The Forest House (12 page)

Macellius Severus secured supplies and rations for the entire Legion, directed quartering, and acted as general liaison officer between the populace — both Briton and Roman - and the army. In theory, he also represented the interests of the civilian population. In requisitioning supplies for the Legions, he was required to see that the people who provided them were left with adequate food and manpower to avoid driving them to revolt. Hence the actual management of the Ordovia lands around Deva lay more in his hands, except in time of war, than in those of the legionary Commander.

His office, small and austere, and constructed with a rigid economy of space, somehow accommodated a daily overflow of civilians and military personnel, with a long string of complaints, requests and petitions. Sometimes Macellius, who was not a small man, seemed as if physically forced into a corner.

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He had almost finished with this morning's accumulation. Seated on a kind of folding chair and frowning at a roll of parchment in his lap, he was pretending to listen patiently to a plump and effeminate townsman in the toga of a Roman citizen who had been talking uninterruptedly for about twelve minutes. Macellius could have stopped him at any time, but as a matter of fact he had not heard one word in twenty; he was reading the supply list. It would have been rude to turn away a petitioner simply to study a list; it cost nothing to let the man talk while he read it. In any case, he had heard enough to know that Lucius Varullus was simply saying one thing over and over with a number of oratorical variations.

"Surely you don't wish me to go to the Legate, Macellius," the falsetto voice continued querulously.

Macellius rolled up the list and put it aside, deciding he had listened long enough.

"You can if you like, of course," he protested mildly, "but I doubt if he'd give you even this much of a hearing, if he had time for you at all." He knew his Commander well. "You must remember that these are restless times. A certain amount of sacrifice . . ."

The plump underlip of the man across the table went out in protest. "No, no, of course not," he said, waving his hand in a delicate gesture. "My dear fellow, no one, absolutely no one is readier than I to realize that, but how can I work my farms and my gardens if all the men in the area have been levied?

Surely the peace and comfort of Roman citizens must be the first consideration? Why, I've had to put my landscape gardeners to work in the turnip patches! You should see my flower gardens!" he concluded mournfully.

"Now really," Macellius said offhandedly. "I'm not responsible for arranging native conscriptions."

Silently, he cursed the shade of the Emperor who had extended Roman citizenship to fools like this. "I'm sorry, Lucius," he said — he was lying, and wasn't sorry at all - "I can't do anything for you now."

"Oh, but my dear fellow, you simply must."

"Look," said Macellius briefly, "you're chasing the wrong horse.

Go to the Legate if you like, and see what kind of answer he gives you; I doubt he'll be anywhere near as patient as I have been. Bring over slaves from Gaul, or offer better wages." Or, he added silently,
get
out there with a pitchfork yourself and work off some of that fat.
"Now, if you please, I'm very busy this morning." He let his gaze fall on the scroll again and coughed discreetly
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Varullus started to protest, but Severus had already turned to his secretary, a skinny sad-looking youngster. "Who's next, Valerius?"

After Varullus had grumbled his way out, the secretary showed in a drover who had sold cattle to the Legions. Bonnet in hand, he begged the Excellency's pardon in stumbling market-Latin for troubling him, but the roads were so beset with bandits . . .

Macellius addressed the man fluently in his own Silurian dialect. "Speak up, man. What's troubling you?"

When the countryman poured out his story, it appeared that he had been hired to drive his cattle overland to the coast, and there were thieves and robbers, and the cattle already belonged to the Legion, and he was a poor man who could not support the loss of them to outlaws . . .

Macellius held up a hand. "All right," he said, not unkindly, "you want a military escort. I'll give you a note to one of the centurions. Take care of it, Valerius." He nodded to the secretary, "Give him a note to Paulus Appius and tell him to take care of escorting this army beef. No, man, don't apologize, that's what I'm here for."

When the drover had gone out, he added testily, "What's Paulus thinking of? Why in heaven's name did this come all the way up to me? Any decurion down the line could have handled it!" He drew breath, striving for his customary calm. "Well, send in the next one."

