Arthur Britannicus

by Paul Bannister

  Carausius nodded. It seemed likely to him that some echo from the past still sounded in men’s memories. He’d be cautious about advertising his presence around the mine. It would be wise to dismiss the guides as quickly as possible, and to carry out this first of his explorations secretly, he thought. He gave instructions to his men and to the centurion, and all were ready within the hour, Carausius’ file of troops and several slaves equipped with picks and shovels. Mounted scouts were sent out ahead with orders to keep discreet watch against attack.

  The centurion called his troop together. “Right, you lot, it’s time for bohica, bend over, here it comes again,” he told them cheerfully, “a bit of marching, a bit of digging, more pleasure is in your future.” The men grumbled good-naturedly as Pattalus led the whole group to the place, just a couple of miles from the fort walls. “They call it the Blue John mine,” he remarked casually as they squinted against the sunlight to sight the cavern entrance half-hidden in a fold of land. The legate, thunderbolt-surprised, jolted upright and almost slipped from his mount. Somehow, he suppressed his emotions, and said nothing. Could he be so lucky, to strike the exact place at his first attempt?

  When they arrived at the mine, almost unnoticeable in a jumble of tumbled limestone, Carausius made a play of being disappointed. He shrugged his shoulders for effect and murmured non-commitally that it didn’t look good. “We’ll go through the motions, and just use our slaves,” he told the centurion, “Don’t waste your time, take your men and we’ll see you back at the fort in a few hours.” The old soldier, relieved at not having to stay with the officer, nodded his thanks, gave the salute of the fist across the chest and rode away with his patrol.

  Mael and Domnal approached. “Why’s he going?” Mael asked. “We’ve found the bloody place,” said Carausius. “It’s the Blue-Ion mine, just like the ‘bluion’ on the map. Get those oil lamps, we need to take a look, and get everyone out of sight, as soon as possible.” Inside, the cavern was a winding, narrow place, carved by an ancient stream through the limestone. The animals were led in, and sentries under specific orders to stay unseen were posted by the entrance. Only then did the work party set off.

  They were able to walk easily down into the old workings, following a time-worn path left by miners who’d extracted a glistening stone used to make crystal bowls and ornaments. A quarter mile in, the path ended, blocked by a rock fall. It had been two centuries since they were made, but the scrape marks of hammers and iron pry bars on the cavern ceiling were still discernible in the lamplight to someone who was looking for them, and the tumbled rock below seemed to confirm the site.

  “Remove those rocks, and carefully,” the twins instructed the slaves. It took almost an hour until an elm and leather pay chest with bronze bindings showed, then another, and another. All contained gold and silver coin and ingots. Carausius ignored the bullion. What he was seeking was far more valuable. His breath halted as he glimpsed red wool where a slave levered at a chunk of limestone. “Stop that,” he commanded, and dropped into the trench where the men were working.

  His pounding blood made thunder in his ears and the place seemed suddenly brightly lit. His breath hurt his throat and an exultation he only felt in the joyous, total surrender to the bloodlust of battle washed over him like heavy surf. ‘This is the instrument of my emperor’s crown. This will make me master of Britain,” he thought. He clawed at the rocks where the red fabric showed. Someone a long time before had made a secure stone cradle for the Eagle, and had carefully stacked more rocks above and around to protect it before the ceiling had been collapsed. The gleaming standard was unharmed in its stony nest, wrapped just as the long-ago aquilifer had left it, safe in his own military officer’s scarlet cloak.

  Carausius reverently lifted out the gilded silver Eagle with its upraised wings and laurel wreath, and dropped to one knee. “Mithras, I shall sacrifice a bull to you, in thanks,” he promised, giddy with relief and excitement. The Eagle that could rally the support he needed to become emperor was in his hands.

