The Mask of Command Read online

  Battle cries from the enemy lines, carrying through the murk: ‘LICINIUS! APOLLINARIS!’ Castus squinted into the snow. He recognised the accents now. Legion XV Apollinaris was based in Cappadocia, hundreds of miles to the east on the Armenian frontier. Had Licinius really drawn troops from so far away? He remembered the jokes about the soldiers of Asia and Syria: soft and debauched, made effete by luxury. Castus had seen the eastern troops himself during the Persian war, and they had seemed tough enough. But the men before him now had been fighting all day, only now to face a fresh assault; even in the gathering gloom he could see that their ranks were in disarray.

  Already the advance had closed more than half the distance to the enemy line. Castus glanced back over his shoulder, then called to the hornblower to sound the charge. Before the brassy notes had faded, he was running.

  Shields on both sides, massed spears raised to strike; in the next rank men had javelins and darts ready to hurl. The Second Britannica were famed for this: the blunt-headed charging wedge the soldiers called the boar’s head. One thousand men bellowing as they ran, and Castus was yelling with them, his wind-numbed face stretched in fury. They powered forward into the funnel of the wind, like swimmers breasting a racing tide.

  Castus barely noticed as the easterners broke. He saw a white shield go down, then he slammed another aside and he was in among them, striking at the fugitives as their formation collapsed into panic. His column scarcely missed a step as they drove into the enemy, blasting aside the frayed cordon and pushing onwards, deep into the exposed side of Licinius’s right phalanx. Castus was still yelling, punching out with his shield boss and cutting down anyone who appeared before him.

  Hands seized him, dragging him back. A centurion grinning at him, shouting through the noise. ‘Got to re-form, dominus! Cavalry on our left!’

  Castus could only nod, staggering as he tried to stand. The beating of his own blood seemed to be echoing inside his helmet and he could not speak. He heard the high scream of trumpets, the wail of horns and the cries of the centurions. ‘Prepare to repel cavalry!’ He saw the shields of his own troops battering together into a solid wall, spears and javelins levelled. Voices in Latin, in Greek, in what sounded like Syriac. ‘CONSTANTINE...! LICINIUS! LICINIUS!’

  The ground was covered with the bodies of the slain and dying. A hand grasped at his ankle, bloodied fingers sliding on his bronze greave, and Castus kicked it away. When he looked out between the shields he saw that the light had completely gone; the battlefield was eclipsed by darkness. Snowflakes whirled white against the black land and the black sky, and everywhere figures stumbled in confusion, moving like men lost in fog or overwhelmed by smoke.

  A flurry of arrows struck somewhere to his left. A javelin with a bent shank arced out of the darkness and clattered off his shield. Castus felt his strength ebbing fast, the breath heaving in his chest as the last reserves of stamina burned through his limbs. Age was counting against him; he was no longer a young man. Then a moment later the darkness thickened into a line of advancing infantry, and all his thoughts were lost in the fury of combat.

  It may have lasted only moments, or hours. Castus could no longer determine time. He was still on his feet, calling out for reports, and his orderly was at his side forcing him to drink from a canteen. From somewhere to his right he could hear the din of battle, and he knew that the emperor had thrown his full strength against the centre of the enemy line. Had they broken through? Was the battle won? He sucked down vinegar wine, choked and gasped, then drank again. It tasted like honey.

  A figure was striding towards him out of the murky darkness, perhaps a dismounted cavalry officer, with a sword in his hand and other men advancing behind him. Castus stiffened, readying his shield, sensing the troops to either side of him doing the same. He lifted his sword, the reddened blade ready to strike.

  But the figure kept coming, raising an open hand now, and Castus heard him calling his name. With only three paces between them, he recognised the man. Tribune Vitalis, serving with Constantine’s main division.

  ‘Aurelius Castus!’ Vitalis said again. ‘You took your time getting here, brother! But when you did, it was worth it!’ He grabbed Castus by the shoulder, pulling him close and slamming his chest in a fierce embrace.

  ‘Have they broken?’ Castus managed to say, pulling himself back. Vitalis was grinning, his teeth gleaming in the dark.

