The Iron Hand of Mars Read online

  “We can’t go in here!”

  “If anyone issues a challenge, keep your pearly teeth clamped together and let me talk. As a general rule, while we’re inside the fort don’t argue with anybody wearing a sword. And, Xanthus, do try not to look so much like a lost understudy from one of Nero’s theatricals…”

  Three sides of the square were taken up by storerooms and the quartermaster’s offices. Opposite, stood the basilican hall, which provided a focus for the formalities of both legions. It was where we were going, so I set off straight across the parade-ground. By halfway, even I felt slightly exposed. It seemed to take us half an hour to reach the other side and I could sense enraged centurions breathing fire from all the overlooking offices. I realised how the lobster feels when the water in the cooking pot slowly starts heating up.

  The Principia was enormous. It stretched the full width of the complex. Decoration was minimal; it achieved its effect through size. The central nave was forty feet wide, separated by gigantic columns from sombre aisles each half its width again. The columns supported an almighty roof whose weight it was best not to contemplate while standing underneath. On a rainy day a whole legion could be crushed in there like anchovy bones in fish pickle. The rest of the time this formidable hall stood empty and silent, guarding secrets and forming a bold tribute to the skill of the army’s engineers.

  Through the gloom we could see the commander’s tribunal at one end. The main feature, directly opposite the entrance, was the legionary shrine.

  I walked across. My boots rang on the paving. There was a lurking scent of ceremonial oil, recent not rancid. Behind a border of stone screens lay a fireproof vaulted chamber; it guarded that other religious sanctum, the underground strongbox room. Up here, in the unlocked part, they kept the portable altar for taking auguries. Around it the standards were spikily arranged.

  The XIV had grabbed the most prominent position for their display, their companion legion obligingly tucking itself up on one side. In the place of honour gleamed the XIV’s eagle and a portrait of the Emperor wreathed in purple cloth. By the dim light from remote clerestory windows high in the main hall, I could see on the centuries’ standards more medals for acts of valour than I had ever seen assembled together. Predominantly honours from the Emperors Claudius and Nero, they must have been awarded for outstanding service in Britain. Naturally they also had bronze statues of their titular patrons, Mars and Victory. The other legion’s standards were by contrast unadorned.

  We had not come to make obeisance. I winked at the eagle who was guarding the naked set of standards. Then I wheeled Xanthus into the nearby offices. The secretariat occupied the most significant place, alongside the shrine. Since no one else wants to bother with accommodation problems, the clerks always control the fortress plan. They naturally allocate the most desirable roost to themselves.

  A bald will clerk nodded us towards the lavish suite which the XIV had commandeered. Things were peaceful. That could mean either the legion were a dozy, inefficient outfit, or that the day’s business had already been stamped up and cleared away. Perhaps their legate was taking a siesta at his own house, and the camp prefect had a cold. Perhaps the tribunes had all snatched a day’s hunting leave. I reserved judgement. So long as they were keeping full granaries, a careful weapons count and an up-to-date log of what went into the savings bank, Vespasian was not a man who would quibble at the XIV maintaining an unrushed commissariat. His interest was in results.

  In the biggest room, we found two of the legion’s senior men.

  One, who was a non-combatant, wore a red tunic but no body armour. On a nail hung his helmet, adorned with the two horns that gave him his title of Cornicularius: head of the commissariat. In my opinion, the little horns are the legions’ joke to make their chief clerks look ridiculous. His companion was a different species. A centurion in full kit, including a complete set of nine phalerae, the chest medallions awarded for dedicated service. He was over sixty, and his air of ingrained contempt told me this was the Primipilus, the First Spear, leading centurion. This sought-after rank is held for three years, after which lies a gratuity equivalent to middle-class status, and a passport into plum civilian jobs. Some, and I guessed this was one of them, opt to repeat their first spear posting, thereby making themselves public menaces in the way they know best. Dying in harness in some godforsaken province is a first spear’s idea of a good life.

