Claudius

XI

There are different kinds of waking.

There is the restful waking in a soft bed, or even a hard one, when the brain is refreshed and instantly at the ready for whatever the day brings. There is the sluggish, glue-mouthed waking that is the aftermath of a half-remembered night of revelry that involved one cup of rough wine too many. Then there is the joyful waking, as one’s hand unthinkingly finds firm, rounded flesh, and the mind strays to the wonders of the night before and the body anticipates the pleasures yet to come.

Rufus’s waking was none of these.

He knew something was horribly wrong even before he opened his eyes. What was this unyielding, gnarled vegetable thing cutting into his face from eyebrow to chin? And another, trapping his arm beneath him and eating deep into his flesh. He was half upside down, with his neck forced at an angle by something crushing him from above. The thing was moving, enormously heavy, and at once hard and soft. He could barely breathe because of the weight bearing down on him. Warm, viscous liquid ran over his bare flesh — he was naked? — and into his hair and his eyes and his mouth. He tasted it, bitter and sharp and yeasty, as at the same time he recognized its smell. He choked and spat and his eyes snapped open with the shock. Human piss!

Still his brain took time to acknowledge the enormity of what was happening to him.

One eye was angled so it could see nothing but the pile of wood and logs at the base of whatever it was he was now part of. Because he was part of it, as much so as if he were jointed or nailed to it. The thing eating into his face was a twisted wicker strand, perhaps an inch across. His mouth was partially covered by the wicker and forced half open by the pressure crushing him. His other eye looked directly at a ring of grim, moustached faces. Two men were set apart by their bearing and the fact that they were clean-shaven. The one in the long cloak, with the shaven head; and a warrior…

There was an awful moment when realization took over from calculation and concussed bemusement was replaced by sheer horror. His body began to tremble, at least what little of it was capable of movement. He heard a high, whining sound come unbidden from his throat; a helpless, terror-stricken wail he now knew was being echoed by the nameless, faceless mound of living human bodies piled above him in this wicker trap. He closed his eyes again, hoping against hope that he was in some terrible dream; that he would wake once more and it would be gone. But there was no escape. Instead, his mind painted a picture of what was, and what was to be. He could see the giant structure, grotesque, yet vaguely human in shape. A great basket made up of wicker and tree branches, and filling its belly and breasts the human fodder that would soon fuel its fiery appetite. Sacrifices. He was to be a human sacrifice. He shook with helpless terror and felt urine shoot from him in short involuntary bursts. Now he understood. And there was worse occurring above him as his fellow captives began to realize the true horror of their fate. The stink of voided bowels filled the air. He could hear someone pleading from within the human tangle close by and thought he recognized the voice of Paullus, though it was difficult to tell since it sounded like the high-pitched bleating of a small boy. He felt the tree-man shudder as prisoners fought in vain to be free; to throw themselves on the merciful swords of their captors.

He had heard the tales of the Wicker Man, of captives put to death in the belly of Taranis, the thunder god, and trembled at the thought of it. He had never expected to see it. Now he was enduring its terrible reality. Why was he not going mad? Surely it would be better to be lost in babbling insanity than to lie here coldly considering his fate?

Soon they would begin to push the straw and branches into the basket between the living fuel. And then the songs would begin. Julius Caesar had written of the songs, or was it Strabo? What did it matter? He was going to die. When the Wicker Man was filled with enough flammable material, the Druid would come forward with his flaming torch, and then… ‘No! Gaius! Bersheba! Please!’ His wail rang across the glade where the British war chiefs had gathered to see Taranis receive the gift they prayed would turn the campaign in their favour. With one eye, he saw the warrior without the moustache frown. Was there something familiar about him?

The man had the place of honour beside the Druid. He was dressed in the finespun cloth of a Celtic lord, with a torc of twisted gold at his neck and a thick cloak about his shoulders, clasped by a bright, bejewelled brooch. On his left hip hung a long sword in an ornate bronze scabbard, its hilt decorated with rubies and glittering studs of precious metal. His left hand rested on a big oval shield with a swirling pattern etched into the copper and the figure of a charging boar at its centre. Some faint memory blew back the curtain of panic that surrounded Rufus. A charging boar. What was it?

The flicker of a torch in the Druid’s hand drew a collective howl from the trapped men. In a high, clear voice Nuada began the gift song of Taranis, quickly joined by the deeper tones of a dozen warrior kings, including Caratacus, who stood tall and straight at his side. The Catuvellauni leader watched the men trapped inside the thirty-foot construction squirming in terror, and steeled himself against pity. What must be, must be. These Romans had invaded his land. Now they would pay the price. His whole upper body vibrating, he let the song boom from his chest, felt the mesmerizing power of it in his mind. The loss of a fine moustache was a small price to pay for the information he had gleaned about the ‘monster’. He had resented it when his father insisted he should learn the language of the enemy, but now he acknowledged Cunobelin’s wisdom. The old man had known the Romans would return, and that his sons were destined to oppose them. He was determined they should have every possible weapon at their disposal. Caratacus remembered his father’s words as the trio sat by the fire in that fierce winter a dozen years before.

