Druids (19 page)

There were soldiers stationed everywhere, even in the sleepiest villages. Many were Gaulish recruits who played with the children and joked with the women, but others were Roman legionaries, hard-faced men who laughed and joked with no one. They all reeked of garlic and were drilled, as Rix commented with grudging admiration, to perfection. Every man’s marching pace was the same measured length. They were as impressive in their

discipline as a horde of Germanic warriors in their ferocity.

For civilians as well as soldiers, tavemae were drinking places, meetinghouses, dens of thieves, and hubs of information. One evening found us entering a low-roofed tavema of stone and plas-ter on the road to Nemausus. Over the doorway a weather-beaten sign depicted a man with his hand around the neck of a red rooster larger than himself. The smell of sour wine, cheap ale, and un-washed bodies flooded out to meet us.

The windowless interior contained a number of wooden tables so close together you had to climb over one to reach another. The tables were obviously never washed; only the forearms of patrons removed the splinters.

We found seats, and I sent Tarvos to get our drinks-We had changed since our arrival in the Province. Now our faces were burned brown by the sun, and we wore the coarse belted smocks favored by native Provincials. Since none of us was willing to scrape off his beard, this was not much of a disguise, but at least we did not look so obviously alien.

“Don’t forget to order an extra measure of ale to take back to camp or Baroc will grumble all night about being neglected,” I called to Tarvos.

A big-bellied man sitting nearby turned at the sound of my accent. “Gauls, are you? From beyond the Province?”

I nodded.

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His eyes swept over us. “You don’t look like Hairy Gauts. Where are your plaid trousers? Barbarians all wear plaid trousers.” He spoke with drunken conviction.

Hanesa beamed at him. “Who needs trousers in a climate as sunny and welcoming as yours? We wear no leggings here.”

The man blinked owlishly at him. “You like this climate, do you? You wouldn’t think it was so wonderful if you had to live here. The business climate is terrible.”

“Ah? And why is that?” Hanesa leaned forward with an expression of such earnest sympathy that the other responded with a flood of words. People usually did. Hanesa had a gift.

“I’m in trade,” the man confided. “I do a nice little business in small pottery figures; idols, mostly, of the more popular gods and goddesses. For the home trade. I sell as far north as the Gabali, in Hairy Gaul. But it’s getting harder and harder to turn a profit.

“My principal investor is a Roman citizen with a villa in Mas-salia overlooking the harbor; he doesn’t have to worry. But I must pay bribes and hand-backs almost daily just to stay in business. Fraudulent contractors take my money and disappear with it. Craftsmen fail to meet deadlines and then offer me shoddy merchandise that even me barbarians won’t buy. And worst of all, I

live in absolute fear of having my personal property confiscated if I can’t pay my taxes, and the taxes go up every time the rooster crows. I tell you, barbarian, a little sunshine doesn’t make up for all that.” He took a massive gulp of his wine.

“You are abused indeed,” said Hanesa.

“Fate,” replied the other gloomily, “I did not have the right parents, you see. And I wasn’t bom in the right place. I’m not a Roman citizen. Just a poor man struggling to make a living …” His body heaved and let out a mighty belch.

My intuition told me he had reached that state of drunbenness when a man still knows what he is saying but no longer cares. I signaled Hanesa with my eyes. The bard leaned even closer to our new acquaintance and, through skillful questioning, uncovered a treasure trove of information while I listened.

The man’s name was Manducios, and he was of mixed blood, claiming Hellenes and Celtiberians among his ancestors. “In the Province grapes from many vineyards are emptied into one vat,” he explained.

He said that the already ruinous local taxes had recently been raised again to support the expanding military force. A new cavalry was being drafted from among the Narbonese Gauls, and

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additional soldiers—with insatiable appetites, according to Manducios—were being quartered on local people.

“Why so many soldiers in a land at peace?” Hanesa inquired.

Manducios ran a finger up one nostril, probed, withdrew the finger, examined it, then wiped it on his chest. “We’re at peace now but no one expects it to last. Peace isn’t profitable, and Cae-sar needs money.”

