Vindolanda

IV

THEY WERE A hunting party, laid on by Cerialis as entertainment for the visiting Crispinus, and even if they were only armed with boar spears, knives and a few swords, the band of twenty-eight riders and a dozen hounds had looked formidable and deterred the raiders.

‘We saw the beacon,’ Cerialis explained, ‘so without hesitation rushed towards the road in case my wife was at risk.’ He had sent a couple of riders to follow the British horsemen, while everyone else waited to see what they should do. Sulpicia Lepidina and her freedwoman, the little dark-haired girl, and a couple of slaves carrying bundles had gone off into the shelter of the wood.

‘I am glad you did, sir,’ Ferox told him. ‘You saved us.’ It was several hours after noon, with a few glimpses of blue between the slow-moving grey clouds.

‘As I said before,’ Cerialis said, patting him on the shoulder, ‘it is I who am grateful to you for saving my most precious possession.’ His smile was ready and full, yet Ferox could not help thinking that the man was acting, playing the part of the honest, brave and honourable man, and very aware of his audience. Still, educated Romans often seemed that way to Ferox, all of them soaked in rhetoric since youth so that they rarely sounded natural. It mattered to them to be seen to act in the way expected of a member of the equestrian order.

Some of that audience was less enthusiastic. Caius Claudius Super was the regionarius based at Luguvallium, the big base on the Western Road, tasked with the superversion of junior men like Ferox. He was from Legio VIIII Hispana, an equestrian directly commissioned into the army, and in Ferox’s opinion had all the intelligence of a cowpat. ‘If we had come any later then you would have been gutted by that big barbarian,’ he said.

Ferox wondered whether the man was disappointed. Most equestrians who served in the army were like Cerialis, starting as prefect in command of an auxiliary infantry cohort and then holding a series of more important posts. Only those without the wealth or influence to follow that career joined as legionary centurions, and they always reminded their fellow officers of their superior social status. Claudius Super was worse than most, even if it was clear his family had barely scraped together the property needed to be registered as equites in the census. He was from Etruria, and openly disdained everyone and everything outside Italy. He did not care for any barbarians, despised the Brittunculi in general and the ‘little Britons’ of the north in particular as undisciplined, unreliable, untrustworthy, lazy and drunken. Ferox knew that Claudius Super considered that he was typical native of Britannia.

‘It was not going well for me,’ Ferox admitted.

‘Indeed.’ Claudius Super sounded like a schoolmaster taking delight in demolishing the arguments of one of his pupils. ‘He looked a tall fellow, if not perhaps as big – or as German – as he seemed to you!’ Ferox had mentioned his suspicion, only to have it dismissed. ‘Damned barbarians, we shall have to go north and teach them a lesson. An iron hand’ – he held his clenched fist in front of him – ‘that is all these brigands understand, if only…’

Sulpicia Lepidina came out of the trees, her golden hair unpinned and hanging down around her shoulders. She wore a man’s tunic, far too large so that it was loose and baggy even though she had gathered it close around her waist with a soldier’s belt fastened as tight as it would go. It was a pale crimson and went down to her shins, so that only a little of the dark breeches she wore underneath were visible. She had on a man’s shoes, the thongs drawn tight to keep them on as well as possible. Behind her came the freedwoman, a heavy woollen cloak pulled tight around her.

Claudius Super bowed, Crispinus smiled and Cerialis inclined his head. Ferox stood and stared. Lepidina was slim and straight, gliding more than walking. She was also beautiful, her fair skin flawless, features delicate, and her large round eyes full of life and wit. She was dressed like a man and still looked like a goddess come to earth. Ferox could not understand why he had not noticed before, wondered how he had ever mistaken her for a slave and inwardly cringed at what he had said and done.

‘My lady, it is good to see you a little restored,’ Cerialis said, ‘but you should take my cloak as it may become cold.’