  XX. Danube

  Beyond the Danube River, the general Maximian was fighting a desperate rear-guard action. A vast horde of Saxons and Alemanni barbarians had threatened to outflank and surround his battered, half-strength legion, now down to fewer than 3,000 men, and he’d been forced to withdraw from the shallow valley where they had been confronted. Javelins and arrows were beating down like deadly hail on the legionaries, threatening to turn the trampled meadow into a slaughter yard.

  Their general ordered the Romans to form the testudo, the tortoise-like protection created when the ranks held their curved, oblong shields above their heads, overlapping them to form an armoured carapace. The divisions quickly established the great metal shells and, protected under them, retreated, edging away slowly to preserve their formation. The outer ranks, however, were being ground away as the plunging horde of the enemy made inroads, slashing and stabbing at their exposed knees and feet, and the occasional unfortunate was dragged into the hostiles’ mob when hands grabbed the shaft of his outstretched spear. Some of those so disarmed were not hacked to death at once, but were hustled through the abattoir of the killing fields to the barbarians’ rear ranks. They would be kept in cages for agonizing later sacrifice to the forest gods.

  The testudos kept inching backwards, legionaries stabbing and thrusting at the pressing warriors. The situation under the lofted shields was a half-light nightmare of clattering, banging noise, triumphant Saxon howls and shouts, and the curses and moans of the Roman wounded. From time to time, a heavy javelin would find a gap, or a soldier would stumble, and an incoming missile would transfix a shoulder, thigh or throat, but the Romans kept dragging the wounded with them, kept closing the ranks, kept steadily moving, even at the cost of trampling a fallen comrade underfoot. They were edging towards the relative safety of the treeline, where they could reform in the sheltering forest and begin firing back with their own spears and arrows. The general Maximian wanted to tear out his own beard. This was not going the way he’d planned. Where the hell was the cavalry he’d called to loop around from the Roman rear? The big soldier swore he’d have that commander’s nuts skewered on a spear if the horsemen didn’t show soon.

  He turned to the tribune Flavius Constantius, his son-in-law since marrying Maximian’s daughter Theodora, and waved his sword in the direction he expected to see the mounted troops. “Send someone to tell that bastard mule thrasher Marcus Aemilius to pull his sodding finger out. No, go yourself. Tell him I want the cavalry getting significant, and now, or he’ll answer to me!” he ordered. Flavius, blanching at the fury in the big general’s voice, saluted and ran for his horse, beckoning two aides to accompany him, but before he could straddle the animal, brass trumpets sounded and the cavalry appeared from the right flank, trotting into place.

  “Testudos down, get those javelins working!” Maximian bellowed in his huge parade ground roar. The centurions didn’t need to repeat the order, the soldiers heard it themselves. The heavy shields clattered down, and the front ranks accepted the rain of Saxon missiles for a few moments, as they banged shield edges together to form the protective fighting wall. Within seconds, a rattle of lead-weighted, iron-pointed javelins hurled from the second and third ranks began clattering into the barbarian mass. A few of the Germans cowered away from the deadly hail, but most shouted defiance and kept coming. They were still focused on the obstacle of Maximian’s steadfast shield wall when the cavalry tore into their left flank. The barbarians fell back from the trampling hooves and thrusting spears, and the movement spread like a wave rippling against a seawall. The flood of attacking tribesmen diverted, ebbed and broke under the cavalry charge and they were rolled up in a scrum of hacking swords, blood and terror.

  Some of the Saxons wheeled to face the new threat, and Maximian pushed his way right through the Roman war hedge, to stand alone in front of his troops. All the while, he was bellowing his bull-like roar and waving his sword, to signal the advance. His m
en heard him, saw the purple-dyed horsehair crest of his helmet and recognized their general. Maximian stepped up alone, close to the front rank of the Saxons and a bearded blond giant dropped his shield and, motioning with his war axe, accepted the wordless challenge. He swung once, the Roman feinted to one side, reversed and hacked up backhanded with his sword under the man’s braided beard, noting dispassionately as his blade bit that the Saxon had threaded small beads into the blond hair.

