Rivals in Blood Read online

  ‘I have wanted this moment for so long. Where have you been?’ he asked in some delight.

  Not wishing to get closer until her husband had time to look again at the symbol and fully understand that she wasn’t the woman he had married, she maintained her distance. There before her stood a bearded thin man in his late twenties with the appearance of a starving destitute yet unscathed from having fought in any battle.

  ‘Many times I have returned here, especially on the day of our wedding and expected to have found you waiting for me’ she said.

  ‘How many times have I been disappointed despite asking for your return? Even before you were taken I prayed for you and my father gave his offerings.’

  She cried at the emotion of meeting him again and Salvius, not wishing them under these circumstances and then sensing his opportunity, took a step forward. He carefully cradled his wife in his arms and her fragility worried him.

  ‘Can we return to your farm? ’ he asked the mason who kindly helped them both out of the courtyard before locking the gate behind.

  Allowing the two to talk in private he then respectfully walked on ahead.

  When far enough away from the villa both turned back to jointly reminisce. All Salvius could see was an unwanted house with its memories now abandoned in time. The laughter of Bacchus had gone and devoid of the protection of the Lares. Where were the owners? Where were the slaves? Had the estate been sold? There were so many questions that remained unanswered.

  A lot had happened and initially the couple struggled with renewing their conversation. One wanting to know more about the other’s fortunes but it was happily established that Flavius Martinus had somehow managed to write to his daughter and alert her to the fact that Salvius was still alive and back in Britannia. Had he met with her father somewhere? He didn’t answer.

  Sitting down that late afternoon to enjoy the freedom of speaking without reproach, Faustina warned her husband that their life may have to change with the victory of Constantius. She admitted being a follower of the new church and that Martinus had been disappointed in her. However, he continued to practice his old beliefs in secret and left her alone to follow hers.

  She was though interested in why the war had gone the way it had and curious as to why her husband was uninjured. Tearing a piece of turf away between them he drew a map with a stick in the light soil of where he believed that he had been. The names were unfamiliar to her as were the distances involved.

  ‘How far could you travel in four years?’ she asked.

  It didn’t matter.

  Magnentius had lost the crucial battle at Mursa he explained. Going into greater detail he told her that the two armies were arranged on a wide river plain and that both had used Fluvius Dravus to shield their flank. He briefly sketched another picture. Constantius had put his horsemen on the outside of the legions and Magnentius too. It seemed an equal contest but Constantius had more men and more horses. He then told her about the defection of Vetranio which had bolstered the numbers of the eastern army.

  He himself had been ordered to stay on the right and away from the river. At the outset, the fighting was far from him but he could never fully recount the terrible fear that he had felt with hearing the war horns blaring out or the legions singing their death songs and coming forever closer. Both horrified him equally. As ranks of soldiers charged at one another in the madness of war he lost his confidence at surviving the day and feeling embittered as roman armies fought amongst themselves, ran away. It was carnage all around as they died for their respective emperors.

  ‘Did you see Magnentius?’ she asked.

  ‘He was witnessed amongst the heaviest fighting’ Salvius replied.

  ‘The emperor encouraged everybody with his bravery. This was to be his only battle.’

  ‘What happened at the end?’

  ‘Constantius possessed a cavalry that I have never seen before dressed in chain mail from their neck to their toes. Under their arms they swung huge lances and the horses were protected too. They used these to charge directly at our legions and then quickly retired whilst mounted horse archers fired volleys of arrows into us with the armoured horsemen returning over and over again. Under their constant attack our right flank broke away and the army was left to defend itself in small groups with their back to the river. Those that weren’t killed in the fighting were then drowned. There was no mercy shown from either side.’

  He was quiet for a moment reflecting on what he had lived through.

  ‘Magnentius fled before the end of the day’ he admitted.

  ‘And not knowing that twenty four thousand of his men and thirty thousand of Constantius’ army were left dead!’

  The numbers meant nothing to her.

  She wasn’t afraid to ask...

  ‘But how did you escape?’

  The question tore Salvius between wanting to be honest and not wanting her to know. The answer that he gave was a compromise.

  ‘When I saw the army in disarray I chose to run. Nobody came after me. I hid in a copse as nightfall fell and then the following day I was found and beaten for my cowardice. I was rounded up with the Abulci and returned back to Britannia to serve here as punishment but I escaped.’

  Looking into the ground and not at her he admitted that he wasn’t proud of anything that he had done.

  ‘Where did you escape and how did my father know that you were alive? He told me that he was being ordered to Londinium. Did you see him there? What did he say?’

