Hero of Rome

XXVI

April AD 60

The march west seemed much shorter than seven months before, when the First cohort had made its way towards Colonia under the dank grey clouds of autumn. The very obvious manifestation of spring put a little more bounce in every man’s step. Not even the sixty-pound loads they carried could dent their spirits. Wherever they looked leaves fresh from the bud turned the hedgerows emerald green and buttercups, dandelions and primroses studded the meadows with gold. Each farmer’s field had its flock of newborn lambs jostling playfully for position on the nearest hummock of grass and watched over by a shepherd boy ready to fend off any enterprising fox or buzzard, or passing hungry-eyed legionary.

As they marched through the hills towards Glevum, Valerius heard a familiar bass voice take up the simple cadence of the first verse of the ‘March of Marius’.

There was a Mule, he was no fool,

He had a girl in every fort

Another one in every port In

Allifae she was not shy…’

By the time they reached the Twentieth’s base above the Severn, the Mule had shown much imagination and inventiveness and he’d left a trail of worn-out working girls from one side of the Empire to the other. Lunaris’s voice never let up and he was still going strong. Valerius sang along with the rest.

He barely recognized the fortress as the place he’d left the previous year. Supply trains carried a constant stream of equipment and provisions from the river to a separate temporary encampment protecting the mountain of stores gathered for the campaign ahead. Engineers had constructed a series of double-ditched annexes to house the various auxiliary units who would accompany the Twentieth and the Fourteenth to attack Mona: veteran infantry from Frisia, Batavia and Tungria, a five-hundred-strong wing of Sarmatian light cavalry scouts and another of Raetian bowmen.

Travel-stained and leg-weary, the men of the First cohort gathered on the parade ground to say farewell to their tribune. Valerius had never seen a unit more battle-ready or eager. Brick red, dust-coated faces grinned at him from below their polished helmets, and dark patches of sweat stained their tunics, but every man was honed whip thin and tough as seasoned saddle leather. War held no illusions for them but they had had enough of mending roads and mock fights. He felt a wasp sting of guilt at the knowledge he wouldn’t be going to Mona and worse when they cheered him to a man as he dismissed them.

‘Good luck, Julius. Look after them,’ he said to the centurion. ‘I’ll announce our arrival at the principia, and after that, who knows?’

‘There’s a pretty whore called Thalia in the brothel up by the gate on the Prata Flaminia. Say hello to her for me and give her a big kiss, or something else.’ Julius laughed and took him by the arm, looking up into the young-old face with the wary fighter’s eyes. ‘I can’t imagine you in a law court, Valerius, but you’ll scare the life out of the opposition.’

Afterwards Valerius reported to the legate on the status and condition of his men. He was pleased by the general’s reaction.

‘I know, I watched them march in. They are a credit to you and their officers. They’ll have plenty of time to rest. The Fourteenth sets off in a week from their base at Viroconium. It will take a month to force a way through the mountains. We go in after that. That’s when the First cohort will be needed. When we reach Mona.’

Valerius nodded his thanks and turned to the request that had been dominating his thoughts for the final five miles of the march. ‘I would like to ask for a meeting with the governor, sir.’

Livius pursed his lips and tutted. ‘You won’t change his mind, Valerius. He won’t keep you in Britain.’

‘I don’t expect him to, sir. It’s another matter.’ He knew he could ask the legate to pass on the information supplied by Cearan, but there was no guarantee it would reach the governor. He owed it to the Iceni to argue the case himself.

‘Very well, I’ll arrange it, but I warn you he’s in a dangerous mood. He heard this morning that Corbulo heaps success upon success in Armenia. The governor’s future rests on this campaign and the Emperor is impatient for victory. It will mean a triumph and a consulship if he wins, but… I hope it’s good news you are bringing him.’

Staff officers and messengers bustled to and from the governor’s headquarters with the regularity of bees supplying a hive. A harassed aide ushered Valerius inside, where he found Paulinus at a plain wooden desk writing unhurriedly in confident strokes across a piece of parchment. It was undoubtedly an important report; normal orders would be issued on the wax writing block at his right hand and transcribed by clerks. Valerius felt the first flutter of nerves. This man had the power of life and death over every soldier and civilian in the province, and he was a man to be feared.

In the silence he considered what he knew of the governor. Paulinus had spent his first campaigning season in Britain in the south-west, annihilating the last remnants of resistance from the Dumnonii and their Durotrige allies in the rugged peninsula where they had fled the swords of the Second legion. The governor counted it a great success, reaping the double benefit of guaranteeing Rome the tin it needed and spreading word of the new total war he had brought to these shores. Every king, prince or warrior who resisted was butchered. Only widows and orphans survived to wail their funeral songs and spread the tale of his coming.

