Hero of Rome

IV

‘You are a fool, Valerius. You should have killed him and had done with it. Instead you burden me with trouble I don’t need and paperwork I don’t have time to deal with.’ Valerius stood at attention in front of the legate’s desk, exactly where Crespo should have been standing. The general pursed his lips and frowned. ‘Did you really think I would arrest Crespo? The man may only be a centurion but he has powerful friends. When I took command of this legion I received letters of commendation about him from my three predecessors. Look!’ He waved a document he had been reading. ‘One of them is now a consul, another a military adviser to the Emperor. I do not need enemies like that.’

‘He raped-’

‘I know what you say he did, but where is your evidence? The two soldiers you say watched him claim they saw nothing.’

‘The girl-’

‘Is dead.’

Valerius remembered the helpless, sobbing figure being led from the hut. Of course. The legate was right. He’d been a fool.

‘Even if what you say is true — and I don’t doubt that it is — I would remind you that this is a punishment expedition. The men of this tribe murdered twenty of my cavalry and they have paid the price for it. Some would say the price was light and that centurion Crespo was only carrying out the punishment in his own fashion. He may have overstepped his orders but I’m too short of experienced officers to lose him. Tribunes come and tribunes go but our centurions are the backbone of the legion.’

‘But the law,’ Valerius protested. ‘We came here to bring these people under the protection of the Empire. Are they to be denied that protection? Allowing Crespo to do what he did and go free makes us as much barbarians as the Celts.’

A spark of anger flared in the legate’s eyes. ‘Do not try my patience, tribune. Not only are you a fool, but you are a naive fool. There is no law on the battlefield. Keep your high-minded arguments for the courts. You talk of civilization, but you cannot have civilization without order. We came to this island to bring order and order can only be achieved by the use of force. Rome has decided the tribes are a resource to be harvested. If we must flatter their kings to get the best crop, we will do so. If flattery fails, I am prepared to exterminate as many as it takes to ensure the message is heard and understood. If you do not have the stomach for the work say so, and I will have you on the first ship home.

‘It is important that we demonstrate to the Silurians who rule here. The scouting party they ambushed was no ordinary patrol. It included a metallurgist sent directly from Rome. Somewhere out there,’ he waved a hand to indicate the hills to the west, ‘is the primary source of British gold. It was his job to find it. Instead, he ended up with his head on a pole.’ He paused and stared out of the tent to where the legionaries and auxiliaries were busy dismantling the camp around them. ‘I had intended to continue this demonstration, but that is no longer possible. I have received orders to retire to Glevum and prepare for a major campaign next year. We will march on Mona.’

The name sent a shiver through Valerius. Every Roman had heard of the blood-soaked Druids’ Isle and the terrible rites that took place there.

‘The druids are at the heart of every obstacle we face in Britain,’ the legate continued. ‘But by the time next year’s harvest ripens there will be no more druids. Governor Paulinus intends to attack the sect’s stronghold with two legions, including the Twentieth. We will wipe the island clean of the vermin priests and every Briton who follows them, and when that phase is completed we will turn south and destroy the power of the Ordovices and Silures once and for all.’

He turned to face Valerius. ‘You will take the First cohort to winter at Colonia Claudia Victricensis. A season repairing roads in the snow is just what they need to keep them battle-ready. Work them hard and, when they’re not working, train them hard. They are my best fighting troops and you are my best fighting officer. Do not let me down.’ Valerius opened his mouth to protest. Colonia, Claudius’s ‘City of Victory’, lay a hundred miles to the east and was the last place he wanted to be posted when the legion was preparing for an important campaign. It had been the site of the British surrender to the Emperor, when it was known as Camulodunum, and was the first Roman city created in Britain, although it was becoming increasingly over-shadowed by the new port and administrative centre at Londinium. Livius continued before he could interrupt. ‘Centurion Crespo will only be fit for light duties for some weeks.’ The legate suppressed a smile, remembering the battered face and outraged protestations of innocence. ‘He will accompany the main unit to Glevum where he will be given duties commensurate with his standing and his rank. Under normal circumstances he would take over the First cohort when you return to Rome, but that may not be ideal. I will think on it.’

For a moment Valerius thought he had misheard: he’d been certain the summer campaign meant a reprieve. The legate read the look on his face.

