Arthur Britannicus

by Paul Bannister

  Maximian was his Serbian countryman, an unsophisticated brute but a canny military man who did not pose a political threat to the Augustus. He’ll be my attack dog, thought Diocletian. For his part, Maximian was uncomfortable around Rome’s smooth, epigram-quoting courtiers who, he knew, sneered at his lack of education. He was a fighting man, a good general. He knew it, and his men knew it. He was happiest in the field, not among Rome’s patrician officers, poncing office stallions to a man, he thought. He was even less comfortable in the snake pit of the Senate, where the lawmakers carried knives under their togas and would not hesitate to assassinate you either politically or physically.

  Only yesterday, there had been an assassination attempt. People were talking of a would-be killer who had been captured when he fainted while trying to escape. In fact, all Rome was now laughing about the Ashen Assassin. The man, Josephus Lindinius, was the younger son of a political family and had made an attempt on the life of a senate rival of his father’s. During the blundering, clumsy attack, Josephus had seized his victim’s robe with one hand and swung his large dagger with the other. The victim had twisted away unharmed, and had unbalanced his attacker at the exact moment that he struck. The hapless Josephus had hacked off two of his own fingers and a part of his hand that carried a seahawk tattoo.

  The severed digits, the tattoo and the blood trail made him easy to identify and follow and two praetorian guards had caught him on the bank of the Tiber, where he’d fainted from blood loss. Today, he and his father were to be thrown off the Tarpeian Rock and the rest of their family would be forced to witness the event. Maximian thought he might go along to watch, partly for the pleasure of watching some unfortunate’s death, partly because he despised such ambush tactics. He wore his sword openly, and that was the way he wanted it. Send me back among Marius’ Mules, my honest ground pounders, he thought. He automatically touched the iron of his sword hilt for luck. A sword; that was what he understood.

  XXI. Eboracum

  Carausius also had a sword on his mind, although he had not yet seen it. He’d heard that a wonderful feather-patterned weapon forged for him by the blade-smith Gimflod was ready and he sent a messenger into Eboracum, bidding the smith to bring the blade to him in nearby Selletun. The legate was safely away from Navio, his successful foray to find and recover the Eagle still unheralded. It was a secret still known only to a few. He was well aware of the huge political and emotional significance of possessing the recovered symbol of Roman pride, and planned a dramatic, triumphal entry into the capital of North Britain. He wanted all to witness him returning the lost Eagle of the Ninth to its rightful place as an icon, not just of military pride restored, but also as a sign of better days to come. It would signify a return to honourable, ancient Roman standards and reinforce him as the legitimate claimant to rule Britain. It was time, he thought, to declare himself consul, or better yet, emperor of Britain and northern Gaul.

  The Britons were ready for change. They were suffering under the hard rule of collapsing Rome. The landowners were being too heavily taxed, bled white to sustain the opulent lifestyles of far-away nobles and to pay for military activities along borders like the Danube and Rhine. In turn, the landowners were forced to pass on the demands to their tenants. A series of Rome-appointed governors of the province had made matters worse by openly maintaining their own proud lifestyle at the locals’ expense, and treating them poorly in return. Carausius had recognized a pattern. It was, he thought, going the way of Gaul, where peasants who had been dispossessed of their land or who’d been subjected to barbarian attacks had begun roaming the country as marauders. The Briton shook his head as he recalled the blood he’d spilled and the drastic, cruel measures he’d been required to take to suppress those bandits. He could see that happening in Britain if matters did not change, because British history was not so different. Centuries before, when the Romans had been unable to subdue the Britons, they had recruited their barons and jarls, giving them princedoms and kingships in return for their aid in keeping their fellow countrymen quiet. Then, when the place was subdued, the subject kings were discreetly disposed of.

