The Secret of the Kingdom

Book III

Britain

I arrived in Britain just as winter was setting in with its storms, mists and icy rain. As every visitor to Britain knows, the country can oppress any man. There are not even any towns in the sense that there are in northern Gaul. Whoever does not die of pneumonia in Britain gets rheumatism for life, if he has not already been captured by the Britons and had his throat slit in their ash groves; or been carried back to their priests, the Druids, who predict the future of their tribe from the intestines of Romans. My legionaries, who have thirty years’ service behind them, told me all this.

I met Aulus Plautius at the trading station of London, which lies by a fast-moving river, and where he had his headquarters as there were at least a few Roman houses there. He was not angry, as I had feared he would be when he read the letter from his wife, but burst out laughing, slapping his knees. A week or two earlier he had received a secret letter from Emperor Claudius confirming his triumph. He was in the process of arranging his affairs in Britain so that he could leave his command and return to Rome in the spring.

“Oh, yes,” he laughed, “so I’m supposed to summon the family together to pronounce judgment on my dear wife, am I? I shall be lucky if Paulina doesn’t tear the few remaining hairs from my head when she questions me on the kind of life I’ve been leading in Britain. I’ve had enough of religious matters here, what with cutting down the Druids’ sacred groves, and paying for a whole shipload of idols to stop people here making their revolting human sacrifices. And then they immediately smash the clay statues and start rebelling again.

“No, no,” he went on, “superstition at home is much more innocent than it is here. This accusation is only an intrigue by my dear colleagues in the Senate who are afraid I’ll be much too wealthy after being in command of four legions for four years. As if anyone could get rich in this country. In fact Rome’s money disappears as if into a bottomless pit, and Claudius has been forced to let me celebrate a triumph so that Rome will think that all is peaceful here. No one will ever make this country peaceful, for it is in a permanent state of turmoil. If one conquers one of their kings in honorable battle, another soon appears, caring for neither hostages nor treaties. Or else a neighboring tribe comes and captures the land we’ve conquered and slaughters our garrison troops. One can’t disarm them completely because they need their weapons to defend themselves against each other. I should have been glad to return without a triumph just to get out of this godforsaken country.”

He grew serious and looked sternly at me.

“Had rumor of a triumph already spread to Rome when you left,” he asked, “for a young knight like you voluntarily to offer to come here? I suppose you hope to share in the triumph with the minimum effort.”

Indignantly I explained that I had heard nothing of any triumph. On the contrary, it was said in Rome that Claudius, out of sheer envy, would not allow any such thing for service in Britain because he himself had celebrated a triumph for quelling the Britons.

“I have come to study the art of war under a famous commantler,” I said. “I was tired of the riding exercises in Rome.”

“There are no glossy horses and silver shields here,” said Aulus briskly. “No hot baths or skilled masseurs either. There is nothing here but the war cries of blue-painted barbarians in the forests, daily fear of ambush, an eternally running cold, an incurable cough, and permanent homesickness.”

And he was not exaggerating all that much, as I was to find out in the two years I spent in Britain. He kept me on his staff for a few days to have my descent confirmed, to hear the latest gossip from Rome and with the help of a relief map to teach me the shape of Britain and the positions of the legionary camps. He also gave me leather clothes, a horse, weapons, and some friendly advice.

“Look after your horse well or the Britons will steal it,” he said. “They fight with chariots, so their horses are small and are not good for riding. As Roman war and politics here are based on our treaties with the British tribes, we also have several chariot auxiliaries. But never trust a Briton, and never turn your back on one. The Britons would like to have our large war-horses to start up their own cavalry. Claudius’ victory here was due to his elephants, which the Britons had never seen before. The elephants tore up their wooden barricades and frightened their horses. But the Britons soon learned to aim at the elephants’ eyes with their spears and to scorch them with burning torches. And the elephants could not stand the climate either. The last of them died of pneumonia a year ago. I’ll send you to Flavius Vespasian’s legion because he is my most experienced soldier and most trustworthy commantler. He is dull but never loses his head. His descent is humble and his habits crude, but he is an honest man who thus will probably never rise to greater heights than that of legion commantler. But you will learn the art of war from him, if that is what you want.”

I met Flavius Vespasian on the shore of the flooded river Anton, where he had dispersed his legion over a wide area and had had wooden fortifications built far apart from each other. He was a man of about forty, powerfully built, his forehead broad and with good-natured lines around his stern mouth. And he was not so insignificant as one would have thought from Aulus Plautius’ superior description. He liked to laugh loudly and also to joke about his own reverses, over which a weaker man might have despaired. His presence alone gave me a sense of security. He looked at me slyly.

“Is fortune coming our way,” he said, “now that a young knight from Rome comes of his own free will to the damp dark forests of Britain? No, no, it’s not possible. Confess what you have done at once and what boyish pranks you have fled from into the protection of my legion’s Eagle, then we’ll get on better together.”

When he had questioned me minutely on my family and friends in Rome, he said that I would be neither a credit to him nor the contrary. Good-natured as he was, he decided that I should gradually get used to the filth and crudity and trials of military life. At first he took me with him on one of his tours of inspection so that I should get to know the country, and he dictated to me his reports to Aulus Plautius because he himself was too lazy to write. When he had made sure I really could ride and did not trip over my sword, he handed me over to the legion’s engineer to learn how to build fortifications.

Our isolated garrison did not even make up a full maniple. Some of us went hunting for provisions, others felled timber in the forest and a third contingent was building fortifications. Before leaving, Vespasian exhorted me to see that the men kept their weapons clean and that the guards were awake and not idle, for carelessness with weapons was the mother of all vice and weakened discipline.

After a few days I grew tired of wandering about the camp, listening to the barefaced gibes of the old legionaries. I took an ax and began to fell trees in the forest. At the pile-driving, I too, with dirt in my eyes, took a hand at the rope and joined in the song. In the evenings I stood both the centurion and the engineer some wine, which one could buy at an outrageous price from the camp trader, but often I joined the scarred old under-officers around the campfire and shared their porridge and salt meat. I grew stronger, coarser, cruder and I learned to swear, no longer minding about being asked how long I had been jveaned.

There were a score or so of cavalry men from Gaul attached to our garrison. When their commanding officer realized I was not competing for his command, he decided it was time for me to kill my first Briton, so he took me on a provisioning raid. After crossing the river, we rode a long way to a village where the inhabitants had complained that a neighboring tribe was threatening them. They had hidden their weapons, but the veterans, who had come after us on foot, were used to finding weapons in the earthen floors of the round huts and in the heaps of manure outside. After finding the weapons, they plundered the village of all the corn and some of the cattle and mercilessly killed the men who tried to defend their property, on the theory that Britons were not even any good as slaves. The women who had not had time to escape into the forest, they raped as a matter of course and with friendly laughter.

This pointless destruction appalled me, but the commantler just laughed and told me to calm down and be prepared. The demand for protection was merely a customary trap as was proved by the weapons we had found. Nor was he lying, for at dusk a howling mob of blue-painted Britons attacked the village from all directions in the hope of surprising us.

But we were on our guard and easily withstood the lightly armed barbarians who had no legionary shields with which to protect themselves. The veterans, who had the day before destroyed the village and whom I thought I should never forgive for the bloody deeds I had witnessed, enclosed me in their midst and protected me in the hand-to-hand fighting. When the Britons turned and fled, they left behind one of their warriors, who was wounded in the knee. He bellowed wildly, supporting himself on his leather shield and swinging his sword. The veterans opened their ranks, pushed me forward and shouted laughingly, “There’s one for you. Kill your Briton now, little friend.”

It was easy to protect myself and kill the wounded man, despite his strength and his sword. But when I had finally cut his throat with my long sword and he lay dying on the ground with blood pouring from his body, I was forced to turn away and be sick. Shame for my weakness drove me quickly back into the saddle to join the Gauls as they followed the fleeing Britons into the undergrowth until the trumpet recalled us. We left the village prepared for another attack by the Britons, for our centurion was convinced that the fighting was by no means over yet. We had a difficult journey ahead as we had to drive the cattle and carry the corn in baskets back to the garrison and at the same time ward off attacks from the Britons. I felt better when I had to defend myself and also ride to the assistance of others, but I did not think this was a particularly honorable way of waging war.