At the mention of Caesar, I saw from the comer of my eye that Rix, who usually sat quiet through such conversations, suddenly straightened and fixed his hooded gaze on Manducios. “I thought the man called Caesar was a proconsul of Rome. Surely such officials are not impoverished.”

The trader barked a cynical laugh. “Let me tell you about Gaius Caesar. My principal knows his family well. They were of equestrian rank and Caesar was born to the patrician class, the aristocracy of Rome. But from the beginning of his career he made a point of associating himself with the commoners, the plebeians. There arc more of them, of course, and thus he was able to build a large base of popular support.

“With his military background he also had the support of the fighting class, and was able to get himself appointed to Iberia at the time of the last Celtiberian uprising there. He was no indoor bureaucrat; he was personally responsible for leading Rome’s ar-mies to a great victory in Iberia that forced the rebels to submit once and for all after years of resistance.

“Caesar went back to Rome in triumph, enriched with the spoils of the Iberian campaign. With money to spend in the right places he was able to form Rome’s current ruling coalition with another general, Pompey, and an extremely wealthy merchant, a man called Crassus, who owns part of every warehouse and whorehouse in Rome. Their official title is the First Triumvirate.”

I had to ask, ‘ ‘How could three men rule together? If any tribe in free Gaul had three kings they would pull it apart in three separate directions.”

Manducios rolled his eyes toward me and took another drink.

“You’re right, barbarian, it’s a difficult situation. The three of them constantly struggle for power among themselves. In order to hold his own, Caesar originally spent lavishly, using the Iberian profits to create an air of personal magnificence, and showering the plebeians with gifts to keep their favor. Like my own paying of bribes, really, but on a higher level. Everyone does it. Everyone must,” the trader said gloomily.

He went on. “According to rumor, Caesar was on the brink of

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impoverishment when he persuaded the Senate to award him a ripe plum, the governorship of the Province. He needs money and he means to get it in Gaul.”

“But how? Through continually raising the taxes? He will strangle the very horse he rides,” I said.

“Not taxes; war! The surest way for Caesar to acquire another fortune is to mobilize the armies that the Senate has put under his command. Win or lose, armies in the field take plunder, and the cream of the plunder rises to the top. Tb the generals. Caesar is a superb general. Some claim he’s better than Pompey.”

“So he will start a war?”

Manducios pursed his lips and eyed his empty cup. I quickly signaled to Tarvos to have it refilled. “He can’t just go off and start a war because he wants one,” the trader explained. “He is answerable to the Senate in Rome, and the Senate won’t sanction a war without some sort of justification. War must appear to be necessary for the welfare of Rome, not just to enrich an individual.”

Recalling the history Menua had taught me, I nodded. I could not resist showing off my knowledge to this Provincial who kept calling us “barbarians”—which as I knew and he apparently did not was no more than a Greek word for people who did not speak Greek. Which I could, if necessary. By this time, I had drunk quite a lot of wine myself. “The Roman legions,” I said, “were sent to Iberia originally when Hannibal of Carthage was at war with Rome. Hannibal had bases in Iberia and the legions were sent to destroy them, then stayed to establish colonies. Rome subsequently annexed the Province because Narbonese Gaul is the land link between Latium and her Iberian colonies. Justification’ ”

Manducios squinted suspiciously. “How do you know so much?”

Close your mouth, my head warned me. Druids are not welcome in the Province now, the official religion of Rome condemns them.

Hanesa rescued me. “We learn from listening to traders,” he said quickly. “Traders know everything.”

Manducios was drunk enough to be easily mollified. He looked around blearily; I signaled Tarvos to get him a fresh drink. When he had downed half of it, I murmured, ‘ ‘You were saying? About Caesar? As you can tell, I am always anxious to leam.”

“Eh? Oh. Him. The new governor. I can tell you this: If he could lead a victorious army in this part of the world like the one

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he led in Iberia, he could go back to Rome with enough loot to put even Crassus in the shade. He might even be able to get the Senate to name him sole consul.”

Rix spoke up. “To have a war you must have an enemy. Who-”

At this moment a party of Roman officers entered the tavema. Talk slopped. Men huddled over their cups and kept their eyes lowered until the Romans had demanded and received the best wine the establishment had to offer. Then the officers arrogantly annexed for themselves the table nearest the door.