Next was a Briton named Tascio who had come about selling some rye. Macellius scowled. "I won't see him; that last lot he sold us was rotten. But we need it; grain's in short supply. Listen. Offer this gouger half of what he asks; and before you sign for the treasurer to give him his pay, get half a dozen of the cooks from the messes to come and look it over. If it's rotten or moldy, dump and burn it; rotten rye will give the men the burning sickness. If it's good, pay him the half agreed on, and if he gives you any trouble, threaten to have him flogged for cheating the Legion. Sextillus told me five men were poisoned by the damned stuff last time. If he still kicks up a fuss, turn him over to Appius," he went on, "and I'll put in a complaint to the Druid Curia, and what they'll do to him won't be half so kind. And by the way, if this lot is rotten put him on the blacklist and tell him not to come around here again. Is that clear?"

Valerius, looking sadder than ever, complied. For all his skinny poverty of appearance, he was extremely efficient at this sort of thing. As he started to leave, Macellius heard his incongruously husky bass rise in surprise.

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"Hullo, young Severus. You're back again?" Macellius heard a familiar voice reply, "Salve, Valerius.

Hey, take it easy, that arm's still sore! Is my father in?"

Macellius arose so precipitately that he upset his chair. "Gaius! My dear boy, I was beginning to worry about you!" He came round the desk and briefly clasped his son in his arms. "What kept you so long?"

"I came as soon as I could," Gaius apologized.

He felt the boy flinch as his grip tightened and abruptly let go. "What's wrong? Are you hurt?"

"Not really, it's nearly healed. Are you busy, Father?"

Macellius looked around the small office. "Nothing here that Valerius can't handle perfectly well." He regarded his son's dusty garments with disapproval, and said with some sternness, "Must you go about the camp dressed like a freedman or a native?"

Gaius's lips tightened briefly, as if "native" had stung. But his voice was matter of fact and without apology when he replied. "It's safer to travel this way."

"Humph!" But Macellius knew it was true. "Well then, couldn't you at least bathe and dress decently before coming into my presence?"

"I thought you might be anxious about me, Father," Gaius said "seeing that I'd overstayed my leave by a couple of days. With your permission I will go and bathe and dress. The only bath I've had this week was in the river."

"Don't be in a hurry.," Macellius said grumpily. "I'll come with you." He let his hand rest on the younger man's forearm, gripping it without words. For some absurd reason he always worried whenever Gaius was away that the boy would not return; he did not know why, for the youngster had always been very self-sufficient. Seeing the bandaged arm had frightened him. "Tell me what happened now; why the
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bandages?"

"I fell in a trap dug for boars," Gaius said. "One of the stakes went through my shoulder." His father paled, and Gaius added reassuringly, "It's all but healed now; doesn't even hurt unless I knock it against something. I'll be carrying a sword again in six weeks."

"How?"

"How did I get out?" The boy grimaced. "Some Britons found me and doctored me till I was on my feet again."

Macellius's face betrayed what he could not express. "I hope you rewarded them suitably." But Gaius appeared to understand the solicitude hidden behind the indirection.

"On the contrary, Father, hospitality was offered in a noble manner and I accepted it in kind."

"I see." Macellius did not press the matter. Gaius tended to be touchy about his British blood.

At the military baths just outside the stockade, Macellius chose a low chair while Gaius was stripped and scrubbed by the army attendants. Once his personal slave had been despatched to their house for clean garments, Macellius lay back in his chair wondering what the boy had been up to now. There was a difference in him, something more than could be explained by the injury. For a moment he wished himself back in his office dealing with questions that could be quickly dismissed.

Presently Gaius emerged from the bath looking young and very clean in his short wool tunic, his damp hair curling down his back. He sent for a barber-slave and as the man clipped the unruly hair to proper military shortness and scraped away the nascent beard, he recounted his adventure. Clearly he was leaving some things out, thought Macellius. Why had Clotinus Albinus not reported the accident? He felt a moment of gratitude at being spared the kind of unpleasantness any irregularity would involve.

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"You should have a regular army doctor look at that arm," he said simply when the tale was done.