‘Oh, yes, Valerius, you cannot escape your destiny. In the spring you will return the First to Glevum and then await a ship to take you back to Rome. I will be sorry to lose you, my boy. I did try to intercede on your behalf but it would take more than a legate and an impending battle to alter what is written on a bureaucrat’s scroll.’

Four days later Valerius led his men in full marching order past the wooden walls of Londinium, and smiled as he heard the subdued muttering behind him. The city called to him just as loudly as it did to his soldiers, but where the legionaries heard the siren sound of the inns and the brothels along the quay, Valerius craved only his first proper bath in three months.

‘They’re restless.’ His second in command, Julius, a twenty-year veteran who had replaced Crespo as the unit’s senior centurion, rode at his side. Auxiliary cavalry scouts ranged ahead and on the flanks, and behind the two commanders the cohort marched in its centuries.

‘They’re not alone,’ Valerius agreed. The men knew that the slaves captured at the hill fort would bring them a month’s pay each and a soldier never liked to keep money in his purse for long. ‘But we’ve been ordered directly to Colonia and that means another two hours on the road and two more with a shovel before we can rest. A pity; I’d have liked to visit Londinium again. It’s surprising how the place has grown in only a year.’

Julius followed his gaze. From behind the wooden palisade the smoke from hundreds of cooking fires hazed the sky. But Londinium had already overflowed the boundaries set by the engineers who had sited the port and the fortress which guarded it. Upstream and down, new buildings of wood and stone fringed the bank of the broad River Tamesa. Where once only willows had grown now stood the homes and the workshops of merchants of every sort, drawn to the town by the scent of profit. At each of the three gates a settlement of huts and shops clung to the edges of roads along which the bounty of an Empire passed each day. It must have been close to here that Claudius had fought the decisive battle which destroyed the might of the southern tribes. Valerius had heard fifty thousand men died that day, but he knew the figure would be exaggerated. Soldiers always inflated their successes and then the politicians inflated them a little more. No matter, it had been a great victory, one which had won Claudius the triumph that cemented his next dozen years on the throne. Now he was dead, and the Emperor was Nero, a man just a year younger than Valerius. Nero’s mother, Agrippina, had died only a few months earlier. He’d heard whispers she had been murdered, but that wasn’t something a lowly tribune dwelt upon if he valued his career.

The cohort had marched from the Silurian border on the military road through the Corinium gap, then on to the easier going of the gentle rolling downlands inhabited by the Atrebates, most romanized of all the British tribes. Military roads were designed to allow the legions swift passage, elevated on a bed of earth and compacted stone, and paralleled by two deep ditches. You knew Rome was here to stay when such roads spread their tentacles across the land. They were the ropes that bound a vanquished nation; ropes that could become a noose if circumstances required it. A legion in a hurry could march twenty miles a day along these roads, but Valerius had set a more leisurely pace. The men deserved some rest after their efforts in taking the Silurian fort.

‘You were here with Claudius?’

Julius shook his head. ‘Not with Claudius. With Aulus Plautius. Claudius didn’t arrive until the main battle was over. It was the Twentieth and the Fourteenth who forced the bridges, but if I’m being honest the Second did most of the fighting.’

‘I thought the Ninth were there as well?’

Julius spat. ‘You know the Ninth: last on the battlefield and first off it.’ Valerius grinned. The rivalry between the Ninth and the Twentieth was legendary; any bar where off-duty soldiers of the two met was certain to become a battleground.

A decurion approached and reported that one of the recent recruits to the fourth century was struggling to keep the pace. His centurion requested a short halt to allow the man to recover. Valerius opened his mouth to agree, but then he remembered the legate’s words of a few days earlier. Did he want to be liked or did he want to be a leader?

He shook his head. ‘I won’t stop the cohort because one man can’t keep up. Assign two of his section to help him. If he’s still lagging we’ll leave him at the next way station. He can rest there and follow on to Colonia in his own time.’

‘But-’ Julius interrupted.

‘I know,’ Valerius said sharply. If they left the man behind without written orders he’d have trouble persuading any military post to feed him and might well be accused of desertion. ‘This is the First cohort of the Twentieth, not a parade of Vestal Virgins. When he gets to Colonia make sure he gets extra training. Think, Julius. Think what would happen if he was left behind in some valley on the way to Mona.’

Julius nodded. He had seen the result when Roman prisoners fell into the hands of the Britons. He remembered a night on guard on a river bank: screams from the darkness and a terrible, flaming figure. And in the morning blackened lumps of charcoal that had once been men he had called friends.

