The Capricorn Bracelet

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  As he said, we had little chance to speak together after that, and I did not ask him again to let me go with the troops, though some of the other boys, little older than I, were going. I had learned long before, that if my father did not say: ‘Yes’, at the first asking, he would not change because one asked again – or twenty times again!

  So the third morning came, and the four Centuries of the Cohort marched out, my father’s Century leading them; out through what used to be the Praetorian Gate, and away down the road that led to Corstopitum – and Gaul – and Rome. I heard the trumpets sounding back on the wind, and a child cried somewhere in the watching crowd, and a dog barked, in the sudden emptiness that they left behind.

  It had been a dry spring, and the dust of the roadway rose in a cloud behind their marching feet, and they were lost in it.

  Life went on! A couple of Centuries of Scythian Archers were moved into Onnum from Borcovicus to fill the gap a little. All along the Wall that was happening, as the remaining garrisons were spread more evenly. And I and the other boys on the edge of manhood began to take our places with the troops at weapon practice, as well as tending our fathers’ field plots. And every morning we thought: ‘Perhaps there will be news today.’ And every night we went to sleep thinking: ‘Like enough, there will be news tomorrow.’

  And so spring and summer went by.

  The first news reached us with the autumn gales, and went roaring from fort to fort along the Wall like a great triumphant gale itself.

  ‘Victory! It’s Victory!’ everyone was telling everyone else. ‘Gratian’s down and dead! Maximus has dealt with the Emperor Pup! He’s got all Gaul in his knapsack, and now for Rome!’

  But old Paulus said, ‘Aye, and now for the Emperor Theodosius!’ and there was no triumph in his tone.

  Two and a half years after my father went away, the second news reached us. And that was news of a battle, too. A great battle between Maximus and Theodosius; and Maximus defeated and executed, and many of his officers with him; and the rest of his army slain or captive or scattered in flight.

  We had been afraid of that news for a long time; but when it came, it was too big and terrible for us to find room in our hearts for it all at once. At first I would not believe that my father was dead, and neither would my mother. At least, I think we knew in our inmost places, but we would not admit it to each other, or to ourselves. I think there were many like us, in those first days after the word came.

  ‘We must wait,’ my mother said. ‘He may have escaped. He may be on his way home even now. We will not grieve yet – not just yet.’

  That was on the edge of winter. An evil winter, spent in waiting for more news that did not come; in waiting for attacks upon the Wall that did not come either. We heard of fighting on the Saxon shore; but, save for a few brushes with raiding Scots at the western end, the Wall was left to itself. It seemed that we had been forgotten, by friends and enemies alike.

  ‘Now that the danger threatens as sharply from the South as from the North, I am thinking that the Wall has served its day,’ Paulus said. ‘Oh, it will last my time – I am old. Old and tired; and I too have served my day. But soon, I think that the Eagles will fly south, and all this will be forsaken, except by its dead.’

  And then, at winter’s end, it seemed that we were remembered again. And the Emperor Theodosius sent officers to see what should be done about the old defences that had lost their use.

  They lodged a night at Onnum. And that evening a man came to the door of our quarters and beckoned me outside. I recognized him – for I had seen them ride in – as the Centurion of the Officers’ Escort.

  ‘You are Lucianus, son of Centurion Lucius Calpurnius?’ he said, when I joined him in the tumbledown colonnade.

  ‘I am,’ I said, ‘if that’s anything to you.’ I was on my guard.

  He held out something that glinted faintly in the light from the open doorway. ‘I have this for you. It seemed best, maybe, not to give it to you in front of your mother.’

  I took the thing from him. The feel of it was so familiar in my hand that, for the moment, it seemed as though it must bring my father with it, they were so closely part of each other. ‘Our bracelet! Our silver Capricorn! My father gave you this?’

  He nodded: ‘He asked me, if ever I could do so, to find means to get it to you. As things have turned out, it has been easy enough.’

  I stood turning the bracelet over and over in my hands, trying to straighten out something that was snarled and tangled in my mind – or in my heart. ‘You and my father – you were friends?’