  This primipilus had a short, thick neck and looked as if his party trick was killing flies with a head-butt. He had broad shoulders and his torso hardly narrowed on the way to his belt, but none of what went on below the chest was paunch. His feet were small. He hardly moved while he was talking to us, but I guessed he would be nippy when he wanted to exert himself. I didn’t like him. That was irrelevant. He didn’t care for me, either; that was what would count.

  The cornicularius was much less impressive physically. He had a turned-up nose and a small, bitter mouth. What he lacked in presence he made up in personal venom and his ability to express himself.

  When we entered, these two were tearing shreds off a soldier who had committed some misdemeanour, like asking an innocent question. They were enjoying themselves, and were ready to humiliate their victim all afternoon unless someone who disgusted them even more turned up. Someone did: Xanthus and I.

  They told the soldier to sheath himself in his own scabbard, or words to that effect. He slunk out past us gratefully.

  The primipilus and cornicularius looked at us, glanced at each other, then stared back at us derisively while they waited for the fun to start.

  “I don’t believe this!” the primipilus marvelled.

  “Who let this rabble in? Someone must have bopped the gate security on their heads!”

  “Those slack bastards in the First!”

  “Good afternoon,” I ventured from the doorway.

  “Shove off, curly!” snarled the primipilus. “And take your garland girl.”

  In my business insults are the normal convention, so I rode out the squall. I could feel Xanthus throbbing indignantly, but if he expected me to defend him in this company he could think again. I moved further in, and dumped the basket containing the Emperor’s gift. “Name’s Didius Falco.” It seemed wise to be formal. I flipped my imperial passport at the cornicularius, who lifted it between one finger and thumb as if it had been found in a sewer. He let a sneer play around his tight little mouth, then shoved my tag across his table for the primipilus to laugh at too.

  “And what do you do, Falco?” asked the mouth. It squeezed out his words like stuffing from a badly sewn mattress case.

  “I deliver awkward packages.”

  “Hah!” commented the primipilus.

  “So what’s in the picnic basket?” jeered his more talkative pal.

  “Five bread rolls, a sheep’s-gut sausage—and a new standard to mark the Emperor’s personal favour to the Fourteenth. Want to take a look?”

  The primipilus was the man of action around here, so while the cornicularius attended to a snag in his manicure with the stump-end of a stylus, he forced himself to approach as I unbuckled the basket straps. The Iron Hand weighed as much as a chunk of aqueduct supply pipe, but he lifted it by its thumb as lightly as an amulet.

  “Oh very nice!” No one could fault the words. Only the tone was treasonous.

  I kept my own voice level. “I am to deliver Vespasian’s gift to your legate in person. I also have a sealed despatch for him, which I believe contains the programme for a suitable investiture ceremony. Any chance of a word with Florius Gracilis at once?”

  “No,” said the cornicularius.

  “I can wait.”

  “You can measure yourself for a funeral urn and pour yourself into it.”

  I remarked to Xanthus pleasantly, “This is the Fourteenth legion’s famous helpfulness and charm.”

  “Who’s the flower with the disgusting reek?” demanded the primipilus suddenly.

  I gave both sections of
the military a narrow look. “Special envoy from Titus Caesar.” I drew one finger across my neck in the time-honoured gesture. “I haven’t worked out yet whether he’s a well-disguised assassin looking for someone to dispose of, or just an auditor with a fancy dress sense. Now we’ve got here we should soon know. Either there’ll be a body count, or you’ll find him peering at your daily accounts…”

  Xanthus was so startled that for once he kept his trap shut.

  The two wits consulted each other wearily. “As we thought!” sighed the cornicularius. “Things must be rough in Rome. Now they’re sending us rejects from musical parties and bogus scum like this—”

  “Steady on!” I grinned, attempting to go along with them. “Whatever I am, it’s genuine! Let’s get back to the point. If Gracilis is too busy now, make me an appointment when his schedule has more space.”