They reached the halt by late afternoon; the scouts had already marked out the position of the cohort marching camp. Each legionary took his place without thinking in a combined effort they had carried out a thousand times before. Men dug, erected palisades or put up tents. A fortunate few formed hunting parties to seek out hare or deer to supplement the monotonous legionary rations. They had only covered a dozen miles since dawn but Valerius was satisfied. He knew they’d reach Colonia in four more days and he was in no hurry. The only thing that awaited him there was barrack-room walls and boredom.

He was wrong.

V

They approached from the west, on the Londinium road, through a gap in one of the great turf ramparts which had once defended Cunobelin’s Camulodunum. Colonia’s origins were clear the moment the city itself came into view. It stood on a low, flat-topped rise above a river crossing; a classic defensive position designed to dominate all the country around. What had once been a continuous ditch, backed by a turf wall and topped by a wooden palisade, surrounded the city, but much of it was now obliterated by new buildings and orchards. To the north, beyond the river, the ground rose in a hogsback ridge that stretched for miles from east to west. Once, the ridge must have been wild land, wood and bog, but it had been tamed by the dozens of farmsteads and the occasional small villa that dotted the hillside. At the eastern end of the ridge Valerius could just make out the distinctive outline of a military signal tower. The layout of the farms was almost entirely Roman because they were occupied by Roman citizens. The men who had won this land — cleared it, ploughed and sown it — had been granted that right by the Emperor Claudius in honour of his victory on the Tamesa. They were twenty-five-year veterans of the four legions who had conquered Briton. Men who had reached the end of their service and been rewarded either with twenty iugera of prime land or a share in the legionary fortress they had turned into the first Roman colony in Britain. In return they pledged their service as militia and vowed to protect what they’d been given. That had been eight years earlier and from a distance it looked as though they had used the time well.

Beyond the broken walls lay the familiar grid of streets that had originally been home to a legion. Once, those streets would have been lined with tents, then permanent legionary barracks, but now insulae, apartment blocks, some of them three storeys high, jostled the roadways. Valerius’s attention was drawn to a small group of soldiers gathered beside the western entrance, an honour guard to welcome the cohort to its temporary home, and he instinctively straightened his helmet and adjusted the plate armour beneath his cloak. Behind him, he heard the centurions and decurions closing up the ranks. He smiled. Of course, they would want to make a show before the men of another unit.

But as he approached the legionaries at the gate, he sensed something odd. A Roman soldier’s equipment had changed little over the last thirty years, but the armour and weapons of the men arrayed to welcome him appeared curiously dated. And something else was missing: a legionary had a certain posture, a straight-backed solidity that hinted at strength and stamina. These men looked to have neither. They stood ten to each side of the roadway beneath a modest triumphal arch that was in the latter stages of completion, and as Valerius rode towards them a soldier wearing a centurion’s crested helmet stepped smartly into the road in front of him and saluted.

Valerius reined in and dismounted, returning the salute. ‘Tribune Gaius Valerius Verrens commanding the First cohort of the Twentieth legion, on assignment to Colonia for the winter,’ he announced formally.

The man pulled back his shoulders. ‘Marcus Quintus Falco, First File of the Colonia militia, at your service.’

Valerius attempted not to stare. The militiaman facing him was like no soldier he had seen before. For a start, he was an old man, perhaps more than fifty, with a well-trimmed beard peppered with grey and a substantial paunch that bulged over his belt beneath the oft-mended chain-mail vest that covered his chest and shoulders. His helmet was of a pattern that Valerius only recognized because he’d seen it on altar stones dedicated to the men of Julius Caesar’s legions — men who had last worn those helmets a hundred years earlier. The cloak he wore had been washed so many times the original vibrant red had faded to a sickly pink, and the leather of his scabbard was worn through at the point. Each member of the welcoming party shared their commander’s failings to a degree. Slumped shoulders weighed down by out-of-date, rust-pitted armour. Lined faces staring out from beneath antique helmets. The hands that held the spears were veined and wrinkled.

‘Your scouts brought word this morning that you were on the way.’ Falco ignored the stare. ‘No soldier is more welcome here than a ranker of the Twentieth. We have prepared ground for your men’s tents in the old horse lines, but we hope that you personally will accept our hospitality and stay as a guest of the town.’