When we finally recrossed the river and had returned with our spoils to the protection of the fort, we had lost two men and a horse and had a number of wounded. Exhausted, I went to rest in my wooden hut with its earthen floor, but I kept waking and seemed still to be hearing the Britons’ shrill war cries outside.

The following day I did not feel the slightest desire to join in on the division of the spoils, but the cavalry commantler jokingly boasted to everyone how I had distinguished myself and slashed around with my sword and bellowed with fear almost as loudly as the Britons. So I had the same right to the spoils as the others. Presumably in jest, the veterans pushed toward me a half-grown Briton girl with her hands bound together.

“Here’s your share of the spoils,” they cried, “so that you won’t find life dull and leave us, brave child knight Minutus.”

I shouted furiously that I did not want to keep and feed a slave-girl, but the veterans were all innocence.

“If one of us takes her,” they said, “she’ll just cut his throat with a knife as soon as her hands are free. But you are a noble youth with fine manners and you can talk Greek. Perhaps she’ll like you better than us.”

They willingly promised to give me advice on how to train such a slave-girl. At first I must beat her morning and evening, on principle, just to tame her wild ways. They also gave me more experienced advice, but that I cannot put down on paper. When I roughly refused, they shook their heads and pretended to be sad.

“Then there’s nothing else for it but to sell her for next to nothing to the camp trader,” they said. “You can imagine what’ll happen to her then.”

I realized I should never forgive myself if I were the cause of this frightened child’s being trained with a stick as a camp whore. Reluctantly I agreed to take the girl as my share of the spoils. I drove the veterans out of my hut and sat with my hands on my knees, looking at her. She had smuts and bruises on her childish face and her red hair hung untidily over her forehead. She looked like one of the Britons’ colts as she peered at me from beneath her fringe.

I began to laugh, cut the rope around her wrists and told her to go and wash her face and plait her hair. She rubbed her swollen wrists and stared at me mistrustfully. Finally I went and fetched the engineer, who could speak a few words of the Iceni’s language. He laughed at my dilemma but remarked that the girl was at least healthy and had straight limbs. When she heard her own language, the girl seemed to gain courage. They talked animatedly for a while.

“She doesn’t want to wash, or comb her hair J explained the engineer, “because she suspects your intentions. If you touch her, she’ll kill you. She swears this in the name of the hare-goddess.”

I assured him that I had not the slightest intention of touching the girl. The engineer said that the most sensible thing to do would be to give her wine to drink because the uncivilized Britons were not used to wine and she would soon be drunk. Then I could do what I liked with her as long as I made sure that I did not get too drunk myself. Otherwise the girl might cut my throat when she sobered up. That was what happened to one of the legion’s tanners who had made the mistake of drinking together with an untamed British woman.

I repeated impatiently that I did not want to touch the girl. But the engineer insisted that it would be wisest if I kept the girl bound. Otherwise she would run away at the first opportunity.

“Nothing could be better,” I said. “Tell her that tonight I’ll go with her past the guards and set her free.”

The engineer shook his head and said that he had thought I was mad before, voluntarily joining in the work with the men, but he had not thought I was that mad. He spoke to the girl and then turned back to me.

“The girl doesn’t trust you,” he said. “She thinks that you’re taking her into the forest to get your own way. Even if she did escape from you, Britons from other tribes would capture her and hold her as a hostage as she doesn’t belong here. Her name is Lugunda.”

Then the engineer’s eyes began to glisten and he licked his lips as he looked at the girl.

“Look,” he said. “I’ll give you two silver pieces for the girl and then you’ll be rid of her.”

The girl saw the look and rushed up to me, grasping my arm as if I were the only security she had in the world. But at the same time she uttered a stream of her sibilant language. The engineer laughed loudly.

“She says, if you touch her without permission you will be reborn as a frog. Before then her tribesmen will come and cut out your stomach, pull out your intestines and stick a red-hot spear up your backside. It’d be wiser, I should think, if you sold her at a reasonable price to a more experienced man,”

For a moment I felt like giving the girl to the engineer for nothing, but then I again patiently assured her that I did not want to touch her. In fact I thought of treating her like a colt. They had their fringes combed and were given a blanket on their backs on cold nights. Old veterans used to relieve their boredom by keeping pets. The girl would be better than a dog because she could teach me the Britons’ language.

I do not know how the engineer interpreted my words, or if in fact he knew enough of the language to convey what I had said to the girl. I suspect that he told the girl that I was as unwilling to touch her as I would be to mate with a dog or a horse. Anyhow, she drew quickly away from me and began to splash her face with water from my wooden pail, to show she was neither a horse nor a dog.

I asked the engineer to leave and gave the girl some soap. She had never seen such a thing before, and to tell the truth, neither had I until I stayed the night in the Gallic town of Lutetia on the way to Britain and visited the wretched bathhouse there. It was on the anniversary of the day of my mother’s death and thus also my birthday. I was seventeen in Lutetia and no one congratulated me.

The thin slave in the bathhouse surprised me with the mild and cleansing soap he was using. It was quite a different feeling from being scoured with pumice. I remembered the money Tullia had given me and bought both the slave his freedom and his soap for three gold pieces. On the morning I left Lutetia, I gave him permission to call himself Minutius. The few pieces of soap I received in return, I kept well hidden when I realized that this new invention roused the contempt of the legionaries.

When I showed the girl how the soap should be used, she forgot her fear, washed herself and began to untangle her hair. I rubbed her swollen wrists with good ointment, and when I saw how badly her clothes had been torn by the thorns, I went to the trader for underclothes and a woolen cloak for her. After that she followed me everywhere like a faithful dog.

I soon noticed that it was easier for me to teach her Latin than for me to learn the barbarians’ language. During the long dark evenings by the fire, I also tried to teach her to read. But I did it just for my own amusement, by writing the letters in the sand and letting her copy them. The only books in the garrison were the centurion’s almanac and the trader’s Egyptian-Chaldaean book of dreams, so I very much regretted not bringing anything with me to read. Teaching Lugunda made up for some of this.

I endured with a laugh the stream of obscenities from the veterans regarding the girl in my hut, for they meant no harm. More likely they wondered what kind of witchcraft I had used to tame the girl so quickly. Of course, they thought I slept with her,” but in fact I did not touch the girl, although she was over thirteen years of age.

As the icy rain poured down and the even normally wretched roads were transformed into bottomless mud, and the puddles every morning were covered with a crisp layer of ice, life in the garrison became more and more static and monotonous. A couple of young Gauls who had enlisted in the legion to become Roman citizens by serving for thirty years, made a habit of slipping into my wooden hut when I was teaching Lugunda and watching with their mouths open and repeating aloud the Latin words. Before I knew what was happening, I was teaching them both Latin and how to write. Some knowledge of reading and writing is necessary for promotion in the legion, for no war can be waged without wax tablets.

It was while I was teaching like this that Vespasian surprised me in my turf-roofed hut when he came to inspect the garrison. As was his habit, he came unexpectedly and did not allow the duty guards to sound the alarm, for he liked to go around and see the camp as it was each day. He considered that in this way a commantler had a better picture of the morale of the legion than by a previously arranged tour.

I was reading aloud from the tattered Egyptian-Chaldaean book of dreams what it meant if one dreamed about hippopotamus, and I was pointing out each word in turn while Lugunda and the young Gauls put their heads together and stared at the book, repeating the Latin words after me. Vespasian laughed so much that he bent double and slapped his knees as the tears poured down his cheeks. We all nearly fainted with fright when he appeared so suddenly behind us. We sprang to attention and Lugunda hid herself behind my back. But from his laughter, I realized that Vespasian was not at all angry.

