Vindolanda

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  A third of Crispinus’ column consisted of horsemen, but if they wanted to stay together they could go no faster than a man or mule could walk. By day the cavalry from the cohorts provided scouts ahead, on the flanks and to the rear of the main force. Brocchus’ men were split into two, as vanguard and rearguard; they were kept formed up and ready to fight. The Batavian infantry led, the Tungrians protected the baggage and the Spanish infantry were in the rear. Vindex and his men rode far ahead to scout, and often Ferox went with them, wearing his battered old floppy hat so that the tribesmen would know him from afar. At night the cavalry provided pickets while the infantrymen did the digging, making a ditch and throwing up a low rampart of cut turves and piled earth and stones when the ground was too hard. It was rarely more than waist high, but would slow an assault if one came. Tents were pitched inside, although they had carried as few as possible so each one was packed fuller than usual. Men on guard during the night watches came back to climb under blankets left warm by the men who had relieved them.

  They dug in each night because it made them a little safer and because that was the army’s way, but because they pushed on and marched as far as they could there was never time to do the job properly. Cavalrymen always hated to dig, and the infantry did their best, and men from both arms formed the outposts beyond the ditch and rampart with the job of dying noisily if an attack came.

  For three days there was no sign of any enemy – indeed little trace of people at all.

  ‘They’re wary of us, sir,’ Ferox explained when Crispinus expressed surprise to find another farm empty of humans and animals alike. There were four huts, a raised grain store, and dry stone walls to form animal pens. Some of the dung in these was no more than five or six hours old.

  ‘Why?’ the tribune demanded. ‘These are not from one of the clans we are sent to chastise.’

  ‘They don’t know that – at least, not for certain, and would you take a risk?’

  Ferox was pleased when a Batavian cavalryman asked whether they should burn the houses and Crispinus was aghast at the thought. ‘Of course not.’

  The soldier looked disappointed, but resigned to the vagaries of senior officers.

  The tribune brought a dozen troopers with him whenever he joined Ferox and some of the scouting parties, something he did more often as the days passed. Now, at long last, on the fourth morning when they reached the lands of one of the chieftains who had not yet paid his tax, Crispinus saw his first warrior. The Briton with his painted face sat on his pony, watching them as they watched him.

  ‘Do they always paint their faces?’ he asked. Crispinus talked a lot and asked many questions, so that his early long silences were no more than a blessed memory of a better world.

  ‘Means the bugger’s taken a vow,’ Vindex explained when the centurion said nothing. ‘He will either vanquish an enemy and take a trophy before returning home or he will die in the attempt. They’re queer folk, the Selgovae. Good hosts, though, and fairly honest if you don’t trust them too much.’

  Crispinus was puzzled. ‘So he really will not go back to his home unless he kills an enemy?’

  ‘Pity we haven’t got any archers, we could solve his problem for him now,’ Ferox suggested, making the tribune stare at him.

  ‘I thought you wanted to talk to him?’

  ‘Well, I’ll try.’ Ferox urged his horse into a trot up the slope towards the lone warrior. He raised his empty right hand high to show that he was coming in peace. The man watched him, letting him come close, until the centurion was twenty paces away. The Briton raised his spear and Ferox reined in. He shouted out that they did not want to fight unless they had to and wanted to speak to the chieftains. The man rode away.

  ‘Get anywhere?’ Crispinus asked Ferox when he returned.

  ‘We shall soon see, sir.’

  They pushed on, down one valley that opened into another, steeper sided with high hills on either side. Ferox did not like this country. If they had had a bigger force and plenty of time then he would have wanted them to advance covered by pickets on top of the ridges. As it was even the main force did not have the manpower to do it, so relied on mounted patrols to see any threat long before it appeared. He hoped that he was right and that the Selgovae did not want to fight. All the while Crispinus kept chattering away. Some of it was nerves, but there was also a genuine curiosity and desire to learn so that he could do his job better. With just a few months of military service, the young aristocrat was now in charge of over a thousand men, their lives at risk if he made a mistake. He was nervous but eager, and the man gabbled away almost as much as Vindex and his Brigantians.

