Claudius

XXI

Why don’t they come?

‘Why don’t they attack?’

Caratacus kept his eyes on the far bank where the Romans waited, the tents of their geometrically precise encampments stretching as far as the horizon. It was the eighth day he had watched them. The sky above the camps was made hazy by the smoke from a thousand cooking fires. On the flatland beyond the river he could see squadrons of cavalry wheeling and manoeuvring as they’d done every evening for the past week. The Roman engineers had begun building three separate bridges within hours of their arrival. They were sited four hundred paces apart, which Plautius obviously believed was far enough to stretch the British forces but close enough for each bridgehead to support the other in case of need. But the work lacked urgency and each slim artery seemed to progress only a few feet a day, inching out as if the Romans were nervous of reaching the British bank. At this rate it could be weeks.

‘I don’t know, Bodvoc. Perhaps they are frightened of us.’

The Regni war chief didn’t smile. ‘We have supplies for only another few days.’

‘So do the Romans.’ It was true. His spies had reported a dwindling stream of wagons reaching the four great legionary encampments. But the Roman commander, Plautius, had cut his men’s rations by a quarter to eke out his food. Caratacus knew that if he did the same his army would melt away around him. He could almost feel the ripening harvest calling to the farmers among his vast force. There had already been desertions among the Dumnonii; it seemed greed for gold could not out-weigh the reality of Rome’s legions massed on the other side of the river.

‘Scarach grumbles. He says if the Romans do not attack us, we should attack them.’

‘Scarach was born to grumble. He knows we cannot cross the river, but he howls like a wolf to impress the rest of the pack. They will come, and when they come we will defeat them.’

The utter conviction in his voice surprised him and seemed to convince Bodvoc, for the big man just nodded, and strode off the hill-top towards the circle of rough huts where the Regni had set up camp. Caratacus could see the bright flame of a funeral pyre outside the ring of huts. A change in the wind brought him the familiar reek of cooking fires and carelessly ejected shit. They had been fortunate so far; the disease that always followed an army on campaign had not found them yet. The few men who had died were already sick. If the Romans did not come soon it would be different.

He closed his eyes and his hand strayed to the brooch at his shoulder. Come now. Taranis, use your power to make them come. He inspected the men working below him, screened from the Romans by the uneven mound of sand-covered flood debris that lined the bank for miles up- and downstream. He knew he could not have chosen a better position. It was perfect.

From the point where Plautius had set up his garish pavilion it appeared the terrain on the north side of the river was a flat meadow which stretched for perhaps two hundred paces before sloping gently upwards to form the grassy hill. The Roman commander would calculate that he would lose men, maybe hundreds of men, making the crossing. But once they were on the British bank and formed up he would be certain that no matter how hard the British fought, the out-come was inevitable. What he did not know, and what Caratacus sacrificed to the gods each night to ensure he did not find out, was that the ‘meadow’ and its approaches had been turned into a killing ground.

The harmless-looking bank where the legionaries would disperse when they crossed was full of deep pits, dug each night by reluctant warriors who thought wielding a shovel was slaves’ work, but many of whom would live because the Roman line would be fractured before it had fully formed. When they emerged from the river in their cohorts, the Romans would march straight into an ambush from mixed squads of slingers and spearmen hidden in the hollows. Those who survived, and Caratacus acknowledged there would still be many, would be held back by their officers until they could form the disciplined lines which made them impossible to defeat. But the delay would give the British ambushers time to flee back to their comrades ready to cause more carnage. That was when the legions would realize they had walked into a trap. But by then it would be too late.

The meadow which looked so inviting from the safety of Plautius’s pavilion a mile away was in reality a featureless bog. In itself it would have made a formidable obstacle for heavily armoured men, but Caratacus’s fertile mind had added its own deadly refinements. He had ordered his men to carve thousands of wooden stakes sharpened to a point at each end. When they were ready, the stakes were jammed into the soft mud of the bog, with three feet above ground angled towards the advancing legionaries at groin height. When the stakes were fixed to his satisfaction, the British war leader ordered the small stream which ran through the centre of the bog to be dammed a few feet from where it met the river. Now the bog was a shallow lagoon which stretched for two miles along the British front and was laced with invisible gifts from the gods which would kill and maim. He could imagine the tight, orderly lines struggling through the placid waters, tripping and stumbling, then the first man going down with a scream, writhing against the unseen horror that had punctured his lower belly. Then the next, and the next, until the water turned red.

