Britannia: Part I: The Wall

by Richard Denham

  Flavius Coelius, the weapons master of the legion, stood beaming as his boy received the scarf of a tribune. There were tears in his eyes and he wished his Marcia could have been there to see this day. The horns blasted and the drums rattled and the Adjutant read out the four names and their new ranks. The praeses sat on his campaign chair on a raised dais at one end of the parade ground, the cornicines arranged around him and the eagle glittering at his shoulder. He said a few quiet words to each man – Justinus Coelius, the tribune; Paternus Priscus, the first centurion; Leocadius Honorius and Vitalis Celatius the circitors and then, as they took their places in their respective ranks, Ammianus looked at his legion. The tribunate were, as the praeses could have predicted, haughty in the extreme and they shifted imperceptibly as Justinus stood among them. Across the field, Flaminius grunted out of the corner of his mouth to Paternus, ‘Don’t let this go to your head, son; I’ll be watching.’ It was just as well that the praeses could not hear the hissed comments from the ranks of the circitors directed at the new boys.

  ‘VI Victrix,’ Ammianus shouted so that his voice carried to every corner of the camp and drifted across the Ussos to the smoky streets beyond. ‘Today you have new heroes among you; you who are heroes already. Behold, your heroes. Behold your eagle. In the name of the Emperor!’ and he raised his hand. The thousand swords hissed clear of their scabbards while the spearmen raised their weapons high. The archers pulled their bowstrings back to their chests, though their arrows stayed in the quiver. When the praeses’ hand came down, sword blades clashed on the oval shields in a rhythmic chant that carried to the far mountains and must have reached the Wall itself. Then the other noise started, the cornicines of the legion braying with their terrifying screams and the deep-throated barritus from three thousand voices – ‘Victrix! Victrix! Victrix!’

  It was a little thing but it was Ammianus’ own and he was just letting the world know who ruled it.

  The lamps burned low that night. It had been a day of feasting and celebration and even though Ammianus doubled the guard to the north to watch the night roads and the far horizon, the legion relaxed and drank and ate their fill. So it was early morning before Flavius made his way to the new quarters of his son, in the tribunes’ block south of the Principia. The guards at the doorway saluted him. He was the hastiliarus, the weapons master and every soldier of the VI knew him by sight.

  ‘Look at this,’ Flavius smiled, throwing his arms wide at the sumptuous surroundings. All his working life as a soldier, he had slept in a contubernia, the eight man unit who ate, slept, fought and died together on some far field. Their beds were hard and unyielding, their food equally so. Under stone or under leather, everywhere was cold, grey and grim. It was the way it had always been. But here, things were different. Justinus’ bed was wooden, with a soft mattress and pillows. He had a couch to eat on and low tables of marble brought from Italia. The oil lamps had laughing faces carved in Graecia and the metal ewers, glinting in the half light had the bears of some German forest chasing each other through trees of beaten bronze.

  ‘I can’t quite get used to it,’ Justinus poured a goblet of wine for his father. ‘I’m not sure I ever will.’

  ‘How many slaves have you got?’ the older man asked, taking the cup.

  ‘One would be too many,’ Justinus said.

  ‘Ah, no,’ Flavius laughed. ‘One is civilized. I don’t know what I would do without old Rialbus.’ He looked his only son in the face. ‘What’s this all about?’ he asked, ‘really, I mean?’

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’ Justinus said. ‘We’re heroes of the Wall – Pat, Leo, Vit. We’re all that stands between you and certain annihilation.’ He gestured with the ewer, sending a trail of golden wine spraying through the lamp light.

  ‘Justinus …’ Flavius was looking for the words. They wouldn’t come.

  ‘I know!’ the Tribune bellowed, rounding on his father. ‘And I don’t like it any more than you do. Oh, I’ve heard it already, the sniggers, the whispers and I’ve only been in post for a day. Three weeks ago,’ he paced the room, the ewer still in his hand, ‘I was a circitor in a godless shithole on the edge of nowhere. I had nothing to worry about but reveille, training and seeing that the camp had enough food. Today … today, I am second-in-command of a legion that holds the north for the Emperor. I have four slaves to answer your earlier question and, on parchment at least, six thousand men under my command.’ He looked at his father and knew he had lost the old man already. ‘Out there,’ he pointed to the north, ‘are massing more men than you and I have ever seen together in one place. By spring – or perhaps by tomorrow – I don’t know, they will be able to swallow the VI Victrix whole. We haven’t faced a threat like this in three hundred years. Look around you, Pa. Do you see anybody in this entire bloody city who knows what the hell to do?’

