Venator, p.2
Venator, page 2
Like his sister, Cato was a Gaul; his features did not resemble a Roman’s in the slightest. But, unlike his sister, he had chafed against his slave’s collar from the moment of his birth. He had not been able to buy his freedom with sexual favours the way Cassia had. And, though Decimus was by no means as cruel a master as The Senator had been, Cato had had his fill of being ordered around.
Why should he have to wait around while others decided his fate? Why had he spent his entire life letting others order him around? Why wasn’t he ever put to a useful enough trade to earn his freedom? Why did his sister lead such an easier life than him? And why couldn’t he just pluck up the urge to run away?
The image of the Senator’s ancient houseboy leapt to his mind. The old man’s son, born into The Senator’s household a decade before Cato himself, had attempted to run away at the age of fifteen. He’d been caught by the vigiles and returned ten days later. The Senator had made Cato, Cassia, and the other slave children line up to watch the teenager lose his fifth fingers to the burning forge before receiving a branded ‘F’ on his forehead. The mingled screaming and smells of burning, cauterised flesh, combined with the visceral imagery of the young slave’s mutilation, haunted Cato’s childhood dreams for years.
He tossed the bridle aside and kicked a sandaled foot at a stone sitting in the grass. He watched it bounce slowly down the knoll and drop into the cistern stream with a ping.
‘Shirking again, eh, Cato?’
He lifted his head to see Livius, Tribune Julianus Titianus’s man, grinning down at him from a few feet away. He cut short the retort that had been building in his throat, eyes widening at the sight. Livius stood proudly, his expression almost as lofty as his master’s. His fine white tunic, belted at the waist, didn’t sport the holes and tears at its hem like Cato’s dingy blue number. A dark cloak, gifted to him by his master to better endure the British winters, flapped softly in the breeze behind him. These Cato hardly noticed. It was the gleaming, heavy silver collar ringing the slave’s olive-hued neck that arrested his attention.
‘Where in Jupiter’s name did you get that?’
‘Get what?’ Livius grinned. He watched Cato rise from the grass and lean close to inspect the collar. ‘Oh, this?’ He brushed his fingers against it absently. ‘It’s just a heathen torc.’
Cato studied it closely. The silver torc, though solid, consisted of an intricate weaving of bands that formed a knotted pattern. The curved ends were festooned with gleaming, carved figures of snarling hounds. Their jewelled eyes sparkled even in the overcast gloom. ‘It looks like a king’s torc,’ Cato breathed admiringly.
‘Near enough. I took it from the chieftain of the Deceangli.’
‘When?’
‘After the battle, you nitwit.’ Livius shot him a haughty look. ‘He had no more use for it, and it seemed a shame to let it be buried in the pit with his corpse. I presented it to the Tribune, but he told me to keep it.’ He shook his head. ‘Really, Cato, you ought to stay closer to the rear guard when the army engages with these tribes. There’s all manner of treasures to be found if you’re the first on the scene.’
‘Looting bodies, you mean.’ Cato drew back, scowling again.
Livius shrugged. ‘What you call looting, I call opportunity. If you weren’t so busy cowering by the baggage waggons, you might have found enough treasures to buy your freedom.’
‘I do not cower!’ Cato’s blue eyes flashed angrily. ‘The centurion orders me to stay well to the rear until he sends for me!’
‘And since when did you ever care for following the centurion’s orders?’ Livius rolled his eyes before strolling away.
Cato stood in the grass, clenching and unclenching his fists, as he watched the slave stalk back to the fort. Slowly, he stooped down and picked up his master’s bridle before turning to follow. He took a few reluctant steps, not caring that he dragged the newly polished leather through the mud.
‘Cato!’
He stopped and lifted his head. The vertical black and white horsehair crest of an optio’s helmet appeared in the distance, bobbing towards him. Below its visor, the grim, lined face of Publius Tullius Servius became visible as it drew near. ‘Where is your master?’
He shrugged. ‘How should I know?’ Bored, he made a move towards the fort again. Tullius’s arm reached out and stopped him.
‘Hold it, boy! The legate’s been screaming for him! Surely you must know!’
