Legatus Legionis: Book Two in the Gaius Claudius Scaevola Trilogy (3 page)

"Which is?"

"The Master taught that we should do unto others as we would wish them to do unto us. When you conquer, think about the conquered. Put yourself in their place, just for a moment."

"They would want us to leave," Gaius smiled, "and we're not going to do that."

"Yes, but if they accept that they are conquered, there are different ways of being treated."

"Yes, there are," Gaius nodded. A strange feeling came over him, as he realized that Athene had said almost the same thing. "I shall remember what you say."

"And now we must leave," James said, "for we have taken too much of your time. Again, thank you for the money, and may the Lord be with you, now and for ever more."

"And with you two," Gaius replied.

As he watched them walk away, he later told Timothy, for the first time since he had received his orders dismissing him from the legion, he felt at peace with himself. With the peace came realization: another part of the prophecy had been fulfilled. Perhaps his career was not yet over.

It was only later that another thought occurred to him: was Rebecca's answer from the same source as his prophecy?

* * *

When Gaius reached Caesarea, he reported to Marullus, Prefect of Judea. His instructions from Caesar had included continuing with his non-military career, and to assist the Prefect with administrative tasks, which might provide useful experience and might also benefit Judea. As it happened, Marullus was elsewhere, and it was unclear when he would return.

There was some news from Rome awaiting him. Lucilla had married Quintus. Strictly speaking, as eldest living male within the family, he, Gaius, should have arranged the marriage and given Lucilla away. Knowing his sister, the first part would have been impossible. As it was, there was no immediate male relation available and apparently this lack of available males made this the wedding of the year in Rome, for Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus announced that he had been instructed by the divine Tiberius to look after Lucilla, and he would honour that responsibility by giving Lucilla away, and by ensuring that Quintus would answer to the
Princeps
of Rome if he did not treat Lucilla properly. After considerable religious procedures, and considerable feasting, the spelt bread was duly eaten and Lucilla was taken into Quintus' house.

Quintus then decided that he would make himself responsible for the running of the family estate. His argument was there was nobody else to do it, given that the eldest son was absent. Even if his younger brother could have run the business, he too appeared to have died with the rest of his family in the cave-in. Gaius snorted at this news, and sent a message back that the Steward was doing a fine job, and while he, Gaius, appreciated Quintus' offer of help, the Steward would make the final decision. The Steward, after all, was answerable to the Head of the family.

He so wanted to return to Rome, but after much agonizing he accepted Claudius' advice. He could do nothing for the dead, but Little Boots could ruin his career. Without doubt, he thought bitterly, Little Boots considered this a sort of test. There was nothing for it, short of inciting a revolt, to sit back and await the pleasure of Little Boots.

Such was life. But however bad Little Boots might seem, at least it was not as bad as the last days of the Republic; when Caesar bribed his way to the Senate with Crassus' money and supported Crassus in his search for military glory, to the cost of how many Roman lives? When Caesar used legions to conquer and loot Gaul for no better reason than that he had to pay off the debts incurred while bribing his way to influence. When Caesar invaded Britain, then left largely because the tributes he got were as much as he felt he could milk easily from that wet and dismal land. Ironically, that gave Little Boots an out for his disastrous attempt to invade Britain for when the first Gaius Julius Caesar could not conquer Britain, somehow it did not seem as bad when the second one did not.

Not that that was much of a consolation. His immediate problem was Little Boots, and there seemed to be nothing he could do about such a problem.

Chapter 3

His thoughts returned to his engine. The only time he ever thought about his engine, he noted to himself wryly, was when things were going badly for him in every other way. Right now, they could hardly be worse, so he was back to it, perhaps on the basis that it was the only problem he had where he thought he could make any progress at all. The trouble was, he was not exactly making progress on it either. He needed inspiration, and moods like this were not the place to find it.

Until this point, he had really been playing with this concept of an engine. The engine had been a distraction, and a reasonably successful one for it had given him sufficient challenge during dark times that he never resorted to despair. However, now his general thinking was beginning to crystallize onto a final object, which meant that the time was approaching when he had to test his theories. To do that, he had to get things made so that he could assemble it, but before he started making things, he needed to make some decisions. The first decision was whether he would really commit to it. This was going to take a lot of time, and a lot of money. Did he really want to spend that time and money? But for Athene and her prophecy, the answer most certainly would have been, "No!" Now he almost felt he had to. From her tone, and her body language, it had seemed very important to her, but why?

Then, if he decided to proceed, he needed to know how big the final engine was going to be. There were two questions here: how big could it be, and how big did it have to be to demonstrate the principle. The smaller it was, the easier and cheaper it was to make changes if something went wrong. On the other hand, it had to be big enough to demonstrate that it could do something meaningful, and it should be designed in such a way that a larger version could easily be made, essentially as a scaled copy. He would have to think about this.

Meanwhile, if steam was going to drive this piston, he needed to get lots of steam in very quickly, which meant he needed big enough pipes. How big was 'big enough'? The issue really was, though, how big should, or perhaps it was could, he cast his cylinder? And his piston? Once he decided that, the valve had to be made so that steam could be driven in and out of the system, and fixed to the cylinder so that it would stay there.

That meant designing some means of fixing everything, but leaving room for anything that had to move. The valve, or valves, had to connect the cylinder to both the boiler and the condenser, which also had to have a means of returning water to the boiler. That would need a small return valve that might operate by opening the condensate to the boiler when its top valve was closed. This might be drivable through the same rocker arm, but the two valves would have to be some distance apart, so maybe not. Could he design a cylinder-type valve with two paths, one of which would do one job? What would it look like, and how could it be put together. Perhaps he should make wooden models made with his key pieces, and see if that would help his thinking on the layout.