  He said in a quiet, carefully levelled voice: ‘In our young days we served together under Maximus against the Picts. Last autumn I commanded his guard on the night before his execution.’

  I said, just as carefully, ‘My father was – executed?’

  ‘With others of Maximus’ officers. It was cleanly done; honourably, with a sword. The same death as Maximus died; a better one than he meted out to Gratian.’

  I was still turning and turning the bracelet. The feel of it seemed to help. ‘It – seems my father died in good company,’ I said at last.

  ‘In the very best.’

  ‘Was there any message with the bracelet?’

  ‘No. He just asked me to give it to you,’ the man said, and added, very kindly, ‘I think the bracelet is the message.’

  I said, ‘I – I am sorry that I cannot ask you into the house.’

  ‘I am sorry, too,’ he said. ‘I would have liked to come to know Lucius’ son. But you cannot ask me into the house.’

  So he turned away. I waited a little, outside in the dark; then I went in, and showed the bracelet to my mother. And we both knew that it was time to stop pretending.

  We sat very late over the fire that night, my mother staring into the flames, and the red hollows under the flames, while I polished and re-polished the old Capricorn bracelet, and the small sister slept in the corner. My mother had not taken her into the inner room as usual. I think it was in her heart to keep us all together. I heard the trumpet sounding for the third watch of the night: the longest and the darkest watch, when people die or are born. The sound roused my mother, and she sat up and looked about her, like someone rousing from sleep, but she had not been asleep.

  ‘There is nothing to keep us here any more,’ she said.

  I shook my head. ‘Nothing. We will start tomorrow for Traprain Law.’

  ‘Traprain Law?’ She sounded as though she had never heard the name before that moment.

  ‘Father said that if he did not come back, we were to go to his kinsfolk at Traprain Law.’

  She sat and looked at me, unmoving and unspeaking, so long that I wondered if she did not understand. But she was perfectly calm, though dried out with grief, like the dried papery husk of a flower that has finished blooming and shaken out its goodness on the wind. ‘Not Traprain Law,’ she said at last, with a great pride that I had never seen in her before. ‘I am not of the Votadini. I will not go among strangers, to be taken in out of pity and befriended for my dead man’s sake. I am a chief’s daughter. I will go back where I have the right to go – to my own people – to my father’s hall.’

  It seemed to me that my father would not mind. So next morning we made two bundles of the things that would come in useful: an old worn cloak of my father’s amongst them. And my mother took one, and I took the other and the small sister on my shoulder, and we set out north-westward for the hunting runs of the Dumnoni.

  If my father had been killed in battle, I might have gone back when I had made sure that all was well with my mother and the small-one. There was still an army, though they had taken the garrisons from the Wall. But as it was – the time went by and the time went by; and then I married with a girl of the Tribe. And the Tribe has had need of all its fighting men, with every west wind bringing the Scots raiders, in these past years.

  Soon, my sons or my sons’ sons will forget that we were ever anything but tribesme
n of the Dumnoni. . . . No, not quite; the Capricorn bracelet will see to that, the old battered Legionary bracelet that is our link with Rome. . . .

  A few autumns ago, I went down as far as the Wall, on the hunting trail. There’s good hunting that way – the wolves lair-up in the forsaken forts. No men, now, just the wolves. I haven’t been back again.

  Background For These Stories

  AD 43 The Emperor Claudius successfully invaded Britain, and then returned to Rome to take his Triumph. The troops he left behind him to complete the conquest and become an Army of Occupation were divided into three forces, and pushed on from the south-east to make their headquarters at last in three great Legionary Stations, at Caerleon-upon-Usk (Isca Silurum), Chester (Deva) and Lincoln (Lindum). The Ninth Legion, which was stationed at Lincoln, later pushed on north again to York (Eburacum). But that was only the first stage; and in

  AD 61 Suetonius Paulinus, the Governor General, took a large force into North Wales to deal with troubles among the tribes there. He was in Anglesey, campaigning against the Druids, who were the heart and core of the ‘Resistance Movement’ when Queen Boudicca of the Iceni started her uprising in the East of Britain.

