Marilyn Todd - Black Salamander

In short, Claudia thought, their guards are down.

The hide across the porch had been drawn back, the oak door flung open to reveal the reason for the incredible height of the roundhouse. A central circular hearth, piled high with fragrant fir ash, smouldered gently to smoke a multitude of hams, tongues and sausages strung from a crossbeam. Under the eaves of this single-roomed, windowless building, a ewe with long arching horns and two lambs dozed happily, as though gatherings on this scale happened every day, while two doves strutted and cooed on the thatch.

‘I don’t believe it!’ The bubbly blonde giggled, head to head with the slipper-maker’s wife. ‘She said that?’

Gossip. A sure sign everything’s on track.

Whistling under his breath, the tubby priest set up an altar to the Lares, pouring them a libation of spring water and beer in thanks for their protection of the travellers, and just to make sure they got the message, Clemens scattered meadow rue and scabious, honesty and orchids across the altar stone.

Iliona was belting out a bright little number, her ankle bracelets and bangles a jaunty backing group, as she followed the path through the birches, watched by Titus whose smile, for once, didn’t seem ambiguous, just proud.

‘Talk about opposites.’ Somewhere along the line Orbilio had sidled up.

‘Titus and Iliona? Nonsense.’ They complement one another wonderfully, each finding in the other a matchless counterpart. ‘It works,’ Claudia told him (men! Fancy needing to have this explained to them!), ‘because she is of the sea and he the land. She is light and bright and sunny, a product of broad skies and barren hills, of rolling endless seas, whereas Titus hails from dark, wooded landscapes, which are reflected in his repressed and cautious attitudes.’

‘In fact, a perfect merchant in the making.’

‘A perfect partnership.’ Claudia corrected him, waving a cautionary finger. ‘I’ll bet you a quernstone to a quadran that if purchasers are not swayed by Titus’s logic, Iliona’s charms tip the balance.’

‘But Titus is so moral.’ Orbilio laughed. ‘Is any man more prudent, more provident that he?’

Claudia found herself laughing, too. ‘Exactly my point, Hotshot. He may be provident, but our Cretan lovely will look to Provid ence for taking care of the future. I defy you to tell me there’s a more potent combination?’

‘I shall,’ he said, tapping the tip of his forefinger on the tip of her nose, ‘hold you to that on our wedding day. But in the meantime, I have an Empire to save. Do excuse me.’

Claudia laughed, watching him lope off along the track in the direction of the village. Sometimes, Marcus Cornelius, sometimes I can almost believe that I like you.

Volso was huddled over his charts, muttering about suns in this, moons in that, cusps all over the place, trying to determine whether the calculations were on target for when the Dog Star starts to rise. Apparently this made a difference, if only Claudia suspected, to his income.

‘Drusilla? Where are you, poppet?’ Overcome with the joys of freedom, neither of them had come ‘home’ to the roundhouse, and the last time she had seen the cat, it had been with a thin, hairless tail hanging out the side of her mouth. Well, catching them is one thing. Leaving mangled mice on a girl’s bedding is another. ‘Drusilla?’

‘Hrrrrow.’

Good grief, what was she doing on the roof? Then Claudia noticed the cat, cross-eyed to start with, was experiencing considerable problems in deciding which of the two doves to chase. Both eyes seemed fixed on both birds.

Laughing, as she craned her neck to watch the antics on the thatch, her heel caught and suddenly Claudia was tumbling backwards over someone else’s belongings. Whoops! The heap of armour went sprawling, but no one seemed to notice, and certainly Theo wasn’t around to apologize to. In fact, she thought she’d seen him take his towel towards the spring just a few minutes previously.

What a mess! With downturned mouth, she leaned down to re-stack the heap-and then it happened.

Memories leapt in.

Her father, his features after so many years reduced to a haze, she suddenly caught the smell of him, warm and nutmeggy, and felt the bristles of his beard against her cheek. She swallowed at the unexpectedness, tried to fight this fierce tidal wave of emotion. He, too, had been attached to the army, a lowly orderly admittedly, but she’d learned so much about military campaigns from him and now absurd, inconsequential items skipped along the tunnel of her memory. His mimicking of the trumpeter who’d sound the call ‘Strike Camp!’ The way he showed her how to route march, the pair of them left-righting down the stinking slumland alleys, one little soldier in the shadow of the real one, dwarfed by crumbling tenements which stank of raw sewage and boiled turnips and which relied for their water on one erratic standpipe or a surly water carrier. A lump rose in her throat. So many times she’d seen Theo in full uniform, why now? Why did it all flood back at this moment? Eyes misted, hot and salty, as she ran a loving hand over the gleaming helmet, the iron-shod boots, the heavy cloak Theo used for a pillow, the yellow deerskin pouch he kept under it…

Her father, his mannerisms, even the stinking slums vanished like a pricked bubble. Gone. Fast. Without trace. And try as she might, by screwing up her fists and eyes, Claudia could not re-capture those golden, precious, carefree moments. The uniform, the weaponry, the armour had become inanimate again. Objects. Detached. Without soul, without life, without meaning. Just objects. Mother of Mars, she hated them for that, but more, she hated the little yellow eye which peeked out from the red woollen cloak, because it had taken her father away from her.

Claudia kicked back the corner she’d disturbed and spun away.

In Rome, military dispatches were flooding in, the message in each one identical in flavour, if not in actual content. Dissidents were wreaking havoc with their guerrilla raids along the border. East of Trier, a stable block had been burned to the ground, the horses perishing inside. Fires had been lit under two separate garrison gates, and attempts had been made to burn crossings on the Rhine, Danube and Moselle. Sentries were being picked off with splendid regularity, supply wagons ran the gauntlet of ambush and in some cases the rivers which supplied the troops were poisoned upstream, overloading the military hospitals.

‘Bloody backshooters,’ a retired legate cried. ‘Why don’t they fight like men, the bloody cowards!’

But outraged as he was, he understood the tactics and, worse, could see they were successful. Random strikes, fast and unpredictable, meant no soldier dare let up his vigil, the Roman army was becoming tired and dispirited. They could not be everywhere at once. They could not see their enemy. They did not know who he was.

Civilian suppliers grew fearful of their safety. Patrols were increased, spreading troops ever thinner. Legions were divided first into cohorts, then cohorts into centuries. Intelligence netted next to nothing. Petty chieftains were marched in for questioning, which only undermined the diplomatic efforts so assiduously laid earlier, with the unhappy result that the tribes, far from assisting their Roman administrators, now prevaricated, content to watch the outcome from the sidelines. They, too, were not sure who was orchestrating the raids, but in them they saw the glimmer of regaining a long-lost independence.

The chiefs would not be rushed.

The situation worsened.

*

In Vesontio, proud and splendid, protected as she was by the great loop in the River Doubs and sheltered by the mountain soaring upwards at her back, street sweepers brushed away the debris of yesterday’s celebrations and agreed they’d never seen so much litter in their lives. Eggshells, pie crusts, melon pips and carrot tops were pushed into barrows, along with broken combs, false teeth, pottery shards and lost toys, while an army of slaves with buckets and shovels scooped up what the gentry quaintly called mule apples. Dogs had already disposed of the meat bones.