Tullo fell silent, taking a long drink from his beer, and Julius voiced the question that every one of them was thinking.
‘How did they respond?’
The legion man shrugged.
‘Well enough, I suppose, given the circumstances. A few men decided to run rather than face their own people with a drawn sword, and inevitably most of them were captured and brought back to face military justice.’
‘The usual?’
He nodded again at Marcus’s question.
‘The usual. We beat each of them to death at dawn the day after they were dragged back into camp. I say “we”, because it was clear to the officers that we’d have a mutiny on our hands if the condemned men’s tent parties were ordered to carry out the sentence, so we did it for them. Some of them hated us for it even more than they’d hated us before, and some gave us a grudging respect for sparing them the choice between mutiny and murdering their friends for doing something they’d all considered.’
He drank again, and Julius pursed his lips in appreciation of the stark nature of the war the legionaries had been required to fight against their own people.
‘So you finished pacifying the area round Sailors’ Town and then marched up here?’
Tullo lowered his beaker, nodding gratefully as Dubnus refilled it to the brim with a sympathetic grimace.
‘Yes, and we were lucky in not being posted to the Antonine Wall. We’ve heard stories from the messengers stopping here overnight on their way south as to just what it was that the cohorts up there had to cope with. What they found themselves faced with was having to live alongside forts burned out and left to rot the last time they were abandoned twenty years ago, while the Venicones raided from the north at every opportunity and ambushed the work parties sent out to cut wood for the reconstruction work. A couple of centuries were torn up so badly that the legatus had to ban any detachment of less than a half a cohort from going north of the wall. There are some nasty rumours doing the rounds as well, about men who can change themselves into wolves at night and a pack of female warriors who hunt down any man left alive after an ambush and cut off his manhood before torturing him to death. All bullshit of course, but you put men under that sort of strain and the stories are going to fly thick and fast. It wasn’t much of a surprise when the Twentieth Legion mutinied and offered Legatus Priscus the throne, if only he’d get them back south to the old wall. They were bloody fools though …’
Julius nodded his agreement.
‘If he’d taken the offer seriously he would have led you all off to fight for the empire in Gaul or Germany, with your three legions against double the number in all likelihood, and if you’d lost that battle you’d probably never have seen Yew Grove again even if you’d lived. So what stopped this Priscus from taking them up on the offer?’
Tullo sank the rest of his beer before speaking again, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘Simple common sense, I expect. He came through here a month or so ago, headed south to Yew Grove with our legatus after they were both relieved of command, and he looked like a man with a calm head on his shoulders, a proper Roman general. Not like that fool Governor Marcellus, it was all his fault for sending us north in the first place. And now he’s been recalled to the hardships of his estate in Rome while the rest of us poor bastards pay the price for his stubbornness in blood and terror …’
‘Look out for some ligusticum, Lupus, that’s the herb we need to bring a bit of life back to lamb that’s been dead for longer than might be ideal. You know what to look for, those broad three bladed leaves?’
The child nodded at Felicia, answering without conscious thought, his eyes bright as he searched the ground before them for any sign of its presence.
‘Yes, Mother.’
The doctor stared fondly at the child for a moment before returning to her own search, shaking her head at the speed with which he had adopted her and Marcus as his de facto parents. Behind them a tent party of soldiers were searching the trees clustered around them with hard eyes, having been warned of the dire consequences that would befall them if they were to allow any mishap to befall the woman and child.
Lupus was the first to smell it, wrinkling his nose at the faint but still unmistakable aroma of burned wood, and as he turned to Felicia with a questioning look she nodded her head.
‘I smell it too.’ They advanced down the hill’s slope, finding a faint path through the wild vegetation, but before the child could investigate any further, the tent party’s leader, a tall soldier with a fresh pink scar across the bridge of his nose, put a hard-fingered hand on his shoulder.
‘Not quite so fast, young ’un.’ He turned to Felicia with an apologetic expression. ‘I’m sorry, Domina, but we’ll lead from here. There may be things down there best not seen by the likes of you and the boy.’
The doctor smiled up at him wryly.
‘We’ve both seen rather more “things” than you might think possible, soldier, but I appreciate your concern for our safety. After you, by all means.’
The soldier nodded his thanks to her and ordered his men to form a skirmish line, advancing down the slope to either side of the path with their spears held ready to fight. Behind them Lupus drew his short sword, drawing amused smiles from the soldiers closest to him which he ignored with a face set hard in concentration. A hundred paces further down the hill the canopy of trees opened to reveal the late evening’s pink glow, and the soldiers stopped their advance to stare down into the ruins of what had clearly been a prosperous village until quite recently. Thirty or so burned-out dwellings were arrayed before them, their remaining timbers black with soot, previously straight beams that had been gnawed by fire until they had been left twisted and notched. The inferno that had been visited upon the settlement had reduced it to a ghost town, with only the skeletal remains of its once comfortable existence to bear witness to what had been there before. The tall soldier grimaced at the village’s wreckage, shaking his head.
‘Offensive sweep. Everyone in the village either killed or enslaved, anything of value confiscated and the houses and crops put to the torch. We did a few of these, back when the rebellion was getting nasty, just to show them who was in control …’ His voice tailed off, and he looked about him hollow-eyed. ‘Just like my own village, I expect. You’ll find what you’re looking for easily enough, every house had its own little patch of herbs.’
He led his men forward, putting his spear over his shoulder and shrugging at Lupus who was still holding his sword out in front of him.
‘Nice strong wrists you’ve got there, sonny, but you’ve no need for the blade. There’s no one round here to offer you a fight, that’s for certain.’ He stepped into what had been the vegetable garden of a half-collapsed house, reaching down to grasp a knee-high plant and pull it up by the roots. ‘Here you are ma’am, ligusticum.’
Felicia looked down at the herb garden, plants growing uncontrolled in the absence of their previous owner.
‘And not just ligusticum either. I see thymus and feniculum as well. Gather it all please, especially the ligusticum. That which we don’t use for cooking can be boiled up to make a very effective means of cleaning wounds and preventing infection. Oh, and I’ll have as much of that as you men can carry …’ Directing the soldiers’ attention to a plant that had grown up in the shadow of the destroyed structure’s remaining beams, she laughed at their mystified stares. ‘That bush isn’t just good for producing rasp-berries in the autumn, the leaves are wonderfully powerful sources of goodness. And we’ll have a strong need of that particular remedy before very long, I expect.’