‘You do not paint your face?’ Crispinus asked the head of the scouts.
‘No, my lord, I’m pretty enough as it is.’ Vindex leered at him to demonstrate, his teeth more than usually horse-like. ‘Not many do, apart from these people.’
‘Yet you are kin to them.’
‘Me! No, not to this lot.’ Vindex shook his head at such ignorance. He was polite to the tribune, but no more than he would be to a chieftain of his own people, and among the Brigantes blunt speech was admired. ‘Some of the Textoverdi marry among the southern Selgovae. Not many of my folk – the Carvetii – though. Leastways only if we took their women as captives, but that doesn’t count. That was in the old days, of course.’
‘You sound wistful.’
‘Not me. Long live Rome and long live the emperor! By the way, who is the emperor again?’
Crispinus laughed at the time. Later, when he had followed Ferox away from the others and was out of earshot, he showed more concern.
‘This is a dangerous time,’ he said. ‘Our Lord Trajan is not well known, can boast of no real victories and proved embarrassingly loyal to Domitian just a few short years ago. There are far too many people, like our friend, who have no idea what sort of man the emperor is and struggle even to remember his name.’
‘He is princeps,’ Ferox said, as if that settled the matter.
Crispinus waited for a while, before realising that the centurion had nothing more to say.
‘Our Lord Trajan is princeps, first citizen, first in the Senate, and many other titles. For the moment at least. It would be good for the state if he remains so.’ Once again, the tribune stopped and looked at the centurion.
‘I have no objections,’ Ferox said eventually.
‘He is a good ruler.’ Crispinus’ voice contained a hint of irritation. ‘But others do not consider such things and instead look only for personal power. I am sure that you heard the rumours about the army in Syria.’
Ferox nodded. A year ago the provincial legate commanding the main army in the east had tried to win over his men to back him in a bid for the throne. ‘It came to nothing, though.’
‘It was handled with delicacy,’ Crispinus told him. ‘Retirement to private life because of ill health, postings to distant frontiers, that sort of thing.’
‘Is that why you’re here, my lord?’ Ferox said before he could stop himself.
The tribune glared at him, anger in his eyes, until his aristocratic calm restored itself.
‘Why are you telling me this, my lord?’ Ferox asked.
‘Because this campaign matters, even though it is a small and local affair. Our Lord Trajan is new to power, comes from Spain of all places, and is not that well connected at Rome. There are plenty of senators who feel themselves more suited to the supreme office. They must be shown that they are wrong, that he is wise and under his rule the empire will flourish and the armies win victory after victory, so that the Pax Augusta will reign supreme. That being so, there can be no defeats – not even small ones on distant frontiers like this.’
‘Would anyone care?’
Crispinus pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘I fear that I have a cold. Does it ever get warm in this benighted place?’ He sniffed hard to clear his nostrils. It was a Roman habit Ferox still found strange. ‘People will care,’ he said. ‘Not for the right reasons, but because they will scent weakness. Our Lord Trajan is on the Rhine, and the armies of the two Germanies will most likely stay loyal, but the legions in other provinces do not know him and might be willing to follow someone who promised them wealth to raise him to the purple. It happened when Nero died and that was only thirty years ago, and tens of thousands died in the chaos. It could happen again, very, very easily.’
‘Is that why Trajan – my apologies, our Lord Trajan – is loitering on the German frontier rather than going to Rome to be welcomed by his adoring people? Or is that an impolite question?’ Ferox’s expression gave no hint of repentance.
Crispinus stared at the centurion, who stared back impassively until the tribune gave up and looked away, pretending to follow the flight of a bird. ‘My father was right,’ he said. ‘You have an imaginative and suspicious mind. He said that you did not trust anyone else, but that you followed the scent of the truth like a hound sniffing a trail. Well, he also believed that you can be trusted because of your oath to serve him – and his family, if I am not mistaken.’
Ferox nodded. He had been waiting for Crispinus to remind him of the oath, taken all those years ago on the Danube as the price for convincing the man’s father to march and save some of Ferox’s men.
‘I swore to aid him as long as it did not conflict with my sacramentum, my pledge to Rome and the princeps,’ Ferox said, his voice flat. ‘I am sworn to Trajan and as long as he remains princeps I will keep my word, whatever may happen.’
‘Others may not be so diligent in keeping that same sacred promise of a soldier. There are some who would be happy to make mischief and let our armies be defeated and our soldiers killed simply to discredit the Lord Trajan. They are distinguished men – or friends and dependants of distinguished men – and they may well be in positions of authority. We cannot let them betray the empire and us by engineering defeat.’
They had reached the top of a low rise, and Ferox stopped to stare along the valley ahead of them. He could see pairs of Vindex’s scouts some way ahead and watched as two of the Brigantians paused. Crispinus glanced over his shoulder as Vindex trotted up to join them.
‘Be vigilant and trust no one,’ he whispered to Ferox. ‘If we learn the truth in time then we can stop them.’
From noon onwards they saw more riders shadowing them. Ferox tried once again to meet them, but these proved even more skittish and rode away before he was close enough to call to them. They did not go far and kept watching. From the heights he looked down on the scouting force of a dozen troopers and about the same number of Brigantes. Vindex and his men took turns to go ahead and he could see some of them, lone warriors or pairs of them on the slopes of the valley for some way ahead. Back down the valley were the Batavian patrols. They were about a mile back, and he could see the main force as a dark patch on the green another half-mile beyond them. From up here, the column looked tiny. He stayed up on the crest for a while, keeping pace with them as they trotted along down in the valley. Half an hour later he saw another darker patch on a hillock ahead of where the ground rose to join another glen. It looked as if someone was waiting, but whether to fight or speak was hard to tell. The force was a good size, so it could be either.
Crispinus was still talking when he returned.
‘I had assumed you Britons would all be much alike,’ the tribune declared, ‘but in fact you vary a great deal, far more than the tribes of Gaul.’
‘You’ve studied a lot then,’ Vindex said sarcastically, as if the young aristocrat had just announced that rain comes from the skies.