Rome’s Fallen Eagle

by Robert Fabbri

  As the cavalry rallied behind him, Vespasian surveyed the scene from the hilltop. To the north the bulk of the defeated army streamed towards the Tamesis, glittering in the warm sun just ten miles away. They were pursued, in good order, by the Batavian infantry and the II Augusta’s auxiliaries, picking off the rearmost but making no attempt to make contact with the main body as they drove them north. The rest of the Britons were heading west; a few chariots could be seen at their head a couple of miles distant and the lucky stragglers, who had narrowly escaped the cavalry spathae, were no more than two hundred paces away.

  ‘The sight of an enemy running always warms the heart, eh, legate?’ Plautius observed, pulling his horse up next to Vespasian. ‘A decent day’s work; we must have killed nearly forty thousand of the buggers. It’s ironic that after such a victory I have to write to the Emperor requesting his help.’

  ‘You’ve left him a few to deal with.’

  ‘Yes, a few too many for my liking; there must be twenty thousand heading west and another forty thousand making for the river.’

  ‘Why don’t you try and finish it, general?’

  ‘Because I don’t have enough fucking cavalry. They’re not stupid enough to turn and face legions again, but if I had fifteen thousand cavalry I wouldn’t need them to turn, I could just mop them up. But never wish for what you don’t have, it takes your mind away from using what you do have to full effect. I’ve sent orders to the auxiliaries to let the river and the fleet’s catapults do the rest of the day’s killing and I’m sure that they’ll be happy to leave it that way; the Ninth will follow the others west and take the Tamesis crossing point. And then Caratacus and Togodumnus will have to decide what to do.’

  ‘Togodumnus is dead, sir, I saw him die.’

  ‘Really? Who killed him?’

  ‘My horse.’

  Plautius looked at the beast beneath Vespasian with an appreciative eye. ‘Quite an animal you’ve got there.’

  ‘It wasn’t this one, it was another; Togodumnus killed it and then managed to get underneath it as it hit the ground.’

  ‘Very careless of him. But I’m grateful for your horse’s sacrifice, that’ll make things a lot easier politically. Caratacus rules in the west but Togodumnus’ realm was to the north of the Tamesis based in Camulodunum, the capital that Claudius wants to enter himself. If they’re defeated and leaderless and we hold the north bank of the Tamesis I think that we could get them to see sense, provided that we don’t give them any more cause to hate us. Well done, legate, your horse might just have saved thousands of lives.’

  Vespasian was tempted to ask Plautius to tell Geta that, but refrained. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Plautius nodded with satisfaction and turned to the remnants of the XX legion’s cavalry. ‘Which one of you unsponged arseholes is responsible for losing so many of my cavalry?’

  The decurion who had been the object of Plautius’ wrath earlier ventured a reply. ‘It was our legate, sir.’

  ‘Geta? Where is the idiot?’

  The decurion indicated down the hill with his head. ‘Back there, sir; he fell just as you broke through to us. I think he’s dead.’

  Vespasian and Plautius retraced their steps down the hill littered with corpses and stained with blood in every direction. Vespasian stared about him aghast at the magnitude of what had happened: thousands upon thousands of dead Britannic warriors lay sprawled on the battlefield from the Batavians’ hill in the north, along the line of the XIIII Gemina’s stand by the pontoon bridge – which the VIIII Hispana was now traversing – and on to the line of the II Augusta’s first combat, the previous day in the south. They lay singly, in groups or in long rows, like driftwood marking the extent of high tide, showing where they had taken on the might of Rome, head on, with little hope of victory. There were Romans too amongst the dead, not nearly as many, probably one for every forty Britons, Vespasian estimated. It had been a decisive victory at relatively little cost but its aftermath was a sombre sight: endless corpses of young men cut down in their prime as they defended their homeland from an invasion that, as far as Vespasian could make out, was motivated not by any strategic necessity but by the desire of three freedmen to keep their unmartial, drooling master in power so that they could enjoy its benefits. He quickly banished the bitter thought from his mind, knowing that unless he retired back to his estates and forewent a career in Rome he would always be a witness to the selfishness of politics.