  It had happened exactly that way to the husband of Britain’s queen, Boadicea. An independent king who was the ally of Rome, and who helped persuade his fellow monarchs to accept to the Roman yoke, King Pratsutagas of the Iceni had died mysteriously and conveniently, just when his usefulness to Rome had ended and his rewards were due. It was the Romans’ way. They recruited the chieftains and kings, flattered and made them important, and when the region was secure, disposed of them. Most believed Pratsutagas had been poisoned at the orders of the governor Suetonius. The dead monarch’s will stipulated that his kingdom was to be left jointly to the emperor and to his own two daughters, who would reign as Rome’s ally, as he had. The Romans ignored his wishes, their financiers called in the dead king’s loans and his clan was ruined. Irritated by the royal family’s protests, the governor ordered a demonstration of Rome’s control. Soldiers flogged the widowed queen, publicly raped her daughters and chained up the royal kin as slaves.

  After the humiliations and the display of callous, brutal power, Suetonius contemptuously left the smouldering Iceni and went off to campaign in Anglesey, to put down the British Druids who had formed a seat of power there. He misread the tribes’ mood, and his error cost the lives of 60,000 Romans and their colonists. While the governor’s XIVth legionaries were slaughtering unarmed Druids and burning down the sacred groves of oaks in Wales, Boadicea raised rebellion, burned the administrative capital of Colchester and sacked Verulam. She destroyed Londinium and its piling bridge over the Thames, and her 100,000 warriors and their terrible chariots butchered the Ninth Spanish legion sent from Eboracum to suppress the uprising. A few survivors hid the legion’s sacred Eagle, but they in turn were killed, taking the secret of the standard’s hiding place with them to the grave. The legionary icon went missing for two centuries until Carausius tracked it down.

  Now, the renegade admiral had the silver-gilt Eagle and he planned to use it to rally Britons to him to overthrow their Roman masters. He foresaw few problems with such a rebellion as he had the legions stationed in Britain solidly behind him and his well-filled pay chests. The navy could keep a Roman invasion at bay, he knew. The greater threat to the island’s independence, he suspected, would come from the hordes of Germanic tribes that would be released westwards once the Romans retreated from the Rhine, as they inevitably must. Dark times were coming, and he was readying for them. First, in just a few days, he would parade the iconic, inspirational Eagle into Eboracum, the fortress keystone of the northern frontier defences. He would rally Britain from there, as its new emperor. He would cast his lot as a rogue emperor, and risk his life and fortune for great rewards. It was what soldiers did, he grinned to himself, mentally adding ‘And I’m a good soldier. I deserve a great reward.’

  The wealthy trader Mullinus had once lived near Eboracum, and knew the district well. He arranged for the legate and his entourage to stay for a few days unnoticed at a secluded villa a short distance downriver, in the hamlet of Selletun while Carausius’ agents arranged matters for the triumphal parade and entry. A messenger also met Gimflod as promised at the full moon of August and brought him and the masterpiece sword he had created to the villa. The same envoy had also quietly informed the trader Sucia of the legate’s arrival, and she was hurrying to Selletun to meet her friend.

  Meanwhile, Carausius sent a courier south to his treasurer Allectus, with special orders for him. He planned to dispatch to the Colchester mint the old Ninth Legion’s pay chests and their high-quality bullion once he could detail a proper guard for them. “The quality of this coin is superb,” he told his brothers as they fingered the contents of the five ironbound, elm and leather pay chests they’d uncovered in the cavern at Navio, running the heavy coins through their hands. “It’s all from long before Septimius Severus started the devaluation we’ve had to suffer. I’ll get Allectus to re-mint some as do
natives to keep the army happy, and have him turn the rest into mementoes celebrating the recovery of the Eagle. That will get the message out; we can use a bit of propaganda. I’ll tell him to mint them with my new Roman lineage. I’m the Expected One who’s to restore the golden age of Britain, just as it was in the good days of the old rule, and I’ll have my British name ‘Arthur’ on there, too, underlining my roots in this island.”

  The brothers grinned at each other. “He’s decided we’re descended from the Antonine emperors,” said Mael. “That’s why he’s Marcus Aurelius Carausius Arthur and you’re just dumb Domnal.” The older brother swiped at his twin. Mael dodged the blow. “No, really,” he said. ‘All the recent emperors, Diocletian, Probus, Carus, Carinus and Numerian were called Marcus Aurelius. You’d think they could be a bit more original.” Carausius, brows knitted as he ran though his mental list, was not distracted. “We need to make some big pay increases, too. There’s enough gold in here to make aureii for the legions in Britain. It won’t matter that they’re forgeries, the country’s basically a closed-currency market anyway. We can boost the gold supply when we get the Welsh mine at Dolaucothi working again. Remind me to get a decent garrison set up in the fort there.

