Arthur Imperator

by Paul Bannister

  I woke in my palace in the capital with a sore head and bleary eyes. We had celebrated our ambush of the enemy fleet too well and thoughtlessly. I should have been readying for the attack that would come in six days’ time, not drinking wine with the troops. I was dunking my head under the water spigot in the courtyard when the first courier arrived, spattered with horse spume and mud. The worst news. The Romans were ashore in force at Deal.

  It was the beginning of weeks of a long nightmare. I raced my cavalry towards Dover and lost a tenth of them in a single ambush. Our infantry fared no better against the armoured legions and we fought a bitter rearguard action for days and days as we retreated step by bloodied step down the stones of Watling Street to Londinium. We conceded Richborough and Canterbury and the forefoot of Britain, fought off frenzied flanking attacks through the hills of the North Downs, and we lost a bloody night skirmish at the Medway River but were not yet overrun. Time and again, as we fell back on Londinium we were forced to leave our dead and wounded behind us to the Romans’ limited mercy. That more than anything destroyed my men’s morale and caused our already-depleted army to shrink even more as soldiers abandoned their weapons and their comrades and ran for their homes.

  Finally, we retreated across the bridge to the city at the Walbrook and burned it behind us. A courageous cavalry decurion called Celvinius and a squad of the Chevron elite stayed at the south end of the span and held off the Romans’ furious attacks until we had burned it beyond repair. We knew we could not hold out indefinitely, but I resolved to make the best fist of it until we could raise reinforcements from the British tribes.

  We tried to reinforce the city walls. They might have been good enough to hold off a Saxon horde, but they would be insufficient against a disciplined Roman siege. We made the two public baths along the riverfront into strongpoints and turned the Mithraeum into a hospital. We tore down buildings for fabric to reinforce the Ludgate and its bridge over the Fleet, just below Holborn hill. We added to the defences at the Newgate and its nearby temple, closed down the Cripplegate, the Moorgate, Ealdgate and the Billingsgate and we blocked the Dowgate on the river front.

  Soon, the only entrance to the city was by the stout Aldersgate and Bishopsgate portals on the east hill, which we left open to traffic to encourage the civilian populace to leave. Those gates could be sealed at short notice, and we also needed them to bring in cattle and supplies from the country against the inevitable siege. The prisoners we had taken in the action on the Thames, some hundreds of them, we penned near the cemetery northeast of the city wall. I mentally shrugged. If they escaped, they would be in poor shape anyway, of little use as soldiers. I was not going to risk having them inside the city walls in case of an escape and uprising.

  I ordered the Langbourne and Sherbourne streams dammed to provide us with water to fight fires but left the Walbrook alone, as its flow was sufficient for an emergency water supply and many of the townsfolk relied on it for their own needs. I also ordered all shipping away from the Pool. The smaller craft I sent upstream, the larger had orders to try to escape the estuary and turn south into the Narrow Sea. They would sail west for Portus Chester, where Grimr’s fleet was stationed, along with the depleted legion brought down from Caerleon. I held little hope that they could pass the Romans at the Medway, but it was a chance and I did not want them where they could be used as convenient pontoons to throw an army across the Thames at Londinium. That jogged my memory, and I ordered burned our own makeshift pontoon bridge at Till’s burh.

  In due course, Maximian and his army arrived on the south bank, though the numbers made me suspect he had split his forces and some were attempting to cross the river elsewhere. They camped directly across the Thames, just outside the South Wark and established an advance guard in public buildings along Watling Street and Eormen Way, in full sight of our city wall across the river. And they began to build a bridge.

  Their engineers chose a spot upstream of the old bridge, and began by protecting it from anything we could send downriver by setting pilings into the riverbed and floating a log boom across much of the flow to catch anything destructive. Then, instead of driving the bridge pilings straight down, they rammed their great baulks of timber at an angle against the current, employing it to give the structure more strength, fastened the whole thing together and finally laid a wooden roadbed across its top.