Talk resumed, but there was a guarded quality that had not been there before-Rightly deducing we would get little more from Manducios, I ordered enough additional wine for him to cloud his memories of us, and we left.

The eyes of the Romans followed Rix as we passed their table. Even in common garb he had a warrior’s style that they recognized and admired instinctively.

Vercingetorix always seemed to have a fire smoldering in him.

We traveled farther, we listened and learned more. Rix was an excellent companion, but was proving to be something of a handicap. When he was not scrutinizing the military, he was scrutinizing the local women, and they him. He might be a barbarian, but obviously they found him gorgeous. More often than I liked, Tarvos and I had to reclaim him from beds in situations that might have proved embarrassing or even dangerous.

As we made our way southward, one of Rix’s women was the wife of a prosperous olive oil merchant. Considerable ingenuity was involved in having Tarvos and Hanesa sneak a reluctant Rix out the back of the merchant’s large house while I, at the front, persuaded the merchant I had come all the way from Hairy Gaul just to purchase some of his wares.

He was both flattered and suspicious. “I find it difficult to believe that my oil, fine as it is, is known as far north as the land of the … what did you say your tribe was?”

“The Camutes.”

‘ ‘Yes, the Camutes. I do considerable trade with the Aedui, of course, but … how much did you say you were interested in contracting for?”

“1 didn’t say, not yet.” He was looking at me intently; I con’ centrated on imagining myself a trader, my spirit a trader’s spirit, and felt my flesh reforming in that particular combination of affability and avarice I had observed among the breed. “It de—

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pends on the quality and how soon you could ship it north. Olive oil is perishable and the summer is hot.”

We were standing on the long terrace fronting his sprawling white villa. Beyond a riot of flowers I could see a roadway curving behind the house. Out of the comer of my eye I kept watching for Rix and the others to retreat down that road.

“Our oil is bottled in stone and stoppered with the best cork,” me oil merchant was saying. “It will stay good indefinitely and I can ship within fourteen days. Or perhaps you would prefer to take it with you?”

“Mmmm.” I pretended to be considering. No sign of Rix making his escape. How long could I keep the man distracted? “Did you say you do business with the Aedui?”

“I have a customer among them who has pronounced our oil the finest available. He’s been responsible for a lot of business coming my way.”

Some intuition nudged me. “Who is this man? Would he vouch for you to our tribe?”

“No Gaul would doubt his word,” came the confident reply. “He is Diviciacus, vergobret of me Aedui.”

Vergobret was the title the Aeduans gave their chief judge or magistrate, a person of analogous position to our Dian Cet. Such an individual was of course a druid, and his word was beyond question.

My intuition had served me well. The unexpected connection between an Aeduan vergobret and a Provincial oil merchant was intriguing. 1 probed further, and the merchant, sensing a sale, obliged by being talkative.

He explained that though official policy had made druids persona non grata in Naroonese Gaul, Diviciacus had managed to acquire Roman friends. He had done this by repeatedly urging closer ties between his people and Latium—the opposite of Men-ua’s attitude. Diviciacus liked Roman luxuries.

The vergobret was brother to an Aeduan prince, Dumnorix, with whom he was engaged in an exceptionally bitter brotherly feud. “Dumnorix wants to be king of the tribe,” the merchant explained, “and to aid him in this ambition has swelled the ranks of his personal warriors by forming a military alliance with the neighboring Sequani,”

The Sequani! Briga’s tribe, overrun by Germanic invaders …

The merchant was saying, “Diviciacus responded by asking me to arrange for him to appear before me Roman Senate. I was happy to do so, he’s a valued customer. I not only got him an

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audience with the Senate but with the great orator Cicero himself, who was much impressed with him.

“Diviciacus petitioned the Roman Senate to support him against the ambitions of his brother, whom he claimed would be a bad king because he was too much under the Germanic influence permeating the Sequani. But the Senate refused me petition. They said the quarrel between Diviciacus and Dumnorix was an internal and tribal affair and did not involve Rome’s interests.