The Amber Road

by Harry Sidebottom

  And he was not going into exile. When he reached the comitatus, he would petition the emperor. It might be Gallienus would give him permission to retire to Sicily. Of course, the villa was Julia’s. But it was where his sons were. It was where his wife was. He missed his books, the baths, the garden with the view of the Bay of Naxos. Perhaps he and Julia could make things better, make them more what they had once been between them. Perhaps in a sense he was returning home, returning to protect his wife and his sons.

  It had not been that difficult to arrange, but Kadlin knew the risk she ran. The leaving feast continued in the hall. The drink was flowing. Most were drunk. When she saw him go, she had told her serving women what she wanted them to do. They had not been unwilling. They had taken his closest companions away; most likely taken the Suanian and the Hibernian to their beds. Was that what she wanted for herself? She was bathed, perfumed. She had dressed her hair and chosen her clothes with care. It was for him, not for her husband. Did she want him to take her to bed? Throughout her life she had overheard the whispers that she was no better than a whore. The whispers that had started all those winters ago were his fault, and perhaps they were true. If she was caught, that was what Oslac would assume, what everyone would assume. If that was what Dernhelm wanted, she would not be in a position to resist. Was that what she was doing, giving herself no choice, putting the choice, and all its ramifications and guilt, on him? No, she told herself, that was not the reason. He was leaving, and before he left he must be told. Most likely there would never be another chance.

  Muffled in the big, hooded cloak, she slipped into the outlying hall. It was empty. His hearth-troop were still drinking in the great hall. She climbed the stairs. Light showed around the door. She lifted the latch and went into the bedchamber.

  The shutters were open. Dernhelm had been sitting, staring out at the dark trees. He twisted to his feet, hand reaching for the hilt of the sword propped against his chair.

  She pushed back her hood.

  ‘Kadlin.’

  She walked right up to him. His hands fell to his sides. She touched his forearm. It was wanting you that made me sick. The line of poetry came into her mind.

  ‘Were you going to leave without seeing me?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’ He spoke quickly, but she heard the uncertainty.

  ‘I thought you –’ He stopped, obviously unsure what to say. ‘– With your daughter being betrothed tonight, I thought you might not want to see me.’

  She took her hand from his arm, stepped back, suddenly furious. He was a fool; all men were fools. ‘Aelfwynn will marry for duty, as I did.’

  He stood irresolute, thrown by her sudden change. ‘Does Oslac treat you well?’

  ‘Yes.’ Was that all he could say? She could not imagine how, coming here, she had desired him.

  ‘I was sorry to hear your son Starkad was one of those taken in Gaul.’

  She wanted very much to hit him. If she had been a man, she would have knocked him down. Her sister would have knocked him down. Starkad was in Gaul. His son was in Gaul, and very likely this man, his father, had ensured he would die there.

  ‘May the gods hold their hands over you, see you safely back to your wife and sons.’ She turned to go.

  ‘Kadlin …’

  She stopped.

  He held his hand out. She did not take it.

  ‘Kadlin, you know I never wanted to go, never wanted to leave you.’

  ‘I know.’ She managed to smile. ‘I never wanted you gone.’

  He moved to put his arms around her.

  ‘No.’ She stepped back.

  He looked hurt.

  ‘Life has not been kind to us,’ she said. ‘Now, I must return.’

  She did not look back. Outside, in the dark night, she began to cry.

  Our lips had smiled to swear hourly

  That nothing should split us – save dying –

  Nothing else …

  Some lovers in this world

  Live dear to each other, lie warm together

  At day’s beginning; I go by myself.

  Epilogue I

  Gallia Lugdunensis, AD264

  As he had not had sex with his wife, at dawn the emperor Postumus went out into the atrium to his household gods. The pleasures of the flesh had not been on his mind, not since the news last night. A fleet of Angle and Frisian longboats were off the coast of Gaul, their leader a barbarian called Evil-Child. The towns of Caracoticum and Iuliobona had been sacked and burnt.

