The Iron Hand of Mars Read online

  To Rosalie,

  in memory of two Roman legionaries

  on the 29A

  ROME; ROMAN GERMANY; GERMANIA LIBERA

  SEPTEMBER–NOVEMBER AD 71

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Principal Characters

  Map

  Part One: Refusing to go

  Part Two: Getting there

  Part Three: Legio XIV Gemina Martia Victrix

  Part Four: A trip down the Rhenus

  Part Five: Swamps and forests

  Part Six: Going home (perhaps)

  Also Available by Lindsey Davis

  Copyright

  “The story upon which I embark is one full of incident, marked by bitter fighting, rent by treason, and even in peace sinister…”

  Tacitus, The Histories

  PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

  (NOT ALL OF WHOM ARE FREE TO APPEAR)

  The Emperor Vespasian

  who needs an agent he can trust, e.g.:

  M. Didius Falco

  an informer in need of work, who wants:

  Helena Justina

  who wants the impossible, but not:

  Titus Caesar

  who wants Falco off the scene

  Plus in Rome, or thereabouts:

  A widow in Veii

  a mere distraction (honestly!)

  Canidius

  an unwashed clerk of censored archives

  Balbillus

  a one-legged free-speaking ex-legionary

  Xanthus

  a sharp barber who wants to see the world

  Silvia

  wife to Petronius (who keeps out of the way)

  Decimus

  Helena’s father, an apologetic man, also parent to:

  Camillus Aelianus

  (in Spain); a high-minded youth

  And in History:

  P. Quinctilius Varus

  a disastrous general (long dead)

  Petilius Cerialis

  a renowned general (not as disastrous as Varus)

  Claudia Sacrata

  a woman of intrigue (preferably with generals)

  Munius Lupercus

  a missing officer (probably dead)

  Julius Civilis

  a rebel chief in need of a haircut

  Veleda

  a priestess who lives alone with her thoughts and:

  Some relatives of hers

  who live there too

  In Gaul:

  A Gallic potter

  who will soon be a long way from Lugdunum

  Two German potters

  who may never go home

  In Germany:

  Dubnus

  a pedlar who sells more than he should

  Julius

  a potter who knows a few things

  Mordanticus Regina

  barmaid at the Medusa; an angry girl

  Augustinilla

  Falco’s niece, laid low by love and the toothache

  Arminia

  her little flaxen friend

  Belonging to the famous XIV Legion:

  Florius Gracilis

  their legate; another missing officer

  Maenia Priscilla

  his wife, who is not missing him

  Julia Fortunata

  his mistress, who says she is

  Rusticus

  his slave, who is just missing

  The Primipilus

  the XIV’s sneering chief centurion

  The Cornicularius

  their snooty commissariat clerk

  A. Macrinus

  their arrogant senior tribune

  S. Juvenalis

  their truculent camp prefect

  In the much-less famous I Legion:

  Q. Camillus Justinus

  Helena’s other brother; an ingénu tribune

  Helveticus

  a centurion with a problem, which includes:

  Dama

  his servant, who yearns for Moesia,

  Twenty rather

  including:

  dim recruits

  Lentullus

  the one who can’t do anything

  Also featuring:

  The aurochs

  a legendary beast famous for ferociousness, and:

  Tigris

  a dog who finds an interesting bone

  PART ONE

  REFUSING TO GO

  Rome, September, AD 71

  “My official career owed its beginning to Vespasian, its progress to Titus … I have no wish to deny this.”

  Tacitus, The Histories

  I

  “One thing is definite,” I told Helena Justina; “I am not going to Germany!”

  Immediately I could see her planning what to pack for the trip.

  * * *

  We were in bed at my apartment, high up on the Aventine. A real sixth-floor bughole—only most bugs grew tired of walking upstairs before they ever got this far. I passed them sometimes, flaked out on halfway landings, with droopy antennae and tired little feet …

  It was a place you could only laugh about, or the squalor would break your heart. Even the bed was rocky. And that was after I had pieced in a new leg and tightened the mattress webs.

  I was trying out a new way of making love to Helena, which I had devised in the interests of not letting our relationship go stale. I had known her a year, let her seduce me after six months of thinking about it, and had finally managed to persuade her to live with me about two weeks ago. According to my previous experience of women, I must be right on target to be told I drank too much and slept too much, and that her mother needed her urgently back at home.

  My athletic efforts at holding her interest had not gone unnoticed. “Didius Falco … wherever did you … learn this trick?”

  “Invented it myself…”

  Helena was a senator’s daughter. Expecting her to put up with my filthy lifestyle for more than a fortnight had to be pushing my luck. Only a fool would view her fling with me as anything more than a bit of local excitement before she married some pot-bellied pullet in patrician stripes who could offer her emerald pendants and a summer villa at Surrentum.

  As for me, I worshipped her. But then I was the fool who kept hoping the fling could be made to last.

