‘What?’
‘Arpagius is gone. Sent off back to Numidia to add up his sums! Apparently the city council wanted to prosecute him for failing to protect their property adequately. And after the fiasco at Isurium he didn’t smell good to the bigger chiefs either. Tribune Rufinius has been promoted to prefect of the legion.’
Castus nodded. He was not sorry that he would never be seeing Arpagius again, and Rufinius seemed a competent officer at least. But that was not what Valens had wanted to discuss.
‘What else?’ he said.
‘There’s talk going round the centurions’ messes,’ Valens mumbled. ‘You saw the Augustus – up close, I mean. How did he look to you?’
‘I only really saw his shoes.’
‘But did he look… healthy?’ Valens was barely even moving his lips now, and Castus had to stoop towards the smaller man to catch his words.
‘Healthy?’ he said, and glanced around quickly. They were walking in the centre of the street. From their left came the thun shy;der shy;ous clatter of the armoury workshop, working to produce weapons, shields and body armour for the new recruits. The air reeked of hot iron and forge smoke, and nobody could possibly hear them over the din of hammers and anvils. But still Castus felt a cold stir at the back of his neck. Discussing the health of emperors was treason. ‘Be careful what you’re suggesting,’ he said in a low rumble.
‘Don’t worry, brother! I’m just concerned. A sense of loyal regard for our domini.’
They fell silent for a few moments as they passed the tall portals of the headquarters building.
‘You saw his son, too? Constantine?’
‘I saw him,’ Castus said. His discomfort had not eased, and he wanted to step away from Valens, as if the mere suggestion of treasonous talk might be contagious.
‘There were a couple of Protectores down at the Blue House the other night. The new one, I mean, in the old Tenth Cohort barrack… They told me that Constantine had only joined them at Bononia on the Gallic coast, just before the crossing to Britain.’
‘What of it?’
‘Well – do you know where he’d been? Apparently the son of the Augustus has been in Nicomedia these last eight years, at the court of the other Augustus, the senior one, Galerius. In a sort of gilded captivity, so they implied. When the news arrived of the uprising here – by express messenger, as you’d imagine – Constantine petitioned Galerius for permission to go and join his father on the expedition. Galerius could hardly refuse, but he’d barely given his nod – while he was drinking over dinner, so they say – before our Constantine was off. He rode all the way from Nicomedia to Bononia by post relays in just over ten days, mutilating the horses as he went so he couldn’t be followed by a countermanding order!’
‘Is that even possible?’ Castus had travelled most of that route himself when he had come to join the Sixth, and it had taken him nearly three months.
‘Seems so. He’s here now, anyway. And you know that quite a few in the army think that Constantine should have been made Caesar after the abdications? Apparently the mint in Alexandria had already started turning out Constantinus Caesar coins when they heard the news – they had to recall them and break the dies. These two Caesars we have now, what are they? Flavius Severus is a drunk and a gambler who can’t control himself, let alone the empire. Maximinus Daza’s a common soldier with no more experience of commanding armies than… well, than you!’
This time Castus really did step back, and gave his friend a hard appraising glare. Valens looked away, as if conscious that he had said too much.
‘Don’t tell me these things,’ Castus said, cold and level.
‘You’d hear the same in any officers’ mess, brother. Here, in Gaul – all across the empire, probably. If you weren’t too thickheaded to listen when you’re off duty you’d have heard much the same.’
‘But I don’t want to hear it!’
Politics, Castus thought, was a stinking mire. Nothing to do with him. The emperors were to be revered, whatever their personal failings. They were beyond mere men; the purple robe elevated them to stand beside the gods. It pained him – quite literally burned in his guts – that the circles of supreme power were just as foul with intrigue and suspicion as the mortal world far below. Because if the emperors could not be trusted, could not be wholeheartedly admired and obeyed, where was loyalty? Where was honour?
In his mind he heard the voice of the notary, Nigrinus, and his subtle threats and insinuations. We make our own gods too, here on earth. Then the panicked stammer of the renegade Decentius, just before Castus had killed him. Both men had been sucked into the intrigue: one prospered by it; one had died of it. The muck of politics was corrosive. It rotted morals; it made men weak and terrified, or turned them into monsters. Castus shuddered, hunched his shoulders, tried to ignore Valens’s disapproving stare.
They were passing beneath the north-west gate now. The sentries gave their salutes, and Castus remembered, with sudden start shy;ling clarity, the early dawn when he had ridden in through those gloomy arches with Marcellina. Barely three months ago, but it seemed like years. Valens was marching on, head down, and Castus took three long paces to catch up with him. They emerged from the dark tunnel beneath the gate into the sunlight, and turned left into the drill field.
‘There he is,’ Valens said, nodding away into the middle distance.
A crowd was gathered around the margins of the field, most of them soldiers and centurions. In the centre of the field straw bales had been set up for cavalry practice, and a troop of the Equites Mauri, light horsemen from North Africa, were wheeling and darting their javelins at the gallop. It was an impressive display, but the crowd was not watching the Mauri. Constantine, the emperor’s son, was riding with them. Mounted on a powerful grey mare, and dressed only in a quilted white linen corselet, he rode hard at the bales, flinging his javelins with great grunts of effort. Each one flew straight to the target, punching into the bale and hanging slack as Constantine spurred his horse away.
‘You brought me here to see this?’ Castus asked.
‘He comes down every afternoon. Sometimes with the Mauri, sometimes the Dalmatae or the Scutarii. Joins in their practice, at all arms. Quite a performer.’
‘Just for show, you think?’
‘Could be. Letting the army see who’s going to be leading them.’
They had dropped their voices again, as if by instinct.
‘The emperor leads the army,’ Castus said quietly. ‘Nobody else. This man’s just a tribune of the Protectores.’
‘The emperor is sick…’ Valens said, almost under his breath. ‘If we’re going to war in the spring we ought to know the facts, do you agree?’
‘I don’t care. All that matters is that we go. We have reason enough.’
‘Well, as to that,’ Valens said in a brisker tone, ‘it’s not exactly certain if we go or not… There are new detachments arriving from the German legions. The Eighth and the Twenty-Second. And two cohorts of the Second Augusta from the southern province are camped just south of the city, did you know that? The Sixth might just be left here in the spring after all, holding the fort.’
Castus frowned. Surely that could not happen? He remem shy;bered the emperor’s words, in the audience hall. We need skilled men like you – was that it? Not, surely not, just to work at training recruits at Eboracum either.
They walked back to barracks in silence.
Saturnalia, and the dark wintry streets of the fortress were loud with the noise of riotous celebration. Released for the period of the festival from the bounds of military disci shy;pline, the soldiers roared and laughed from the taverns and the baths’ porticos, rampaged around the colonnades, climbed onto pedestals naked, oblivious of the freezing drizzle, to yell bawdy songs at the moon.