‘Nice fuckin’ work, Tertius. You’ve chased away the only woman I’ve seen that’s been worth more than a denarius all night. And I’ll bet she’d a been nice and tight.’
A seam-faced man leaned across from the table next to them, his features creased in a wry smile.
‘No, friend, your mate had it right. She’s the best of a pretty bad bunch, and she wasn’t joking about the boys either. Both of them are her brothers, and they’re both younger than she is. Yeah, I know..’ He grinned into Tertius’s disbelieving expression. ‘And her old mum’s up there too. It’s tough times, what with the gangs getting their fingers into every pie going. But if you gentlemen are looking for a higher-class of female company then pull up a chair, buy me a beer and I’ll tell you what’s to be had in Tungrorum for a man with a taste for the better things in life.’
The look on Centurion Tertius’s face was one of weary triumph, while Sanga’s expression, like any veteran finding himself in the presence of his own centurion, first spear and tribune, was one of stone-faced inscrutability.
‘We struck it lucky in the third bar we visited. The men we watched leaving the grain store when the place closed for the night were all there in a tight little huddle, drinking their beer and planning a night of whoring, as it turned out. All it took was a little play-acting by myself and the soldier here, and the spending of a little coin to back up our story as to how we came to be out on the town, and we found ourselves invited along with them to the Blue Boar. When we got there it was clear that they were regular customers, because the lump who was keeping door let them in without a word, and us too once they’d vouched for our behaviour. And it wasn’t a cheap place either.’
First Spear Frontinius raised a wry eyebrow.
‘I presume that you were both forced to sample the establishment’s services in order to maintain the fiction of being a pair of soldiers who got lucky at your standard bearer’s expense?’
Sanga struggled to maintain his mask of imperturbability, one corner of his mouth twitching slightly, and Frontinius allowed a long, hard stare to linger on him, but Tertius was speaking again, his voice free of any trace of irony.
‘Yes, sir. It would have been strange if we hadn’t, if you take my meaning. Mind you, it didn’t hurt that Morban’s reputation for taking bets on anything and everything seems to have spread across the city. The whorehouse’s hired muscle was in stitches when our new friends told him our little story.’
‘And?’
Tertius frowned at Scaurus’s question.
‘Tribune?’
Scaurus rubbed his eyes with one hand, stifling a yawn with the other.
‘Centurion, whilst this is all very gratifying, you’ve not yet got to the crux of the matter, have you?’
Tertius nodded apologetically.
‘Indeed not, Tribune. To keep the story short, the prefect seems to be justified in his suspicions about the traffic in and out of the grain store. As we expected, the men we hooked up with are labourers, paid to haul the corn off the farmers’ carts and into the grain store, and then to put it onto the carters’ wagons for shipment to the legion fortresses. That much was evident from the first beer, since they were still in their work clothing, but it was only after we’d got a few more wets down our throats that we got a few more clues. Soldier Sanga here managed to blurt out that jobs in the store must be well paid.. ’ The officers collectively winced, each man imagining the moment of uncomfortable silence as Sanga’s apparently naive words had sunk in. ‘But he said it in such a morose way that all they did was laugh at what they took for jealousy at the amount of silver they were throwing around. One of them leaned forward and tapped his nose, with a smile, mind you, and said that there were things that happen in the store that it would be best we didn’t know about, and he rubbed his fingers together like he had a coin between them. It was pretty clear to me that they’re the men that do the dirty work when there’s mouldy corn to load onto the outbound wagons, slipping it in with the good bags, and in return they get a big enough backhander to enjoy themselves properly once in a while.’
‘So they didn’t actually tell you how the fraud works?’
Tertius shook his head at Prefect Caninus’s question.
‘No, Prefect, and they were never going to. They wouldn’t trust a couple of men they’ve just met with that sort of information. It could take another month of drinking and whoring for them to get to the point of opening up that much.’ He saw Frontinius’s eyebrows rise in unspoken comment and quickly continued. ‘But in the absence of our having that sort of time to spend, I think it’s fairly clear that there’s something worth investigating.’
When the two soldiers had left the room Prefect Caninus nodded to Marcus, sitting in his enforced silence in the corner.
‘Well done, Centurion. I think we have enough information to wrap up this fraud with no more than a few quick raids. If we arrest all of the likely participants at the same time one of them’s bound to panic and incriminate the rest of them.’
Scaurus shifted uneasily.
‘And just who are you suggesting we should arrest on the grounds of some grain store workers having more money to spend than ought to be the case, Prefect?’
Caninus shrugged.
‘That all depends whether we want to scare them into inactivity, and have the gains of their crime vanish into thin air, or to catch every man involved and recover the money they’ve been salting away. And that sum, Tribune, is likely to be large enough to put everyone involved very much in the emperor’s eye.’
He watched intently as tribune and first spear exchanged glances. Scaurus shook his head slowly, his eyes locked on the prefect’s.
‘That’s not a status I crave, Quintus Caninus. The attention of the throne can be a double-edged sword, as anyone with any experience of imperial politics will tell you. I’ll settle for recovering the gold and making sure that it is returned to its rightful owner. So, whose doors would you have me send my men to kick in? I’m presuming that you want me to put on a display of overwhelming force?’
‘What in Hades are you doing, Tribune? Do you have such delusions of grandeur that you think you can arrest me and assume my responsibilities in your ceaseless quest for power? Do you imagine that I won’t…’
Albanus, standing under the watchful eyes of a pair of Tungrian veterans in the middle of the basilica’s main chamber, was literally spitting his indignation at Scaurus, who sat before him with an expression of weary contempt. Julius, standing close behind the prisoner with his vine stick in one hand, reached out and tapped him hard on the arm with the baton. As he did so the tribune raised an eyebrow, pointing with one hand at the fuming procurator.
‘The next time my officer’s vine stick touches you, the force used will be sufficient to silence you. And it will be repeated as many times as necessary to achieve that objective. Bruised or unmarked, either way you’ll be silent when I command it. Shut your mouth and consider for a moment which outcome you would prefer, if you will.’
The two men stared at each other in silence before the tribune gestured with his raised hand to the stony-faced Julius, who stepped back with another tap of the stick, smiling quietly to himself as the procurator flinched at its touch. Albanus composed himself, looking down at the broad flagstones on which he stood before Scaurus’s chair. Lifting his head to look at the tribune, he waited in silence for permission to speak.
‘Very well, Procurator, now that you’ve had some time to consider our relative positions in this redefined relationship, do please continue with whatever further expression of outrage you had in mind.’
When he spoke again, Albanus’s previous fury had been replaced by a more calculated approach, part submission, part sardonic sneer.