Valerius opened his mouth to refuse, but Julius appeared at his side before he could speak. ‘Centurion Julius Crispinus makes his greetings,’ he rapped out, and there was a respect in his voice that surprised Valerius. It took a lot to win Julius’s respect. ‘How are you, Primus Pilus?’

Falco squinted, focusing on the newcomer’s face. ‘Julius? An officer? No, it cannot be. I knew a Julius once who was only fit for cleaning out the latrines.’ Valerius waited for the eruption that would inevitably follow this insult, but Julius only laughed.

‘And I knew a First File once with shoulders like a bull, not a belly like one.’

With a grin, Falco reached forward to take the centurion’s hand by the wrist and drew him forward into an embrace that was more father and son than a meeting of military equals. ‘By the gods it’s good to see you again, Julius. A centurion, and a proper centurion too.’ He reached out to touch the medals that hung from the younger man’s chest. ‘Where did you win these phalerae?’

Julius mumbled something and blushed like a boy and Valerius decided he’d better rescue his centurion. ‘You will have the opportunity to continue this reunion later,’ he suggested. ‘I’d like to get the cohort settled in and fed. Julius? Find the granary and organize the replenishment of our stores.’

‘Sir!’

‘I can take you. If you’d agree, tribune?’ Falco offered. ‘My men will lead you to the camp ground. No digging for the Twentieth tonight. The defences are prepared and the latrines ready.’

Valerius nodded. ‘In that case we’ll fall them out once they’re fed. They deserve something after a week on the march. Three hours on the town should do it. But make sure everyone knows I want them back by dark or I’ll have the skin off their backs.’ He paused, remembering previous nights. ‘And I want them back alone. Defaulters to stand guard.’

Falco shook his head. ‘No need for guards here. My men will cheerfully do duty for you. In any case, this is Colonia; you won’t find a quieter place in the whole of the province.’

‘That may be, sir,’ Valerius said mildly. ‘But the First is my cohort and no cohort of mine beds down for the night without a guard. Not in Colonia; not if we were in the Forum in Rome.’

Falco acknowledged the censure with a smile. ‘You shame me, tribune. As you can see it is a long time since I served. Ten years ago I hope my reply would have been exactly the same. Come, Julius, we have much to discuss.’

Valerius followed the honour guard through the arch and on to the decumanus maximus, Colonia’s main street. Once they were within the town he glanced at his surroundings. The insulae had walls of white plaster punctured by small, shuttered windows. Many of the ground floors were occupied by shops offering the kinds of goods you would find anywhere in the Empire: fine glassware and jewellery, cloth and linen of every colour and quality, garum, the fish sauce without which no meal was complete, fruits, even figs that he knew must have been imported from far in the east, and of course wine by the amphora, without which any Roman colony would grind to a halt within a day. Competing vendors called out their prices and leatherworkers and potters showed off their wares. Everything spoke of a prosperous, thriving and settled community. His nostrils were assaulted by the sharp stink of a tanning yard and the strong smell of piss told him a dyer was at work nearby. The legate of a legion once ruled here, but now Colonia would be run by an elected town council. A crowd lined the street and children cheered as the men passed and he knew the legionaries would have their chests puffed out and the centurions would be snarling in their ears if they put a foot out of place. A small triumph in its way, but any triumph was to be savoured. Soldiers generally had a wary relationship with the civilian population. Profits could be made, but soldiers meant extra mouths to feed and more taxes, and civilians didn’t like taxes. Colonia was different. This was an army town, with army wives and army children. They knew how to treat a fighting man. Valerius’s soldiers might be weary after days on the road, but he could sense their excitement at the chance to spend time in proximity to civilization.

But was it truly civilization? His eyes strayed again to the buildings around him, and he noted that many were simply reused barrack blocks, subdivided into homes. Even those that had been rebuilt showed signs of having been thrown up in a hurry. He’d thought Colonia a true example of a Roman provincial town, but now he studied it he realized it was a caricature of one. It had none of the comfortable solidity or deep roots that could be found even in Gaul or Espana. The feeling grew as they turned left on to what had been the via principalis, past the Forum and the curia, which was simply part of the original headquarters complex, extended and with an extra storey added. Here the town’s toga-clad elders gathered on the steps, but he kept his eyes to the front and marched the cohort past with only a covert glance. A protocol must be followed. First, he would settle in his men. Then he would wait for their invitation, which would arrive in its own good time.

