The Boat of Fate (17 page)

I rode back.

‘Ask the chief,’ I said carefully, ‘exactly how he stores his grain.’

The answer, as far as I could make it out, was as I had expected.

I nodded. ‘And how long does it take for a pit to sour?’

More voluble explanations.

‘Very good,’ I said. ‘Now ask him, if you will, how many seasons for a hut to stale?’

Before the question was out I saw their faces alter. Hands flew beneath ragged tunics, emerged brandishing daggers. One man ran at me, fumbling to draw an ancient sword. I yelled ‘Arcadians ...’ and rode into him, not wanting to cut him down. He went over handsomely, crouched cowering from the hooves. I heard the screech of drawn steel behind me, a thud and a groan. I wheeled, but the thing was over almost as soon as it had begun. My Germans had deployed neatly, in a half-moon cutting the villagers off from the gate. One man lay doubled up, the grass reddening beneath him; the rest were already flinging down their arms. Faced with the glittering ring of broadswords, there was nothing else to be done. It had been a stupid attack, but they were a stupid, brutal-looking mob. I beckoned to the nearest of the Burgundians. ‘Open the walls of a few of these huts,’ I told him. ‘You’ll find as much grain as you want, buried under the floors.’

He must have understood more Latin than he was prepared to admit, for he set to with a will. The others soon caught on; the prisoners were herded to one side and by nightfall we had unearthed more than enough for our needs. I suppose it was robbery, but necessity had already begun to harden me. I called the headman to me again. He came, flanked this time by a pair of burly guards. ‘Tell him,’ I said, ‘he has been guilty of tax evasion, also armed rebellion, the penalty for which, were I to arrest him, would certainly be death.’

He set up a wailing as the words were translated; the Germans thumped him unfeelingly, and he subsided. I stared down at him from the horse. ‘Tell him,’ I continued, ‘that despite this I will take no action, believing his behaviour to be the outcome of stupidity and greed. Also that in spite of his dishonesty I will still give him a note for one half of the amount we have taken from him. The rest I levy as a fine; I’ve left ample to last the village till next harvest. For his part he will provide a waggon, if these folk own such a thing, and a man to drive it. It may return after it has delivered the grain to Burdigala. Ask him if he considers this just.’

The protestations that ensued left me a little more cheerful; it seemed my victims considered themselves well reprieved. To make my tiny triumph complete, at first light next day we ran into a straggling band of men answering vaguely the description of the people we sought. What followed could scarcely be termed a fight; three or four made a token resistance, the rest were run down as they bolted from the horses. We rode into Burdigala two days later with the fruits of victory; the face of Vidimerius, when he waddled out and spotted the loaded cart, was a memory I treasured for months.

He called me to his quarters that evening to give an account of myself. I explained as concisely as I could how I had come by my windfall. He seemed pleased enough, until I mentioned the remission of the taxes. ‘That was a thing you had no right to do,’ he said moodily. ‘Why couldn’t you just collar the bloody lot and be done with it? They’d have been just as satisfied to get away with their skins. A chit from the Army’ll carry no weight at all when it comes round to assessment time; we’re not supposed to mess with civilian affairs anyway. All it needs is some officious little imp in the Praefecture writing to Mediolanum that we’ve been currying favour with the natives or inciting rebellion and they’ll be looking for somebody’s head to put on a dish. Mine, not yours. Though I’ve no doubt,’ he finished darkly, ‘we could come to a compromise, as far as that’s concerned.’

I answered, curtly, that I had not wished to be unfair; and he burst into a rumble of laughter. ‘Unfair?’ he said. ‘You’ll be telling me next the Empire runs on justice and brotherly love. Act your age.’ I was silent; and he regarded me curiously. ‘You’re not one of those chanting, branch-waving damn Christians, are you?’ he said. I gathered from his expression that as far as he was concerned that would be the final straw.

I answered him as honestly as I could. ‘I was brought up to believe in Christ,’ I said, ‘but I’m no longer sure.’

He grunted, reaching for the wine. ‘Take my tip,’ he said. ‘Believe in nothing. Except yourself. Get yourself in a hole and no God’s going to come swooping out of the sky to get you out of it. That much I’ve found out ...’

