‘I suppose so.’
Vinius let a little lightness into his voice and did, finally, tease her: ‘After all, I am your guardian.’
Lucilla gave him the dirty look he wanted, burying her nose in her wine beaker. Vinius smiled slightly.
After a moment, Lucilla let herself smile too.
This was dangerous. Assuming responsibility for a woman in trouble was something Gaius Vinius had never done. His own wives, except his first and youngest, barely needed him for emotional support. What they wanted was his money and the social status of marriage, especially marriage to a Praetorian. He was pretty sure that Verania required him to be faithful yet herself strayed. She had never sought his advice, offered advice to him, nor wanted consolation of any sort. Keeping their distance suited both of them.
A quiet voice in his head warned him to watch out.
Then again, he rather enjoyed the warm feeling he experienced when this vulnerable soul looked to him for help. A vulnerable soul with melting brown eyes and — he let himself notice as she reclined in dappled sunshine — an inviting body.
I don’t suppose if I stayed here tonight, you would sleep with me?
Get lost, Vinius!
When she seemed composed, Vinius left Lucilla to herself. Though she bore no grudge for his raising the subject, he saw she wanted to think about her mother and sister in solitude. Her family connections were so very few, and now they all needed to be reconsidered.
He had intended to visit his wife that evening. But Verania was like a jealous dog or cat; she would smell other people on him and their aura would make her sulk. Their relationship was sketchy, yet any hint that he had other interests inflamed her. Even the touch of melancholia that crept over him when he left Plum Street was liable to drizzle into Verania’s mind and affect her as if he had committed some act of blistering disloyalty. When in fact (Vinius convinced himself) all he had done was a kindness to someone.
As he neared the Market of Livia, within reach of their apartment, he changed his mind abruptly. An insistent voice urged him to return to Plum Street. But Vinius turned his steps up along the ancient Servian Walls and returned via the Viminal Gate to the Praetorian Camp.
13
In Sarmizegetusa the balance of power shifted.
In where?
Sarmizegetusa Regia, the royal citadel of the Dacians, lay four thousand feet up in the Carpathian Mountains, the hub of a string of powerful fortresses from which Dacia would wage war upon the Romans and their emperors for the next thirty years. The very fact that the name of their citadel was a tongue-twisting hexasyllable indicated the Dacians’ attitude to the outside world. They were a warrior people. They did not give a toss.
Sarmizegetusa had a military purpose but was also a political and religious centre of greater sophistication than enemies might suppose. Its people, who mined for gold, silver, iron and salt, had long been wealthy and had a very high standard of living. On a daunting approach road, which climbed steeply through leaf-littered woods where exquisitely cold mountain streams rattled over pebbles, no milestones signed the citadel. Sarmizegetusa was too long to carve on a stone. If you had a right to go there, you would know where it was. If not, then keep out.
The heartland of Dacia was a remote area that would one day be called Transylvania, almost entirely surrounded by the crescent of the forbidding Carpathians. This heart-stirring enclave was a mix of striking crags, rolling meadows, delightful forests, fast rivers and scenic plains. There were alluring volcanic lakes, wild bogs and mysterious caves. Wildlife teemed in bounding abundance, with every kind of creature from bears, boars, lynxes and wolves, various deer and chamois. Fish filled the brooks, lakes and rivers. Fabulous butterflies roamed over hay meadows. Wild flowers crowded everywhere. Eagles slowly soared above. Nobody gave a second thought to the odd vampire bat.
A few forbidding routes led in from the exterior over high, well-guarded mountain passes. It was hostile terrain, especially in winter, when all strategists agreed that approaches should be tackled only in dire necessity, or for a very dubious advantage of surprise. A winter invasion would certainly be a surprise — because it would be madness.
In the interior were impregnable hilltop fortresses, plus an old royal city and others no one else had ever heard of, of which the capital was the most magnificent. Any Dacian might well believe that all roads led to Sarmizegetusa. Though not snappy in any language, it had a certain portentous quality, whereas ‘all roads lead to Rome’ can sound by comparison like a line in a comedy musical.
At Sarmizegetusa, the four-sided fortress crowning the hill was guarded by massive masonry, enormous blocks that were known as Dacian Walls, with monumental gates. As a military building it was equal to any Greek acropolis, on a scale with the Cyclopian Walls of ancient Mycenae, though a Dacian engineer would claim they had better setting-out and better-dressed masonry. Dacian Walls were tremendous structures, with a double skin of stonework that was bonded with timbers and a hard-packed earth and rubble core. Outside the fortress, civilian areas occupied a hundred or so great man-made terraces to east and west. Their buildings were sophisticated, often polygonal or circular, created with great precision. There were domestic compounds, workshops, stores and warehouses. Water was pumped through a sophisticated system, with ceramic pipes feeding the homes of the well-born. The citadel had all the accoutrements of a thriving population who benefited from a rich economy.
The ancient Dacian language was spoken all over central Europe, used commercially and politically by many other tribes. Dacians were masters of ethics, philosophy and science, including physics and astronomy; they toyed with Egyptian divination; they had contact with Greeks. With their spirits lifted by their beautiful country — and boosted by their enormous wealth — the Dacians were famously religious. At Sarmizegetusa they had created a sanctuary where a great sun disc showed their mastery of their own solar calendar while a combined stone- and wood-henge allowed them to honour the winter solstice, winters there being bone-hard. Long, dark nights of yearning for the sun’s renewal gave them, like all northern people, morose tendencies.
They lived at the crossroads of central Europe. Their choice, therefore, was either to be downtrodden by everyone who passed through, or fight them. They took the latter course. Dacians had no reputation for diffidence.
From the Roman point of view, Dacia had been quiescent for a hundred years after a king called Burebista was quashed by the Emperor Augustus. For the Dacians, Burebista was never quashed and would remain a mythical ideal. He was killed off by jealous aristocrats of his own nation, a local difficulty which was a mere kink in history. For them, it had no bearing on Dacia’s potential as a world power.
One of King Burebista’s measures, it was said, was to uproot Dacian vineyards and persuade his warriors to stop drinking the robust red wines of their homeland. These wines may provide a clue to why Dacian pre-eminence had been slow in coming. And why, after the vines were replanted, Dacian fortunes slumped again for a long time.
Under King Burebista, Dacian territorial influence had extended to its widest, from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, and from the Balkans to Bohemia, always with Transylvania as its political core. Burebista had consolidated the Dacian tribes including the influential Getae, or Goths, who had made their mark in the past and would do so again. However, he made the mistake of siding with Pompey against Julius Caesar. This alienated not just Caesar but his gut-wrenchingly ambitious young successor, Augustus, who invaded Dacia intent on diminishing its status. Before he arrived, however, Burebista was killed. The coalition disintegrated into ineffective warring factions. For a century afterwards, Dacians held a truce with Rome, which meant they took any money Rome offered and in return were thoroughly unreliable allies.