‘That is kind, my lord, and I thank you.’ Her voice was quite deep for a woman, yet still soft. She gestured to her servant and then called to Vindex. ‘We have prepared a poultice. Bind it tightly to your leg and keep it on for three days. Keep it damp as well.’

Claudius Super looked surprised at this concern, before muttering, ‘So kind,’ and smiling with indulgence as the maid helped the Brigantian tie up his leg. The shoulder wound was not so serious, as most of the force had been absorbed by his mail, but they insisted on dressing it as well.

‘Make sure that you keep it clean and bound up,’ the lady told the scout. ‘No need to coddle it. It will get stiff if you don’t use it at all.’

‘Thank you.’ Vindex smiled, something that always looked more like a leer as he bared his prominent teeth. ‘Your kindness is only matched by your beauty,’ he added in his own language.

No one else had spoken while they waited. Ferox avoided meeting the lady’s cold gaze.

When all was done it was she who took the initiative. ‘I am ready to ride, if we are ready to depart?’

One of the huntsmen brought an unsaddled mare. The lady patted her head, spoke softly to her and then sprang up. ‘It is easier like this,’ Sulpicia Lepidina told them, beckoning to the freedwoman to come up behind her. She needed help, bunching her dress up so that she could sit astride, clasping her mistress as bidden. Two of the slaves were made to dismount and stay with the men in charge of the pack, so that their horses could be given to Vindex and Ferox.

They set out and soon met one of the riders that Cerialis had sent out earlier, who told them that the barbarians had fled and that there were Roman cavalry on the road coming from the east, so not Batavians from Vindolanda.

‘If my lads weren’t there first then I’ll have words to say to the duty decurion,’ Cerialis said cheerfully.

Keeping to the open fields, they climbed by a gentle route and soon encountered a patrol of cavalrymen with green shields and fur on their helmets – Batavians out from Vindolanda. Cerialis welcomed their commander by name, heard his report and then ordered them to fall in as escorts.

‘You may wish to return to Vindolanda, my lady,’ Cerialis said to his wife. ‘I ought to take a look at the place of the ambush, but there is no need for you to see such things.’

‘I was there, my lord. I have already seen much. Thank you for your concern, but it is safer if we stay together.’

‘The barbarians have gone.’

‘And we were assured that there was no great risk on the road,’ the prefect’s wife told him. Ferox wondered at the relationship between them. He guessed that Cerialis was a few years younger than his wife and perhaps that explained his willingness to defer to her. She was right to be cautious. He would expect raiders to flee once soldiers began to chase them, but this band had already done things that surprised him. On the other hand, he hoped that they would stop her from going too close. She may have seen some of the fighting, but that was not the same thing as looking in the cold light at the aftermath of a skirmish. The dead were rarely pretty.

By the time they reached the place they had met with more Batavian troopers, as well as a detachment of forty riders from the ala at Coria. Another party of legionaries with a mule convoy were at the ambush site, clearing up, so that there was little to see save rows of bodies neatly arranged, the dead Batavians covered with blankets.

‘Our poor raedula,’ Cerialis said, shaking his head at the sight of the carriage, one door hanging off and the wood scarred by arrows and from the fall. The legionaries had lifted it upright again. Two of the mules were dead and the other pair taken, but the soldiers unloaded some of their own beasts to provide a new team. Ferox found it odd to hear a grown man using a diminutive. The coach was a bit smaller than a normal four-wheeled raeda, but it was the sort of expression he expected from a woman trying to be charming.

One of the Batavians had escaped after charging the British horsemen. He was cut across the face, his helmet dented and cheek piece broken off, but he had ridden through them, so was able to tell his prefect what had happened. To Ferox’s surprise, the man said that another of the troopers had survived. ‘Longinus was thrown and knocked out cold. His horse rolled on top of him and he’s badly bruised, but nothing seems to be broken, and he should be all right.’

The one-eyed, grey-bearded cavalryman was sitting up, drinking from a wineskin. Half the army was called Longinus, and it made Ferox wonder whether Batavian parents gave their sons military names because so many were destined to serve.

