Standard-bearers, as clerks for their centurions, often had a slightly informal relationship with their superiors, but Evagrius more than most. Besides being a reasonable soldier and an excellent clerk, he also knew Castus’s secret: his centurion could neither read nor write. In the years he had spent with II Herculia, Castus had barely spent six months under a roof, and there had been no time to learn even the basics of literacy. This was fine for a legionary, but since his promotion it had been a constant embarrassment, and one he liked to keep quiet. One of these days, he told himself, he would learn, but for now, squinting at the squirm of letters and figures covering the clerk’s tablets made his head hurt.
‘So what’s the roster looking like?’ he said, gazing out of the window into the darkening portico.
‘Four men still absent on supply escort duty,’ Evagrius said, darting his nib down the list of names, ‘three men – Macrinus, Flaccus and Modestus – in the hospital, two more – Terentius and Claudianus – on leave. Macer detached to the river patrol. Aurelius Dexter still not returned from leave. That’s ten days he’s over now. Shall I mark him down as a deserter?’
‘Better do that. Good riddance to him too. He’s welcome to his flogging if he shows his face here again.’
‘So that’s fifty-eight men present for duty, centurion.’
‘Right – sign that off for me.’ Castus’s own cramped scribble would never pass as a signature, but the standard-bearer had devised a reasonable-looking alternative.
‘There’s a memorandum here from Tribune Rufinius. Faulty brothel tokens are still turning up and they haven’t tracked down the source. He asks all centurions to check before issuing new ones.’
‘I’ll leave you to see to that. Anything else?’
‘That’s everything,’ the standard-bearer said. He closed the last wax tablet and slipped it in his pouch. Castus was sure that the canny Evagrius himself, together with his fellow clerks in other centuries and the merchants in the city, was behind most of the assorted scams and ruses in the fortress. Corruption was an institution in military camps all over the empire, and Eboracum had many a blind eye.
‘Dismissed,’ Castus said, although Evagrius was already on his way out, whistling.
The hospital building occupied almost a full block between the praetorium and the grain silos. Castus never liked going there – the dim complex of rooms contained a heady reek of sour vinegar that turned his stomach, and he had a suspicion that illnesses somehow travelled through the air – but owing to the legionaries’ habit of constantly injuring themselves and picking up diseases, he was obliged to pay regular visits.
Now he followed the medical orderly along a corridor between starched drapes and into one of the wards. He was trying not to breathe too deeply, just in case.
‘These three are yours, I think,’ the orderly said. Castus merely glanced at the first two: they were legitimate enough. One had managed to impale his foot with the throwing dart on the drill field; the other had broken his leg falling off a horse. Both were eager enough to be discharged back to barracks: the hospital diet of herbal soup and blood pudding was designed to be unappetising.
‘And this is Julius Modestus, who still has a fever.’
Castus stood by the bed, glowering. Modestus was looking more than usually sallow and sweaty. He opened his eyes and gave a weak cough. This was his third time in hospital since Castus had taken command of the century, and between his illnesses and his frequent punishments he had spent barely ten days on duty.
‘What are you doing for him?’
‘Oh, just herbal infusions and bed rest. A little light massaging of the limbs is often efficacious…’
Castus gave him a sideways glance. Medical orderlies were known to take bribes to keep shirkers in hospital, but this one looked sincere. He nodded, waited until the orderly had moved away, and then stooped over the bed.
‘I want you back on your feet in two days, Modestus,’ he said in a low voice, ‘or I’ll send Timotheus and Culchianus over here to give you the sort of massage you won’t appreciate. Understood?’
‘Understood,’ Modestus croaked, then gave a few more coughs as Castus paced quickly back towards the fresh air.
‘Ah, the terror of the Tigris is here! The despoiler of the Euphrates!’
‘Watch what you say, Balbinus, or he may despoil you – he has that Herculian look in his eyes!’
‘Only joking, my dear Knucklehead. Come and despoil a cup of beer with us!’
Castus tried to smile – how the unfortunate nickname from his old legion had managed to follow him across half the empire he had no idea. He sat down at the table, and the other three centurions shuffled along the bench to give him room.
The centurions’ messroom was at the back of a small warehouse beside the main market. It was gloomy, and smelled of stale beer, but there was a fire burning in the brazier in the corner. The walls, painted with crude colourful murals of nude shepherdesses being chased by satyrs, were covered in scratched graffiti: the names of generations of centurions and tribunes of the Sixth, with accompanying obscene comments. There was a sense of heritage, if nothing else.
‘Still enjoying life at the edge of the world, then?’ Balbinus said, and stifled a belch. ‘Or are you pining for the delights of Antioch, eh? The dark-eyed gazelles of Ctesiphon?’
‘It’s all right,’ said Castus, and took a heavy slug of the warm sour beer. Balbinus was obviously drunk, but he barely understood most of what the man said at the best of times.
‘Leave him be,’ said Valens, the third man at the table. ‘I smell the hospital on him.’ For a moment Castus thought that the stale vinegar odour really had clung to him somehow; then Valens tugged at the end of his long nose and winked.
Of all the fifty or so centurions in the Sixth, Valens was only one Castus could consider a friend. Perhaps because he too was a relative newcomer – he had been transferred from one of the legions on the Rhine five years before. Although he had a wry sardonic air that Castus often found baffling, Valens at least had the bearing of a soldier. Not a stewed drunk and a gambler, like Balbinus and his friend Galleo.
‘Man of few words, our Knucklehead,’ said Galleo, scooping a fistful of coppers across the table. ‘That’s what they teach them out there on the Danube – act first, speak later… Mind you, with that barbarous accent he’s got, you’d hardly know what he was saying anyway!’
Castus stared across the rim of his cup, unblinking. He kept his expression neutral, his hands loose. Let them think what they liked about him. Let them joke if they wanted. One swift jab of his arm and he could shatter the cup between Galleo’s eyes, grab the other man by the hair and dent the table with his face. He enjoyed the bitter flavour of that thought, the intention idling in his mind.
When he first arrived at Eboracum, he had been given the usual initiation. In the corner of the messroom behind a barricade of benches and tables, they’d set upon him: he’d been expecting it, and managed to wrestle all six of the centurions in the cohort to surrender at the cost of a second broken nose and a cracked rib. Valens was the only one who took it lightly now – the rest all treated Castus with a sly mocking disdain. He had hurt their pride, he supposed, but they all knew he could beat them again if he wanted to – he was like a half-tamed bear brought to a feast, for the revellers to goad and dare themselves.
Still, he tried not to blame them for it. Service on the north British frontier held few rewards, and the centurions had little to boast about. So what if they mocked him for his military experience? So what if they laughed at the way he kept his boots and belts oiled and shining, his tunics cleanly laundered, his metal bright? He worked hard at training his men, and he drank little, and if they hated him for that he did not care. The army was his life, his only love. He had seen his father slump into indignity and be destroyed by it, and he would do anything to avoid that.