Give Me Back My Legions(59)

She ended up satisfying all the Romans. They emptied the barrel of beer, too. As Caelius none too steadily made his way back toward the encampment, he couldn’t remember a day he’d enjoyed more.

Arminius stared at the handful of silver the village girl showed him. “Did you people butcher a Roman to get this?” he asked her. “If you did, I hope you hid his body so the legionaries never found out how he died. If one of them gets killed, they avenge themselves on many. Thev - ”

He broke off, because she was laughing at him. “We didn’t kill anybody,” she said. Then she told him exactly how she’d earned the denarii. “They pay so much for so little! Look at all this silver! I never thought I would have so much in my whole life, and it didn’t even take an hour.”

He knew what prostitutes were. He’d used a couple himself, to slake his lusts while he served among the Roman auxiliaries. Up till now, Germany had known little of such notions, probably because so few coins circulated here. But if the country came under Roman rule, if money spread here till it was as widely used as anywhere else in the Empire . . . how many girls like this one would there be?

Her father wasn’t helpful. “She didn’t do anything that made her no maiden,” the man said. “As long as she bleeds on her wedding night, nothing else matters. And she will. My wife made sure of that.” He held up his middle finger to show how.

“But . . .” Arminius wanted to hit him. “She sold herself!”

“Got a good price, too,” the other German agreed. “These Romans must have silver falling out of their assholes, the way they throw it around. Plenty of chieftains with less than we’ve got now.” He eyed Arminius.

“Do you have that much?”

“Yes,” Arminius said flatly. If the other man challenged him, it would give him the excuse he wanted to murder the fellow. But the man just stood there outside of his steading, a foolish grin on his face. Arminius tried again: “Don’t you see? Before the Romans set up their cursed camp near here, your daughter never would have done anything like this.”

“I should say not,” the girl’s father answered. For a moment, Arminius thought he’d reached him. Then the wretch continued, “Before the Romans came, nobody could’ve paid anywhere near so well.”

“We have to get rid of them,” Arminius insisted. “They’ll ruin us if we don’t.”

The older man stared at him in what Arminius hoped was honest incomprehension. “Why do you want to get rid of them when they’re making us rich? I can spend some of this silver at their camp for things they have and we don’t. My little girl wants some fancy combs for her hair. Hard to tell her no when she was the one who made the money, eh?

I can even buy wine if I want to. Like I said, I might as well be a chieftain myself.”

“You might as well be a swine,” Arminius said.

“I don’t know who you are, but you’ve got no cause to talk to me that way.” The villager didn’t reach for a spear or a sword. He was brave enough running his mouth, but not when he had to back up his words.

So it seemed to Arminius, anyhow. He didn’t think about what it might be like to confront a large, fierce, well-armed stranger only a little more than half his age. People half Arminius’ age were children; he didn’t need to fear them.

He didn’t need to fear the shameless girl’s father, either. He turned his back and strode away. If his scorn made the other man respond, he would do what he had to do - what he wanted to do. But, regretfully, he didn’t think it would. And he turned out to be right.

He wondered if he could make it out of the village without being sick. He managed, but it wasn’t easy. The Romans purposely changed the way the folk they conquered did things. He’d heard about that in Gaul, and seen it with his own eyes in Pannonia. They were like potters working with soft clay, shaping it into whatever they wanted.

They also changed people - and peoples - without meaning to. If they hadn’t set up their encampment so close to this village, that man would have stayed an ordinary fellow. Oh, chances were he never would have been a hero or any kind of leader, but Arminius wouldn’t have wanted to wipe him off the sole of his shoe like a dog turd, either. The man never would have been proud of how much his daughter could make going down on her knees.

And he wouldn’t have worried about fancy combs or wine. The Romans might not have known that they used such things as weapons, but they did. Too many Germans craved what they lacked and the Romans had. Wine and luxury goods had bought too many chieftains - Arminius’ fists clenched as he thought of Thusnelda’s father.