The slave shook his head irritably. ‘Check Charis’s establishment! I expect he’s in bed with my whore of a sister.’
On the banks opposite the ford of the river Sabrina, facing the fort’s southern wall, Charis’s boarding house stood tucked between a weaver’s shopfront and the alley lining a rather seedy tavern called The Aurochs. The front of its limewashed wall boasted a roster of “exotic girls from all corners of the empire,” punctuated with graffito left by its male patrons. These included Helena (“good lay”), Sophonisba (“long legs”), Euphemia (“goes all night”) and Kottyto (who, according to one disgruntled customer, “has warts”). A hulking Dalmatian doorman glowered from the porticoed entrance, scowling at the scarlet-clad soldiers seeking Charis’s advertised treasures.
Once inside, a man needed to avoid the carousing drunks and dancing women performing on tables, chairs, and laps, skirt past the drawn curtains of the cells located in quiet corners behind the bar and make his way up the narrow staircase to a hall of rooms partitioned off by heavy wooden doors.
There, behind the farthest of the doors, Cassia reclined against Decimus on her bed, gently feeding him dates from a bronze dish. ‘The chariot races at the Circus Maximus,’ she intoned, stroking his wiry chin while he dreamily gazed at the ceiling. ‘All the bright colours of the ponies sweeping past, the balls raising on the post with each lap, the excited cheers of the crowd…’
He smiled, absently rolling the candied fruit around in his mouth. ‘The smell of the citruses that horrible little man kept trying to hawk to the cheap seats. That loud supporter of the Greens with the squeaky voice daring anyone with money on the Blues to try and take him on. The stable lads scurrying across the track with their pitchforks. Emperor Tiberius watching from the imperial box, the Praetorian Guard surrounding him.’
Decimus recoiled from his daydream long enough to lean over and spit the date’s pit onto the wooden floor. When he lifted his head, he caught sight of the dark, nervous eyes of a Syrian girl hovering in the doorway. ‘Oh, hello.’
Cassia turned her head and shot the girl an irritated look. ‘Yes, Marina, what is it?’
‘Begging your pardon,’ she murmured in heavily accented Latin. She dipped her head towards the officer. ‘There’s a man outside for the centurion. He says it’s urgent.’
Decimus gruffly picked Cassia up off his lap and dropped her aside. ‘Duty calls.’ He grabbed his helmet with its accompanying felt skullcap and clapped it over his head as he followed the small, dark prostitute towards the door.
‘Tullius!’ He caught sight of his optio’s face as soon as he emerged outside. The optio’s dark eyes were furrowed within the gathered lines of his face as he stood, shifting uneasily from foot to foot. Decimus frowned. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I’m glad I found you, sir. The legate’s fit to be tied.’ He turned and started leading the way down the hall. Decimus fell into step beside him. ‘Do you remember that cavalry patrol that went missing two days ago?’
‘Yes, what about them?’
Tullius swallowed grimly. ‘I think you’d better see for yourself.’
They tramped down to the first level, cut through the hazy kitchen at the back of the brothel, and exited through the courtyard to the alley alongside The Aurochs. Decimus frowned at Tullius’s set shoulders, wondering what might have occurred.
Since arriving at the fort seven years ago, Legio Quatturodecimae Gemina had seen precious little action; the local British tribe was content to pay the governor’s taxes and stay out of the legion’s way. There had been disquiet among the Brigantes to the north, but the Ninth legion was seeing to them. Building projects, such as roads and sewers, were progressing at an agreeable pace. The largest hindrance to the army’s engineers had thus far been the mercurial island weather. As a result of the army’s works, the vicus down by the ford had grown with each successive year of occupation. Occasional raids and hunting parties from the southern tribes sometimes troubled the locals, who fell on the legion to settle their disputes. Some punitive action had been taken in the south alongside the Twentieth legion, but the natives in their roundhouses and hillforts had been little match for the might of Rome’s disciplined killing machine. While several tribes remained hostile to their presence on the frontier, no meaningful resistance had been mounted since their invasion. Decimus saw no reason things should suddenly change now.
