Читать книгу Red Queen, White Queen - Henry Treece - Страница 11

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The Prefect’s room stank with incense, stale wine and sweat. It was very aristocratic sweat, of course, because his assembled Tribunes all came from Patrician families. But to Gemellus and Duatha, it was still sweat, the sort they knew when their leather-clad footmen marched in the sun or their horsemen rode for a stretch over rough country.

The Prefect was a man of sixty or more, lined and grey, worn thin and tender by ten years in an occupied country. His eyes were vacant and tired, his shoulders sagged, his waistline was too heavy to allow him to wear armour any longer, for the sheer discomfort of it all.

The Prefect sat at the white marble table which he had had transported specially from Italy when he first took up his command. Before him lay many scrolls and maps of the eastern Province. An amphora of Samian wine stood beside his lion-legged chair, and a bowl of grapes was by his thin elbow.

The Tribunes who lounged here and there in the room chewed continuously, or picked their fine white teeth, or sang little snatches of whatever camp song they felt was current at the time.

Gemellus and Duatha stood rigidly before the Prefect’s marble table, almost exhausted now as he came to the end of the indictments against them.

Then suddenly Gemellus heard that old man say, as his summing up of the whole enormity, ‘And to think that you two, brothers, should allow yourselves to forget the dignity of your profession and the sacred bonds of blood—it is stupid, unRoman and unnatural!’

When he had spoken, the Prefect waited, as though he wished his words to plough deep. Gemellus, accustomed to hearing such words, stood rigidly to attention, his eyes fixed a foot above those of the Commanding Officer. Duatha, his face now scarred and red from the thrashing it had received, swayed a little on his feet, his eyes half-closed.

The Prefect spoke again, as though his words had not yet carried their sting into the hearts of the men before him.

‘Brothers, I said. You, Gemellus Ennius; and you, also, Duatha Ennius, who sometimes call yourself, without claim, Ambrosius. Brothers of one father, I say. You did wrong to fight on that count alone.’

Suddenly Gemellus recalled the sight of the two hands upon the swords, and his strange recognition of something beyond himself at that moment. He turned, half-amazed, half-aghast.

Duatha looked back at him, his eyes still almost closed, but a wry little smile playing now about his lips.

Gemellus said, ‘You knew, Celt? You knew?’

Duatha Ennius nodded and made a sour grimace. ‘I knew and hated you for it. You are a Roman. I am what the Tribune called me, a bastard.’

Then he turned back to the Prefect and said, ‘I am sorry, Prefect. But you will understand that we of an alien folk are hot-headed. You will understand that we act from the heart and not the head, as you true Romans do. You will understand, and I pray that you will pardon.’

The bewildered Gemellus watched with contempt his half-brother fall to his knees in an attitude of abject defeat. This then was what he had heard about the Celts, that in battle they were like lions; but in defeat they were frightened children.

But that this coward should be a brother of his, that the Centurion’s blood should flow in his veins.... That was humiliating, degrading, impossible to bear.

Gemellus saluted and said, ‘Permission to speak, sir. I beg to be punished in accordance with the regulations of the Emperor, and then I beg that I may be posted to another Legion.’

The young Tribunes stopped yawning and nudging each other. They stared at the young Decurion with curiosity now.

The Prefect passed his hand tiredly through his thin hair and gave a small and bitter smile.

‘I will remind you, Decurion,’ he said tartly, ‘that you are a soldier. You will obey orders, not give them. You have been posted here, by chance, with a high reputation, both in Germany and in the Imperial Guard. It is not for me to ask myself whether there has been some mistake in the allocation of the small fame which you enjoy. I must accept it, as you must do, without question. So, you are a good soldier. That is understood. Your records state so much. And so is this—bastard, as he calls himself. A good soldier, in his own barbarian way. You are too good to cut each other to ribbons because of some foolish quarrel.’

He stopped for a while and seemed to be reading a long scroll, written in a meticulous hand and sealed with a small purple signet.

At last he seemed to come back from a long journey.

‘As for punishment,’ he almost whispered, ‘if this had happened at any other time, any other time at all, I should have bound you to posts in the middle of the parade ground, for three days and nights. And you would have been flogged, with thirty lashes, every hour—yes, dead on the hour. Yes, dead on the hour!’