  ‘Broken and fled the field, brother. And if the gods are smiling, this is victory!’

  Castus tipped back his head and sucked in air, feeling the cold freckling of snow on his tongue. All around him men were raising shields and spears, their hoarse voices crying out into the freezing night. ‘VICTORY! VICTORY!’

  *

  But the gods were not smiling.

  Four days later, on a snow-covered plain ten miles south-east of the town of Adrianople, Constantine and Licinius met to declare a truce. The two emperors rode out from the ranks of their assembled armies, Constantine on a black horse that snorted and stamped, Licinius on a placid grey. Behind them, each had their mounted standard-bearer and a pair of Protectores. They approached slowly, with due dignity, crossing the unmarked snow until they reined in their horses side by side. Then both men leaned from the saddle and they embraced, kissing each other in a bond of brotherhood.

  From his position with the other senior officers in the front rank of Constantine’s army, Castus watched the two emperors on the open white field. He kept his face impassive. There was no shame in this, he told himself. No capitulation. In the confused closing hours of the battle at Campus Ardiensis, Licinius had managed to withdraw most of his left wing and his cavalry intact from the field. Under cover of darkness he had marched them north-east into the hills, and when morning came Constantine had led his troops south-east, following a decoy force on the road towards Byzantium. By the time the ruse was discovered, Licinius had manoeuvred to block Constantine’s supply route, seize his baggage train and close his line of retreat. Both armies were exhausted, hungry and worn down by months of marching and fighting. All knew that the war was at an end, for now.

  Castus remembered the day in Mediolanum, nearly four years before, when Constantine and Licinius had first met in solemn brotherhood. Maxentius was defeated, and Licinius was wedded to Constantine’s half-sister to seal the pact between the new masters of the world. A glorious occasion, or so it had seemed at the time. Castus was there, of course, standing in the ranks of Constantine’s officers, his white cloak and tunic stiff with gold and silver embroidery. He had helped secure the alliance himself, long before, by carrying a message to Licinius through barbarian country. That desperate journey had been in winter, too, in cold almost as harsh as this. How simple everything had seemed back then.

  ‘When we fight them again,’ Vitalis said quietly, standing at Castus’s shoulder, ‘let’s hope it’s summer, and our bellies are full!’

  But as the trumpets sounded the imperial salute, Castus could think only of the field on the morning after the battle, the frozen corpses thinly blanketed by snow. Nearly all of them were Roman soldiers, and thousands like them had died in these three months of war. They had given their lives for a quarrel between two men, a quarrel that was now officially suspended. Constantine had won himself another five hundred miles of territory: all of Pannonia and most of Moesia. But whatever grand and empty words the two emperors were exchanging out there on the field between their armies, many more would die for them in years to come.

  *

  Back in the great camp of Constantine’s army, Castus paced along the muddy avenue between the tent lines. Woodsmoke curled in the air, and he heard laughter, women’s voices. At least now that the campaign was suspended the troops could return to more comfortable quarters. The thought gladdened him. He too had something to look forward to: in the spring, he would be back at Sirmium and his wife and child would be joining him there. He had not seen Sabina, or his son, for nearly a year; his wife loved Rome, and disliked travelli
ng, but she had promised to make the journey into the cold and inhospitable north to stay with him again, for a few months at least. Besides, Sirmium was one of the great cities of the empire. It was not Rome, but neither was it short of luxuries.

  He reached the enclosure of his command tent, returned the salute of the sentries, then paused to stamp the worst of the mud from his boots before going inside. Brazier-warmth met him, and the familiar smell of damp leather. His orderly brought a folding stool for Castus to sit on, and a cup of spiced and heated wine.

  Castus drank, and felt the wine lifting his spirits further. Soon he would be with his family again. His son would be six years old this coming summer; Castus had seen so little of the boy that every time they met he had to re-establish a bond between them. Every time it was harder. This time, he told himself, he would make sure to spend much longer with Sabinus. None could fault him for that.

