Rome’s Fallen Eagle

by Robert Fabbri

  Magnus let out a bellow of grief-stricken rage as Ziri sank, his arms trailing above his head as it slipped beneath the surface. His fingers disappeared, leaving only the shaft of the javelin poking out of the water to mark his position in the element so alien to his parched homeland.

  ‘The stupid little brown sod,’ Magnus hissed through gritted teeth as he jumped up onto his horse. ‘I told him to empty the water from his skin but the idiot thought it would bring him bad luck to waste it.’ He kicked his horse up the bank.

  Vespasian followed as the first of the Chatti made it into the river. ‘Now he’s going to be drinking water for eternity just because he wouldn’t throw a few drops away.’

  ‘That’s what I call a fucking irony.’

  Vespasian and Magnus drove their mounts as fast as they would go as they strove to catch the Batavians now a quarter of a mile ahead of them. With the looming, smoke-oozing, fortified hilltop settlement of Mattium blocking their way east and the knowledge that the other half of the Chatti cavalry were in front of them following the river to the north, they were heading in the only viable direction: northeast.

  So close to the Chatti’s major settlement the farmland was well cultivated and they were forced to hurdle low stone walls and hedgerows.

  ‘My horse ain’t going to last much longer,’ Magnus called over to Vespasian as he landed ungracefully after another leap.

  Vespasian did not reply, he knew that his own mount was gradually fading, although not as quickly as some of the Batavians in front of them. In an effort to stay together the column was travelling at the speed of their slowest animal and they were now less than one hundred paces ahead; Vespasian and Magnus were gaining all the time. Glancing behind, Vespasian saw the chasing Chatti starting to swarm through the trees on the north bank, just over a mile away.

  ‘Shit, I don’t like the look of that!’ Magnus exclaimed, pointing up to Mattium.

  The gates had opened and horsemen were making their way along the winding track leading down to the plain.

  Paetus too had obviously seen them because the column veered slightly more to the north; then after a few moments on the new course it changed back to its original direction. Vespasian knew immediately what that meant without having to look: the Chatti who had followed the river had left its course and were heading across country to cut them off. They were surrounded.

  Paetus brought the column to a halt and Vespasian and Magnus finally caught up. ‘We’ve got no choices but to fight or surrender,’ he said to the brothers as they halted next to him.

  ‘Then I’d say that we have no choice,’ Vespasian replied. ‘If we fight we’ll all die. Gisbert offered to escort our men back to the Rhenus if we surrender, at least that way they’ll survive.’

  ‘Batavians do not surrender,’ Ansigar spat, ‘and especially not to Chatti; we would never be able to return home again if we did, such would be the shame.’

  Paetus smiled without mirth. ‘Well, gentlemen, it looks like a bloody death in the middle of Germania Magna for us, however you look at it. I have to say that I’d much rather go down fighting than be executed by some barbarian who calls himself king just because his great-grandfather came down from the hills and chopped everybody else’s head off. Ansigar, form the men up to the north, we’ll try to break through that way.’

  The decurion saluted and rode away growling orders; the turmae started to form line with the Chatti no more than five hundred paces away on three sides.

  ‘I’m sorry, Vespasian,’ Sabinus said with a surprising dose of sincerity in his tone, ‘it was my fault that got you into this.’

  Vespasian smiled at his brother. ‘No, it was Claudius’ freedmen playing politics with each other.’

  ‘Bastards.’

  ‘So it looks like the prophecy made at my birth was false; unless of course it said that I was to die at the age of thirty-one butchered by Germans?’

  ‘What? Oh yes, I see what you mean. No, it didn’t predict that so it was all bollocks; I never believed it anyway, but Mother insisted that that was what the marks on each of the three livers meant.’

  ‘Meant what?’

  Sabinus shrugged, looking around at the three oncoming Chatti units, which had slowed and also formed a line.

  ‘Come on, Sabinus, you might as well tell me now seeing as it was rubbish.’

  Sabinus looked at his brother appraisingly. ‘Very well. Father sacrificed the normal ox, pig and ram at your naming ceremony. When he took out the livers for examination they all had blemishes on. I can remember being very excited about that because I was sure that meant that Mars was not going to accept you; I hated you, you see?’

  ‘Why? What had I done?’