Gemellus had seen this happen in Germany on two occasions, with legionaries who had raped local women. He knew that at the end of three days, no man who had suffered such punishment was ever anything but a brute imbecile again. He shuddered at the thoughts which the Prefect’s words flung up in his tired mind.

Duatha shrugged his shoulders now, as though he had escaped and was satisfied. He was a Celt, half-savage, a child at heart; he sensed that he was not to suffer as the Prefect had threatened, therefore he was content.

Then the old man stood up, a bent figure, without dignity. He came round the table and stood between the two soldiers, looking from one to the other, nodding all the time, as though weighing up their capabilities.

At last he sat down again with a little sigh, and said, ‘Your punishment shall perhaps be also your reward. You are fortunate in this, as you are fortunate in the moment you chose for your brawling. I have before me a report from the Procurator, Decianus Catus, of whom even you two must have heard.’

Gemellus nodded vaguely, but the Celt shook his head contemptuously.

The Prefect observed this with a slow smile, but went on.

‘On the orders of the Emperor himself, Decianus Catus has confiscated the kingdom of Boudicca, widow of Prasutagus, late king of the Iceni in the Eastern Province.’

Duatha shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘She is a she-wolf, Prefect. She deserves flogging. Her two daughters are little better. They merit little more than any other whores of the streets.’

The Prefect fingered the lobe of his right ear, ruminatively. Then he smiled and nodded.

‘How astute you are, Duatha Ennius,’ he said. ‘That is precisely the treatment which this Decianus Catus measured out to them, with a few extra trimmings for good measure. Yet, strangely enough, these Iceni do not seem to agree with the Emperor, Decianus—and you! Curious, isn’t it?’

One of the Tribunes, a lad of good family from Ostia, giggled at the old man’s words. The Prefect half-turned and the officer was silent once again, his face red with shame.

Then the Prefect said, ‘The Iceni and the Trinovantes have put on the war-paint, my wise young friend. Does that surprise you?’

Duatha whistled between his teeth.

‘The Trinovantes!’ he said. ‘But that is different. They are killers, to a man.’

The Prefect nodded. ‘I understand that well enough,’ he said, ‘without corroboration from a mere leader of Horse, and a Celt at that.’

Duatha looked down at his feet. But Gemellus felt suddenly free to speak, for this was a situation which he understood.

‘Sir,’ he said, ‘we are a western outpost. It will be some time before the eastern tribes turn in our direction. We shall have time to prepare and even to march to meet them. The Legate, Suetonius, will undoubtedly have crushed them before their rebellion can come to anything.’

The Prefect looked down at the table, smiling bitterly, his shoulders hunched and tired.

When he spoke, his voice was as weary as his body seemed.

‘What a thing it is to be young,’ he said. ‘To have all the movements worked out, as one might work out the shifts in a game of chess. But, alas, when one grows old, it is not like that at all. The game will play itself; the pieces will break the rules, whatever the fingers on them decree.’

He looked up at Gemellus as though the Decurion were a simple little child.

‘Decurion,’ he said, ‘the Legate, Suetonius, is away. I do not think I am violating any military secrets if I tell you that he has with him the whole of the Fourteenth and part of the Twentieth, besides Auxiliaries enough to capture Persia! It appears that he needs to make a progress through the West, to put the fear of Rome into a dozen tribes out there, and to clean up some of the religious beliefs of the area. So the Legate is not available now, you see. We are alone, my young friend.’

Gemellus stared at him in amazement.

‘I can understand that, sir,’ he said. ‘The position is difficult. But though the Second Legion stands alone for the moment, we can more than hold these rebels. We can take the road through Corinium and on to Verulamium, and we can....’

A Tribune who stood behind Gemellus sniggered and said audibly, ‘This one has seen a map somewhere!’

The others laughed at this, but the Prefect cut short the laughter with a wave of his pale hand.

‘Gemellus Ennius,’ he almost whispered, ‘you are a Decurion, not a Legate, my friend. You may understand how to drill ten men—but you do not yet know how to put five thousand men in the field and keep them supplied on a campaign such as this. No, it is not easy. You see, a third of the men here are useless—yes, useless. Some of them are down with marsh sickness, some of them are old and should have been discharged five years ago, some of them have broken the regulations and have got themselves native wives and native bastards....’

