Conscience of the King

by Alfred Duggan

  In the morning we sent forward an intelligent scout to examine the town; he came back to say that no one had replied to his shouted challenge, though the gate was blocked by a barricade. We found a way in where a stream had undermined a portion of the wall; then Constans put a sentry in the top of a tree, and told us we could scatter to rummage in the houses. No matter how often a town has been sacked, you will usually find something useful lying about.

  What made Calleva such a queer place to wander in was that it had been abandoned while it was still a going concern. The streets were overgrown, and most of the roof-beams had been stolen by people who were too lazy to cut timber even in that thick Forest, but many house-walls were intact. In sheltered corners you could trace frescoes on the plaster, and mosaic floors glimmered through a layer of mud. For the first time I could visualize what Britain must have looked like a hundred years ago, when the Emperors still ruled undisturbed in Augusta Treverorum. Some of the frescoes were very curious indeed, and so lifelike that they had probably been made by wizards; at least Conan thought so, and would not let me look at them for long, in case they cast a spell over me. Nowadays we don’t like our designs to be too lifelike; no one can work a charm into a pretty pattern that means nothing.

  Before the citizens finally despaired and emigrated to the west, they must have called on every Power for assistance; the church was in ruins, but we found a large pillared building still carrying its stone roof, and in it a statue of Mars, upright behind an altar. The Saxons love to desecrate churches, but they had evidently taken this figure for their war-god Seaxneat, and had left his temple unharmed. Constans thought that as Christian warriors we ought to overturn it, but our peasants would have liked to make an offering, just in case; so we compromised by doing nothing at all, and left him brooding over his deserted city.

  As a matter of fact, it was not quite deserted; one of our men caught an old woman who was too weak with hunger to run away, and Constans ordered that she should not be harmed. When she found that she was safe, and that we didn’t even want her cloak, she bubbled over with gratitude, and told us the recent history of the place. She had been born a colona near by, but had moved into a good town house when the citizens went away; she had lived there ever since, with occasional excursions to the Forest when raiders were about. She said that robbers, both Roman and Saxon, often settled inside the walls, which seemed such a perfect base; but they soon found the neighbourhood too poverty-stricken to support them, and moved to better hunting-grounds. She told us we were unlikely to meet anyone in the Forest, if we stuck to the main road to Corinium, although she knew nothing of the open country to the northwest. Constans gave her a piece of salt beef, and we left her building a fire on her marble floor to roast the unexpected feast. She was a living warning of what happens to peasants who try to live without the protection of trained and well-paid soldiers, as the comitatus took pains to point out.

  We had picked up very little of value in the town, apart from a few bronze building-clamps prised out of the walls, but I think the experience had given us a new determination. If someone didn’t do something soon about the Saxons, Anderida would share the fate of Calleva, even though her inhabitants had shown greater stubbornness. We rather hoped to meet a party of barbarians, so long as it was small and badly armed.

  We had not gone a mile from the town when we crossed a little stream, and saw that it flowed northeast; I had never in my life seen a stream that flowed in any direction except the south, and I was thrilled to realize how far we had travelled. All that day we marched to the northwest, and in the evening we camped by the roadside and lit fires, as an earnest of our new resolve not to give way to the Saxons.

  Next morning we came into open and well-tilled country. The peasants did not hide, for they were used to seeing Roman troops. When we halted for our midday meal a number of them came out of the nearest village bringing jugs of beer and great round cheeses; their spokesman, who wore a cloak draped toga-wise over his leather breeches, told us that we were now in the territory of Corinium, and he had orders to supply food to the Count’s foederati. The men were delighted; it was quite a new experience for them to find villagers giving food willingly, without a foraging expedition waving drawn swords; but Constans grumbled that we were free allies, not foederati bound to follow the Count of the Britains.