When he had at last collected himself, he looked sternly at us with a heavy frown. The upright posture and clean faces of the youngsters showed him that they were irreproachable soldiers. He said that he was pleased they wanted to learn Latin and to read rather than getting drunk in their spare time. Vespasian even lowered himself to tell us that he had seen a hippopotamus with his own eyes in the amphitheater in Rome at the time of Emperor Gaius, and he described how enormous the animal is. The Gauls naturally thought he was making it up and laughed shyly, but he was not offended and merely ordered them to get their equipment in readiness for inspection.

I respectfully asked him to step inside my hut and begged permission to offer him some wine. He assured me he would very much like to rest for a while, for he had finished his inspection and had set people to work everywhere. I found my father’s wooden goblet, which I thought my best drinking vessel, and Vespasian turned it around in his hand curiously.

“You’ve the right to wear the gold ring, you know,” he remarked.

I explained that I did indeed own a silver goblet, but that I prized the wooden goblet much more highly as I had inherited it from my mother. Vespasian nodded in approval.

“You are right to honor the memory of your mother,” he said. “I myself have inherited a battered old silver goblet from my grandmother and I drink from it on all feast days without caring what people think.”

He drank the wine thirstily and I willingly gave him more, although I was already so used to the poor life in the legion that I calculated how much he was saving by drinking my wine. This was not out of meanness. I had simply learned that a legionary, on ten copper pieces or two and a half sesterces a day, had to provide food for himself, keep his clothes in order and put something by in the legion’s fund toward the day when he was ill or wounded.

Vespasian slowly shook his large head.

“Soon the spring sun will be here,” he said, “and it will dissolve the mists of Britain. Then we may well have a hard time. Aulus Plautius is preparing to go to Rome to celebrate his triumph and he is taking his most experienced soldiers with the longest service with him. Wise veterans would rather accept gratuities than trek the long way back to Rome for a few days’ feasting and drinking. Among the legion commantlers, I was the one whose length of service entitled me to the first chance to go with him, because of my conquest of the Isle of Wight. But someone must see to Britain until the Emperor appoints a new commantler-in-chief in place of Aulus Plautius. Aulus has promised me a triumph insignia anyhow, if I agree to stay here.”

He rubbed his forehead over and over again.

“As long as I am in charge,” he went on, “there will be no more plundering and we shall pursue a policy of peace. But that means we’ll have to extract even higher taxes from our allies and subjects to maintain the legions. That’ll make them rebellious again. Admittedly, it will take some time to do, for Aulus Plautius will take the kings, commantlers and other important hostages to Rome. There they’ll get used to the comforts of a civilized life and their children will be brought up in the Palatine school, but the only result will be that their own tribes will desert them. On our part, we shall gain a breathing space while the tribes competing for power here setde their differences. But if the Britons move swiftly enough, they’ll have time to get a rebellion going by midsummer day. That’s their main religious feast day. They usually sacrifice their prisoners on the communal stone altar. It is strange, when otherwise they worship the gods of the underworld and the Goddess of Darkness with the face of an owl. The owl is also the bird of Minerva.”

He thought for a moment about this.

“In fact we know much too little about Britain and its different tribes and languages and customs and gods,” he went on. “We know something about the roads, the rivers, the fords, the mountains, forests, grazing lands and drinking places, for a good soldier’s first task is to find out about that sort of thing somehow or other. There are successful merchants who travel freely among hostile people, while other merchants are robbed as soon as they set foot outside legion territory. There are civilized Britons who have traveled to Gaul and all the way to Rome and who talk broken Latin, but we’ve not been able to meet them as their rank demands. At a time like this, if someone were to collect the most necessary information on the Britons, their customs and gods, and write a reliable book on Britain, it would be of much more use to Rome than the subjection of a whole people. The god Julius Caesar didn’t know much about the Britons but believed all kinds of loose talk, just as he exaggerated his victories and forgot his mistakes when he wrote his propaganda book on the war in Gaul.”

He drank again from my wooden goblet and became even more animated.

“Naturally the Britons must in time adopt Roman customs and Roman culture,” he said, “but I’ve begun to wonder if we couldn’t civilize them more easily by knowing their own customs and prejudices, rather than by killing them. This would be just right at the moment, when we want peace because our own best troops are leaving Britain and we’re waiting for another experienced commantler-in-chief. But as you’ve killed a Briton yourself, I suppose you want to take part in Aulus Plautius’ triumph, as your descent and your red border give you the right to do. Naturally I’ll give you my recommendation, if you want to go. Then I’d know I had at least one friend in Rome.”

The wine was making him melancholy.

“I have my son Titus, of course,” he went on, “who is growing up and playing with Britannicus in Palatine and who is getting the same education as he is. I have guaranteed a better future for him than I myself can hope for. Perhaps he will finally give Britain peace.”

I told him I had probably seen his son with Britannicus at the riding exercises before the centenary feast. Vespasian said that he had not seen his son for four years and would not be able to this time either. His other son, Domitian, he had not even held on his knee, for the boy was the result of Emperor Claudius’ triumph and Vespasian had had to return to Britain immediately after the celebrations.

“A lot of noise and not much else,” he said bitterly, “the whole of that triumph. Nothing but a mad waste of money to please the mob in Rome. I don’t deny that I too would like to creep up the Capitoline steps with a laurel wreath on my head. There isn’t a legion commantler who hasn’t dreamed of doing so. But one can get drunk in Britain too, and much more cheaply.”

I said that if he thought I could be of any use to him, I should be glad to stay in Britain under his command. I had no great desire to take a part in the triumph which I had not earned. Vespasian took this as a great sign of confidence and was obviously moved.

“The more I drink from your wooden goblet, the more I like you,” he said with tears in his eyes. “I hope my own son Titus grows up like you. I’ll tell you a secret.”

He confessed that he had taken a British sacrificial priest prisoner and was keeping him from Aulus Plautius, just when Aulus was collecting up prisoners for the triumph parade and the battles in the amphitheater. To give the people a special treat, Aulus especially wanted a genuine British priest who would sacrifice prisoners at a performance.

“But a real Druid would never agree to do such a thing just to please the Romans,” said Vespasian. “It would be much easier for Aulus to dress up some suitable Briton as a priest. People in Rome would never know the difference. When Plautius had gone, I was going to set the priest free and send him back to his tribe as evidence of my good intentions. If you are brave enough, Minutus, you could go with him and make yourself familiar with the customs of the Britons. With his help you could make ties of friendship with their noble youths, for I have a secret suspicion that our successful merchants have been in the habit of buying safe-conducts at high prices from the Druids, even if they daren’t admit it.”

I had no desire whatsoever to get involved in an alien and frightening religion. I wondered what sort of curse it was that seemed to follow me wherever I went, for in Rome I had been forced into an acquaintance with the Christian superstition. But one confidence for another, I thought, and I told Vespasian the real reason why I had ended up in Britain. He was very amused at the thought of the wife of a commantler who had gained a triumph being judged by her husband because of a shameful superstition.

But to show he was aware of the gossip in Rome, he said, “I know Plautia Paulina personally. As far as I know she went wrong in the head after letting a young philosopher-Seneca, I think his name was-and Julia, Emperor Caesar’s sister, meet in secret at her house. They were exiled because of this and Julia finally lost her life. Plautia Paulina couldn’t stand a charge of procuring, became temporarily insane and, going into mourning, she withdrew into solitude. Naturally a woman like that gets strange ideas.”

Lugunda had been sitting all this time crouched in a corner of the hut, watching us intently, smiling when I smiled and looking anxious when I was serious. Vespasian had absentmindedly looked at her occasionally and now surprisingly said, “Generally speaking, women do get funny ideas in their heads. A man can never be quite sure what they have in mind. The god Caesar had the wrong idea about British women but he didn’t respect women particularly anyhow. I think that there are good women and bad women, whether barbarians or civilized. For a man there is no greater happiness than the friendship of a good woman. Your wild one here looks like a child, but she can be more useful to you than you think. You probably don’t know that the Iceni tribe has applied to me and offered to buy the girl back. The Britons don’t usually do such things. They usually reckon that members of their tribe who have fallen into the hands of the Romans are lost forever.”

