‘Thank you, Corbulo, but I think you had best make that two hours; I need to report to the Governor.’
‘This is most irregular,’ Servius Sulpicius Galba barked in the parade ground voice that he had used for the entirety of the interview. ‘Arriving to take over the legion and then leaving the very next day on some mission, across the river, that you are unable to confide in me about? Most irregular. But then everything these days seems to be most irregular, what? Freedmen and cripples giving orders to men who can trace their families back to the first days of the Republic and beyond; New Men like you with no family to speak of becoming legates and replacing ex-consuls who should be governing provinces. It’s time for a return to traditional Roman ways; we’re lacking discipline, wouldn’t you agree, er …’ He quickly consulted Vespasian’s orders. ‘Vespasian?’
‘Yes, Governor,’ Vespasian replied as he adjusted his position on the uncomfortable plain wooden chair.
He looked around the room whilst Galba studied the Emperor’s mandate again. It was not what he would have expected for the study of a provincial governor; it was minimally furnished with plain practical furniture that paid no heed to comfort and was completely lacking in ornamentation; even the inkpot on the rough desk was of undecorated fired clay.
Galba rolled up the scrolls and handed one back to Vespasian. ‘It’s been most awkward having a man of Corbulo’s rank placed below me, for both of us; at least your appointment deals with that. Very well, take what you need for this mission. But be warned, the German tribes are a bloodthirsty bunch of undisciplined barbarians. A couple of months ago I was obliged to throw a Chatti war band back across the river when they crossed further downstream whilst it was frozen.’
‘Judging from the maps, I’ll have to pass through their lands.’
‘Then do it quickly.’ He waved the Emperor’s mandate at Vespasian. ‘I’ll be at the camp shortly before noon to give you the mandate officially and publicly confirm your appointment with the men, although why they need that defeats me; they should just do as they’re told. No discipline, you see, no discipline.’
‘The best unit for the job is the First Batavian Cavalry Ala,’ Gaius Licinius Mucianus stated without even being asked his opinion. ‘You obviously have to take mounted troops but these lads are more than that: their homelands are at the mouth of the Rhenus and they learn to swim almost before they can walk, and they’re great boatmen. With all the rivers that you may need to cross those abilities will be essential. What’s more, being Germanic they’ll be able to communicate with the local tribes and have a good knowledge of the terrain.’
‘Where are they based?’ Vespasian asked, liking the young thick-stripe military tribune immensely for his correct assessment of the problem and pertinent suggestion so quickly after he, Vespasian, had finished briefing the senior officers of the II Augusta as to what was required of him.
‘At Saletio, about thirty miles downriver, north from here.’
‘Thank you, Mucianus.’ Vespasian looked around the faces of the other officers sitting across the desk from him and Sabinus in the praetorium. The five junior, thin-stripe tribunes, whose names he had not yet managed to remember, were all looking supportive of the idea, but he was less interested in the opinions of the young and inexperienced than he was in those of the primus pilus, Tatius, the senior centurion of the legion, and the camp prefect, Publius Anicius Maximus. The latter two were both nodding their agreement; only Corbulo seemed less than enthusiastic. ‘Whose command do they fall under?’
‘Yours now,’ Corbulo said, ‘but I’m not sure that you will like their prefect; he’s an arrogant young man of very little ability, who has none of the qualities of his father. I’m afraid that Paetus’ untimely death meant that his son grew up without proper paternal guidance.’
‘You mean Lucius, son of Publius Junius Caesennius Paetus?’ Vespasian exclaimed, remembering his long-dead friend who had been a comrade of his and Corbulo’s when they had served together in Thracia. He had been murdered ten years previously by Livilla when, as an urban quaestor, Paetus had tried to arrest her on the Senate’s orders after her lover Sejanus’ downfall. With his dying breath Paetus had asked Vespasian to keep an eye on Lucius; Vespasian had made the promise but he now felt very keenly just how remiss he had been in keeping it.
Sabinus shifted uneasily in his seat next to Vespasian. ‘Is there no other unit available?’
Corbulo shook his head. ‘There are two Gallic cavalry alae attached to the legion but they’re too … well, too Gallic. They hate all Germans on principle and would be spoiling for a fight with any that they came across; not conducive to a successful outcome to the mission. And our own legionary cavalry detachment is no match for German cavalry if it should indeed come to a fight. I’m afraid that Mucianus is right; the Batavians are the best men for the job.’
‘Then we shall have them; and besides, I owe young Lucius.’ Vespasian glanced sidelong at Sabinus who refused to meet his eye. ‘As, indeed, does my brother,’ he added quietly. ‘Mucianus, send a message to Lucius Paetus immediately and tell him to be here tomorrow with six turmae of his Batavians; I think that one hundred and eighty men should be enough for security and not so many as to cause alarm. And tell him I want a few who have a good knowledge of the interior of Germania Magna. Maximus, have six transport ships ready to embark them at the port tomorrow afternoon. Dismiss, gentlemen.’
‘You haven’t paid the hundred thousand denarii that you borrowed off Paetus back to his family, have you?’ Vespasian accused Sabinus as soon as they were alone. ‘I told you that you should never have borrowed it.’
‘Don’t lecture me, brother; I borrowed it because Paetus offered and it was the only way that I could get a larger house at the time. Just because you’re parsimonious doesn’t mean that everybody should live the same way. Saturn’s stones, you don’t even own your own house.’
‘Perhaps; but at least all my money is my own and I sleep better at night knowing I’m not in debt. How do you sleep?’
‘In a lot more comfort than you and very well.’
‘But how can you? That debt is accruing interest every month. When are you going to pay it back?’
‘Soon, all right? I was going to pay it back years ago but when the Aventine burnt down taking my house with it I needed to hang onto the money to rebuild. Then I sort of forgot about it.’
‘Lucius won’t have.’
‘Lucius probably doesn’t even know that I still owe it.’
Vespasian stared disapprovingly at his brother. ‘Then I shall tell him.’
‘You judgemental little shit.’
‘Well then, you sort it out with him when he arrives because I don’t want this festering between you whilst we’re wandering around Germania trying to save your profligate life.’ Vespasian turned on his heel and stormed out of the praetorium.
Vespasian’s back stiffened with pride as he walked out of the camp’s gates with Galba to inspect the II Augusta the following afternoon. Although not at full strength owing to a few centuries being on detachment, manning smaller forts and lookout towers along the Rhenus, it was still an impressive sight: more than four thousand legionaries in neat ranks and files formed up in cohorts on the flat ground between the camp and the river. As he mounted the dais he wished that his father could see him, but he knew that they would probably never meet again. They had said their goodbyes and both had been grateful for the chance to do so; it was more than most people got.
‘The Second Augusta,’ Primus Pilus Tatius bellowed, ‘will come to attention!’
The bucinator next to him brought his horn to his lips and blew three ascending notes; as the last one died every centurion simultaneously bawled an order and the entire legion came to a crashing, synchronised attention, thumping the butts of their pila, javelins with long iron shanks, onto the ground and slamming their bronze-fronted shields, adorned with a white Pegasus opposite a Capricorn, across their chests. Silence followed, broken only by the fluttering of standards and the cawing of crows high up in a copse of trees to Vespasian’s left.