Britannicus stood up and walked away to look at the riot of hollyhocks growing wild in the corner of the yard. He stood there for several moments, deep in thought. I spoke to his back.
"I know you agree with what I'm saying, in principle. I've heard you say so. I'm not stupid enough to think that all slaves should be freed, or could be. But I really believe that depriving a man of his humanity is a certain way to deny anyone, including him, the benefit of his living. A slave has no incentive to improve. That's why there were never any slaves in the legions. Go back to the days of the Republic, when Rome was the strongest it has ever been. All the best ideas, the finest decisions, the greatest steps forward in knowledge, in strategy, in deployment, in whatever you want, were developed and put into place by free men. None of them came from slaves. Not one. That's all I'm saying. I don't care if other people have slaves. My point is that any man who works for me or with me will better his own life and the conditions of his life by doing so. I'll make it worth his while to do the best he's capable of."
He had turned around and was looking at me. "What about the Greek city states?"
"What about them, Commander? We've been through this before. They prove my point."
"Not so, Varrus. In Athens, a slave state, the human mind was lifted to its greatest achievements ever."
"Aye, and they still died out! They had to! Commander, how can you be a Christian and believe that God made man in his own image, and still maintain that any man has the right to own any other man?"
"Religious philosophy? From you, Varrus?" He was smiling again.
"That's not philosophy!" I felt the blood rising to my face. "That stuff's too deep for me. The democracy of Athens was built on a basic fault: only citizens were allowed to think, and only slaves were allowed to work. The slaves had no life at all to speak of, but they were expected to produce everything the parasitic thinkers needed to live on. It was bound to fail. It bred hatred on the one hand and laziness on the other." Britannicus crossed back to the bench and picked up his flagon, and I saw another illustration of my point.
"That ale you're drinking — where do you think it came from?" His eyebrow went up again. "You told me. Equus brewed it."
"He did, but out of what?" I read the amusement in his eyes. "We know a farmer, General, who supplies us with the materials from which Equus makes his beer. Equus supplies me with his beer because I supply him with the workshop to make the nails and the tools with which he pays the farmer for his crop. If the farmer stops growing his crops, or if I deprive Equus of his workplace, or if he stops making his nails and tools, that chain will break down. The farmer will go somewhere else for his goods, or Equus will seek another farmer to supply him with hops. In the meantime, I'll have no ale. Somebody loses."
He smiled and half nodded, his eyebrow arched in what I took to be derision, but I carried on.
"It may seem like a contrived example, but it's not. It's not. It's simple and real, like life. There has to be something produced before anyone can consume it, and I believe no man has a right to live if he does not produce something. Parasites are destructive. Yet our society, our Roman state, has never seen any need to encourage its people to produce sensibly or to govern their own production! That's all I'm going to say. Otherwise I'll get angry."
He smiled at my vehemence. "Enough! Sorry. Show me your workshop."
"I'll be glad to. But tell me why you got me onto that topic as soon as you arrived? That's almost exactly where we left off talking two years ago."
He grinned. "That is correct. It was exactly where we left off. I was simply curious as to whether or not you would remember your own eloquent argument, although I never seriously doubted for a moment you would."
I led him inside, and we spent the next half hour going over work in progress. Britannicus asked a lot of intelligent questions and I tried to provide him with intelligent answers. He seemed impressed with the way we were set up, and I felt pleased. Then, after standing for a while watching Equus, who was finishing the last of the pike-head order, he pulled the sword from the scabbard by his side and extended it to me, hilt forward.
"What do you think of this?"
I took it and examined it. It was not a good weapon, in spite of the jewellery and inlay work on the hilt. The blade was plain and ill balanced. I hefted it and weighed it in my hand.
"Well?" He clearly wanted me to evaluate it and I did not want to hurt his feelings.
"Where did you get this, Commander?"
"Never mind, for the moment. Would you buy it?" I looked him straight in the eye. "No, Commander, I would not. The blade is ill weighted, the metal won't hold an edge for any length of time, and the tang is starting to work loose inside the hilt."
"Hmmm! There was no looseness inside the hilt when I bought it last year. What would cause that?"
"It was probably made by a slave." I couldn't resist the jibe. "No self-respecting armourer would allow such a shoddy piece of work to leave his hands. I would venture to guess that it was bought cheap by a jeweller, who made it look fancy and sold it for its decorative value rather than its usefulness."
He shook his head ruefully at my candour and took the offending weapon back, slipping it into its ornate scabbard. "Do you have any swords for sale?"
I shook my head. "No. Not that I would have such a ceremonial piece for sale at any time. These things are made to order. I do have one sword, but it's an experimental type that I've been working on for some months. It's not been proven yet."
"May I see it?"
I went and fetched the sword for him. He ran his eyes over the lines of it and hefted it for balance, transferring his gaze immediately to the hilt.
"How have you done this? It's bronze, isn't it?" I nodded. "But it's solid!
No seams. How?"
"A new technique, or rather, an adaptation of a very old technique. I think it's going to work very well. The entire hilt is poured in one piece and bonded to the iron of the tang."
He swung it in a series of sharp, jabbing cuts. "Will you make me one like this?"
"Happily. I'd give you that one, but I'm still not satisfied with the weight and balance of it. I'll make you one that will be perfect. Not fancy, Commander, but as close to a perfect weight for you as I can achieve."
He placed the sword flat on the bench. "Do so, my friend, and name your price."
As we walked back out into the sunlight, I was half smiling at the thought of charging Gaius Britannicus for using one of my swords. His horse was cropping the grass growing between the flagstones of the yard, and he stopped With his hand on its neck. "Varrus, have you ever heard of the Bagaudae?"
I thought for a moment. "Weren't they the rebels in Gaul who turned bandit about a hundred years ago? Stirred up a hornet's nest of trouble for the administration over there for a long time, if I remember correctly. What about them?"
He was stroking his horse's muzzle gently. The big white animal whickered softly and pushed its muzzle against his shoulder.
"You have a good memory, my friend. That's exactly who they are. I'd hardly call them bandits, but they are nominally rebels. They are still active, and the legions over there do nothing about them. Fascinating people, Varrus. They've held virtual rule over a major part of southern Gaul for almost a hundred years."
I stared at him. "What do you mean, rule?" He simply shrugged his shoulders. "You mean they govern the province? And the legions let them?
I find that hard to believe. Why haven't we heard more about them? Why haven't they been stamped out?"
He shrugged slightly again. "Cowardice, Varrus. Sheer cowardice."