He spoke laboriously to the girl in the Iceni language and I understood little of what they said. But Lugunda looked confused and crept nearer to me as if seeking protection. She answered Vespasian shyly at first and then in a more animated way until he shook his head and turned again to me.

“This is another hopeless thing about the Britons,” he said. “The people who live on the south coast talk a different language from the inland tribes, and the northern tribes don’t understand anything of the southerners’ dialect. But your Lugunda has been chosen since infancy by her priests to become a hare-priestess. As far as I can gather, the Druids think they can look at a child even in infancy if it suits their purposes and see whether it can be trained for the priesthood. This is necessary, for there are Druids of many different grades and ranks, so they have to study all their lives. With us, a priest’s office is almost a political honor, but with them the priests are physicians, judges and even poets, insofar as the barbarians can be said to have any poetry.”

It seemed to me that Vespasian was by no means as crude and ignorant as he himself liked to make out. He seemed to have adopted this role in order to draw out other people’s self-assurance.

It was news to me that Lugunda had been marked as a Druid priestess. I knew she was not able to eat hare flesh without being sick and that she would not tolerate my catching hares with snares, but this I had presumed was some barbaric whim, for different families and tribes in Briton have different sacred animals, in the same way that Diana’s priest in Nemi may not touch or even look at a horse.

When Vespasian had once again spoken to Lugunda, he burst out laughing and slapped his knees.

“The girl doesn’t want to go home to her tribe,” he cried, “but wants to stay with you. She says you are teaching her magic which even their priests know nothing about. By Hercules, she thinks you are a holy man because you haven’t tried to touch her.”

I replied with annoyance that I was certainly no holy man. I was just bound by a certain promise and anyhow, Lugunda was only a child. Vespasian gave me a sly look, rubbed his broad cheeks and remarked that no woman is ever completely a child.

“I can’t force her to return to her tribe,” he said, after thinking for a moment. “I think we’ll have to let her ask what her hares think about it.”

The following day, Vespasian held the usual inspection in the camp, spoke to the soldiers in his crude way and explained that from now on they must be content with cracking their own skulls and must no longer go out after the Britons.

“Do you understand, dolts?” he barked. “Every Briton is your father and your brother, every British hag your mother, and even the most tantalizing maiden your sister. Go out to meet them. Wave your green branches when you see them, give them presents, let them eat and drink. You know only too well that the rules of war punish individual plundering with death at the stake. So see to it that I don’t have to scorch the hides off you.

“But,” he continued grimly, glowering at them, “I’ll scorch the hides off you even more if you let any Briton steal as much as a single horse or even a sword from you. Remember they are barbarians. You must civilize them with mildness and teach them your own customs. Teach them to play dice and swear by the Roman gods. That’s the first step to higher culture. If a Briton strikes you on the cheek, then turn the other cheek to him. I have indeed heard of a new superstition which demands that one does that, whether you believe me or not. However, don’t turn the other cheek too often, but settle your differences with Britons by wrestling, steeplechasing or ball games, in the British way.”

I have seldom heard legionaries laugh so much as they did during Vespasian’s speech. The lines swayed with merriment and someone dropped his shield in the mud. To punish him, Vespasian himself flogged him with a stave of rank borrowed from the centurion, which caused more amusement than ever. Finally Vespasian made ritual offerings at the garrison altar with such dignity and piety that there was no more laughter. He sacrificed so many calves, sheep and pigs that everyone knew that for once they could eat their fill of free roast meat, and we all marveled at the favorable omens.

After the inspection, he sent me to buy a live hare from a veteran who was breeding hares, as the Britons did, in cages for amusement. Vespasian thrust the hare under his arm. We three-he, Lugunda and I-left the camp grounds and walked far into the forest. He took no guard with him, for he was a fearless man and both of us were armed, as we had just come from the inspection. In the forest he seized the hare by the ears and handed it to Lugunda, who put it under her cloak with a practiced hand and began to look around for a suitable place. For no apparent reason she led us through the forest so far that I began to suspect an ambush. A crow flew up in front of us, but fortunately veered off to the right.

Lugunda stopped at last by an enormous oak tree, looked around once more, marked out the points of the compass in the air with one hand, flung up a handful of rotten acorns, looked to see where they fell and then began to intone an incantation for so long that I began to grow sleepy. Suddenly she snatched the hare from under her clothes and threw it up into the air, and stood leaning forward, her eyes black with excitement as she stared after it. The hare darted away with great leaps in a northwesterly direction and vanished into the forest. Lugunda burst into tears, flung her arms around my neck and pressed herself to me, shaking with sobs.

“You chose the hare yourself, Minutus,” said Vespasian apologetically. “This has nothing to do with me whatsoever. If I’ve got it right, the hare says she must go home to her tribe immediately. If it had stayed and hidden in a bush, it would have been a bad omen and stopped her going. I think I understand that much of the Britons’ art of predicting by hares.”

He patted Lugunda kindly on the shoulder and spoke to her in the Iceni language. Lugunda calmed down, smiled at little and then seized my hand, kissing it several times.

“I only promised that you would see her safely to the Iceni country,” Vespasian explained, unmoved. “Let us now consult several other omens so that you need not go straightaway before you’ve had time to get to know my Druid prisoner. I’ve a feeling that you’re a mad enough young man to be able to appear as an itinerant Sophist collecting wisdom from different countries for your own sake. I suggest that you dress in goatskins. The girl will bear witness that you are a holy man and the Druid will protect you. They keep their promises if they’ve made them in a certain way in the name of their own gods of the underworld. If they don’t keep them, we’ll have to think of another way of securing peaceful cooperation.”

In this way Lugunda and I went with Vespasian to the main legion camp when he returned from his tour of inspection. When we left, I realized to my surprise that many of the men in the garrison had become quite attached to me during the winter. They gave me small parting gifts, told me never to bite the legion’s hand that had fed me, and assured me that genuine wolf blood flowed in my veins, even if I did speak Greek. I was sorry to leave them.

When we arrived at the main camp, I forgot to salute the legion’s Eagle in the proper manner. Vespasian snarled with rage, ordered my weapons to be removed from me with ignominy and had me thrown into a dark cell. I was completely mystified by this strictness until I realized that in the cell I was to be given the opportunity of meeting the captured Druid. He was not yet thirty, but nevertheless was a remarkable man in every way. He spoke quite good Latin and was dressed like a Roman. He made no secret of the fact that he had been captured on his way home from western Gaul when his ship had been driven inland by a storm on a coast guarded by the Romans.

‘Tour commantler Vespasian is a clever man,” he said smiling. “Practically no one else among you would have noticed that I was a Druid, or even taken me for a Briton, because I don’t paint my face blue. He has promised to save me from a painful death in the amphitheater in Rome, but that alone won’t make me do as he asks. I do only what my own true dreams and omens tell me. He is unconsciously fulfilling a greater wish than his own by saving my life. I am not afraid of a painful death even, for I am an initiate.”

I had a splinter in my thumb and my hand became very badly swollen in the cell. The Druid took out the splinter without even hurting me, by pinching my wrist with his other hand. When he had poked out the splinter with a pin, he held my hot and aching hand for a long time between his own. The following morning all the pus had gone and my hand showed no sign whatsoever of the splinter.

‘Tour commantler,” he said, “probably understands better than most Romans that the war is now a war between the gods of Rome and the gods of Britain. So he is trying to bring about a truce between the gods and in this way is acting in a much wiser way than if he tried politically to unite all our different tribes in a treaty with the Romans. Our gods can afford a truce, for they never die. Reliable omens tell us, however, that the gods of Rome soon die. So Britain will never be completely under the power of Rome, however clever Vespasian thinks he is. But everyone must of course believe in his own gods.”

He also tried to defend the horrible human sacrifices which were part of his belief.