  If the countryside was a revelation of what Britain could be like under a strong government, the City of Corinium quite took my breath away. It was a good deal decayed, of course, for there is really no function for a city when traders dare not go fifty miles from their workshops to sell their goods; but the walls were not only undamaged, but newly repaired with well-squared freestone, and only one of the three gates had been blocked up. Since they had never been burnt the houses had kept their red-tiled roofs, and this gave the city a very strange appearance to our eyes, accustomed to the untidy bundles of thatch in Anderida. The streets themselves were not in very good shape; a few fallen columns had been left lying about, half-buried in the clay and gravel with which the stone pavement had been repaired; but the market-place was full of well-dressed citizens, and in the shops traders were selling for silver money a surprising assortment of well-made goods. We stopped to sell the bronze we had pulled out of the walls of Calleva, and though there was no time to haggle we received a parcel of minute silver coins in exchange. The smith just scooped them out of a drawer and put them in a little linen bag, without worrying whether they all contained the same amount of alloy; evidently a man could trust this coinage, tiny though the individual pieces were. So this was what a city looked like, when it was well governed and secure.

  The next day we marched into the camp of Count Ambrosius, on the bare hills above the source of the Thames. As soon we had chosen our camping-ground Constans took me with him to call on this mysterious general, who had appointed himself Count – and made others recognize him. I was very glad that Constans took me along; it showed that my good behaviour had produced its intended effect, and that he now regarded me as his second-in-command. Conan was left behind, and I began to feel myself free.

  I had expected to find the Count a mighty warrior, seven-foot tall and covered with hair, the type of man to win obedience from the fighting Kings of Britain; and I got a surprise when the guard led us into his tent. I saw a wiry little man sitting behind a table, leaning forward on a folding stool ornamented with ivory, and dressed just like the pictures of the Emperors on the old coins; he wore a bronze breastplate, the front all in one piece and decorated with images of the gods, and a long red cloak hung over his shoulders; his arms were bare, except for bronze wrist-guards, and so was his head, though a handsome bronze helmet with a horse-hair crest stood on the table beside a short Roman sword; on his legs were greaves and ankle-boots below bare thighs. If he dressed like this on a cold hill-side in April, I reflected, it could only be for effect; I determined not to be impressed.

  He was beardless, except for a grey stubble, and the hair on his head was also short and grey; his face was deeply lined, and from under thin eyebrows large brown eyes looked out sadly; his fingers were long and well-kept, as though he had not handled his sword as often as his pen. He looked like a wise old steward dressed up as a statue of Mars.

  He did not rise as we entered, which made Constans speak very loud and haughtily. He listened to the formal account of who we were, where we came from, and what force we brought; then he squared his shoulders, wrinkled his brows, and looked my brother full in the face.

  ‘Eleutherus should have sent his whole army,’ he said in a stern, rasping voice. ‘But I suppose your little comitatus is better than nothing. Now, young sir, fifty men are too few to form an independent command, but as you are all well-armed I shall put you in a good numerus, and you can be a captain; your young brother must serve in the ranks, for such a small force does not need two officers. Of course you don’t know any drill as yet, but you will pick it up quickly if you train hard, and that’s just what you shall d
o. Go now and report to the Tribune Aurelian, then see that your men are comfortably encamped. Lights-out is an hour after sunset, and they must make no noise from then until the trumpet blows at dawn. You will draw bread and beer from the central store, but there must be no waste, and any extras you must pay for yourselves. That is all. No, come back. It is the custom in this army to salute before you leave my tent.’

  We were both glad to get outside, for the Count could be very frightening. It was, however, a manner that he put on and took off like a cloak, and he really preferred to be friendly with his subordinates, once he had got them into the right frame of mind. Constans went off to see his superior officer, who was the nephew of Count Ambrosius, and I returned to the comrades, to tell them that we were in a Roman army now, and that life promised to be dull and strenuous. Nobody liked the prospect.

