Give Me Back My Legions(28)

A minute’s worth of muffled talk followed. Whatever the sentries had expected, that wasn’t it. Arminius advanced no farther. Roman citizen or not, he would have been asking for trouble if he had. He knew how sentries’ minds worked. They were like dogs who carried spears. They had to decide for themselves whether he’d thrown them meat.

When one of them showed himself, Arminius knew he’d won. “You are expected, son of Sigimerus,” the man said. Somebody might have expected him, but these fellows hadn’t - not right away, anyhow. The sentry went on, “One of us will escort you to the governor’s quarters. Come ahead.”

“I thank you.” Arminius urged the horse toward the entranceway.

Inside the fortified encampment, Roman soldiers went about their business. They seemed as much at home as they would have inside the Empire. As far as they were concerned, they were inside the Empire - they brought it with them wherever they went. Arminius’ hands gripped the reins till his knuckles whitened. The gall they had! The arrogance!

A few Germans fetched and carried for the soldiers. Slaves? Servants? Hired men? It hardly mattered. They were traitors to their folk.

A pretty woman stepped out of an officer’s tent. Her fair hair blew in the breeze. When she saw Arminius, she squeaked and drew back in a hurry. She wasn’t quite dead to shame, then. She didn’t want a fellow German to know she was giving herself to an invader.

The legionary leading Arminius was blind to the byplay. “Here y’are,” he said. “You can tie your nag up in front of his tent.” The Roman also used army Latin. Equus was the formal word for horse. He said caballus instead. Arminius would have, too. And a German pony was a nag by Roman standards.

Going into the tent didn’t mean Arminius got to see Quinctilius Varus right away. He hadn’t thought it would. The Roman governor might be busy with someone else. Even if he wasn’t, he would make Arminius wait anyhow, to impress on the German his own importance. The tent was big enough to be divided into several rooms by cloth partitions. The man perched scribbling on a stool near the entry flap had to be a secretary, not Varus himself.

Because he was a prominent man’s secretary, he reflected his master’s glory. “And you are - ?” he asked, though he had to know. By his tone, he seemed to expect the answer, Nothing but a sheep turd.

Arminius might have tried to kill a German who sneered like that. But he knew how to play Roman games, too. “Arminius son of Sigimerus, a Roman citizen and a member of the Equestrian Order,” he replied, as he had to the sentries. “Who are you?”

“Aristocles, pedisequus to the governor.” The secretary sounded prouder of being a slave than Arminius did of being his father’s son. No German, no matter how debased, would have done that. Arminius wouldn’t have known what to make of it if he hadn’t seen it before among Roman slaves. The pedisequus added, “The governor will see you soon.”

“Good. Thank you.” Arminius swallowed his anger. You had to when you dealt with these folk. If you didn’t, you threw the game away before you even started playing.

Aristocles went back to his scribbles. Arminius knew what writing was for, though he didn’t have his letters. He also knew Aristocles was subtly insulting him by working while he was there. And he had to keep standing while the slave sat. That was an insult, too.

But then, as if by magic, another slave appeared with wine and bread and a bowl of olive oil for dipping. Arminius liked butter better. He didn’t say so - to the Romans, eating butter branded any man a savage. He and plenty of other German auxiliaries had heard the chaffing in Pannonia.

Maybe this Aristocles was waiting for him to complain. The skinny little man would glance at him sidelong every so often. Arminius ate and drank with the best Roman manners he had. Maybe they weren’t perfect by the slave’s standards, but they proved good enough.

Voices rose and fell in one of those back rooms. One of them had to belong to Varus. Arminius listened while pretending he was doing nothing of the kind. A German who’d never had anything to do with Romans would have cupped a hand behind his ear to hear better. So would a lot of legionaries. But Roman chieftains played the game by different rules. Having claimed the status of a Roman chieftain himself, Arminius had to show he knew those rules.

The Romans were talking about keeping Mindenum supplied. They didn’t seem to see any problems. No, that wasn’t necessarily so: they didn’t want Arminius to hear about any problems they saw. They were bound to know he was waiting out here. They were bound to know he was listening to them, too, whether he showed it or not. He hid his curiosity. They hid the truth. Romans used silence and misdirection far more than Germans did.