Saturnalia Read Online Free PDF Page A

serious.
    'I'm not laughing. Why spend money on a very expensive present for Claudia, yet not hand it over?'
    'So you are as concerned about him as I am, Marcus?'
    'Of course.'
    Well, he would probably turn up here this evening, blind drunk and trying to remember in which seedy wine bar he had left Claudia's present.
    We marched in on Ganna.
    She was perched on a seat, a thin, hunched figure in a long brown gown with a plaited girdle. Her gold torque necklace study told us she came from some predominantly Celtic area and had access to treasure. Perhaps she was a chieftain's daughter. I hoped her papa did not come looking for her here. She had ice-blue eyes in a sweet face, upon which an anxious expression was making her look vulnerable. I knew enough about women to doubt that.
    We seated ourselves opposite her, side by side formally like a husband and wife on a tombstone. Stately and brisk, with her best agates nestling on the rich blue gown that covered a wonderful bosom, Helena led the conversation. She had worked with me for the past seven years and regularly handled interrogations where my direct participation would not be respectable. Widows and virgins, and good-looking married women with predatory histories.
    'This is Marcus Didius Falco and I am Helena Justina, his wife. Your name is Ganna? So where do you come from, Ganna, and are you happy to speak our language?'
    'I live among the Bructeri in the forest beyond the great river. I speak your language,' Ganna said, with the same slight sneer Veleda had had when she made the same boast five years ago. They learned from traders and captured soldiers. The reason they learned Latin was to spy on their enemies. They enjoyed the way their Latin startled us. 'Or would you rather speak Greek?' challenged Ganna.
    'Whichever is most comfortable for you!' countered Helena, in Greek--which put a stop to that nonsense.
    As a supplicant, Ganna was fiery but desperate. I listened, watching her in silence, as Helena drew out her story. The girl had been Veleda's acolyte. Captured with Veleda, she had been brought here as her companion to give an appearance of propriety. According to her, Rutilius Gallicus had told them they would be honoured guests in Rome. He had implied they would be treated as noble hostages, like princes in the past, who were taught Roman ways, then returned to their home kingdoms to act as friendly client rulers. This was the explanation for placing the women in the safe house, with the senator Quadrumatus Labeo, a man Gallicus knew. They were there for some weeks, then Veleda overheard that she was really to end up paraded in chains in a Triumph and ritually killed.
    'Very distressing for her.' Helena thought intelligent women should have foreseen it.
    'You call us barbarians!' scoffed Ganna.
    Like Cleopatra before her, Veleda was determined not to be made a spectacle for the Roman crowd. I muttered to Helena, 'Luckily the Bructeri have never heard of asps.'
    Ganna said Veleda had made up her mind to escape immediately and being both determined and ingenious, she did so. She went alone. It was very sudden. Ganna was left behind; in the hurried investigation that followed, she was terrified to learn that the Chief Spy intended to interrogate her, probably using torture. She took advantage of the confusion at the Quadrumatus house and also ran away, not knowing where she could find her companion or how to survive in a city. Veleda had told Ganna that there was one man in Rome who might help them return to the forest, giving her my name.
    I like to be thought of as a man of honour--but returning these women to the wild woods a thousand miles to the north would be harder than Ganna seemed to realise. For a start, the logistics would be appalling. But I had no intention of allowing either to go back to the Free German tribes, carrying yet more stories of Roman duplicity. Even if I could manage it, if the truth came out here, I would be a traitor, crucified by a high