‘And I need you to look out for Linza,’ I added. ‘Micon and Brando, too. You’ve seen what Malchus is, Stumps. I can’t leave her alone here when he’s got a blade to grind.’
‘I’ll trade places with you,’ Stumps pressed defiantly.
‘Won’t work.’ H shook his head. ‘Caedicius has a high opinion of Felix, and Malchus can’t go back on his old praise, either. We’re taking a few others with us to send word to the Rhine about our intentions, but you’re in no state to be a runner, Stumps.’
‘Ah, fuck the lot of you anyway,’ our comrade cursed. ‘Go and get yourselves killed and I’ll stay here and keep warm. You’re the fucking idiots, not me.’
‘There’s my boy.’ Titus grinned, ruffling Stumps’s unkempt hair as if he were a child. ‘What now?’ he then asked H.
‘We draw rations and kit. Leave as soon as it gets dark.’
‘Enjoy your dog,’ Stumps grunted from his bed, his back turned to us but mind fully in the conversation.
‘I think I’ll lie low here,’ Titus said to me. ‘Don’t want Malchus having second thoughts, so it looks like you’ve lost your bed.’
There were plenty of empty ones in the room. After a moment, I caught my friend’s meaning.
‘I’ll go and see her before we leave,’ I promised.
‘Now,’ he said, and I felt the eyes of my other friends burning into me, telling me to find my balls.
‘Now,’ Titus urged again.
‘Don’t tell me you put my head through a bunk for nothing,’ Stumps rumbled from his bed.
Titus laughed.
‘I’ll go—’
‘Now!’ my comrades shouted in unison.
And so I did as I was ordered.
I left to find Linza.
60
Walking through the fort I felt the same edge of fear that had descended on to the parade square following Metella’s final words. It clung to every person in the fort. Shrouded figures moved sullenly from building to building, avoiding eye contact at all costs. There were no thoughts of the greater good, only of their own person, or the smallest band of brothers and sisters.
Such pessimism made finding Linza difficult. My questions were met with suspicion and scorn. Combing the grid-like layout of the fort, I eventually found her cutting wood with a dozen other women, their faces ruddy from effort and biting cold.
‘Linza,’ I said.
There was no happiness in her expression when she saw me. I felt as though I was being watched and judged for intention, the way a horse warily eyes a dog.
‘Felix,’ she finally said, walking clear of the prying eyes and ears of her group. ‘What do you want?’
‘I want to speak to you,’ I answered, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
‘To me?’
‘With you.’
‘About what?’
I faltered then. Even her tired look of annoyance brought back memories that I treasured – did I truly love this German woman, or was I chasing a ghost?
‘I’m not sure,’ I finally said. ‘I’m going away for a while,’ I added, as if it explained everything. Perhaps it did, because I saw the tension in her shoulders soften.
‘What the prefect was talking about on the square? He has a mission for you?’
I nodded. She shook her head as if disappointed with a child.
‘I suppose you volunteered?’ she accused me.
‘I had no choice,’ I tried, recognizing a deep note of worry hiding amongst the simmering anger.
‘Of course you did. That’s why it’s called volunteering.’
I said nothing. How to explain to her the ties of comradeship when I could not understand them myself? Titus was a friend, and putting my own life at risk had been the only way to give him a chance of survival. There was nothing heroic or glorious in those actions. They simply happened because they had to. There was no other choice.
‘Do you know what a snowball is?’ I asked, earning a look of contempt.
‘I’m Batavian.’
I blushed a little at my foolishness. ‘Volunteering is like a snowball,’ I tried to explain. ‘You do it once, roll it once, and it just keeps getting bigger. Once you volunteer for one thing, they’ll always expect you to do it the next time. It gets to the point where if you don’t volunteer, you’re not standing still, but pulling back.’
‘So it’s about pride?’ Linza snorted. ‘What a surprise. Stupid of me to think you weren’t as arrogant as the next Roman.’
‘I’m no Roman,’ I told her, meaning it.
‘You dress like one. You kill for them. Now you risk your life for them.’
‘I’m not doing it for Rome,’ I told her honestly. ‘Fuck Rome. I just want to see my friends get home alive. I want to see you get home alive.’
‘Why?’ she pressed me.
And I knew then that she wanted me to kiss her. To take hold of her. To be a man.
But I could not. I could not, because I was looking at a ghost, and she was looking at a husband lost to the forest.
‘Stay with Stumps and the others when I’m gone,’ I urged, watching the moment sail by me as I had once watched the ships leave the pier of my home.
‘What do you think is going to happen to me?’ she asked. She was angry with me. Angry with our place in the world.
‘You’ll be all right with them.’
‘I’ll tell you what will happen to me, Felix.’ Linza spoke over me, closing in so that her flushed face was inches from my own. ‘If Malchus doesn’t rape and kill me here, another man will. German, or Roman. That’s my place now. That’s what you soldiers see me as. Plunder.’
‘That’s not true,’ I urged, but I could hear the frailty of my words.
‘Of course it’s true,’ she snapped. ‘Sooner or later this fort is falling. I will not fall with it, Felix,’ she vowed. ‘I will take my own life before that.’
Her words hit me harder than any blow I had suffered at the hands of Titus. The thought of a man forcing himself on Linza revolted me, angered me and filled me with shame in the same moment – shame that I could not protect her. Guilt that I had failed before.
‘I can show you a way to make it quick?’ I tried.
She laughed at me then. It was a bitter, furious laugh. Instantly, I knew that I had failed a test. My soul and manhood had been on trial, and both had now been condemned.
‘You think that’s what I wanted to hear?’ She shook her head, her face made ugly by bile. Resentful that she had let her shield and defences down, as I had my own.
‘Go and fuck yourself, Felix,’ she snarled at me. ‘Go and look for your war.’
She walked away from me. Defeated, I made no attempt to follow. No attempt to call out. Instead, I vowed that I would take her guidance, and do what I had been doing since the first moment I had known loss, and true pain.
I would look for my war.
61
It was dark by the time I joined Titus and H in the barrack room. Neither soldier was surprised, assuming that my time had been spent doing what every soldier wants to do when he sees the end of his life hanging by a thread.
‘That much fun, was it?’ Titus smiled, his teeth yellow in the flame of the room’s flickering stove.
‘Where are the others?’ I asked.
‘Guard duty.’
My stomach turned sour. My self-pity had cost me the chance to say goodbye to my comrades.
‘Get your kit and let’s go,’ H instructed me. ‘The runners are waiting for us at the gate.’
We joined them soon after. Having ruined my farewell to both Linza and my comrades, I was anxious to be free of the fort and to place myself in danger, where my thoughts would be occupied with survival and not recrimination. The two runners were young men, and carried themselves with confidence. Both had been known and trusted by H for years.