Vespasia Polla’s pleasure at seeing her two sons after so long was tempered by her worry about her husband. After no more than a perfunctory embrace in the spacious atrium, whose vaulted, lofty ceiling was fully enclosed in defence against the northern climate, she led them along a corridor and up a set of wooden stairs. Her once proud, slender face was now careworn and she wore her greying hair haphazardly pinned atop her head, taking no pride in her appearance. There was no sparkle in her dark eyes and the thin flesh beneath them hung in slack bags, telling of tears and sleepless nights.
‘These doctors here know nothing,’ she complained as she led the brothers along a first-floor corridor with views over the vineyards and on to the distant Alps beyond. ‘I’ve tried to persuade Titus to return to Rome since he first started feeling weak a few months ago, but he won’t go. He says that whatever the Fates have decreed for him is not going to be altered by changing from Greek quacks in Germania Superior to other Greek quacks who charge twice as much just because they live in Rome.’
Vespasian could see the logic of the argument but refrained from saying so.
Vespasia paused by a plain wooden door. ‘He says that the time that Morta chooses to cut the thread of a man’s life is determined solely by her whim and has nothing to do with your geographical whereabouts.’ With a disparaging scowl she opened the door.
The brothers followed her in and were surprised, but delighted, to see their father sitting up in bed; he raised his eyes from the scroll that he was perusing and a smile cracked his pallid, hollow-cheeked face. ‘Well, well, my sons; either the messengers got to Rome and Pannonia in record time and you beat that again travelling here, or I wasted my money writing to you both, four days ago, asking you to come.’ He held out both hands and Vespasian and Sabinus took one each. ‘But seeing as you’re both here and that I’m feeling a little better today, despite the doctors’ best endeavours to finish me off, I’ll get up for dinner.’
Titus set down his wine cup and looked disbelievingly at Sabinus. He rubbed the puckered, red scar where his left ear had been and then turned to his wife reclining on the couch next to him. ‘It seems that we brought up our eldest son to be an idiot with a suicidal sense of honour.’ He glanced over to Clementina, reclining next to her husband, and added: ‘Although, of course, my dear, the wrong that had been done to you had to be avenged at some point, but not at the expense of your brother and husband.’
Clementina nodded vaguely at Titus, her red eyes rimmed with tears for her brother; she wore a simple stola of yellow wool and her hair hung dishevelled around her shoulders. Since being told, upon returning from a walk with her children an hour earlier, of the part that her menfolk had played in the assassination of Caligula, she had been torn between mourning for Clemens and relief at Sabinus’ reprieve. She decided to attend dinner so as not to be parted from her husband for a moment, but had not been the best of dining companions and had eaten nothing. ‘My shame was not worth my brother’s life; nor my husband’s.’ She ran a hand up Sabinus’ muscular forearm. ‘But I thank the gods that one, at least, remains to me.’
Sabinus shifted uneasily and placed his hand over Clementina’s. ‘Only if we can find the Eagle.’
Vespasian held up his wine cup for a slave to refill. ‘And to do that Pallas thinks that we should try to find Arminius’ son, Thumelicus, whom he suspects has returned to his tribe’s homelands. And how do we do that? We don’t even know what he looks like.’
‘Exactly like his father, I should expect,’ Titus said. ‘At least he did as a child.’
The brothers both stared uncomprehendingly at their father.
‘You’ve seen Thumelicus?’ Sabinus asked, frowning.
‘I only saw him as a small child at Germanicus’ triumph; it was the May of the year that your mother and I went to Asia; we sailed from Ostia two days later. I remember remarking on how the boy looked so like his father: long, almost black hair with piercing, bright blue eyes and thin lips. The only difference was a slight cleft in his chin that his mother had passed on to him.’
‘But how could you compare them?’
‘Because I knew Arminius as a child; I saved his life, as a matter of fact.’ Titus gave a rueful smile. ‘Looking back, perhaps if I hadn’t, things might be different; you see, boys, it’s not just men from the great families who can change the course of history.’
‘How did that come about?’ Sabinus asked.
But Vespasian remembered. ‘Of course, you served with the Twentieth Legion.’
The look of pride on Titus’ gaunt face as he recalled his martial youth seemed to take twenty years off his age. ‘Yes, Vespasian, I did. After we had defeated the Cantabri in Hispania we were sent to Germania. We were part of Drusus’ army, Tiberius’ elder brother, whilst he pursued Augustus’ policy of conquering Germania Magna as far as the Albis River. With him we fought campaigns all over that forest-infested land, against the Frisii and the Chauci along the low-lying coast of the cold Northern Sea and against the Chatti and the Marsi in the dark forests and hills inland. When I was thirty-four and had been a centurion for two years, we fought a battle against the Cherusci, almost on the banks of the Albis. We beat them, and then their King, Segimerus, submitted to Drusus in one of their sacred groves. To seal the pact, his nine-year-old son, Erminatz, was given as a hostage to Rome. As one of the most junior centurions at the time it fell to me and my century to escort the boy back to Rome so I got to know him quite well — and I saved him from being butchered by some Chatti tribesmen who ambushed us on the way back to the Rhenus.’
‘Erminatz was Arminius, Father?’ Vespasian asked.
‘Yes, his name was Latinised to Arminius. He stayed in Rome for seven years and was given equestrian rank before serving as a military tribune in the legions. He eventually returned to Germania Magna as the prefect of a cohort of German auxiliaries. And the rest is history: three years after his return he betrayed Varus and almost twenty-five thousand legionaries and auxiliaries were massacred. Perhaps I should have left him to the Chatti after all.’
Sabinus took a sip of wine, looking less than pleased. ‘How does this help us, Father? You saw Thumelicus when he was two and his father when he was nine and you thought that they looked very similar. Both had black hair and blue eyes, just like many thousands of other Germans, but Thumelicus had a cleft chin.’
‘Exactly,’ Vespasian agreed. ‘And wandering around Germania Magna looking underneath the beard of every German we can find is not going to get us any closer to Thumelicus.’
Titus nodded and picked up a wrinkled winter apple. ‘So you are going to have to get him to come to you.’
Sabinus almost scoffed but then remembered that it was his father that he was talking to and pulled his face into a more respectful expression. ‘And how are we going to do that?’
Titus took his knife from the sheath on his belt and started to peel his apple. ‘As I said, I got to know Erminatz or Arminius quite well. It took us nearly two months to get back to Rome; on that journey the lad began to realise just how far he was being taken from home and he began to despair about seeing his parents again, especially his mother. The Germans hold their mothers and wives in very high regard and even take their advice on subjects that we would consider to be male concerns.’ Vespasia snorted; Titus carried on without seeming to notice. ‘The morning that I handed him over to Drusus’ wife, Antonia-’
Vespasian was surprised. ‘You met Antonia when you were younger?’
‘Hardly, she dismissed me as soon as I walked through her door; I was far too lowly to be noticed. Anyway, before I left him, Arminius gave me something and made me promise to give it to his mother. I promised of course, thinking that I would be rejoining my legion, but what I didn’t know was that Drusus had fallen from his horse two days after we’d left and he had died a month later. We met his funeral cortège on our way back and my legion was with it. We were then posted to Illyricum and, with Tiberius, campaigned in Germania Magna again a few years later. This time we came in from the south and never reached the Cherusci lands. Then, four years after that, I was almost gutted by a spear-thrust and was invalided out of the army; so I never returned to the Cherusci lands and I never gave this thing to Arminius’ mother. By the time I’d recovered from my wounds and got back to Rome, Arminius was serving with the army far from the city so I couldn’t return it to him.’