  Flavius looked at the man who had once been the boy swinging from his outstretched right arm. He would give that right arm to help him now, because he saw that Justinus was as lost as he was. And he had never seen that look before; never thought he would ever see it. It was etched on his boy’s face. It was a look of fear.

  The snow set in early that year and as the little cavalry patrol clattered north out of Eboracum, flurries of it were stinging Paternus’ face and powdering his hair. It had to be said, a Roman four-pronged saddle was not the primus pilus’ natural habitat and he bounced on the back of his chestnut with every roll of the horse’s body. Sometimes he could be comfortable for as many as three or four of the animal’s strides and then he would lose the rhythm again and would jar against the leather. He tried not to think too much about how many thousand more strides he would have to endure. They had left camp a little before dawn, cloaks over their mail tunics and helmets buckled to their chins. Only Paternus rode bareheaded, because he wanted to see everything clearly, not to have to peer under an iron rim or over cheek plates. It had been nearly four weeks now since he had kissed his wife and son goodbye and gone out with his little hunting party and already, in a curious way, their faces were growing dim in his memory. He knew he would know them, though, just from a turn of a cheek or a curl at the nape of a silken neck; the little things that makes a beloved wife or precious child unique in a husband’s and father’s eye and he watched carefully every village they rode through, moving north.

  He spoke the local dialect well enough to get by. These were the old lands of the Brigantes as far north as the Wall and the patrol’s job was to see just how near the Wall they could get before they sighted the war bands that had killed the Dux Britannorum and wiped out his command. Everywhere they went, Paternus asked the same questions. Had anyone seen a woman and her son, from the North? She was dark haired, a beauty with eyes to drown in and a boy with hair of gold. They were not quite the words he used but they were the words burned into his soul as he rode on through the snow.

  The patrol had been forbidden to ride more than a day’s march away. The nine horses were more precious to Decius Ammianus than the men on their backs and he would not risk them being away overnight. Overnight meant they were dead and the praeses had no more men to send after them. They were at the edge of their limit when they reached Derventio. The fort had been abandoned and the canabae under the shadow of its walls was a shell of ash and blackened timbers under the snow.

  ‘I remember this place,’ the Ala semisallis said, hunched in his saddle against the cold. ‘Tertillo the jeweller lived here.’ He looked up to the snow-filled clouds on the treeless horizon. ‘I wonder who’s wearing his trinkets now.’

  It was the same wherever they rode. The painted ones and their allies had been and gone. Villages lay burnt and forgotten, temples smashed and levelled to the ground. Jupiter, Mithras, Sol Invictus, their stone and marble likenesses lay in pieces, half-buried in the earth. Villages still standing were full of frightened, surly people. Yes, there had been a woman and a child who had passed by not three weeks ago, but she was flaxen haired and the child was a girl. On the
other hand, fleeing refugees with tales of horror from the North had seen many women, many sons. Most of their husbands and fathers were dead; they had no one looking for them. Had the great and virtuous centurion tried Eboracum, some of the villagers asked. He would be bound to find them there.

  Paternus was still out with his patrol that Jupiter’s day, trailing the Ussos to the east. The wind was bitter, slicing through the men who guarded the main gate of Eboracum as they leaned on their spears and prayed for the arrival of the relief. A single rider was trotting along the road from the north, his wolfskin hood over his head and his hands encased in rabbit skins. He breathed in the smoke of the cluster of huts on the vallum and urged his battered pony on at the thought of a fire and hot food.

  ‘Io, the gate!’ he called, reining in and cupping his hands.

  ‘Get lost, Brigantus,’ the sentry shouted down to him. ‘We’re not open.’

  ‘I am an Arcanus,’ the man shouted back in Latin. ‘I have an urgent message.’

