“Hardly. Did you not attend the meeting Caesar held afterward? The one with the Provincials bringing land disputes for judgment?”
“Why should I have? I had duties to attend to; inspecting the guard, posting the officers of the gates, that sort of thing. I’m responsible for the security of this camp, you know. Do you think I get to laze around like a tribune?”
I allowed his insolence to pass. “Then I take it that the location, movement, and disposition of civilians to, within, and from the camp also lie within your purview?”
“They do. You talk just like a lawyer.”
“A qualification I share with our commander and Proconsul,” I reminded him. “At what time must foreigners leave the camp?”
“When the sunset trumpet sounds, unless they have an extended pass from me or from the Proconsul or the legatus, and those permissions have to be submitted to me first.”
“Were there any such special passes granted that evening?”
“Yes, to the party with the land disputes. Caesar thought the business might extend well after sunset, so he had me make out passes for them.”
“Did the pass list them all by name?”
“No, of course not. It was for the party as a whole. There were forty or fifty of them.”
“So many? Nobody mentioned that many at the meeting.”
“These are substantial men, by local standards; big land-owners. They arrived with personal guards, grooms, slaves to handle their animals, the lot. Most of them stayed in the forum or the livestock compound while the meeting was going on.”
“Who had charge of the pass?”
He looked honestly puzzled. “What on earth could that mean to you?”
“It has considerable bearing on the matter,” I said, looking serious and wise to cover my confusion.
“The Druids held it. It’s their custom. Gauls think writing is some sort of magic. For all they know, you hand them a papyrus with writing on it, you might be putting a curse on them. They think their Druids are proof against evil magic.”
“Do you know which Druid took charge of the pass?”
“It was the youngest one brought it to me for validation, but any of them might have presented it at the gate.”
“Are departing civilians allowed to use any of the gates?”
He shook his head. “Only the Porta Praetoria.”
“Who was the officer in charge of the Praetoria that night?”
He turned to the clerk. “Get the roster.”
The clerk wore armor, so he was another soldier pulling special duty. He didn’t bother to look for the roster. “It was the ninth night after the full moon, so it was the tribune of the Ninth Cohort.”
“That’s Publius Aurelius Cotta,” Paterculus informed me. “Another snot-nosed shavetail sent to plague my days.”
“Was he on the gate all night?”
Paterculus looked at me as if I had handed him a mortal insult. “No officer of the guard leaves his post unless properly relieved. If he does, by every god of the State I’ll see him beheaded in front of the whole army, no matter how ancient and illustrious his name is!” Obviously, I had trod on the sensitive corns of his authority.
“Very good, Prefect. Carry on.” I turned neatly and walked out of the tent. Behind me I fancied I could hear him fuming.
I pondered upon the minutiae of military practice as I went in search of Aurelius Cotta. Soldiers could blithely ignore the grossest acts of cruelty and depravity, yet grow infuriated over minuscule breaches of procedure and precedence. To an inspecting centurion, a speck of rust on a sword blade or a dangling bootlace was exactly the same thing as a military defeat: It was something that shouldn’t happen and must be punished. He could work up precisely the same amount and degree of rage over each.
That same centurion could watch his soldiers sacking an enemy village, slaughtering and raping and destroying everything in sight, and it was “just the boys acting up a bit.” The fundamental difference between the military and the civilian mentality, I believe, is a totally divergent sense of proportion.
I found a gaggle of tribunes dicing their time away beneath a lean-to erected near the stables. As officers elected by the centuriate assembly, they had the privilege of bringing their own horses along on campaign, so they regarded the stables as part of their territory. Their current occupation was typical of tribunes, who usually lack for meaningful duties. Of soldiers generally, for that matter. I firmly believe that an army’s load could be lightened considerably just by getting rid of all the dice.
I walked up behind my cousin Lumpy and nudged him with my toe. “Where is that hundred you owe me?” It had become my invariable greeting.
“Do you think I’d be trying to win some drinking money if I was rich?” he grumbled. “Besides, no man who’s been given that German piece has any cause for complaint.”
“Tell you what,” I proposed. “Give me that hundred and you can have Molon.”
“I’ll trade you my horse and my personal slave for that German girl.”
“Your keen business acumen will bring credit to our family yet. I’m looking for Aurelius Cotta. Has anybody seen him?”
One of the tribunes looked up from the bone cubes. “I saw him over by the armory a while ago.”
“Thanks.” I turned to go. Lumpy got up and began to walk along beside me.
“Listen, Decius,” he began, hesitantly, “I know Caesar appointed you investigator, but that was just a matter of form, don’t you think? Like when a praetor appoints an index for a case that’s really not important, but constitutional forms have to be followed?”
“Lumpy, I know that, in your tiresome way, you’re trying to say something. Why not just say it?”
“Decius, you’re building up a lot of bad feeling here, the way you’ve been interrogating officers and centurions like common felons. I think you had better back off and let those men take their punishment.”
I stopped and turned on him. “What is this to you?” I demanded.
“I am a Caecilius Metellus, too. Everything you do rubs off on me!”
“You’ll smell none the worse for it,” I said. “You can’t really care about this-you aren’t involved in any way. Did someone put you up to this? Someone involved in the activities of the night in question?”
“Nobody!” he said, but his eyes kept sliding away from mine as if he found my ears to be of some interest. “I’m just catching a lot of grief from the others because of the way you’re acting.”
I stepped close and stared him down. When his eyes dropped, I addressed him. “Lumpy, I had better not learn that you are holding out on me. If the son of my old retainer is flogged to death with sticks because you withheld information from me, you’ll wish you’d gone with him.”
He laughed nervously. “Don’t get in such a state, Decius! We are family, after all. I’d never interfere with your duties, and if the boy is a client of the Caecilii, he deserves our help. I’m just asking you not to tread so heavily. You have a way of questioning people that infuriates these soldiers. They don’t care about birth and officeholding and education. They respect only a better soldier, and you aren’t that.”
“Just remember what I’ve told you.” I whirled and stalked off. There was some truth in what he said. This was not a good place to sling my arrogant weight around, but it is not easy to suppress fifty generations of breeding. And I knew perfectly well that he was not telling me the whole truth. Was anybody?
I found Cotta having an edge put on his sword. This was a sure sign of nerves. The armorer was doing a great business sharpening the weapons of the tribunes, as if they had much chance of using them. Youngsters going into their first campaign always do two things: they spend all day fussing over their weapons and all night making out their wills.
“A word with you, Publius Aurelius, if you don’t mind,” I said.
“Certainly,” he said, his eyes on the armorer’s hands. The man was working the edge of the sword in tiny circles on a very large whetstone set in a long, wooden box full of oil. His movements were slow and precise. The edge on a Roman sword is not so much ground as polished into the steel. With such an edge it takes amazingly little effort to inflict a horrendous wound.