Of a sudden he heard his master’s voice—Telamon, he told himself, seeking to embed the name into memory—coming from inside the woodworking plant. The carpenters, David had learned from locals, were prisoners, mostly rebel Jews and petty criminals. They wore leg irons as they labored.
David could make out the voices of three other men. The tone of their speech was imperious and accusatory. When Telamon answered, it was in single syllables or inarticulate grunts. The exchanges, or the snatches that David could overhear, were in Latin, so that he could divine even less of their import. He could find no way into the shop. Soldiers and warders of the site barred every entry.
The youth discovered a breach, however, between the top of the stall walls of an adjacent livery and the overhang of the carpentry shop roof. Into this cranny he mounted, yet lugging the man-at-arms’ weapons and kit, and, working his way forward in a crouch and then a crawl, managed to reach an elevated vantage directly under the eaves. From this site of concealment the boy could see and hear, such as his understanding of the Roman tongue would permit, the interview being conducted below.
Present were the man-at-arms, still manacled and in leg irons; an officer of tribune rank, apparently the garrison commander Severus; an attending officer of lesser station, which the boy took to be an adjutant or second-in-command; and the cavalry lieutenant who had made the original arrest at the Narrows.
“The soldier whose jaw you shattered, whose teeth you beat out of his head,” declared the lieutenant, addressing Telamon, “was a good man, a sergeant of sixteen years with numerous awards for valor. Now he will have to be retired and pensioned off. I must train another to fill his station, at hell only knows what expense, not to mention cover the cost of his repatriation and the education of his children. The toll for this, as you know, comes not from the provincial treasury at Antioch but from our own military budget—”
With a look the garrison commander cut the lieutenant off.
“The penalty for assaulting a Roman soldier is death,” he said to Telamon. “What do you say to this?”
“What is the penalty,” replied the man-at-arms, “for a Roman soldier assaulting a child?”
“I’ll tell you what I say,” put in the lieutenant. He indicated Telamon. “The prisoner struck not in the passion of the moment—for why would anyone defend a scrofulous urchin unknown to himself?—but with premeditation and criminal intent, to work harm to Rome. He is a hireling of the Hebrew Zealots,” declared this officer, “or if not of them, then of any of a hundred Jewish gangs and rebel confederations.”
The garrison commander asked the lieutenant what punishment he proposed.
“Let him ride the pine mare,” said the young officer, gesturing to the eastern extremity of the manufactory. David craned to look. Against this wall stood a brace of newly hewn crucifixes.
“I would see him on the third day,” said the lieutenant, “when the sinews of his loins sever and his guts sluice out through his anus.”
The garrison commander studied the expression on the man-at-arms’ face. He observed to his adjutant and to the lieutenant that this fellow had trained himself all his life for such a moment, or worse.
“He will not even cry out. Will you, my friend?”
David, peering from his perch, could pick out the military mark on the commander’s forearm.
LEGIO X
“I know this man well,” declared Severus Pertinax.
Indeed, David reckoned, an unseen current coursed between the captive and his keeper.
“Still serving only for money, peregrine?” Severus inquired of the man-at-arms.
David could make out little of the next exchange, conducted as it was partly in Latin and partly in legionary’s slang. The commander addressed Telamon as “peregrine,” the Roman term for a non-citizen who had taken service in various legions and legion auxiliaries.
The commander observed to his adjutant and to the cavalry lieutenant that the man who stood before them now in irons had been accounted only twenty-four months previously the ablest soldier of the acclaimed Tenth Legion—the Tenth Fretensis (as opposed to the Tenth Gemina, based now in Spain), descended of Caesar’s original Tenth of Gaul a century past. “But the only eagle this son-of-a-whore would salute was one on the face of a gold coin.”
The commander remarked to the lieutenant: “By the way, this fellow is no agent of the Zealots or of any sect of these Hebrews. They can’t afford him.”
To David’s eyes Marcus Severus Pertinax, a knight of the Equestrian Order and senior tribune of the Tenth Fretensis legion, appeared the paragon of an officer of Rome—clean-shaven, of impeccable posture, handsome as a god, and possessed of supreme poise and self-command. The youth crept forward upon his overhead beam, hoping to see and hear better. The commander was addressing his adjutant and the lieutenant in tones of mock instruction, indicating the man-at-arms before them.
“You are acquainted, gentlemen, with the practice by which foreign-born enlistees in the legions put aside their native names and take in their place Roman identities—the three-name structure.” Severus indicated and addressed by name the pair of sergeants who stood immediately behind Telamon, securing him in their custody. “As you did, Septimus Justus Antoninus, and you, Gaius Procopis Martialis. Not this one.”
Here the commander turned directly to the mercenary.
“He kept his single Greek name, absent even a patronymic. Nor is this all, my friends. This man earned his discharge three years early, for valor, a decoration sash set about his shoulders by the legion legate himself. Any other would display such a citation with pride. You cast yours away, didn’t you, peregrine? Or did you sell it for silver? Nor did you claim the Roman citizenship that came with such an honor and in fact had been mandated upon your enlistment. You declined. You turned it down.
“You see, my friends,” Severus continued, “this man holds himself above such conceits as love of the emperor or bonds of comradeship with those who serve him. Isn’t that right, peregrine? To call oneself a Roman would be in your view . . . what? Philosophically deficient? Wanting in self-autonomy? What is that passage from your credo? ‘Only fools fight for a flag or a cause.’ Yes, that’s it. I remember. He is a philosopher, this fellow. That which other, simpler souls call ‘honor,’ this man styles ‘delusion.’ Nay, ‘self-delusion.’ Do I cite your code aright, prisoner?”
“Close enough,” replied Telamon.
Severus smiled.
“I could order you nailed to a cross right now and this garrison to a man would buy tickets to savor the spectacle.”
The Roman paused.
His aspect softened.
“But perhaps I have been more influenced by your philosophy than I realize. For it seems an opportunity has arisen by which you, and no other, may prove of service to Rome.”
A job, Severus said.
An assignment.
“Don’t worry, peregrine. It pays. Will you accept?”
Severus produced a leather pouch. He tossed it onto the joinery table between himself and the man-at-arms.
“Note, my friends, that I proffer to this soldier-for-hire no description of the task I wish him to perform. I display only such reward as its successful completion commands. Why? Because our brother-in-arms here, who is too good to call himself a Roman and too proud to accept citizenship beneath our standard, regards all chores of war as equally worthy or worthless. He asks one thing only: ‘How much does it pay?’ ”