Arthur Britannicus

by Paul Bannister

  Aboard his flagship Minerva, Carausius grabbed the arm of the shipmaster and pointed a mile ahead of the struggling Roman squadron. “Where has that come from?” he demanded. A dense sea fog was creeping across the water, promising concealment for the west-fleeing Romans who were still running with the racing tide. “How can that be?” he swore. He’d managed to trap the Romans between his warships, the shore and the teeth of the deadly Bill that lay in their path, and now a fog might let them escape him. “Where in the name of Manannan did that come from?” he asked the sky.

  On the shore, Claria knew. She had watched in awe as the black-robed Druid priestess of the witch goddess of the Wild Hunt worked her spells. The slaves were huddled away in fear, the palace steward, pale faced, had waved the retainers back to a safe place but the pagan priestess was oblivious to it all. Almost unseeing, she stooped and took up a handful of sandy soil from the cliff top. She stepped forward towards the edge, and threw it high into the wind, causing a small haziness as it was snatched away. Her eyes were rolled back in her head, perspiration stood out on her forehead, a low ululation came from her mouth and her body shuddered with effort. Finally, eyes closed, she threw both her hands forward, opening her fingers as she released her two-fisted spell. The silver pentagram ring of Myrddin seemed to pulse and glow in the misted light and the slaves later swore to each other that sparks had crackled from her fingertips. Guinevia slumped over, hands on knees, exhausted. She remained still for minutes, eyes closed, breathing hard, before she finally straightened her back. Her eyes were unfocused and it took minutes more before she could view the result, and success, of her enchantments.

  The sea fog she had conjured rose out of the depths ruled by Manannan mac Lir. Spreading like thick smoke, it cloaked the ocean around the claw-like promontory whose tailings stretched far into the strait. Inside the cold, near-impenetrable fog, the waters of the strait clashed in a thrashing maelstrom that told of the furious power of the tide. Above the heaving turbulence of the water, the fog by contrast held an eerie stillness, and no current of air seemed to move. Water droplets waited to bead and condense on the rigging and spars of the ships that entered the enveloping gloom, and the churning white and green waves thrashed above rocky underwater teeth that were waiting to snatch the lives of mariners driven by the tide into the confusing, concealing dimness.

  Carausius punched his fist into his opposite, open palm. “Got the bastards,” he exulted. “That sea fog is exactly what we want. They’re caught, they have no local pilots, they don’t know and they can’t see. They’re going onto that promontory blind. It’s happened to me like this once before. We trapped pirates on a bill just like this years ago, on this very coast.”

  He assessed matters. The triremes still outside the fog bank were trying to fight off the British sea wolves while the barges scurried past, but the warships were being frustrated by the skilled British crews. Their vessels were relatively undamaged from the occasional ramming and the crews had successfully fended off all the Romans’ boarding attempts with their long poles. The frustrated fighting parties that crowded the invaders’ decks were paying a price, They were under bombardment from the Britons’ heavy javelins, arrows and egg-sized, leaden slingshot missiles, and the dead, dying and wounded were piling up, clogging the open ships and hampering the crews who worked them. The British orders to kill officers and steersmen with the accurate ballistae was effective too, evidenced by the erratic wakes left by some warships and the bloodied steerboards at their sterns.

  As Carausius watched, a prefect in a splendid coat of polished mail took a bodkin bolt square in the chest. The armour wasn’t proof against the heavy arrow with its needle point nose. Sparks like those struck in a forge flew from the links of mail, and the man was hurled backwards. The bodkin head and several inches of shaft protruded from the prefect’s back, having passed right through his mail and his body. The legate nodded grimly. The ballistae were accurate and immensely powerful. That officer would take no further part in any actions.

  A furlong’s distance away, two triremes were ablaze from end to end, caught by lobbed buckets of Greek Fire, and worse, terrible damage was being inflicted on the lightly-built troopships, whose sides were splintering under the deadly fire of the catapult projectiles. One large river rock, fired head-on, hit exactly on the bow of a troop-carrying barge. It struck the stem with so much force that the strakes of the whole boat opened like flower petals, the green sea poured in, and the barge went down in a spread of planking.