  Postumus pulled a fold of his toga over his head. He picked up the incense box and with his right hand scattered a pinch into the fire on the little altar. The painted genius of the house mirrored the emperor: togate, veiled, incense box in hand. Two lares flanked the genius. A drinking horn in one hand, a wine bucket in the other, they danced, their short tunics flaring out. Their happiness did not reflect his mood. The statuettes of the gods – the deified emperors Augustus, Trajan, Marcus, and Pius, Alexander, Neptune and Hercules Deusoniensis – had a more sombre demeanour.

  It was the sort of legalistic question which entranced his son. Treachery makes a group of men your hostages. They prove their loyalty, but further treachery turns their countrymen into your enemies. Do you reward them for their own behaviour, or do you punish them for their compatriots’ betrayal? Such questions were all very well in the fictive world of Postumus Iunior’s Controversiae, but very different in the hard, indeed lethal, arena of imperial politics.

  The Angles of Arkil had done well at the battle of Curia. They had resisted the blandishments of Gallienus. One of their leaders, called Wiglaf, and his men had stayed and died fighting a rearguard action. Arkil and the others had got to their horses and cut their way out of the disaster. Arkil had taken a bad wound. Like Xenophon taking command of the ten thousand, a young Angle warrior called Starkad had led the survivors over the Alps back to Postumus in Lugdunum. The Angles had remained true to the oath they had sworn.

  The Angles had been the only good thing about the disaster at Curia; an army lost, the province of Raetia lost. The governor Simplicinius Genialis had only just managed to get clear. And it was all caused by the treachery of Bonosus. The Spanish drunkard had suborned Legio III Italica Concors, and with its desertion all had been lost.

  It was late in the season, probably too late for Gallienus to mount another campaign. But there was no doubt he would come next year. He had more options now he held Raetia. From that province he could strike north-west into Germania Superior, or he could move west from northern Italy into Gallia Narbonensis. Gallienus had a large Mediterranean fleet; Postumus did not. Superiority at sea meant Gallienus could strike direct at the south coast of Gaul, or even as far afield as Spain.

  Bonosus had turned traitor, and he was not the first. The betrayal by Lollianus still hurt. Lollianus had been there from the start. He had been a friend, and he had been well rewarded. If Lollianus had not proved trustworthy, who would? Who guards the guardians? Wearing the purple had shown Postumus that trust and mercy were both finite qualities.

  Postumus placed his right hand on his chest and prayed to his patron Hercules Deusoniensis for guidance. What should he do with the Angles? Late the previous night, he had put the same question to his hastily summoned consilium. His councillors had produced various arguments and advice, most of it severe. The Angles of Arkil could no longer be trusted. They would not fight against their own. Of the latter, Postumus was convinced. They should be disarmed and sold into slavery, sent to work in the mines, thrown to the beasts. Simplicinius Genialis had led a minority of voices which dissented. The Angles had fought well at Curia. Outnumbered two to one, they had nearly broken the Pannonian legionaries in front of them. In the face of disaster, they had held true to their sacramentum.

  Postumus looked to the sky. There was not a bird in sight. He looked at the fire. It did not waver. Neither Hercules nor any other deity whispered in his mind. He would have to make his decision without divine aid. In the midst
of his field army, Arkil and his men were impotent in his power. Postumus had faced a similar decision once before. When the citizens of Colonia Agrippinensis had surrendered the Caesar Saloninus along with Silvanus, the Dux of the German frontier, all options had been open. Postumus had ordered them beheaded; his consilium had urged it. The decision had troubled him ever since. Saloninus had been no more than a child, an innocent child. Saloninus had not desired to be Caesar any more than Postumus wanted to be emperor. All too often, Postumus had imagined the boy’s fear as he was led out, knowing he would be killed, knowing he would be denied burial, and that his soul would be condemned to wander the world for ever without hope. Severity too easily declines into savagery.

  Postumus made his decision. The Angles would live. They would not be sold into slavery. Fighting men such as they were not to be thrown aside. But they would have to be far away from their kinsmen. They would be sent to garrison southern Spain, the province of Baetica. From that distant latitude, they could not ever hope to return home.

  Epilogue II

  The Island of Abalos in the Suebian Sea, AD265

  Zeno came out of his hut and walked up through the wood, taking the longer path through the birch and aspen and avoiding the grove of oaks and the marsh. He stopped and knelt to tie a loose lace on his rough leather boots. The wind moved through the trees. The leaves were turning already. It would soon be his second winter in Hyperborea.