They turned left at the end of the road and began cresting the straight track up the rise to the fort’s south gate. At their backs, the docks and warehouses lining the Sabrina faded behind the shapes of wooden homes and businesses belonging to natives, immigrants, and soldiers alike. Tullius’s steps began to hasten to the double march. Decimus practically had to jog to keep up with them. He looked beyond the optio’s black-and-white crest to the high walls of the wooden palisade. Legionaries stationed along the gate silently watched the approach of the two senior officers.
‘Labruscum,’ Tullius grunted to the gate guards. He grinned over his shoulder at Decimus as they passed under the heavy, reinforced watchtower that defended the gate. ‘Tribune Titianus must be missing his vineyards again.’
Decimus shook his head; he didn’t have time to waste thinking about the tribune. ‘Now, what’s so sensitive you couldn’t tell me before? Where’s Legate Regulus?’
Tullius grimly pointed up the via praetorium. They continued their steps past the stable blocks, where the auxiliary cohorts barracked, and the legionary hospital.
The hulking complex of temple, offices, gathering hall, and supply buildings comprising the principia loomed before them. They stood out from the surrounding wooden structures, as they’d been replaced with limewashed brick walls and tile roofs. As the most important building complex within the fort, the principia shared this more permanent build with only the legate’s quarters thus far; the rotating building crew was working on steadily replacing the wooden barracks of the first cohort with brick walls. The forbidding, porticoed façade of the praetorium stretched out ahead on the officers’ left. To their right, the wooden granary on its raised platform looked pitiful by comparison.
The pair took a sharp left at the principia and marched past the praetorium. Slaves sweeping and spinning along the portico paused to shoot Decimus a nervous look as he passed. A feeling of unease rankled in the pit of the centurion’s stomach. Whatever Regulus needed to see him for, it couldn’t be good.
The legionaries stationed along the western palisade stopped and clapped their fists to their shoulders in stiff salute as Decimus and Tullius approached. The gate guards looked ashen under their helmet brims, backs rigidly against the wooden doors opening onto a construction yard. Here sat the bricks, tiles, and timbers being used to improve the buildings inside the fort’s walls. Hulking blocks of dusty concrete and buckets of limewash lent the grounds a hazy, dirty white sheen. Gravel crunched under the officers’ hobnailed boots, oddly loud in the silence of the normally bustling yard.
They came across the legate, red-faced and huffing, behind a tall stack of bricks just outside the gates. His vertical scarlet helmet crest quivered with rage. His impassive, stonelike features seemed etched of the very materials surrounding him. Red brick dust hung about his lorica, lending the medals on his harness a dull sheen. ‘If it isn’t my primus pilus! It’s about time they tracked you down! Look at what Fortunatus’s crew found,’ Regulus gestured with his arm expansively. ‘Just what in Tartarus do you make of that?!’
Decimus marched up to the edge of the yard and stopped short. His shoulders drooped as he breathed a weary sigh. ‘Mithras preserve us.’
The heads of the ten cavalrymen sat on spikes ringing a knoll on the edge of the construction yard. A piece of heavy woollen cloth, attached to the decurion’s helmet, fluttered gently in the breeze. An arm band tied to the end of the rag bore the insigne of the Cornovii.
II
‘
Why has there been no reply?’
Luciana looked up despairingly from the pile of rushes carpeting the floor. ‘Stop fretting, Father. I don’t even want to marry Morcant in the first place.’
Gruffydd, chieftain of the Cornovii, glared at his daughter. ‘I don’t recall your having a choice in the matter. Our people have had enough of the Silures raiding their farms and burning their pastures for one lifetime. An alliance between our tribes will ensure peace along our borders.’
She blew out a breath in exasperation. ‘So the happiness and safety of the tribe depends solely on my arranged, lifelong misery? How very noble of you to sacrifice your only daughter!’
‘You are being unfair, dear,’ her mother quietly murmured from her seat. She didn’t look up from the mortarium cradled in her lap. ‘The marriage that produced you was itself arranged, and I have not suffered for it.’
‘Exactly,’ Gruffydd nodded. ‘This family has always been prepared to do what they must for the sake of the tribe. Besides, it’s not as bad as you might think. You’ll still be a noblewoman belonging to a chieftain, with all the freedoms that entails. There’s nothing stopping you from declaring a divorce once he’s got his heir. And you’re still free, married or not, to fuck any of the Silures you want, so the brat doesn’t even have to be his.’
