‘Now,’ said her languid friend, oblivious, ‘I really think we should try the peonies again, I thought that one was quite beautiful…’
Castus blinked, trying to appear more agreeable. This would soon be over, after all. Sallustius, he was sure, would have enjoyed the experience much more. He stared towards the rear of the courtyard, then dropped his eyes and found the third woman, who had remained silent, looking back at him.
She was younger than the other two, with an olive complexion, glossy black hair and deeply hooded dark eyes. She wore a simple yellow tunica and shawl, and sipped wine from a blue glass goblet in a gold lattice holder. Her face was a narrow blade. Castus stared at her, and she held his gaze.
‘Oh, very well, Plautiana, the white roses, if you insist. Now, we have only to choose the best of the three – what do you think, Sabina?’
The woman in yellow said nothing for a moment, but only smiled slowly, swirling the wine in her blue glass.
‘Which one do you like best?’ she said, addressing Castus directly. The other two women appeared briefly startled.
‘Me, domina?’ Castus said, his voice thick in his throat.
‘Yes. You’re a man. Which do you prefer?’ She gestured to the wreaths piled on the floor between the potted shrubs.
‘Oh, yes!’ her friend exclaimed, grinning. ‘We should know what a man thinks, a man of action, like our emperor…’
Castus exhaled slowly, frowning as he stared at the flowers. Show me three swords, he thought, and I’d pick the best, no problem. Three javelins, even three horses. But not this. Was this some trick, some further humiliation? He had no idea what he was supposed to say.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Oh, he doesn’t know!’ the woman in green said behind her hand. ‘Perhaps we should have made a wreath of… oh, raw onions and boot leather, or something?’
‘I am a soldier,’ Castus said heavily, slowly. ‘This isn’t what I do.’
Something in his words stilled the mirth of the two ladies. The woman in yellow regarded him over her goblet. She narrowed her eyes, and seemed to nod just slightly as she smiled.
‘I believe we’re done here,’ the eunuch said, with undisguised relief.
* * *
Brinno gave him a wry glance as he marched back into the Atrium of the Giants and took up his position before the doors of the tablinum.
‘Did that man I mentioned come back?’ Castus whispered. His voice was still stiff with annoyance.
‘No,’ Brinno said. He leaned a little towards Castus, flaring his nostrils.
‘Brother, are you wearing perfume?’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘There’s a… Wait.’ The young Frank raised his hand and brushed lightly at Castus’s shoulder. A couple of stray petals fluttered to the mosaic floor. Brinno gave a quizzical half-smile.
‘Don’t ask.’
Brinno raised an eyebrow, then pondered for a moment. ‘This is a place of many perils,’ he said under his breath, nodding gravely.
Sound of footsteps from inside the tablinum, and both Protectores straightened abruptly as the doors swung back. The slave doormen stepped aside, and a figure in a heavy purple robe stepped over the threshold. Castus gazed straight ahead at the painted gods and giants on the far wall.
The emperor paused. There was the sound of a light sniff, then another. Then Constantine cleared his throat and walked on, trailed by his slaves and secretaries.
Releasing his breath, Castus fell into step with Brinno as they followed the imperial party out into the fresh air of the portico.
10
They found the dead man between the pilings of the bridge foundations, his body almost submerged in the muddy water. Castus stood on the riverbank and watched as a group of legionaries, stripped to their tunics to work on the bridge, waded in and hauled the corpse free.
The body turned as they dragged it clear of the heavy wooden baulks, and the blanched face rose to the surface. Castus felt his throat tighten. The dead man’s thin lips were drawn back from the teeth, but even without the nervous gestures and the gold-clasped belt he was easy to recognise. The soldiers towed the body to the bank and heaved it up onto the mud, then wiped their hands and stamped back up onto the bridge scaffolding to get on with their work.
It was only an hour after dawn, and the vast cavalcade of the imperial retinue was pulling out of Colonia Agrippina. The day before, the emperor had made his ceremonial inspection of the new bridge, performing sacrifice and taking the auspices. All the omens had been good for the new construction. But this, Castus thought, could be nothing but a very poor omen indeed. He touched his brow with his thumb between his fingers, a warding sign against evil.
Luckily for the emperor and his engineers, there were few people around to see the corpse pulled from the river. The emperor’s party had already set off along the road southwards, and the main street of the city was still flowing with carts and carriages, horses and marching men. Even the eyes of the gods were elsewhere this morning.
Gazing out over the slow grey flood of the Rhine, Castus could see the cleared ground on the far bank, and the first scaffolding and brick heaps of the new fortress that would soon rise there, a bridgehead fortification on the barbarian shore. The bridge itself was creeping steadily out from the bank: huge coffer-dams had been constructed, and men in barges were lowering stones and cement down to form the foundations for the bridge piers. Further out, in midstream, more barges were moored with cranes and tackle to lift massive timber pilings and drive them down into the riverbed. The bridge itself would be a permanent structure, with heavy wooden arches firmly bedded on nearly twenty solid stone and concrete piers. Now even the mighty Rhine would pass beneath the yoke of Rome, and no barbarian would dare oppose the will of Constantine – or so the orators had proclaimed during the ceremony the day before.
‘He must have gone for a walk along the bridge supports last night and fallen in,’ Sallustius said, nudging the waterlogged corpse with the toe of his boot. ‘Probably drunk after the ceremony. Wonder who he was?’
‘He didn’t fall off the bridge,’ Castus said. ‘Look at where they found him – on the upstream side. He must have gone in further up and floated down here.’
Sallustius made an appraising face. ‘A neat deduction. Although it doesn’t help matters, does it? Far easier to account for a dead drunk…’
Castus turned away from the river and made his way up the slope with the bow-legged former cavalryman walking by his side. Nearly a month had passed since he had last seen the nervous little man in the Atrium of the Giants; there had been no further sign of him, nor any word from Hierocles about whatever plot he might have been trying to report. But now here he was, dead in the Rhine as the imperial party left town. Presumably the centurion of the detachment of Legion XXII Primigenia working on the bridge would attend to the body, or the curator of Colonia Agrippina would. Either way, the emperor would be long gone by the time the man’s identity was revealed, whoever he was.
‘Perhaps he dived off the bridge?’ Sallustius said, glancing back. ‘Or how about swimming? He could have had a few drinks and decided to go for a night swim in the river.’
‘Wearing his cloak?’
Sallustius pondered this. ‘They brew their beer strong in Colonia, brother!’
They skirted the heaps of bridging timber, cut stone and rubble piled on the riverbank, and returned to their horses. Mounting, they rode back between the wooden barracks of the engineer detachment, through the river gate of the city and up the slope between the temples and the curia to the main street. The ground before the pillared facade of the forum precinct was rutted and strewn with flower heads and petals, trampled into the mud where the dignitaries of the town had gathered at first light to pour their praises upon their departing emperor. Castus and Sallustius had been seconded to the office of the Master of Dispositions, who had posted them at the rear of the convoy. Castus did not mind, although it meant he missed the adventus ceremonies when the imperial retinue arrived at each new settlement along the road. Then again, he considered, once you’ve seen one group of town councillors roaring themselves hoarse and throwing flowers in the air, you had pretty much seen them all.