  Sometimes ingratiation works. Not here. “Genuine scum!” commented the primipilus to his crony. “Disappear up your own arse, curly!”

  “Leave my orifices out of the orders of the day! Listen, centurion. I’ve just lugged an Iron Hand halfway across Europe and I’m intending to deliver it. I know the Fourteenth are a blasphemous, uncultured mob, but if your legate wants his consulship he’s not going to let a drill-swank and an ink-swab reject an award from the Emperor—”

  “Don’t get clever,” the cornicularius warned. “You can leave the trophy, and you can leave the sealed despatch. Maybe,” he speculated with his most cheerful expression yet, “the despatch says ‘Execute the messenger’…”

  I ignored that. “I’ll happily ground the ironwork, but I’m going to hand the confidential orders to Gracilis himself. Do I get quarters at the fort? Your accommodation must be flush now you’re light of the loyal Batavians!”

  “If that’s a jibe at the Fourteenth’s expense,” the primipilus snorted, “make the most of it; you won’t manage another!”

  I said I wouldn’t dream of insulting the victors of Bedriacum, and that I’d find my own roost.

  As I shoved him down the corridor outside, Xanthus whined, “What’s Bedriacum?”

  “A battle where the Fourteenth escaped being called losers by the simple trick of claiming they had never arrived for the fight.”

  “I thought it would be something like that. You’ve upset them, Falco!”

  “Suits me.”

  “And they know you are working for the Emperor—”

  “No, Xanthus; they think you are!”

  “What’s the point of that?”

  “They appreciate they have a tricky record. They know the Emperor will send someone to look them over, but they reckon I’m the dregs. So long as I behave stupidly, they’ll never believe I’m the spy.”

  Fortunately, Xanthus didn’t ask why I was so anxious to identify someone else as the Emperor’s agent.

  Or what I thought the XIV Gemina might try and do to whoever they thought it was.

  * * *

  As we reached the exit, two tribunes came from another office, arguing in a gentlemanly way.

  “Macrinus, I don’t want to be a nuisance, but—”

  “He’s incommunicado; planning one of his forays against imagined troublemakers. Remind me tomorrow and I’ll get you in to see him when he has some breathing-space.”

  At first I listened because I guessed they were referring to the legate Gracilis. The young man speaking was the assured and stocky type that had never impressed me, with an athletic build, square head, and a burnished tint to his tight curls. The one who seemed to be protesting struck me as familiar.

  He must have been twenty, but looked younger. An ordinary, boyish face. A tall, slim frame. A quiet manner but a ready smile from a wide mouth.

  “Camillus Justinus!” At my cry of recognition for his companion, the first tribune reacted deftly. Coming from a senatorial family, he had had a good education: he knew Latin, Greek, mathematics, and geography, how much to tip a prostitute, where the best oysters come from—and the old forum art of escaping from someone he wanted to avoid. “Sorry, Justinus. Were you in conference?”

  Helena’s brother growled after the gleamingly armoured and fast-retreating back. “Never mind. He wasn’t going to oblige me. It’s Falco, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Marcus Didius. I heard you were posted—not to the Fourteenth I hope?”

  “Oh, I don’t meet their high standards! No, I was persuaded to ‘volunteer’ for an extra tour with the First Adiutrix—they’re a new outfit.”

  “Glad to hear it. The Fourteenth are an impolite mob. I just brought them a trophy and they refused me a billet,” I hinted without shame.

  Justinus laughed. “Then you’d better stay at my house! Come on. After trying to wrestle sense out of this crew I need to go home and lie down in the dark.” We started to walk. “What are you doing here, Marcus Didius?”

  “Oh, nothing very exciting. Business for Vespasian. Mostly routine. One or two extra tasks to toy with in my free time—coercing rebels, that sort of stuff,” I joked. “There’s a missing legate to find, for instance.”

  Justinus stopped in his tracks. He seemed amazed.