  ‘You do not paint your face?’ Crispinus asked the head of the scouts.

  ‘No, my lord, I’m pretty enough as it is.’ Vindex leered at him to demonstrate, his teeth more than usually horse-like. ‘Not many do, apart from these people.’

  ‘Yet you are kin to them.’

  ‘Me! No, not to this lot.’ Vindex shook his head at such ignorance. He was polite to the tribune, but no more than he would be to a chieftain of his own people, and among the Brigantes blunt speech was admired. ‘Some of the Textoverdi marry among the southern Selgovae. Not many of my folk – the Carvetii – though. Leastways only if we took their women as captives, but that doesn’t count. That was in the old days, of course.’

  ‘You sound wistful.’

  ‘Not me. Long live Rome and long live the emperor! By the way, who is the emperor again?’

  Crispinus laughed at the time. Later, when he had followed Ferox away from the others and was out of earshot, he showed more concern.

  ‘This is a dangerous time,’ he said. ‘Our Lord Trajan is not well known, can boast of no real victories and proved embarrassingly loyal to Domitian just a few short years ago. There are far too many people, like our friend, who have no idea what sort of man the emperor is and struggle even to remember his name.’

  ‘He is princeps,’ Ferox said, as if that settled the matter.

  Crispinus waited for a while, before realising that the centurion had nothing more to say.

  ‘Our Lord Trajan is princeps, first citizen, first in the Senate, and many other titles. For the moment at least. It would be good for the state if he remains so.’ Once again, the tribune stopped and looked at the centurion.

  ‘I have no objections,’ Ferox said eventually.

  ‘He is a good ruler.’ Crispinus’ voice contained a hint of irritation. ‘But others do not consider such things and instead look only for personal power. I am sure that you heard the rumours about the army in Syria.’

  Ferox nodded. A year ago the provincial legate commanding the main army in the east had tried to win over his men to back him in a bid for the throne. ‘It came to nothing, though.’

  ‘It was handled with delicacy,’ Crispinus told him. ‘Retirement to private life because of ill health, postings to distant frontiers, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Is that why you’re here, my lord?’ Ferox said before he could stop himself.

  The tribune glared at him, anger in his eyes, until his aristocratic calm restored itself.

  ‘Why are you telling me this, my lord?’ Ferox asked.

  ‘Because this campaign matters, even though it is a small and local affair. Our Lord Trajan is new to power, comes from Spain of all places, and is not that well connected at Rome. There are plenty of senators who feel themselves more suited to the supreme office. They must be shown that they are wrong, that he is wise and under his rule the empire will flourish and the armies win victory after victory, so that the Pax Augusta will reign supreme. That being so, there can be no defeats – not even small ones on distant frontiers like this.’

  ‘Would anyone care?’

  Crispinus pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘I fear that I have a cold. Does it ever get warm in this benighted place?’ He sniffed hard to clear his nostrils. It was a Roman habit Ferox still found strange. ‘People will care,’ he said. ‘Not for the right rea
sons, but because they will scent weakness. Our Lord Trajan is on the Rhine, and the armies of the two Germanies will most likely stay loyal, but the legions in other provinces do not know him and might be willing to follow someone who promised them wealth to raise him to the purple. It happened when Nero died and that was only thirty years ago, and tens of thousands died in the chaos. It could happen again, very, very easily.’

  ‘Is that why Trajan – my apologies, our Lord Trajan – is loitering on the German frontier rather than going to Rome to be welcomed by his adoring people? Or is that an impolite question?’ Ferox’s expression gave no hint of repentance.

  Crispinus stared at the centurion, who stared back impassively until the tribune gave up and looked away, pretending to follow the flight of a bird. ‘My father was right,’ he said. ‘You have an imaginative and suspicious mind. He said that you did not trust anyone else, but that you followed the scent of the truth like a hound sniffing a trail. Well, he also believed that you can be trusted because of your oath to serve him – and his family, if I am not mistaken.’

