CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Municipium Aelium Karnuntum,
Capital of Pannonia Superior
November 8th, 166 CE
Dearest Husband, he read, three days later.
For a moment he closed his eyes and smiled. If there was a somewhere . . . afterward, outside of time . . . he thought Mary was smiling too, and from the best neighborhood, she and their children. Mary and Julia would have liked each other and little Claudia would have gotten on with the kids like a house on fire.
I told Mary not to mourn me too long if I died in the field, and she said the same thing back at me—said a car or a stroke could do the same thing as an IED. Fortune loans things to us, it doesn’t give them.
Next to having Julia here—and that wasn’t going to happen until he was convinced it was safe . . .
Which recent events have shown this is not, yet, he thought, touching the scab on his ear.
—reading Julia’s letter was as close to complete happiness as he was likely to get. Especially since he was sitting next to a fireplace, with a good lamp, a mug of watered wine and a bowl of dried figs. The cut earlobe had been disinfected and now was only an itch. He read on:
The vilicus is at last convinced that you indeed meant to convey your auctoritas here to me and accordingly the timber for the new construction at the vicus you wish to establish on the estate is being cut and stacked to season.
That meant by this time next year the married couples in the familia rustica would all have their own three-room cottages, starting with ones a bit bigger for the pars rustica’s managerial staff. Each cottage would have a fireplace-cum-brick-stove in the kitchen and all would stand around a village . . . vicus, in local terminology . . . square. One with a school and a clinic.
That would free up the pars rustica for business, not least enlarged spinning and weaving rooms where the womenfolk could earn some cash, which was a valuable idea of Paula’s.
Not much cash, but any wage was a start.
Then we’ll gradually extend the principle and eventually end up with a free labor force . . . one quite a bit smaller than it is now. It’s not as if they don’t have the concept of regular wage labor here, though it’s low status from an aristo’s viewpoint. And I’ll see that the ones we won’t need on the villa get a good start, land north of the river or enough to set up in a trade, they deserve it.
The school was possible right away because there wasn’t any law here against teaching slaves to read, the way there had been in the South before the Civil War. Quite the contrary, slaves were often trained in things like accounting, or apprenticed to trades, or were schoolteachers or doctors or whatnot themselves; their masters regarded it as a profitable investment and the slaves got a better chance of eventual manumission.
Rural slaves working in the fields usually didn’t get any education except from their elders, learning by doing . . . but then, neither did free peasants, mostly. The plan for gradual emancipation on the estate would follow.
Even bankers here tended to be either slaves or more often freedmen or their sons; it could be a lucrative occupation, but was rather low status.
Artorius grinned: he’d started on the free-labor project with the vilicus himself. The man had been planning on self-purchase from his peculium anyway, and had leapt at the chance of a contract, with him as a cost-free freedman paid a share of the profits . . . and with double-entry bookkeeping to keep him honest.
The tricks to get around that hadn’t been invented yet, though he supposed they would be as soon as the new system spread very far. There was always some wise boy or clever girl who went aha! and reached for the shears when an opportunity wandered by bleating and blinking.
He read through the rest of the letter, chuckling occasionally at little Claudia’s innocently acute questions, or Julia’s observations like:
. . . it is amazing how many more social calls we receive from the ladies and daughters of the gentry hereabouts, now that I am no longer the scandalous widow of a bankrupt spendthrift gambler living in semi-exile on her brother’s charity, but instead the wife of a wealthy Imperial comites who owns this estate . . . and now that the Emperor himself attended our wedding ceremony. Which I hardly noticed . . .
“Dry, that’s my Julia,” he said to himself. “But she’ll be impeccably polite . . . and even enjoy their company.”
. . . my mother the lady Claudia is reconciled to a journey to Carnuntum when you say danger is past, especially in the new coach with brass springs, which she has enjoyed using on visits in the neighborhood, not least for the envy and emulation it arouses. The prospect of dining often with the Emperor has proven an even more amazing tonic to her health. The house you suggest sounds very comfortable; especially the fireplaces. For which I thank you, dearest one who warms my heart . . . and the rest of me too.