  The thought of seeing his wife again brought conflicting feelings. Their marriage had not been easy; her betrayal of him five years before was forgiven now, but neither of them could forget it. It was almost as if, Castus thought, she was unable to forgive herself, or did not want to. As if she wanted that twisting guilt always to be between them. What did she fear would happen if she allowed it to fade? Sabina had always been a mystery to him. Maddening, too, but he loved her even so. He had long ago ceased to wonder whether she loved him in return. The passion that they shared during their few and scattered meetings seemed sincere, but Castus knew that it was laced with remorse. He shook his head, drank more, and felt the heat of the wine warming his chest. In the spring he would see her again, and somehow he knew that things would be better between them then.

  ‘Dominus,’ his secretary Diogenes said, ‘there are some documents here that require your attention, I’m afraid to say.’ He raised an eyebrow, rueful. He was sitting at a trestle table to one side of the tent, a mass of tablets and scrolls heaped before him. War, and the winter season, had held up the despatches and now a mass of correspondence had arrived at once, much of it months late.

  ‘Put aside the ones I need to look at, and deal with as many of the rest as you can,’ Castus told him. Diogenes had already performed great labours with the mass of documents, it appeared. Castus watched the man as he worked. He had known Musius Diogenes for well over a decade, ever since the ex-schoolteacher had been conscripted into the old Legion VI Victrix back in northern Britain. He had come to appreciate the man’s odd wit, even his frequently bizarre notions. But as he looked at him now, Castus saw only the signs of age upon his face. Diogenes was barely older than him, but his scalp was balding and what hair he retained was mostly grey. Then again, Castus thought, while he himself had been destined for the military life – his father had been an army veteran and it was in his blood – Diogenes had forced himself into the mould of a soldier, and the effort had aged him. But one day, Castus knew, the years would take their toll on him as well. He had not forgotten his fatigue on the battlefield, his body’s near-surrender.

  ‘There’s something else here,’ Diogenes said, looking up. ‘A letter for you. Personal correspondence.’

  ‘Who from?’

  Diogenes lifted the tablet, turning the face to the light and then the rear.

  ‘Your wife’s cousin, it seems,’ he said, with a quizzical frown. ‘The clarissimus Domitius Latronianus, in Rome. Or, at least, that appears to be his seal...’

  Castus grimaced sourly. He had cared little for Latronianus. The man was a senator, an aristocrat, recently governor of Sicily; he had never hidden his disgust that his well-bred cousin had married a common soldier, a blacksmith’s son from some Danubian backwater, no matter how exalted the rank he now held. Then again, Castus thought, he had once threatened to choke Latronianus with a lavatory sponge, and somehow the two of them had never quite managed to laugh the incident off...

  ‘Open it and read it to me,’ he said. ‘Let’s see what he wants.’

  Sabina, he thought. Surely it was about his wife. What other reason would the senator have for writing to him directly? He felt a quick pinch of anxiety: the news would not be good. Latronianus, he felt sure, would not hesitate to inform him of some affair, some new adultery, if he thought the knowledge of it would wound Castus and drive him from Sabina. Castus had worried about that himself, of course, over all these long months of separation. His wife had never demonstrated a great regard for fidelity.

  ‘Well?’ he said. Diogenes had opened the tablet and run his eyes over the words, but was still staring down at it. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘Dominus, I...’ Diogenes began, but then his voice failed. With a shock Castus noticed that the secretary’s jaw was trembling, his face was pale, and there were tears in his eyes. He stood up quickly, the stool clattering behind him. Annoyance shifted at once to panicked dread, to swift anger.

  ‘Speak!’ he demanded, his fists clenching at his sides. ‘Speak, curse you! What does it say?’

  ‘Dominus, I’m sorry.’ Diogenes cleared his throat, then recited in a hollow monotone. ‘The clarissimus reports that your wife, the domina Valeria Domitia Sabina, was taken ill with a sudden fever last November...’ He paused again, blinking, and then raised his eyes.

  ‘Brother,’ he said. ‘Your wife is dead.’