  “Also, we should establish a garrison again at Cadbury in the old fort. We’ll need to establish a supply point for the beacon and stronghold there, it’s a major gateway to the west, and I hear that the old place isn’t in too bad shape. Then there’s the north. We need to get the Picts off our backs, mollify them or make some treaty with them to keep them quiet while we sort out the situation in Gaul. If we can get the port and forts at Bononia and Rouen reinforced and command the hinterland, those bastards in Rome will likely leave us alone for a while; they have enough problems with the eastern front.

  “And, remind me about getting that Gallic mint up to speed, we’ll need coin if we’re to raise more soldiers over there.” Another thought struck the legate. “Get me a proper scribe, I’m tired of having to remember everything myself and these bits of metal and pieces of shaved wood are hopeless for keeping track of memoranda. Find me someone who can record and monitor things, and can send out my directives. It wouldn’t hurt if he had some languages, and was someone with half a brain. It would be even more useful if you found someone with standing who could be an ambassador to those painted Picts. I want someone with a bit of initiative, who can carry my message and persuade the buggers to take a break from thieving cattle and burning hayricks for a while. Just don’t get me another bloody soldier who can only dumbly obey orders. Now, let’s take a look at this new sword.”

  The weapon was a marvel. “Balanced at the guard within the weight of ten grains of sand,” Gimflod boasted recklessly. As the legate had demanded, the weapon was longer by far than a standard gladius, the stabbing sword of the legions that had been adopted as the murderous weapon of gladiators. “You asked for at least two hands breadths more, lord,” said Gimflod, closing his eyes as he thought, “but I made it almost a hand span longer than that to get it exactly right.”

  Carausius hefted the sword. It was longer than the standard 24 inch Spanish Sword of the old republic, but had elements of both the shorter, broader Mainz and Pompeii blades which followed it. It had two slightly curved cutting edges and came to a tapered point. An ornate, knobbed hilt was ridged for the fingers and fitted with a small ring to protect a digit wrapped over the guard as the user pulled back after thrusting. The grip itself was perforated leather wrapped tightly and retained at guard and pommel with wire overlaid with ferrules of beaten gold. The polished bronze pommel was more than just for use as a club; it also acted as a counterweight to the length of the blade. It seemed to Carausius that most of the sword’s three pounds of weight was in the handle, making the weapon easy to wield.

  The blade itself was a masterwork. It carried a contrasting featherlike pattern along its length, from the sword’s deadly point through its leaf-shaped blade to the section of unsharpened steel just below the guard that was called a ricasso. This last was created at Carausius’ demand, to give him the opportunity to use the long sword two-handed. He admired aloud the pattern of the steel.

  “It’s from a Damascene blade-smith who showed me his secrets,” explained Gimflod. “The sad bastard. If he’d been a better dice player, I would never have known how to do this, but he lost the bet and had to show me.” The smith explained that he melted ore to produce a bloom of loosely-bonded iron that was like a sponge, networked with channels filled with the molten glass that resulted from impurities in the iron. The bloom was reheated into malleability, hammered to drive out the glass, then was shaped into rods.

  The smith took five of those rods and twisted them into one blade, fusing them together by heating, folding and hammering them flat. The pounding friction of the hammer blows super-heated the metal and made a powerful weld, while the mixed metals and carbon created the blade’s swirling patterns. Gimflod next ground a groove down both faces of the blade, which both lightened and strengthened the steel and allowed an easier break of the suction when the sword was thrust into an opponent’s clinging flesh.

  He stamped Carausius’ names into the blade below the hilt, filed the cutting edges to lethal level and reheated the whole thing. The last stages, tempering it to harden the steel and allow it to hold an edge, were to plunge the sword into a bath of boiling salts, then to quench it in oil. This allowed it to cool evenly, so the blade did not warp or fracture. He repeated the process, this time using layered clay to coat the blade, except for the edges, before reheating it. The clay slowed the cooling and made the steel slightly softer, increasing flexibility while the unprotected edge stayed hard. “A good blade bends under pressure. A poor one is brittle, and snaps,” the smith explained.