  ‘I’d heard Father promise Mars to nurture you well, to take great care of you, even over me; I was seethingly jealous of you. But the blemishes did not mean that Mars was rejecting you, far from it. Each liver had a different mark, they were all recognisable, uncannily so, but now what seemed like a blatant pictorial message turns out to be no more than—’

  ‘Romans!’

  The brothers looked behind them; the Chatti who had come from Mattium had stopped fifty paces away. One man came forward.

  ‘Shit! That’s the bastard that led us here,’ Vespasian exclaimed, recognising their erstwhile guide instantly. ‘He must have crossed the bridge.’

  He shouted a couple of sentences in German.

  ‘Perhaps this is not the end, brother,’ Sabinus mused. ‘Thank my Lord Mithras I didn’t break my oath.’

  Vespasian looked at Sabinus, enraged, as Ansigar rode over to them and translated. ‘They do not ask for our surrender but they do ask that we come with them to avoid any more bloodshed. We may keep our weapons and our honour. It’s a fair deal.’

  ‘What do they want from us?’ Sabinus asked, ignoring his brother’s frustration.

  ‘Their King wants to talk with the officers; you are invited to the hall of Adgandestrius.’

  The gates of Mattium swung open to reveal a mass of rectangular wooden huts of varying sizes, jumbled together without any thought of civic planning. Constructed with thick poles hammered into the earth, there were no windows in the walls, and the doors were no more than sheets of leather; smoke spiralled out of holes in the centre of each hut’s thatched roof.

  The guide led the column along the main street of compacted earth that twisted and turned as it climbed higher. Narrow alleys ran off into smoky gloom on either side; the tang of wood smoke and reek of human waste filled Vespasian’s nostrils. Women and old men peered curiously from doorways at the strangers as they passed and flaxen-haired children stopped their play and scuttled out of the road, away from the horses’ hooves.

  ‘Uncle Gaius would like it here,’ Vespasian mused, looking at a couple of particularly beautiful, if rather grubby, young boys.

  Sabinus laughed. ‘Perhaps we should see if we can buy a couple to take home for him.’

  ‘We should. He’s always saying that it’s so hard to find fresh ones in the slave markets; he enjoys breaking them in.’

  ‘Well, they don’t come much fresher than these. Sluice off the dirt and they’re ready to be broken into.’

  As the brothers laughed, Vespasian glanced at Magnus who sat glumly in the saddle, clearly still in no mood for jokes.

  Eventually the road opened out into a clear area with a few market stalls around its circumference; on the far side was a large longhouse, at least twenty feet tall with a sloping thatched roof streaked with green moss.

  The guide dismounted and spoke to Ansigar.

  ‘We’re to stay here,’ the decurion translated, ‘where we will be fed. You three are to meet the King in his hall.’

  ‘Do you want to come?’ Vespasian asked Magnus as they slipped from their horses.

  ‘Better not, I might spoil the meeting by exacting some vengeance for Ziri.’

  ‘As you wish.’ Vespasian patted his friend’s shoulder and then, with Sabinus and Paetus, foll
owed the guide into the longhouse.

  Stepping through the entrance, Vespasian’s eyes took a few moments to adjust to the dim light. Four rows of long tables, with tallow candles placed at intervals down them, filled the first half of the hall up to a blazing, circular log fire whose smoke partially obscured the high vaulted ceiling as it struggled to get out through the round hole in its centre. Antlers, boar tusks and horns lined the wall interspersed with shields, swords and other accoutrements of war. Beyond the fire the hall was empty apart from four huge warriors standing at each corner of a dais upon which, on a high-backed chair, sat an old man with a long, grey beard and silver hair tied in a top knot. A band of gold was placed upon his head. ‘I am Adgandestrius, King of the Chatti,’ he said in unaccented Latin. ‘Come forward.’

  The guide led them up the central channel between the tables; their feet crushed the rushes strewn over the floor. Halfway between the fire and the King he stopped and bowed; he was dismissed with the wave of a gnarled hand and went to stand to one side, in front of a red curtain made up of two-foot-square pieces of material stitched together.

  Adgandestrius surveyed the Romans for a few moments before his eyes fell on Vespasian. ‘So, you are the Romans whom Gisbert told me that Galba had sent to kill me?’

