I found the optio, Aulus Vehilius, conferring with his decurions next to their fire, where a slave tended a pot of posca. I could smell the vinegar reek fifty feet away. The optio watched me with the by now customary look of annoyed disgust as I dismounted.
“How did the night go?” I inquired politely.
“We’re alive, aren’t we?” he said.
“Yes, please accept my congratulations. I need to ask some questions about the last hours of Titus Vinius.”
“Still trying to save your precious client and his messmates?” said a decurion. “They’re safe in the camp and we’re out here. Why are they so favored?”
“They are the ones facing a dreadful execution,” I pointed out.
“If the Gauls attack in any force,” interjected another, “we’ll die before they will.”
“Listen to me, you ungrateful peasant wretches,” I said affably. “Nobody is going to die if I have anything to say about it. I do not believe Vinius was murdered by the men of that contubernium, nor do I believe that his century was responsible in any way. I feel sure that Vinius brought about his own death and that it was richly merited. But I have to prove it first. I have been given a special commission by Caesar himself to investigate and I am empowered to interrogate anyone within his imperium. If you object, you may argue with the Proconsul when he gets back. Do not expect a sympathetic hearing.”
This seemed to sober them a bit and I reflected that these were terrified men. Roman soldiers are the best in the world and brave as lions, but much of that has to do with the way they identify with their legions and the eagles. A soldier separated from his legion becomes diminished. I was just the most convenient target for their anger. In a perverse but understandable way, they held it against Burrus and his companions that they were not being executed for the good of the rest.
The crusty optio actually managed a barely detectable smile. “All right, Captain, we’ll back off. What do you need to know?”
“The last account I have of Vinius’s whereabouts that night says that he attended a conference in Caesar’s tent with some locals who wanted judgments on land disputes. That was just after the evening parade. Did any of you see him after that?”
“You know that we had the north wall that night,” said Vehilius. “We marched straight from parade to guard mount.”
“The whole century?”
“Yes. This doubling of the guard means there’s two centuries to each relief and the First is in my charge.”
“And Vinius never made an inspection of the guard posts?”
“He seldom did that,” the optio said, confirming what I had already heard. “When he inspected, it was always toward the end of the watch, to catch anyone sleeping.”
“And he knew that wasn’t going to happen,” a decurion commented, “not with all the noise the barbarians were making.”
There was something wrong with this, but I could not decide what it might be. Perhaps, I thought, I was just too unmilitary to detect the inconsistency.
“There was the odd way he was dressed,” I pointed out. “Did anyone ever see him in a rough, dark-colored tunic?”
“Centurions in the Tenth wear white tunics, as you’ve probably noticed,” the optio said.
“On regular duty, certainly. But did Vinius ever undertake reconnaissance at night? I used to do that in Spain and I always wore dark clothes and no armor, for obvious reasons.”
“Then you must have been an officer of auxilia,” Vehilius said, quite accurately. “Every legion I’ve ever heard of uses cavalry and scouts for that sort of thing. It stands to reason—a man who spends years clumping around under a full load of legionary gear is going to be no good for quiet work at night. Titus Vinius would never have done such a thing.”
Another dead end. I did not dare ask these men about Vinius’s sudden wealth. Isolated though they were, the news would be all over the camp within hours.
“If you want to know what he was doing that night,” said a decurion, “ask that ugly slave of his, Molon. He’s a lying little sneak like all slaves, but if you lash him for a while, or put a hot iron to his feet, he just might tell you what you need to know.”
This advice was in keeping with the common belief of Romans that slaves are inveterate liars. Even our courts will not allow the testimony of slaves unless they are tortured first, on the assumption that only torture will make a slave tell the truth. I have never understood the reasoning behind this wide-spread prejudice, because it has been my experience that nobody, slave or free, ever tells the truth if they see the slightest advantage in lying.