  Standing, Zeno brushed down his trousers. He was a Hellene, born in Arcadia under the sheer peak of Cyllene. A eupatrid, his ancestors had fought at Plataea. He was a Roman equestrian, a Vir Perfectissimus. He had governed a province, and advised the emperor. Now he lived in a thatched hut and dressed as a barbarian.

  It was all the fault of Ballista. Piece by piece on the journey up, the northerner had chipped away his authority. When they were among the Heathobards, Zeno had vowed to bring down the northerner, but accepted that he had to bide his time. Eventually, he had revealed to Morcar the existence of the secret imperial mandata carried by Ballista. His half-brother evidently hated Ballista. It should have gone well, but it had not. With typical barbaric lack of foresight and self-control, Morcar had blurted out the information at the most inappropriate moment. In his profound ignorance, the ruler of the Angles had failed to see the meaning implied in the imperial orders: to take all measures to look to the safety and success of the embassy. In the uproar, Zeno had slipped away from the feast. He had remained out of the way during the duel. Almost insultingly, no one had searched for him. In fact, the Angles had almost completely ignored him, until the embassy was preparing to leave for home.

  Zeno entered the settlement by the southern wicket gate. Most of the outbuildings still bore evidence of smoke damage, but the hall at Gnitaheath was clean and raw in its newness. As ever, the session would be in there. There had been nothing he could have done when given the orders. Ballista had the imperial mandata allowing him to take command. Ballista had armed men around him. Zeno was to remain in the north as a Studiis to Ballista’s half-brother Oslac.

  Zeno remembered how, on the journey, he had compared himself to Ixion and Odysseus. But the wheel bore Ixion up as well as down, and Odysseus returned home. All the gods, Zeno hated Latin literature, especially Virgil.

  Life flutters off on a groan, down among shadows.

  Appendices

  Historical Afterword

  THE GALLIC EMPIRE

  The essential modern study of the breakaway regime founded by Postumus is J. F. Drinkwater, The Gallic Empire: Separatism and Continuity in the North-western Provinces of the Roman Empire AD260–74 (Stuttgart, 1987). Also useful is R. J. Bourne, Aspects of the Relationship between the Central and Gallic Empires in the Mid- to Late Third Centuries AD with Special Reference to Coinage Studies (Oxford, 2001).

  Raetia

  An altar discovered in 1992 at Augsburg records a victory over the Semnones and Iuthungi, two Germanic tribes returning from a raid into Italy, by an army composed of troops from the provinces of Raetia and Germany and the local militia. It was led by Marcus Simplicinius Genialis, equestrian acting governor of Raetia. The inscription (AE 1993, 1231) was dedicated on 11 September in the year when Postumus Augustus and Honoratianus were consuls (most probably AD260). The battle had taken place months earlier, on 24 and 25 April. In these novels, the following interpretations are made. The Semnones and Iuthungi were a part of the Alamannic invasion whose main contingent was defeated by Gallienus near Milan (most probably in AD260). Simplicinius won his victory in the spring while still loyal to Gallienus, and erected the altar in the autumn to mark his later change of allegiance to Postumus.

  Olbia

  Although about a third of the site has been lost to the waters of the Bug (Hypanis) river, Olbia is a rich and much studied archaeological site. Overviews are provided by E. Belin de Ballu, Olbia: Cité antique du littoral nord de la Mer Noire (Leiden, 1972); S. D. Kryzhytskyy et al., ‘Olbia-Berezan’, in D. V. Grammenos and E. K. Petropoulos (eds.), Ancient Greek Colonies in the Black Sea, vol. I (Thessaloniki, 2003), 389–505 (a stilted English translation); and S. D. Kryjitski and N. A. Leïpounskaïa, Olbia: Fouilles, Histoire, Culture: Un État antique sur le littoral septentrional de la Mer Noire (Nancy, 2011).

