Arthur Britannicus

by Paul Bannister

  “Absolute stunning brilliance,” Mael told his twin later as he passed on the news. “The hump-a-lots get a very nice bonus and a huge boost to their pride, and Carausius is confirmed as the god-supported emperor who got the Eagle back after 200 years. The footsloggers get to understand that the gods favour him, one of their own, more than any emperor for two centuries or more, probably all the way back to Claudius. It tells the legions that they simply cannot be defeated. He’s the Messiah, the Expected One, and the gods are with him. Soldiers will fight well if they get decent food and regular pay, old Julius knew that and paid them out of his own purse, but they’ll be invincible if they know they have the backing of Mars and his friends.”

  Mael was right. Recruits flocked to garrisons in Britain and Gaul, where Carausius’ paymasters were pouring out a torrent of coin minted from pirated bullion and from the surprising output of the opencast that was the Welsh gold mine at Dolaucothi. This supply of precious gold supplemented the silver output from other British workings in Derbyshire, Devon, Somerset and Gloucestershire. The native production was added to by healthy trade balances from across the Narrow Sea, where British exports that included lead vital to the Roman water supply pipes brought back the bullion that was paying the soldiers’ wages. “They all want to be on the winning side,” Allectus gloated. “That’s where the loot, the women and the glory are.”

  That same message was spread purposefully by Guinevia when she met the Caledonian chieftains. She was already respected and held in awe as an adept of the Druid Myrddin. Now, as effective proconsul of the emperor, she displayed temporal as well as spiritual power. The priestess approached the chieftains gently, but she also flashed the steel of her resolve. She took them gifts of small gold ingots stamped with their emperor’s image, and gave the dozen or so senior jarls a fine-tooled sword made by Gimflod and his apprentices. She also made two simple, credible promises to the wary chieftains. The first was: ‘Cooperate with Carausius while he settles his other business, and great rewards will come to you when he rules Rome.’ The second vow was grimly sombre: ‘Break your oath and cause him trouble while his back is turned, and you will rot on crucifixes along the wall of Hadrian.’

  The quarrelsome, prideful, tattooed and painted clan chiefs came to heel, took the oaths, kissed the silver pentagram ring of power the priestess wore on her left hand and left their bloody thumbprints on the vellum agreement that she put in front of them. Then the assembly participated in a gore-spattered ceremony that sacrificed , Nicevennand Ogmia, god of dangerous, sacred words. The pact was sealed between man, emperor and the gods.

  A travel-stained, exhausted Guinevia brought back the news to Eboracum: the Wall would be inviolate, and Carausius could take his campaign into Gaul, confident of peace at home. What she did not tell him was that before her great council with the chieftains, she’d gone first to a remote western island. She had sailed there at peril in a cockleshell skiff, confident that she would be kept safe by the intercession of the sea god Manannan mac Lir. She had gone to see her mentor, Myrddin Emrys.

  The Druid sorcerer had welcomed his initiate, instructed her in some new mysteries of the oak and mistletoe, giving her a silver pentagram ring of power as token of them, and had alerted her to the significance of the familiar; a white rat, that he had conjured to support and enhance her missions. One day, she knew, she would find the new powers extremely useful, and she mentally welcomed the comforting presence of the rat. And, being a woman, she speculated about Carausius. A fine man, she thought, and one who needed affection, but he did not yet know it, she mused. One day, she would help him discover that need.

  XXIII. Gaul

  Smoke gusted from the pharos that guided the way into Bononia’s harbour and the blue-sailed trireme, oars shipped and under a small headsail, slipped past the great mortared stones of the sea wall. The new Emperor Carausius, regal in his Tyrian purple cloak, nodded to the shipmaster his approval for a job well done. The mariner had pushed his crew hard and had succeeded in reaching port at high tide, which was the only time when the entrance to the Gallic harbour was navigable to larger vessels. It had been a busy few weeks, with parades in Eboracum, Aquae Sulis, Londinium and Colchester to display the recovered Eagle, and the emperor was eager to show it to the troops in Gaul.

