The small group of Protectores rode in single file, a perimeter cordon flanking the main party of hunters around the emperor. When he glanced to his right Castus could see them, a dozen riders with hunting spears, swathed in brown mantles as they rode along the margin of the woodland. The bodyguards were supposed to remain in sight of the emperor at all times, but keep a distance, out of earshot. The hunting party included the former emperor Maximian, newly returned from the imperial conference on the Danube, and whatever matters of state might be discussed there were not to be overheard. Castus was glad of that: he had no wish to be a party to such things anyway. The trees beyond the hunters were black, and flocks of birds wheeled above the bare branches, routed out by the plunging dogs. Like the field after a battle, Castus thought.
‘What are we supposed to be guarding against anyway, out here?’ he called, his lips barely moving above the bunched folds of his cloak.
‘Brigands!’ replied Brinno, riding behind him. ‘Bandits and robbers!’
Sallustius was laughing from up ahead. ‘More likely the importuning provincials,’ he called back, ‘wanting to disturb the emperor’s leisure with their pleas!’
They drew together, slowing their horses; the imperial party had paused at the edge of the wood, perhaps debating the direction of their chase.
‘We’d be better off surrounding some of that lot over there,’ said Victor, the last of the four men. He nodded towards the emperor and his companions, and the string of other riders and men on foot that trailed behind them, kicking up the snow. ‘They’re much more of a threat, I’d say. Civilians! Too many eunuchs as well – why bring eunuchs on a hunting expedition?’
‘To massage their tired thighs, no doubt,’ Sallustius said, compressing his squashed face into a deep grimace. He dropped from the saddle to the ground, and stood flexing his legs. ‘Or somebody might be struck by a profound thought, and need it copied down before it fades…’
‘Why are there so many eunuchs at court anyway?’ Brinno asked. ‘Eunuchs and Christian priests. And women!’
One of Constantine’s first acts as emperor had been to lift the prohibition on Christianity in his domains; now he seemed even to favour them, and several of their priests were indeed residing at the palace. But they were quiet, studious-seeming men, not the crazed cannibal degenerates Castus had been led to expect. About the eunuchs he was less sure.
Sallustius was grinning. ‘Seems strange to you, eh, my young barbarian friend?’ he said to Brinno. ‘The ways of the civilised world! Eunuchs make good courtiers,’ he went on. ‘They’re loathed by most men, and owe everything to the emperor. They’re ambitious, but they lack the balls to aspire to the highest offices. If you see what I mean…’
Brinno just shrugged, gazing with mute incomprehension towards the imperial party. Castus could not help but sympathise with the young man’s disdain.
He had assumed, when he first came to the palace, that the other members of the Corps of Protectores would be men like himself, former centurions, veterans of the legions. Many of them were, but he soon discovered that many others were not.
There were fifty Protectores quartered in the palace at Treveris. Of those in Castus’s section, Sallustius was a former decurion of the guard cavalry, a bow-legged man in his forties, with thinning hair and a wry squashed face; he reminded Castus of his old friend Valens. Then there was Victor, barely out of his teens, the son of a wealthy landowner from western Gaul who had purchased his commission in the Corps; he made up for his youth and inexperience with vigour, going out every morning at dawn to ride circuits on the equestrian field, and practise the showy individual sword drills his father had taught him.
Brinno, meanwhile, was the son of a war chief of the Salian Franks. He had been captured in battle ten years before, when he was only sixteen, and held as a hostage at Treveris until his father’s loyalty was assured. A lean and rangy young man, he wore his yellow hair much longer than any Roman, and had a downy growth of beard on his chin. He seemed to Castus very much like the warriors of the Bructeri he had been fighting only a few months before.
It had been strange, at first, living and serving beside such men, but Castus had quickly grown accustomed to their company, and they had accepted him with ease. The Protectores were not like a regular military unit, but there was a keen sense of pride and discipline amongst them even so. He could respect that at least.
‘Do you know,’ Sallustius said, as he squatted in the frozen grass, ‘how they make eunuchs?’
‘Make them?’ Castus said. He sensed this might be another of Sallustius’s strange anecdotes. Brinno at least appeared curious.
‘There are three ways,’ Sallustius said, raising a finger. His breath made a thin fog as he spoke. ‘First, the dissolving method. This is done to boys before they reach manhood. The boy is placed in a bath of very hot water, and his ball sack is squeezed and gently crushed, until his balls dissolve…’
‘Not possible!’ Brinno said, with a look of horror.
‘True! Next, the cutting method, for older youths. The youth is made to sit on a bench with a hole in it, and his balls are pulled down through the hole…’
Castus shifted in the saddle; he noticed Brinno and Victor doing the same.
‘…then two cuts are made in the ball sack with a sharp blade, and the balls pulled out and twisted together. The youth is left sitting there like that, and when the balls turn blue they can be safely nipped off with a pair of pliers.’
‘People do that?’ Brinno said. ‘It’s allowed?’ He shook his head and gazed off into the snowy distance with an expression of appalled disbelief.
‘No, it’s illegal. But mainly it’s done in Armenia and Persia, places like that,’ Sallustius said, getting up from the grass. ‘The eunuchs are brought into the empire as slaves. Though some desperate Roman parents do it to their children, pretending it was an accident, in the hope they’ll rise to greater things.’
He swung himself back up into the saddle; over to the right, the hunting party was moving again, on along the margin of the woods.
‘You said there were three ways?’ Castus said. He caught Sallustius’s wink.
‘Oh, yes,’ the older man replied. He rode up alongside Brinno. ‘The third method is to place the victim upon a trestle and jerk him up and down. It’s usually done in winter, in severe cold. The motion feels like riding a horse, you see… Eventually the balls go numb and just drop off, and the victim doesn’t feel a thing… Sometimes, riding a real horse can have the same effect…’
‘Bastard!’ Brinno said, grinning as he blushed.
It was a few hours after daybreak when the hunting party paused to eat. They had already covered miles of woodland and hill country, and the local huntsmen that accompanied the party had brought in a few rabbits and a couple of small deer they had caught with the dogs. But there had been neither sign nor scent of the boar, their intended prey. The hunting nets had yet to be rigged, and the horsemen had not yet had a chance to try their spears.
In a clearing between the trees the slaves cleared the ground of snow, rolled out matting and stretched a canopy overhead, then piled straw bolsters to make a three-sided dining couch. They hung clay charcoal burners in the trees all around, to warm the frigid air, and then the emperor and his hunting companions reclined upon the couches, eating freshly roasted rabbit and venison while the dogs yapped and snarled over the bloody scraps in the snow nearby.
Castus stood at a discreet distance with the other Protectores. His stomach growled – he had eaten nothing that day except half a raw onion before leaving Treveris. He tried to clear his mind of everything but the task appointed to him, but still his eyes kept drifting back to the party sprawled on the dining couches beneath the canopy. Being in close proximity to the emperor and his advisors was usual for him now, but Castus had never been able to lose the unnerving sense of awe and discomfort he felt. He watched the diners on the couches, knowing that they were some of the most powerful men in the world. And yet they were just men: Constantine himself, red-faced and open-mouthed as he related some anecdote or called for more wine. At his right hand Maximian, greasy-fingered as he brought the steaming meat to his lips. To most of humanity these figures were as remote and austere as the gods. More powerful than gods, in a way, for their authority was immediately felt, immediately enforced here on earth. What would it be like, Castus thought, to sit among them, to share their meal and their easy laughing talk? He dared not even imagine.