Nobody Loves a Centurion(56)

I found a gaggle of tribunes dicing their time away beneath a lean-to erected near the stables. As officers elected by the centuriate assembly, they had the privilege of bringing their own horses along on campaign, so they regarded the stables as part of their territory. Their current occupation was typical of tribunes, who usually lack for meaningful duties. Of soldiers generally, for that matter. I firmly believe that an army’s load could be lightened considerably just by getting rid of all the dice.

I walked up behind my cousin Lumpy and nudged him with my toe. “Where is that hundred you owe me?” It had become my invariable greeting.

“Do you think I’d be trying to win some drinking money if I was rich?” he grumbled. “Besides, no man who’s been given that German piece has any cause for complaint.”

“Tell you what,” I proposed. “Give me that hundred and you can have Molon.”

“I’ll trade you my horse and my personal slave for that German girl.”

“Your keen business acumen will bring credit to our family yet. I’m looking for Aurelius Cotta. Has anybody seen him?”

One of the tribunes looked up from the bone cubes. “I saw him over by the armory a while ago.”

“Thanks.” I turned to go. Lumpy got up and began to walk along beside me.

“Listen, Decius,” he began, hesitantly, “I know Caesar appointed you investigator, but that was just a matter of form, don’t you think? Like when a praetor appoints an index for a case that’s really not important, but constitutional forms have to be followed?”

“Lumpy, I know that, in your tiresome way, you’re trying to say something. Why not just say it?”

“Decius, you’re building up a lot of bad feeling here, the way you’ve been interrogating officers and centurions like common felons. I think you had better back off and let those men take their punishment.”

I stopped and turned on him. “What is this to you?” I demanded.

“I am a Caecilius Metellus, too. Everything you do rubs off on me!”

“You’ll smell none the worse for it,” I said. “You can’t really care about this—you aren’t involved in any way. Did someone put you up to this? Someone involved in the activities of the night in question?”

“Nobody!” he said, but his eyes kept sliding away from mine as if he found my ears to be of some interest. “I’m just catching a lot of grief from the others because of the way you’re acting.”

I stepped close and stared him down. When his eyes dropped, I addressed him. “Lumpy, I had better not learn that you are holding out on me. If the son of my old retainer is flogged to death with sticks because you withheld information from me, you’ll wish you’d gone with him.”

He laughed nervously. “Don’t get in such a state, Decius! We are family, after all. I’d never interfere with your duties, and if the boy is a client of the Caecilii, he deserves our help. I’m just asking you not to tread so heavily. You have a way of questioning people that infuriates these soldiers. They don’t care about birth and officeholding and education. They respect only a better soldier, and you aren’t that.”

“Just remember what I’ve told you.” I whirled and stalked off. There was some truth in what he said. This was not a good place to sling my arrogant weight around, but it is not easy to suppress fifty generations of breeding. And I knew perfectly well that he was not telling me the whole truth. Was anybody?

I found Cotta having an edge put on his sword. This was a sure sign of nerves. The armorer was doing a great business sharpening the weapons of the tribunes, as if they had much chance of using them. Youngsters going into their first campaign always do two things: they spend all day fussing over their weapons and all night making out their wills.

“A word with you, Publius Aurelius, if you don’t mind,” I said.

“Certainly,” he said, his eyes on the armorer’s hands. The man was working the edge of the sword in tiny circles on a very large whetstone set in a long, wooden box full of oil. His movements were slow and precise. The edge on a Roman sword is not so much ground as polished into the steel. With such an edge it takes amazingly little effort to inflict a horrendous wound.

“I think you can leave the man to his work,” I said. “He won’t fail you.”

“Oh, yes, of course.” He came away reluctantly. “How may I help you?”

“Paterculus tells me that you were officer in charge of the Porta Praetoria the night Titus Vinius was killed.”

“I had that duty.” His eyes slid back toward his sword.