“A life must be paid for by a life,” he explained. “If an important man becomes ill, to be cured he sacrifices a criminal or a slave. Death does not mean the same thing to us as it does to you Romans, for we know that we shall be reborn on earth sooner or later. So death is just a change of time and place and no more remarkable than that. I would not say that every person is reborn, but an initiate knows for certain he will be reborn into a rank that is worthy of him. So death is for him nothing but a deep sleep from which he knows he will awaken.”

Later, Vespasian officially freed the Druid, whom he had taken as his slave, paid the necessary tax into the legion fund and gave him permission to use his other family name, Petro, sternly pointing out to him his duties to his former master according to Roman law. Then he gave us three mules and sent us across the river to the Iceni country. In the cell I had allowed my hair and fair beard to grow, and when we left the camp I was dressed in goatskins, although Petro laughed at all these precautionary measures.

As soon as we reached the protection of the forest, he threw his freedman’s stave into the bushes and let out a bloodcurdling British war cry. In a moment we were surrounded by a crowd of armed blue-painted Icenis. But they did no harm to either Lugunda or me.

Together with Petro and Lugunda I was taken by mule from early spring until the depths of winter among the different tribes of Britain, as far away as the country of the Brigantes. To the best of his ability, Petro taught me all the British customs and beliefs except the secrets of the initiates. It is unnecessary for me to describe my journey here, for I have put it all in my book on Britain.

I must admit that I did not realize until several years later that I had traveled around in a kind of haze of enchantment during the whole of this time. Whether this was because of some kind of secret influence from Petro or Lugunda or simply my youth, I cannot say. But I think I saw everything as more wonderful than it was in reality and I was pleased by the people and their customs, which later I did not like as well as I had done then. Nevertheless, I developed and learned so much, that six months later I was considerably older than my years.

Lugunda stayed with her tribe in the Iceni country to breed hares while I returned for the darkest months to London, in the Roman part of the country, to write an account of my journey. Lugunda had of course wanted to come with me, but Petro hoped I would return to the Iceni country and succeeded in persuading her that this would be much more likely to happen if she stayed with her own family, which by British standards was a noble one.

Vespasian did not recognize me when I reported to him with blue stripes on my face, dressed in valuable furs and with gold rings in my ears. I addressed him formally in the Iceni language and made with my hand the simplest of the Druid signs which Petro allowed me to use so that I should not be in danger on my return journey.

“I am Ituna,” I said, “from the Brigantes’ country, blood brother to the Roman, Minutus Lausus Manilianus. I have a message for you from him. He allowed himself to be sent down to the dead to acquire for you a favorable omen. Now he cannot return to earth in his original form, but I have promised to pay for a memorial tablet in Roman script. Can you recommend me a good stonemason?”

“By all the gods of the underworld and Hecate too,” swore Vespasian in amazement. “Is Minutus Manilianus dead? Whatever shall I tell his father now?”

“When my wise and gifted blood brother died for you, he saw a hippopotamus in the river,” I continued. “That means an everlasting kingdom which no earthly power can hinder. Flavius Vespasian, the gods of Briton bear witness that you, before your death, will cure the sick by the touch of your hands and be exalted to a god in the country of Egypt.”

Not until then did Vespasian recognize me, and he burst out laughing when he remembered the Egyptian-Chaldaean book of dreams.

“I nearly had a stroke,” he cried. “But what’s all this nonsense you’re talking?”

I told him I had in fact had a dream of that kind about, him, after allowing a Druid High Priest to put me into a deathlike tfance in the Brigantes’ country.

“But whether it means anything or not, I don’t know,” I admitted sensibly. “Perhaps I was so frightened that time you surprised me when I was reading about a hippopotamus in the book of dreams with Lugunda that the hippopotamus returned to me in my sleep just as I was dreaming about Egypt. It was such a clear dream that I could describe it and the temple in front of which it all took place. You were sitting, fat and bald, on a judge’s throne. There were many people around you. A blind man and a cripple were begging you to cure them. At first you did not want to, but finally you agreed to spit in the blind man’s eyes and kick the lame man’s leg with your heel. The blind man soon received back his sight and the lame man’s leg healed. When the crowd saw this, they came with sacrificial cakes and named you a god.”

Vespasian’s laughter was hearty but rather forced.

“Whatever you do, don’t tell other people that kind of dream, even in jest,” he warned me. “I promise to remember the remedies you mention, should I find myself in such a dilemma. But it is more likely that as a toothless old man I shall be, in the interests of Rome, a simple legion commantler in Britain.”

He was not entirely serious when he said this, for I saw that he was wearing a triumph ornament on his tunic. I congratulated him, but Vespasian looked gloomy and told me that the latest news from Rome was that Emperor Claudius had had his young wife Messalina murdered, and weeping bitterly, had sworn before the Praetorian Guard that he would never marry again.

“From a reliable source, I have heard that Messalina had separated from Claudius in order to marry Consul Silius, with whom she already had spent a great deal of time,” Vespasian told me. “They married once when Claudius was out of the city. The idea was either to bring back the republic or make Silius Emperor with the approval of the Senate. It is difficult to know what really happened, but Claudius’ freedmen, Narcissus, Pallas and the other parasites, deserted Messalina and made Claudius believe his life was in danger. During the wedding feast, however, the conspirators made the mistake of getting drunk to celebrate their victory. Claudius returned to the city and got the Praetorian Guard on his side. Then large numbers of senators and knights were executed and only a few were allowed to commit suicide. So the conspiracy was widespread and evidently carefully prepared.”

“What a terrible story!” I exclaimed. “I had heard before I left Rome that the Emperor’s freedmen were terrified when their colleague Poly-bius was executed on Messalina’s orders. But I could never quite believe all the dreadful things that were said about Messalina. I even had a feeling the gossip was deliberately spread about to blacken her reputation.”

Vespasian scratched his big head and glanced slyly at me.

“I’m not really competent to speak,” he said, “as I’m only a simple legion commantler and live over here as if in a leather sack, without knowing what is really happening. It is said that fifty senators and about two hundred knights were executed because of the conspiracy. I am most concerned about my son Titus, who was left in Messalina’s care to be brought up with Britannicus. If Claudius believed so ill of his child’s mother, then such a capricious old man might equally well turn against the children.”

After that we talked about nothing but the British tribes and kings whom I had got to know, thanks to Petro. Vespasian ordered me to write a careful account of my journeys, but by no means paid for my

Egyptian paper, ink and pens, not to speak of my keep in London. In fact I rceeived no pay whatsoever and I was no longer included in the rolls of my own legion, so I felt very lonely and outcast that icy cold and foggy winter.

I rented a room at a Gallic corn merchant’s and began to write, only to find that it was not nearly so easy as I had thought. It was not now a matter of commenting or revising earlier works, but of describing my own experiences. I spoiled a great deal of expensive paper and paced anxiously up and down the banks of the mighty river Thames, protected by furs and woolen clothes against the icy wind. When Vespasian returned from a tour of inspection, he summoned me to him and began to read what I had written. When he had finished he looked confused.

“I haven’t the ability to judge literature,” he said, “and, in fact, respect learned men much too much even to try. But this gives me the impression that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. You write very beautifully, but I should have thought that you must first decide whether you are writing a poem or a factual account of Britain’s configuration, religions and tribes. Of course, it’s pleasant to read about how green the fields you have seen in Britain are, how the ash trees bloom and the little birds sing in the early summer, but for soldiers or merchants, this is not very useful information. Also, you rely-much too much on the Druids’ and noble Britons’ accounts of their tribes’ descent and the kings’ divine origins. You describe their merits and noble virtues so well that one might think you had forgotten you were a Roman. If I were you, I wouldn’t blame the god Julius Caesar and say that he never succeeded in conquering Britain but was forced to flee her coasts without ever accomplishing his task. Naturally, what you say, which in itself is not without foundation, enhances Emperor Claudius’ honor, when he, thanks to the British tribal wars, has succeeded in making such a large part of the country peaceful. But it is not a good thing to insult the god Julius Caesar publicly. You ought to know that.”

