He’d just finished another harangue when a man he knew came up to him and spoke in a low voice: “Masua got away. We couldn’t nab him, and he’s been seen at Segestes’ steading. We’ll never get him there.”
“Thunderweather!” Arminius said. “So he went and told lies to Varus and made it back, did he? That’s not good.”
“Sorry.” The other German hung his head and spread his hands. “He’s a sneaky bastard - that must be why Segestes chose him to go to the Roman in the first place. He gave our friends the slip some kind of way. We still don’t know how. They thought they were going to catch him and give him what he deserved . . . but they didn’t.”
“Too bad. Oh, too bad!” Arminius said. “Has anyone we know come back from Vetera? Have you heard whether Varus paid any attention to him?”
“No, I haven’t,” his acquaintance answered. “The only way to find out will be how the Romans behave come spring.”
“Yes.” Arminius drew out the word till it sounded uncommonly gloomy. He could picture Varus summoning him to Mindenum. He would have to go if the Roman governor called him. Not going would show mistrust, and would make Varus mistrust him if he didn’t already. But if Varus did already mistrust him . . . chains and the headsman’s axe might be waiting for him when he came to the legionary encampment.
I am a Roman citizen, Arminius thought. If Varus does try to take my head, I can appeal to Augustus, the Romans’ king. That would put off the inevitable. But how likely was Augustus to spare a rebel chieftain’s life? If he was as canny as people said, he would want to nail Arminius’ head to a tree or do whatever the Romans did with their sacrificial victims.
“You keep telling people Varus likes you,” the other German said. “If he does, he wouldn’t have listened to Masua.”
“Yes.” Arminius stretched the word again. “If.” A foreigner’s fondness was liable to decide his fate, and his country’s. A slender twig to have to trust, but the only one he had.
VII
Quinctilius Varus got the feeling that he’d never properly appreciated spring before. That was what came of living his life around the Mediterranean. Winters were mild there, snows uncommon. Winter was the rainy season, the growing season, the season that led toward spring harvest.
Not here. Not on the Rhine. Varus had seen more snow in one winter than in all his previous life. So he told himself, anyhow, though it might not have been strictly true. He was sure he’d never seen more snow, deeper snow, than the drifts that whitened field and forest around Vetera.
And he’d, never seen a greater rebirth than the one that came when the -sun at last swung north and melted all the snow. The bare-branched trees enrobed themselves in greenery. Fresh new grass surged up through the dead, wispy, yellow stuff the snowdrifts had hidden.
Butterflies, flying jewels, flitted from one magically sprouted flower to the next. Bees began to buzz. Flies and gnats and mosquitoes also came back to life, and were rather less welcome.
With the insects came swarms of birds. Sparrows and carrion crows and a few others had stayed through the winter. But now the woods and fields were full of music. Swallows swooped. Thrushes hopped. Swifts darted. Robins sang. Varus appreciated them the more because he’d done without them for so long.
Aristocles was less impressed. “If things weren’t so awful before, they wouldn’t seem so much better now,” the slave said darkly.
“I’d rather look on the bright side of things,” Varus said.
The pedisequus sniffed. “The bright side of things would be going back to Rome. Are we going to do that?” His woebegone expression answered the question without words. Then he used a few more: “No. We’re going into Germany.”
“Don’t remind me,” Quinctilius Varus said. Even with the broad-leafed trees across the Rhine getting new foliage, the German forests looked dark and forbidding. Varus had never seen them look any other way. The bright side of things was hard to find. He did his best: “Maybe this year’s campaigns will bring the province under the yoke once for all.”
“Gods grant it be so!” Aristocles exclaimed. “In that case, you can turn it over to somebody else and go back to Rome after all.”
“Nothing I’d like better.” Varus lowered his voice. “The company of soldiers begins to pall after a while.”
“Bloody bores,” Aristocles muttered, which was just what his master was thinking. The pedisequus went on, “Is there any chance we could send the legions across the river to do what needs doing while we stay here ourselves? Vetera is bad, but I don’t suppose it’s impossible. Not next to Mindenum, anyhow.”
Regretfully, Varus shook his head. “Augustus put me in charge of the three legions here. If I’m going to command them, I have to command them, if you know what I mean. And commanding means being seen to command.”
“You have a strong sense of duty,” Aristocles said. Varus would have liked that better had the slave not contrived to make it sound more like reproach than praise.
However much Varus wished he could, he couldn’t avoid the company of soldiers. Practically everyone in Vetera was a soldier or a retired soldier or someone who sold things to soldiers or someone who slept with soldiers. Some of the legionary officers seemed enthusiastic about the prospects for the coming campaigning season. “One more good push and we’ve got ‘em, I think,” Ceionius said at a supper of roast boar.
“Here’s hoping,” Varus said. By now, he’d got used to drinking neat wine - or he thought he had, anyhow.
“It’s still Germany. They’re still Germans,” Lucius Eggius said. “We’ve been banging heads with them for a long time, like a couple of aurochs in rutting season. How do we pull a miracle out of our helmet now?”
“We have a fine new leader,” Ceionius said. “That’s how.”
“You flatter me,” Varus said, which was bound to be true. Augustus’s courtiers were smoother at it than these provincial bumpkins. To keep from thinking about that, Varus added, “Aurochs are a disappointment.”
“Not if you boil ‘em long enough,” Eggius said. “After a while, the meat will turn tender. You’ve got to be patient, though.”
“That isn’t what I meant,” Varus said. “In the Gallic War, Caesar makes them out to be fearsome monsters. And they aren’t - they’re nothing but wild oxen with long horns.”
“Caesar likes to tell stories,” Eggius said with a shrug. “Sometimes they’re true. Sometimes they just sound good.”
“How do you know which are which?” Varus asked.
“Sometimes you can tell. Sometimes - like with the aurochs - you can really find out. Sometimes . . .” The legionary officer shrugged. “It’s the same way with the stories about Caesar, I guess. He’s - what? - fifty years dead. Who knows which ones are true and which ones are just crap? Any old way, though, they’ll be telling tales about him forever.”
“Yes, I suppose they will,” Quinctilius Varus said in tones more bitter than he would have expected.
Lucius Eggius wasn’t wrong. Julius Caesar’s fame would last as long as men endured. So would Augustus’ - Varus had no doubt of that. But what about my own? he wondered, not for the first time.
If he was the man who brought Germany into the Empire, his name would live. Some historian would write an account of Augustus’ reign, the way Sallust had written about the war against Jugurtha the Numidian and about Catiline’s plot against the Senate or the way Caesar himself wrote about the war against the Gauls. Nobody could talk about Augustus’ reign without talking about the conquest of Germany. And so, to some degree, people would remember that there had been such a man as Publius Quinctilius Varus.