Ovid

She turned back to face me, and she had the grace to look guilty; but that was all.

'Thank you for the book,' she said. 'It was kind of you to think of it.'

'My pleasure.' I was almost as angry as I had been in the Secretary's office. 'I'll see you around, okay?'

As I walked past her she laid a hand on my arm. 'I really don't know why my stepfather was exiled. I'm not hiding anything from you. Honestly.'

'Sure,' I said; but I'd stopped. I could no more've carried on walking back to the house with those fingers burning into my skin than thrown a party for my father and that new wife of his.

She lowered her eyes, but not before I'd seen the glint of tears. 'I may have thoughts of my own on the subject but they're just that. Thoughts of my own.'

'Care to share them?'

She shook her head. 'No, they're probably wrong anyway. Certainly they don't make much sense.'

There was a lump in my throat the size of an egg. I told you I was a kind-hearted sucker. However, I had my pride as well. Valerii Messallae don't melt easily.

'Suit yourself,' I said. I had my arm back now. There was nothing else to keep me.

'You'll still keep on trying? To get the permission, I mean?'

'Of course,' I said stiffly. 'You had my promise.'

She got up and before I knew what was happening she'd kissed me lightly on the cheek. It was the sort of bird's peck you'd expect from your kid sister but from the effect it had on me you'd've thought she'd given me a complete no-holds-barred Corinthian tongue job. I muttered something suitably noble and patron-like about doing my best and escaped as quickly as I could.

I'd given Perilla my word that she'd have her stepfather's ashes back, and I intended to keep it, whatever the cost. But as of this afternoon I'd as much idea of how to go about it as an oyster's got of woodcarving.

* * *

Varus to Himself

Vela has just come in for the sentries' watchword. I gave him Inflexible Vigilance, a joke which, of course, he did not recognise as such. Numonius Vela is my second-in-command, with special responsibility for the cavalry. That, too, is a joke.

I have always viewed horses as stupid creatures. They have as much sense (and no more) as will prevent them throwing their riders in battle and ensure that they go cheerfully to possible disembowelment. In other words, they are blessed with the perfect military virtues. Horses and Vela have much in common. He is a turnip-head incapable of following a reasoned argument beyond its first most obvious premise; a nonentity of staggering blandness. Solid is the word that springs to mind — or perhaps stolid, for Vela has no stiffness, no backbone. He is thick and starchy as overcooked porridge. You could reach out your hand and knead him, body and soul. This is not to say he is a moral man. If Vela is incorruptible (and he is; oh, he most certainly is!) his virtue is a product not of choice but of mental and spiritual sloth.

In short, dear confidant, Numonius Vela is a bore of the first order. I view it as not the least of my trials that I am compelled to march through Germany in his company.

Perhaps I should give you other names, and the faces to fit them. I will not weary you with a long list; we are few, we band of brothers, despite the thousands of breathing souls who surround us. Three — not counting Vela — will be sufficient.

Egregious Eggius first, and least. My Camp Commander, or one of them. One of the Old Breed, a Roman par excellence, who might have stood with Horatius on the bridge but would have drawn the line at anything so cowardly as chopping it down. Where Vela is a cold-porridge soldier, Eggius is all pepper and fiery spices, a damn-your-eyes man destined for glory or the grave; the latter being his more likely destination, and good riddance to him so long as he does not drag the rest of us in as well. I cannot bring myself to like Eggius, but he has his uses, largely because of a natural antipathy for Vela. Which is, I may say, reciprocated and affords me much quiet amusement.

Next, Marcus Ceionius, my other Camp Commander and, of necessity, ally. Venal, greedy (although as you know I speak as should not), cowardly and rotten as a ten-day-old fig, which facially he unfortunately resembles. He, too, may win through to glory, but it will be glory undeserved and achieved by guile rather than merit. If, as is more likely, the grave claims him before his time it will be with a common soldier's javelin in his back. The men hate him, and with good reason. It is rare to meet someone with no redeeming qualities. Ceionius comes as close as is humanly possible.

Third and last, your humble servant: Publius Quinctilius Varus. Ex-consul, ex-this, ex-that (I shall never, after all, see sixty again). Augustus's viceroy and general of this glorious army. Bon viveur, lover of coined gold and (not least, this!) traitor against the state. That, I think, will do for the present. After all, I do not wish to alienate your sympathies completely.

You will notice of course that I have not described Arminius, who is the most relevant character of all. Patience. I must, like every good general, keep something in reserve. You will meet Arminius in his place, and I promise you that you will have your fill of him.

Heigh ho. Off we go.

6

I didn't go straight home when I left Perilla's. I'd left a signet ring in for repair at Cadmus's in Fox Street off the Saepta, which meant another trip up town. Not that I minded. I liked walking around the city, even in weather like this. Besides, it was an excuse for a stroll through the Subura.

Yeah. I know. That's the sort of remark eager young heirs to the family fortune hope to hear their rich daddies making. It means that the old guys' lids have shaken loose and it's time to call in the lawyers and slap on a certificate of gross mental instability. No one in their right mind walks in Rome if they can avoid it. The crowds are thicker than fleas in a fourth rate whore's mattress, the climate's boiling in summer and freezing in winter, and the streets stink all the year round of effluent, rotten vegetables and everything from cheap incense to dead dogs and month-old fish. And that's just for starters. Step off the main thoroughfares in the poorer districts and you'll find that the more enterprising locals do a line in throat slitting, mugging and purse snatching that has anywhere else in the empire beaten hollow. Keep to the main drag and you've got a better-than-average chance of being hit by something thrown from a tenement. Or, if your luck's really out, even by the tenement itself. Don't laugh. I've seen it happen.

So I like Rome. Sure, it may be a dump outside the bits that old Augustus found brick and left marble, it may stink worse than a wineshop privy in midsummer, but it's got character. Where else could you buy a pitch-black performing midget, have your fortune told by a cheiromantic goat and catch a dose of clap from a female sword-swallower, all within twenty yards?

Like I say, Rome's strong meat. It may hurt you, it may even kill you, but it'll never bore you.

The sky was beginning to cloud over in earnest as I left the slope of the Esquiline and cut down into the Subura. This was pretty bad news. Most people who have business in that part of town can't afford raincoats let alone litters, and the chances of finding a litter-team for hire between Pullian Street and the Argiletum is about as likely as seeing the Wart do a clog-dance for coppers on the Speakers' Platform. I wrapped my cloak tighter round me, pulled up the hood to keep the wind out of my eyes, and tried to think about something other than the soaking I was going to get between here and the Saepta.

Like what I'd got on Ovid so far.

Point one. The reason for his exile was no secret among what I'd call the arse-lickers: people like my father and Crispus who were on the inside of government and knew where all the dirty linen hung. If they were terrified to open their prim little mouths in case someone slapped them shut then whatever the secret was, ancient history or not, it was pretty sensitive.