The Iron Hand of Mars Page 3

  “I am relying on you, Marcus, to tell me where that daughter of mine is—”

  I swallowed. “Well, you know Helena Justina, sir—”

  “No idea either!” her father exclaimed. Next thing, he was apologising for Helena as if I was the one who ought to be offended by her extravagant behaviour.

  “Calm down, senator!” I tucked a towel around him soothingly. “I’ve made my business out of tailing other people’s treasures when they disappear. I’ll track her down.” I tried not to look too worried at my lies. So did he.

  My friend Petronius did his best to jolly me along, but even he was fairly amazed.

  “Abroad! Falco, you have the brain of an inadequate catfish. Why couldn’t you have fallen for a normal girl? The kind who rushes home to mother whenever you upset her, but then slinks back the next week with a new necklace you’ll have to pay for?”

  “Because only a girl who likes pointless dramatic gestures would fall for me.”

  He let out an impatient growl. “Are you looking for her?”

  “How can I? She could be anywhere from Lusitania to the Nabataean desert. Leave off, Petro; I’ve had enough stupidity!”

  “Well, women never travel far alone…” Petronius himself had always favoured simple, timid fluff-balls—or at least women who convinced him that was what they were.

  “Women are not supposed to travel. That simple rule won’t deter Helena!”

  “Why did she flit?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  “Oh I see: Titus!” The Praetorian Guard must have been spotted by one of his troopers when they were squatting outside my house. “That’s you finished, Falco, anyway!”

  I told him I was tired of other people’s optimism, then I slouched off by myself.

  * * *

  The next time a summons came from the Palace, ostensibly from Vespasian, I knew it must really be Titus who was plotting to remove me from the scene. I suppressed my annoyance, and made a vow to extract the largest fee I could.

  For my interview with the purple I made a sartorial effort, as Helena would have wanted me to. I wore a toga. I had a haircut. I kept my lips pressed close together to hide my republican snarl. That was the most any palace could ever hope for from me.

  Vespasian and his elder son were governing the Empire in effectual partnership. I asked for the old man, but the receiving official had gum in his ears. Even with a written invitation from his father, apparently it was Titus on that night’s duty roster to handle pleas, pardons, and wine-bar rejects like myself.

  “Wrong throne room!” I apologised, when the limp flunkey passed me in to him. “Sir, I gather the good of the Empire will be best served by despatching me elsewhere! Rumour says your noble father has a horrible proposition I’m just dying to hear.”

  Titus recognised my jibe at his personal motives. On hearing the news I might be leaving, he gave a short laugh, which I did not join. He signalled a slave, presumably to lead me to the Emperor, but then held us back. “I’ve been trying to get wind of a certain female client of yours,” he admitted—too offhandedly.

  “So she gave us both the slip! What did she tell you?” He made no answer; at least Helena favoured me with angry messages. Feeling braver, I risked sneering. “She’s travelling. Fraternal visit, apparently. She received a letter from the noble Aelianus recently, in high dudgeon over some imagined slight.” I saw no need to confuse Titus by saying it was over me.

  Titus frowned warily. “Surely if her brother was annoyed, avoiding him would be more logical?”

  “Helena Justina’s reaction would be to rush straight there.” Titus was still looking quizzical. I believe he had had a sister himself, an impeccable girl who had married a cousin and then died young in childbirth, as Roman women from good families are supposed to do. “Helena likes to face up to things, sir.”

  “Does she!” he commented, perhaps with irony. Then he asked more thoughtfully, “Camillus Aelianus is in Baetican Spain? But surely he’s too young for a quaestorship?” Would-be senators normally serve as provincial finance officials just before their formal election to the Curia at twenty-five. Helena’s brother had two or three years to go before that.

  “Aelianus is the son his family all think a lot of.” If Titus wanted Helena, he would need to bone up on her relatives. I described the situation for him with a familiar ease: “The Senator persuaded a friend in Corduba to find the boy a staff position ahead of time, to give him the early benefit of experience abroad.” Judging by the way he had written to his sister, this plan to teach Aelianus diplomacy was a waste of time and cash.

  “Does he demonstrate special qualities?”

  I replied gravely, “Camillus Aelianus seems well equipped for a spectacular public career.”