“You’re welcome,” he said, grinning again at the triple play of metaphor. “You are one clever lady. Smarter than I am. And it was your idea to buy the house and then make her a present of it instead of renting. Which will make your brother happy too, since it’s even further from Sirmium than the villa is.”
And last but not least, you may expect your child, hopefully a son, soon after the ides of July of next year.
He read that twice before it sank home. He gathered his breath for a whoop, but a knocking at the door interrupted it.
An armored marine guard opened the portal, and Artorius had made clear that he wasn’t to be disturbed except for something important—or for the Emperor, who’d arrived a couple of hours ago and after a brief greeting had retired for a snack and a good night’s sleep. One thing you could count on with Marcus Aurelius was that he wasn’t going to spend the day on a couch having grapes dropped in his mouth, or all night partying. Or even having a philosophical symposion, which was his version of a wild night out.
“Your client Marcus Triarius is here, sir,” he said. “Will you—”
Mark burst through, waving a sheet of paper. “Got it! Got it, Prof!” he caroled. “We got it, we got it, sooooogottit!”
Gritting his teeth, Artorius made himself set the letter aside. Duty called . . .
In a shrill, unpleasant voice, as the man said. I’d forgotten the many reasons . . . besides getting blown up myself after Jake getting blown to bits all over me . . . I decided to get out of the Army.
“Chisels and saws and axes and adzes . . . is that a word? . . . and nails,” Mark burbled as he sank into a chair—or onto a stool, more accurately. “Oh, my.”
“Who?”
“The Quadi, half a dozen of their chiefs, acting through agents. Multiple purchases of woodworking tools, and starting months ago. It’s not as if they can’t make this stuff themselves, so you can assume their own smiths are working overtime too. People have been selling all they can make or get. Here, and in Vindobona and some other places too. Prices up too. That was what first put us on to it, before we got to the who. There have been complaints from camp prefects, boatbuilders . . . ”
“Boats,” Artorius said. “Someone’s building boats over on the Quadi side . . . up the north-bank tributaries. Moving them at night, hiding them in marshes . . . ”
“Lots of boats, evidently,” Mark said. “Got the basic data from Josephus—he activated his contacts around here and told them to get him info on any unusual purchasing. He says the . . . tensions was the word he used . . . are probably the reason why nobody else noticed this yet.”
There hadn’t been a formal declaration of war on the Quadi; then again, they weren’t really at peace with Rome right now either. They didn’t really have governments yet in the sense he—or the Romans—used the word, though they were on that road. There just weren’t any authorities that could stop raiding by subchiefs or ambitious would-be chiefs on other tribes or the Romans anyway.
Only fear, the dread of retaliation, kept would-be raiders in line.
All that meant trade continued, but with everyone doing it as fast as they could, in out-of-the-way spots, and keeping quiet about it. And nobody venturing far into the other side’s territory. Which would reduce the quantity and quality of gossip, for a while.
“What are they building boats for?” Artorius asked the air.
“Ah . . . to cross the river?” Mark said.
“OK, but why?” Artorius said, as much to himself as to the other man. “All right, they know we’re going to attack them, so they’re planning on doing unto others, meaning us, before we get a chance to do unto them. But where, and why?”
He popped a dried fig into his mouth and offered the bowl to Mark, who took one absently and poured himself a cup of watered wine.
“Well, it would let them cross the river faster,” the younger man said, in intervals between chewing. “More of them doing it all at once.”
“Bingo. But why? The Pannoniorum classis isn’t . . . couldn’t be . . . big enough to patrol the whole river at once, so they just have to go where the Roman ships aren’t and cross there. It’s only three hundred yards, not the English goddamned Channel!”
“Ummm . . . another fig? Thanks, I skipped dinner without noticing, doing the final collation and cross-checking. So maybe they want to cross all at once because they’re planning on attacking somewhere the Romans . . . we Romans, I suppose . . . are, instead of somewhere we’re not? Then they’d need to get their men across all at once, wouldn’t they? So the first bunch wouldn’t all get chopped up before the second lot arrived?”
