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Authors: Douglas Jackson
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Colonia worthy of the Emperor’s name it holds. We have real soldiers, like the tribune here, to keep us safe in our beds. Why should we spend a king’s ransom so that your little army can strut the streets like peacocks?’
Valerius expected the insult to provoke a violent reaction, but it seemed this was an argument so well rehearsed it had lost its power to inflame.
‘Come.’ Falco led him away from the quaestor . ‘I will introduce you to the head of the ordo , our council of one hundred leading citizens.’ When they were out of Petronius’s earshot, he explained. ‘He means why should we have shields that don’t splinter at the first blow and why must we complain when we wear the same rusty swords we carried all the way from the Rhenus to the invasion all those years ago.’
‘Every army has supply problems … even little armies,’ Valerius said. He recognized the older man’s frustration. Shortages were part of life in the legions. A soldier, even a Roman soldier, had to fight for everything he could get.
Falco looked at him sharply, wondering if he was being made fun of.
Valerius smiled. ‘Perhaps while we are here we will lose a few shields and a few spears. My men are sometimes careless.’ There would be no shortages for a unit taking part in the governor’s campaign against Mona, that was certain, and in any case he would be back in Rome before the legion’s quartermaster worked out what had happened.
The militia commander slapped his shoulder. ‘Now I understand why Julius likes you. Come, we will share some wine. You should have been with us on the Tamesa: Catuvellauni warriors seven feet tall who took a dozen cuts and still wouldn’t fall. I have nightmares about them even now …’
Still talking, he led the way into a long, narrow room with a patterned mosaic floor and walls painted with lifelike scenes of an emperor, who must be Claudius, carrying out his imperial duties as fawning courtiers looked on. Two of the paintings immediately caught Valerius’s eye. In the first, the Emperor was depicted sitting high on the back of a gold-clad ceremonial elephant as a dozen splendid barbarian figures bowed before him. He realized this must be the surrender of Britain, which had taken place close to this very spot. The second took up an entire end wall and showed Claudius standing proudly on a hill above a broad river surveying the crossing of his legions and the hazy battle beyond.
‘The Tamesa,’ Falco whispered. ‘Claudius wasn’t even there. Didn’t arrive until the next day. He was a fraud, old Claudius, but we didn’t love him any the less for it.’
Valerius looked around to see if anyone was listening. Criticizing emperors, even long-dead emperors, was not something to be done lightly. But Falco only winked.
‘If he was going to strike me down he’d have done it long ago, lad. I sweated and bled for him and now he’s taking care of me in my old age. But he’s still an old fraud.’
The room had been set for twenty-four people, with couches round the walls and a gilt table in the centre. Valerius found himself between Falco and Petronius, and opposite the Briton, Lucullus, who called for wine to be brought.
One by one he was introduced to the men who ran Colonia; bland mercantile faces his brain refused to accept had once been seasoned soldiers of Rome’s finest legions. A few names stuck in his mind: Corvinus the goldsmith, wide-shouldered, dark-visaged and improbably handsome, who had turned his trade as the Twentieth’s armourer into a more profitable business; Didius, tall and thin and with shifty eyes that fitted all too well with his profession as one of Colonia’s foremost money-lenders; and Bellator, who seemed out of place because his exotic name and relative youth identified him as a freedman, and who now prospered by taking a cut of the rent from the insulae he administered for his former master. All had one thing in common. They were rich. They had to be,
Valerius expected the insult to provoke a violent reaction, but it seemed this was an argument so well rehearsed it had lost its power to inflame.
‘Come.’ Falco led him away from the quaestor . ‘I will introduce you to the head of the ordo , our council of one hundred leading citizens.’ When they were out of Petronius’s earshot, he explained. ‘He means why should we have shields that don’t splinter at the first blow and why must we complain when we wear the same rusty swords we carried all the way from the Rhenus to the invasion all those years ago.’
‘Every army has supply problems … even little armies,’ Valerius said. He recognized the older man’s frustration. Shortages were part of life in the legions. A soldier, even a Roman soldier, had to fight for everything he could get.
Falco looked at him sharply, wondering if he was being made fun of.
Valerius smiled. ‘Perhaps while we are here we will lose a few shields and a few spears. My men are sometimes careless.’ There would be no shortages for a unit taking part in the governor’s campaign against Mona, that was certain, and in any case he would be back in Rome before the legion’s quartermaster worked out what had happened.
The militia commander slapped his shoulder. ‘Now I understand why Julius likes you. Come, we will share some wine. You should have been with us on the Tamesa: Catuvellauni warriors seven feet tall who took a dozen cuts and still wouldn’t fall. I have nightmares about them even now …’
Still talking, he led the way into a long, narrow room with a patterned mosaic floor and walls painted with lifelike scenes of an emperor, who must be Claudius, carrying out his imperial duties as fawning courtiers looked on. Two of the paintings immediately caught Valerius’s eye. In the first, the Emperor was depicted sitting high on the back of a gold-clad ceremonial elephant as a dozen splendid barbarian figures bowed before him. He realized this must be the surrender of Britain, which had taken place close to this very spot. The second took up an entire end wall and showed Claudius standing proudly on a hill above a broad river surveying the crossing of his legions and the hazy battle beyond.
‘The Tamesa,’ Falco whispered. ‘Claudius wasn’t even there. Didn’t arrive until the next day. He was a fraud, old Claudius, but we didn’t love him any the less for it.’
Valerius looked around to see if anyone was listening. Criticizing emperors, even long-dead emperors, was not something to be done lightly. But Falco only winked.
‘If he was going to strike me down he’d have done it long ago, lad. I sweated and bled for him and now he’s taking care of me in my old age. But he’s still an old fraud.’
The room had been set for twenty-four people, with couches round the walls and a gilt table in the centre. Valerius found himself between Falco and Petronius, and opposite the Briton, Lucullus, who called for wine to be brought.
One by one he was introduced to the men who ran Colonia; bland mercantile faces his brain refused to accept had once been seasoned soldiers of Rome’s finest legions. A few names stuck in his mind: Corvinus the goldsmith, wide-shouldered, dark-visaged and improbably handsome, who had turned his trade as the Twentieth’s armourer into a more profitable business; Didius, tall and thin and with shifty eyes that fitted all too well with his profession as one of Colonia’s foremost money-lenders; and Bellator, who seemed out of place because his exotic name and relative youth identified him as a freedman, and who now prospered by taking a cut of the rent from the insulae he administered for his former master. All had one thing in common. They were rich. They had to be,
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