  Maximian leaned into the swing and hauled his spatha across the man’s Adam’s apple, slicing so deeply he felt the blade jar and scrape against the bones of the Saxon’s spine. The impact of the heavy cavalry sword opened a gaping red mouth in the man’s throat and threw the warrior backwards in a bright spray of arterial blood. He was dying as he hit the ground, his blood releasing with a sound like water going down a drain. His death spasms caused the Saxon’s feet to drum hard on the leaf mould for a few seconds, then he shuddered and was still. A growling animal shout welled from the throats of the watching Roman ranks, Maximian, his face spattered red, hauled his wet-bladed sword free of the dead man’s neck and brandished it, scattering a swathe of crimson droplets. Another long-haired Saxon came at him, screaming. Maximian brought his shield edge up hard, under the man’s jaw, snapping his head back, then swung his sword right to left across the man’s face, hurling him backwards and dropping him like a felled tree. The Romans involuntarily stepped forward, quivering like leashed hounds eager for the release.

  Javelins and darts were still flying over their heads from the legion’s rear ranks and into the wavering Saxons when a communal, primitive blood lust swamped and overwhelmed the troops. The bruised legion acted as if they were possessed by a single will, one urgent, demanding need. They lunged forward in line, lowering their heads and smashing the heavy bronze bosses of their shields into enemy ranks that were still half-turned to the cavalry threat. The legionaries were inflamed and mindless, berserk with fighting madness, angered at being forced into retreat and reckless with the overwhelming desire to chop, thrust and kill to dispel their humiliation. They plunged into the fur-clad mass of the enemy, battering with their shields, stabbing and punching over and around them with their sharp-pointed, two-edged gladii.

  Irresistible, the Romans moved into the press of Saxons, knocking them down, stamping their nailed boots hard on bodies and heads as they went underfoot. The barbarians were trampled and kicked to death even as they were coughing up their blood from spear and sword thrusts. In minutes, the battle went from near-triumph to utter disaster for the Alemanni. The legionaries clubbed and smashed their way into the heart of the horde, hacking and cutting to turn men into bloody meat, while the Roman cavalry’s feared heavy horses, biting, rearing and slashing with their wicked hooves, created white-eyed panic on the flank. In moments, the horde of Alemanni wheeled like a flock of starlings, broke and tried to flee. The Roman cavalrymen abandoned their lances in the bodies of the barbarians who had suffered the first impetus and thrust into the mob to swing and scythe like terrifying reapers with their heavy long swords, Panicked, fleeing men were hacked down from behind, their skulls split open, spines broken, great ragged wounds slashed into unprotected backs, necks and shoulders. The horsemen rode the fugitives down, swinging, chopping and clubbing before kicking on to slaughter the next, until the field was choked and heaped with butchered bodies.

  A light rain started, but it did nothing to hide the stench of human dung, the iron-taint smell of spilled blood and the scent of trampled, crushed grass that rose over the killing ground. Maximian pulled off his helmet with its confining cheek plates, wiped the sweat and rain from his eyes and forehead and inhaled disgustedly. “The smell of shit,” he grunted. “Battlefields always smell of shit.”

  The thought was with him again months later, as he led his procession into Rome. Battlefields stank, he mused, but this smelled a lot better. It was the month of Aprilis, once called Neroneus after the half-mad emperor. It was the 286th year of Julius Caesar’s calendar. Wafts of honeysuckle and yellow jasmine gave the city some pleasing, positively rural scents that almost overpowered the stench of the dung heaps. The emperor Carus was gone, Diocletian was visiting Rome from his domed Oriental palace in Nicomedia and wore the Tyrian purple now, and that was good.