  AD 80–85 Gnaeus Julius Agricola fought his great Northern Campaigns, setting up legionary stations at Corbridge (Corstopitum) and Newstead (Trimontium) and then a line of forts across the Narrows from the Clyde to the Forth, and other isolated forts at the mouths of the Highland Glens. In the sixth summer he gained a crushing victory over the Northern tribes at Mons Graupius, somewhere north of where Perth stands now. But soon after, with his work still half finished, he was recalled to Rome.

  AD 100–117 The Emperor Trajan fought his Dacian Campaigns. These were brilliant and successful, but desperately costly in men; and the occupying forces of the Empire were reduced to a dangerously low level to provide more. His second war in the Near East was a disaster, and news of his death was the signal for a rising among the North British tribes, in which the Ninth Legion was wiped out.

  AD 117 The Emperor Hadrian came to Britain with the Sixth Legion to replace the Ninth, and determined on the. building of a great frontier defence across North Britain. This was probably begun in AD 23

  AD 122 and finished about five years later.

  AD 142 Lollius Urbicus built the Antonine Wall, largely on the line of Agricola’s old Clyde-Forth string of forts. He also rebuilt the big Outpost Stations such as Newstead, and turned the country between the Walls – roughly speaking, Lowland Scotland – into a sort of buffer territory to take the main shock of troubles in the North from Hadrian’s Wall.

  AD 155 The Northern tribes again revolted, the whole North dissolved in chaos, and by

  AD 162 the Antonine Wall was lost, Newstead and the rest of the outpost forts destroyed. A temporary Roman victory followed, and again the forts were restored, but in

  AD184 there was a still more violent revolt, and despite another Roman victory, there was never again a full-scale Roman military occupation north of Hadrian’s Wall. Instead, a new kind of government began; and the Lowlands became a kind of Protectorate. Tribal boundaries were formally defined, and the amount of tribute to be paid in cattle, grain and young men for the Army all agreed; tribal gatherings for trade and other purposes were limited to fixed times and places under Roman supervision

  AD 196 Clodius Albinus, Governor of Britain, took most of the British-based troops to the Continent in an attempt to wrest the Imperial Throne from Septimus Severus. On his defeat at Lyons, the Northern tribes revolted yet again, the Wall went up in flames and devastation spread as far south as York. Severus sent reinforcements under a new Governor, Varus Lupus, who dealt with the uprising and divided the country into two provinces, Upper and Lower Britain.

  Gradually, friendship of a kind returned between Rome and the tribes, and instead of the old forced levy of young men for the Army, there began to be free local recruiting for the Auxiliaries.

  AD 209 But the North could not be counted as secure, until the Highland tribes from beyond the old Northern Wall, the Picts, the Caledonii had been taught a lesson they would not forget. The Emperor Severus himself led two punitive expeditions against them, but on

  AD 211 the eve of the third, he died at York. His half-mad son, Caracalla, who took over from him, did not push the third campaign through. So the Highland tribes were saved, but nevertheless, they had learned their lesson, and the Lowlands had nearly a hundred years of comparative peace. Again the old outpost forts were rebuilt, and now some of them began to serve as bases for long-range scouts, who patrolled well north of the Tweed and probably as far north as the Tay. Friendly relations between Rome and the Lowland tribes continued, probably because of the growing menace of the Scots from Ireland, the Caledonii, when they began to forget their lesson, and the distant tidings of Saxon raiders in the South.

  AD 284 Diocletian became Emperor, and, while himself keeping the supreme command, divided the rule of the Empire into four, and took a fellow Emperor and two ‘Lieutenants’ who bore the title of Caesar. In

  AD 313 he died, and after ten years’ Civil War, Constantine the Great became Emperor.

  AD 334 Constantine proclaimed Christianity the official religion of the Roman State, and at the same time divided the Empire into East and West by making a new capital at Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople.