Falco had been as good as his word. The tent lines were laid out with symmetrical precision and it would be the work of a few minutes to erect them. No ditches to be dug today. And here at least the defensive wall was intact, probably because the area had yet to be earmarked for development. The old soldier was right; they were as secure as they would be in the fortress at Glevum. Still, he thought, there will be a guard tonight and every night. Civilization could make a soldier soft and he would not allow that to happen. They needed to be hard for what awaited them in the spring. He would make sure they were.

Beyond the flat, hardened earth of the camp ground was the beginnings of a semicircular structure which must be the town’s theatre. And beyond that again, something which astonished him.

The Temple of Claudius.

Of course, he had heard tales of its grandeur, but nothing had prepared him for the reality. It was the glory of Britain. Constructed of creamy white marble and glowing like a beacon even in the flat light of an early autumn afternoon, the temple dwarfed everything around it. Wide, fluted columns five or six times the height of a man supported an enormous triangular architrave with a decorative marble frieze showing a bull being led to the sacrifice, and another depicting the Emperor Claudius riding in a chariot. Gold statues of winged Victory rose tall at each corner of the pitched roof. The temple stood in the centre of a walled precinct perhaps a hundred and fifty paces square with the entrance in the middle of the southern wall, which was set back from the line of the main street. Building plots and vegetable gardens dotted the area around the precinct, but the isolation merely served to emphasize the structure’s immense scale. Intrigued, Valerius left his officers to set up the cohort headquarters and walked to the front of the precinct to take a closer look. Here the wall was lower and he was able to see the massive building in its entirety. He had been taught to admire the balanced symmetry and perfection of form of fine architecture, and in the Temple of Divine Claudius he found it manifested in a place he would never have expected.

‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’ He turned to discover a tall, balding figure in a pristine white toga standing behind him. The man studied him complacently. ‘The Emperor sent an architect from Rome to supervise the building and every ounce of marble was carried here from the quarries at Carrara. It is of similar design to the temples at Nemausus and Lugdunum in Gaul, larger than the first, but slightly smaller than the second. Tiberius Petronius Victor, quaestor and adviser to the council,’ he introduced himself.

Valerius smiled to show he was impressed, but something in the man’s voice — a certain unnecessary arrogance — irritated him. Pride was something he understood, but it was as if Petronius wanted him to believe he’d personally laid every stone.

‘Tribune Gaius Valerius Verrens of the Twentieth. I lead a detachment of the First cohort. We will be based here for the winter.’

Petronius smiled in his turn, showing an array of white teeth that were so unnaturally perfect they might have belonged to another, much younger man. ‘I knew of your coming, of course. I myself served with the staff of the Second.’ The words were accompanied by a certain inflexion that made Valerius aware their status among the equestrian classes was approximately equal, but also raised an intriguing question in the younger man’s mind. Normally, a quaestor would serve on the procurator’s staff for two years, but Petronius gave the impression of being a permanent member of the city’s bureaucracy. ‘We have much to do here, as you see. Colonia should be the pride of Rome, yet we have barely started. In the beginning we were encouraged to be ambitious, perhaps overly so. Projects were begun but never properly completed, public buildings commissioned but never built. The veterans,’ his tone made it clear he didn’t care to be included among them, ‘preferred to spend their money and their time on the land. Even then, we might have succeeded, but the temple…’

Naturally, when the Emperor had ordered the construction of the temple which would bear his name, every sestertius, every denarius and every aurius must be dedicated to it. Such funds could be diverted, of course, but there was an unspoken admission that it would take a braver man than Petronius to do it.

‘Yet, as you say, it is wonderful,’ Valerius said politely.

Petronius gave a tight smile. ‘You are invited to join us tomorrow at the eighth hour, in the banqueting hall in the precinct.’ He indicated a doorway in the eastern wall.

Valerius nodded his acceptance. ‘I will be glad to attend.’

‘When will your men be ready to start work? As I said, there is much to do here and the rains will begin soon.’

Valerius realized that Petronius expected his legionaries to carry out construction work in Colonia itself, and he almost laughed. ‘I’m sorry, quaestor,’ he said, allowing his voice to take on an edge of irritation. ‘My men are soldiers, not house-builders. They carry out military projects. We have a warrant to repair the roads and bridges to the north of here.’ With a curt nod and one final look at the temple, he returned to his men.