SATURNALIA

A group of Praetorians bunched tightly around her, to prevent escape. They were not harming her. But Ga

Things grew ugly. Guards finally drew their swords, so the temple staff went crazy. Justinus and Lentullus, both shouting, raced through the shrine towards Ga

Infuriated, Anacrites came ru

The temple attendants were useless, concerned only about the desecration in their shrine. A bunch of the Guards were pretending to be solicitous. I saw what they were up to. One of their number had done this, and they were starting to sense difficulties ahead. Most had fallen silent. Old centurions know what to do when things go wrong. They would be pla

On the verge of losing a man in his charge, Clemens went crazy. 'Leave him! Leave him to stabilise, you fools! Somebody get these murderous bastards out of the bloody way -'

I strode up. I let the Guards know from my voice how furious I was at having to sound reasonable. 'Just leave us to it now, lads. Better get lost. We were all on the same side, today. This was supposed to be a joint exercise – or hadn't anyone explained that?' Already displaying embarrassment, the Guards quickly decided to evacuate. Anacrites must have melted away from the scene ahead of them. . Kneeling by Lentullus, Clemens was still desperately trying to stanch the blood. He looked back over one shoulder, recognised me as I came to assess the problem, and yelled: 'Don't just stand there, Falco! Get some help – get a doctor!'

XLII

This mission was stuffed with doctors. I knew only one who might be close at hand. It was quickest to visit him. As soon as we could safely shoulder Lentullus, we rushed him to the vigiles. Their outstation was barely two streets away. Luckily, I had underestimated the Fourth Cohort's ability to recover from their Saturnalia drinks: a skeleton staff was on duty that night, and to my relief, one of them was Scythax, their morose doctor. He looked put out at the interruption, but he reacted quickly.

We lugged Lentullus in, and Scythax cleared a working space. A body was already on the table, but that was a dead man so he lost his place in the queue. The lads dumped the corpse outside in the exercise yard. At first we clustered round, but pretty soon Scythax shooed us out. He just kept Clemens to pass him equipment and take orders. 'Is there any hope?' 'Very little.' Scythax was a dour bastard. We sat in the yard, half of us on the cold ground, some on coils of rope. I tried both; they were equally uncomfortable. Fortunately Sentius – another dismal, peculiar type – turned up with our abandoned cloaks. Two were unaccounted for. On a headcount we realised Titus and Gaudus were missing. If they went down in the fight, nobody had seen it. We just had to hope they had fled in the confusion – perhaps with Justinus. We waited. Young soldiers spend a great deal of time sitting around while nothing much is happening – but that doesn't mean they are good at it. Bored, Lusius took a look at the corpse Scythax had had in his cubicle. Fresh meat, Lusius said. To ease my stiffness I straightened up, and strolled over for a professional appraisal. He was fresh all right. I had seen this man alive not much more than an hour ago. It was the vagrant from the Via Appia, the musical one with the limited repertoire. He still had his deplorable one-note pipe, twisted into an indescribably filthy string he had been using as a tunic belt.

There was no indication what killed him. Lusius and 1 rolled him. Nothing. Quietly 1 walked to the door of the medical cubicle.

Night had fallen hours ago, so the scene was lamp-lit; Clemens was holding a small pottery oil lamp, while the doctor carefully inserted a few animal-gut stitches to keep the flesh together on Lentullus' mangled thigh.

'How did this happen?' Scythax asked, between actions with the needle. He was no fine embroiderer. Nor was he confident at sewing; he liked a challenge, but his normal work was with bums and crush wounds. Vigiles who were cut in accidents ended up with very crooked scars.

'He tried attacking armed men when he didn't have a sword.' Clemens must have seen it occur. 'So he used his feet. He stamped them; they were not happy.' 'Drunks?' Scythax was supposing this had happened in a normal street fight. 'Oh no. They were sober.' Clemens kept it diplomatic, still not mentioning the Guards. 'You don't want to hear it, Scythax,' 1 added quietly from the doorway.