It took half a day to get the monâkon to the base of the ramp, and night had fallen by the time that they were done, so that men with torches lit the way. Ferox had been surprised at how slowly the engineer raised the great machine, inching it up the slope, then stopping and having men thrust in levers as brakes to hold it in place while pulleys were adjusted. He did not stay to watch the whole thing, because he wanted to show trust and also had a lot of other things to do. Yet he made sure to pass by every half hour or so and sometimes the thing had barely moved.
‘Sure this is a good idea?’ Vindex asked time after time.
‘No,’ Ferox replied, prompting Claudia Enica to shake her head in dismay. She was dressed in high Thracian boots, a short, belted tunic under a mail shirt, with a sica, a curved sword of the type common in this area and used by Thracian gladiators on one hip and a gladius on the other. Today she was not wearing a helmet, and her long hair was braided and coiled on top of her head. This had been her garb each day, sometimes with a different cuirass, sometimes with a plumed helmet, and very occasionally adding a cloak if the morning was cold.
‘I am queen,’ she had told him when she appeared at morning orders the first time. ‘These are my warriors, so I must lead them.’
Sabinus had gulped nervously, for the skirt of the queen’s tunic showed most of her legs and he was not accustomed to seeing an equestrian lady display herself in this way, let alone such an attractive one. However, the army was the army and things ought to be done properly. ‘The numerus is under the care of your husband.’ He swallowed again, for like everyone else he knew that the marriage between Ferox and Claudia was scarcely orthodox. ‘That is Flavius Ferox. It is not the Roman custom to let ladies serve as soldiers.’
Claudia gave him a look of the sort Ferox had always felt she reserved for him alone, mingling disappointment with weary contempt at the stubborn idiocy of a small boy. Having already had this conversation with her, and realised that she was absolutely determined and quite possibly right, he let it play out.
‘I am queen, and we are Brigantes.’
‘You are Roman, my lady,’ Sabinus said, surprising Ferox by his determination. ‘This is not proper.’ Then he made a huge mistake as his lips curled into a smile. ‘I admire your bravery, but war is grim work and best left to men.’
Enica nodded thoughtfully as if seeing the wisdom, prompting Sabinus to smile, but before he could say another word she started to turn. Her hand gripped the sica, which slid from the scabbard in one fluid motion and flicked up, the curved edge stopping a whisker short of the centurion’s throat. It was all so sudden, but then Dionysius jumped back in surprise and a guard was shouting, hefting his pilum to use as a spear.
Ferox waved at the man to stand fast. ‘You will discover that the queen has considerable skill at arms,’ he said gently. Sabinus was gulping again and again, eyes wide, still struggling to believe what was happening. ‘And the Brigantes will fight all the better – if the time comes – for the queen’s presence. But,’ Ferox raised his voice. ‘This is a principia of the army, and more than that the principia where I command and not some tavern suited for brawls. You will sheath your sword, your highness, and do it now.’
Enica glanced at him, then did as she was told. Then she gave Sabinus a flirtatious smile that was pure Claudia, leaving the centurion even more confused than before.
Ferox stood up behind his desk. ‘I command here. If anyone draws a weapon here again, they will be in chains before the day is out. Is that understood?’ He saw that his wife was fighting the urge to make a lewd joke – or at least a statement easy to interpret more than one way – and was pleased that she controlled it. This was not the time.
‘You command and I will lead my people to serve you,’ she said.
‘Good enough,’ he replied. ‘Have it added to today’s orders that the queen is to command the Brigantes, second only to me, and that she is to be treated by all with the respect due to a centurion and an eques.’
So from then on the queen attended morning orders, and did the rounds with Ferox and the others, openly supervising the training of the Brigantes and riding out once or twice with patrols, when she added silk Parthian trousers to her attire. As the days passed the officers all became used to it, not least because she was attractive and charming and very positive when she gave orders. The contingent of Brigantes she had brought to the fort came equipped with a vexillum standard, the blue flag painted with what most Romans must have assumed was the figure of Victory. To the tribesmen the woman was Brigantia, the goddess of their people, who lived on earth in the women of the royal line. Ferox had not been surprised to see that the painted figure had red hair and a short tunic. Some of the legionaries and auxiliaries had scoffed when they saw it installed in the aedes, the shrine for the standards in the principia. This was almost empty for a fort this size, for none of the men at the fort had brought a signa, and otherwise there were just two other vexilla, one for I Minervia and one for cohors I Hispanorum veterana.
The Brigantes showed no surprise as their queen took charge of them.
‘She’s the queen,’ Vindex explained to Sabinus. ‘And they don’t hate her like they do Ferox.’
The rest of the garrison displayed shock, amusement, and then surprisingly swiftly became used to the sight of a woman wearing armour and giving orders. That was the charm again, and helped because this was a fort full of men largely deprived of the sight, let alone the company of women, so that such a pretty one was a treat. Ferox quickly noticed that there were always more men around than usual whenever they were carrying out an inspection and began to climb one of the towers. Even when he tried to vary the route, there they were, off-duty soldiers and sentries arriving early or lingering late for this shift, talking among themselves or apparently busy, but ready to cluster as close to the bottom of each ladder as they dared when it came time for the queen to climb.
‘I wish you would wear a cloak, at the very least,’ he whispered to her as she followed him up onto the top platform at the porta decumana at the back of the fort.
Claudia Enica’s expression was one of supreme innocence. ‘Some of the men have no breeches under their tunics.’
‘It’s not the same,’ he hissed, as Sabinus appeared through the open trap door, his face somewhat red.
After that Ferox made sure that she went first up any ladder in front of him and came down last. There would still be plenty of interested bystanders, but at least he spared his senior staff both embarrassment and enjoyment. Vindex was not impressed whenever he joined the party.
‘Jealous, eh?’ he leered. ‘Or just desperate?’
Ferox ignored him, for in truth the repeated views up his wife’s tunic as she climbed were reminders of his failure as a husband and his surging desire. Having her here, but still unreachable, was a lot harder to bear than when she had been so far away, especially when he tried and failed to stop himself from staring up at her wondrous rear and the little pants she favoured. She knew it too, and Ferox was sure that she was deliberately stopping part way up and even wriggling more than necessary each time she got onto a platform. Yet still he slept alone, in one of the smallest rooms in the praetorium.
Sulpicia Lepidina was sympathetic, at least to a point. ‘Claudia will come around. Be patient and play her games. It is all your fault in the first place for losing her. Sometimes you are too much the barbarian, aren’t you?’ Her face had a wistful look, and he wondered whether she was thinking back to their own affair. ‘I would like you both to be happy,’ she said. ‘And while I wonder about Claudia’s talk of magic and fate, I do suspect that you are meant for each other, while also guessing that it will be the rockiest of roads.’