  Castus felt the breath punch against the back of his throat. For a few heartbeats his mind was blank, uncomprehending. He stood swaying, speechless. There was a strange ringing in his ears, and through it he heard Diogenes’ voice, still in that dead flat tone. ‘...assures you that the family attended to the funeral with all due solemnity, and requests that you come to Rome at your earliest convenience to discuss matters relating to your late wife’s property, and to the future of your son...’

  A sudden lurching step, and Castus was flinging the tent flap aside. Whiteness glared in his eyes; it was snowing again, thick white flakes drifting slowly in the still air. He took another step, then another. The sentries were staring at him, but he strode on past them to the edge of the tent enclosure.

  It could not be true. Sabina must be alive – she had been alive in his thoughts all through these months.

  Castus closed his eyes and tipped back his head. He wanted to shout, to scream, but the air was trapped in his chest and he could not make a sound. Ice water was pouring through him, a torrent of it, unceasing. It would never cease. Your wife is dead. Dead, and the funeral done. Never again would he see her. Each new truth struck at him. His throat was clenched, his whole body drawn tight in the lock of grief.

  The snow came down, and he felt it settling on his face, each flake melting instantly.

  PART ONE

  TWO MONTHS LATER

  CHAPTER I

  March AD 317

  The barbarians were waiting for them on the broad meadow above the Rhine. Valerius Leontius, Dux Limitis Germaniae – Commander of the Germanic Frontier – reined in his horse as he saw the figures on the riverbank. His face tightened into an expression of disgust, his flaring eyebrows knotting; this was hardly a task he relished, but it needed to be done.

  Behind him, his escort party of soldiers slowed to a halt, the mounted scouts moving forward to screen the flanks. The barbarians must have arrived about an hour before, Leontius estimated; he could see their boats pulled up on the muddy bank between the reeds. They had lit fires on the dry ground beneath a stand of trees, and he could smell smoke and the burnt-earth aroma of their oatmeal porridge.

  ‘Remember,’ he said to the tribune who rode beside him, ‘no one is to speak to them except me, via the interpreter. Keep the troops back, and make sure there’s no contact between them and the barbarians.’

  The tribune nodded curtly, almost dismissive. He understood what was to be done.

  Leontius was a proud man. He detested this country, as he detested its inhabitants. A flat landscape of shaggy trees, reed beds and shallow meres that reflected the grey sky. This was the frontier of the Roman world, the place where civilisation bled out into barbari
sm just as the land bled into the sea. To the west lay a green wilderness of branching rivers and salt marshlands, merging into the maze of scrub-covered islands and sandbanks that filled the estuaries along the coast. A place of treachery and deceit, with no fixed boundaries.

  The last Roman stronghold was ten miles south at Noviomagus, on the far bank of the River Vahalis. But over to his left, between the trees and the reeds, Leontius could make out the overgrown hillocks of an old fortification. Castra Herculis, it was called. The Fort of Hercules. Once Roman soldiers had garrisoned this place, until the frontier had collapsed during the time of troubles forty years before. Now this was no man’s land, an empty waste between the rivers, where roving barbarian bands and Roman patrols each tried to stake their rival claims.

  The river up ahead, the Rhine, was the true frontier, and the barbarians waiting for him were Franks, from the tribe of the Chamavi. They had been one of the most savage foes of Rome once, but the emperor Constantine and his father before him had crushed them in battle, most recently only three years before, and now the tribes lived in peace with the empire.

  But peace had a cost. And that cost, Leontius thought, was weighing down the leather panniers of the half-dozen mules that waited on the track behind him.

  ‘Let’s do this,’ he said to the tribune, then waved his hand forward as he kicked his horse into motion.

  The barbarians gathered to meet him as he approached. About twenty of them, as far as Leontius could see, all armed with spears and carrying small round shields. Most were poorly dressed, but there were a few veteran warriors among them, their belts adorned with gold and silver trappings. They were big men, with heavy moustaches and thick hair that hung to their shoulders. Many of them, Leontius noticed with irritation, were grinning openly.

  ‘Halt,’ Leontius cried, throwing up his hand. His herald and trumpeter moved forward, and a moment later the brassy blare of the horn startled the birds flapping from the thickets. A flock of geese lifted from the river in wild disarray.