I had many occasions, later, to remember his words.

For some weeks after that I was kept busy in and about the Praetorium. What records the regiment had managed to maintain were in a hopeless muddle, as I found when I tried to enter my contribution of grain. Here was one field at least in which a Roman could score over any Burgundian. A room had been prepared for me; I had the books carried to it and applied myself, vigorously at first, to clearing up the confusion. I had inherited some of my father’s passion for tidiness and order, and my four years with my uncle had left me with a good grasp of account-keeping if nothing else. I made little progress; and it dawned on me by degrees that nobody, least of all Vidimerius, wanted the books put straight. On paper there were five hundred Loyal Arcadians, but the unit had been under strength since its formation, and the Duke was quite content to have it stay that way. He drew allowances, and pay when it arrived, for a full complement, calmly pocketing the difference. He treated the men fairly and generously enough; what remained he considered spoils of war. That and other devices principally supported his standard of living; some of his evasions were breathtaking, while any queries that did happen to arise were, of course, explained away as the results of language difficulties. I none the less persisted, chasing imaginary totals grimly round and round dog-eared ledgers, till Vidimerius lost patience. ‘Much as I admire your industry and learning,’ he said, with an access of sarcasm I wouldn’t have believed possible in a German, ‘I would still be grateful if you kept your fingers out of what doesn’t bloody well concern you. ...’ Afterwards he explained his philosophy to me. It had at least the merit of simplicity. ‘Everybody cheats everybody else,’ he said kindly, as if to a recalcitrant child. ‘The farmers and tied men cheat the landlords, the landlords cheat the tax-collectors. The little landlords, that is; the rich ones take care not to pay any tax at all. The collectors cheat the Praefecture; the Prefecture cheats the government; and the government are the biggest bloody robbers of the lot. Now one honest man, in the middle of all that, is going to stick out like a sore thumb; he’s going to be investigated as an oddity by everyone in the Province, which is just what I don’t want to happen to me ...’ After that there was nothing more to be said, or done.

Life settled into a routine and I for one found time beginning to hang heavily on my hands. Patrols were infrequent and generally uneventful; and in any case Vidimerius was usually content to send his men out in charge of one of their own officers. What he had warned me of was largely true; I was a supernumary, and my days were very much my own. The Burgundians, as Ruricius had pointed out, kept themselves to themselves and apart from the odd grunted word had no real time for any Roman; and I had even less inclination to seek the company of my fellows. Tonantius was pleasant enough when I had to deal with him, but apart from the accident of our origins we had nothing really in common, while Ruricius I have already described. He could be amusing company for an hour over a jar of wine, but his limited range of interests soon began to pall. Mostly, his talk was of women; those he had laid, those he had yet, as he put it, to get his leg across. Occasionally he tried to rouse me to a similar enthusiasm, but the fire that had burned so fiercely in Rome seemed to have reduced itself to ash and embers. If I couldn’t understand Ruricius, he certainly couldn’t understand me. I overheard him once confiding to the Hispanian that I was an odd sort of character, either stuck-up from birth or as queer as a coot; after that I avoided him more than ever.

Under the circumstances it was probably natural that I should gravitate to the University. It possessed an extremely fine library; I presented myself there one afternoon and asked for the curator. There was some delay before he appeared; my arrival had caused a considerable stir. Once he had recovered from his astonishment at the spectacle of a literate soldier he was more than helpful. I told him I wished to study the known history of Britannia, my mother’s Province; it was a project I’d often considered in Rome, and always deferred. He hurried off immediately, returning with an armful of books. ‘This is all we have available at the moment,’ he said, ‘though there is some interesting material I might be able to lay my hands on for you if you so desired. It doesn’t seem to be a country that’s ever appealed much as a subject for authorship, though it’s belonged to us now for nearly four hundred years.’

I told him there was ample to start on; he showed me to a side room where I could work undisturbed, and left me. I sat for a few moments, hands spread flat on the table, eyes closed. The scents of oil, ink and 'leather that pervaded the place reminded me vividly of my father’s study in Italica; it took little effort of imagination to convince myself I was back there, that the last four hectic years had never intervened. Any moment now I would hear Ursula’s quick, scurrying step pass the door, or the soft swishing of my mother’s robe. I opened my eyes, shook my head and settled down to work. I read till nightfall; much still lay untouched when the library closed for the day. I left considerably refreshed; for the moment at least my problems were solved.