He looked away from Duatha as he said these words, then went on, a little more gently.

‘You see, Gemellus Ennius, we have been stationed here too long, watching for an uprising that never came from the West. Now that we are faced with one from the once-peaceful East, we are not ready, not able, hardly willing even to turn and face it.’

A young Captain made a step forward, his flushed face moved with emotion. ‘But, Prefect,’ he began, ‘we are Romans. We are ...’

The Prefect stared him to silence.

‘You are an inexperienced puppy, sir,’ he said. ‘A puppy whose father I have known all my life, and who begged me to take you on for training as a Staff Officer. You will be silent when I speak.’

The young Captain saluted and stepped back into the shadows, his head bowed.

Suddenly the Prefect looked up at Gemellus and said, ‘Why do you think I am telling you this?’

The Roman shrugged his shoulders and half-smiled.

‘I hardly dare try to answer your question, Prefect,’ he said, ‘for I have seen that you count as nothing even the opinions of your Tribunes.’

For a moment it seemed that the Commanding Officer might flare up at the young Decurion’s words. But he controlled himself, his tired muscles working in his grey face, and, putting the tips of his fingers together, he said, ‘I will tell you. A divine chance has been presented to me this day, just as it has been presented to you. On your part, you might have been flogged to death for brawling within the precincts of this fortress; on my part, I might have been left as hopeless tomorrow as I was yesterday. But the gods have seen to that; they have saved you from flogging and me from utter despair.’

Gemellus gazed at the old man, uncomprehending. He would have spoken, to ask what the officer meant, but was waved to silence again.

The Prefect said, ‘You are the son of my most trusted Centurion; so is this savage here, Duatha Ennius, the horseman. What chance was it that brought you together in my presence? The gods willed it, my friend. That is clear to me now. And why should I be so pleased? Because you are both warriors, men who will carry out the will of Rome when the need arises, trained soldiers. Within you both burns the flame of courage which your father once held; yet you are different men—one a true Roman, with a true Roman’s caution and ability for organisation and self-control; the other half a Celt, with all the speed, the sensitivity, even the madness, which such blood carries in it. Together, you might achieve great things—you might even put an end to this rebellion in the East.’

Duatha looked up now in astonishment.

‘Two men against the tribes, sir?’ he said. ‘What could we do that the whole of the Second Legion could not do?’

The Prefect began to shuffle the scrolls of parchment on his table.

‘Two men can often get where two thousand may not,’ he said. ‘The Legion cannot move from Glevum, partly because, if it did, the Western tribes would spill over the river and into our territory like flood-water, and partly because it would take us five weeks to be ready for such a campaign. We dare not move; we cannot move; yet if we did, spies would carry word of our preparations to the bloody queen, Boudicca, and we should be cut to shreds before we had marched ten miles. But two men could go tomorrow, tonight, even; and two men could go secretly, could hide in woods and march at night, without even the badger or the birds being any the wiser. Two men such as you, one who understands soldiering and one who knows the country and the people, who speaks the language.... Yes, two men could go—even four, if they were chosen rightly.’

Gemellus said, ‘You want us to go to Boudicca, sir? What are we to do when we find her?’

The Prefect said quietly, ‘Take a present from me, friend. Take her two presents.’

And as the brothers gazed down at him in astonishment, the old man reached under his table and brought out a soft deerskin case. He unrolled it carefully, and then sat back as the two men gasped with amazement at the beauty which lay unfolded before them.

Bright as the day they were forged, lay two daggers, their blades long and thin, engraved their length with curling arabesques, inlaid with gold, their points fine and wickedly sharp, their edges so keenly ground as almost to be invisible in the light of the flickering lamp. Gemellus gazed at the delicate red coral of the hilts, carved into the shape of a stag rising on his hind hooves—two knives for two brothers....

The Prefect watched them carefully, like an old wolf lurking in the den which sickness prevented him from leaving, as his prey walked into the trap.

‘Take these two knives to the Queen, Boudicca,’ he said. ‘And leave them where she will not forget them. It would be a shame for two such beautiful things to be lost, would it not?’