  The actual training was not as bad as we had feared; we were pushed into a line, three ranks deep, along with a lot of other well-armed soldiers, and practised for hours advancing and retiring together at the word of command. It was hard on the legs, but restful to the brain. Yet Constans and the other officers found it very exhausting, for they had to learn their drill and teach it to us at the same time, and the Count was always riding up on his big black war-horse to criticize them. Our numerus was made up, apart from ourselves, entirely from the very large comitatus of the King of Dumnonia, so all the men in the ranks were socially my equals and pleasant people to be with, though I could hardly understand their speech; but some of the other first-line formations contained shepherds and foresters, for west of the Sabrina every man is a warrior, and they have no servile coloni. That explains the great size of the army, which was larger than I had supposed all the Kings of Britain could put into the field. Besides the Count’s own followers we had the whole levy of Dumnonia and Venedotia, the eighteen grandsons of Cunedda each with his comitatus, and a sprinkling of the Irishmen they had conquered. There was also a small band of Saxons from the upper Thames, settlers who lived among the peasants by leave of the Count, and defended his borders from their cousins. These last no one attempted to drill; they were surly brutes, who would soon have murdered any officer who tried to push them into line.

  But it was these savages who gave me my chance to get out of the ruck. I was not enjoying my service in the ranks; it seemed all wrong that Constans could sit up drinking all night, and have a servant to wait on him, while I, his brother, had to polish my own arms, and go to bed when the trumpet sounded. One day, about a fortnight after we had arrived, I was standing idly on the parade-ground. A young officer had just tried to march his men in column slap through our line, and we were fallen out until the confusion was righted. A hundred yards away some Saxons were throwing spears at a mark, and the Count, cantering up with his eyes on the mess we were in, nearly rode over one of them. The man jumped round angrily, drew his scramaseax, and trotted after the horse. I saw what was happening and shouted to him not to be a fool, for the general had never meant to insult so noble a warrior; these Saxons are absurdly sensitive about their prestige, and the only way to deal with them is to apologize quickly when they take offence. The man calmed down when he saw that he had attracted sufficient attention to his wounded honour, and put up his sword; but Count Ambrosius had seen what was going on, and he beckoned me to him.

  ‘Well, young man,’ he said kindly, ‘you seem to speak very fluent German for a Roman soldier. I won’t ask you where you learned it, in case the answer shocks my grey hairs, but your talent is wasted in the ranks. I want to split up that band of Saxons, for they may change sides if they act in one body. Can you look after ten of them if I make you a decurion? I see you carry Saxon arms yourself, and that makes it easier.’

  I explained that I was of German descent and was brought up by a Saxon nurse, though I was also a true Roman. I was dismissed from my numerus, and as soon as I had taken my barbarians aside I proceeded to get on good terms with them. I said that we would take mutual oaths, and they would be my comitatus, so that they need feel no indignity in obeying my orders; I admitted that they were probably more experienced warriors than I was, but reminded them that it was the Count himself who had put me in command, and promised always to respect their honour; they were very easily flattered, and swore to live and die with me.

  Now I was much better off. As I could not possibly live with my men, whose manners were frankly disgusting, I had to be treated as an officer in spite of the small size of my command. The only things that Saxons ever keep clean are their swords, so I persuaded one of them to look after my arms, and as we did not attempt any drill I was free to wander about the camp.

  That camp was a curious place. There was all the dull housekeeping work to be done that is necessary when a lot of men are living together, but apart from that we all seemed to be acting parts in a play; everyone was seriously pretending to be a Roman of a hundred years ago, and the Count dealt sternly with anyone who forgot his part. The commands had to be given in Latin, and they made a tremendous business of posting sentries every night, and saluting the standards, in the morning. Men who came drunk on parade, or kicked up a row when they should be sleeping, were flogged, and one who punched his officer on the nose was publicly hanged. Everyone drilled all day long, and Count Ambrosius lectured the officers on tactics in the evening.

