‘Gutted, I’m sure. But they are saying that one of his foals went in his place, so that must be the one in the headdress, the one I killed. But people aren’t telling it that way. They are saying that he died along with all his band after falling on the Romans at night and slaying ten times their number. He is supposed to have broken his sword from hewing through Roman necks. The last he killed was the Roman commander. With his sword gone, the pupil of the great priest rent the Roman apart with his bare hands.’
Crispinus looked down at himself and then used his free hand to pat his other arm and his chest. ‘Seems to have worn off. So this was the fellow skulking in the darkness who had the misfortune to run into you?’
‘The same, but people will believe anything else quicker than the truth.’ When Crispinus raised an eyebrow, Ferox explained. ‘That is a saying of my people.’
‘Of the Silures, you mean – you are a Roman after all.’
Ferox let that pass. ‘It’s taken a while to learn, and come in whispers and hints, but it seems that the Great Stallion has six foals – well, five now: followers who learn from him and are mighty in their own right.’
‘Do the people you meet like him and his men?’
The centurion had forgotten for a moment that the tribune knew so little of these lands and the folk who lived there. ‘That does not matter – they fear them. Men who can work magic and have one foot in the Otherworld are dangerous. As long as they have power then people will do what they want whether they want to or not. We need to do something about them.’
‘You are probably right, and I will see what I can do. For the moment keep your eyes and ears open.’ Crispinus tossed the cup to Philo, who fumbled, but managed to catch it before it dropped. ‘Nearly caught you there!’ the aristocrat told the slave. ‘Time to go. I think it might be a good idea if you went to Vindolanda. If he is well enough, ask Titus Annius about the orders given to him by Flaccus. We won’t be able to prove anything, but it gives us more to go on.’
The tribune leaped into the saddle and clicked with his tongue to make the horse walk on. He had almost reached the gate when he turned and came back. He snapped his fingers and then pointed at the centurion.
‘Augustus,’ he said. ‘I am right, aren’t I? The divine Augustus used to go to a special room in the palace when he wanted peace and quiet and to get away from it all. He called it Syracuse, and I dare say you would struggle to find anywhere better than this for getting away from it all.’ His horse tried to pull towards the water in the trough, but the tribune held the rein firmly.
Ferox nodded. ‘You are a learned man, my lord.’
‘And you are full of surprises. Farewell for the moment, Flavius Ferox, centurio regionarius.’
The wind picked up overnight, coming from the east with the bitter hint of the coming winter. It ripped half a dozen tiles from the roof of the gate-tower, and a few more from the buildings inside the fort.
Ferox rode to Vindolanda the next morning, swathed up to stay warm and dry in the saddle as best he could, but it was not long before his face felt numb from the battering of the wind. He passed a young birch tree snapped almost in half and an older tree pulled from the ground by its roots. When he reached the fort he was not surprised to learn that Titus Annius had died. This was the sort of day a good man’s soul would leave its body. The centurion had seemed to be at peace, but then had cried out during the night and when the slaves ran to his room they found that he was dead. Ferox thought it odd that no slave was with him all the time, although the centurion was well known for his frugal lifestyle and for his fixed ideas of how things should be done.
His will was a case in point. He had no wife or children, and no other family members to whom he wished to bequeath his estate. No one at Vindolanda knew much about Titus Annius’ background. Every detail of his funeral was set down. The centurion wanted no hired mourners and only the simplest procession to a spot near the road outside the porta praetoria, the main gates of the fort. ‘Let whoever come who chooses, and let a dozen of my boys see me off. Burn me, drink to cohors I Tungrorum and to the emperor, and tell my lads that I’ll be watching them and they had better never disgrace me by their turnout or conduct or I’ll come back and haunt them.’
A copy of the will was posted up outside the small praetorium where he had lived – a far more modest building that the one housing Cerialis. All day there were Tungrians gathered around it, half weeping and half laughing, those who were able reading the words out to the others. Titus Annius’ estate was considerable, and he left most of it as a fund to give a year’s pay to each widow or child left behind when one of his auxiliaries died going about his duty or from sickness. The recent losses meant that there would soon be plenty of calls on the legacy. One thousand denarii were set aside by special arrangement with Flora, who for the three days after the centurion’s death was to welcome without charge any Tungrian who knocked on her door. ‘Give the lads whatever they want. I want to hear humping as I make my way to the Elysian Fields.’
As Ferox watched the wrapped corpse burn, he wondered whether Titus Annius had got his wish. Cerialis was there, as was Crispinus, Aelius Brocchus, and Rufinus, the prefect of the Spaniards. The twelve picked Tungrians sparkled even on this drab, rainy morning, with every piece of metalwork polished like a mirror. Two of the men wore bandages from wounds taken on the day the centurion fell, and one of them limped as he carried the couch on which the body was laid. Around them, forty or fifty more men from the cohort watched. No one gave orders, but they stood in ranks and files, and all had found a reason to appear in their best uniforms. Quite a few Batavians had come as well, and there were civilians from the canabae. The centurion had said that no women were to attend, and this was obeyed, although several cloaked and hooded figures watched from a distance.
No one cried openly, for that was another rule, but plenty of eyes were moist, not least because a fitful wind stirred the smoke and blew it around. The Tungrians had done their job well, though, and Ferox could feel the heat from twenty paces away, even though the only wood available was damp, so that its smoke was thick and black. Now and again the wind carried the smell of burning flesh, the scent lingering even after the skin and fat must have burned away. It was the smell of death, and he had never cared for the Roman custom of watching a man being cremated. The smoke reminded him of the burning thatch in the old fort and not for the first time he wondered whether or not he had done the right thing in ordering the retreat. Had he killed Annius and all those men or saved the survivors from being surrounded and slaughtered inside the ramparts? Instinct and reason told him that they had had to leave, and that the supports should have come much sooner. He wondered about Flaccus – and about the plausible Crispinus, standing just a few feet away in a black cloak.
With a great flare of sparks, the piled wood collapsed, letting the remnants of the body fall, and soon the remains of Titus Annius, centurion of Legio XX Valeria Victrix and lately commander of cohors I Tungrorum, would mingle with the rest of the ash. When it cooled they would gather some of the ash in an urn and bury it, letting the rest blow on the four winds. The tombstone was already being carved and would be erected in nine days’ time.
It was almost time for the funeral banquet, although thankfully Titus Annius’ will had stated that he wanted this to be simple, a soldier’s meal and not some great feast. They had brown bread and a stew made with salted bacon and hard tack biscuit, all to be washed down with posca, and not just his own men, but any soldier who passed was welcome to join. It ought not to take long, once a libation had been poured, and Ferox was glad. He had never understood the way the Romans would laugh and joke so soon after burning the remains of a friend. Titus Annius had gone on his own journey to the Otherworld or wherever it was that Romans went. Did the man truly believe in the Elysian Fields? Ferox met so many Romans who did not seem to believe in the soul and thought the whole essence of a man ended with death, or slowly faded away into nothingness.