  The project was almost finished in two weeks, a tribute to their engineers and industry, as we bombarded them where we could with missiles. We built outworks where they had to come ashore, full knowing that once they did, we would be overwhelmed in a matter of hours. I spent those two sleepless weeks limping from place to place, for I had been wounded again during our retreat from Dover, encouraging, ordering, chivvying and praising our troops, who were exhausted. It was all wasted effort.

  Maximian coordinated his attacks. The first came from the east, down the Viginal Way and through the burial grounds, where they instantly released the prisoners and attacked our wall. Later I learned that the traitor Allectus had crossed the Thames near its mouth and sailed into Colchester, where he made a pact with the Saxon warlord Skegga, who was still encamped there, waiting for reinforcements from the Rhine.

  In return for assurances that they would be left in peace when the Romans had reconquered Britain, Skegga’s men used their longships to ferry a considerable Roman force across the Thames. That force then marched on Londinium. As they approached the capital, Maximian ordered the new bridge to be finished, and hurled suicide squads across it. In an hour’s fighting, they cleared away our emplacements and were under Londinium’s western walls, too. Then, with both banks of the Thames secured and bridged, they set about reducing our defences.

  The Emperor of the West was an experienced and skilled soldier, and he knew about siege tactics, but he was eager to see my head on a pole, so he risked a frontal assault behind a firestorm. His ballistae threw blazing material over the western walls that were furthest from our water supplies, and his troops controlled the Fleet River access that was so vital against a fire. In a day, we were in desperate condition. More of my men were pulling down buildings to make firebreaks than were manning the walls, and we were hugely outnumbered in any case.

  The Romans rolled a heavy-timbered roof forward against the Ludgate as protection against the rocks we dropped from above, and began swinging an iron-headed ram at the small wicket set into the city gate. No wood could resist that for long, and as the postern cracked and fell, their ballistae fired heavy iron bolts through the creaking gap, smashing aside the brave soldiers who filled it. I ran clumsily to rally troops to the breach, but already their axe men were hacking at the rest of the splintered gate. A dozen Romans died in the breach, but twice as many Britons pooled their blood on the stones with that of their dead enemies.

  The gate fell inwards with a shattering crash and an armoured wall was through in testudo formation, shields held above and around to protect the soldiers like a tortoise shell. Then the street fighting began and flowed west to east. It trapped most of our garrison where they would die, in the forum by the basilica on the east hill. I hacked my way with Exalter northwest, grimly amused to find myself in a moment of quiet leaning panting on my sword by the Cripplegate. My mutilated foot hurt like hell, the arrow that had caught my left armpit in the fighting at the Medway had left that side of my body feeling crippled, too.

  Five of my house guards, Chevrons all of them, were with me and the phalanx of legionaries we had been battling as we retreated were halted warily 30 yards distant, possibly hoping for archers to take on the unenviable task of finishing us. Somebody whistled, and I peered through the smoke at that unlikely sound in a battle. It was the familiar figure of Cragus Grabelius, one of my tribunes, and commander of the cavalry. He looked battered and smoke-blackened but seemed in control. He was standing just inside the big gate, which was still fast and undamaged, but whose small wicket gaped open. Cragus was gesturing urgently. I realized he was not in sight
of the legionaries, growled a command at my Chevrons to hold them, and limped to him.

  “Outside,” he said. “Outside, lord. I have horses.” I stooped and peered through the small gate. A miracle. A troop of British heavy cavalry was there, dragoons who fought on foot or on horse, the soldiers quieting their mounts, which were shying at the smoke and sounds of crashing conflict. There, saddled and bridled, stamped Corvus my war horse, and Nonios his stablemate, a horse named for Pluto, two black Frisian stallions held at their heads by a trooper. Never have I seen such a welcome sight. I stepped back inside the wicket and gestured to the Chevrons.

  “Back here, slowly, then run!” I shouted in the British language to confound the Romans. “Don’t let the bastards see you hurry.” Cragus assessed the retreating line of men.

  “I have four spare remounts,” he said coolly. “One of them will have to double up.”

