By evening they had set up the tent lines in an angle of the old fortifications, dug scratch trenches to mark off the defensive perimeter and sent a party of men with the slaves to the river to draw water. The cooking fires smoked, and the mounted scouts groomed their horses. Castus sat on a folding stool outside his tent, dictating the daily report to Evagrius: Fifteen miles marched, direction north-west, no injuries, weather fair. Meeting with tribal host of Votadini. The standard-bearer passed him the tablet, and he gave the indecipherable scribble scored into the wax a cursory glance and handed it back. He mused for a moment on all the other centurions who must have filled in their reports and muster rolls in this place, once upon a time. It was a comforting thought. Throwing up his arms, he yawned loudly and stretched, feeling the muscles of his shoulders bunch around his ears. The camp was filled with a low golden light, peculiar to this country. Unfortunately it was also filled with tiny flying insects, which darted around his head, drawn to the sweat of his scalp. Swatting, cursing, he ate his cold meat and hardtack, drank his vinegar wine and waited for Marcellinus to return from the Votadini camp.
‘Centurion? Do you mind if I sit with you?’
It was Strabo. The little secretary – imperial agent, Castus reminded himself – was considerably less dapper now than when they had left Eboracum together. His beard was wilder, and he had taken to wearing a native cloak of dogtooth checks. Castus had not spoken to him for the last three days, since the debate at Coria.
‘I don’t mind,’ he said, and fetched a second folding stool from his tent.
‘I wanted to apologise,’ Strabo said, once he was seated, ‘if I seemed rude back in Coria. I don’t blame you for following me – you were concerned, of course, about the integrity of our assignment. Ironic, isn’t it, that it should be you spying on me!’
He laughed, sounding ill at ease. Castus continued chewing his last hunk of hard bread.
‘But I don’t take you for a malicious man, centurion. Your intentions were good, you were not merely… prying. So, I’m sorry if I took it badly.’
Castus nodded, and then swallowed thickly. ‘Tell me something,’ he asked. ‘This… religion of yours’ – he glanced around quickly, but none of the men were within earshot – ‘this Christian thing… What’s it all about? I mean, what do you do?’
‘What do we do? The same as any other men. We are not such strange beings. We believe in one God, and in the mercy of His son, who died for our sins.’
‘Sins?’ Castus said. He had a peculiar taste in his mouth, and took another slug of sour wine. ‘Like what? I mean… is it true that you eat the flesh of the dead?’
Strabo threw back his head and laughed, genuinely amused. Castus frowned darkly. He had not been aware that it was a joke.
‘You refer to the blessed sacrament of the eucharist,’ Strabo said, smiling. ‘No, it does not involve actual flesh-eating – that is an old, old calumny!’
‘A what…? Well, never mind. But how can you serve the emperors when you don’t believe in the gods?’
Strabo sucked his cheek, his beard twitching. ‘My brothers have debated that question for hundreds of years,’ he said.
Castus raised an eyebrow, puzzled. Had there really been Christians for hundreds of years? He’d had no idea.
‘What I believe,’ the secretary went on, ‘is that our duties to the world of the spirit and our duties to the world of the flesh – the material world, I should say, to avoid misunderstandings – are quite separate. Where they do not contradict, we can give our allegiance and our service to the earthly powers. To Caesar render what is his, as our teacher said. In my case, I serve the Augustus Constantius willingly and with love. He is the only one of the emperors to have never seriously persecuted the faithful. A man of great wisdom and foresight. And so, by serving him I serve justice and truth, and by extension I serve God. As do we all.’
Castus felt unable to meet Strabo’s inquisitive gaze. The conversation was unsettling his guts, and he wished he had not raised the subject.
‘Is your god also in this place, then?’ he said, flinging out a hand at the hills, the river, the broken turf.
‘God is everywhere. His power is infinite. But surely you would agree – do you not worship one god yourself? The being you call the Unconquered Sun?’
‘The Sun gives life,’ Castus replied quickly. He touched his brow, as if to ward off an ill omen. ‘The Sun is the chief of the gods. All the others draw their power from him. So I suppose, anyway. He watches over the soldiers – it’s tradition.’
‘And tradition is important to you?’
‘Of course!’ Castus glanced up at the man, baffled. How could he ask such strange questions? ‘Tradition is all that makes us civilised. The old ways are always best.’
‘Ah, yes, the old ways. And here we are, surrounded by them…’ Strabo glanced away at the ruined fortifications in the grass, the layering of old ditches and walls growing indistinguishable in the dusk. ‘Consider,’ he said, ‘how many Roman armies have passed this way, how many legions, all with their dreams of glory, their certainty of victory… What remains of them now? Maybe one day all our works will be like this. Nothing more than hummocks in the turf, for savages to wonder over!’
Castus snorted, deep in his throat. Fantastical idea, he thought. Then again, perhaps this man wanted the empire to fall? Perhaps he even prayed for it, in his secret gatherings…
‘Aren’t you afraid they’ll punish you?’ he said.
‘Who? The law, or your gods? I have no fear of either. Death is nothing to one who believes, centurion. The grave is merely a gateway to resurrection, and the bliss of the hereafter. But what about you – what do you think lies on the far side of death?’
‘Nothing much,’ Castus said. ‘Just darkness, forgetting. The end of light. It doesn’t matter – it’s what we do here that’s important.’ He stamped his foot on the turf. ‘That’s how people remember us, and that’s how we’re judged. Were we loyal and strong? Did we do our duty like men? Did we fight well when we had to? Anything else is vanity.’
‘You’re almost a philosopher, I think,’ Strabo said. Castus stared hard at him, eager that he should not be mocked. But now Marcellinus was approaching, riding across the meadow from the Votadini camp, and Strabo was smiling, getting up and smoothing his tunic.
‘I hope our talk has laid to rest any doubts you may have, anyway,’ he said. ‘My business is with the envoy, and the success of our mission. I hope we can strive together towards that end.’
Castus nodded, and the agent took his leave and walked away towards his tent. Night was falling, the perimeter of the camp lost in gathering gloom, and the smouldering fires were drawing masses of whirling insects. Timotheus would lead the first watch – Castus was glad of that. The talk of death, spirits, strange and secret beliefs had unsettled his mind, and the lonely darkness of the ruined fortification seemed a less comforting place now.
For two days more they crawled north through the hill country, still following the track of the old road. The men of the Sixth Legion marched in a compact mass, surrounding their baggage mules, with the scouts riding at the flanks. The Votadini warriors flowed around them in wild array, running on ahead and streaming to either side over the flanks of the hills. Some of them, mounted on their shaggy little ponies, rode alongside the Romans and called out to them; many of the soldiers knew the native British language, and some called back, but Castus soon ordered them to keep silence. The Votadini might be allies, but he didn’t want his men striking up bonds with them.
At the end of the second day they reached the sea, the water spreading a sheet of dull silver in the low light. It was the mouth of an estuary, Marcellinus said, leading to the river that would take them to the Pictish meeting place. Here too there were old fortifications on the hill above the shore – this whole country was scarred with the welts of Roman camps and forts and roads – and once again the legionaries camped within the circuit of the fallen walls. The Votadini host whooped and sang from their own fires on the lower slopes of the hill.