The man reporting to Cerialis seemed very relieved, even though two survivors from twelve was not many. Six of the bodies had been beheaded and another hacked about the head, arms and body so badly that it had not been worth taking a trophy. One of the corpses had its trousers pulled down and a dark patch of dried blood showed where the man had been castrated. Swords, armour, helmets and other weapons had all been taken, but nothing else, which suggested that the attackers had not had much time. A patrol from Coria, with the mule convoy close behind, had arrived less than half an hour after the attack, making the raiders leave in a hurry. They left behind five of their own, including the two Ferox had killed in the gully and another man also with a stallion tattooed on his forehead. Each of the three men’s left hands was marked with a raven, wings folded. Ferox and Vindex exchanged glances, but said nothing. Claudius Super had already scoffed when Ferox suggested that the heavily tattooed leader of the ambush was some sort of priest or druid. According to the senior centurion, Ferox was starting at shadows, just trying to cover up his own failure.

‘If only you had given the alarm earlier, none of this might have happened,’ Claudius Super told Ferox.

‘If my wife had not left later than planned,’ Cerialis cut in, ‘then it would have been a damned sight worse. There is no blame, and much praise for the centurion’s quick thinking and brave actions.’

Claudius Super did not look convinced. Crispinus said nothing and just watched. As the son of a senator, and someone who would within a few years be enrolled in the Senate, he was a far more important man than anyone here and could speak or be silent as he wished. Ferox had the sense that he was watching and thinking. At the moment the centurion was too busy to worry, and too tired to work out where he had encountered the man’s father, for it seemed an unlikely claim for the young man to have invented. Claudius Super was right about one thing – the alarm had been late, and men had died because of that. Women might have died too, or been raped and carried off. The fear about what had so nearly happened gnawed at him.

Ferox blamed himself for not listening to Vindex sooner, but even after that something was wrong. He had sent Victor to the tower, knowing him to be reliable and well mounted. The man should have reached the watchtower and the beacon been lit a good half-hour before the signal had gone up. Something was very wrong – yet another thing to add to the others that he did not understand.

‘Fire and sword!’ Claudius Super shouted the words angrily when someone told him about the castrated cavalryman. ‘That’s all these animals understand and it’s all we should ever give them!’

Ferox let him rant, for he was busy searching for arrows and had only managed to find one, hidden in the grass and broken off six inches from the head. He felt the tip. It was not iron, or even bronze, but bone of some sort, narrow and carefully sharpened. The archers must have picked up the missiles they had used, even the damaged ones, and taken them away to repair. A legionary, seeing him looking, produced a second stump.

‘Thank you.’ This one was iron, similar in shape, so that all the power was behind the narrow pointed head. Ferox had never seen ones like this, and remembered the great force behind them as they had gone past or struck the carriage.

One turma from Coria had already gone north after the raiders. Cerialis decided to take thirty of his men to join the chase, while Crispinus and the rest escorted his wife back to Vindolanda. The prefect took Claudius Super with him, ‘to make use of his experience’, and Ferox doubted that it was concern for their fatigue that prevented either of them from asking or ordering Vindex to go as well. Well, let them chase. He doubted that they would catch anyone and was more concerned to ride to the watchtower and find out what why it had taken them so long to fire the beacon.

They rode west, the sun low in the sky, turning the clouds pink and gold ahead of them. Vindex had kept his hat through all the day and Ferox was glad to have it back and shade his eyes from the dazzling light. A dozen big Batavians went ahead of the carriage, with another twenty bringing up the rear. The lady rode bareback, having given the coach to the two wounded troopers and her maid – the latter briefly reluctant to be confined in the car with two soldiers, however enfeebled by injury. The legionaries had taken the loose door off rather than let it hang, so her mistress had persuaded her that it was safe. Whenever Sulpicia Lepidina passed one of the Batavians he raised hand to forehead and then touched it over his heart. Ferox could see that they were devoted to her, no doubt helped by her kindness to their comrades, especially the one-eyed veteran Longinus.