Luciana buried her head in her arms. ‘It most certainly won’t be,’ she growled under her breath.
Gruffydd blustered on unheedingly. ‘I know Arthmael’s son has an…unconventional…view of women, but one that many, his father included, don’t share. You could leave him whenever you like. You could marry another warrior or chieftain if they’d have you. You could even challenge him for the chiefdom or assume the role upon his unexpected demise. For the time being, however, you will wield more power and influence within the tribe as his wife than in any other capacity. The matter is closed; you will marry him. And I hope that, with a wife of such modern education as yourself, Morcant will be less likely to make trouble with the Romans when he ascends to leadership of the Silures.’
Luciana rolled her eyes. ‘As if we haven’t already placated the Roman enough.’ She tossed her head and settled back against the wattle and daub wall of the chieftain’s hut. It, like the walls of most Roman homes, had been painted over to depict a scene featuring Roman deities. Against her back, Jupiter in the form of a hulking bull chased Europa down a pastoral field. At its far end stood Timoteo, Luciana’s brother, carefully adding an array of colourful butterflies and flowers to the mural.
She scowled at him. ‘And you’re no help at all, tarting this place up into some barbarian villa!’
Timoteo turned towards her, frowning. ‘I’m with Father; an alliance with Morcant is the most sensible thing you could do. As for my hobbies,’ he drew himself up, sniffing, ‘I don’t see any harm in adopting a bit of Roman culture.’
‘A bit?!’ Luciana threw her arm up, gesturing around them. ‘Look at us! We are practically Roman in everything but name!’
Timoteo self-consciously pulled at his draped toga before reaching up to scratch at the short fringe of yellow fuzz encircling his bald crown. He glanced over at their father. Gruffydd could practically pass for a Roman statesman; after Emperor Claudius successfully added Britain to the empire sixteen years before, he’d quickly adopted a Roman appearance in order to ingratiate himself with the occupying army. He’d cut his grey hair short, shaved off his long mustachios, and began parading around the precinct in a carefully draped toga. He’d even Latinised the names of his children and sent them to a tutor in the emerging colony of Londinium so that they’d both learn the language and customs of the Romans. And for his efforts, the emperor had bestowed upon him the title of client-king for the region. The army didn’t burn the Cornovii farms or slaughter and enslave their peoples, as they had the rebellious Durotriges and Atrebates to the south. Gruffydd paid the Roman taxes and let the Romans build their roads so that his people could co-exist in peace.
The only outward thing that marked Gruffydd as a Celt was the heavy chieftain’s torc he wore around his collar, wildly incongruous against his Roman robes. His son, lacking this accessory, looked even less like a Celt than his father did. His fair complexion and wide blue eyes aside, he wouldn’t have seemed the least bit out of place in a Roman square with his tunics and sandals, his clean-shaven face, and his Latin tongue. He wore the jewelled rings and armbands ascribed to his princely status as the chieftain’s son, but even these weren’t enough to hide how completely he’d assimilated into the conquerors’ culture.
Luciana turned her head away from them and glanced at her mother, Gwenfrewi. A smile pulled at her lips as she watched the old woman serenely grind a small bundle of herbs with a pestle. It seemed that at least the queen of the Cornovii had not lost her head to their Roman overlords. She still wore her long, silky grey hair in a series of plaits and intricate braids down her back. A gold fillet crowned her head. Her delicate gown had been dyed a series of shades of red, the bright scarlet at her shoulders and bosom fading away to white at the hem. An embroidered pattern of leaves fringed the bottom of her skirt. Gwenfrewi knew the old magicks and still worshipped the same familiar gods of Luciana’s childhood. Gwenfrewi’s mother had belonged to the outlawed Druidic order as a priestess of Danu, the Earth Mother. It had been the will of the gods, her mother decreed, that she be given to the chieftain as his queen. Gwenfrewi, having been raised on the druidess’s hip, knew how to call upon the gods’ protection and their wrath. If Luciana had been a more attentive daughter, she might have learned her mother’s wealth of ancient knowledge.