  ‘Apart from the Fourteenth’s defensive line this must be one of the few places on the field where more than twenty or so of our lads lie together,’ Plautius reflected as they approached the point where the cavalry had been rescued.

  Vespasian surveyed the tangle of troopers and their mounts, nearly forty in all; their comrades were working their way through them looking for any signs of life as the auxiliaries of the VIIII Hispana marched by, acting as the vanguard for their legion. ‘My Batavians also took heavy losses buying us time to form up across the bridge.’

  ‘Yes, I watched that, it was bravely done; I shall see that Paetus comes to the Emperor’s attention when he gets here. And Civilis of the Batavian Foot, the diversionary action on that hill was the key to the battle. Did you know that he’s the grandson of the last Batavian King?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘His men treat him as if he was the King himself, they’d follow him anywhere.’

  ‘General!’ a trooper shouted from the midst of the corpses. ‘It’s the legate, he’s still breathing.’

  Vespasian and Plautius dismounted and picked their way through the dead to where Geta lay. Blood seeped from under his breastplate; it was pierced just below the ribcage. He was unconscious but definitely breathing.

  Plautius looked down at him with a mixture of regretful disapproval and sorrow. ‘Get him to my doctor, trooper, you’ll find him in a tent across the river.’

  The trooper saluted; he and three mates began to prise the wounded legate out of the tangle of dead flesh.

  Plautius shook his head. ‘He’s a fine soldier but why he made such an elementary mistake is beyond me. Everyone knows that you don’t take cavalry too deep into an enemy rout; it’s asking for trouble.’

  ‘Perhaps he saw Caratacus, and tried to get to him.’

  ‘We’ll find out, if my doctor manages to save him. You should get back to your legion now; I want a full report of casualties first thing in the morning. We’ll march west at dawn the following day once I’m sure that Togodumnus’ men are either dead or across the river; I wouldn’t like to have a force that size come and bite my arse. I want your legion to lead the way, seeing as you’ll be the only fit legate left to me.’ He looked at the first cohort of the VIIII Hispana now marching by with its Eagle at its head. ‘It’s their turn now.’ He spotted Corvinus sitting proudly on his horse riding to the side of the column and rode over to him. ‘March your lads hard, legate, it’s down to speed now and you’ve got thirty miles to go; I want you at the Tamesis by tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘We’ll be there, general.’

  ‘I’m sure of it. The fleet will be following you in support once they’ve dealt with the Britons trying to cross the river. And remember, take the north bank and hold it; do not go further.’

  Corvinus smiled thinly and saluted. ‘Of course, sir. Goodbye!’

  The tone of the last word struck Vespasian as having a finality to it as he watched Corvinus riding away and, thinking of Narcissus’ suspicions, he wondered whether to confide in Plautius. ‘Do you trust him, sir?’

  ‘Trust him? I have to. Narcissus suggested to me that I should send him forward, just before we left for Britannia. He thought Claudius would appreciate me sending his brother-in-law to be the first Roman to cross the Tamesis since Julius Caesar; it would reflect well on the imperial family and the gesture would not go unnoticed by the Emperor. For once I agreed with that oily freedman.’

  ‘But he didn’t seem very keen on waiting for Claudius.’

&n
bsp; ‘He’ll obey his orders.’

  ‘What if he doesn’t?’

  ‘He will. Narcissus pointed out that he and his sister both have everything to gain from Claudius’ supposed victory.’

  Vespasian stared, incredulous, at Plautius’ profile. ‘Are you sure he said that?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure, legate! I’m not deaf.’

  ‘I apologise, sir. I’ll return to my legion now.’ Vespasian gave a salute and turned. Riding away, he looked back up the hill at the VIIII Hispana and, in a moment of clarity, he realised what Narcissus had done and why: he had made his first move towards the removal of Messalina.

  CHAPTER XVIIII

  ‘WHAT DO YOU mean you can’t warn Plautius?’ Magnus asked, struggling to make sense of what he had just been told.