  Finally, Gimflod set the guard over the blade’s shoulders, snugged it in place with the hilt and locked the whole together with the heavy pommel. A local leather-smith had created an iron-reinforced scabbard that carried a tooled and painted Celtic pattern similar to the swirled silver and amber brooch of British office that the legate wore.

  Now, the blade-smith was looking on, beaming, as Carausius whipped his new sword through the air. “I shall call this sword Exalter,” he declared. “It will bring me joy and triumph.”

  “There’s one other thing, lord,” the smith said. “I haven’t been able to get one myself, but I’ve heard of a new device to keep the blade extra sharp.” The legate looked up. He only knew of the strickle, a stick smeared thickly with pig grease and rolled in fine sand that was used to sharpen all kinds of blades. “What’s that?” he asked.

  “The southern people use a wheel, lord, a cranked wheel of stone. You turn the wheel and apply the blade. The stone moves, the blade stays still. It’s faster and makes a better edge.”

  Carausius nodded. “Make one,” he said thoughtfully. “If it works, we’ll equip the troops with the things. Now, send in that woman.”

  The legate had spied the negotiator Sucia, a woman he’d befriended in Rome years before, crossing the wet stones of the courtyard. She ran a lucrative trade in precious things: freshwater pearls, jet and crystal for adornment, sun stone crystals from Iceland that let sailors find the sun to navigate through fog, fine British woollen clothing and something Carausius craved, British hunting dogs. “I remembered your promise,” he told her after the greetings were dispensed with.

  “I did not forget either, and you have come at a very good time,” she smiled. “This week, you will have one of the best dogs I have ever had trained.”

  “You too, have come at a very good time,” grinned Carausius, for once relaxed and mellow. “I have chests of coin, including gold, and you can charge what you damned well like!”

  Some of that coin was scattered by the prefects to the roadside crowd as Carausius made his entrance into Eboracum two days later, heralded with the blare of brass and stirring thump of kettledrums. Allectus and the tribunes had done their work well. At their instruction, as the paymasters ha
nded out donatives of gold, the legions had been asked by their officers whether they had any reluctance in acclaiming as their British emperor Carausius Arthur, the restorer of the lost Eagle and source of the stream of loot that had come their way. The alternative, the scarlet-cloaked officers pointed out to the parade, was meekly to accept the arrival of a stranger sent by Diocletian from his faraway Asian palace. That stranger would rule the armies of the west and would bring Britain again under the crushing heel of rapacious Rome.

  The legionaries needed no persuasion. Car the Bear was popular anyway. A soldier’s soldier, bluff, blunt and brutal when it was needed, he had always been mindful of his troops’ welfare, pay and equipment. He had carefully settled retired veterans not only in border territories where they acted as a military reserve in time of need, but had given many of them generous land grants close to military bases. There, they acted as living examples to serving soldiers of the fine retirement that waited at the end of their service. Any footslogger who wondered why he’d taken the oath only had to glance at the prosperous farms and taverns owned by old soldiers to have his question answered. The general would look after him, not just by being successful in battle or in acquiring plunder, but also when the fighting was done and the gladius and helmet were hung over the fireplace.

  The stage was set. The soldiers had the message: this was a good leader in war, and in peace too. Just follow his lead, and his orders. So all was readied, with Carausius’ usual shrewd management. The capital’s colonial amphitheatre was packed with troops, the priests had made the sacrifices and declared themselves content with the auguries, the officers had addressed the men and their new emperor with the recovered Eagle was on his way to a triumphal entrance and popular acclaim.

  Carausius was a splendid sight at the head of his marching columns, a lord of war in burnished, segmented armour, mounted high on a heavy-hoofed, black Frisian charger. The golden crown he had won for single combat was wreathed with his imperial laurel leaves. It gleamed above his purple and white cloak, itself pinned with the emblem of a British jarl. Behind him, protected by an elite squad of troopers in burnished bronze and carried by a standard bearer who wore a black-maned lion’s pelt over his armour, came the restored Eagle of the Ninth Spanish legion, symbol of recovered pride and Carausius’ new power.