“And then,” he added for himself alone, “we plan how we’re going to go home.”
The soldier ahead of Vibulenus cycled sideways. “I still think —” the tribune heard Clodius Afer grumble as they stepped together into the paired cubicles.
“Quartilla,” said Vibulenus, and he walked into the woman’s room through the dissolving wall. “I need to talk to you.”
Clodius had insisted the tribune should go to the head of the line on the basis of planning needs if he were unwilling to pull rank — and he had the rank, had earned it, so there was no reason not to claim its perquisites.
Vibulenus had refused on the grounds that they were all in this together, however you defined “this” . . . and that there was no real haste, that he’d processed through the Sick Bay, eaten, and drunk already.
And all that was true, to the seasoned veteran Gaius Vibulenus Caper at any rate. He smiled at how the boy-soldier Vibulenus Caper would have reacted to the notion of eschewing the honors due his rank — the boy who had not yet fought beside his men in a hundred fields, fought and died. But the real reason he had not cut in at the head of the line to the women was cowardice. There was solace in the thought, a psychic mudwallowing in the fact that he was afraid and that he was giving in to that fear — somewhat.
He was here in the room lighted by a bead in the back corner, and Quartilla was facing him.
Vibulenus hadn’t been a gallant — Carrhae and capture had come too soon for the boy to have developed polish even if the inclination were there. There had been a woman during the season he spent in Athens attending lectures by the philosopher Aristaneus. An Argive of good family, she claimed . . . a Carian from some nameless crossroads, Vibulenus had suspected even then. Everything about her was as false as the red of her hair, and Vibulenus’ passion had been false as well — a boy’s nonsense modelled on the poetry of Catullus and Theognis, and it hadn’t prepared him to really care.
“I would have discussed it with you first,” the Roman said softly, “but the offer was spur of the moment and there wouldn’t be . . . time.”
He was standing with his back straight and his hands gripped firmly so that they would not wash themselves in his nervousness. He was not skirting the discussion of his plans to take the ship home to Campania: he did not even remember those plans in the crash of personal emotions which, as always in a human, managed to claim precedence.
“You. . . ,” Quartilla said. She patted the couch beside her. She wore wristlets and anklets strung with tiny bells which sang at every movement. “Come, sit down, of course. You — must have been very brave for the guild to allow you. . . .”
The tribune sat very carefully and faced the woman, because he forced himself to do so. “Brave’s easy,” he said, meaning physical courage. He was blackly amused at how much easier it was to face spears than it was to face the fact that he had blithely destroyed a relationship that just might mean more to him than life did.
“Everybody was brave,” he went on, able to make his tongue function even though it was dry and his mouth was so dry he thought it would crack. “Either they were pleased because I was smart enough to pull the pan out of the fire when they fucked around —”
Vibulenus took a deep breath. “Or else,” he went on, letting the words tumble out in their own time, “they liked the way I tried to save the Commander’s life. Which was a stupid mistake, and the more so if it earned me the chance to make a worse stupid mistake. All I can say about either choice was that I did what I did; and I — wish I hadn’t.”
“I’m a slave,” said Quartilla.
“We all are,” Vibulenus broke in savagely. “We’re less than that.”