For a while she rode alongside the carriage, talking to her maid and the injured men. Crispinus kept two lengths behind, still saying nothing to Ferox and Vindex as they followed. After a while the lady laughed, throwing her head back so that her long hair shook. Most of the soldiers grinned even though they had no idea of the source of her mirth. Soon afterwards she wheeled her horse around and came back, acknowledging Crispinus with a nod but passing him. Much to Ferox’s amazement she turned the mare again to fall in alongside him.

‘My lady,’ he said, dipping his head and trying to avoid her gaze. He felt shabby and brutish alongside this golden woman, and deeply uncomfortable as she rode in silence next to him.

‘M-my lady,’ he stammered the words again. ‘I must… That is to say, I wish to apologise for my conduct earlier.’

She laughed, head going back once again and hair glistening red in the light of the setting sun. Ferox looked at her, seeing a face so full of life that it was infectious.

‘Am I to understand that you are apologising for saving my honour or life or both?’ Her teeth were very white, her lips curling back as she chuckled. ‘Is it such a source of regret? I suppose you could always hope that we are attacked again, so that you can stand aside and do nothing.’

Crispinus turned around in the saddle and winked at him.

‘I did not mean—’ Ferox broke off, finding her amusement infectious. ‘You must forgive my clumsiness and the boorish way I treated you earlier on.’

‘Oh, that,’ she said. ‘It was a little unusual, that is true. Not quite what I expect from a respectable army officer. You are respectable, I take it?’

‘Thoroughly.’

‘I thought the appearance must be a disguise.’ She looked him up and down. ‘It is a very good disguise. Do not worry. That is not to give you licence to maul me about or shout orders, but the occasion was unusual and we are both still alive, so it seems to have been justified. It is I who thanks you. If you had not arrived then it would surely have been unpleasant.’

Ferox thought she spoke as if they were discussing some breach of etiquette at a dinner.

‘How do you know such things?’ he asked, encouraged by her friendliness. ‘The way you dealt with your girl’s shoulder, the poultice and everything.’

‘Roman nobles raise their daughters to run a household. That means that we must know about everything if we are not to make a mess of it or be cheated blind by our slaves.’

‘Your husband is most fortunate,’ he said and meant it. There was something overwhelming about this woman.

There was a smile now, but a thin one. An excited squeal came from the coach. ‘I had better see what that silly girl is doing. She has had excitement enough today, trying on some of my jewellery. You would have thought that that and surviving a brutal ambush was enough for one day. Must she really flirt now?’ she said and nudged her mare forward. He watched her go, cloak flung back, sitting as comfortably and naturally as a Numidian. Even in the plain, unflattering clothes, her hair wild and loose, she was beautiful and somehow out of place – not just here in the frontier, but anywhere in this grim, squalid world.

Vindex started to hum a tune that was as old as the hills, sung by Britons and Gauls alike, telling of the first meeting between a great hero and the queenly, magical woman who would become his wife. The names changed from place to place, but some of the lines never altered – ‘I see a sweet country; I’ll rest my weapon there.’

A little later Crispinus eased back and joined the centurion. ‘I understand you will not come with us all the way?’

‘No, my lord, I want to go to the watchtower. I sent one of my men to raise the alarm, but it took far longer than it should.’

The young tribune considered this. ‘Probably nothing, but you may be right to check. When will you leave us?’

‘Another mile.’

‘Will it not be dark by then?’

‘Yes, sir.’ The tribune appeared to be expecting more, so after a moment Ferox went on. ‘I’d prefer to look in daylight, but if something has happened better to know about it as soon as possible. If nothing has happened then it does not matter.’

‘Well, you know best.’ Crispinus grinned, looking boyish in spite of his prematurely grey hair. ‘You don’t know who I am, do you?’