  The emperor was Maximian’s fellow countryman from Dalmatia and the pair had formed useful alliances in the past. This day would seal their latest union. Diocletian’s cunning brain would be allied with the brutish general’s military brawn to benefit them both, and now it was time to celebrate. Today’s procession lauded Maximian’s last-ditch victory over the Saxons on the lower Danube, a crushing triumph which had led to a series of mopping-up engagements as far as the northern stretches of the Rhine as he’d cornered the barbarians and overwhelmed them. The military defeats, the barbarian kings made vassals, the pitiful files of chained slaves and the horrors of the crucifix-lined roads would ensure a long peace in that part of the empire and, for the victorious general, a purple-draped seat at the emperor’s right hand.

  Things had been better managed, thought Maximian, since he’d punished his cavalry commander for sluggishly carrying out his orders. He’d broken the man to the ranks and set him to cleaning stables when they got back to barracks at Mainz. When the aristocratic officer protested too strongly and had hinted at reprisals later, the big general had called for the legion to parade in full order. Maximian next commanded the unfortunate equestrian to be brought to him on horseback. He had ordered the officer from his mount and removed its bridle. The general casually dropped the leather reins around the man’s neck and, as he kicked and fought, lifted him from the ground and strangled him with them.

  The legion, stiffly at attention, witnessed the execution stony-faced before they were paraded century by century past the corpse. There could be no misunderstanding their general’s message. Maximian’s son-in-law Flavius was the new cavalry commander and, thought the emperor-elect grimly, was satisfyingly more attentive to his orders than he used to be.

  This bright, balmy April day, Maximian was leading his triumph into Rome, through the arch of Marcus Aurelius, whose names he had taken, with five once-proud barbarian kings shuffling in chains as they trailed behind his chariot on their way to execution. He glanced at the tombs, forbidden inside the city walls that ringed them outside. A cluster of the mausoleums of the dead stood by the great arch, elbowing each other, it seemed, to have their occupants noticed by the traffic into and out of the city. Romans, he mused, were preoccupied with being remembered after death, though he noted wryly that their living descendants did little to keep their memorials clean. The tombs’ walls served as billboards, and among the red-painted advertisements for gladiator fights, a whorehouse, a bakery and an assortment of political advertisements, his own new names stood clear and proud, painted hastily a day or two before by a team he had ordered assembled for the task at this and a handful of other gates.

  Maximian had underscored his new status by assuming the Valerian family name of the emperor, a bow to the Augustus who claimed to be the reincarnation of Jupiter, and it paid to let the populace know it. So there, painted over the scatological messages and the libellous, boastful statements of who had done what to whom at that place, all left by the great unwashed, was his new name and claimed patrimony, painted prominently large. ‘Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maximianus Herculius,’ it said. Maximian grunted to himself. “I’m a Valerian now, like Diocletian,” he thought with satisfaction. “I’m Hercules to his so-called Jupiter.’

  The god-emperor waited to formally greet the general as well as to survey the wagons piled high with loot that preceded the chained columns of captives, all of it good news for the treasury. “Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maximianus Herculius,” Diocletian unknowingly repeated the graffiti, kissing him on both cheeks, “it gives me great joy to welcome you to our home city, whose enemies you have so confounded. For the populace of Rome, for its gods and its Senate, I formally appoint you Caesar, and
welcome your sword and strong arm to protect and defend the empire.” The appointment made Maximian junior emperor to the Augustus but Diocletian had privately assured him that in a decent time he would also be declared Augustus, to oversee half the empire.

  Diocletian was shrewd to share power, for he knew he was vulnerable. He had no son, only a daughter who was not eligible by her sex to assume the purple. He had needed to find a co-ruler from outside his family, and he privately admitted that it would be useful to have a general more capable than himself, as the frontiers of the empire were in flames from Syria to the Danube. Diocletian might not be a military genius, but he was a good administrator, and as a matter of practical security, he separated the military and the civil service. He created new administrative centres closer to the frontiers where they would be more effective and standardized the imperial taxes, quietly increasing them as he did so. In time, he planned to divide the empire between four rulers, to insure against any one faction and its legions rising against him. There had been, he thought grimly, too many barracks emperors who had been elected then murdered at the whim of the soldiery. He had no plans to die soon…