Free Master and God by Lindsey Davis Page B

the thing. Maybe it would never catch up with him.
    Just before Vinius returned to Rome, his father achieved his lifelong ambition of a transfer to the Praetorian Guards. He died only six weeks later, without ever being on duty beside the Emperor. Of those other great military men, Felix and Fortunatus, there was little better to record. Whilst on service in Germany, Felix had had an accident involving a cartload of liquor barrels (he was larking about), acquiring a limp and a medical discharge. In Syria, Fortunatus had made it to centurion but was subsequently dismissed, clearly under a cloud. He made light of it, but Gaius suspected there had been some fiddling of legionary stores. Fortunatus worked for a builder when he came back to Rome; pieces of wood and hand tools were always coming home with him. Felix, who had no sense of irony, now earned his keep driving delivery carts.
    Vinius was left to sustain the family tradition of military service, so after his convalescence he accepted a posting to the vigiles. Felix and Fortunatus pushed him into it, knowing their father would have approved. It allowed him to feel he was not written off. He quickly found his niche as an investigator. He enjoyed the work, and was good at it.
    No one in the armed services could marry; many ignored the rule. Vinius had married before he joined up, which briefly solved the problem of sexual release, that ever-pressing matter for a seventeen-year-old. Felix and Fortunatus had been suggesting women they thought suitable, all rejected by Vinius, who gave them a hint of his independent spirit when he chose Arruntia for himself. They were childhood sweethearts, genuinely in love. The marriage was passionate, even romantic; he and Arruntia could hardly keep their hands off one another. Gaius also enjoyed extricating himself from his male and female relatives’ supervision.
    Then the dream ended. Arruntia was horrified to learn he intended to join the legions; she could not believe he would leave home indefinitely, leave her, and do it voluntarily. Somebody warned her that legionary service was twenty years, plus more in the reserves – then another so-called friend pointed out that soldiers were not allowed to marry so she was in effect divorced. She felt utterly rejected. Coming from such a military family, the blasé Vinius had taken his future for granted. He had not intended to deceive Arruntia; he was a lad, and just never thought about it.
    He did not know, when he departed for Britain, that he was leaving his wife pregnant.
    When Vinius then came home out of the blue, expecting to pick up their previous life, he fell over the cradle as he entered their rented room, and was severely knocked back. His wife’s angry mood over his career choice was also outside his experience; worse, she no longer had much interest in sexual relations. Had pregnancy and labour been frightening? Was she overwhelmed by domestic responsibility? Although she devoted herself to the child she now had, perhaps she did not want another baby. Perhaps, Vinius darkly suspected, she no longer wanted him. As far as he could tell (and he brooded on this continually) there had been no other man.
    He knew for sure his damaged appearance horrified Arruntia. She shrieked and burst into tears when she first saw him; even their tiny daughter took the apparition more quietly.
    He had no idea how to deal with an infant. Arruntia biffed him away when he tried. On rare occasions when he found himself alone with the baby, he picked her up gingerly but felt as guilty as if he had taken a secret lover. Once, the tiny child fell asleep clinging onto his tunic and Vinius found himself weeping, he did not know why.
    Older now, and shaken by his army experience, he dimly recognised that Arruntia must have felt desperate when he left, though this understanding did not improve his subsequent behaviour. No teenaged girl would enjoy being shackled to a man she might not see again for twenty