‘A noble officer, from the highest family, and of unimpeachable virtue.’

‘That means you have not got a clue!’ The tribune’s sudden roar of laughter lacked the gentleness of the lady’s. ‘I fear sometimes we forget that the world does not follow the breeding habits of the upper class as avidly as we do. There are no doubt gladiators and actors more famous than half the Senate.

‘Well, my father was Marcus Atilius Serranus, legate of Legio VII Claudia pia fidelis, comes of the late and unlamented Caesar Domitian.’ He watched the centurion. ‘Ah, I see that you do remember. May I add that my uncle is Sextus Julius Frontinus, former legate of Britannia and close advisor to the deified – and much lamented – Nerva and friend of our princeps.’

‘Ah,’ Ferox said in recognition and because he could not think of anything else to say. His grandfather had surrendered to Frontinus, after the legate spent four years waging savage war against the Silures of the south-west. It was the culmination of decades of struggle and ‘We lost, but at least we didn’t make it easy for the bastards’ as the Lord of the Hills used to say. According to the terms of the capitulation, Ferox was one of several boys sent as hostages and to be part of the new order.

‘Titus Flavius Ferox.’ Crispinus stopped after he had said the name. He did not look much like his father, who was a bigger man, dull and unimaginative, although a better commander than many senators put in charge of a legion. Serranus had saved the life of Ferox and his men more than once.

‘Let me see,’ Crispinus continued after a suitably dramatic pause. ‘Ferox, let me remember it all. Yes, the first Silurian made a citizen and commissioned as centurion in Legio V Alaudae,’ he said, pleased to parade his knowledge. ‘Renowned for his courage, picked to command the exploratores scouting for the expedition across the Danube, warned of the danger of ambush in vain, but when the legion was cut to ribbons he managed to lead a force that cut its way out of the disaster under Fuscus, rescued by a certain legate of VII Claudia, decorated for valour, served with distinction against Dacians and Chatti, decorated again – and I may note saved again by the same legate – then promoted into XXI Rapax and sent to the Rhineland, only to get caught up in that nasty business with Saturninus’ plot against Domitian.’ That was an understatement for long weeks of investigations, surrounded by informers and torturers plying their trade, all leading to dozens of suicides and executions. Only a lucky handful escaped with exile and disgrace. Ferox had been told to discover the truth and that was what he had done. It did not make it any easier to live with the consequences. Too many had died, and the only woman he had ever loved had vanished. He still did not know why, or where she had gone, because he had been posted to Britannia and not allowed to look for her.

‘It is quite a career,’ the tribune concluded.

‘I know, I lived it,’ Ferox said.

‘Yes, Father always said that you had no manners. But he also said that you were a remarkably brave man, one of the ablest officers and certainly the most cunning fighter he had ever met. Uncle Frontinus just told him all that summed up the Silures – at least if you added in their cruelty. But one thing stood out all the more to him – and that was your obsession with the truth. Uncle said that was not like any Silurian he had met.’

‘He did not know us well, my lord.’

‘Bugger hammered you even so,’ Vindex said in a low voice, ‘so I reckon he knew something about you.’

Crispinus was amused and did not resent the intrusion. ‘It is quite a record.’

‘As I said, I know.’ Ferox was remembering something else and failing to convince himself that this young aristocrat did not know. He was indebted to Frontinus as patron, but he had sworn an oath to Atilius Serranus, pledging to serve the man and his family and protect them with his life. The man had forced it out of him, as the price for sending men back to save a detachment of Ferox’s exploratores who had been left behind, but that did not matter. An oath was an oath.

‘Your first legion destroyed, its eagle and honour lost, your second disbanded in disgrace and the survivors mostly killed in another disaster.’ Crispinus spoke as if these were minor misfortunes. ‘I’m thinking the Second Augusta were none too pleased when you were posted to them!’

Vindex cackled. The noise was so loud that heads turned, including that of Lepidina, who looked puzzled. Seeing her the Brigantian started humming again, glancing at Ferox all the while.

