He gestured to Scaurus.
‘The legatus here needs an edge, a man who knows where the bodies are buried. And that means me.’
‘The centurion’s experience will be of enormous value, if we’re to take a grip of the legion and shake it into some sort of order. So, as long as Cotta here can do a meaningful imitation of a legion centurion, he will remain just that. This is unfamiliar territory for all of us, First Spear, and I have the suspicion that we’re going to need every little advantage we can get.’
Julius fixed the veteran soldier with a dark gaze.
‘I’ll be watching you, Centurion. I suggest you work hard on not attracting my attention. Very hard.’
Scaurus turned away with a beckoning nod to Marcus.
‘March the cohorts up the road to Antioch once they’re ready to move, will you First Spear? I think the port’s procurator has had long enough to get word up to the governor’s residence, so Tribune Corvus and I had better go and show our respects, and give him the bad news. I’ll take Silus and his horsemen with me as well; I’ve a small but rather important job in mind for them.’
Cotta and Julius turned to look at him, and the veteran centurion raised a questioning eyebrow.
‘Bad news, Legatus?’
Pursing his thin lips, Scaurus shrugged at them both, tapping the sealed leather document case that Arminius had guarded closely throughout the six weeks of their journey from Rome.
‘I might be wrong, of course, but the look on the Chamberlain’s face when the discussion turned to Governor Dexter wasn’t the happiest of expressions. And, I should point out, before his untimely demise with the blunt end of a guardsman’s spear thrust straight though him, Praetorian Prefect Perennis did oversee the appointment of several well-placed provincial governors, including one Gaius Domitius Dexter. All of them were given control of provinces whose opportunities for the generation of private wealth go hand in hand with significant military commands, two or three legions apiece. And all of them were, I gather, men likely to show their gratitude for being awarded such lucrative and influential positions by …’
He paused, his lips twisting into another wry smile.
‘Let us simply say that their happiness at being granted opportunities to generate considerable personal wealth would probably have been expressed in the most practical of manners, involving the loyalty of their legions, in the event that Perennis had been forced to take the purple by some cruel circumstance such as the emperor’s assassination.’
Cotta inclined his head with due respect to his legatus’s point.
‘So now that Perennis is dead, it’s probably not good news for the governors he appointed?’
The legatus shook his head.
‘No, Centurion Cotta. Probably not good news at all.’
‘Leave? You want me to leave the city? Now?’
Imperial Governor Gaius Domitius Dexter, sat forward in his chair, leaning his arms on the wide, polished wooden desk in front of him and stared at the suddenly discomfited legion commander who was sitting bolt upright on the other side with a face set in lines of shocked distress.
‘In point of fact, I want you to leave the province, Magius Lateranus. And most certainly now! You have been replaced, unscheduled, unannounced, and quite astonishingly, by a man who’s been delivered here by means of the Praetorian fleet, which sends us a message in itself. Your replacement disembarked from the flagship less than two hours ago, and will doubtless be up the road and knocking on your legion’s gates before sunset. And I have to say that a man who arrives courtesy of the emperor’s private navy is likely to be a man with a fairly well-defined agenda. Not to mention a man in something of a hurry. So I don’t think it would be good for either of us if you were on hand once he gets a good look at the Third Gallic, do you?’
The legatus nodded slowly.
‘But to leave so suddenly?’
Dexter waved a hand to dismiss his concerns.
‘A death in the family. Your father, perhaps? That would be more than sufficient reason for you to leave for Rome, would it not? And in the absence of any ship’s master being willing to risk such a voyage at this time of the year, you’ll have the perfect reason to travel overland, thereby avoiding the risk of meeting your replacement since you will leave the city to the north while he arrives from the south.’
‘But my personal belongings-’
Another wave of the hand.
‘Can be sent after you. Whereas if this man Scaurus lays hands on you, given what we both know you’ve been doing over the last three years …’
The words hung in the air while the officer’s face slowly drained of blood.
‘What I’ve been doing?’
The governor leaned back in his chair.
‘Come now Legatus, it’s a well-known fact that what I know about the military could be captured in very large letters on a very small scroll. It’s a mystery to most of my peers how I was ever appointed to command a province with such a strong complement of legions, although I think we both know why Perennis favoured me over the better-qualified candidates. Whereas you have all the right experience, don’t you? After all, you were a tribune with one of the Rhine legions, were you not? You know how a legion works.’
He leaned forward.
‘And so does this man Scaurus. Have you ever met him?’
The soldier shook his head, sniffing in disdain.
‘He’s not one of us, I know that much.’
Dexter nodded, steepling his fingers under his chin.
‘Indeed he isn’t! He’s an equestrian, which makes the whole thing that little bit more puzzling. His family used to be senatorial, but his ancestor managed to get on the wrong side of Vespasian, back in the Year of the Four Emperors, and was reduced to a thin stripe as his punishment. The family have scraped along ever since, but they’ve never lost their patrician sense of duty and honour. The man’s father fell on his own sword twenty years or so ago, accepting the blame for some disaster or other on the Rhenus it seems, whereas the legatus who was actually responsible walked out from under that particular falling tree without a blemish on his honour. The younger Scaurus was at an impressionable age, it seems, and he promptly swore to avenge his father.’
He smiled up at the legatus.
‘And, in consequence, he’s something of an animal when matters of military propriety are under consideration. He shipped out here with the last governor as a tribune on the man’s staff. It seems that Helvius Pertinax has become something of a sponsor to him, and he certainly gave Scaurus free licence to go wherever and do whatever he liked while he was governor of the province. He made the man his inspector of troops, and woe betide any legatus or prefect whose manpower wasn’t what it ought to be, or whose soldiers weren’t properly trained. I met him just the once, during the official handover from Pertinax to myself, and he was never anything less than polite and respectful.’
He shook his head at the memory.
‘And yet I had the impression that he could have bitten my throat out without a change of expression. How the young bastard’s ended up commanding a legion, I can only imagine. Anyway …’
Standing, he reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a small but heavy bag.