  Sabinus shifted slightly in his campbed, lifting his head and grimacing with pain. ‘My brother’s right, Magnus, Narcissus made us promise that whatever happens we must not go to Plautius.’

  ‘But why? He could stop Corvinus now; the Ninth are less than a day’s march ahead of us.’

  Vespasian held a cup of steaming wine to his brother’s lips and Sabinus sipped from it gratefully. ‘He doesn’t want Corvinus stopped; he knew that this would happen because he set it up. He wants Plautius to see for himself Corvinus’ treachery; that way he’ll have solid evidence to present to Claudius when he arrives, not mere suspicions. Claudius doesn’t believe his freedmen’s warnings about Messalina and her brother but he might just believe the evidence of his own eyes if Plautius presents it to him.’

  Magnus looked around the dimly lit tent, evidently exasperated. ‘So what will you do?’

  ‘Do? Why, nothing for the time being. Narcissus asked us to keep Plautius alive and not to let Corvinus and Geta go too far. We thought that he meant not to let them go further than the Tamesis but he didn’t; he meant not to let them go too far north of the Tamesis. In other words stop them once they’ve damned themselves but before they get all the way to Camulodunum.’

  ‘Well, Geta’s not going anywhere in a hurry; he’s lucky to be alive according to one of the orderlies, who’s a mate of mine. He says Geta’s put himself out of commission for the foreseeable future, so that’s half the threat gone.’

  ‘And, more to the point, that’s something that Corvinus won’t know because he was too far away to see Geta being taken from the field. So if Geta was the one who was meant to deal with Plautius whilst Corvinus goes north, it won’t be happening soon.’

  Sabinus lay back down with a sigh. ‘True, but Priscus, his thick-stripe, is now in command of the Twentieth, and who knows where his sympathies lie.’

  Vespasian placed the cup down, next to the only oil lamp in the tent, on the rough bedside table. ‘We’ve got to keep an eye on Plautius, somehow. Meanwhile we’ll march west tomorrow. The Second Augusta will be the vanguard because I’m the only legate on my feet at the moment, so it’ll be my cavalry scouting.’

  Magnus chuckled. ‘And Paetus will only see what he’s told to see.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘And how will you stop Corvinus?’

  ‘That’s where Narcissus’ forward thinking sometimes just leaves me breathless with admiration.’

  The severely wounded had been despatched back to Rutupiae in a long train of wagons, disappearing east through the smoky haze issuing from the scores of pyres disposing of the fallen. The battlefield had been partially cleared by the Dobunni but many bodies still remained lying out in the sun and the tribesmen laboured amongst the dead, piling the corpses of their former allies onto the pyres under the supervision of just two auxiliary cohorts; Budvoc had been true to his word and his men worked willingly.

  Vespasian turned away from the sombre sight and rode towards his legion, formed up in column on the hill, ready to begin the march west. Apart from a visit to Sabinus the previous evening and a couple of periods of brief but sound sleep, his time had been taken up with the aftermath of battle. He had received the lists of casualties from each cohort and had been relieved by their comparative lightness: just under three hundred dead and twice as many wounded, of which almost a hundred would never serve again. Dead or severely wounded centurions, optiones and standard-bearers had to be replaced and promotions were made under guidance from the surviving officers of each cohort. Finally, the few centuries that had been badly mauled were temporarily disbanded and the survivors used to bring others up to a respectable strength. All this had been achieved in haste on the day after the battle so as to bring the legion and, more importantly, its chain of command, back up to battle readiness.

  And battle there would be; Vespasian was sure of it. As Plautius had predicted, the bulk of the Britons had crossed the Tamesis, despite the best endeavours of the fleet, which had massacred thousands in the water. The auxiliaries had tried to follow them through the marsh tracks to the river, but without local knowledge they found it all but impossible and many foundered, sucked into the slime, weighed down by their chain mail. A couple of Batavian cohorts did manage to find a way through and foolishly swam across, only to be repulsed with heavy losses by a few thousand tribesmen who had rallied on the north bank, despite receiving artillery support from the ballistae mounted on the bows of the fleet’s triremes.