Shortly afterwards, the even tenor of life in Burdigala was disturbed by news of the death of Theodosius and the subsequent elevation of his son. Some there were who found the prospect of a boy Augustus alarming, but Vidimer was not one of them. ‘Stilicho’s been made regent,’ he said. ‘And he’s a good man, although he’s a bloody Vandal. Marched with him once, just after we were formed. Good fighting man.’ For Vidimerius of all folk to make such an admission was remarkable, for there was little love lost between any of the Germanic tribes. It was the one thing, as the Duke himself had pointed out, that had prevented them from uniting years back in the time of anarchy and sweeping us completely off the board. ‘What’s more to the point,’ said my commanding officer, running his tongue reflectively round his lips, ‘is what we stand to get out of it. Pay’s far enough behind again already, the Gods know .... Should be worth a few solidi apiece at the very least.’ He fixed me with a sudden beady eye. ‘You’ll see a bit of fun then,’ he said. ‘You mark my words. ...’

In the event, Honorius paid a handsome donative. Vidimer at least made sure of his share of the prize; a full half of the strength of the Arcadians was despatched to the borders of Aquitania to escort the bullion waggon home. The excitement the Duke had prophesied followed soon after.

The regiment paraded at first light the day after the money arrived; Vidimerius presided grandly over the occasion, seated at a trestle table heaped enticingly with dully glinting stacks of coins. To either side a huge Burgundian, sword unsheathed, ensured the equitable distribution of the bounty. The Duke seemed already somewhat the worse for wear; his little piggy eyes, outlined now in festive red, watched suspiciously as each man stepped up, saluted smartly, gathered his money and withdrew to the ranks. Our shares were left till last; Vidimerius gave them to us personally, accompanying each with an unpleasant leer and an admonition to use the money well. I had little doubt what Ruricius at least would do with his; mine went to swell my personal savings, which I had already lodged, through the good offices of my librarian friend, in the University safe.

I would have returned to my books, but I found the library, in common with the rest of the public buildings, closed down. There was good cause. I would not have believed that four hundred dour and massive Germans could have been so rapidly transformed had I not the evidence of my own eyes. By midday most of Vidimerius’ men were roaring drunk; by nightfall they were like fiends from the Pit. They roamed the streets in droves, chanting and bellowing; it was a brave citizen, or one with pressing business, who showed his nose beyond his own front doors. A few wineshops attempted, unwisely, to put up their shutters. It was to no avail; the Arcadians simply removed them, by the quickest means that came to hand. In time, as establishment after establishment ran dry, the din lessened somewhat, but the streets were still far from safe. One couldn’t step far in the blackness without tripping over a snoring German; and there was always the possibility that he might settle the question of rights of way with an axe or sword. At dawn Burdigala wore a beleaguered look, its houses bolted and barred, its streets strewn with debris; what Arcadians remained on their feet tottered about uncertainly, grey in the dim light, like ghosts from their own fabulous Hell. But by midday the uproar was as bad as ever again, for many traders in the vicinity, scenting quick profits, had hastened to load cargoes of wine for despatch to the town. The first consignment never reached the walls; after that some sort of discipline was imposed and things became more orderly, though far from normal. It was amazing to me that nobody was killed; our only casualties were a cavalryman severely bitten by a pig, and Ruricius, who succeeded sometime during the fracas in falling from top to bottom of a flight of stairs. He was lucky to break only his collarbone, and not his neck.

A week or so after peace was finally restored I received an invitation to dinner at the house of the University librarian, Sallustius Patermuthis. I accepted eagerly. The visit would be a welcome break with routine; he was a kindly man, retiring and shy for all his learning, with whom I had already formed a tentative friendship. Frequently on my visits to the library Patermuthis would call me to his office to examine this or that manuscript or map, for my interest in Britannia had stimulated him to research of his own, and he liked nothing better than to impart some titbit of freshly-gleaned information. Also the invitation was a signal honour; the curator was well thought of in Burdigala, and highly influential at the University.