Адриан Голдсуорти - Brigantia

‘Fetch me back the returns for ala Petriana for the same year,’ he said to the exactus. ‘And of all the Thracian cohortes equitatae for the consulship of Novius Priscus and Commodus.’ The clerk limped away, a happy expression on his face as he carried tablets to re-shelve and went in search of more.

Ferox was close to giving up when he found another mention of Prasto, this time given twenty horsemen from an ala as escort. After a while he found the name again, in the first year of Agricola’s term as legate, when he fought the Ordovices and crossed to Mona. A Prasto was there, guarded by a decurion from a mixed cohort and seventeen troopers.

‘Have you a fresh tablet?’ he asked the clerk. Surprisingly in this building packed with documents, a blank writing tablet took a while to be found, and Ferox was toying with the idea of warming his stylus and melting the wax on the book he was using to make notes. Just then the clerk returned, with a folding page, slightly battered on the edge, but good enough. Ferox wrote a note to Ovidius, explaining what he had found and asking him to search in the reports of Suetonius Paulinus and Agricola for mentions of a Prasto, perhaps a renegade druid. Slipping the exactus the price of another few drinks for carrying this to the old man, Ferox got up. If he did not hurry now he would be late.

It took a while to get anywhere in Londinium, at least in the daytime. In Rome there were more people, ten or even twenty times more, but the main streets were wider and there were more restrictions on where stallholders could set up. Today was a market day, even busier than usual, as some of the harvests had only just come in. The stalls overflowed with vegetables, sacks of grain, and cages with poultry squawking or hares staring round-eyed through the bars. The larger livestock were in pens, and he avoided the streets behind the basilica where they were being auctioned, but the signs of their passage were everywhere, the earth of the alleys and side streets churned up into clinging mud, and great piles of dung even on the main roads. Today, Londinium smelled like a farmyard, and he wondered if that would make Vindex feel more at home. The scout kept complaining about the reek of the town, so Ferox had told him and the others that he would take them all to a bath-house later today. Much to his surprise, they had agreed.

The exactus had told him about a short cut through the courtyard of the basilica, and Ferox found it, for the moment leaving behind the shouts of the market traders and replacing them with the shouts of petitioners and the grander merchants, yelling at each other. He had never fully understood how commerce functioned, but it clearly required a lot of shouting regardless of the scale. Up on his tribunal, under a canopy in case the weather turned poor, he saw a stone-faced Neratius Marcellus, sitting on his chair of office, listening to a tall, lanky man making a speech. No doubt he was asking for some favour or other, and had dressed up in a toga for the occasion, although he was clearly unfamiliar with the garment because twice it slipped off his left arm.

Ferox went through an arch into one of the halls, then out towards the main entrance. In the shadows by the gate he saw the short red hair of Arviragus, talking to a tubby figure in a dark tunic and Greek cloak. As he passed he recognised Vegetus, the freedman whose cart had been attacked by Rufus and the others what seemed like an age ago in another land. A big slave cleared a path through the crowd, and he glimpsed the stocky figure of the procurator joining the two men.

The house was on one of the hills, some way back from the river. There was more space up here, where the air was a little clearer, and the houses were big and surrounded by substantial, well, groomed gardens, some containing big trees whose leaves were just beginning to turn brown. Ferox was trying to get more sense of the layout of the town, so took a route he had not used before and soon got lost. Streets that appeared straight never quite seemed to lead where he expected, and so many of the buildings looked alike. There was less noise here, and the roads less muddied by wheels and hoofs, but the belief that if he kept climbing he was going in the wrong direction soon proved false when he reached the top of the wrong hill, occupied by a few workshops and some larger fields and open spaces. He gave up and asked the way, and ten minutes later was in the right place.

A slave he did not know answered his knocking, but as he was led into the house he saw a maid he knew, and as he was led through into an inner garden heard the familiar raised voices of the children at play. When excited, young Brocchus had a shriek as shrill as any girl’s, while Cerialis’ oldest son was given to loud howls of uncontrollable laughter. They were playing catch, dropping more than they took, the younger ones bustling around their feet, and they all sent up a delighted cry when they saw Ferox, and then threw the ball at him. He caught it, pretended that the force sent him staggering back and spun around before finally slumping to the ground. In a moment the children were battling each other to climb all over him. His bruises and broken ribs complained, but Ferox did not really mind.

‘You are a bad influence, Flavius Ferox,’ Sulpicia Lepidina said.

‘Atrocious,’ Claudia Severa agreed, looking up a moment from her knitting. The two friends sat in high-backed chairs. In front of them, Marcus rolled and gurgled to himself on a spread blanket.

‘Men are just children at heart,’ Claudia Enica declared. She sat a little apart, under a parasol held by a slave, even though that side of the garden was shaded by the buildings. She was carding wool, working with two boards, but not putting in enough effort to achieve very much. Once again she was in silk, this time coloured sea green, and matching stockings showed through the patterned tops of her shoes.

‘Of course they are, my dear,’ Sulpicia Lepidina explained, ‘that is why we let them have their politics and their wars to keep them amused, while we get on with the important things in life.’

Enica struggled to free the carding combs, which had become stuck fast. ‘That does not sound very fair,’ she said, pressing her teeth against her lower lip as she tried to pull them apart.

‘It isn’t, dear.’ The other Claudia spoke in a stage whisper. ‘So we have to be careful not to let them know.’

The red-headed Brigantian chattered away, frowning as she battled with the wooden combs. Ferox did not really listen, for it was talk of clothes and colours and jewellery, subjects on which he had few opinions. Apart from that, the children were trying to roll him across the grass, and he pretended to resist, while helping them in their task. While they drew back and gathered their forces, he undid the clasp on his belt so that in the next roll it came free and he left it and his weapons behind. Much to his surprise, it was obvious that the friendship between the three women was genuine, however unlikely. Sulpicia Lepidina had a sharp, incisive mind, and if Claudia Severa was not the brightest, she was nobody’s fool, and yet they chuckled and smiled at the rapid flow of trivial conversation pouring from their companion.

‘Away from the water!’ Claudia Severa barked the command as forcefully as any centurion, and Ferox realised that he was getting close to the edge of a sunken pond. ‘You have all got soaked once already today, and that is quite enough. Leave our guest alone.’

‘Yes, the poor fellow was attacked by a lion yesterday,’ Sulpicia Lepidina said. ‘We don’t want you finishing him off! Now help him up.’

Ferox wondered how she had heard about that, and guessed that Crispinus had called. The children took his arms and he started to sit up and then roared like a lion and pulled them down onto him again amid plenty of giggling and shrieks of delight.