Mark Findlemann had little interest in things military, and not much knowledge of them—his chosen specialty area had been the spread of libraries in the Roman Empire and the Roman publishing industry, of all obscure and arcane things. But there was absolutely nothing wrong with his ability to worry compulsively at any problem with the fangs of logic.
“Attacking into the teeth of a waiting Roman army would be suicide, especially given our new weapons, unless—” Artorius began.
His eyes grew wide. He looked out the window—this room had one, four-by-six-sized piece of glass in a wooden framework.
Looking out at a dark rainy autumn night, twenty hundred hours, nearly everyone’s asleep, including the Emperor and most of his Praetorian guardsmen. The perfect time and place to force a close fight, at knife distance, where artillery is irrelevant, it’s all chaos and unit discipline doesn’t matter nearly as much because it’s just a gigantic brawl . . .
Artorius sprang to his feet, and snatched up his new spatha where it lay across a table with the belt wrapped around the scabbard. Four steps took him to the door and he ripped it open. The two marine sentries stiffened.
“An attack! Attack from the north bank! Sound the alarm, sound the alarm! Notify the fleet prefect, the Praetorian Prefect”—who would take care of informing the Emperor—“the legate of the Fourteenth and the town garrison! Turn everyone out! Now, now!”
He’d look like a wimpy idiot if he was wrong. If he was right . . .
* * *
Ah, now I could purr, speaking of leopardesses, Filipa thought.
She was lying in a happy, drowsy tangle with Sarukê, who’d said between endearments and gasps that making love on sheepskins in front of a fire was very homelike, reminding her of a wheeled hut on the Pontic steppe in wintertime, only with more room and privacy.
Their bedroom here in the castra navalis had a fireplace, one so new you could still smell the mortar setting. It was perfectly useable, though. In fact, the bricklayers had diffidently advised her to keep at least a low fire burning as much as she could when she arrived four days ago, because mortar set slowly in wet chilly weather.
That I have no objection to, she thought.
Stone buildings were perishing cold here this time of year. With only heating systems designed for the Mediterranean, the lower-status wooden structures, or the small houses of the poor, were often more comfortable than anything more upscale that didn’t have the expensive luxury of a hypocaust.
This room was usually occupied by some sort of midlevel officer, probably. There was a fair-sized bed with the usual Roman stuffed mattress—stuffed with chicken feathers, in this case—on leather lacing across the frame. She’d had new bedding set up as soon as it arrived from Vindobona with the wagon carrying their personal gear, including the American novelty of linen sheets; there were a couple of chests, and a cupboard with drawers below. They didn’t waste glass windows at this level, but the shutter was good and tight.
And Sarukê was starting to nibble at her neck again. Filipa sighed happily—
Trumpets blared, cornua and tubae and then someone began banging thunderously on a naval drum. Neither was very far away, nor were the growing chorus of shouts and yells.
Sarukê shouted in her own language as she rocketed erect, and Filipa squawked as she was dumped aside. Normally she only felt the other woman’s sheer strength as an added, exciting bonus; it could be disconcerting when it showed this way, despite the muscle she’d put on herself with all the riding and arms practice and the sheer effort of living without machines.
The Sarmatian dropped back into Latin:
“Attack alarm is! Get ready, quick! Quick!”
They scrambled into their clothes, then the quilted subarmalis pullover jacks you wore under armor, then helped each other into their mail hauberks and fastened their sword belts. Sarukê slung her round shield over her back, her bowcase-quiver to her belt, and snatched up her helmet.
She didn’t put it on yet—it restricted your vision, and more so at night, and the Roman model she used had a convenient handle on the neck guard for carrying it around. Filipa did likewise, suddenly conscious of how dry her mouth was.
“Get you shield,” Sarukê said, all carnivore focus.
She’ll run toward the fight, Filip thought numbly.