  ‘He lied,’ Vespasian replied.

  ‘I know that – now.’ Adgandestrius pointed to the guide. ‘You were lucky you let this young man live otherwise you would now be lying dead on the plain. He realised that Gisbert had lied when you asked what Mattium was; how could you be coming to kill me when you didn’t even know the name of the place where you could find me? We Chatti are honourable men; we speak the truth and despise those who try to deceive us with falsehoods and half-truths. I will not be demanding blood-money from you for the many of my men that you’ve killed because you were defending yourselves against a lie that I am at fault for believing; I will pay the blood-money and I will spare your lives.’

  ‘You are just, Adgandestrius.’

  ‘I am a king; I have to be just, otherwise someone else would take my place. But I grow old and my judgement fails, that is why I believed Gisbert. Although I found it strange that Rome would send men to kill me just because of an insubstantial raid. I once offered Tiberius to poison Arminius for him but he refused, saying that Rome had no need to assassinate its enemies; Rome would deal with them in battle. So why would Rome resort to assassination now? Then I heard the news that you have a new emperor who is a fool and drools and I thought that the fool must have less honour than his predecessors; so I swallowed the lie. But now I want the truth; why are you here?’

  Vespasian knew that to try to deceive Adgandestrius would be dishonourable after the clemency that he had shown them so he opted for honesty. ‘We have come to find the Eagle of the Seventeenth Legion lost at the battle of the Teutoburg Forest.’

  ‘Why now after all these years?’

  Having embarked on the truth he felt that he had no option but to continue and so told the King of Claudius’ freedmen’s plan to secure his Principate.

  ‘Britannia, eh?’ Adgandestrius mused once he had finished. ‘Does Rome never tire of conquests?’ The question was rhetorical; everyone in the hall knew the answer. ‘So why was Gisbert trying to stop you?’

  ‘We’re not sure but we suspect that it’s political.’

  ‘We shall ask him, then.’ The King spoke in German briefly and two of his guards left the hall. They returned moments later with Gisbert; a strong rope wound around his chest bound him. The guards threw him onto the rushes before the dais; Adgandestrius looked down on him in disgust. ‘Liar!’

  Gisbert struggled to his knees and bowed his head. ‘I had no choice; you would not have helped me if I told you the truth.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t have. I know better than to interfere with Rome. Her legions lie just across the Rhenus and I have no wish to provoke them into a full-scale crossing again. Who made you do this? Who is it in Rome that doesn’t want her Eagle found and seeks to make me responsible?’

  Gisbert shook his head. ‘I can’t say.’

  A guard went to slap him but Adgandestrius held up a hand. ‘If you don’t answer, your death will be long and painful and I will not grant the mercy of a sword – you will never reach Walhalla. If you do then you will die swiftly, with a weapon in your hand.’

  Gisbert raised his eyes to the King. ‘I have your word on that?’

  ‘It takes a liar to doubt the word of an honourable man.’

  ‘Very well; it was Claudius’ freedman, Callistus.’

  ‘Why?’ Vespasian asked, pleased to have his theory proven correct.

  ‘He wants to claim the glory of finding the Eagle from the Emperor. You see, he knows where it is and he was afraid that you might beat him to it.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘That I don’t know, but I do know that he has sent men after it. My task was to kill you and Sabinus, which would have been a pleasure because Sabinus took my hand. But you made that difficult by bringing so many men with you; I had only expected a few, thinking that you would try and pass unnoticed. So I tried to frighten your men away by picking off a couple of them at a time until we got closer to here and I could get reinforcements enough to threaten you.’

  ‘But you didn’t bring them over the river? You could have crushed us between the two forces had you done so.’

  ‘I only wanted to kill you two, not the Batavians.’

  ‘You murdered enough of them every night on the way here.’

  ‘Yes, but I always made sure that they had a weapon in their hand and I had no wish to kill more than necessary. You see, the German Imperial Bodyguard is drawn from two of the tribes settled on the west bank of the Rhenus, the Ubii and the Batavii, and I’m Batavian; I try not to kill my own people.’

  Suddenly it all made sense to Vespasian and he made a mental note of the debt that he owed his tribune, Mucianus, for suggesting that he take the Batavian auxiliaries: it had saved his life.

