He stood and stared at the white-faced Albinus, his expression still taut with anger.
‘Just three little words. Any fucking time you like, Senator …’
As the silence stretched out, Dubnus turned to a grinning Julius with a look of confusion, shaking his massive head in puzzlement.
‘Am I missing something here?’
2
‘Was it the dream again, my love?’
When Felicia awoke the next morning she found Marcus sitting by their quarter’s window, his eyes fixed on the lights burning on the walls of the city, the impending dawn still no more than a smudge of grey on the eastern horizon. She had lived with him for long enough to know what would have awoken him early, and the answer to her whispered question was already clear in her mind even as she asked it. He nodded, smiling across the room at her in the light of the single lamp burning in the corner, although his expression was more haunted than happy. She beckoned him with a crooked finger.
‘Come back to bed then, before Appius wakes up.’
He padded softly across the room and slid in behind his wife, warming his feet on her calves despite her quiet protests, pulling her to him and cupping her breasts in one hand.
‘Our meeting with Lucius Carius Sigilis’s father yesterday seems to have inspired the ghosts of my family to greater efforts. Twice last night and again this morning they came to me in my dreams, showing me their injuries and entreating me to take revenge for our family’s slaughter.’
She snuggled back against him, reaching a hand up to stroke his face.
‘My darling, you know that this is just-’
‘Just my sleeping mind, working on the events of the day and tortured by my guilt at having survived such horror?’ Felicia turned to face him, her expression growing more troubled as she realised that he was staring at the wall behind her. ‘That may well be the case, but I cannot live the rest of my life haunted by these dreams, whether they be my family’s ghosts or simply my mind’s way of coping with the reality of their horrific murders while I escaped from their killers. And now that I have the names of the four men who murdered my father, my brother, my sisters, and probably sold the rest of our household into slavery, I am bound to act against them.’ He paused before speaking again, knowing that his wife had to know the news he had kept to himself the previous evening. ‘A gang leader, a praetorian, a senator and a gladiator: Brutus, Dorso, Pilinius and Mortiferum. We got their names from an unlikely source though.’
Felicia frowned at something in her husband’s voice and sat up in bed, turning to look down at him in the light of the lamp burning by their son’s cot.
‘Unlikely?’
Marcus looked up at her, clearly trying to gauge her possible reaction before he spoke again.
‘Excingus.’
Her eyes opened wide with shock.
‘Excingus?! The grain officer who kidnapped me and tried to murder us both?’
‘The same.’
‘And you didn’t …?’
‘Kill him? He was under Senator Sigilis’s protection. And taking my knife to him wouldn’t have changed anything, although it would have prevented me from learning the identities of the men who killed my father.’
Felicia looked back at him with a grave expression.
‘And if he hadn’t told you, you wouldn’t be planning to kill them all, would you? This can only end badly Marcus …’
He smiled back at her.
‘I understand your fears, but I really don’t have any choice in the matter. And besides, I have Cotta and his men behind me now.’
‘Yes …’
Her tone was dubious.
Marcus laughed softly. He and Cotta had grinned at each other in the square the previous evening, both of them deaf to Albinus’s furious protests as he’d been led away, and the veteran centurion had wrapped him in a bear hug that had squeezed the breath from his body before pushing him away and looking him up and down.
‘I thought you were dead, boy, but look at you, scars and all! You can join my little team of lads any time you like!’
Marcus had stared dumbly back at him, smiling through unexpected tears and was unable to reply. After a moment’s silence, Scaurus had coughed politely behind him.
‘Ah …’
Cotta had straightened, throwing a salute at the senior officer.
‘Tribune, sir!’
‘There’s no need for all that, Centurion, given that you’re retired.’
The veteran had shaken his head dismissively.
‘A man leaves the legion when his twenty years are up, Tribune, but the legion never really leaves the man, does it, sir? Tattoos, scars and memories of dead friends, they’re all still there until the day you die, and since me and my lads are time-served veterans for the most part, we can recognise a fellow professional when we see one. Which means that we’ll be saluting you, and calling you “sir” just as long as we’re working alongside you.’
Scaurus had stepped forward, regarding Cotta from beneath raised eyebrows.
‘As long as you’re working beside us, Centurion? Whatever gave you that idea?’
Cotta’s return stare had been utterly unabashed, the tolerant gaze of a career soldier when challenged by his less-experienced senior officer.
‘The fact that me and my lads know Rome a damned sight better than your boys, no disrespect intended, First Spear.’ Julius had nodded his head gracefully, a corner of his mouth lifting in a wry smile at his tribune. ‘The fact that I’ve burned my bridges with one of the most powerful senators in the city by failing to obey his order to kill the centurion there. And the fact that I’ve been beating common sense into this officer of yours since he was half the age he is now, although to little avail given the stories I’ve been hearing about him from your soldiers, once they’ve got a few cups of wine down their necks. Put simply Tribune, you need us. And I’m not about to allow that silly young bugger to get himself killed in Rome, not when he seems to have made a tolerable job of surviving everything else that’s been thrown at him up to now.’
Once the usual dawn officers’ meeting was out of the way, Julius went to report to Scaurus as to the two cohorts’ strength, gathering Marcus and Dubnus to him with a glance as he left the transit barracks’ cold and slightly dingy headquarters building. The tribune greeted them cheerfully, inviting them to join him at his breakfast table where, Marcus was unsurprised to discover, Cotta was already busy ploughing his way through a plate of bread and honey. Scaurus gestured to the empty seats around the scarred and stained table.
‘It isn’t often that a man gets to eat fresh bread of quite such good quality, and the honey’s excellent. Help yourselves, gentlemen.’
He turned to the silent Arminius, who was doing his best to avoid attention in the room’s corner.
‘Don’t you have a young pupil to be teaching the martial arts?’
The German gave him a hard stare before shrugging and making for the door.
‘I’ll find out what you’re planning soon enough, don’t worry.’
Cotta raised an eyebrow at the door as it closed behind him.
‘You’re not beating that slave enough, Tribune.’
Scaurus shrugged.
‘I tried it, in the early days of our relationship, but it seemed to make no difference to his attitude, and it all proved to be rather a lot of energy expended to little effect, so I stopped bothering. He means well enough …’ He took another piece of bread and popped it into his mouth, looking at Marcus with a quizzical expression, and when he spoke again his tone was deceptively soft. ‘So, are you determined to see this through then, Centurion?’