  Her anxious voice carried within it a mixture of incredulity and disbelief.

  Salvius could have said nothing. His wife would have been ignorant of her father’s death until informed by palace officials at sometime but they would have hidden the truth. She needed to be told by him.

  ‘I am sure...’ he began to say but never wishing to finish the sentence.

  ‘I can tell you that your father has been killed.’

  Knowing that he had attempted to assassinate Paulus his body wouldn’t be respectfully disposed of. His head spun with delivering his message that now left her alone in their unpredictable world. Her father was dead, her only family, and now she had nothing. Sitting in a field with an attempted reconciliation, the two were completely and emotionally separated. Faustina, with her head turned away, began sobbing at her loss before allowing the tears to turn into a stream. The laughter of their marriage days in the villa before them now a distant memory and Salvius unable to do anything but gently encourage her to get her to feet and walk to the mason’s farm.

  That evening after trying to eat something but struggling, the couple retired to a simple bedroom where she had been occasionally staying over the years. Before they slept Faustina tersely explained that the mason had been entrusted by the absent owners of the large villa to keep the gates locked to stop looting which would be unlikely given its remoteness. The gold or silver belongings had been taken and anything else of portable value hidden away as they sought to escape persecution of their beliefs. One day they might be able to return but until then he had been paid to maintain it the best he could. Now she had claimed possession of it.

  Salvius, unaware of the strength of her admission, just longed for female company and tried to make her feel like a wife but with everything that had happened that day, was rejected. It didn’t appear out of the ordinary when she arose early. The dip in the straw mattress still held her womanly shape and the bed warm where she had been lying. He could try again so lay back and waited for her to return. The door opened slightly and in she came followed by the mason.

  ‘Quickly’ she said to him and he reacted.

  Faustina jumped forward and with her body lying across her husband’s chest to stop him rising then gripped the side of the bed with all her strength. He was excited at smelling her sweet skin and relaxed.

  ‘Do it!’ she ordered.

  The mason tugged at Salvius’ tongue as his head thrashed about between the man’s knees and with a sharp knife slic
ed through it before recoiling at what he had just done. His mouth burst into warm blood at which Faustina, letting go, threw him a piece of cloth with which to stem it. In immense pain Salvius screamed an empty scream before losing consciousness in the light of a beautiful day. Hours later he awoke to feel her washing the wound and stroking his hair. He pointed at his mouth trying to speak.

  ‘You are safe, my husband’ she reassured him.

  ‘Nobody can question you now. We can survive on our own.’

  Five short years passed allowing Faustina to grudgingly accept what had happened to her father. The emperor Constantius hadn’t killed him through the intervention of Paulus she affirmed, but he had correctly taken his own life according to Salvius who would only nod the answers to her questions.

  They had left the cavernous Villa Juliana deserted far to the north and today they stood in admiration of their own home situated to the east of Durnovaria and Lindinis in his native Durotrigia. Her father had left her enough money in his will to be able to afford to build it and as the only heir she had no rivals to it. The small villa was private and secluded occupying free draining ground that rose from a river. From it Salvius continued to rear animals for the army although never dealing with the authorities himself. For this he employed an agent and kept his past a secret.

  In a united pact with her husband, and in respect of wanting to honour her dead father whose remains she could never recover, they both carefully watched on as the craftsmen from Durnovaria finished their work. In the smaller of the two dedicated rooms they had carefully placed the roundel of the Bellerphon killing the Chimera and surrounded by dogs chasing deer. The mortar had been levelled, dried out and the floor sturdy enough to carefully walk upon. In the larger of the rooms and adjacent to it they were just tentatively tapping away with wooden mallets at the last remaining raised tiles and getting them to permanently settle. The larger mosaic featuring a shaven Christos with pomegranates either side was accompanied by panels depicting the seasons. The red, yellow and cream tesserae shone and reflected the money that had been lavished upon it. A few more taps and it was completed to the satisfaction of the artist and his clients.

  He spoke of the two floors that he had designed stating carefully that in a few villas people were accepting the new changes but only slowly. The rich still hankered to cling onto their past but if things changed then one or the other mosaic could be mortared over!

  Salvius, now worn down by life, eventually succumbed to disease and died peacefully whilst his wife lived on a little longer. Without children of their own through the fearful knowledge of what might become of them she chose to leave their home to the church. Yet it only wanted the land and as the building decayed year upon year and debris allowed to settle upon its fine mosaics their particular story was lost.