  Now, accompanied by his aide Guinevia, he was in Bononia, the dangerous sea voyage was behind them and there was much to do. The emperor gestured impatiently to a centurion to ready the gangplank. He was in a hurry to be ashore and receive news of Maximian’s activities. He’d considered a triumphant entrance with the Eagle mounted on the prow of his ship but opted, considering that the vagaries of wind and sea could upset his timing, to parade it before the troops later in a more formal and predictable land-based operation. No point, he thought, to undermine the magic by going aground on a falling tide. Anyway, right now, he wanted news, not celebrations.

  Had the emperor of the west taken action against him yet? He had to know.

  He strode past the honour guard lined up on the quay, clapping his arm diagonally across his chest in salute, but hardly sparing time to glance at their gleaming turnout. Inside the square of the keep, Lucius Cornelius, the prefect in charge of the fortress, snapped another honour guard to attention. Carausius paid them as little mind as he had the first squad. “News for me?” His anxiety to know how his enemies were disposed made his demand brusque. “Where’s Maximian?”

  The prefect saluted his emperor. “Over the Rhine, lord. He’s had to destroy a Theban legion for mutiny, and now he’s putting out fires in the east again.”

  “Mithras be blessed for that,” said the self-appointed Emperor of Britain and northern Gaul. “I hope the bastard gets his nuts roasted.”

  “There’s a message for you from Rome, lord. We had a courier a day and a half ago,” said the prefect. “I didn’t send the dispatch on, as we knew you were coming here today. It’s waiting in your quarters.” His entourage trailed behind as the emperor strode rapidly into the barracks tower, his limp scarcely evident as he hurried up to the commander’s chambers.

  Guards at the door stiffened and saluted, body slaves sidled back against the walls. Carausius picked up the heavy, sewn-leather package and slashed the stitches and the Senatorial seals apart with his punching knife. The missive from the senatorial jurist Marcus Vettius bluntly ‘requested and required’ him to return to Rome with all speed, no reason given. “Court martial,” the emperor muttered. “The boneheads have finally worked out why they’re not getting any income from Britain. Well, their rapacious days are ending.”

  He crumpled the summons and dropped it on the tiled floor. “The hell with them. I’m not going back to have my shoulders relieved of their weight.” He turned to his aide Lycaon. “Get the scribe here, bring Allectus, too. And, I want the quartermaster. Get me a full report on our readiness; garrison strength, equipment, supplies, the condition of the grain crop, the infirmary list and anything the scouts and spies have on the Bagaudae situation between here and the Seine. I want it all in an hour.”

  The pagan priestess Guinevia Avenae had never been to Gaul, and was unsure if her gods could hear her, away from her own settings, so she quickly made sacrifice to her deities to ask their protection and guidance in this place that was a spiritual stronghold of the Druids. She located an old temple to Minerva and had a slave visit the livestock market. Soon, her preparations were complete. First, she offered a lamb to the witch goddess Nicevenn, leader of the Wild Hunt at Samhain, the night of the dead. Handling the little creature tenderly, and with merciful swiftness, she slashed its throat and raised her bloodied hands to the ruined ceiling. She quietly muttered an incantation as she dedicated the gift to her goddess, then expertly gutted the carcass and burned its entrails, adding incense, inhaling the smoke and closing her eyes in meditation.

  Her second sacrifice, to Ogmia, god of dangerous, persuasive words that can enchain, was less gory. She pricked her thumb, wrote in her own blood on a piece of p
apyrus the acronym that represented the secret vow of her sect, then burned the scrip in a small dish. She pulverized the ashes with her thumb, scattered them on a scrap of linen and examined the patterns. They made the rough outline of a crown, a wonderful augury. All the omens, she felt, were good, and she glanced upwards again to the water-stained plaster ceiling of the old temple, seeing with pleasure that a small vapour cloud had formed. It was the usual sign that her magic was working. Nicevenn and Ogmia had come with her and were satisfied, and she happily carried the thought with her as she stepped lightly back to her quarters.