  I pulled up, too. “What’s up, tribune?”

  “Does the Emperor have access to new kinds of Etruscan augury?”

  “Something not right?”

  “You flabbergast me, Falco! That was what I was trying to get straight with my oppo just now. I don’t see,” he grumbled, “how Vespasian could have known there was something fishy out in Germany in time for you to turn up here before my commander has even made up his mind that he needs to signal Rome!”

  As he ran out of breath, I simply said, “Explain?”

  Camillus Justinus glanced over his shoulder then lowered his voice, even though we were crossing the empty parade-ground. “Florius Gracilis has not been seen for several days. The Fourteenth won’t admit it even to my own chief, but we in the First reckon that their legate has disappeared!”

  XVIII

  I set a warning hand on the tribune’s arm. Then I told Xanthus to walk ahead and wait for us at the main gate opposite. He sulked, but had no choice. We watched him set off, scuffing his feet in the dust at first as a gesture, but soon preferring to save the turquoise leather of his nattily bethonged shoes.

  “Who exactly is that?” queried Justinus in a wary tone.

  “Not sure.” I gave him a stiff look, in case he thought it was a companion of my choice. “If you want a boring couple of hours, get him to tell you why Spanish razors are the best, and the secrets of German goosefat pomade. He’s a barber by trade—that’s genuine. He forced himself on me as a tourist. I suspect there’s a more sinister reason behind his trip.”

  “He may simply have a yearning for travel.” I remembered that Helena’s youngest brother had a touching faith in humanity.

  “Or he may not! Anyway, I’m passing him off as Vespasian’s nark.” Justinus, who must have known about my own undercover duties, or my past history anyway, smiled faintly.

  As we waited for Xanthus to trot out of earshot, a slight breeze lifted our cloaks. It carried the characteristic aromas of cavalry stables, oiled leather, and mass-produced stewed pork. Dust bowled across the parade-ground, stinging our bare shins. The hum of the fort reached us, like the low undernotes of a water-organ as it grinds into life: metallic hammering; rumbling carts; the clack of wooden staves as troops practised sparring against an upright stump; and the sharp cry of a centurion giving orders, raven-harsh.

  “We won’t find anywhere more private than here. Now Justinus, what’s all this about? Tell me about Gracilis.”

  “Not much to tell. He hasn’t been seen.”

  “Is he ill, or taking leave?”

  “If so, it’s highly impolite of him not to inform his senior colleague in the same fort.”

  “Bad manners would be nothing new!”

  “Agreed. What alerted the First to something peculiar was that even his wife, who is with him here, seems unsure where he is. She asked
my legate’s wife if there was a secret exercise going on.”

  “Is there?”

  “Joke, Falco! We have quite enough operational tasks without playing board games or throwing up practice camps.”

  I paused for a moment, considering him. He had spoken with a flash of authority. Last time we met he had been holding down a junior tribune’s place, but now he was wearing the broad purple stripes of a senior—his legate’s right-hand man. Those posts were mainly earmarked for senators designate; promotion to them while in service was highly unusual. Justinus qualified socially—he was a senator’s son—but his elder brother was using up all the embalming oil. The family had long ago decided this one was destined merely for middle-rank bureaucracy. Still, he would not be the first young man to discover that the army lacks preconceptions, or to find that once away from home he could surprise himself.

  “So how are the Fourteenth reacting? What do the men say?”

  “Well, Gracilis is a new appointment.”

  “So I heard. Is he unpopular?”

  “The Fourteenth have been having a few problems…” Justinus was a tactful lad. The Fourteenth were a problem, but he glossed over that. “Gracilis has a rather abrasive attitude. It goes down badly when a legion are in a touchy state.”

  “Gracilis was the Senate’s choice,” I confided, based on what Vespasian had told me. “You know, ‘Step up, most excellent Florius. Your grandpa was a friend of ours; it’s your turn next…’ What’s he like?”

  “All virile sports, and shouts a lot.” We both winced.