The War at the Edge of the World by Ian Ross Read Free Book Online Page A

Eboracum.
    An elderly eunuch in a blue chiton met them as they stepped through into the yard. Valens passed over his two tokens, and the eunuch held the leather discs up to the light of a lamp.
    ‘Don’t worry, they’re genuine,’ Valens said, and smiled over his shoulder to Castus. The eunuch made a weary bow and gestured them into the house.
    ‘Welcome, welcome, brave and handsome centurions!’ Dionysia, the madam of the house, was a woman in her fifties, wearing garish cosmetics and heavy earrings that chimed. ‘Come in and be seated – you’re our only visitors tonight! Sit down and I’ll send for wine!’
    In the blue-walled sitting room, Castus eased himself down onto a shabby divan and spread his knees. He always felt uncomfortable in brothels, even if Valens appeared entirely relaxed. A boy brought cups and a bronze pitcher of earthy brown wine. There was a thick smell in the air, like burnt flowers.
    ‘The only visitors?’ Valens said dubiously. He glanced up at the ceiling, as if he expected to see it shuddering.
    A bell sounded, the beaded curtain across the inner doorway opened, and a group of girls filed into the room. Castus gazed at them: a couple were familiar from his previous visits, but the face he was looking for was not there. One of the girls, a skinny redhead who looked about fifteen, was trying to stifle a cough.
    ‘Cleopatra!’ Valens cried, getting up and seizing the hand of a tall dark-skinned girl. ‘You’re for me. Castus, which do you fancy?’
    ‘Is Afrodisia not here tonight?’ Castus asked, turning to the woman lingering by the door.
    ‘Ah, Afrodisia,’ Dionysia replied, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Yes, but she’s… she’s bathing at the moment. Perhaps you’d like to wait?’
    Castus nodded and settled back on the divan.
    ‘Bathing!’ Valens grinned. ‘She’s bathing in something, but I’ll bet it’s not mare’s milk. Choose another one…’ He gave the dark girl a slap on the buttocks and herded her out through the bead curtain, and the other girls followed behind him.
    Afrodisia was really called Claudia Galla, but clients were supposed to use only trade names. Castus had met her only a month after arriving in Britain: a blonde woman, a few years younger than himself, with a soft womanly body and a tired ease about her that he found deeply attractive. Sometimes he had fantasised about marrying her, but the idea was absurd, the sort of misty notion that bored soldiers concocted when they spent too long in barracks. Even so, he wanted her now – wanted to see her and talk with her more than anything. The wine was stripping away whatever vague ardour he might previously have possessed.
    Settling himself heavily on the narrow divan, he wondered at the gathering frustration he had felt these last months, the sense of barely tethered anger. Was it something he had inherited from his father? His promotion to centurion had seemed like a reward once, but now the fortress was coming to feel like a snare. He could lose himself here. All day he had been baited: by Ursicinus on the drill field; by Balbinus and Galleo in the messroom; by all the head-scratching routines of unit administration and hospital visits. He felt a raging violence inside him, a need for release. The disappointment at not seeing Afrodisia was just the latest of his vexations.
    From somewhere upstairs he heard a man shout. Not Valens. A woman screamed – it was her, he was sure – and at once he was crossing the room: three long strides to the curtain with his centurion’s staff gripped in his fist. Swiping aside the beaded curtain, he stared down the wooden passageway to the stairs: the big Frankish slave rising to his feet, Dionysia’s startled expression through a doorway to the right.
    ‘Centurion?’ the madam said. ‘Please, be calm… nothing is wrong!’
    A woman’s laughter came from upstairs. Castus lowered his staff and the beads dropped back into place, swinging and