Paulinus had plotted and conspired to win his position as governor, but he hated this island and he despised its people. He combined a hard, unbending and utterly ruthless character with a forensic intelligence. He was also a brilliant soldier who had been the first Roman general to fight his way across the Atlas mountains.

A sharp scrape announced he had completed his correspondence. Valerius drew himself up to his full height. The shaven head lifted and he found himself being studied by two flat, basilisk eyes squinting from beneath a heavy brow. Paulinus maintained his gaze for a full minute, as if he was trying to define what species of life form had dared interrupt him. Valerius felt the first prickle of sweat in his scalp.

‘I am told you have important news for me?’ The voice was as rough-edged as the face it emerged from, the accent from somewhere to the south of Rome.

Valerius repeated what Cearan had told him about the likelihood of political upheaval among the Iceni when King Prasutagus died, the clandestine meetings in the woods and his certainty that druids were spreading poison among his people.

When he had finished the governor snorted impatiently. ‘So, in short, I am expected to endorse the claim of this woman, this Boudicca, over other worthy candidates on the word of some barbarian opportunist.’

Valerius took a deep breath. ‘Sir, it is my opinion that Lord Cearan is a man to be trusted. If he has concerns, then I think we should also have concerns.’

The pebble eyes glowered in surprise.

‘You would give me advice? Young man, I have so much advice that I am forced to sit at this table twelve hours a day considering it. The Emperor advises me how to squeeze more profit out of this benighted province. My officers advise me their forces are not strong enough yet to take the Druids’ Isle. My priests advise me that it is a fine day — as if I cannot see that for myself. And my doctor advises me that if I don’t calm down my piles will burst.’

Paulinus slapped his palm on the table hard enough to make stylus and scroll airborne.

‘Everything you say assumes that these Iceni seek a war. They would not be so foolish. I would wipe this country so clean of any rebellious vermin that neither their children nor their children’s children would pose a threat to any Roman again.’

Valerius suppressed a soldier’s instinct to keep his mouth shut and used his lawyer’s experience to place a doubt where it would do most good. ‘Perhaps we underestimate them, sir,’ he said, thinking of the hate-filled eyes of the mourners at Lucullus’s funeral.

Paulinus stared at him. Lowly tribunes did not answer back to their commander in chief, but then perhaps this tribune was not so lowly. He cast his mind back in an attempt to fathom what political leverage Valerius might have that made him so brave. It did not occur to him that someone might be brave for its own sake. The family Valerii had once wielded influence on the Palatine; perhaps they would wield it again, and one day that influence might be useful to him. Very well, he would humour the boy.

‘I underestimate nothing. The eastern tribes are a toothless, leaderless rabble. Their kings have taken our gold and eat off our plates. The warriors sit in the shade and watch their women plant seeds all day, and they drink beer all night. Their swords are rusted to an edge that would not cut grass, oxen pull their chariots and they use their shields to water their cattle. Am I to fear them? Does Colonia fear them?’ He thought for a moment. ‘King Prasutagus still lives. I will consider his queen’s case if and when he dies, but it must wait until my return.’

‘And the druids?’

‘If what this Cearan claims is true there would already have been attacks. It is always the way. We old men counsel patience, but the young hotheads cannot keep their swords sheathed. No. Even if a few druids are spreading poison, their work is at an early stage. They are no danger yet.’

‘But they could be in future?’ Valerius suggested.

Paulinus suppressed his annoyance. ‘It is possible, but I will not jeopardize this mission on a possibility. If the tribes were to combine to threaten Colonia, I would know of it. No force of any size could gather without my knowledge in this province. The Ninth are only a few days’ march away; they would be there before the rebels reached the gates.’

‘And if they were not?’

‘Then Colonia must be held by its people.’

‘And if they cannot hold it?’

‘Then they do not deserve to keep it.’

Paulinus picked up his stylus. Valerius was dismissed. He had failed.

He expected to be ordered to Londinium immediately, but the Twentieth’s preparations were behind schedule and an extra pair of hands was not to be lightly discarded. That day and each day thereafter the legate found some new logistical crisis for him to solve, a supply line to unclog or a dispute to smooth over. The armourer went sick and his deputy turned out to be incompetent, and a new armourer must be found. Valerius thought of Corvinus back in Colonia, but the distance was too far and the time too short. Eventually he bribed the prefect commanding the Frisian auxiliaries to give him the use of a blond giant with a manic grin and Latin that sounded like a bathhouse draining. And so it went on.