  Ferox nodded. He had been waiting for Crispinus to remind him of the oath, taken all those years ago on the Danube as the price for convincing the man’s father to march and save some of Ferox’s men.

  ‘I swore to aid him as long as it did not conflict with my sacramentum, my pledge to Rome and the princeps,’ Ferox said, his voice flat. ‘I am sworn to Trajan and as long as he remains princeps I will keep my word, whatever may happen.’

  ‘Others may not be so diligent in keeping that same sacred promise of a soldier. There are some who would be happy to make mischief and let our armies be defeated and our soldiers killed simply to discredit the Lord Trajan. They are distinguished men – or friends and dependants of distinguished men – and they may well be in positions of authority. We cannot let them betray the empire and us by engineering defeat.’

  They had reached the top of a low rise, and Ferox stopped to stare along the valley ahead of them. He could see pairs of Vindex’s scouts some way ahead and watched as two of the Brigantians paused. Crispinus glanced over his shoulder as Vindex trotted up to join them.

  ‘Be vigilant and trust no one,’ he whispered to Ferox. ‘If we learn the truth in time then we can stop them.’

  From noon onwards they saw more riders shadowing them. Ferox tried once again to meet them, but these proved even more skittish and rode away before he was close enough to call to them. They did not go far and kept watching. From the heights he looked down on the scouting force of a dozen troopers and about the same number of Brigantes. Vindex and his men took turns to go ahead and he could see some of them, lone warriors or pairs of them on the slopes of the valley for some way ahead. Back down the valley were the Batavian patrols. They were about a mile back, and he could see the main force as a dark patch on the green another half-mile beyond them. From up here, the column looked tiny. He stayed up on the crest for a while, keeping pace with them as they trotted along down in the valley. Half an hour later he saw another darker patch on a hillock ahead of where the ground rose to join another glen. It looked as if someone was waiting, but whether to fight or speak was hard to tell. The force was a good size, so it could be either.

  Crispinus was still talking when he returned.

  ‘I had assumed you Britons would all be much alike,’ the tribune declared, ‘but in fact you vary a great deal, far more than the tribes of Gaul.’

  ‘You’ve studied a lot then,’ Vindex said sarcastically, as if the young aristocrat had just announced that rain comes from the skies.

  Crispinus darted him an angry look and was ignored. He smiled. ‘I do remember my uncle telling me that the Silures were different from everyone, perhaps from every nation on earth.’

  ‘Oh well, everyone knows that,’ Vindex agreed. ‘Odd people. Funny customs. Don’t talk much. Don’t swear much either and you cannot say that is natural.’

  ‘Is it true?’ Crispinus asked. ‘Now that you mention it I have not heard you swear.’

  ‘Waste of good anger,’ Ferox said without looking at him. It was something his grandfather had often said. Do not waste rage. Nurture it, cherish it and use the strength it gives. Hot anger gets a man killed. Cold anger will put the other man in the earth.

  ‘Silures like killing.’ Vindex was enjoying stirring things up. ‘They like it more than food or drink – even women.’

  Ferox said nothing. For the first time in years he wished he was back with his own people, men of sense who enjoyed silence for its own sake. He was tempted to say that his people most liked winning, but saw no point in the conversation. Things were as they were, and the tribune was marching into the lands of the Selgovae, not the Silures.

  ‘My uncle Frontinus,’ Crispinus went on, ‘the man who conquered your people, did say that the Silures were cruel and cunning, that they killed without remorse and tortured without mercy. He said that they despise everyone and have no honour. According to him half of what a Silure told you was a lie and the other half wasn’t true.’

  Vindex roared with laughter, then explained in their own tongue to his warriors who found it just as hilarious. Ferox shrugged, half his mind wondering about what the tribune had said earlier. Some of what Crispinus said was more than idle talk. ‘But Uncle also said that if one did give you his word, then he would keep it until the end of the world.’