  On Olbia in the time of the Roman empire, see V. V. Krapivina, ‘Olbia Pontica in the Third to Fourth Centuries AD,’ in D. V. Grammenos and E. K. Petropoulos (eds.), Ancient Greek Colonies in the Black Sea 2, vol. I (Oxford, 2007), 591–626; and the chapters by V. V. Krapivina (pp. 161–72) and V. M. Zubar (pp. 173–8), in D. Braund and S. D. Kryzhitskiy (eds.), Classical Olbia and the Scythian World from the Sixth Century BC to the Second Century AD (Oxford, 2007).

  The most useful classical text is Dio Chrysostom, Oration 36, The Borysthenitic, Delivered in His Native Land.

  (NB No attempt has been made here to standardize the variant transliteration of proper names of these authors.)

  Leuce/ The Island of Achilles

  Much of Chapter 3 is drawn from the Heroicus of Philostratus in the excellent translation of E. Bradshaw and J. K. Berenson (Atlanta, 2001). S. B. Okhotnikov and A. S. Ostroverkhov, ‘Achilles on the Island of Leuce’, in D. V. Grammenos and E. K. Petropoulos (eds.), Ancient Greek Colonies in the Black Sea 2, vol. I (Oxford, 2007), 537–62, offer a guide to the archaeology and history of the island, often rendered nearly incomprehensible by the English translation.

  THE NORTH

  One of the pleasures of researching the Warrior of Rome novels is learning about new areas of the classical world. The superb articles, maps, plans and illustrations in The Spoils of Victory: The North in the Shadow of the Roman Empire (Copenhagen, 2003), a catalogue of two exhibitions held at the National Museum in Copenhagen in 2003–4, edited by L. Jørgensen, B. Storgaard and L. G. Thomsen, opened my eyes to ancient Scandinavia.

  Other extremely useful articles are to be found in O. Crumlin-Pedersen (ed.), Aspects of Maritime Scandinavia AD200–1200 (Roskilde, 1991); A. N. Jørgensen and B. L. Clausen (eds.), Military Aspects of Scandinavian Society in a European Perspective, AD1–1300 (Copenhagen, 1997); B. Storgaard (ed.), Aspects of the Aristocracy in Barbaricum in the Roman and Early Migration Periods (Copenhagen, 2001); and T. Grane (ed.), Beyond the Roman Frontier: Roman Influences on the Northern Barbaricum (Rome, 2007).

  Map of the North

  We have no literary source which describes the north in the third century AD. To people this world I have drawn on earlier classical works, especially the Germania of Tacitus and the Geography of Ptolemy, and later Anglo-Saxon poetry, mainly Beowulf and Widsith, as well as various much later Norse sagas. It should be stressed that the map makes no claims to historicity. The tribes on it may not have been contemporary with each other, may not all have been in those areas at that time, or ever, and in some cases may not have existed at all. The map just sets out to create a plausible world.

  Himlingøje (Hlymdale in the novel)

  The archaeology is well published in U. Lund Hansen et
al. (eds.), Himlingøje – Seeland – Europa (Copenhagen, 1995). This very important site is a large burial ground. I have given it a port, and a settlement further inland by a forest. For what it is worth, although they have not been identified, the former must have existed, and most likely the latter did, too. Pollen analysis shows there were woodlands at a distance. The two graves described in Chapters 24 and 25 are composites, rather than based on specific examples. The construction technique is borrowed from Mound 2 at Sutton Hoo: M. Carver, Sutton Hoo: Burial Ground of Kings? (London, 1998). Somehow, although a northern setting seems to demand them, I managed to stop myself including both an anachronistic ship burial, and the Viking sex and death stuff from Ibn Fadlan.

  The name Hlymdale is borrowed from The Saga of the Volsungs.

  The ‘treasure-fires’ kept alight on top of the funeral mounds are invented from the idea in the Norse sagas that the location of buried hoards was revealed by supernatural fires, e.g. Grettir’s Saga, ch. 18.

  Gudme and Lundeborg (Gudmestrand in the novel)

  A brief and thought-provoking introduction to these linked sites is provided by L. Hedeager, Iron Age Myth and Materiality: An Archaeology of Scandinavia AD400–1000 (Abingdon and New York, 2011), 150–63, 184–6. Neither site has been fully published, but substantial articles can be found in P. O. Nielsen, K. Randsborg and H. Thrane (eds.), The Archaeology of Gudme and Lundeborg (Copenhagen 1994).