Empress & Soldier Chapter 24 part 1
In which Eudekia considers history.
New to this story? Start here.
OUR DAYS WERE SPENT largely apart, but Philitos and I breakfasted alone as often as we could. Working meals, most of them, discussing what we each had learned the previous day. My entertainments now took up only one afternoon a week, giving me more time to turn my mind to the problems my husband shared with me. Two months into his reign, the issues were both local and distant.
The attempted granary theft at the harbour had been followed by raids on bakeries and merchants’ wagons. The guard had kept the damage to a minimum, and after three public executions—and the introduction of subsidized bread—the city was quiet. Or as quiet as it ever was. Any man with muscles or skill with a blade had work if he wanted it, guarding warehouses and shops and private houses. The fighter from the sands, I’d been told, had banked his winner’s bag of gold and taken up a private position, pocketing even more cash to fund his future. Where, I didn’t ask.
“The Boranoi envoy should arrive tomorrow,” my husband told me, after our plates had been cleared.
“A dinner, then? For how many?”
“A small number. This should be an occasion of welcome and friendship, not a time to begin deliberations. Ourselves, your father. Perhaps your grandmother, to make it feel even more intimate.”
“And Quintus?” I suggested. I was doing my best to accept that Philitos saw him as a friend.
“And Quintus,” he agreed.
“What do we know of the man?” A messenger would have been sent from one port or another where the envoy’s ship had docked for food and water.
“Atulf, his name is. Of middle years, perhaps a bit more. He speaks fluent Casilan, and has advised the Boranoi king for some time.”
“Has he companions? A wife?” What did one do with a diplomatic wife when difficult negotiations were occurring?
“No wife.” That was a relief. “He travels with a secretary.”
“And do we know if the secretary is only a secretary?” They would share a house; whether a bed was shared or not would make little difference to those arrangements. But two men away from home for long months had appetites to be fed, and if they did not slake that hunger together, then there were opportunities to gain information from them. Another thing I’d learned from my grandmother.
“The captain is unsure,” Philitos said, “but he thinks so. We will know soon enough.”
The house prepared for the Boranoi ambassador belonged to the palace, kept for diplomatic visitors. Its assigned staff would be skilled in their work, and that work included reporting what they saw and heard. There would be no indication they understood the Boranoi language, of course. But they would; Quintus had told us once that among the men and women recruited to these roles, someone spoke every language known to Casil.
I still wasn’t sure how I felt about Quintus’s oversight of the palace’s sources of clandestine information. But the fiscarius’s office had been responsible for it for generations, and, as Philitos had pointed out more than once, Quintus was both dedicated and honourable, beyond reproach.
He certainly worked long hours. More than one conversation had been needed before the fiscarius stopped arriving at our door late at night, or when I was still in my nightclothes in the mornings. When he slept, I had no idea. But Quintus had finally accepted that a married Emperor needed private time, although messages often awaited Philitos at the breakfast table, left with either his guard or his secretary.
“I’ll give the instructions,” I told my husband.
“What are you doing today?” He reached for a fig. The beauty of his arm, the flex of muscle under the skin, distracted me for a moment.
“Reviewing expenditure with the steward this morning,” I said, recovering my composure. Sometimes it seemed that being Empress had meant exchanging the oversight of a small household for an enormous one. Much of my time was spent in the same tasks, just on a larger scale. Although I didn’t have to review the kitchen’s spending—there was someone in the fiscarius’s office who would do it—I wanted to know. I wanted to be able to tell the dignitasae how the palace’s expenses had been reduced, the funds diverted to the bread subsidies. It challenged them to do the same.
“Can you delay it? Your father and I will be discussing the history of this dispute with the Boranoi. I’d like you to join us.”
“Of course.”
~
My father looked well. I hadn’t seen him or my grandmother in some days. She, I knew, spent her time in a round of social engagements; my father’s time was divided between his responsibilities in the Assembly and as a patron, and advising my husband.
He had unrolled a map on the long table, weighing the corners down with weights made in the shape of dolphins. I ran a finger over one of the metal pieces, remembering the dolphins following the fishing boats at my grandmother’s villa. It seemed so long ago.
We bent over the map, my father tracing the line of the defences. The Boranoi held all the lands east of both the Danós and the Atta above where the rivers joined. Casil controlled the lands west of the Danós, either directly or through the governance of several small provinces.
“A report newly arrived indicates there is still no increase in raids north of the bridge,” Philitos said.
“They want the river?” My eyes followed its line.
“It is likely,” my father said. “When Ulpius took the eastern bank and bridged the river south of its confluence with the Atta, he cut off a major route for both trade and the movement of armies. The latter was Ulpius’s intent, but limiting an enemy’s ability to move trade goods and food also has consequences not to be ignored.”
My husband looked up from the map. “Then are they dependent on roads?”
“Roads and this much smaller river.” My father indicated its route. “But it is a mountain river for much of its length, so of limited value. There is a harbour at its mouth, used for both trade and their navy.”
“But perhaps smaller than they would like?” Philitos said. “I wonder what they are thinking.”
“The simplest answer is they plan to take Casil.” Calmly, without emotion, my father explained his thinking. “This is the first move. Take the Danós back to transport an army and its provisions, and to house a larger navy at its mouth. But—” He held up a hand. “I am no strategist. I only speak of what history suggests. Whether Genucius agrees must await his return.”
Genicius had sailed north with the fleet to judge the situation for himself. His predecessor, Roscius, had returned from his retirement villa to take his place for the few weeks. I wondered, briefly, what the old general would have to say. He had made history, not just studied it.
All the men who had made history—had they known they were doing so? Or had they just solved the problems of the day? Emperors had their monuments, but they had them whether they’d done much at all. Some—like Cotta and Ulpius—had led their armies themselves and deserved their fame. Some had preferred a life of luxury and pleasure, leaving war to their generals, whose names faded into obscurity.
Which would Philitos be? A third kind, I hoped, a wise and considered administrator, leading his people by example, weighing the words of his advisors judiciously. Not risking his life in battle, nor a hedonist. Casil had had such Emperors, and my father would have ensured Philitos knew of their lives and deeds.
Like what you read? There’s lots more in my Substack Story Archive
Donations for my local foodbank gratefully received
Find (almost) all my books at https://scarletferret.com/authors/marian-l-thorpe