As she picked up her shield—which she’d painted with Çѱ¹, for “Korea,” as a mordant joke. As far as she remembered the Three Kingdoms were just getting started back there, and Buddhism hadn’t even arrived among her remote ancestors yet.
It’s Sarukê’s instinctual response, and she really, really meant that stuff she said to the Prof, and she just assumes I’ll do the same. And I am, aren’t I?
“Stay behind me little bit in fight. Right side,” the Sarmatian said. “You guard, I lead, sword-sister.”
The door banged open and they trotted out and toward the second story of this barracks block, where the Prof had his quarters.
I’m running toward a knife fight in the dark with frothing barbarian savages, Filipa thought, a little dazed. This must be love!
* * *
“This is going to sound really strange,” Paula said. “But would you mind giving me a hug?”
“Not at all,” Mark said. “I could use a hug.”
They were alone in the map room, standing by the window. It was warmer than their private quarters—by mutual unspoken consent they’d all let Filipa and Sarukê have the one with the fireplace. Mark had found Paula still there when he returned, and they’d been chatting nervously. Now they simply stood with their arms around each other, looking out into the foggy darkness. Mark was uneasily aware that he was sweating, and that it wasn’t because they’d stoked up the fire, but he could tell she was too. Lights were going on outside, but he couldn’t see any details through the thick streaked glass.
“You don’t think I should . . . ” he said.
Paula snorted into his chest. “Don’t think you should grab a snickersnee and make an idiot of yourself and get in everyone’s way and get pointlessly killed?” she said. “No, I don’t. Any more than I will. We have bodyguards with us to handle anything personal.”
They were outside the door right now. A tribune—the Prof’s current official rank—couldn’t have private guards in a strictly military context.
“Fil will,” he said, and then, to keep his teeth from chattering: “I’m a poet and I don’t know it.”
“Fil’s being an idiot because she’s in love with Sandahl Barbarian Bergman redux,” Paula said. “Also she has some idea of what she’s doing, she and Sarukê work out at it every day, for better than eight months now. Jeremey’s being an idiot out of machismo, I think. The Prof is doing what needs to be done and he does know what he’s doing.”
“But I—” Mark began.
“You are the reason we’re not getting attacked in our sleep,” Paula said sharply. “So the Prof and the others get a chance to do something but wake up and say huh? whuzzat? ouchie! while someone spears them.”
“Well . . . ” Mark said; the thought did perk him up. “Yeah, I sort of am, aren’t I?”
Mind you, this is a military base, she thought. They’ve got sentries and walls and barred gates. They wouldn’t have been totally taken flat-footed. But the Prof did seem to think every second counted.
“Well, you guys all helped,” he said.
“We did, and so did Josephus . . . but you’re the one who picked out the pattern. The Prof is right, you’re the best at that. We might have gotten it in a day or two . . . but he was right about being in a hurry, too.”
“Hurrah,” he said, giving her final grateful squeeze. “You know, looking out the window isn’t going to do jack, so why don’t we have a drink by the fire and talk about . . . oh, our long-term goals?”
“Anything but tonight? Or you could tell me about growing up in Midwood. I’ll swap you stories about my ’hood.” She hesitated for a moment. “Or we could go to bed.”
He frowned. “I don’t think I could sleep . . . ”
“I meant together, Mark.”
“Oh!” he said. Then: “Oh!”
“I’ve been dropping hints.”
He winced. “I’m really not good at the nonverbal stuff, you know.”
“Duh, Mark. That’s why I just asked you straight out. Unless there’s someone . . . ”
“Uh, no. Certainly not! Ummm . . . yeah? Let’s. By all means! But why me, if you don’t mind me asking? I mean, you’re really gorgeous, and . . . ”
“And I really like you. You’re always smart. Funny a lot of the time. You’re kind even if you forget people exist a lot of the time. You’re not bad looking. I feel less lonely with you around.”
And you’re not a Roman man, she thought. Which makes you a real catch.
She could see he was warming to the idea.
And I can’t think of a better distraction from that battle out there, too.