‘You’re under arrest, centurion,’ the tribune said. ‘Surrender your belts and weapon.’
Two soldiers seized his arms. Castus stood passively for a moment, baffled. Then he shrugged the soldiers roughly away from him.
‘Arrest? On what charge?’
‘Desertion in the face of the enemy,’ the tribune said. ‘The penalty is death. Take him away!’
14
‘Over forty days ago,’ the governor said, ‘you left this fortress in command of a century of men, with orders to escort an envoy and my secretary into Pictland. Now you return and tell me that all these men are dead and you alone have survived. In the meantime, the Picts have crossed the Wall, devastated my province, defeated my legion in the field and surrounded my capital. It doesn’t look good, does it?’
‘No, dominus,’ Castus said. He was standing at attention, tunic unbelted, still bloody and unshaven after three days in the guardhouse.
Aurelius Arpagius, governor of the province and prefect of the legion, paced across the mosaic floor of his private chamber in the headquarters building. His beard, once so neatly groomed, was now wild and ragged. His eyes were sunken, and his dark skin had a yellowish tinge from lack of sleep.
‘Do you know how many deserters have flooded into this fortress in recent days?’ he asked. ‘Half the Wall garrison fled when the enemy first raised their heads above the horizon! My troops at Isurium broke after the first engagement! Panic, centurion, is eating through this whole province. It must be stopped – discipline must be restored. That’s why I’ve ordered the arrest of any further deserters who come through the gates. And that’s why I’ve ordered the execution by stoning of any officer, centurion or above, found to have deserted his command.’
Castus nodded. He had already given his report, in as simple and soldierly manner as he knew how. He had told Arpagius almost everything about what had happened: the Pictish muster, the capture of Marcellinus and Strabo, the defence of the hilltop fort. He had told him of his own surrender and imprisonment, Strabo’s murder, their captivity and Marcellinus’s death, his escape. All he had left out was the involvement of Cunomagla; he remembered his promise, but this was not the moment to mention her.
‘Your duties,’ the governor said, ‘were to protect the envoy and the safety of your men. You have failed utterly in both. Understand?’
‘Yes, dominus.’
‘But… bearing in mind the circumstances, I am prepared to suspend the sentence of death for the time being. You will remain under arrest and confined to quarters until I have time to decide whether you should be discharged without honour or reduced to the ranks…’
Castus kept his shoulders straight, his chest out, but anger was boiling inside him and he could feel his face reddening. He could hear the scratching of the clerk’s stylus on the wax tablet. The soldiers at the door were already pacing forward to lead him away.
‘Dominus!’ he said, tight-throated. Arpagius glanced up at him sharply. ‘Dominus… the Roman renegade I mentioned…’
‘Yes?’ The governor’s eyes narrowed, and his face grew still. ‘You put the man to death, you said?’
‘I did. But before he died, he told me… certain things.’
A long pause. The tribune Victorinus, perched at the end of the couch, looked at the governor and raised his eyebrows. The clerk paused in his writing. Then they all looked at Castus.
‘Things?’ Arpagius said. He cleared his throat quietly. ‘Vic shy;torinus, Proclinus, leave us and take the guards with you.’
The tribune and the clerk stood up, saluted, and then paced out of the room. The guards closed the door behind them. Arpagius circled the desk and leaned back against it. The gov shy;ernor was a head shorter than him, but Castus felt the searching pressure of the man’s gaze.
‘So – tell me,’ Arpagius said quietly.
‘Dominus, the renegade and traitor Julius Decentius claimed that he had been acting under imperial orders to raise a rebellion among the Picts. He claimed that he was receiving instructions from an imperial agent in the province, who had come from Treveris, and had promised him a pardon for his crimes. He said… that my men and I had been sacrificed by our superiors.’
Arpagius was silent for a long time. He tugged at his beard, and Castus noticed that the man’s forehead was beaded with sweat.
‘Did you believe him?’
‘Dominus… it’s not for me to believe or disbelieve. I can only report what he said to me.’
‘Well, I know nothing of it. The words of a renegade – a man you describe as a traitor? A man trying desperately to talk his way out of a just execution…? It seems to me this sort of man would invent any plausible excuse, no?’
Castus looked directly at the governor for the first time. ‘I would have killed him anyway. He knew that.’
The governor held his gaze, the silence bristling between them, and Castus felt the anger rising in him again.
‘Who have you told about this? Anyone?’
‘No, dominus.’
‘What about that girl you brought in with you. Marcellinus’s daughter. Did you mention this to her?’
‘I did not.’
‘Good… I’ve got twenty thousand civilians sheltering in this fortress, centurion. The last thing I want is for evil rumours to start circulating amongst them. The same goes for the troops, of course. I would strongly advise you to say nothing of what this renegade told you to anybody. Is that clear?’
‘Quite clear, dominus.’
‘When I received warning of the enemy attack on the north shy;ern forts,’ Arpagius went on, pacing back to the couch and sitting down, ‘I at once sent an urgent message to the Augustus Constantius in Gaul. As we speak, he is assembling a field force and preparing a rapid march to relieve us. When he gets here… I will perhaps raise the matter with his staff. Meanwhile, I order you to put it out of your mind. Do you understand?’
‘I understand, dominus.’
‘Good. As far as you or I are concerned, whatever happens beyond the Wall stays there.’
Strong hands gripped and lifted him, and he fought against them, still lost in the fevered dreams of grief. In his mind he saw again the grisly tree, and he thought the voices were Timotheus and Vincentius, calling to him from the far side of death.
‘Easy, brother, easy now,’ one of them said. The hands were dragging him up off the cold flagstone floor. He lashed out, but somebody caught his wrist and held tight.
‘How long’s he been like this?’
‘Two days, centurion,’ said another voice. Castus knew this one: the thin-necked youth with a frightened stare who had been set as sentry outside his door. Castus had never seen him before. The other speaker was his friend Valens.
‘Get him up, careful now. By the gods, he must weigh twice what I do!’
The world swung, and Castus let himself swing with it. His head reeled with the fumes of the wine; his mouth was dry with the taste of it, and his eyes felt gummed shut. He had never drunk to excess before – that was his father’s weakness.
A bolt of cold water struck him in the face, splashing down his chest, and he gasped and cried out as he opened his eyes. Valens and two guards stood before him. Castus aimed a kick at the man with the bucket, but missed. His head was screaming and his hands ached.
‘Look what he’s done to the wall!’ the sentry said. Above the bed Castus could see the plaster cracked and broken to the brickwork. That explained his battered fists, he thought. The painful grazes on the forehead too. Between them the guards dragged him up to sit on the bed and gave him water. He gulped back three large cups of it.
Officially, he remembered, he had been forbidden to leave his quarters, but he had been granted a trip to the baths and to the hospital to have his wounds dressed. Then they just gave him a big clay jug of wine and left him to it. How long had he spent like this, drunkenly raging or sprawled on the floor? He could no longer properly account for the time that had passed, nor did he want to remember.