Then he needed to build a much larger version, but out of what? Iron was the most desirable, but maybe bronze would be easier, at least to start with. Could he make a big enough mould? For bronze, at least the answer was yes, and even if he did not know how to do it, the casting of large bronze items had been done many times. If he specified what he wanted, he would find someone to cast it. The next problem was how to fit the valves? Fire-welding? Maybe. But if he could cast his cylinder with the end sealed, but with small piping extended for the valve or valves, that would be a lot easier later, and hopefully a lot stronger. This joining of things was becoming more of a problem than he had considered, largely because if his machine was going to do anything useful, the steam pressures were going to have to be very high, and that very same pressure that was going to do his useful work was also capable of blowing his machine apart.

He would think about it, and record his thoughts.

* * *

"Your engine won't go for long," Timothy warned, after Gaius had explained his latest designs, "if steam is flying everywhere."

"The trick is to recover the steam!" Gaius said triumphantly. "Let me think. I've got an idea on that too."

"And where does this recovered steam go?" Timothy asked.

"To another cylinder," Gaius explained. "There we condense it, and keep the water to reboil."

"And all your steam comes flying out when you try to put the water back in," Timothy pointed out.

"Just need a suitable valve," Gaius shrugged. "A minor detail! The most important detail is can we get anything to work at all?"

"I don't see the point of something that lasts just a few minutes," Timothy muttered.

"The point is, if you can make it work at all, you can work on the problem areas, improving them, and eventually you can make it work well. If you can't get anything out of it, you don't know what to do next, and sooner or later you give up."

"Which, of course, you have no intention of doing," Timothy nodded, almost in dismay.

"Not yet," Gaius shrugged.

Timothy stared at him, then finally asked, "Why this burst of enthusiasm for this steam motor?"

"Takes my mind off my problems," Gaius admitted. "Little Boots is doing what he can to mess up my career, and there's nothing I can do about it."

"Slaves tend to have their careers messed up too," Timothy pointed out.

"It seems I never learn," Gaius shook his head. "I should never have given you that opening." He paused and looked ruefully towards a palm tree. "Yes, life's unfair, and I've had a better start than most, but I wasn't complaining. I was merely explaining. I'm really pissed off, but what can I do?"

"You Romans demonstrate interesting logic. You make all this fuss about the principles of the republic and why a king is bad, then you give yourself a bad king and ask, what can you do?"

"We put up with this," Gaius explained, "because the alternative, the end of the republic, was terrible. There's only so much civil war a country can stand, and don't give me all that nonsense about Greece. The only reason you Greeks didn't have civil war was that you were so busy fighting amongst yourselves you never had a nation."

"There's some truth there," Timothy nodded ruefully. "Anyway, about this valve. What do you want done?"

"I'll try to draw something," Gaius said. "You try to find someone to have a go at making it. I know, it'll cost, but I'm determined. Now, let me think about this return system for the water to get back in the boiler. That seems easier. All you need is a cylinder with a valve that lets in steam and a valve that lets out water, and a way of making sure they can't both be open at the same time. It's also desirable to have some way of cooling the steam, because the quicker it can be converted back to water, the more likely it is that the steam will exit the cylinder. Then all we've got to . . ." he mused and then eventually grinned as he said, "we've got to find a slave to sit on the contraption and pull the lever up and down from time to time!"

Timothy gave Gaius a look of despair, then he shrugged and walked away.

* * *

Gaius had been in Caesarea less than a week when another boat came from Rome, and it brought him messages. It was with more than a little trepidation that he put a small bag aside and opened the seal on a message from the
Princeps
.

"
To the saviour of temples, I hereby award you something appropriate. As you still wish to serve Rome, proceed forthwith to command Legio XI, usually at Burnum, but currently stationed at Lussonium. Thanks to Calvisius Sabinus, the loyalty in this region is suspect. Bearing in mind your orders from a Goddess, I look forward to receiving your assurances that you will address this problem. G.
"

Gaius could hardly believe the message. In principle, his career was back on track. Then there was the question of Rebecca: she had been so certain. Why was she so certain? She said she had prayed, and received a response. Did that mean there really was a God, and these Christians were the favoured people. Or did it mean she had had a vision not unlike his? Was this further evidence of some force at work that was playing with him?

It did not matter. What did matter was that he had orders, and also a small bag from the
Princeps
. He opened the bag and stared in surprise. In addition to what went with the office, there were two additional
vexillae
carrying the standards of the
Fulminata
and the
Cyrenaica
, showing his experience. There was also a decoration that had the silver spearshaft of the
hasta pura.
However, that was all that was orthodox, since, instead of the head being a spear, the shaft terminated with
a small silver temple. A strange decoration, but since specifically mentioned as an award by the
Princeps
, albeit an erratic
Princeps
, he was marked as an unusual Legate.

There was a further message, this time from Claudius. He, Claudius, had heard Gaius, the
Princeps
, muttering about this position, and the lack of anybody suitable and trustworthy to take it, so he said he could easily find someone to fill it. Gaius Caesar had laughed and said, "Why not! It's about time you did something useful." He sat back and laughed in disbelief at the prospect, then added, "C C C C Claudius, d d d d don't p p p p p p piss yourself. Try not to bring Rome to her knees with laughter."

Accordingly, I appointed you. Little Boots roared with laughter, muttered something about having appropriate religious convictions and divine support, and said that he was always going to make you special. So please, Claudius concluded, try not to be too embarrassing.