  ‘Who for?’ the guard wanted to know.

  ‘I think his name’s Paternus. He’s a semisallis. Don’t ask me which cohort.’

  Leocadius was circitor of the watch that day and the name of his friend brought him out of the guard room even though he was doing particularly well with the dice at the time and men owed him money. He hauled his cloak over his shoulder and stared down at the little man on his shaggy pony. ‘I know you, don’t I?’ he called.

  The little man recognized him too. ‘You do, sir. My name is Dumno.’

  ‘What is it you want with Paternus?’ Leocadius asked.

  ‘For his ears only, sir,’ Dumno said. ‘It’s about his family.’

  CHAPTER V

  Dumno told his story between gulps of wine and huge mouthfuls of food. The man smelt from his days on the road and he freely confessed he could not remember when he ate last. As for the wine, excellent – Iberian, wasn’t it? It certainly made a change from the half-frozen ditchwater he had been living on for the past few days. He was sitting in the circitors’ quarters in the south-east corner of the camp, stuffing his face and wiping the grease from his chin. For all he knew, he was eating dog, but he was past caring about that. ‘So it’s the same all over,’ he spoke with a mouthful of food, ‘Rape, murder. You name it. I met this bloke from Caractonium way. He says the garrison there mutinied – killed their officers and went over to the barbarians.’

  ‘No!’ Leocadius leaned back and put his goblet down. ‘That’s not possible.’

  ‘I heard it with my own ears,’ Dumno assured him. ‘How many men have you got here, masters? Four thousand? Five?’

  ‘On parchment, six,’ Leocadius told him. ‘In reality, less than three.’

  ‘What? Actually here in Eboracum, or including the lads on the frontier?’

  Leocadius did not know.

  ‘Not that there is a frontier now, of course. You’re it.’

  ‘No Wall?’ Vitalis frowned, staring the arcanus in the face.

  Dumno shrugged. ‘Oh, the Wall’s there all right. You know, stones, mortar. All you haven’t got is men to hold it. That was then.’

  ‘Tribune!’ somebody barked from the corner and the handful of circitors lounging around the room stood to attention, Leocadius and Vitalis among them. Justinus strode into the building, his sagum wrapped around him against the cold. Dumno struggled to his feet and only then realised just how much he had eaten and drunk. He bowed his head to Justinus and stifled a belch.

  ‘Why wasn’t I told this man was here?’ the tribune asked, raking the men around him with his eyes.

  ‘It’s my fault, master,’ Dumno said. ‘I hadn’t eaten. These gentlemen have been kindness itself.’

  Justinus ignored the others. ‘The officer at the gate tells me you have a message for Paternus,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right, sir, I have,’ the arcanus said.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Er … for his ears only, sir,’ Dumno mumbled.

  Justinus looked at the man’s bowl, wiped so clean with his bread it might have been brand new. ‘Well, now you’ve enjoyed our hospitality,’ he said, ‘You can give me your news. Come with me.’ He looked at Leocadius and Vitalis. ‘To your duties, gentlemen,’ he said.

  Even sounds like a bloody officer, Leocadius thought to himself. ‘We’d like to hear this, sir,’ Vitalis said. ‘Paternus is one of us.’

  One of us. The events of the last few weeks had driven a wedge through that. The four men who had run from the Wall were separated now by rank and fortune. But were they? Would they not forever be bound by that one chance factor – that they had been out hunting when the world turned upside down? Could a bond like that ever be truly broken?

  ‘As you please,’ Justinus said and he led the way to his quarters.

  The green swirling mist that cloaks the northern moors in winter was thicker than Paternus could remember. Once more he was on the road with the cavalry patrol, looking for his loved ones. The droplets of water that had condensed on his helmet rim had turned to ice and he could barely feel his hands around the reins. Staring into the fog was becoming troublesome; in its green depths he started to see shapes that could not be there – pray Sol Invictus they were not there, because the monsters that peopled the murk were not for human eyes to see. He blinked and shook his head. His patient horse plodded on, slipping a little here and there as its hooves clashed on the ice under the snow.