Gaius protested irritably, "It's doing well enough." But Macellius insisted, and after a certain amount of delay old Manlius came and unbound Cynric's careful bandages, and probed and poked and pressed until Gaius was white-faced and sweating. Then he solemnly pronounced that the arm was healed as well as if he had had the care of it from the beginning.

"I could have told you that —" muttered the boy, refusing to meet his father's eyes.
Good,
thought the older man,
he knows better than to argue with me . . .

Gaius lay back limply, his good hand falling away from a fumbling attempt to repin his tunic, yet he grinned as Macellius reached out and refastened it, reaching up to take his father's hand in his own.

"I told you I was all right, Dad, you old Stoic," he said roughly. Macellius thought again,
He's a
handsome boy; I wonder what sort of devilry he's been up to? Well, he has a right to a certain
amount of folly. Better not let him know that, though . .
." He cleared his throat, glad that no one else was using the bathhouse at this time of day.

"So, what excuse can you offer for overstaying your leave, Son?"

Gaius nodded at his arm.

"I understand; of course you couldn't travel with that injury, and I'll speak to Sextillus. Another time, allow for accidents. But you're not some patrician puppy who can slack. Your grandfather was a farmer outside Tarentum, and I've had to work hard to get this far. Gaius, what would you say to not going back to Glevum?"

"Do you mean they would courtmartial me for overstaying leave because of an accident -?" He looked so upset that Macellius hastened to reassure him.

"No, no, I didn't mean it that way. I mean, would you care to be transferred to my staff? I need someone to help me here, and when I spoke to the Governor on his way north he agreed to make an exception and let you serve with me. It's time I started introducing you to my connections here. The
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Province is growing, Gaius. Intelligence and energy will carry a man far. If I could rise to the rank of Equestrian, only one rung below the nobility, who knows how far you might go?"

He saw the trouble in Gaius's eyes, and wondered if his son was in pain. It seemed a long time before the boy replied. "I've never understood why you stayed here in Britain, Father. Couldn't you have risen more quickly if you had been willing to go elsewhere? It's a big empire."

"Britain isn't the whole world," said Macellius, "but I like it." His face grew grave. "They offered me a Juridicus post once in Hispania. I should have taken it, if only for your sake."

"Why Hispania, Father? Why not of Britain?" As soon as the question left his lips, Gaius seemed aware that it had been a mistake. Macellius felt his own face stiffening.

"The Emperor Claudius was so busy trying to reform things at home, from the Senate and the coinage to the state religion, that he never got around to reforming the military laws," Macellius explained, "and the emperors who came after him seemed to think that he, as the official conqueror of Britain, knew what he was doing."

"I don't understand what you mean, Father."

"I visited Rome just once," Macellius said. "And Londinium is more like the Rome I was brought up to honor than Rome is now. The Empire is in the devil of a mess, Gaius; that shouldn't come as any surprise to you." He frowned, then with sudden irritability turned on the slave who stood by their chairs and demanded, "Get us something to eat, don't stand there gawking."

When they were alone he turned back to Gaius, "What I'm going to say now comes under the official heading of treason; when I finish speaking, forget you heard it won't you? But as an officer of the Legion I have a certain responsibility. If there's ever going to be any reform, it may have to come from the Provinces, like Britain. Titus . . .this is dangerous talk . . .Titus is well meaning, but he seems to care more about increasing his popularity than governing the Empire. Domitian, his brother, is at least efficient, but I've heard rumors that his ambition may outrun his patience. If he falls heir to the purple and becomes Emperor, then what little power is left to the Senate and People of Rome may disappear.

"I would advance my family in the old way, by service and solid achievement, one generation following another," Macellius continued very deliberately. "You asked me why I stayed in Britain. Julius Classicus
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tried to create a Gallic empire not ten years ago. After Vespasian crushed him, he decreed that auxiliaries could not be used in the country of their birth, and the Legions must be drawn from a mix of men from all over the Empire. That's why I had such a hard time gaining permission for you to serve in Britain, and why, it might have been wiser for us to seek our fortunes in Hispania, or somewhere like that. Rome's deepest fear is that the subject nations may rise again . . ."