  The fight, Carausius saw, was well on its way to being won, but he’d soon have to call off his sea wolves because the eerie mist that hid the teeth of the bill were getting closer. He hung on to the last, determined to keep the Romans headed where he wanted them to go. Finally, he gave the signal to turn away for the safety of the open strait. Maximian saw the British manoeuvre and sighed with relief. He could vanish into the sea fog and still have enough troops to establish a beachhead or even capture a harbour and await reinforcements. He signalled his flotilla onwards, ordered his rowers to pull harder, and his trireme, boosted by the sea race, charged unknowing into the fog that concealed the ship-killing rocks.

  XXX. Constantius

  Maximian didn’t die, but he lost his newly-built fleet and his hopes of a glorious re-taking of Britain, at least for the time being. Not even half of his warships escaped the deadly teeth of the coastal rocks, and some that did had been so damaged in the sea battle, they worked their seams open in the heavy swells and sank anyway. It was a desperate struggle for the remnant of the fleet to rescue survivors, or to haul as many of the foundering troopships to safety as they could, and when the mysterious sea fog had cleared, screaming hordes of gulls arrived to feast on the awful things that floated in the sea wrack.

  The emperor returned to Gaul with blood in his eye and fury in his heart. For a month, his slaves and those around him lived in trembling fear of his rages, but Maximian eventually calmed and began planning his next campaigns. A lull in the Alemanni incursions along the Rhine border meant he was able to pull back six of the 18 legions stationed there. “Put them on bandit duty,” he instructed his tribune Crassus. “Clean up the Bagaudae insurgents in eastern Gaul, then quietly move a couple of legions close to Bononia. I want to surprise those bastards who stole our fleet.” Maximian knew that northern Gaul would never be subjugated while his enemy could cross at will to reinforce his troops from the sea with all the reserves of the Britons’ island. He would put down the bandits in the countryside, seize Carausius’ headquarters in Gaul and crush the Gallic rebels. Only then would he ready another invasion fleet for Britain. The Roman began gathering bullion, troops and supplies. He would first destroy the stone warship that was the sea fort of Bononia. Building a second fleet could come later.

  In Britain, The Expected One was enjoying his good fortune. Carausius–Arthur wore the circlet of a Roman emperor and the badge of a noble British jarl. The populace was at peace, pride was restored, the golden age his coins promised seemed to have arrived. He had recovered the long-lost Eagle, and brought down the gods’ favour and had defended the island from the tyrants who had extorted them so heavily while treating them like third class provincials. For the first time, a British ruler had pacified and unified the country, built trade and demonstrated that the nation could withstand the war eagles of Rome.

  Britain’s own legions, its navy, the fortifications along the Saxon Shore and the watch beacons up the eastern coast meant that any who came from Germania or Saxony must come as peaceful settlers, not as raiders. Even the Picts were quiet since the tribune Cragus had taken the Eagles beyond the Wall to punish the northern tribes and bring back hundreds of slaves and a score of their chieftains’ sons as hostages. The Celts, too, were subdued. A legion sent from Chester had worked with several squadrons of the fleet against Hibernian sea raiders in the northwest. In a shockingly swift campaign, they had trapped, crucified and enslaved enough of the wild men of the western island that they w
ould not soon break the British Peace.

  Carausius also ordered improvements to the fabric of his nation, rebuilding ruined roads and bridges, channelling clean water into the towns and restoring long-neglected temples to the old gods. In return, those deities smiled with good harvests, good weather and a lack of plague. The coinage of silver and gold was so fine that merchants from as far as Phoenicia came, confident in the exchanges and eager to trade. Even the emperor Diocletian in distant Nicomedia turned a blind eye to importers doing business with the rebel province because where else could one obtain such fine woollen goods, not to mention the other luxuries from the far north?