  We slipped through the wicket, barred it with a baulk of timber and bought time enough to ride away towards the shelter of the cloaking forest. The only incident was encountering two legionaries who may have defected to find loot, but we killed them and rode on. I was surprised to see the decurion Celvinius in that skirmish. I later found that he had survived his heroic defence of the bridge to swim back across the Thames and rejoin the garrison, and I resolved to promote him for gallantry. We crossed the Ty burn and joined the Praetorian Way, headed for Silchester and the safety of its oppidum’s walls. The legionary foot soldiers we sighted as we rode wanted nothing to do with heavy cavalry, nor did we especially wish to join in more combat. I was a fugitive now, not a triumphant lord of war and Imperator. My empire was slipping away.

  XXXIX Hilltop

  Our big horses ate up the miles at a canter and the occasional small town, farms and hamlets went by in a blur of halts and fodder, of watering the horses and snatching food for the men. People were there, too, incredulous at our news of invasion and war; folk who hurried away to bury their valuables and move their beasts to safety. Everywhere we stopped, I ordered able-bodied men to muster with their weapons in the west, at Caros’ Camp, the earthwork fort of the ancients that some premonition years before had caused me to reinforce. Then, I had seen the place as a strongpoint to withstand invasion from the west. Now, it would be a rallying point against the iron Roman tide from the east.

  We diverted to the coast at Portus Chester, to see what news there was of the fleet, and what infantry reserves we had there. With a bitter heart, I decided to leave the port to its fate and to move the foot soldiers back to my western hillfort of Caros’ Camp. I would need all my force in one place to hold the Roman threat and that would be a good place to meet it. I also had half a legion at Caerleon, directly across the Severn Sea from the hillfort, which was once called Cado’s Fort, or Cadbury. It had been renamed for me, as I was called Caros or Carausius when I rebuilt it.

  We burned the port facilities to deny them to the Romans, and I ordered the fleet to the safety of the Severn. They would be based at Abonae, a harbour on the Avon just west of Aquae Sulis. There, if needed, they could shuttle my force across from Caerleon, and importantly would have control over the Severn Sea. The irony was not lost on me when I learned that a second Roman fleet had just been destroyed in those waters, the very place where I was now gathering my forces. It had to be an augury from the gods, and a good one at last.

  So, within the week and on a beautiful spring day, I arrived to inspect the limestone hilltop fortress of Caros’ Camp. I was happy to see that the place was bustling with men and construction. It had been several years since I had ordered it reinforced with stone from Roman fortifications at their nearby lead mines. I thought then that the Camp would be a keystone to the western defences as well as a place of mystical power. Now, it looked like a bastion from which I could either begin the recapture of my kingdom or face my own death.

  The Camp is an ancient earthwork that rises to a commanding height above the rolling countryside around it, and is stepped upwards in four concentric rings of steep-sided ramparts and ditches. Each ring is topped with stout wooden palisades and fighting platforms, and has blind entrances that double back to trap an enemy in blank killing rooms. At the summit of this formidable series of obstacles is a large, smooth plateau that sits behind the rampart of the high stone wall fully 16 feet thick that I had ordered rebuilt. Ironically, we used their Roman-cut stone to make our last defences against them. An attacker who could somehow scramble through four sets of double-gated, defended earth-and-log ramparts would find himself gazing up at that blank stone wall he could not climb, and all the while would be under the deadly lash of missiles directed from the watchtowers and fighting platforms built at close intervals inside it.

  I entered that high ring of limestone through a double gate across a cobbled road twice as wide as a man is tall. It opened onto an enclosed, 18-acre expanse of turf, with stabling for beasts, a small stone palace, temple, military barracks, hall, shielded wells, granary, store houses, smithy and an armoury. The hilltop offers long views of beautiful countryside clear to the Severn Sea 30 miles away, or to the nearer Tor at Glastonbury. On the crest of the hill, a towering structure houses the iron cage, fuel and tinder that can send a blazing message across the land to warn in minutes of invaders and to call the region to arms.

