‘Centurion?’
‘Don’t even consider leaving the Ninth again without winning a vine stick first… unless you want me to have you… have you…’
He slipped into sleep. When he woke again the pain in his head was almost gone, and Antenoch was sitting quietly at his side, reading the borrowed scroll. Seeing his centurion awake, he furled the scroll, shaking it in Marcus’s face.
‘And what sort of reading matter is this for a sick man? Besides, what the divine Julius actually knew about fighting the Gauls would probably have fitted on your pocket tablet with room to spare. There’s more to warfare than looking good on a horse and knowing when to send in the cavalry. I’d like to have seen him stand in a shield wall with the shit flying and retain his famous composure.’
Marcus laughed at him, refusing to be drawn.
‘Oh good, you’re better. You must be, or the good lady Felicia wouldn’t be talking about letting you out in the morning.’
‘Don’t be so familiar, Antenoch, unless the lady’s given you permission to use her forename. One of these days you’ll talk yourself into a mess I can’t get you out of.’
‘Oh, the lady and I are on first-name terms, Centurion, from the long conversations we had mooning over your sickbed, before you got bored with sleeping all the time. Conversations, I might add, that lead me to the belief that Felicia entertains feelings for you that go beyond those that might be expected between doctor and patient. You play it right, you could be hiding the sausage…’
Marcus’s irritation boiled over, his finger stopping an inch from Antenoch’s nose.
‘Enough! You’ll push me too far, you insolent bastard! Credit me with some sense of decorum! She’s a married woman, for Jupiter’s sake. Whether I want her or not, there are rules by which our lives are run.’
To his dismay, the Briton collapsed against the wall in giggles.
‘Rules! Gods above, listen to him…’
He wiped his eyes theatrically, shaking his head in mock amazement.
‘… and you a Roman citizen born and bred? Don’t you know you people practically invented adultery?’
They stared at each other in angry silence for a moment, neither willing to concede. At length Antenoch spoke again.
‘Anyway, be that as it may, the lady Felicia, who I am sure has led the most blameless of lives, entertains more than a hint of affection for yourself. And that’s official.’
Marcus rose to the bait.
‘What do you mean, official?’
His clerk smiled slyly.
‘Her orderly told me so. We shared a mug of beer last night, after he was off duty; call it a scouting mission on your behalf, if you like. He’s been with her for a year and a half down at Fair Meadow, helping her put damaged Second Tungrians together again, and he reckons he knows her better than her husband ever will…’
Marcus shook his head, aghast.
‘I really shouldn’t be listening to this…’
‘But you will, because you feel for her just as much! I warned you I’d always speak my mind! She hates her husband because he won’t recognise her abilities, and wants her to play the submissive little wife for him. Another fool that thought he could change a woman once they were married…
‘Anyway, he told me that she gets all misty eyed when she thinks he isn’t looking, and he’s pretty sure you’re the cause. Which I can understand, a nice young boy in uniform like you. And what’s more…’
Marcus raised his arms in mock surrender.
‘No more! I’ve heard all I need to. You’re quite impossible, and I’m tiring fast just listening to you. Run along and play your games with the orderly, and leave me in peace. We can discuss this again once I’ve got a grip of my vine stick.’
Antenoch got to his feet, his smile undaunted.
‘You’d only break the stick. Sleep well, Centurion, but remember what I’ve told you.’
He went to the door, looked out into the corridor and then turned back, as if on an afterthought.
‘And if she does decide she can’t resist, I think you’ll owe me an apology. Perhaps we could even have a small wager on the matter?’
He ducked round the door frame, as Marcus threw the scroll at his head. Annius sat in his tent throughout the afternoon, working through a sheaf of tablets and sending his staff around the camp to find the items he required, until he was convinced that the cohort had all of the supplies required for a deployment into hostile territory. Spearheads had already been purchased from the local armourer, spare swords traded for surplus sets of mail, and generally scarce boots quietly stolen from a neighbouring unit’s store. All might be required in the next few days, and he had no intention of inviting the wrath of men he would depend upon to stand between him and thousands of angry barbarians.
Darkness fell, and he worked on by the light of half a dozen lamps, snacking from a plate of cakes purchased from Tacitus’s bakery, until a disturbance outside the tent caught his attention. Rising to go to the flap, he received his clerk in the belly, the man literally thrown into the tent from outside. They fell on to his table, scattering tablets, cakes and lamps, plunging the interior into darkness. The flap was pulled open, the man standing in the opening silhouetted in the light of the torches that burned around the camp.
‘Stores officer Annius?’
The cohort’s guards would notice, would come to his rescue. He gathered his dignity, getting to his feet and trying to make out the indistinct figure at the tent’s door.
‘Yes. What…’
The other man reached into the tent, grasping him by the neck and pulling him out through the door, choking him with the pinch-hold on his windpipe. Close up, in the light of the torches, he was evidently officer class, dressed in cavalry armour, and with a body that Annius would have bet filled his cuirass without any trouble. He leaned in close to speak into the stores officer’s face, his eyes shining in the torchlight and a hand sliding down to his waist, gripping the hilt of his dagger.
‘I told your clerk, and I’ll tell you, shut your face if you want to live. I could slit your throats and be away from here before your guards woke up. Understand?’
His vision greying from the vice-like grip on his throat, Annius nodded limply.
‘Good.’
The grip relaxed, allowing him to gulp in some air. His arm was grasped, leaving him no alternative but to accompany the man as he led a winding path through the tents. Without a cloak he began to shiver in the night’s cold air. After a minute’s swift walk the officer pushed him into a tent, lit brightly by several large lamps, and followed, placing his bulk between Annius and the door flap. A younger man, also in uniform, sat idly in a chair at the tent’s far end. A thin purple stripe ran along his tunic’s hem, and he was attired in magnificently polished armour. In the lamplight Annius read his face in an instant, finding the intensity and intelligence of a predator under a shock of blond hair.
‘Well, storeman, do you know who I am?’
He shook his head, realising that he should speak, and chanced a response.
‘A senior officer, sir, a legion tribune to judge from your rank…’
‘Quite so. And more too. You’ll doubtless have heard of our emperor, Commodus?’
‘Yes, Tribune.’
Did this have something to do with that young bastard of a centurion? What had Tacitus been broadcasting to the world?
‘My name is Titus Tigidius Perennis. My father is the praetorian prefect of Rome. I carry a special commission from the emperor…’
He took a small scroll from inside his tunic, and waved it at Annius.
‘I’ve read it so many times I can remember the wording as if it were open in front of me… “find and bring to justice any person guilty of treason against the throne, of whatever rank, within the Imperial Government of Britannia. Command the services of any man required to aid in this task, of whatever rank, on penalty of death for refusal.” On penalty of death, storeman.