  Against this golden prospect of British peace and plenty, the junior emperor Maximian brooded in Gaul over his defeat by the usurper, and was putting his plans into action. He gave his best general, his adopted son Constantius Chlorus, some specific orders. First, a force was sent into the delta of the Rhone river, to secure the eastern marches against the Franks on whom Carausius might call for aid. When they were in place, half a Roman legion was sent to move swiftly down the rivers Aisne, Oise and Somme in oared boats, travelling on the spring floods as fast as a cantering horse. Two thousand more men came in sea barges, creeping unheralded down the coast from Ostend to Bononia, and no spies successfully slipped out of the Belgic seaport to carry warnings to Gaul, although a handful tried.

  They were crucified to die slowly at the roadsides where they were caught breaking the emperor’s embargo, setting a vivid example for others tempted to disobey imperial edicts. South of Ostend, another full legion of Maximian’s troops marched up the old emperor Agrippa’s fine high road to Bononia, screened by cavalry and confident in their numbers.

  The combined strike was lightning fast and came at wolf light. The ship-borne squads of artillerymen and foot soldiers who had arrived several miles along the coast had landed unnoticed after dark and moved quietly into position, secreting themselves and a battery of ballistae in coastal woods a short distance west of Bononia. They emerged when the trotting cavalry arrived at daylight and trapped the British squadron in harbour, just as Maximian had planned.

  He had explained matters to Constantius, who was known as Chlorus, ‘The Pale,’ for his ultra-white skin that never seemed to take a tan. “I’ve had spies’ reports and sketches for weeks, and this is what we’ll do,” he said, tracing with his forefinger on a sketched map of the citadel of Bononia. “The fortress is on a bluff behind the entrance to the harbour, and it guards the harbour well, but they’ve missed something. They haven’t properly defended the harbour entrance, which is about 100 paces from the quayside. All that’s where the ships come into harbour is a small fortification, enough for maybe ten men, and we can seize that easily enough. We also won’t have much trouble cutting Bononia off from the hinterland, either. The place relies on being supplied and reinforced from the sea, from Britannia and as long as it is, we probably won’t be able to invest it. So we need to command the harbour.”

  Maximian glanced up at Chlorus, who nodded. “Now, here,” the emperor continued, jabbing at the map, “is the sea entrance. It’s about 300 paces wide, and ships can only enter and leave at high tide, when even the deepest water is not much, about the height of two men. At low tide, the harbour is virtually dry. I want to stop that entrance, block it with a barrier and stop all traffic through it. If they cannot resupply the citadel from the straits, if we can isolate them, we have them.”

  Chlorus managed matters well, the attack was swift, and the surprise worked. The Roman artillerymen emerged when the tide was falling, the cavalry protected them from the garrison’s foot soldiers and a detachment of chosen men made short work of seizing and manning the small fortification at the harbour entrance. By the time the tide was high enough for the ships in the harbour to sail out, it was too late. The artillery was in place commanding the sea approach from one side of the entrance, the fort on the other was in Roman hands. The British ships were bottled up under the threat of the rock-throwing ballistae. The Bononia commander hesitated to act, thinking this might just be a raid, and the ships were safe enough under the walls of the fortress. Matters changed rapidly.

  Within a few more hours, the land around the citadel was swarming with legionaries who had force-marched that day a full 40 miles up the great road. They reinforced the ship-borne troops who had sailed in along the coast and provided security for the hundreds of engineers who drove a double row of pilings across the tidal entrance.

  Before the stout fence was even partway complete, thousands of soldiers and slaves laboured to fill the gap between the pilings with rocks and shingle. No ship could cross that mole, and the Romans fortified and garrisoned the ends so that no land attack could take and destroy it. While the sappers were pushing the cork into the bottleneck of the harbour, a corps of engineers was readying the siegeworks. They first dug a canal trench to divert water from the Liane river, and created a moat around the land side of the city. This they reinforced with two more walls, a tower-fortified double rampart and ditch to contain the besieged and another wall behind their own army to protect themselves against any relieving attack from Gallic or British land forces.