  Ferox would keep his pledge to Crispinus and his father as long as it did not interfere with his oath of allegiance to the emperor. The question was which side was the tribune really on – apart from his own, like any other ambitious aristocrat. Ferox said nothing, but heard his grandfather’s deep voice telling him that a solemn oath could never be broken, that a faithless man was lower than the dust, doomed to grim punishment in the Otherworld. He also remembered standing in the hall of a principia thirteen years ago and swearing loyalty to Rome and emperor. At the time he had been young enough to thrill at the grandeur of the big parade where the oath was taken. These days the sense was one of habit as much as anything else. It was simply part of him, but that oath held him forever in a vice, and in life he could not be free of it unless the empire crumbled into ruin and was no more.

  ‘There’s someone waiting to meet us up ahead,’ he told Crispinus after the man had finally relapsed into silence, broken only by occasional guffaws from Vindex and his men. ‘We will see them soon, when we crest that rise.’

  A Brigantian scout appeared, riding back with the same news.

  ‘Should we wait for the column?’ Crispinus asked.

  ‘Let’s take a look, sir. Walk the horses on the way so that we can run if needs be. They’ll know the main force is coming, and this way we look as if we have no doubt that they will do what we ask and not give trouble.’

  The tribune looked pale, but nodded assent.

  There were several hundred Selgovae standing or sitting on the hillock. They wore dark trousers with faded patterns of tartan, and some had striped or checked tunics and long cloaks. One or two in the front wore helmets and armour and carried swords. Most of the rest had a spear or javelin and a little round or square shield. Ahead of them were forty or so warriors sitting on their ponies, and a chariot, the wooden frame brightly painted in red and blue. It was drawn by one black and one grey pony, and carried a charioteer, naked from the waist up and covered with tattoos, and a short, stocky warrior in mail, an old legionary helmet clasped under one arm and his long red hair falling down his back. As they approached the driver twitched the reins and the chariot came towards them. The warrior spread his arms high, waving the helmet in one, but apart from the long sword on his right hip he carried no weapon.

  ‘He wants to talk, sir,’ Ferox told the tribune. ‘It would be wise for us to meet him so that he can see your face and decide whether or not to trust you. And by the way, I’ll lay good odds that he is letting us see no more than half his warriors at best. The rest are in the trees on either side of us.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Crisp
inus glanced around. ‘I don’t see anything.’

  ‘That’s why you know they are there,’ the centurion assured him, and then the chariot came round in a wide arc and slewed to a halt in front of them.

  The chieftain was named Egus and he did not want to fight unless the Romans gave him no other choice. Ferox had met him before, although he did not know him well as it was less than a year since the man had succeeded his brother as leader. His reputation was as a good lord to his people, and the clan had always paid what was due to the empire on time, or near enough. This Egus was willing to do, but he resented the levy being demanded early.

  ‘It takes time to gather and sort the grain, and even longer to kill the animals and prepare the hides,’ he told Ferox, who interpreted. In ten days they would have everything as usual.

  ‘You should accept, sir,’ Ferox told the tribune. ‘He is offering his own son as hostage until everything is delivered.’

  Crispinus was unsure what to do. ‘Do you trust him?’

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ Ferox said in a low voice. ‘Keep your eyes on his and do not smile. He needs to know that you are a serious man and one he can trust.’ He switched back into the language of the tribes and spoke to the chieftain in short, clipped sentences, getting similar replies. At last Egus held out his right hand to the tribune.

  ‘I have agreed to the terms,’ Ferox told the young officer.

  ‘You take a lot on yourself, centurion,’ Crispinus whispered, but took the outstretched hand and shook it firmly. ‘I agree,’ he told the chieftain, hoping that the man either knew a little Latin or would sense the meaning from his tone.

  The boy was brought, and all the while more and more warriors appeared on the edges of the woodland. Egus’ son looked to be about nine or ten, skinny and with a drooping lip. The warrior attending him was the man with the painted face they had seen earlier in the day. By the time they all went back to join the rest of the party, there were hundreds more tribesmen watching them from the hillsides.