‘Both of your roles in fulfilling them,’ Pallas pointed out, gesturing to his steward to bring wine. ‘I need both of you to go. This is my idea, so my reputation with the Emperor rests upon it. I can’t afford it to fail.’
Vespasian was incensed. ‘So if you hadn’t had a use for Sabinus, you would have left him to his fate?’
‘Dear boy, calm yourself,’ Gaius advised, slumping down onto a couch placed haphazardly just beyond the doors. ‘It doesn’t matter how it was managed or what Pallas’ motives were, the end result is what counts; Sabinus has got a reprieve.’
Sabinus sat down next to him and rested his head in his hands, breathing deeply as the relief flooded through him in a delayed reaction.
‘Yes, but only just. Nar-’
‘“Just” is good enough, Vespasian!’ Sabinus snapped, glaring up at his brother from beneath his eyebrows. ‘I can even take the humiliation of Corvinus being given my command because I know that I have a chance to survive and have my revenge.’
Vespasian collected himself. ‘Yes, I know; but Narcissus seemed to be ahead of us. We didn’t surprise him by bringing you; instead he surprised us by knowing that you were coming.’
‘Oh, but we did surprise him,’ Pallas said, taking two cups of wine from the returning steward and proffering one to Vespasian.
Vespasian took it and downed a good measure. ‘Did we? I saw a man in full control of the situation.’
‘Of course,’ Pallas replied smoothly, taking a sip of wine. ‘That’s because he likes to think that he always is. I purposely told my clerks to let his agent see Sabinus come in here so that he had time to get used to the surprise and regain, in his mind, the upper hand. I know Narcissus very well and I know that if Sabinus had just come through the door of his study unannounced, then, despite how well I’d covered up his part in the assassination, Narcissus would have executed him anyway because he would have felt outmanoeuvred. Narcissus only spared him because he thought that he’d outwitted me; he gave me Sabinus’ life as a sort of consolation prize.’
Vespasian took another gulp of wine as he turned this over in his mind. ‘Why didn’t you tell us that that was what you were doing, instead of just having us sit there not knowing what was going on?’
‘Because, my friend, I needed Narcissus to see the confusion on your faces, otherwise he would have guessed what was happening. If he hadn’t believed that he had genuinely outwitted us, Sabinus would now be dead.’
Vespasian sighed, exasperated by how Claudius’ freedmen played mind-games with one another from behind their neutral expressions. He looked around for a seat and realised how sparsely furnished the room was.
‘Forgive me,’ Pallas said, ‘I have just moved into this suite this morning; it’s still being refurbished to my taste. Please follow me, gentlemen.’
Pallas led them through three high and spacious chambers looking out over the Circus Maximus to the Aventine Hill beyond, shrouded now in a damp mist. Slaves were busy arranging furniture, polishing ornaments and erecting a couple of statues of Greek, rather than Roman, origin. Vespasian could see that Pallas planned to make himself very comfortable. At the far end of the third room Pallas opened a door and ushered them into a study whose walls were lined with boxed, wooden shelving containing hundreds of cylindrical book cases.
‘Please,’ he said, bidding them to be seated, before going to the far right-hand corner and retrieving a case. He slipped out a scroll and spread it on the desk; it was a map.
‘This is Gaul and Germania,’ Pallas said, placing an inkpot on one side and a wax tablet on the other to keep the scroll from rolling up. ‘The two military provinces on the west bank of the Rhenus, Germania Inferior to the north and Germania Superior in the south, provide the buffer from the lost province of Germania Magna on the east bank.’
Vespasian, Sabinus and Gaius peered at it; there was not a great deal of detail to take in.
‘As you can see, the Rhenus is clearly marked, as are the legions’ camps along its western bank.’ Pallas pointed to each one, from north to south, with a well-manicured finger and stopped at one halfway down the river. ‘And this is Argentoratum, where the Second Augusta is stationed.’ He then traced his finger a good way north and east. ‘And this is the site of Varus’ disaster, in the homelands of the Cherusci.’
Vespasian looked more closely; there was no marking beneath Pallas’ finger. ‘How do you know?’
‘I don’t exactly, but from the reports we have from twenty-five years ago when Germanicus and his general Caecina found the decayed bodies of our men strewn through twenty miles of forest, this is our best estimation.’
‘How are we meant to get all the way there?’ Sabinus asked. ‘Walk in with a whole legion and invite the bastards to have a repeat show?’
‘I don’t think that would be altogether sensible,’ Pallas observed with the merest hint of condescension in his voice.
Sabinus bristled but refrained from a riposte.
‘The Eagle is not going to be there any more,’ Vespasian said, suspecting that he was stating the obvious but feeling that it should be said anyway.
Pallas nodded. ‘In all probability not; but Narcissus is right, it’s the best place to start. It’s more than likely it’s in the homeland of one of the six tribes that took part in the battle under the leadership of Arminius, to give him his Latin name. The Eighteenth was found with the Marsi and the Nineteenth with the Bructeri. So that just leaves the Sicambri, the Chauci, the Chatti and Arminius’ own tribe, the Cherusci.’ As he named the tribes he pointed to their homelands marked with their names. ‘However, an Eagle is a potent and valuable trophy for these people and worth fortunes in trade, so there is no guarantee that it has stayed in one place.’
Vespasian looked at the seemingly endless lands over the Rhenus that extended to the end of the map and wondered how much further east they went and who or what was out there. ‘So we go to the battle site — but what then, Pallas? This is your plan; you must have had an idea when you formulated it.’
‘Arminius was murdered by a kinsman who resented the power that he had accumulated. After his death the confederation of tribes that he had brought together disintegrated. He did, however, leave a son, Thumelicus, he must be twenty-four now; if anyone can tell you where to look it would be him.’
‘And he’s in the Teutoburg Forest?’
‘We don’t know. Germanicus captured his mother, Thusnelda, whilst she was heavily pregnant with him. After they had been paraded in Germanicus’ triumph, two years later, they were exiled to Ravenna. The boy was trained as a gladiator and fought bravely enough to win the wooden sword and his freedom. After that he disappeared; in all likelihood he went back to Germania and to his tribe, the Cherusci.’ Pallas pointed vaguely to the huge area east of the Rhenus. ‘If he’s still alive then he’s probably somewhere out there and that’s why the Teutoburg Forest is the best place to start.’
‘So if we find this man, who may be dead, he might tell us where his father, whom he never met, might have hidden the Seventeenth’s Eagle.’
Pallas shrugged.
The brothers looked at each other and immediately burst into incredulous laughter.
‘There must be more that you can tell them, Pallas,’ Gaius said, studying the sparse map and sharing his nephews’ unease.
‘I have told them all we know; if we knew any more, then the Eagle would have been found by now.’
‘They might as well have sent you to find Venus’ hymen,’ Magnus muttered as they walked back down the Palatine in the deepening dusk.
‘At least we’d know then where not to look,’ Vespasian observed gloomily. ‘As it is, it could be anywhere across the Rhenus.’