The tribune must have noticed. ‘She is something truly special, is she not?’ he sighed.

‘Earlier today I mistook her for a slave,’ Ferox confessed. ‘I may have treated her a little roughly.’

Crispinus burst out laughing once again, tears in his eyes, and could say nothing for a long time. Sulpicia Lepidina glared for a moment, a look Ferox remembered well, but then resumed her poise and ignored them.

‘Well,’ Crispinus said once he had mastered himself, ‘there are little slave girls with all the grace of empresses – and aristocratic women who act like slaves or sluts. She is most definitely neither. She is the daughter of a consul, with ten generations of senators for ancestors, and carries herself so that even such a background seems a mean thing compared to her own dignity.’

‘Well, that makes me feel better,’ Ferox said, making the tribune relapse back into uncontrollable laughter.

The sun was setting when Ferox and Vindex peeled away from the road. Sulpicia gave them a smile and nod, Crispinus a hearty wave.

‘Always search for the truth,’ he called after them.

The truth proved to be grim as they rode up to the tower, lit by a red glow from the dying embers of the beacon. Victor stood on the high balcony that went all around the tower just beneath its shingle roof. He had lit torches and placed one at each corner, but kept back in the shadows until he saw them. His horse was tethered to a post inside the circular ditch surrounding the tower. The outpost had no stockade, for it was felt unlikely that anyone would ever attack it.

‘Thank the gods you’re here, centurion!’ he shouted down. They could already guess some of the story from the body lying just a few feet outside the tower’s single door. It took a while for Victor to come down, for he had pulled the ladder up on to the highest floor so that no one could get to him.

Seven men were serving at the tower this week, their names written on the wax tablet hanging from a nail inside the door. There were a couple of legionaries, and five auxiliary infantrymen from three different cohorts. Now there were six corpses and no sign of the last man. By torchlight Ferox examined the scene as Victor told his story. The cavalryman had made good time, but when he reached the tower there was no one on guard, the body outside and the rest on the ground floor. The door had not been forced, and there was little sign of a struggle. There was a lot of blood, long dried but still stinking. Only one of the men was in armour, and someone had grabbed him from behind and slit his throat. Ferox could see the blood on the neckerchief and all down the scales of his cuirass. The rest were half dressed and had been hacked down before they had much chance to fight. Ferox leaned down and saw that two of the men had deep cuts to their arms. Another had his left arm sliced off just below the elbow. He imagined the desperate, terrified men crouching, arms held up for protection as the blades slashed again and again.

From what Victor said they must have been killed early in the day – perhaps at dawn or soon afterwards. Even if he had sent warning as soon as Vindex arrived at Syracuse he could not have saved them.

Victor had done well. The beacon was prepared, but someone had taken the flints and kindling, and shattered the pot of oil kept to light it. A little had survived in one shard, and he had found a tiny piece of old flint among the rubbish piled in the ditch behind the tower. Somehow he had got a fire lit and then set the piled timbers aflame. It had taken most of an hour, but he had done it. Then he had climbed to the top of the tower, pulling up the ladder, and waited through the long day, surrounded by the stench of blood and butchered flesh.

Ferox asked if he wanted to ride straight back to Syracuse, but the man said that he would wait until they left, or would stay if the centurion felt that the tower needed to be manned. In fact Ferox planned to leave soon, just wanting to look one more time. Once he had done that, he helped them drag the corpse from outside back into the lower chamber of the wooden tower.

Ferox had found a lock and used it to fasten the door from the outside. After that they left, riding through the still night to Syracuse. They rode in silence apart from the breathing of the horses and the jingle of harness. Ferox wondered whether he had the energy to write the reports he knew needed to be sent. Most of all he wondered about the names on the duty roster, for one of them was British. The man might be among the corpses, but he might not, and that was worrying. Crispinus had told him to search for the truth. As so often in the past, Ferox feared where it would lead.