Relief in his voice, the cook said, “Roast boar, your Excellencies, with forest mushrooms, on a bed of cabbage and turnips.”
“I’d never get bored with that,” Lucius Eggius called out.
For a moment, Varus heard it as a hungry man’s commonplace. Then he caught the pun. He sent Eggius a look half respectful, half reproachful. Was the wordplay just luck, or was there more to the officer than met the eye?
Varus decided he didn’t have to worry about it now. He was the highest-ranking man here, so he was entitled to feed himself first and take the choicest gobbet. He did, seizing a smoking chunk of pork generously outlined with dripping fat. His mouth watered.
It tasted as good as it looked and smelled. Varus could imagine no higher praise. Smiling, chewing, he nodded to the cook. That worthy bowed in delight.
Vala Numonius chose next. The cavalry commander’s right hand closed on a slice even bigger and fatter than Varus’. “Good,” Numonius said with his mouth full. “Wonderful!” The cook beamed.
One by one, in order of rank, the Roman officers fed themselves. “Begging your pardon, friends,” one of them said as he took food with his left hand.
“We know you, Sinistrus,” Varus said. The nickname told how thoroughly left-handed the legionary was. His right hand was as clumsy and useless as most people’s left - good only for wiping himself. Varus had known a few other men like that. They always apologized when they fed themselves with what was usually the wrong hand.
The mushrooms were different from the familiar Italian varieties, and also different from the ones Varus had eaten in Syria. Not better or worse, the governor judged, but different. One of the officers spoke to the cook: “You tried these out on beasts before you tried them on us, right?”
“Oh, yes, sir!” the cook said, so quickly that the legionaries laughed.
“Some good news, anyway.” Lucius Eggius’ voice was dry. The Roman officers laughed again. So did Quinctilius Varus. He liked mushrooms, but he also knew you could make mistakes with them. And a mistake with a mushroom was much too likely to be the last mistake you ever made.
Another officer raised a winecup. “Here’s to putting Germany under our thumb once and for all!”
Varus was glad to drink to that toast. The rest of the diners followed his lead. All the same, he heard somebody mutter, “What I’d really like is to put Germany behind me!”
He looked around, trying to make out who’d spoken. But he couldn’t. He didn’t recognize the voice, and no one’s face gave him away. Besides, how angry could he get? He would have liked nothing better than going back to Gaul, going back to Italy, going anywhere but here.
No matter what he would have liked, he had to stay. “By the gods, gentlemen, we will whip this province into shape!” he declared. “And if we have to resort to the lash, that’s what we’ll do. The Germans need to know who their rightful masters are.”
“Hear, hear!” Several officers loudly supported him. Others, though, sat quietly, as if trying to pretend they hadn’t heard what he said. Most of the ones who made a point of agreeing had come north with him the year before. Most of the ones who stayed quiet had been fighting the Germans longer than that.
Were the newcomers too hopeful? Am I too hopeful? Varus wondered. Or were the veterans of this frontier jaded and frustrated because things here hadn’t gone better? Quinctilius Varus decided it had to be the latter. The Germans had stayed pretty quiet even though he’d started accustoming them to taxation. Why wouldn’t they turn into proper Roman subjects if he kept on traveling the road he’d begun?
And he was sure Augustus wouldn’t have sent him up here if the job weren’t doable. If anyone had ever had an instinct for such things, Augustus was the man. The veterans had made a hash of things, that was all, and so they built the Germans up to be bigger and fiercer and stubborner than they really were.
He’d made progress. He would make more. If Augustus thought he could do it, he did, too.
Sometimes the Germans would attack a Roman army without the slightest hesitation. Sometimes a couple of Roman soldiers could amble through the countryside and get nothing but friendly treatment. You never could tell.
Caldus Caelius and two or three buddies were ambling through the countryside now. The legionaries weren’t stupid about it. They’d told their friends back at Mindenum where they were going. If anything happened to them, the legionaries would make the barbarians pay.
And the Germans around Mindenum had figured that out. Knocking off a Roman soldier here was more expensive than it was worth. Caelius and his friends wore helmets, and swords on their belts - you didn’t want to beg the Germans to jump you - but he wasn’t what you’d call anxious.