‘To face the enemy without fully understanding them is like facing them without a sword or a shield. It gives them a precious advantage. Hate the Romans if you must, but do not allow hate to cloud your judgement.’

Caratacus had listened. Togodumnus had sneered that he wanted nothing to do with the Romans but killing them. That was the night, Caratacus knew, when his father had decided he should be king.

He brought his thoughts back to the present. The Druids were pushing straw and thin branches that would feed the fire into gaps in the structure, and the tinder-dry gorse bushes that burned so fiercely when they were in yellow flower. The shrieks of fear were an assault on his ears and he vowed to close them when the flame was lit. A pity he had been unable to spend longer with the young man in charge of the elephant. It had been a very revealing conversation. Now he was sure the beast was no physical threat he could concentrate on combating the power of its symbolism. Togodumnus, the fool, was still determined it should be destroyed. Would he never learn?

The attack on the column his brother had ordered without his knowledge had infuriated the British war leader. How many men had they lost? How many irreplaceable warriors cut down for nothing but one man’s vanity? Three hundred, perhaps four. And worse, every man who escaped the carnage was now convinced of the Romans’ invincibility and spread whispers about the power of the ‘monster’. The damage was incalculable.

At last, Nuada was ready.

Rufus watched the Druid come forward with the flaming torch in his left hand. His mind threatened to freeze with terror, but he knew he couldn’t allow it. He must find the strength. Think! The boar. There was something about the boar. Then the words came to him as clearly as if he was hearing them spoken inside his head: ‘I have faced charging boars the size of a small bullock, but I doubt that I would stand before this.’

He forced himself to concentrate. The nose. Yes, the broken nose. That noble, who must be Caratacus, was the Gaul, the Gaul who had questioned him about Bersheba! He had only one chance. He opened his mouth wide to shout for the British king’s attention. But he had drunk nothing for more than a dozen hours and it was as if his throat was filled with pebbles. All that emerged was a pale imitation of an elderly crow that was drowned by the moans and screams of those trapped with him.

Nuada was mere feet away, his hand reaching forward to push the torch into the straw, where it would flicker, then burn, then consume. Rufus swallowed desperately, working his mouth in an attempt to find something, anything, that would lubricate his throat. He tried again. If he failed, he was dead. ‘Lord,’ he croaked. ‘Lord Caratacus. Bersheba. The elephant.’

Nuada’s winged brows knitted in puzzlement at the words, but he shook his head and forced the flaming torch into the straw beside Rufus’s head. The young Roman screamed in terror as he felt the first heat of the flames on his flesh.

‘Hold.’ The voice was firm and commanding and it was accompanied by strong hands beating out the fire.

‘What is this?’ Nuada’s voice was thick with righteous outrage. ‘It is sacrilege to deny Taranis his gift.’

Caratacus stooped to wipe his blackened hands on the grass at his feet and looked up at the Druid. ‘Do not oppose me in this, Nuada,’ he said quietly. ‘It is the will of the gods.’

He straightened and turned to the kings and war chiefs, who were staring at him in astonishment. ‘This man is a gift from Taranis to me, Caratacus, and I accept his gift. Does any man deny my right to it?’ He stared at each warrior in turn, daring them to challenge his authority. None would meet his eye.

‘I say burn them all.’

Togodumnus, of course. So be it.

He turned to his brother with his hand on the jewelled hilt of his sword. Togodumnus glared at him for a few long seconds, but recognized a deadly intent in Caratacus’s eyes. He calculated his chances. ‘Keep him then, but the rest burn.’

Axes chopped at the slim branches holding Rufus within the wicker figure and willing hands bent them aside, creating just enough space for him to fall clear, but not enough to allow another captive to follow. Barely understanding what was happening, he was dragged naked before Caratacus with the pitiful pleas of the men he left behind torturing his ears. He didn’t dare look back for fear that what he would see would unman him.

‘You are Rufus, keeper of the monster?’

Rufus realized his face was covered in dried blood from the wound he received when he was struck down in the forest, and that his hair was wild and matted. He must be barely recognizable to this man he had met only once. ‘Yes, lord,’ he replied, his voice shaking with emotion. He knew a single wrong word could put him back in the wicker cage. ‘I am the keeper of Bersheba, the Emperor’s elephant.’