  “You’re not enjoying yourself.” As a private informer, my powers of deduction were just about adequate.

  “I don’t think…” Helena gasped, “this is going to work!”

  “Why not?” I could see several reasons. I had cramp in my left calf, a sharp pain under one kidney, and my enthusiasm was flagging like a slave kept indoors on a festival holiday.

  “One of us,” suggested Helena, “is bound to laugh.”

  “It looked all right as a rough sketch on the back of an old rooftile.”

  “Like pickling eggs. The recipe seems easy, but the results are disappointing…”

  I replied that we were not in the kitchen, so Helena asked demurely whether I thought it would help if we were. Since my Aventine doss lacked that amenity altogether, I treated her question as rhetorical.

  We both laughed, if it’s of interest.

  Then I unwound us, and made love to Helena the way both of us liked best.

  * * *

  “Anyway, Marcus, how do you know the Emperor wants to send you to Germany?”

  “Nasty rumour flitting round the Palatine.”

  We were still in bed. After my last case had staggered to what passed for its conclusion, I had promised myself a week of domestic relaxation—due to a dearth of new commissions, there were plenty of gaps in the schedule of my working life. In fact, I had no cases at all. I could stay in bed all day if I wanted to. Most days I did.

  “So…” H
elena was a persistent type. “… You have been making enquiries then?”

  “Enough to know some other mug can take on the Emperor’s mission.”

  Since I did sometimes undertake shady activity for Vespasian, I had been up to the Palace to investigate my chances of earning a corrupt denarius from him. Before presenting myself in the throne room, I had taken the precaution of sniffing round the back corridors first. A wise move: a well-timed exchange with an old crony called Momus had sent me scurrying home.

  “Much work on, Momus?” I had asked.

  “Chicken-feed. I hear your name is down for the German trip?” was the reply (with a mocking laugh that told me it was something to dodge).

  “What trip is that?”

  “Just your sort of disaster,” Momus had grinned. “Something about investigating the Fourteenth Gemina…”

  That was when I had pulled my cloak round my ears and scarpered—before anyone could inform me officially. I knew enough about the XIV Legion to put quite a lot of effort into avoiding closer contact, and without going into painful history, there was no reason why those swaggering braggarts should welcome a visit from me.

  * * *

  “Has the Emperor actually spoken to you?” insisted my beloved.

  “Helena, I won’t let him. I’d hate to cause offence by turning down his wonderful offer…”

  “Life would be much more straightforward if you just let him ask you, and then simply said no!”

  I gave her a smirk that said women (even clever, well-educated daughters of senators) could never understand the subtleties of politics—to which she replied with a two-handed shove that sent me sprawling out of bed. “We need to eat, Marcus. Go and find some work!”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Paint my face for a couple of hours, in case my lover calls.”

  “Oh, right! I’ll go, and leave him a clear field…”

  We were joking about the lover. Well, I hoped we were.

  II

  In the Forum, life was proceeding much as normal. It was panic season for lawyers. The last day of August is also the last day to bring new cases before the winter recess, so the Basilica Julia was humming. We had reached the Nones of September and most barristers—still rosy from their holidays at Baiae—were scurrying to settle a few hasty cases to justify their social standing before the courts closed. They had the usual noisy touts out all round the Rostrum, offering bribes for cheerleaders to rush into the Basilica and barrack the opposition. I shouldered them aside.

  In the shadow of the Palatine, a sedate procession of functionaries from one of the priestly colleges was following an elderly white-robed Virgin into the Vestals’ House. She glanced about with the truculence of a loopy old lady who has men who should know better being respectful to her all day. Meanwhile, on the steps of the Temples of Saturn and Castor lounged throngs of sex-crazed idlers, eyeing up anything (not only female) that looked worth whistling at. An extremely angry aedile was ordering his heavy mob to move on a drunk who had had the bad judgement to pass out on the pavement sundial at the base of the Golden Milestone. It was still summer weather. There was a strong smell of hot donkey droppings everywhere.

  Just lately I had been sizing up a piece of wall on the Tabularium. Having come armed with a sponge, a few deft strokes soon washed off the electioneering puff that was besmirching the antique stonework, (Supported by the Manicure Girls at the Agrippan Baths … the usual sophisticated candidate). Deleting his offensive rubbish from our architectural heritage left a good space, just at eye-level, for me to chalk up graffiti of my own:

  Didius Falco

  For All Discreet

  Enquiries + Legal

  Or Domestic

  Good Refs + Cheap

  Rates

  At Eagle Laundry

  Fountain Court

  Seductive, eh?

  I knew what it was likely to bring in: shifty import clerks who wanted financial health checks on rich widows they were cultivating, or corner-shop barmen who were worried about missing girls.