  Vespasian reached the front of the column. He raised his arm in the air and, with a slight flourish, swiped it down; a deep horn sounded, the signal was relayed and the II Augusta moved forward. Before them, two auxiliary cohorts scouted ahead in open order with two more on either flank; behind followed the XX and XIIII Legions, both without their legates – although Sabinus had been pronounced fit enough to travel in a covered wagon. Geta, however, although conscious, was very weak from loss of blood and had been despatched to the hospital tents at Rutupiae, along with the other wounded.

  As he rode, Vespasian contemplated Narcissus’ skill in engineering a situation whereby from a safe distance back in Gaul he could force an enemy to expose himself for what he was and thereby set in train a sequence of events that might well topple an empress. Again, he knew that he was being used as a small piece in a bigger game; but it was ever thus in the murky world of imperial politics whose fringes he felt he would be always destined to inhabit – unless, of course, he retired to his estates. But, then, would he be happy to live out his life quietly as he had once wanted? A life in which his only excitement would be, as Sabinus had described it so disparagingly, to see if this year’s wine would be better than the last. He thought back to that conversation two years previously in Germania: at the time he had genuinely considered retirement as a way of avoiding being caught up in imperial politics, but now he realised that his brother had been right, he would be bored. Now that he had commanded a legion in battle and received the praise of his commanding officer for his conduct; now that he knew he was capable of such command and that there would be more battles ahead from which to learn, how could he possibly retire to a farm and watch the changing of the seasons? He looked back at the legion at whose head he was riding and exalted in the pride that he felt. There would be no retirement – at least not yet – he would continue his career and the price would be his involvement with politics.

  He consoled himself with the fact that this time his role was more crucial in that he now had to judge how long it should be before he reported to Plautius what he was sure his scouts would be telling him in just a few hours. He knew that it was imperative for Corvinus to have enough time to damn himself completely in Plautius’ eyes; it was not so much that he cared about Narcissus’ power struggle with Messalina – although he realised that in the choice of the two evils he was better off with Narcissus winning that struggle – it was the chance of revenge for Corvinus’ abduction of Clementina and deliverance of her to Caligula for violent and repeated rape. He smiled coldly, his eyes set with satisfaction, as he contemplated the sweet sensation of delivering vengeance upon a man who had so wronged his family.

  ‘You’re looking pleased with
yourself,’ Magnus said, pulling his horse up next to him. ‘Did you have a particularly good shit before we left?’

  ‘I did, as a matter of fact. Where’ve you been? I was looking for you earlier to tell you all about it.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry to have missed out on that treat; but don’t worry, I’ve been down to see Sabinus and he made up for it by easing one out in his wagon whilst I was there. More to the point, I saw my orderly mate again and he told me that he had overheard a mightily displeased Plautius ask Geta to explain to him why he made the elementary mistake of letting his unit probe too deeply into the routing enemy and allowing forty of his precious cavalry to go absent without leave across the Styx.’

  Magnus paused; Vespasian waited for a moment and then looked at him. ‘Well, go on then, tell me what he said.’

  ‘He didn’t really have a reason, he just said that he’d been fired up with enthusiasm and it would never happen again.’

  ‘Did Plautius accept that?’

  ‘Apparently; he shouted at Geta for a short while, until the doctor advised against it for medical reasons, and then he left, seemingly satisfied with the explanation, and with no more than a warning about not being a reckless arsehole in his army again and a vague threat concerning his testicles, a weighty hammer and an anvil.’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense. Whatever you might think about Geta, he’s got a reputation as being an excellent soldier; just take the Mauretanian campaign, for example – from all accounts his conduct was exemplary. He’s not the sort of person to make a stupid mistake like that.’

  ‘We all do, now and again.’

  ‘If you’re alluding to my failure to advance quickly enough on Cantiacum, it’s not the same; I’m not nearly as experienced as Geta and yet I know not to lose my head and go chasing off into the heart of a horde of very angry Britons with just my legion’s cavalry.’

  ‘Fair point; but there was a time when you might have lost your head.’