  Titus Caesar glanced at me, as if he suspected I might be suggesting that the normal criterion for rapid advancement in the Senate was a touch of the dungheap. “You seem well briefed!” He eyed me shrewdly, then called up an outdoor messenger. “Falco, when did Helena Justina leave?”

  “No idea.”

  He muttered something to his mercury; I caught a mention of Ostia. Titus realised I had overheard. “The lady is a member of a senatorial family; I can forbid her leaving Italy,” he told me defensively as the messenger left.

  I shrugged. “So she’s taken an unauthorised holiday. Why not? She’s not a vestal, or a priestess of the imperial cult. Your predecessors in office might have had her exiled to an island for displaying such independence, but Rome expected better from the Flavians!” Still, if he could find her—and I had myself already spent a day fruitlessly searching the Ostia quays—I was quite prepared to let Titus have my lady escorted back to Rome. I knew she would be handled respectfully because of her status. I also knew that Titus Flavius Vespasianus was in for a Charybdis of trouble if he ordered it. “Helena Justina will object forcibly to being hooked off her ship. I’ll stay if you like,” I offered. “Her ladyship in a temper may be more than your Praetorian Guard can handle without help!”

  Titus made no attempt to call back his messenger, “I’m sure I can mollify Helena Justina…” No woman he ever seriously wanted would be able to turn her back on him. He smoothed down the ample folds of his purple tunic, looking grand. I planted my feet apart and just looked tough. Then he demanded abruptly, “You and Camillus Verus’s daughter seem unusually close?”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Are you in love with her?”

  I gave him a simple smile. “Caesar, how could I presume?”

  “She’s a senator’s daughter, Falco!”

  “So people keep telling me.”

  Both of us were heavily aware of his father’s power and of how much authority had already devolved on Titus in his own right. He was too polite to draw comparisons between us, but I did.

  “Does Verus approve of this?”

  “How could he, sir?”

  “Does he allow it?”

  I said quietly, “Helena Justina is a sweetly eccentric girl.” I could tell from his face Titus had already learned that. I wondered what he had said to her; then I wondered more painfully what she had said to him.

  He moved in his seat, closing our interview. He could dismiss me from his throne room; he could order me out of Rome; but both of us were a good deal less certain whether he could exclude me from Helena’s life. “Marcus Didius, my father needs you to take a journey. I feel that would be best for everyone.”

  “Any chance of Baetica?” I ventured cheekily.

  “Wrong direction, Falco!” he whipped back with more relish than he should. Recovering, he murmured, “I was hoping to entertain the lady here last Thursday. I was sorry that she would not come—still, most people like to celebrate their private feasts amongst those who are closest to them…” This was some kind of test. I stared at him, giving nothing away. “Helena Justina’s birthday!” he explained, like a man throwing a double six with weighted dice.

  It was news to me. He could s
ee that.

  With difficulty I restrained my instinctive reaction, which was to punch his superbly barbered chin straight through his handsome teeth to the back of his Caesarly skull.

  “Enjoy Germany!”

  Titus subdued his air of triumph. But that was when I forced myself to accept the plight Helena and I were in. If this situation had become awkward for her, it was positively dangerous for me. And whatever scabby mission I was to be despatched on this time, it would suit Titus Caesar most of all if I failed to finish it.

  He was the Emperor’s son. There were plenty of things he could do to make sure that once he sent me out of Rome, I would not be coming back.

  VII

  I was passed through the perfumed offices of three chamberlains, lost in my own moody thoughts.

  I am not completely deficient. After ten years of what I called a successful love life, a new girlfriend’s birthday was something I reckoned to find out fast. I asked Helena; she laughed off the question. I tackled her father, but without his secretary’s list of family feasts, he dodged the issue shiftily. Her mother could have told me, but Julia Justa had better ways of upsetting herself than by discussing her daughter with me. I even spent hours in the Censor’s office searching for Helena’s birth certificate. No luck. Either the Senator had panicked on the arrival of his first-born (understandably) and had failed to register her properly, or else he had found her under a laurel bush and could not call her a Roman citizen.