  Footnote

  Following the defeat of Magnentius, the emperor Constantius struggled to restore order. The German tribes that he had bribed to attack his enemy refused to return home thus leading to a new war on the Rhine. He therefore appointed Julian, as Caesar, to rule in the West but as he was a supporter of the pagans and therefore against the edicts of the church Constantius had to again confront this threat. Only he died before being able to do so. Julian was declared Augustus in AD360 by his own troops.

  The state religion then wavered in its choice of belief for the next thirty years until when, in AD392, the emperor Theodosius ordered the quelling of the Vesta, the eternal flame of Rome and the expulsion of the virgins. Roman fortunes were never to be the same and in AD476 the empire in the west collapsed.

  Glossary

  Aquae SulisThe city of Bath

  AuroraDawn

  AverruncusGod responsible for warding off harm

  Augusta TreverorumTrier (France)

  AugustodunumAutun (France)

  AlemanniTribe of Germany

  AntiochiaAntioch

  AquileiaAquileia (Italy)

  AbulciTribe from north east Spain

  BritanniaBritain

  BacchusGod of wine and debauchery

  BonnaBonn (Germany)

  BellerphonThe slayer of monsters

  Corinium DubonnorumCirencester

  Castrum HelenaeElne (France)

  ChristosChrist

  Calleva AtrebatumSilchester

  ComesAn officer

  ConstantinopolisConstantinople (modern Istanbul)

  Chi RhoThe first two Greek letters spelling Christos

  Concordia Militum‘Peace of the army’

  CuneusCavalry formation (wedge)

  ChimeraFire breathing monster comprising of the body of a lion’s head, goat’s body and serpent’s tail

  ConstantiusCorrect title is Constantius II

  DurotrigiaDorset, Somerset

  Domus AureaGolden House

  DurnovariaDorchester (Dorset)

  FavoniusThe West wind

  Fluvius SabrinusRiver Severn

  Fluvius LigerRiver Loire

  Fluvius RhenusRiver Rhine

  ‘Fortuna Dies Natalis’‘Good fortune on your day of birth’

  FranksTribe of Germany

  FebruariusFebruary

  Fluvius ThamensisRiver Thames

  Fluvius OrontesRiver Orontes

  Flavius DanuviusRiver Danube

  FoederatiMercenaries

  Fluvius SavusRiver Sava. Tributary of the Danube

  Fluvius DravusRiver Drava. Tributary of the Danube

  GalliaFrance

  Gallia LugdunensisThat part of France ruled from Lyon

  GermaniaGermany

  Gallia NarbonensisThat part of France ruled from Narbonne

  HymenaeusGod of marriage ceremonies

  Herculian and JovianSenior units of the Roman field armies

  HiberniaIreland

  Hoc Signo Victor Eris‘In this sign you will conquer’

  HellespontThe Dardanelles

  HeracleaMacedonia

  HadrianopolisAdrianople

  IllyricumRoman province including the area of several Balklan states: Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.

  ‘Incede’‘Forward!’

  Julius mensisThe month of July

  JupiterMightiest of the roman gods

  JanuariusJanuary

  LaresThe protectors of the household

  LeucomagusEast Anton (Andover)

  LondiniumLondon

  LindinisIlchester (Somerset)

  Magister Militum Commander of the army

  MursaOsijek (Croatia)

  Mare AdriaticumAdriatic sea

  Magister EquitumMaster of the horse

  MedusaTo gaze upon the face of Medusa with her hair of snakes would be to turn you to stone

  NaissusNis (Serbia)

  OceanusThe mighty river that encircled the Roman world

  PersiaSouthwest Asia (modern Iran)

  PannoniaRoman Province of modern Hungary and environs

  PontesStaines

  PoetovioPtuj (Slovenia)

  Portus DubrisDover

  RomaRome

  SolGod of the sun

  SaturnaliaRoman feast of Saturn

  SiluriaSouth Wales

  SorviodunumOld Sarum (Salisbury)

  ScholaeBodyguard

  SharpurPersian leader

  SirmiumSremska Mitrovica (Serbia)

  SerdicaSofia (Bulgaria)

  SisciaSisak (Croatia)

  SenonaeSens (France)

  TarraconensisNorth east Spain

  VicariusDeputy to a more senior official

  Villa JulianaChedworth roman villa (in this case)

  Via DomitiaRoman road linking Italy to Spain

  Via MilitarisImportant roman road linking modern Belgrade with Istanbul. Running through Serbia, Bulgaria and Turkey

  Villa MedianaNis (Serbia)

  ViminaciumStari Costolak (Serbia)

  VestaAncient roman god of the hearth. The eternal flame of the city

  VapincumGap (France)

  VerulaniumSt Albans

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