By the time they reached the temporary safety of dry soil, they would be exhausted and demoralized. That was when he would launch his first attack. It would be his elite: the champions of the Catuvellauni and the Trinovantes, the Regni and the Atrebates, the Durotriges and the Iceni — Britain’s mightiest warriors. They would smash the Roman line as it struggled to free itself from the grasping mud of the bog. The weight of the assault would force the Romans back into the ranks behind them, creating a tight-packed logjam into which the spearmen and slingers would cast their deadly rain of missiles. As his men screamed and died and drowned, Plautius would throw in reinforcements, but they would only add to the chaos, more cattle to the slaughter. That was what Caratacus counted upon; what he had planned for since the night his conversations with the slave Rufus had divulged Plautius’s fatal weakness. The Roman commander was under so much pressure to win a quick victory he would accept battle wherever he found it. Even on British terms. Togodumnus, in his stupidity and his arrogance, had unintentionally helped lay the trap. The easy victory on the first river could only have made Plautius more certain of his overwhelming superiority. Caratacus had led him onwards to this place, the doom of his army, in the certain knowledge that Plautius would follow as a dog follows a bitch in heat.

He waited on the hilltop until the sun was almost down, enjoying the aloneness of it and listening to the different sounds of the two camps; the Roman was silent apart from the occasional shouted order or strident trumpet call, while from behind him came the raucous clamour of men arguing and women shrieking. When would it start? Ah, there it was, the roar of massed voices singing some repetitive marching song. It happened every evening at this time and would last until just before daylight. Was this some Roman superstition — a rite to be performed on the eve of battle — or was Plautius attempting to keep the British warriors from their beds in the hope they would fight less well? Either way it would not affect the outcome of the battle.

But first the Romans had to come to him.

‘Why are they singing?’

‘Soldiers like to sing. They have few enough pleasures.’

Narcissus had taken an almost fatherly interest in Rufus since he had returned to the column. He had insisted the young slave enjoy the most nourishing foods from General Plautius’s personal supply: fillets of fish and breasts of fowl, great slabs of suckling pig and slices of succulent, fat-heavy beef. Rufus was pleased enough to accept the Greek’s unexpected generosity, but sometimes he couldn’t rid himself of an image of a calf being fattened up for slaughter.

‘They seem to be singing the same song over and over again.’

‘Yes. I believe it’s entitled “The March of Marius”. Some of the verses are quite obscene, but it has a rhythm that keeps going round in my head. I much prefer it to that other dirge, what is it? Oh yes. “The War Anthem of Mars” — it hardly stirs the blood, does it?’

They stood in silence for a while, listening to the pulsating chant, which always seemed to come from their right, downstream. When Narcissus spoke again his voice took on a commanding edge and his words sent a shiver through the young slave. ‘It is time to fulfil your oath. Tomorrow after dusk I will send a messenger for you and your elephant. You will accompany them where they direct you, and when you reach your destination you will follow your orders to the letter. Is that clear?’

Rufus nodded. ‘Is it time, then?’

The Greek pursed his lips. It was something he had considered, but one element of the puzzle still remained to be put in place before the contents of Bersheba’s wagon could be revealed. ‘No, but you, I think, would be wise to wear the uniform of the Guard. And Rufus?’ Rufus stared at him. ‘Say nothing of this matter to anyone. Your life may depend upon it…’

Rufus returned to the baggage train, his mind ablaze with visions of battles and wounds and terrible ends. But men survived battles. He had fought before, when he had killed Dafyd, and at Cupido’s side when they had saved Caligula from the assassins, and again, on that awful day in the passageway from the theatre when the world had changed for ever. He thought of Cupido, the calm stillness of the man and the reassurance in his pewter-grey eyes, and knew that the gladiator would keep him safe, or, at the very least, save a place beside him in the feasting halls of his ancestors.

He didn’t expect to sleep that night, but when he woke at dawn his head was clear and his mind sharp. Neither was matched by the day, which was a sulphurous, brooding trial of airless heat crushed beneath a blood-red ceiling of low cloud. Soldiers called days like these ominous, and with good reason; a sky the colour of new offal seemed to be filled with omens for a legionary on the eve of battle. It was the kind of day Rufus had learned promised rain, and plenty of it, but the rain never came and the heat never abated. Instead, the air crackled with an almost physical tension. Men who had never exchanged a sour word cursed each other as they worked. Centurions lashed out with the thick vine sticks of their office at the slightest provocation. And there was no lack of provocation.

It was clear by now that the Second’s preparations for the river crossing were close to culmination. The camp was abuzz with activity. Carpenters worked ceaselessly to ensure the great wooden catapults and the ballistae that could punch a heavy four-foot arrow a quarter of a mile through the air were in good order and ready for action. Armourers sharpened swords by the dozen and met last-minute promises to mend the weak points in legionary plate armour or auxiliary chain mail that might cost a man his life. Vespasian stalked the camp with his aides like a lion marking its territory, reassuring, checking, and repeating his orders again and again to his junior commanders. There was only one word on every man’s lips. Tomorrow.