  One thing was certain. I had committed domestic sacrilege. Helena Justina might overlook many insults, but my bumming off to Veii on her birthday was not one of them. The fact I didn’t know it was her birthday was irrelevant. I should have done.

  “Didius Falco, Caesar…” Before I was ready to concentrate on political matters, a major-domo who reeked of long-standing vanity and recently braised onions announced my name to the Emperor.

  “That’s a long face. What’s up, Falco?”

  “Woman trouble,” I admitted.

  Vespasian enjoyed a laugh. He threw back his great head and guffawed. “Want my advice?”

  “Thanks, Caesar.” I grinned. “At least this heartthrob didn’t run off with my armpurse or elope with my best friend…”

  We hit a small moment of stillness, as if the Emperor had remembered with disapproval who my latest heartthrob was.

  Vespasian Augustus was a beefy bourgeois with a down-to-earth manner who had risen to power on the tail of a vicious civil war and then set out to prove that men who lacked flash ancestors could still own a talent to rule. He and his elder son Titus were succeeding—which guaranteed that the snobs in the Senate would never accept them. Still, Vespasian had been struggling for sixty years—too long to expect easy recognition, even when he wore a purple robe.

  “You’re in no hurry to know about your mission, Falco.”

  “I know I don’t want it.”

  “That’s normal.” Vespasian humphed mildly, then told a slave, “Let’s see Canidius now.” I didn’t bother wondering who Canidius was. If he worked here, I didn’t like him enough to care. The Emperor beckoned me closer. “What do you know about Germany?”

  I opened my mouth to say, “Chaos!,” then closed it again, since the chaos had been stirred up by Vespasian’s own supporters.

  Geographically, what Rome calls Germany is the eastern flank of Gaul. Sixty years ago, Augustus had decided not to advance across the natural boundary of the great River Rhenus—a decision dragged out of him by the Quinctilius Varus disaster, when three Roman legions were ambushed and wiped out by the German tribes. Augustus never recovered. It was probably this throne room which he used to pace, groaning, “Varus, Varus, give me back my legions…” Even so long after the massacre I myself felt extreme reluctance to spend time where it had occurred.

  “Well, Falco?”

  I managed to sound impartial. “Sir, I know Gaul and our Rhine provinces played a rich part in the civil war.”

  It was the recent Vindex revolt in Gaul which had sparked everything by causing Nero’s downfall. The governor of Upper Germany crushed the revolt, but on his recall to Rome after Galba claimed the throne, his troops refused to take the New Year’s oath to Galba. When Galba died, Otho took over in Rome, but the Rhine legions rejected him and decided to elect their own emperor.

  They chose Vitellius, then governor of Lower Germany. His reputation was as a brutal, loose-living drunk—obvious imperial material by the standards of the time. From Judaea, Vespasian challenged him. Seeking to pin down the legions in Germany who were his rival’s main supporters, Vespasian contacted a local chieftain who might raise a diversion. It worked—too well. Vespasian grabbed the imperial wreath, but the rebellion in Germany ran completely out of control.

  “A part which culminated dramatically in the Civilis revolt, Caesar.”

  The old man smiled at my careful neutrality. “You are familiar with events?”

  “I read the Daily Gazette.” I matched his sombre tone. It was a bleak moment in Roman history.

  The fiasco in Germany had had everything. At the time, Rome itself was a city torn apart, but the shocking scenes on the Rhine outdid even our own problems of panic, fire, and plague. The leading rebel—a Batavian hothead called Civilis—had attempted to unite all the European tribes in some impossible vision of an independent Gaul. During the mayhem he managed to cause, a string of Roman forts were overrun and burnt. Our Rhenus fleet, which had native rowers, rowed itself over to the enemy. Vetera, the only garrison which held out with any credit, was starved into submission after a grim siege; then the troops who surrendered were set upon and slaughtered as they marched out unarmed.

  While the native revolt raged up and down Europe, the mood of our own troops also deteriorated. Mutinies occurred everywhere. Officers who showed any spirit were assaulted by their men. There were wild tales of legionary commanders being stoned, making a run for it, and hiding in tents disguised as slaves. One was murdered by a deserter. Two were executed by Civilis. The governor of Upper Germany was dragged from his sickbed and assassinated. In a particularly horrific incident, the legate from the surrendering fort at Vetera was sent off in chains by Civilis as a present to an influential priestess in the barbarian part of Germany; even today his fate remained unknown. Finally, at the height of the upheavals, four of our Rhineland legions actually sold their services and we had to endure the ultimate horror of Roman soldiers swearing allegiance to the barbarians.