  The semisallis who was the real leader of the patrol suddenly reined in and raised his hand. ‘There,’ he said, in a voice dropped to a whisper. The others followed his pointing finger to a hollow in the ground ahead. Smoke was drifting upward, mixing with the fog to give it a smell of burning wood with an acrid overlay of seared fat. They could all hear now the hum of conversation.

  ‘It’s a village,’ the semisallis murmured.

  Paternus shook his head. ‘A bivouac,’ he said. ‘I see tents.’

  He was right. They were low to the ground, sheets of leather fastened together and lashed to the hard earth with ropes. Outside the largest of them, a single wood fire struggled to stay alight in the deep gloom. Paternus felt his heart thump. He blinked, then rubbed his eyes. It couldn’t be, could it? A beautiful, dark-haired woman was stirring something in a pot over the fire and the smell of stewing rabbit was suddenly overwhelmingly on the light breeze that fanned across to the cold, hungry soldiers.

  ‘Flavia!’ he blurted out and rammed his heels into his horse’s flanks.

  ‘No!’ the semisallis yelled. ‘Jupiter highest and best! Patrol, swords!’ Nine spathas shot clear in the morning and the cavalry broke into a canter, four to the left and five to the right, to encircle the little camp in the hollow. The semisallis did not have a single horse archer with him and if this was going to be a fight it was going to be bloody.

  ‘Flavia!’ Paternus had bounced down from the saddle and was running across the open ground, his boots crunching on the frosty ground. A man stepped into his path with a sickle in his hand, but the centurion barely saw him as he batted him aside and reached the girl. She flung herself backwards, grabbing a little boy as she did so, staring wild-eyed at the mad Roman who was running at her. Paternus stopped, his arms dangling by his side in disappointment and shock. ‘I … I’m sorry,’ he muttered. ‘I … thought you were somebody else.’ The girl was beautiful under the thatch of dark, curling hair, but she was not his Flavia. Paternus was still looking at the little boy, so like his own, trying to bury his face into his mother’s dress and did not hear the man with the sickle running up behind him, the weapon flashing silver in the dim light. The semisallis acted first. A cavalry spatha was not known for its throwing properties, but he hurled his anyway and the heavy blade tumbled through the damp air before thudding, point-first into the scythesman’s back. The man grunted, his lung ruptured and blood spurted out from his mouth as he went down. Paternus stepped back as the corpse fell forward and he raised his hand.

  ‘Enough!’ he bellowed. �
��We’re friends.’

  ‘Some friends,’ a man grunted, kneeling beside the dead man.

  ‘We are the VI Victrix,’ Paternus told them, ‘Out from Eboracum. Who are you?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter who we are,’ the man stood up as the cavalrymen rode in closer, their swords still at the ready. The semisallis dismounted and wrenched the spatha out of the dead man’s back. ‘What do you care, Roman?’

  Paternus looked at the man’s face, hatred and fear etched in every line. He wanted to tell him that he was not a Roman. His grandfather had fought with the Alamanii cavalry from the forests of Germany to the far north of the Empire’s edge. That his father, Tacitus, had had little love for the Empire either. But life to these runaways was not that complicated. ‘They are Roman tents,’ the centurion said. ‘What are you doing with them?’

  ‘Sheltering,’ said the man. ‘The men who put them up don’t need them now.’ He pointed through the fog to a rocky outcrop on which a clump of oaks clung to the ledge. Bodies dangled from ropes along the boughs. Roman bodies, hanging in the fog. Paternus and the semisallis left the smoky hollow and crossed to them. The corpses were stiff and blue, the eyes of most of them bulging from the tight grip of the noose, their tongues protruding black. At least the ravens and the Attacotti had not reached them, if there was any dignity in that thought.

  ‘We didn’t do that,’ the man shouted. ‘It’s how we found them. We didn’t think they’d mind if we borrowed their tents.’

  The bodies were naked, so it was not possible to know where the dead men had come from. Every weapon, every vestige of armour had been taken. Paternus turned back to the woman he had frightened moments ago. ‘Where are you from?’ he asked.

  For the briefest of moments she looked at the man with her. ‘We are Votadini,’ she said. The man opened his mouth to say something but she stopped him with a glance. There was a power there that Paternus had not seen before in a native woman.