When he talked to me in this fatherly way, my heart began to thump, and I realized that while writing I had fled from the dark winter and my own loneliness into a dreamlike summer in which I forgot the trials I had suffered and remembered only the beautiful things. I had missed Lugunda as I had been writing, and because of the brotherhood in which I joined with the Brigantes, I felt myself more of a Briton than a Roman. And in the way of all authors, I was not pleased to hear this criticism and was deeply offended.

“I’m sorry I’ve not fulfilled your hopes,” I said. “I’d better gather up my belongings and go back to Rome, as long as it is possible to cross over to Gaul in the winter storms.”

Vespasian put his great fist on my shoulder and said gently, “You are still young, so I’ll forgive your touchiness. Perhaps you’d better come with me on a tour of inspection to Colchester, the veteran town. Then I’ll give you a cohort for a few months, so that as a prefect you can have all the formal military training you need. Your British blood brothers will only respect you more when you go back to them in the spring. Then in the autumn you can rewrite your book.”

In this way I received my rank of tribune in the same year, although I was only eighteen. This appealed to my vanity and I did my best to show myself worthy of the responsibility, although active service in winter was confined to garrison inspection, building work and practice marches. Somewhat later I received from my father a considerable sum of money and the following letter:

Marcus Mezentius Manilianus greets his son Minutus Lausus. You will have heard by now of the changes that have taken place in Rome. In order to reward more fully my wife Tullia for her services in exposing the conspiracy, rather than my own services, Emperor Claudius has bestowed on me the privilege of wearing the broad purple band. I have now a seat in the Curia. Behave accordingly. I am sending you a money order to London. Here it is said that the Britons have made Claudius a god and raised a temple with a turf roof in his honor. You would be wise to take a suitable votive gift to the temple. Aunt Laelia is well, as far as I know. Your freedman, Minutius, lives with her at the moment, making and selling a Gallic soap. My wife Tullia sends her greetings. Drink to my memory from your mother’s goblet.

So my father was a senator, something I could never have imagined. I was no longer surprised that Vespasian had been in such a hurry to promote me to tribune. What had happened in Rome had reached him more quickly than it had me. I felt bitter and my respect for the Senate lessened considerably.

Following my father’s advice, I went to the wooden temple the Britons had built in Colchester in honor of Claudius and presented a brightly painted wooden carving as a votive gift. I dared not give anything more valuable as the Britons’ own gifts were worthless articles-shields, weapons, cloths and clay jars. Vespasian had given nothing but a broken sword so as not to offend the British kings with a too valuable gift. At least, that is what he told me.

As the summer came in, I gladly shed my insignia of rank and Roman armor, painted blue stripes on my cheeks and threw the colored cloak of honor of the Brigantes over my shoulders. Vespasian pretended that he could not possibly let the son of a Roman senator loose to be murdered by savage Britons in the forests, but he knew perfectly well that under the protection of the Druids, I was safer traveling in all the countries of the Britons than I would be at home in the streets of Rome.

Recklessly, I promised I would be responsible for myself and my upkeep. Out of vanity, I should have liked to have taken my own horse to prance in front of the noble British youths, but Vespasian decisively refused to allow me to and praised, as usual, the staying power of mules in British terrain. He had had a horse dealer crucified for trying to smuggle a shipload of horses in from Gaul, to sell at high prices to the Britons. My stallion, he said, would be much too great a temptation to them. They had been trying in vain to breed up their own small horses after experiencing the superiority of the Roman cavalry over war chariots.

So I had to content myself with buying suitable gifts for my hosts. First I loaded my mules with jars of wine, for the British nobles were if possible even more given to wine than the legionaries. That summer I spent the longest day of the year at the Sun God service in the round temple of giant stones. I found gold ornaments and amber in an ancient tomb, and I made a journey to the tin mines, to the harbor of which the Carthaginians used to sail hundreds of years ago to buy tin. But the greatest surprise was Lugunda, who during the winter had grown from a child to a young woman. I met her at her hare farm, dressed in her white hare-priestess cloak with a silver band in her hair. Her eyes were shining like those of a goddess. When we had embraced in greeting, we both drew back in astonishment and no longer dared touch each other. Her tribe did not allow her to accompany me on my journeys that summer. In fact it was to flee from her that I left the Iceni country. But as I journeyed on, a living image of her followed me. I thought of her the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning, whether I wished to or not.

I returned from my journeys more quickly than I had meant to, back to her, but I had no joy from it. On the contrary, after the first delight of seeing each other again we soon started quarreling, with or without cause, and we hurt each other so bitterly that I could go to bed hating her with all my heart and convinced that I never wanted to see her again. But when she smiled at me again later and came with her favorite hare and let me hold it, I relented and became as weak as water. It was difficult to remember that I was a Roman knight and my father was a senator and that I had the right to wear the red cloak of a tribune. Rome seemed distant and dreamlike to me as I sat on the grass in the warm British summer with her wriggling hare in my arms.

But suddenly she pressed her cheek to mine, snatched the hare into her arms and with glittering eyes, accused me of deliberately tormenting her. With the hare in her arms, her cheeks flushed, she looked at me so provokingly that I regretted not having given her a good spanking in the days when I had had her in my power in the camp.

On her friendly days, she took me around her parents’ vast grazing lands and showed me the cattle, the fields and villages. She also took me to the storehouse and showed me the cloths, ornaments and sacred objects which were passed down from mother to daughter in her family.

“Don’t you like the Iceni country?” she teased. “Isn’t it easy to breathe here? Doesn’t our corn bread and our thick beer taste good to you? My father could give you many teams of small horses and chariots decorated with silver. You could have for the asking as much land as you could get around in a day.”

But another day she would say, “Tell me about Rome. I’d like to walk on paved streets, see big temples with columned halls and war trophies from every country, and get to know women who are different from me, to learn their customs, for in your eyes I am evidently only an uneducated Iceni girl.”

In honest moments she said, “Do you remember how you held me in your arms one cold winter night in your wooden hut and warmed me with your own body when I was homesick? Now I am home and the Druids have made me a hare-priestess. You’ve no idea what a tremendous honor that is, but at the moment I’d rather be in your wooden hut, holding your hand and listening to you teaching me to read and write.”

I was still so inexperienced, manhood or no, that I did not understand my own feelings or what had happened between us. I was informed by the Druid Petro, whom Vespasian had freed and who had in the autumn returned from a secret island where he had been initiated into an even higher grade of priesthood. He had watched our games without my being aware of it and then he had sat down on the ground, covering his eyes with his hands and leaning forward in a holy trance. We did not dare wake him, for we both knew that in his dreams he was wandering in the underworld. But we forgot our bickering and sat down on a hummock in front of him, waiting for him to awaken.

When he had collected himself, he looked at us as if from another world.

“You, Minutus,” he said, “have beside you a large animal, like a dog with a man. Lugunda has only her hare to protect her.”

“That’s no dog,” I said indignantly. “That’s a real lion. But of course you’ve never seen such a noble animal yourself, so I’ll forgive your mistake.”

‘Tour dog,” went on Petro, unmoved, “will hunt the hare to death. Then Lugunda’s heart will break and she will die if you have not parted in time.”

“I wish no harm at all to Lugunda,” I said in surprise. “We’re just playing like brother and sister.”

“As if a Roman such as he could break my heart,” snorted Lugunda. “His dog can run himself out of breath. I don’t like nasty dreams, Petro. And Ituna is not my brother.”

“I had better talk to you both on this matter,” said Petro. “First with you, Minutus, and then with Lugunda. Lugunda can go and see to her hares in the meantime.”

Lugunda looked at us, her eyes yellow with anger, but she did not dare oppose the Druid’s order. Petro remained seated cross-legged, picked up a stick and absentmindedly began to draw with it on the ground.

“One day the Romans will be thrown back into the sea,” he said. “Britain is the land of the gods of the underworld, and the heavenly gods can never conquer those of the underworld as long as the earth remains. Even if I he Romans cut down our sacred groves, tip over our sacred stone slabs, build their roads and teach the tribes they’ve subjected their own farming methods to make them into slaves, the Romans will still one day be thrown back in the sea when the time is ripe. Only one man is needed, a man who will persuade the independent tribes to unite and light together and who knows the Roman art of war.”

