"Yes. I wish to know all about the man who is…," Gertrude seemed to have trouble finding the right words while Alain waited to translate. “I must know all about my enemies.”
"You have not treated me like an enemy, thus far." Lucius smiled.
She smiled back. "I always repay my debts. You saved me from those small-pricked Roman boys. I am grateful to you for that.”
Lucius laughed out loud at that, and this brought a larger smile to Gertrude’s face, but soon her face drew solemn again, and she prompted him to answer her. Lucius closed his eyes, allowing those painful and long buried memories of the past to come back to the forefront of his thoughts. Through the last few weeks, the repeated attempts on his life, and the revelation that Valens was behind it all, he had wanted desperately to tell someone, anyone, all that was brewing inside him. But he had kept silent, unsure if there was anyone he could trust. Now, sitting in front of this Nervii woman, his enemy, but in some ways, the least threatening soul he had encountered since marching into Gaul all those years ago, when he left his old life in Spain behind and never looked back.
Now, he looked into her eyes, and she knew that all that he was about to tell her, was the truth.
“I come from Gades. It’s a small town in southern Spain. But my father was not from there originally. He came from Campania, in southern Italy. My father was an old army veteran. He served in a Marian legion during the civil war, and later in Spain under Sertorius.” He smiled at her puzzled expression. “Have you heard of any of these people?”
She shook her head.
He smiled. “It doesn’t matter. I suppose, it doesn’t. Well, eventually, when Spain came back into the Roman fold, my father was discharged and settled down on a small plot of land given to him by the state. He married a local Iberian girl, and when he wasn’t farming, worked as a cutler. As with many of the discharged veterans, he had to play the game for any work to come his way, so he became the client of a local magistrate – a man who had once served under Sertorius as a legate – a man by the name of Marcus Valens.”
“Senator Valens?” she asked.
He nodded. “The same. He was not a senator then, but he was on the rise. His family was a prominent one in Spain, if not in Rome, and he was making his way up the cursus honorum. He was my father’s patron, and every morning my father duly paid him a visit for the daily salutato. My father was a good client. Seldom, if ever, did he turn down a request made of him. He was well-respected in the community and his own popularity among the local veterans increased Valens’s clientele by ten-fold. Valens, on the other hand, was not a good patron. He demanded much, and gave little in return. My father worked hard for him, but he and my mother soon had children, and more mouths meant not enough food. Even with the small farm and his long days of work, we did not have enough – at least, not after the patron took his share. Then one day, my father ran into a freed slave he had once known in the army. This man had once worked in the mines in the north and had come to Gades looking to resurrect a forgotten Carthaginian silver mine. It was only a few miles outside of town, but it was in a difficult spot and none of the locals knew of its existence. It had been abandoned for generations. The land had been in the hands of a Roman family that had never even seen it. It was abandoned and not being worked. The slave had corresponded with the Roman family to get permission to buy the land, but even without knowing about the old silver mine, they set the price too high for his purse. As an old comrade of the wars, he came to my father seeking help. Of course, my father could not afford to buy the land, either. But my father was an enterprising man. He pooled together a group of veterans, and they all pitched in to buy the land together. He did all of this without telling Valens, and that is not the expected etiquette due to a patron. The patron is supposed to know all. But who could blame my father? Had he told him, that greedy bastard would have likely bought the land himself and cut my father and all the others out entirely.” Lucius sighed and took a sip of the ale. “Well, the mine was successful, and I’m not ashamed to say largely due to my father’s management of the whole thing. But he never once shirked his duties to Valens. My father simply worked from the dark hours of the morning until midnight, seldom getting much sleep. The others recognized my father’s talents and awarded him a controlling share of the mine. He went from struggling cutler to mine owner in the matter of a few months. It was quite a change, and the change had the added burden on him. It has been many years now, and my father’s image begins to fade in my memory, but I do still have the impression of a trudging, exhausted shadow that entered our small house each night and was gone before I woke up in the morning.”
“Valens found out about the mine.”
“Of course. There was no way to keep it a secret. My father had to sell his ore on the market, and the Valenii controlled most of the shipping in the area. A conflict was inevitable. My father and his friends knew this. They got the idea to form a sort of mining guild, offering protection to each other, and presenting Valens with a rock-bottom prices. There was enough to go around. Much to my father’s surprise, Valens took him up on the offer. Silver started to flow out, and money started to come in, for everybody, and my father’s station among the local community started to rise. I believe that is the real reason Valens hated him, not because he had started the mining operation behind his back. Eventually, my father developed a clientele of his own. Some of them came from Valens, and this did not sit well with my father’s former patron.
“To better manage operations, my father moved our family into a respectable villa closer to the mine. I remember wearing newly spun fabric for the first time. And my father bought my sister and me a pony, which we kept in a small stable on the property and the two of us got up early each morning to go out and feed her and watch her clop about. It was the first time I remember being truly comfortable – truly happy.”
“My father’s popularity grew with his wealth. The success of the mine meant a flood of money into the local economy, and soon everyone saw prosperity. People began trying to persuade my father to run for local office. This put him squarely at odds with the Valenii, but you would not know it. Marcus Valens and his brother would often stop by the house, smiling and bringing gifts, talking of how admirably my father ran the mine, and commenting on what a fine, strong young man I was growing into – I still wore the purple stripe at the time. They would kiss my mother, smile at my sister, and leave us all charmed and feeling loved. But my father’s face always turned grim when they left. He did not trust them, especially Marcus. I think, during the years as his client, my father had learned just the type of men the Valenii were.”
“So, Marcus Valens killed your father?”
“No. Not directly. He was too clever for that. My father was too popular. Had Valens killed my father outright, his reputation never would have recovered. Reputation is everything among my people. You can hire all the cut-throat assassins you like to kill your enemy in his bedchamber while he sleeps, but stab him yourself in broad daylight, and you’re considered a rogue and a villain.”
“What happened then?” she asked curiously.
“While my father and his colleagues ran the mine, most of the manual labor was done by slaves – mostly Illyrians and Nubians. My father had purchased hundreds of them with the profits of the first shipments of ore. They were hard men, and had been bought cheaply. Some had been born into slavery, but some were merely criminals, spared from the galleys or the cross. Conditions were terrible in the mine, but then I have never seen a mine that wasn’t so. That is a slave’s lot in life, isn’t it? To do the dirty work for their masters? Much like being in the legions. Anyway, like all groups of slaves, they had a rebellious element – a few ring leaders that daily whispered poison into the ears of the others. There was one slave, especially, that was the chief ring-leader, a sinister looking bald fellow with half of an ear missing. The bastard would always glare at me whenever I came to the mine, as though he would choke me with his chains were I to stray too close to him. I’ll never forget that face.”