The Governor's Man by Jacquie Rogers (best beach reads TXT) 📕

see your face! What harm can these ancient bones do us? Truly, your ancestors are our friends. None other of your countrymen will come up here at night, so close to the barrows. It’s a perfect place for us to camp.’

And camp they did, right in the shadow of the long departed. Tiro’s face grew even more miserable.

It was a cold supper. Quintus might laugh at Tiro’s superstition, but he would not allow a fire to betray them. After supper Tiro seemed to struggle to settle. Not until the moon had set and utter dark dropped over them did he fall asleep.

Quintus lay awake as he often did, watching the crisp night sky with its scattering of starlight. He returned in his mind to the encounters at Julia’s townhouse. He saw the engaging young girl with his rebellious dark hair, his grey eyes, and Julia’s generous mouth. Was Aurelia really his daughter? It seemed so unlikely, a fantasy he might have dreamed up under the influence of the poppy syrup in the military hospital at Eboracum. My daughter. How strange that sounded! His daughter, Aurelia, and at the same time the daughter of Julia. Julia who had run away from him, knowing she was pregnant, knowing he would be unlikely to come back. She hadn’t given him a chance. She took his child away, before he could get used to the idea. He felt suddenly resentful. Julia had ripped away a whole possible future in which he stayed in this strange northern country. All stolen from him by an impulsive younger Julia.

Really, Quintus? A sterner inner eye now shone a harsh light on that final meeting in Eboracum. Julia had run to greet him in the forum. She had looked so happy. He pictured himself ignoring her joy, unable to look her in the face while he told her he was leaving. That his family was in trouble, that he must return to Rome immediately. He gave her no chance to tell him her news, no reason to change his mind. He was the one who ran away — from his real family in Britannia. He was trying to run from the shame of his father’s disgrace, from the horror of the Caledonian battle where Gaius had saved him, from the guilt of watching as Flavius died…

I did this to us, Julia, didn’t I? I rejected you. And now I pay the price: not just thirteen years of trudging the Empire’s roads, policing the Emperor’s business, but also thirteen years without you. Thirteen years of missing my daughter growing from a baby into a wilful bright girl who calls someone else “Father”.

Eventually Quintus slept, not knowing that he turned and groaned in his sleep as the same old nightmares clawed at him.

Quintus woke Tiro before dawn. A ribbon of bright sun hovered along the eastern horizon as they circled round to the southern edge of a sloping plateau already humming with activity. A tumbled mass of slag-heaps and the scattered buildings of the straggling mining complex stretched away into the distance. They crouched down near a small tumbledown fort, anxious to avoid being silhouetted by the rising sun slanting up behind them.

  Beyond the old fort were long wriggling clefts in the bedrock, which Quintus guessed to be the rakes dug out by miners to follow the line of the lead ore. As they watched, miners began to hammer lead ore lumps into smaller piles. Fire and smoke showed where the raw ore was heated by workers swathed in big leather aprons to melt the silver from the lead. Even this early in the day, Quintus could see the sweat pouring off the workers as smelting fumes rose in plumes.

He touched Tiro’s sleeve, pointing to a central brick-built block surrounded by a courtyard, with stables off to one side.

‘There’s the office. I hope our man Tertius will already be at work. No sign of horses or wagons, so Bulbo hasn’t yet arrived from his Iscalis home. Quick as we can, and pull your hood up.’

Leaving the ponies hobbled in a copse of wind-sculpted ash trees, they slunk along narrow lanes to the mines administration block. Several men passed them, hurrying to work without any sign of interest.

They crept into the courtyard and round to the back of the building. Through rough window shutters Quintus spotted a swarthy man seated inside, papers and wax tablets scattered across the table in front of him. The man started at Quintus’s rap on the shutters and came over to the window. Quintus flashed his hasta insignia briefly. ‘Round to the front,’ the dark man hissed, and went to let them in, bolting the door as soon as they were inside.

‘Tertius?’

‘Yes, sir. You have been sent by …?’

‘Rome. The Castra Peregrina.’ The little man anxiously smoothed both hands down his ink-stained robe. With his harsh desert nose Tertius looked every inch the Eastern Roman he was. Dark curling hair bulged in tufts from the top of his tunica. He was slight and stooped, an unlikely hero. He closed the front window shutters, plunging the room into darkness until he had lit a smoky tallow taper.

Quintus got to the point. ‘We’re investigating the possible theft of silver from these mines. We are told by Lady Julia Aureliana that it may be you who has been reporting secretly to Rome.’

‘Yes sir. I am so glad my messages got through.’

‘Sit down, Tertius. We have bad news.’

Tertius trembled, and his black eyes moistened as Quintus told him about Catus. He dashed a hand across his face and wiped it on his tunic. ‘He was such a good lad. His sister Enica will be devastated. They were everything to each other.’ Then Tertius straightened.

‘What more can I do to help, Frumentarius?  I must avenge Catus, and make his ending worth the dreadful cost.’

‘Just tell us everything you