“They must have! Who else could have done it, and why?”
“The why of it is a major question,” I said, my mind speeding for a change. “But I know that Vinius had some sort of dealings on the side. He was amassing wealth from somewhere, and it certainly wasn’t from the army. Might he have been dealing with the Druids? If he somehow betrayed them-and this would certainly be in character-they might have done away with him in revenge.”
“But to do this without a festival of the people?” he objected. “That is terribly irregular.”
“In time of war,” I said, “we often simplify our religious rituals. Perhaps that is what they did. Am I correct in believing that the Druids never use arms?”
“Except for the instruments of sacrifice, they never even touch them. It would be polluting.”
“There,” I said, spreading my hands, “what could be more sensible? They can’t use swords or spears, so they used what they had.” It didn’t answer everything, but I liked the sound of it.
“Well, perhaps,” he said, still very uneasy.
“But there is more, isn’t there?” I prodded.
“Yes. What we saw last night.”
“That had the look of a sacrifice as well,” I said. “But you said that is never the way a Druid is sacrificed.”
“It is not,” he said, taking another pull at the skin.
“Then tell me, Lovernius: Who sacrifices their victims by hanging alone?”
“The Germans!” he said, vehemently. “In their sacred groves, they hang their victims in oak trees. At one great festival held every twelve years, they sacrifice twelve of every living thing: men, beasts, even birds and fish. Hundreds of corpses hanging in a huge oak grove near the Northern Sea.”
“The smell must be appalling,” I said. “You have seen these things with your own eyes?”
“No, of course not. The only Gauls who see their rites are the ones who get sacrificed. But I have heard of this. Everyone has.”
“I see.” More reliance on rumor. But this probably had a greater core of truth than the hearsay of soldiers in a strange country. “Have you any idea what these strange events might portend?”
He shook his head dejectedly. “None, save that things like this should not happen. Is this a war of men or of gods?”
“The two do seem to be getting confused,” I told him. “But I feel that all this mystical confusion is nothing but concealment for depressingly human evils.”
“What do you mean?” he asked earnestly.
How to explain the way my mind worked to a group of Gauls, half-civilized though they were. It was hard enough to explain myself to my fellow Romans, steeped as they were in traditions of Greek logic and native commonsense. I had a try at it. The Gauls paid my words close attention, with serious expressions on their faces. They wanted answers as badly as I did.
“Lovernius, men explain their actions with a great many words, imputing all sorts of noble motives to themselves. They may say they are driven by patriotism, or by devotion to the gods, or by the interests of the people, or loyalty to a king, or any number of other great things. Usually, they are lying. Far more often, their motives are base. They are after power, or wealth, or some other man’s woman.”
“This I understand,” Lovernius said, “but these are religious matters.”
I held up a pedantic finger, the wine lending eloquence to my teeming mind. “Always, Lovernius, when men perform ignoble deeds and seek to justify themselves with high-flown words and portentous actions, I look for the shoddy, base element that ties everything together. A few days ago I discovered that Titus Vinius had amassed a great deal of gold from no obvious source. Forget about gods and priests and dreadful sacrifices. The gold is the thing. When I find out where it came from and where it was destined, I feel sure that I will have all parties involved in this matter tied together as with a chain. A chain of gold.” I was absurdly pleased with the conceit, then reminded myself to go easy on the wine so early in the day.
The Gauls, with their love of flowery rhetoric, did not consider my speech excessive, and Lovernius seemed relieved to have the matter out in the open. He was loyal to Rome, but superstitious dread had caused him to hold his silence about the triple slaying. The triple hanging, on the other hand, had been too much. He now felt that I would be able to set these matters to rest with dispatch. I hoped that his faith in me was not entirely without justification.
11
We rode back into the camp at midday, when the trumpets were sounding cheerily and the men were assembling by messes for their noon meal. It says much for our soldiers that they can anticipate even such Spartan fare with pleasure. I left my horse with the ala and went to my tent, where I found Hermes laying out my lunch. He had managed to scrounge a pot of fruit preserved in honey and a roast duck. I was not about to ask him how he had accomplished this minor miracle.
“Keep this up and I might just manumit you when you’re too old to be useful,” I told him as I sat down and launched into the food. He poured me a cup of watered wine, which I hardly needed. “Where are Molon and Freda?”
“I haven’t seen them all day,” he said. “I thought maybe you’d sent them off on some errand.”
The news stole some of the pleasure from my lunch. Slaves are not supposed to roam around at will, even such eccentric specimens as those two. More and more, they were behaving like free persons and would have to be disabused of that notion.
“When did you last see them?”
“Molon was drunk behind the tent last night and I didn’t look in on him. I didn’t see either of them when your Gauls came for you last night, and when I got up this morning I didn’t see them, either, not that I was looking for them. They have to be around here somewhere. They wouldn’t dare set foot outside the camp.”
“That would be foolish,” I agreed, but I was not happy about this. One more concern when I already had far too many.
With lunch finished, I was temporarily at loose ends. I rose to go look for my errant slaves with Hermes dogging my steps. I badly wanted some sleep, but I knew that it would not come if I lay down in my tent. I had too much to think about. As we traversed the camp, I told Hermes the latest developments. He was far from a brilliant conversationalist, but I had long ago learned that talking to someone helped to sort out confusing matters.
“If Germans hanged the Druids, then there are Germans nearby, right?” Hermes said.
“Your grasp of logic is phenomenal,” I commended.
“No, I mean there are a lot of them, right? More than just those two you saw a few nights ago?”
“Not necessarily.” In fact, I had been brooding over that very question. The boy wasn’t really foolish. “Those were two huge, powerful warriors, and two of the Druids were elderly, and no Druid is trained to arms. Two such brutes as Eintzius and Eramanzius could easily have overpowered these sacerdotal Gauls.”
“Still,” he said dubiously, “getting them all the way up that mountain, and building a bonfire and hauling them up into the trees: that sounds like a big job for two men.”
“Well, they proclaimed themselves to be of royal lineage. Doubtless they came here with companions. But a few dozen Germans are nothing to worry about.”
“Just as long as it’s not an army of them.” Hermes was getting to be like everybody else; jumping at every shadow, worried about our tiny numbers and exposed condition. Like everybody else, he had ample justification for his fears.
A thorough search of the forum and other more or less public areas failed to turn up Molon or Freda. The centuries were no more helpful. Even an encampment of six thousand men is a small community and Freda was the most noticeable creature for a hundred miles in all directions. An elephant could not have drawn more attention.