  Carausius was in process of sending military orders across the continent and as his appointed scribe, Guinevia had been busy improving her command of the Gallic and Belgic languages so she could clearly communicate news of the recovered Eagle to potential allies. The emperor came into her scriptorium to collect the latest batch of scrolls and to see a new thing she had created for him, a codex. The creation was a collection of sewn-together pages that were much easier to view than unrolling a long and cumbersome scroll, and Carausius appreciated the convenience of being able to easily view inventories of stores and supplies in the handmade book. He thumbed through it and grunted, then turned his attention to the tools of Guinevia’s trade, picking up an ochre-stained mortar that was used to grind natural pigments. Its pestle stood next to a finished cake of colour that was bound together with gum and Carausius prodded it with his finger, testing the texture.

  Guinevia smiled at his interest and showed Carausius the stylus and the reed pen she used. “This,” she said, displaying the pointed stylus with its opposite, flattened end, “is for writing on wax tablets. That’s just for note-taking, really. You can smooth the wax and erase any mistakes with the flattened end. You put the wax tablets into these wooden frames, they’re hinged so you can write page after page of notes. A good secretary is careful not to clatter them together while the master is speaking. The reed pen is for writing permanent records. You cut a slit or crush the end of the reed so it takes up moisture easier. You dip it in water, then brush it across the cake of colour, or in this case, black. In this horn, I use ink made from iron gall or charcoal or soot mixed with water and acacia gum.”

  Some scribes, she said, used wood as a writing material, employing shavings or even a thin tablet, but for the imperial missives, she used papyrus made from river reeds glued together and smoothed. For an important document that would be a permanent record, she used vellum, the scraped skin of sheep, goat or calf. “I prefer papyrus because you can wipe away mistakes with a wet finger. It takes a knife to scrape away a mistake on vellum, plus a bit of smoothing with pumice stone.”

  Carausius was close enough to catch a scent of the dried lavender Guinevia kept in the chest in which she stored her clothes. He inhaled again to catch more, and detected the dab of crocus oil she had put behind her ears. Her fair hair, he noted, was shining and clean, and the nape of her neck as she bent over the vellum was white and looked invitingly soft. He nodded and cleared his throat, then refocused his thoughts. He handed the priestess a piece of papyrus he had received from a spy in Mainz. There, he knew, on the west bank of the great Rhine river that formed the frontier, the Romans maintained a military base that commanded both the town and a great bridge with a span of 500 paces. This crossing, one of the four bridges along the long length of the river, was a chokepoint in the defence of the empire, and Carausius spent purses of gold to be kept informed of the Romans’ activities there.

  “This report is barely a week old,” he said, passing the document to Guinevia. “The couriers can make good time when they need to. It’s Frankish, and I don’t know that tongue well. Can you read it?”

  “Somewhat, lord,” she replied, taking the note and scanning it. “It says essentially that Maximian is much occupied with the Alemanni on the Danube, and is not expected to return for months. The region is quiet.”

  Carausius grunted. “What I thought.” he said. ‘You have done well, thank you.”

  Guinevia bowed her head and dropped a curtsey. “Thank you, great lord,” she said playfully. Almost without willing it, Carausius reached out and took her hand to raise her up again. His throat ached. As she rose, he scooped her into his arms and tilted up her chin. Her eyes were calm as they looked up into his, her breath wafted sweet and warm against his face “I think we should use the sleeping chamber,” she said quietly, and turned, still holding his hand as she led him across the room.

  The sunlight woke Carausius. “Middle of the afternoon, I must be mad,” he grumbled. He looked at Guinevia’s calm profile as she slept, her shining barley-golden hair gracing the pillow beside him, and felt a surge of unexpected tenderness swamp him. He grunted again, and swung his legs from under the coverlet, flinching as his bare feet hit the frigid stone of the floor, then he was grabbing and dragging on his tunic even as he shouted for his aide Lycaon. “Get the senior officers to me in a half hour. We have some planning to do.”