  AD 337 Constantine died, and for the next five years the rival Caesars struggled for power, while the frontiers of the Empire began to crumble.

  AD 342 There was another crisis of some sort in Britain, of which no one quite knows the details, and as usual the forts were destroyed. Constans, the Emperor of the moment, came and restored the situation; and also saw to the building of Anderida (Pevensey in Sussex), the last of the long chain of Saxon shore forts to be built, in an attempt to hold off the sea raiders.

  AD 364 Two Emperors later, Valens was appointed to rule the West by Valentinian, Emperor of the East, and for a time managed to hold off the barbarians who were attacking his half of the Empire on all sides.

  AD 368 Meanwhile, Scots, Caledonii, Jutes and Saxons were breaking in on Britain from every quarter. The Roman General in the North was ambushed and killed at the same time as the Count of the Saxon Shore was defeated by sea raiders. Valentinian, who happened to be in France, quickly sent his best general, Theodosius, with reinforcements, to save the situation, and in the fighting which followed, ‘The Pict War’.

  AD 369 Theodosius cleared the coasts and rounded up the Saxon warbands that were terrorizing the countryside, then turned upon the Pictish invaders who had come swarming over the Wall to carry their own kind of fire and sword almost the length of the land, and dealt with them very thoroughly. And finally, with what he could scrape together from the remains of the British Fleet, he drove the Scots back to their own shores. Then he returned to the Continent, where a few years later he was disgraced and executed.

  AD 383 Magnus Maximus, a Spanish General who had served under Theodosius in the Pict War, and held high command in Britain, was proclaimed Emperor by his troops. He crossed to France, taking some of the Legions and a large force of Auxiliaries with him, and defeated Gratian, the Emperor of the West, who was soon afterwards murdered at Lyons.

  After the events described in the last story:

  AD 388 Maximus himself was defeated and executed by another Emperor, Theodosius, son to his old commander of the Pict Wars. In spite of old accounts of a final great attack, it seems likely that the Wall, which no longer served much purpose now that attacks were as likely to come from the South as from the North, was simply abandoned at this time. The Imperial Frontiers were crumbling everywhere.

  AD 410 The Goths sacked Rome itself, and this is generally taken as being the year in which the last Roman troops were withdrawn from Britain altogether.

  But nobody is quite sure about that any more. In fact the more the experts find out about the last years of Roman Britain, the less they can be sure of anything. For the beginning of
Rome-in-Britain is clear-cut and simple, but the end is chaos.

  Author’s Note

  The stories in this book began as scripts about Roman Scotland, which I wrote for Radio Scotland to produce as part of a series called ‘Stories from Scottish History’. I loved writing them, but I got very cramped and frustrated by all the things I wanted to put in but had to leave out because there wasn’t room for them in a twenty-minute script. So I decided, when the B.B.C. had finished with them, to write them again, as a book, in which I could have all the space I wanted for what I had to leave out before.

  You will not find much about battles or bigscale historical events in The Capricorn Bracelet – something, but not much, because it is not meant to be that kind of book (and you can read about the battles and big-scale historical events elsewhere, anyway). It is just a collection of stories about people and changing ways of life over three hundred years or so, seen for the most part through the eyes of six members of a soldier family serving on or north of Hadrian’s Wall. But for those of you who want to put the stories in their historical setting, and see exactly where they fit, and what happened between them, I have put an historical outline at the end of each chapter.

  All the forts and towns mentioned in the book are real, but in a few cases, their Roman names are lost, and in those cases I have used the modern ones which replaced them. You may think it would be more consistent to use the modern names all through; but none exist for some of the forts and stations which are today a few grey stones half lost in cotton-grass and heather . . .

  Placenames

  AQUAE SULIS Bath

  CAMULODUNUM Colchester

  CILURNUM

  CORSTOPITUM Corbridge

  CREDIGONE

  EBURACUM York

  ISCA SILURUM Caerleon-upon-Usk

  LONDINIUM London

  LUGUVALLIUM Carlisle