On the ides of Aprilis he watched with Lunaris as governor Paulinus and his personal bodyguard marched out with the auxiliaries to join the Fourteenth legion, the massed cornicens blowing a strident fanfare and the eagle standard glittering in the fresh morning sunlight. His heart swelled as they passed, rank after rank, with their shields on their backs and their spears and equipment and a week’s rations already grating on their shoulders. The letters to their loved ones had been sent, their bellies were full and they were eager: he could see it in the way they stepped out and in the determination on their faces.

Behind them by the thousand came the mules of the supply train; no ox carts on this campaign because no roads existed where they were going, only precipitous mountain passes and boulder-filled valley bottoms that would snap an axle as if it were a toothpick. The mules were followed by more auxiliaries than Valerius had seen gathered together in one place. The Frisians and Tungrians had been joined by Vangiones and Nervians from the swamps of Germania, Gauls from every part of that vast land, and lithe, tanned hillmen from Pannonia and Moetia and Dalmatia.

‘Better them than me,’ Lunaris growled. ‘They’ll have to clear the hills and force the passes. A Black Celt on every ridge and a boulder on your helmet from every clifftop. At least when we go that job’ll have been done.’

‘You think they’ll fight?’ Valerius asked. ‘The legate of the Fourteenth has been telling whoever wants to know that the druids will pull them back to the island.’

‘They’ll fight all right,’ the big man said gloomily. ‘If the barbarians came to burn down the Temple of Jupiter would you sit and wait at the bottom of the Capitoline? No, you’d block the streets and have an archer at every window and a spearman at every corner and by the time they got to the temple there wouldn’t be enough of them left to take it. That’s why he’s taking so many of the country boys. They’ll do the dying and then the Fourteenth and the Twentieth will finish the job and take all the glory.’

‘If there’s any glory they’ll have earned it,’ Valerius said, considering the perils of a massed assault on a defended island. Any bridgehead would be paid for heavily in Roman lives. ‘Would you rather be staying behind with me?’

Lunaris shook his head. ‘No,’ he said seriously. ‘I’ve been doing this for a dozen years. Mostly digging and marching and waiting — lots of waiting. Fighting is the best part of it, even with all the torn guts and the tent-mates who don’t make it back, because it’s what we’re paid for and trained for. And because we always win. Because we’re the best.’

The next day they heard that Prasutagus of the Iceni was dead.

Valerius considered riding out after Paulinus and pressing him for a decision on the Iceni succession, but reviewing his interview with the governor convinced him that it would do more harm than good. He thought of Cearan’s earnest, handsome face and felt the hollow emptiness of having failed a friend. Yet there was always a chance Queen Boudicca would prevail without the governor’s sanction. Paulinus had dismissed her as a mere woman, but Valerius had sensed a formidable presence when he had seen her at Venta. In any case, he had done everything he could.

Another week passed and, although the legate kept him busy enough, he began to have a strange detached feeling of not belonging. Each man in the legion had a definite aim and a place in the battle line, but not him. What they did, they did for a purpose: to ensure they reached Mona with the equipment they needed in a condition that would allow them to use it to the best effect. All he did was fill gaps. He was considering asking the legate for leave to go when he received the legionary commander’s summons.

Livius received him in the principia with the harassed look of a man with too many problems and not enough time. ‘Nonsense,’ he snapped, throwing a scroll on to the campaign desk in front of him. ‘We are not ready but I am commanded to march within forty-eight hours, so march we must.’ He frowned. ‘You have done good work here, Valerius, for which I thank you, and if I had my way you would be going with us, but…’ he glanced at the scroll in front of him and gave a bitter smile, ‘orders are orders. However, you can do me a last favour. Your replacement is due in Londinium from Rome in one week on the ship that will take you back there. Mars aid me but we need him. He’ll be wet behind the ears and I can’t have him wandering around these mountains on his own or some Silurian will eat him and have his skull for an oil lamp. Choose a dozen experienced men from the First cohort as an escort and take them with you. Once they have picked up your replacement they are to follow us as they can. Judging by the governor’s dispatches we won’t have gone too far. We appear to have underestimated the obstinacy of the Celts defending the passes.’

‘Of course, sir. It will be my pleasure.’ Which was true. He couldn’t think of better company than Lunaris and his comrades from the second century. They might not relish the march, but if they weren’t marching east they’d be marching west into the arms of the druids. At least they’d be safer with him.