‘And you have met this Claudius, whom we owe nothing, but who would have us pay homage to him?’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘Then truly, Rufus, you are among the fortunate.’ Caratacus unpinned his heavy green cloak and shrugged it from his shoulders, then draped it over Rufus’s nakedness. In the same movement he turned the young slave towards the sacrifice. ‘See how fortunate you are.’

For the first time Rufus looked upon the full horror of the Wicker Man. Taller than five men standing upon each other’s shoulders, it dominated everything on the bare hilltop where they stood. It was constructed from a framework of branches and its shape was that of a broad-chested male, his gender instantly apparent from the crude sexual organ protruding from between his legs, each of which was filled to overflowing with tinder-dry straw and branches. The head was a featureless ball, but the blank, pitiless face only made it all the more terrifying. Thrown haphazardly together within the chest cavity was a writhing mass of naked human figures. He could see Paullus, who had shown so little mercy to the village elder, now pleading for it with the last of his strength. Agrippa would be there in that pale jumble of limbs, Agrippa who had seemed too gentle to be a soldier, but who had participated so willingly in Paullus’s atrocity. The interpreter. Slaves he had called his friends. He glimpsed Veleda, the British woman who had led them to the cache of stores, and the two elders captured with her. Presumably they had been tainted by their contact with the Romans. Some of them screamed, some of them, like Paullus, pleaded, others appeared to be shocked into silence. The more fortunate were unconscious or dead, smothered by the weight of flesh above them.

Nuada looked to Caratacus and the Briton nodded. Taranis received his sacrifice.

Rufus’s eyes recorded every detail. As the flames licked the lower layers of bodies he saw mouths opening wider than any human mouth should be capable of, the bulging, disbelieving eyes, and the arms stretching out for assistance from the Roman gods who had forsaken them. Strangely, now, he heard not a sound. Perhaps his mind was protecting him from something that would ultimately destroy him. He felt twin streams of tears on his cheeks as the flames did their work. The gold and green gorse bushes burned quickly, the wood less fiercely. Quite soon the only movement within the giant wicker frame was of blackened corpses contorting and shrivelling in the intense heat at the golden heart of the inferno. The terrified faces of individuals were replaced by a wall of grinning skulls, white teeth stark against charred flesh, which demanded to know why he deserved life when they did not. He had no answer.

‘Enough.’ Rufus felt Caratacus’s hand pulling at his shoulder, but he found he could not move. Somehow he knew that if his eyes broke contact with the flames he would be sucked into that whirling vortex of fire from which he should never have been allowed to escape. Only when the Wicker Man crumpled in on himself, taking with him his banquet of roasted flesh and scorched bone, was the spell broken. ‘Come,’ the Catuvellauni leader ordered. Rufus allowed himself to be guided between the lines of cold, staring faces towards the thatched huts hidden in the woods below. After a few steps an involuntary shudder racked his body and he vomited a fountain of bile on to the grass, staining the fine cloak in the process.

‘I do not think you are made of the stuff of war,’ Caratacus said gently. He led the way to the largest of the huts, which was set some way back from the others. It was clear this rough camp was only a temporary home to the British war leaders, but Caratacus’s hut was nevertheless sumptuously furnished in the British fashion. The walls were hung with the thick fur of a bear and numerous beaver, fox and wolf pelts. The floor was covered with fresh rushes mixed with herbs which filled the interior of the hut with their sweet fragrance when they were crushed underfoot. At the far end, opposite the doorway, a frame had been set up on which hung the shields and standards of the British tribes. Caratacus’s charging boar, the bull’s head of the Regni, the galloping horse of the Iceni, and the crossed spears of the Dobunni were all there, though Rufus recognized them only as brightly coloured symbols of power. To one side, a child played on a rug of washed sheepskin, watched by a smiling, olive-skinned woman with the first silver of age dusting her hair. The boy reminded Rufus of Gaius and he struggled to stifle a sob. The woman looked up in surprise at the sound and her eyes widened when she saw the blood-stained, dishevelled figure wearing her husband’s cloak.

Caratacus smiled an apology to his wife. ‘Take Tasciovanus to see the ponies, Medb, and send Idres with a basin of water.’

The Briton took his place on a wooden chair in front of the banners and invited Rufus to sit at a nearby bench. They waited in silence until a girl of about thirteen arrived with the basin and without a word began to bathe the dried blood from Rufus’s hair. He winced as she touched the raw flesh of a wound just behind his right ear. He reached up and gingerly felt a large bump. ‘It is not mortal,’ Caratacus assured him. ‘We will have it dressed later. Nuada has much skill in these matters. He has stitched me up many a time.’

‘Nuada?’

‘You have met him. The Druid.’ Rufus paled. ‘Do not judge him on what you saw today. He has his place in our society, as your priests do in yours, and carries his burdens as we all do.’ He waved the girl from the hut. ‘Now tell me about the Emperor Claudius.’