‘Bastards,’ Vindex gasped when they first saw her, and his anger grew as they came close. ‘Bastards, bastards, bastards.’
Two of the Batavians vomited there and then, and another did the same thing a moment later. The soldiers cursed and swore and screamed out the vengeance they would wreak.
‘Bastards,’ Vindex said again.
Ferox said nothing. This was his failure and his fault. If the thought of this being done to Sulpicia Lepidina was a nightmare too appalling to admit, that was little consolation. He had let this happen. Samhain was not yet done, but he felt as if hope was slipping back to the Otherworld with the rest of the spirits. He had failed. These swine were butchering victims in his territory and he was not stopping them. One hand gripped the handle of his sword and he itched to use it.
XXV
FOR ONCE, CAVALRYMEN did not object to digging. Ferox rode to a farm half a mile away and borrowed two spades and a pick because they had no tools. The family living there were nervous, and happy to hand over anything as long as it made him leave. When he got back every man took off his cloak and they wrapped the mutilated body round tightly and buried Fortunata in a deep grave. Such sights needed to be buried away, out of sight. They gathered the local grey stones and piled them over the grave, while one soldier found a fallen tree trunk and carved her name into the wood. They dug another pit, and raised the wooden monument at her head. Vegetus would be able to find his wife’s resting place with ease. Ferox hoped that he could be persuaded not to unearth the body for cremation. Better that he never know what they had done.
It took them several hours and barely a word was said as they all took turns working. It was almost sunset by the time they returned to Vindolanda and still no one spoke. Ferox tried not to imagine the freedwoman’s screams, for she would not have lost consciousness for some time.
The fort was busier than when they had left, with working parties labouring away so that there was already little trace of the previous night’s festivities. A long convoy of ox carts and pack mules was going through the main gate, so they went around through the canabae to find another way in. Sentries at the western gateway, the porta principalis sinistra, challenged them, accepted the password and then saluted with fervent precision, and Ferox had the sense of children caught out in mischief and now hoping to make amends. He began to understand when he saw the soldiers standing guard in front of the principia. Twenty of them were horsemen in highly polished scale armour and plumed helmets. Their shields were mixed – oval, hexagonal and rectangular side by side – and carried the symbols of half a dozen different units. They had on matching dark blue cloaks and this marked them as the governor’s singulares, his bodyguard of picked cavalrymen drawn from the best of the army in the province. Alongside them stood a similar number of Batavians, who for all their size could not match the splendour of the governor’s men.
‘You’re to go in straightaway, sir,’ the optio in charge of the Batavians told Ferox as soon as he rode up. ‘Provincial legate’s orders,’ he added, evidently relishing the prestige of their visitor. As Ferox went into the headquarters, a soldier led him to the room normally used as a classroom. Inside were Cerialis, Rufinus, Claudius Super and the Tribune Flaccus as well as a dozen senior officers he did not know. An even greater surprise sat near the back.
‘Glad you are back,’ Crispinus whispered as Ferox took the camp chair beside him.
‘Surprised to see you, my lord.’
The young aristocrat grinned. His face was dirty, the grime giving it lines so that in his tiredness he looked twice his real age, and more like a man who ought to have grey hair.
‘If you do not mind me saying, sir, you look terrible.’
‘Better than the horses I rode, I can tell you. I’ve killed two getting here.’ There was a pride in his voice that the centurion disliked. ‘Only got here an hour ago. Didn’t expect such exalted company.’
‘Then why did you hurry?’
‘Thought you might need my help.’
‘Silence there!’ The voice was deep and the speaker had not shouted, but even so it carried to the back of the room. Lucius Neratius Marcellus, Legatus Augusti, vir clarissimus and former consul, was not a big man. He was thin-faced, thin-limbed and Ferox guessed that he was barely five feet tall, yet he dominated the room. Appointed to the post at the start of the year, the new governor had not set foot in Britannia until the autumn, but the impression this had created of lethargy vanished as the little man paced up and down, never still for a moment and always talking. He spoke first of the situation in the wider empire, of the hard work the princeps was doing to ensure peace and stability throughout the provinces. With the deified Nerva taken from us far too soon, his son would secure his legacy by his strength, justice and virtue. There would be no chaos, no civil war.
Then he turned to Britannia and most of all these lands in the north. Ferox was surprised to find great chunks of his own reports repeated, if admittedly in more rhetorical and elegant language. Some of this came from things he had written last year, a good deal from more recent reports, while some was astonishingly up to date.
‘Bet you thought no one was listening,’ Crispinus whispered.
Marcellus paused. He had reached the aftermath of the punitive expedition against the Selgovae, and begun to speak of the embassy to Tincommius. He beckoned to Crispinus, asking the tribune if he would be kind enough to tell them the outcome. With feigned reluctance the young aristocrat went to the front, and was soon recounting their journey north and the encounter with the high king, explaining the agreement they had reached.
‘Good,’ the provincial legate declared once he had finished. ‘That is eminently sensible and I approve your decisions. I am sure that the princeps will confirm that judgement as soon as the matter is brought to him. Flavius Ferox,’ he said. ‘Stand up, sir.’
He did so, feeling awkward and unkempt and aware that the rage was seething within him and could burst out at the slightest provocation. There was something about the manner of this new governor, the self-confidence exceptional even for a distinguished senator, that annoyed him.
‘Many of you know that the regionarius acted with the tribune on this mission. Do you have anything to add to his account?’
‘No, my lord.’ He wanted to shout out that a war had begun and that they should not be talking, but doing. Instead he said nothing.
Marcellus arched one eyebrow to show his surprise. ‘Very well, perhaps as we proceed. Continue, my dear Crispinus, and tell us what happened after you left the king’s stronghold.’
Ferox listened, and had to admit that the tribune gave an accurate report, including the provision of an escort and discovery of the murdered merchants. ‘The yew tree is sacred to druids,’ he said, and, if that was not quite the way Ferox would have explained it, it was good enough for this audience. The tribune spoke of how and why Ferox and Vindex left them, then described his journey to Trimontium, shadowed and then harassed by warriors on horseback. The garrison had lost a number of men to ambushes as detachments moved through the country. One wood-gathering party was long overdue and no news had come of them.
‘They are dead,’ Ferox cut in. ‘We found the bodies and the burned carts.’
‘I suspected as much,’ Marcellus said, his tone one of mild regret. ‘Continue please, Crispinus.’
The tribune did not have much more to say. Trimontium’s garrison was well enough provisioned to survive a blockade for some time. At the moment the chieftain from the hill fort and other local elders were assuring the Romans of their goodwill. ‘It is hard to be sure how long that will last,’ he finished.