  He was a man of remarkable force of personality. There was no real reason why we should obey him, but we did; and I confess I jumped to it just as smartly as the rest. After a month we began to believe that we were the invincible troops of Constantine or Theodosius, and that it would be an easy task to drive the barbarians out of Britain. The Tribunes could even move the whole army together, without different detachments getting in one another’s way. It had been a great strain, and sometimes I wanted to burst out laughing, but by the end of June we were ready for battle, and no one had defied Ambrosius.

  On July 1st we left camp and marched eastwards, keeping to the bare hills that enclose the Thames valley on the north; no army could march through the tangled woods and swamps of the valley itself. Though we had been gathering for more than two months the Saxons had no force in the field to meet us. They are an independent lot of savages, and they would not give up their pleasant life of plundering in small gangs because of a rumoured danger. Consequently we were able to march eastward without a serious battle, and we caught and killed several small parties of the enemy. Our scouts swept the country far to the north, but my own little command was kept on the southern flank, squirming through the dense woodland of the river-bank. Saxons are good at getting through forest, and my men were not afraid of tree-devils, as civilized Romans would have been. I had to send my horse back to Constans, for no horseman could have followed where those Saxons went, and though I was young and fit I found it hard work to keep up with them. Luckily my equipment was as sensible as theirs; without a cuirass I could bend down easily to get under a branch, and the little round shield, slung low on the back, did not catch in the twigs as a square Roman one would have done. There was nothing much worth stealing in the almost uninhabited valley, but the plunderers made it their base for raids to the north, so we had to move carefully, expecting to meet them at any moment.

  Count Ambrosius was sensible of the danger that my men might decide to go over to the raiders if they were left on their own; I had instructions to send for reinforcements as soon as I bumped into anyone, but sometimes things happened too quickly, and we had to fight by ourselves. I was pleased to see that my men followed me willingly, and fought bravely against their cousins, though I had to risk my life more than was prudent. For a man of my station in life to be killed in battle is a natural death, but it seems to me an admission of incompetence, and I have always tried to avoid it in any way consistent with my prestige. Unfortunately, it is no good standing still and ordering Saxons to charge; they expect their commander to lead the way.

  The secret of the Saxon method of fighting is to go into your man very hard, not bothering about hi
s head and shoulders, which any cripple can guard, but stabbing him low in the belly with an upward thrust. I had been well practised in this by my grandfather, but the first time we cornered six raiders with their backs to a swamp I wondered how it would work out in reality. I ran up to the biggest of them with my shield held low, and when he levelled his spear at my head (he was too poor to carry a sword, like many of these wretched foragers) I did not raise my guard. As I had expected, his first thrust was only a feint, and as I jumped forward he stabbed at my bowels; but my shield was there, waiting for his spearpoint, and next moment I had my scramaseax in his throat. It is a nearly infallible way of dealing with Saxons, although it needs a steady nerve.

  These particular robbers must have been amateurs at their job, perhaps newly landed from Germany, for they had nothing on them worth taking; but there was always a chance of meeting a chief laden with gold, and we continued our scouting zealously. I knew my men would follow where I led, so long as the enemy was weaker; and I had no intention of leading them against odds.

  By the middle of August we had marched without a battle to the neighbourhood of Londinium (our general caused some confusion by referring to it in orders as Augusta, the old official name which nobody now uses). We stayed there for a week, as a challenge to the barbarians; but no one came out to fight us. I could see the walls of the city in the valley below, and they looked to me undamaged. But the position is too near the permanent Saxon settlements in Kent, and the Count could not persuade any craftsmen or traders of Corinium to come and live there. It requires too big a garrison to be held merely as an outpost, and in the end we had to leave it desolate. My brother went inside to have a look, and found no one but a handful of squatters, who fished in the river and stole pigs for a living; all the houses were in ruins, and their metal clamps had been removed already. But I was busy scouting, so I did not see even the wreckage of what was once the mightiest city in Britain.