  It sounds fantastic. At any other period it would have been impossible. Yet in the Year of the Four Emperors, when the whole Empire blazed in ruins while the imperial contenders slogged it out, this was just one especially colourful sideshow amongst the wide-scale lunacy.

  I wondered glumly how the colourful Rhenus frontier was about to impinge on my drab life.

  “We have Germany in hand,” Vespasian declared. From most politicians this would have been self-deception. Not him. He was a good general himself, and he attracted strong subordinates. “Annius Gallus and Petilius Cerialis have achieved a dramatic turnaround.” Gallus and Cerialis had been sent to subdue Germany with nine legions. It was probably the largest task force ever sent out by Rome so success was a foregone conclusion, but as a loyal citizen I knew when to look impressed. “I’m giving Cerialis the governorship of Britain as a reward.” Some reward! Cerialis had served in Britain during the Boudiccan Revolt, so he would know what dismal privilege he had just won.

  A lucky fluke reminded me that the esteemed Petilius Cerialis was related to Vespasian. I swallowed a witty rejoinder and asked meekly, “Caesar, if you can spare Cerialis for higher duties, the frontier must be under control?”

  “Some unfinished items—I’ll come to those.” Whatever was said in public, the whole region must still be highly sensitive. Not the time for a quiet cruise downstream on a wineship. “Petilius Cerialis held a meeting with Civilis—”

  “I heard about that!” Dramatic stuff: the two opposing commanders had confronted each other in the
middle of a river, both bawling across the void from the ends of a severed bridge. It sounded like some incident from the mists of Rome’s heroic history that schoolboys learn about.

  “Civilis has fallen unnaturally quiet since then…” Speaking of the rebel chief, Vespasian paused, in a way that ought to have worried me. “We were hoping he would settle down peacefully in the Batavian homeland, but he’s missing.” That did arouse my interest; I read in it a bad prophecy for me. “Rumour says he may have travelled south. On that subject, I’d like to say to you—”

  Whatever he had intended to tell me—or warn me—about the rebel Civilis never happened, because just then a curtain swung open and the official who must be the one he had called Canidius arrived.

  VIII

  When he shambled in, the sharp lads in glittering white uniforms who waited on the Emperor all stepped back and glared at him bitterly.

  He was a real papyrus beetle. Even before he opened his mouth, I guessed he must be one of those odd cases who hang around secretariats doing jobs no one else will. No well-kept palace would tolerate him unless his contribution was unique. He wore a dingy damson tunic, shoes with one lace tied up crookedly, and a belt so poorly tanned it looked as if the cow it came from was still alive. His hair was lank, and his skin had a grey pallor that might have washed off when he was younger, but was now ingrained. Even if he did not actually smell, he looked musty.

  “Didius Falco, this is Canidius,” Vespasian himself introduced us in his brisk way. “Canidius keeps the legionary archive.”

  I was right then. Canidius was a clerk with unpromising prospects who had found an offbeat job he could invent for himself. I grunted noncommittally.

  Vespasian shot me a suspicious glance. “Your next assignment, Falco, is as my personal emissary to the Fourteenth Gemina in Germany.” This time I saved myself the hypocrisy of politeness and openly grimaced. The Emperor ignored it. “I hear the Fourteenth are in a truculent mood. Brief us, Canidius.”

  The eccentric-looking clerk recited nervously, without notes. “The legio Fourteenth Gemina were an Augustan creation, originally raised at Moguntiacum on the River Rhenus.” He had a thin whine of a voice that tired a listener rapidly. “They were among the four legions chosen by the Divine Claudius for the invasion of Britain, acquitting themselves bravely at the Battle of the Medway, much assisted by their native auxiliaries, who were Batavians.” North Europeans from the Rhenus delta, Batavians are rowers, swimmers, and river pilots to a man. All Roman legions are supported by such units of foreigners, in particular native cavalry.