  The emperor looked around the attentive faces. “First things first,” he said. “Let’s deal with the basics: objective, intelligence, personnel, communications, supply and transport,” he said, ticking off the items on his fingers. “We’re clear on one thing: everyone here knows the objective. We want to force Rome to the negotiating table to give us Britain and Gaul right down to the TransAlpine province. If we turn back Maximian’s legions, we’ll get the territory because they won’t have the reserves to retake it. To them, keeping the barbarians behind the Rhine and Danube is the priority, so they’ll negotiate if we can put Maximian’s western forces out of the picture. That’s the desired result. Next up, it’s vital that we know who’s where and what they’re doing. Intelligence gathering is your job, Allectus. Get your spies and scouts working; you have the gold to do it.

  “Personnel and communications are in the aegis of the tribunes Quirinus and Cragus. Divide the duties between you, and put some extra focus on recruitment. We can’t have too many legionaries. See if you can get experienced troops. If we pay enough, we might lure some auxiliaries across from Belgica and the Rhine frontier, the way we got those German cavalrymen. Barbarian mercenaries will come for the loot. Plus, Maximian doesn’t treat his infantry well, and that could help us to tempt defectors and deserters. It’s always good to get soldiers who are already trained.

  “Suetonius, you’re the quartermaster and you’re responsible for supplies. Talk to me later about that, I have some ideas about iron rations and establishing supply dumps in critical places. We don’t need to have the men humping a month’s worth of rations as well as all their other gear. There’s the usual danger that some will eat it too quickly, and others will steal. We need to control the supplies, it’s more efficient and will give us a little more mobility.

  The emperor looked down at the scribbled list on the tablum before him. “We’ll need to get the coopers busy making staves, too, we have a desperate shortage of barrels for things like salted ham, figs, dried fruit, sardines and salted mackerel, plus salt itself. Also, get the potters making amphorae to store the olive oil and wine, and pack the damned things properly, in sand inside the chests; we’re losing too much to breakage. See to it, too, that we have ample charcoal, the smiths are complaining. The inventory of grain sacks for hard bread and grain is fine, I’m told. After all that, we have not had any decent garum for the boys for months. They want their fish sauce, it’s about the only way to make bland food taste good, it’s useful for morale, so whatever it takes, ship some barrels in, even if you have to use negotiators to get it out of Milan or Massilia.

  “Talking of morale, I’m hearing complaints about the latrines. Make sure they’re properly maintained, get some punishment details working on them. Oh, we’ll be needing one vital small thing, that’s more sponges for the men’s personal latrine use. Hygiene’s of the utmost importance so see to it that the water channels by the latrines are kept fresh for washing those sponges, I want no sickness that we can avoid so easily.

  �
�Lastly, we have transport. Papinius Statius, you see to the baggage trains. I’m inclined not to rely too much on oxen because they slow us down too much, but they’re a necessary evil for the artillery and heavies. Only use them where you have no other options. Get out into the countryside and commandeer wagons and carts that the mules can pull. Mules are best, but they can’t move the heaviest impedimenta and I have a feeling we’ll need siege engines as well as bridging equipment. I want as much mobility as we can arrange, so we’ll try to move some of that big equipment by water. It might mean building some sheer-legs or cranes to load them, so look into making some demountable ones. We also need someone to oversee our river craft. Cenhud the Belge will act as pilot master, but I’ll put a tribune in charge of the infantry on the ships. Scribe, did you get that? Remind me about finding the right tribune for the river craft.”

  The innovative plan, the emperor explained, was to use the great rivers to move troops quickly, as much as 60 miles a day, as he had in the past, only this time he’d employ a hundred or more rivercraft to move a great mass of men and equipment. He could not hope to slip unnoticed past Maximian’s legions, but he could surprise them by swiftly bringing unexpected force and throwing a loop of steel around them before they were properly ready. Marching the troops, even on the great roads that criss-crossed the continent to link Rome to its remotest outposts, limited the legions’ movements to about 30 miles a day or less, and wore out the troops in a prolonged campaign. Using the great waterways would keep the troops fresher and would move them further and faster.