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

the upright young officer and his shock at the lack of respect for the Emperor. It seemed, as Marcellus admitted, unlikely that any of the birthday party behaviour was more than high spirits and boredom. Nevertheless, Quintus thought he would report in due course to Governor Trebonius, who would discipline the legion as he saw fit.

He read the report through again. The business of the flowing money troubled him. Silver denarii, of course. In itself, that wouldn’t be unusual. The army was always paid in silver. The bit he didn’t like was the sudden abundance. Where there was unexpected money, there was invariably trouble. And in this case, he suspected, silver was at the root of all the evil. He shook the wrapper of the letter, and tipped a small coin into his palm.

Quintus looked at Tertius, who was sipping his wine appreciatively.

‘Just before we got interrupted at the mines office, Tertius, you were telling me something about the stolen silver bullion being made into coinage.’

‘Yes, sir. Counterfeiting is an old trade here in the Summer Country. I believe Sextus Caesulanus, as I told you, has revived one of those forges, but I don’t know exactly where.’ The dark little man spread his hands in a gesture of regret.

Quintus thought. Caesulanus might well be liaising with local forgers, but someone else who knew the area, with more authority and freedom to move around, was playing a bigger role. That someone must be either Bulbo or Lucius Claudius. Or they could be running the scam together. Lucius had left the mines office in a panic just before the arrival there of the man in the blue cloak; and now Bulbo had driven away from Blue Cloak at the Iscalis docks, sweating and in a whirl of dust. What were they hiding, and where had they gone? Well, there was nothing for it. Tertius would have to help once more.

’Tertius,’ he said to the accountant, ’I hesitate to ask this of you, but I can’t think of a more reliable help than you. Would you be willing to deliver an urgent message for me? I’ll cover your costs, and I promise you’ll be able to take Enica with you to a safe — very safe — place. You’ll both be well-treated by a colleague of mine.’

The freedman looked up eagerly.  ‘What more do you know, Frumentarius?’

‘We already know the silver is being shipped away from the mines by Caesulanus, in league with Lucius. I have discovered that a secret shipment of money expected at the Iscalis docks for shipping to Isca Silurium has gone missing. That has made Blue Cloak very angry, and frightened Bulbo into melting away like a streak of yellow snow in sunlight. And now Commander Crispus at Aquae Sulis has sent me troubling news of the Second Augusta. With this.’

Into Tertius’s outstretched hand he tipped the silver denarius. It looked a perfectly ordinary coin, bearing the face of the boy Emperor  Severus Alexander on the obverse. Quintus hardly knew a clever counterfeit from a true coin. But maybe Tertius knew better.

It was Enica who spoke up. Tertius held the coin out to her. She looked carefully at it.

‘I believe this could be a local counterfeit, as Tertius says. I have seen such before, when I was a young girl in Bo Gwelt. Making coins is an old industry in the Polden Hills. Folks are not too fussy about whether it’s lawful or not. To find out for sure you need to go there, sir. There are people there who can tell you.‘

‘People where? Where are the Polden Hills?’

‘Bo Gwelt, sir. You need to go to Bo Gwelt.’

The list of Quintus’s concerns was growing. Added to two murders, the report of Imperial fraud, his missing aide, potential tribal rebellion and continuing attacks by ruthless criminals, he now had rumours of disloyalty within the Province’s most famous legion. Even the slightest risk of the Second Augusta being suborned needed urgent action, well above Quintus’s head. Or even Governor Trebonius’s level, although of course he had to be informed. The Frumentariate Commander at the Castra in Rome would also need to know, such was the potential peril to the Emperor. But Londinium was distant, and Rome even more so. There would be no help from either any time soon.

The trouble was, the evidence he had was still mostly circumstantial. He hadn’t yet joined the dots enough to know for sure. Just straws in the wind, the evidence of a little Syrian freedman, reports by worried countryfolk of a Druid revival. And a roiling in his guts that he had learned to trust over the years of investigating crimes.

Quintus asked the innkeeper for a birchwood tablet and ink, and sat down to write back to Marcellus. He saw off Tertius and his little girlfriend with an escort to Aquae Sulis, taking with them the signed and stamped letter in a stout satchel. Then he joined a local guide, hired with the help of the mansio-keeper. Heading back east to pick up the Fosse Way, south to Lindinis, and west again along the Poldens to the Bo Gwelt estate would take too long.  Not enough time before dark. Quintus followed his guide due south across country instead, along the narrow droves crossing the fens of the Summer Country. The pale spring sun was already beginning to slant, reddening, towards the west. His scarred leg grew cold, itching and prickling as they rode on between stunted willows and into thin fog across the sodden levels. He prayed to Mithras that the guide knew his way.

He also found himself praying to Minerva, and thought he heard the low hoot of Minerva’s sacred bird in answer. Perhaps that was just wishful thinking. Then again maybe not, he thought, when their horses crested a low ridge above the fen fog and he saw the large honey-coloured villa ahead. He