  At the moment, refugees and troops could already be seen streaming in, black lines of folk moving along the Fosse Way seven miles to the west, trekking across the fields, small coppices and larger woodlands that spread like a carpet around the hillfort’s foot. Some folk were dragging carts, some droving their cattle or sheep. The warnings had spread, and the people were seeking refuge. They had been warned to bring as much as they could of their beasts and crops because we were going to denude the area of supplies, to deny them to the enemy. They knew, too, that Caros’ Camp was big enough to accommodate them, and was impregnable against even long siege. One especially large, solid-looking group caught my eye as it moved in a military-style phalanx from the north. I squinted and sighted glints of metal. Helmets, breastplates, weapons. It was a contingent that had made the long march from Chester, had halted in Caerleon and Aquae Sulis and would continue to the old stone fort at Ilchester, just nine short miles from Caros’ Camp.

  In Caerleon, the military group had collected my Guinevia, and with her came news of the tidal wave she had called up the Severn Sea to destroy the Romans. I sent word to the Chester troops to establish themselves at Ilchester, to make the place secure, to fill the granaries and secure the stabling. I ordered our heavy cavalry to Ilchester and gave their commander Cragus some specific orders about the horse herds south of us on the plains where the stone circles stood. Matters are looking better by the day, I thought. Truly the gods are with this place, and I glanced around to see if I could spot a white Rat…

  Guinevia arrived with her new female slaves Jesla and Karay, and with a large coffle of captives I needed for labour on the ramparts. Among them was the Pict bishop who had been captured with the women who now served Guinevia. One of my officers alerted me to the man, whom he said had certain qualities I might find useful, so I sent for him.

  Candless still wore the remnants of a monk’s cowled habit and the broad leather belt from which he had sported a serious-looking sword when he was taken. He was a fair-haired man of middle height, ruddy-complected where he had been working in the fields. He was strongly built and had a piercing, shrewd gaze that met mine in a way that few slaves dared employ. I questioned him, and he told me he was from the Pictish coast, quite near the ancient hillfort of Dunpelder that we had occupied before taking Eidyn’s burh. No, he was not an ordained bishop, despite his claims and the tau-rho cross he wore around his neck. He had been given the robes as a gift by a grateful admirer, he said, and people had chosen to accord him the role, so he had not demurred. He wriggled a little under my questions and admitted he was not actually much of a Christian, but he knew about them and had spoken with some of their churchmen.

  An idea w
as playing in my mind, and I asked this Candless what he knew about the things that motivated Christians. “They have a powerful weapon, lord,” he said. “They help those less fortunate. They routinely take in orphans, they ignore their own health to treat the sick in times of plague, they treat women as equals and even sometimes elect them as leaders.

  “Pagans want the Christians as their friends because they help others, and offer succour even to strangers. They make you part of their family and community, and that makes them popular with the common people who have no rights.” I thought about this, and asked Candless what moved the Christians most. “Their Jesus god,” he said at once. “He told them to do good to others, and they think he is a loving and merciful god. Anything about him is good.”

  This Jesus god, I asked him, isn’t he the one the Romans crucified for insurgency? “He was flogged and nailed up like a slave,” said Candless. “His death is so painful to his followers that they do not use the Roman crucifix as a symbol, but have another version.” He showed me the cross around his neck. It was a curious crucifix with an oval shape above the crosspiece, a sort of long-stemmed letter P crossed at about half height. “This is their lord’s sign,” he explained. “It is two Greek letters and it means ‘The Cross Saves.’ They believe that if you follow the Jesus teachings, you will go to the Christian feasting halls and will have a good life after death, a life much better than this one.”

  This gave me a flood of ideas. If I had managed to rally Britain’s tribes behind the symbol of a lost Eagle, maybe I could rally Britain’s Christians, and there were plenty of them, to fight behind a Jesus symbol. I would need something like the crucifix, or Jesus’ possessions, or something important. “What do the Jesus followers prize?” I asked this rogue bishop.

  Candless sighed. “Pedlars travel the world selling feathers from the wings of angels, churchmen claim that only they have pieces of the one true cross, or the original holy bush from which the Romans made the crown of thorns. I have been offered the fingernail clippings of saints, wax from the ears of Jesus’ mother, a piece of the linen with which the whore Magdalene wiped Jesus’ face and a miraculous, still-fresh fish that was one of those that fed the 5,000. It’s a whole industry, and the fish went bad, too.”