  The clerks never pay up, but barmen can be useful. A private informer can spend weeks looking for lost women, then, when he gets tired of putting his feet in wineshops (if ever), he only has to point out to the client that missing waitresses are generally found with their heads bashed in, hidden under their boyfriends’ floorboards at home. This generally gets the bills for surveillance paid ultra-promptly, and sometimes the barmen even leave town for a long period afterwards—a bonus for Rome. I like to feel my work has community value.

  Of course a barman can be disastrous. The girlfriend may be genuinely missing, having run off with a gladiator, so you still spend weeks searching, only to end up feeling so sorry for the dumb cluck who has lost his tawdry turtledove that you can’t bring yourself to ask him for your fee …

  * * *

  I went to the baths for a spot of exercise with my trainer, just in case I did manage to land myself a case which required putting myself out. Then I looked for my friend Petronius Longus. He was captain of the Aventine Watch, which involved dealing with all types, many of them the unscrupulous variety who might need my services. Petro often sent work my way, if only to avoid having to deal with tiresome characters himself.

  He was not in any of his usual haunts, so I went to his house. All I found there was his wife—an unwelcome treat. Arria Silvia was a slightly built, pretty woman; she had small hands and a neat nose, with soft skin and fine eyebrows like a child’s. But there was nothing soft about Silvia’s character, one aspect of which was a searing opinion of me.

  “How’s Helena, Falco? Has she left you yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “She will!” promised Silvia.

  This was banter, though fairly caustic, and I treated it warily. I left a message to tell Petro I was light in the occupation stakes, then hotfooted out of it.

  While I was in the area I dropped in at my mother’s; Ma was out visiting. I was not in the mood for hearing my sisters bemoaning their husbands, so I gave up on my relations (not a hard decision) and went home.

  A worrying scene greeted me. I had crossed the stinking alley towards Lenia’s laundry, the cut-price, clothes-stealing wash-shop which occupied the ground floor of our building, when I noticed a set of tough tykes bristling with buckles who were standing about the stairwell trying to act inconspicuous. A hard task to set themselves: the battle scenes on their breastplates were polished to a dazzle that would stop a water-clock, let alone a passer-by, and ten determined children had stationed themselves in a circle to gape at their scarlet helmet plumes and dare one another to try and poke sticks between the mighty mens’ bootstraps. It was the Praetorian Guard. The whole Aventine must know that they were here.

  I could not remember having done anything lately that the military might object to, so I assumed an innocent saunter and kept going. These heroes were out of their own refined environment and looking pretty jumpy. I was not surprised to be stopped at the steps by two spears slamming together across my chest.

  “Steady, lads, don’t snag my outfit—this tunic still has a few decades of life in it…”

  A laundry girl barged out of the steam with a sneer on her face and a basket of particularly disgusting unwashed goods. The sneer was for me.

  “Friends of yours?” she scoffed.

  “Don’t insult me! They must have been going to arrest some troublemaker and lost their way…”

  They were obviously not here to apprehend anybody. Some lucky citizen in this sordid part of society was no doubt being visited by a member of the imperial family, incognito apart from the vivid presence of his bodyguard.

  “What’s going on?” I asked the centurion in charge.

  “Confidential—move along!”

  By now I had guessed who the victim was (me) and the reason for the visitation (cajoling me into the mission in Germany Momus had warned me about). I felt full of foreboding. If the mission was so special or so urgent it demand
ed such personal treatment, it must involve the kind of effort I would really hate. I paused, wondering which of the Flavians was venturing his princely toes in our alley’s pungent mud.

  The Emperor himself, Vespasian, was too senior and too sensitive about status to make free with the populace. Besides, he was over sixty. At my house he would never manage the stairs.

  I had crossed paths with his younger son, Domitian. I once exposed a piece of dirty work by the junior Caesar, which now meant that Domitian would like to see me wiped off the earth, and I felt the same about him. However, we ignored each other socially.

  It must be Titus.

  “Titus Caesar come to see Falco?” He was impetuous enough to do it. Letting the officer know that I despised official secrecy, I lifted apart the impressively polished spear tips with one delicate finger. “I’m Marcus Didius. Better pass me in so I can hear what joys the bureaucracy are planning for me now…”

  They let me through, though with a sarcastic look. Perhaps they had been assuming their heroic commander had lowered himself for an off-colour intrigue with some Aventine wench.

  Making no attempt to hurry, since I was a fervent republican, I took myself upstairs.

  * * *

  When I went in, Titus was talking to Helena. I stopped short abruptly. The look I had seen the Praetorians exchange began to make more sense. I began to think I had been a fool.

  Helena was sitting out on the balcony, a small affair which clung perilously to the side of our building, its old stone supports held on mainly by twenty years of grime. Although there was room for an informal type like me to share the bench with her, Titus had remained politely standing beside the folding door. Ahead of him lay a spectacular view of the great city which his father ruled, but Titus was ignoring it. In my opinion, with Helena to look at, anybody would. Titus shared my opinion pretty openly.