  This defensive wall was a maze of mantraps and misleading blind alleys backed up with a minefield of the spiked coltrops that crippled horses. Within two weeks, the city and port were solidly isolated, the catapults were established and their missiles were crunching away at the city walls. Approach trenches were snaking forward and ramps and siege towers were well along in construction.

  Constantius Chlorus had the garrison trapped, but he knew that many of them could be persuaded to defect to his forces, so he wanted to keep casualties low. The ballistae engineers were busy lobbing firebombs and boulders into the besieged citadel when he called for a parley. Lucius Cornelius, the garrison commander, knew the general of old, and came out himself to talk. The meeting was curiously cordial. “Look, old friend,” the wily Constantius said, “I want to save your ground pounders. I need them on the Rhine. Surrender and they can redeem themselves. They’ll have to re-take the Sacramentum and swear allegiance again to the Augusti Maximian and Diocletian. We’ll let bygones be bygones. I can argue with my boss that Carausius seduced them and all will be well enough for them. It’s for the best. Just look where you are. You can’t get out, the Gauls won’t help you, Carausius can’t get enough troops together in time to save you and you can’t sail away.”

  He paused and looked pointedly at the bustling sappers. “You know how it works,” he said sympathetically. “We have the ramps almost finished to storm the place, and even if that fails, we’ll be through the walls in a week with the artillery. Why sacrifice the foot sloggers?” The general looked candidly at Lucius. “You and your senior officers will likely be busted for a year or two, but at least you’ll walk away alive, and you’ll save your men. It isn’t a bad bargain.”

  Constantius was persuasive, and the besieged commander could see the truth of what he said. He’d carried out sieges himself and he knew how inevitable was the result of a well-conducted one. Lucius took a short time to think matters through but honestly could see no other viable way without losing a lot of lives that would be useful to Rome. His army career was damaged, but maybe if he proved cooperative…..

  He walked back to the big general and clapped his fist across his chest in salute. “You have it, if my men take their weapons with them and they stay in their own units. No crucifixions, no slavery for our troops. You can have the citizens - do what you want with them.” The agreement was made and the next morning, brass horns blaring, the garrison marched out to a reshaped future, one in which they would be fighting for another Caesar.

  Constantius sighed with relief and gave orders to begin the lengthy business of dismantling the siege works. What he had not told the gullible Lucius was that he was under Maximian’s explicit orders to give generous terms to the Bononia garrison to encourage the rebels in Britain to surrender too. “If they see we can be magnanimous t
o a defeated foe, they’ll not fight as desperately as they would if their lives were on the line,” he mused. “Ah well, get on with dismantling this stuff, we’ll probably need it on the other side of the narrows.”

  He went back to the garrison mansio where he had a pretty, dark-eyed Gaulish girl waiting for him, as ordered. Spoils of war, he thought happily. He hoped she struggled, a little. It was always more enjoyable when they tried to resist, and they probably secretly enjoyed the split lip and the bruising, anyway. He licked his own lips, remembering. He thought he might take another walk around the slave pens tomorrow, see what other women were in there. The surrender had gone well.

  That evening, at high tide, the surge of the sea broke down the mole across the mouth of the harbour. Constantius wasn’t surprised. His engineers had been warning him for a week that it could collapse, but he didn’t want to be seen reinforcing the barrier in case it gave the besieged some new ideas. If the garrison had waited a single day, they could have escaped or been reinforced from Britain.

  The weeping women in the slave pens and the few dozen Gauls who were to be crucified at the dockside for trading with the enemy, looked bitterly at the surging water. If only they’d been allowed to hold out for another day. One of those already hanging from a crucifix was especially bitter. The garrison commander Lucius Cornelius was writhing in agony from the flogging, from the pain of the nails through his wrists and heels and the sheer humiliation of being hung out naked on his own fortress wall. That morning, he’d been more shocked than anyone when a squad of Constantius’ legionaries had surrounded him as he marched out of the gates at the head of his men. One or two of his soldiers had growled, but they had fallen quiet as a detachment of Roman archers raised their bows.