  Adgandestrius stroked his beard in thought. ‘He speaks the truth this time. Is there anything else that you wish to ask him?’

  ‘Just one thing: how did Callistus find out where the Eagle was hidden?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly but it has something to do with ships.’

  ‘Ships?’

  ‘Yes; when he summoned me to give me my orders he said that he’d just got a message from someone up in the north who is in charge of getting ships, what for I don’t know, but he had heard where the Eagle was.’

  Vespasian looked at Sabinus. ‘Callistus said that the general on the northern coast would be addressing the shortage of ships stationed up there for the invasion. He mentioned his name, can you remember it?’

  Sabinus thought for a moment and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry but at the time I had more pressing things on my mind.’

  ‘That’s easy,’ Paetus said, ‘everyone along the Rhenus knows that because he’s been requisitioning ships up and down the river since February: Publius Gabinius.’

  ‘That’s him. Does that name sound familiar, Gisbert?’

  ‘No, Callistus never gave me details.’

  Vespasian inclined his head to Adgandestrius to indicate that he was finished. The King beckoned one of his warriors and spoke in German. The man stepped forward and cut Gisbert’s bonds with a dagger. Gisbert remained kneeling, looking up at his executioner’s face. The warrior drew his sword and handed it to him, hilt first. As Gisbert clasped it with his one remaining hand, the warrior plunged his dagger into the base of his neck and on down into his heart. Blood pulsed from the deep wound as the weapon was withdrawn. Gisbert carried on staring at his executioner, his chest heaving in an effort to breathe, the light in his eyes slowly fading; a moment before they closed a trace of a smile twitched his lips. He fell forward onto the crimson rushes and lay motionless, his hand still gripping the sword.

  The body was hauled away and the King turned his attention back to Vespasian and his compa
nions. ‘I don’t know who has this Eagle, I never did.’ He motioned to the guide standing before the red curtain. The guide pulled it from the middle, it parted and he swung each side open on hinged poles attached to the wall.

  The three Romans sucked in their breath through their teeth as the Capricorn emblem of a legion and five cohort standards topped by a raised hand, palm out, were revealed. The curtains themselves were made of the flags that hung from the crossbar of a century’s standard, each one representing eighty long-dead men.

  ‘Arminius shared out the trophies in secret, drawing lots for them so that there would be no jealousies between the tribes; each King swore never to reveal what he had received to the others. I received the silver Capricorn legion emblem of the Nineteenth and five cohort standards plus all those century flags. As to the rest, only Arminius knew, and he’s dead.’

  ‘But his son is still alive.’

  Adgandestrius frowned. ‘Yes, he is and I suppose it’s possible that he knows. Is that what you planned to do, ask Thumelicus?’

  ‘I thought that if we went to the Teutoburg Forest we could find a way of sending him a message; I have something of his father’s that would interest him.’ Vespasian took Arminius’ knife from his belt and gave it to the King.

  Adgandestrius drew it from its scabbard and examined the blade, looking closely at the runic engraving and then handed it back. ‘Yes, that would be of great interest to him and may be enough to persuade him to meet with you. I know where he is and will send a message to him that you will be at Kalkriese Hill in the Teutoburg Forest at the next full moon in five days’ time. If he so wishes he can meet you there.’ With some difficulty he pulled himself up from his chair and walked over to the standards; he pulled out the Nineteenth’s Capricorn from its holder. ‘I will give you an escort of my men to see you there safely and when you leave here you will go with the Nineteenth’s emblem as my gift.’

  The look of astonishment on the Romans’ faces as he handed the emblem to Sabinus caused the old King to chuckle. ‘You wonder why I help you? It is for the same reason that I will beg Thumelicus to help you; not just for his father’s knife but for a far greater prize: if the fool in Rome gets his Eagle back and also the Nineteenth’s emblem then it will surely secure his position with the army so he can have his invasion and victory in Britannia. However, the legions will be drawn from the garrisons on the Rhenus and Danubius; at least four legions plus their auxiliaries less to face us. The Celtic tribes of Britannia’s loss will be our gain. If Rome goes north to that island then it will not have the power to threaten us again. I’ll help you, as, I pray, will Thumelicus, because in doing so we will guarantee that Germania will remain free, for generations; perhaps even forever.’