“That is why we have four whole legions here,” I said. “In a generation or two, Britain will be a civilized country with Roman peace.”

When we had in this way both expressed our points of view, there was nothing more to say on the matter.

“What do you want from Lugunda, Ituna Minutus?” asked Petro.

He looked sternly at me and I looked down and was ashamed.

“Have you ever thought of entering into a British marriage with her and giving her a child?” Petro asked. “Don’t be afraid. Such a marriage would hardly be legal in Roman law and would not stop you leaving Britain whenever you like. Lugunda would keep the child, and she would have a permanent memory of you. But if you go on playing with her as you are now, she’ll break her heart when you finally leave.”

I was frightened at the mere thought of a child, even if at heart I had already admitted what it was I wanted of Lugunda.

“In Rome they say: Wherever you are, I am too,” I said. “I’m no adventurous seaman or roaming merchant, marrying here and there to get my own way. I don’t want to do that to Lugunda.”

“Lugunda would not bring shame upon herself in the eyes of her parents or her tribe,” said Petro. “Your only fault is that you are a Roman. That is the difference. With us, women have great freedom and power to choose their husbands themselves, even to send them away if they are not pleased. A hare-priestess is no Vestal Virgin who must promise to remain unmarried, as it is said to be in Rome.”

“I shall soon be leaving and going back to my people,” I said stiffly. “Otherwise, Britain might prove too cramped for me.”

But Petro talked to Lugunda too. That night she came to me, wound her arms around my neck, looked into my eyes with her amber-colored ones and trembled in my arms.

“Minutus Ituna,” she said softly, “you know I am yours only. Petro says that you are going away and will never come back. The very thought cuts deep into my heart. Would it really be a shameful thing if you married me in our way before you went?”

I felt very cold.

“It would not be shameful,” I said in a trembling voice. “It would simply be unfair to you.”

“Fair or unfair,” said Lugunda, “what does that matter when I can feel your heart thumping in your chest as loudly as my own?”

I put my hands on her shoulders and pushed her away from me.

“I was brought up to understand that it is more virtuous to control oneself than to give in and become a slave to one’s desires,” I said.

“I am your legal spoils of war and your slave,” said Lugunda obstinately. “You have the power to do what you like with me. You would not even agree to receive the redemption money from my parents last summer.”

I shook my head, unable to speak.

“Take me with you when you go,” Lugunda then begged. “I’ll go with you wherever you like. I’ll leave my tribe and even my hares. I am your servant, your slave, however you wish it.”

She fell to her knees in front of me.

“If you only knew what these words have cost my pride, you would be appalled, Minutus the Roman,” she said.

But I was seized with the manly feeling that I who was the stronger should protect her against my own weakness. I tried to explain this to her as well as I could, but my words were powerless against her stubbornly lowered head. Finally she rose and stared at me as if I were a complete stranger.

“You have offended me deeply,” she said coldly, “and you’ll never know how deeply. From now on I hate you and every moment will wish you dead.”

I was so deeply hurt that I felt a pain in my stomach and could not eat. I should have preferred to leave at once, but the harvest was just over and the customary harvest festival was taking place in the house. In addition, I wanted to note down the customs at the harvest feast and find out how the Icenis hid their corn.

The following evening it was full moon. I was already dizzy with Iceni beer, when the noble youths of the district drove on to the stubble field and lit a huge bonfire. Without asking anyone’s permission, they picked out a calf from the farm’s herd and sacrificed it in noisy amusement. I joined them, as I knew some of them, but they were not so friendly as before. They even began to abuse me.

“Go and wash the blue lines from your face, cursed Roman,” they said. “We’d rather see your filthy shield and your sword spotted with British blood.”

“Is it true,” one of them asked, “that Romans bathe in hot water and lose their manhood that way?”

“It’s true,” answered another. “That’s why the women in Rome sleep with their slaves. Their Emperor had to kill his own wife for whoring in that way.”

There was sufficient truth in their insults for me to be angry.

“I can take jokes from my friends,” I said, “when they are full of beer and stolen meat, but I can’t have you speaking disrespectfully of the Emperor of Rome.”

They glanced maliciously at each other.

“Let’s wrestle with him,” they suggested. “Then we’ll see if he’s lost his eggs in hot water like other Romans.”

I saw that they were deliberately seeking a quarrel, but it was difficult for me to withdraw after they had insulted Emperor Claudius. When they had egged each other on for a while, the boldest of them rushed at me as if to wrestle with me, but in fact to hit me as hard as he could with his fists. Wresding is part of the legion exercises. So it was not difficult to make a stand, especially as he was much more drunk than I. I threw him onto his back and put my foot on his neck when he struggled instead of admitting defeat. Then they all fell on me to a man and pinned me to the ground with a firm grip on my arms and legs.

“What shall we do with the Roman?” they asked each other. “Perhaps we should slit open his stomach and see what his intestines foretell?”

“Let’s geld him to stop him running after our girls like an old hare,” suggested one.

“Best to throw him on the fire,” said another, “then we’ll see how much heat a Roman can bear.”

I was uncertain whether they were serious or just wished to frighten me in a drunken way. Anyhow, they beat me in no joking manner, but my pride prevented me from crying for help. They spurred each other on into a rage until I seriously began to fear for my life.

Suddenly they fell silent and stood back. I saw Lugunda coming toward me. She stopped and put her head on one side.

“I like seeing a Roman lying humiliated and helpless on the ground,” she said mockingly. “I’d like to tickle your skin with the point of a knife if I weren’t forbidden to besmirch myself with human blood.”

She struck her tongue out at me and then turned to the youths, whom she knew by name,

“Don’t kill him though,” she said. “That only leads to revenge. Cut me a birch switch instead and turn him over on his stomach and hold on to him properly. I’ll show you how to handle Romans.”

The youths were glad not to have to decide what to do with me. They quickly fetched switches and tore off my clothes. Lugunda stepped up close and gave me a rap on the back with the switch, at first carefully as if testing it out, and then mercilessly with all her strength. I clenched my teeth and uttered not a sound. This egged her on to beat me in a fury, so that my body jerked and trembled on the ground and tears forced their way into my eyes.

Finally her arm tired and she threw away the switch.

“There, Minutus the Roman,” she cried. “Now we’re quits.”

The youths holding me let go and backed away cautiously with their fists up, for fear I should attack them. My head was throbbing, my nose bleeding and my back on fire, but I stood silently licking the blood from my lips. There must have been something about me that frightened them, for they stopped mocking me and let me pass. I picked up my torn clothes and walked away, but not toward the house. I walked aimlessly in the moonlit forest and thought dimly that it was fortunate for all of us that no one had witnessed my ignominy. I could not walk far. I soon began to stumble and I sank to the ground on a narrow mossy hillock. Shortly afterwards the youths kicked out their fire and I heard them whistling for their chariots and driving away so that the ground thundered beneath their wheels.

The moonlight was frighteningly clear and the shadows in the forest horribly black. I wiped the blood off my face with a handful of moss and called on my lion.

“Lion, are you there?” I cried. “If so, roar and go after them. Otherwise I’ll never believe in you again.”

But I did not even see the shadow of my lion. Instead I was totally alone, until Lugunda came creeping cautiously, pushing aside the branches as she looked for me. Her face was white in the moonlight. When she saw me, she came up to me with her hands behind her back.

“How do you feel?” she asked. “Did it hurt? You deserved it.”

I was seized with a wild desire to take hold of her slim neck, throw her to the ground and lacerate her as I had been lacerated. But I controlled myself, knowing that nothing would be gained that way. But I could not help asking if she had arranged it all.

“Naturally,” she admitted. “Do you think they’d have dared touch a Roman otherwise?”

She knelt beside me and without shyness felt all over me before I could stop her.

“They didn’t crush your pouch-stones as they said, did they?” she said anxiously. “It would be bad if you could not make children with some noble Roman girl.”

Then I could no longer control myself. I smacked both her cheeks, thrust her beneath me and pinned her to the ground with my weight, although she beat at me with both fists on my shoulders, kicked me and bit my chest. But she did not call for help. Before I knew where I was, she had relaxed and she let me come. My life strength spurted into her and I had a feeling of such sensual pleasure that I cried out aloud. Then all I could feel was how her hands held my cheeks and she kissed me over and over again. Appalled, I drew back and sat up. Then she too sat up and burst out laughing.

“Do you know what has happened to us?” she said mockingly.

I was so terrified I could not reply.

“You’re bleeding,” I cried.

“I’m glad you noticed that anyhow, stupid,” she said shyly.

When I remained speechless, she laughed again.

“Petro advised me,” she explained. “I should never have thought of it myself. I didn’t like beating you so mercilessly. But Petro said nothing else helped with tough, shy Roman boys.”

She rose to her feet and took my hand.

“We’d better go to Petro,” she said. “He’s sure to have some wine and a bowl of flour ready for us.”

“What do you mean?” I said distrustfully.

“You’ve taken me by force, although I struggled as long as my self-respect demantled,” she said in surprise. “You don’t want Father to take his sword down from the wall and begin looking for his honor in your intestines, do you? He has a legal right to do so. Even the Romans respect that right. It would be in every way more sensible if we let Petro rub oil and flour in our hair. He can put a ring on my finger in the Roman way, if you insist.”

“But Lugunda,” I cried, “you can’t possibly come with me to Rome, or even London.”

“I’m not going to run after you,” said Lugunda briskly. “Don’t worry. You can come back to me sometime if you want to, but I might well tire of waiting, break my marriage bowl and let your name burn to ashes. Then I’m a free woman again. Doesn’t your good sense tell you that it’s better to follow our customs than cause a scandal that will be heard as far away as Rome? Violating a hare-priestess is nothing to play about with. Or do you deny it? You jumped on me like a rutting beast and crushed my resistance with brute force.”

“You should have called for help,” I said bitterly. “And you shouldn’t have stroked me so shamelessly when I was already in such a stunned state.”

“I was only worried about your reproductive capacity,” she lied calmly. “I couldn’t possibly know that the light touch demantled by the rules of the art of healing would make you blind with rage.”

Nothing could change my real regret. We went down to a stream and carefully washed ourselves. Then we walked hand in hand into the big room in the timbered house where Lugunda’s parents were eagerly waiting for us. Petro mixed oil and flour, rubbed it into our heads and then let us drink some wine from the same clay bowl, which Lugunda’s father then carefully put away in a chest. After this he led us to the prepared marriage bed, knocked me over on top of Lugunda and covered us with his big leather shield.

When they had all considerately left the marriage hut, Lugunda threw the shield on to the floor and asked me humbly to do to her, in all gentleness and friendship, what I had done in my rage in the forest. The damage had already been done and no obstacle stood in the way.

So we embraced each other tenderly after I had kissed her in the Roman way. Not until then did Lugunda get up and fetch healing ointments to rub gently on to my back. It hurt when I remembered to think about it.

Just as I was falling into the deepest sleep of my life, I remembered that I had broken my promise to Claudia, but I blamed the full moon and the magic of the Druids. Obviously no man could avoid his predetermined destiny, I thought, inasmuch as I had the strength to think at all.

The following day I tried to make immediate preparations to leave, but Lugunda’s father wanted me to go with him to look at the fields, herds, grazing lands and forests he was to set aside for Lugunda and her descendants. T his journey took us three days and when we returned, not to be outdone, I gave Lugunda my gold tribune chain.

Lugunda’s lather seemed to consider this an insignificant wedding present, for when Lugunda had put her hair up he took out a gold necklace as thick as a child’s wrist and put it around his daughter’s neck. Such necklaces are worn only by the queens and most noble women in Britain. From all this even I, numbskull that I was, realized that Lugunda was of more noble lineage than I had ever imagined, so noble that her lather did not even have to boast about it. Petro explained that if I had not been a Roman knight and son of a senator, I should have had a sword run through me and certainly not the family battle shield put over my sore back,

I had both my Iceni father-in-law and Petro’s position as sacrificial priest, physician and judge to thank for the fact that I escaped being accused of witchcraft as well. The noble British youth who had attacked me with his fists out of jealousy broke his neck that same moonlit night when his horse at full gallop shied away from some unknown animal and sent him hurtling headfirst at a stone.

Of course I was occasionally tormented by the thought of the promise I had given to Claudia and so reluctantly broken, and also by a painful feeling that Lugunda was not really my lawfully wedded wife since in my thoughts I could not regard my British marriage as legally binding. But I was young. My body, for so long disciplined, was completely bewildered by Lugunda’s caresses and tenderness, and day after day I postponed my inevitable departure to Colchester.

But one tires more quickly of an excess of physical satisfaction than of self-control. Soon we began to irritate one another, Lugunda and I, exchanging angry words and agreeing only in bed. When I at last began my return journey, I felt as if I had been freed from shackles or a spell. Yes, I flew like a bird from its cage and did not reproach myself for an instant that I had deserted Lugunda. She had only had her own way. She would have to be satisfied with that, I thought.

Vespasian excused me from military exercises and tribune staff duties, and I rewrote my book on Britain from start to finish. I had rid myself of the enchantment of that first summer and now described everything as lucidly and factually as I could. I no longer saw the Britons in the same rosy light, and even made fun of some of their customs. I acknowledged Julius Caesar’s contribution to the civilizing of Britain, but verified, for instance, that the god Augustus’ treaty with the Brigantes in the eyes of the Brigantes themselves constituted nothing but a friendly exchange of gifts. They considered they had received more than they needed to give, as long as they remained peaceful.

On the other hand, I gave Emperor Claudius full credit for leaving southern Britain in the Roman Empire, and Aulus Plautius for bringing about peace. Vespasian himself asked me not to say too much about his own merits. He was still waiting in vain for a new procurator or commantler-in-chief and did not wish to stir up ill feeling in Rome with praise of himself.

“I am neither clever enough nor deceitful enough to adapt myself to the changed circumstances there, and so would prefer to stay in Britain, without unnecessary reminders of my merits, than to return to my former poverty in Rome,” he explained.

I already knew that Emperor Claudius had not kept the oath he had once sworn before the Praetorian Guard to the goddess Fides, his right hand covered with a white cloth. Some months after Messalina’s death, he had explained that he could not live without a wife and had chosen the most noble woman in Rome as his consort, his own niece Agrippina, the same person whose son Lucius Domitius had once sought my friendship.

New laws permitting incest were necessary for this marriage, but the Senate had willingly obliged. The most farsighted of the senators had begged Claudius to take back his sacred promise and benefit the state by marrying again. In Rome everything had been turned upside-down in a very short time. Vespasian was being careful not to burn his fingers in this mess.

“Agrippina is a beautiful and wise woman,” he said. “She will certainly have learned much from the bitter experiences of her youth and her first two marriages. I only hope she’ll be a good stepmother to Britannicus. Then she won’t abandon my son Titus, although I made the mistake of leaving him with Messalina when I went to war.”

Vespasian realized that with the completion of my book, I had had enough of Britain and was longing to return to Rome. The book had to be copied. I myself was restless and uncertain. More and more, as the spring in Britain bloomed, I was reminded of Lugunda.

After the feast of Flora, I received a letter in London, written on bark in faulty Latin. In it stood the hope that I should soon return to the Iceni country to take my newborn son on my knee. This astounding news terminated my longing for Lugunda abruptly, and instead roused in me a burning desire to see Rome again. I was still young enough to think that I could rid myself of guilt by changing abode.

Vespasian kindly gave me a courier’s plaque and several letters to take to Rome. Ignoring the high winds, I boarded the ship and on the journey vomited the whole of Britain into the foaming salt sea. More dead than alive, I landed in Gaul, and there is no more to tell about Britain. But I decided never to return there before it was possible to do so on foot. This is one of the decisions of my life I have been able to keep to.