by Manda Scott
It was a trading port based on a bridge, and the bridge itself was by far the most imposing piece of architecture within it. The place was barely a town: it had a tax room built of oak timbers with weighing scales and a clerk’s desk and another room built in stone for keeping records. It had two rows of stables for guest-horses and mounts for messengers who might have need to travel to Camulodunum where the centre of government lay. It had eight taverns, of varying reputation, and two brothels, one that supplied women and one that supplied everything else that might command money.
Of the hundred or so dwellings, the best were merchants’ houses, and even those were little more than huts built of wattle with thatched roofs. Cattle and sheep and pigs and goats and five-toed chickens strutted on the rooftops and pecked in the barnyards. It had hay stores and feed stores and a granary and a string of wells for when the river became swollen with spring floodwater and turned too brown to eat. It had small muddy lanes linking house to house and passage to passage and slightly wider ones linking all of these to the great northern roads that swept northwest to Verulamium and up towards Mona and northeast to Camulodunum. It had a ship, wallowing at the dock, that was being loaded with all that was precious of those who commanded it, ready to flee.
It did not have a wall.
Paullinus pulled up his group on a wooded slope set well back from the chaos. They had been seen, but not yet approached. They sat for a while, watching wagon after wagon, family after family, roll inward from the two broad trackways, and none roll outward again. There were more children than adults and more women than men. They were unarmed, unless one considered their eating knives to be armament, which only an optimist, or a desperate man, might do. Like herded sheep, they converged in increasing numbers on Vespasian’s Bridge. It arced across the river, broad enough for a wagon and a horse side by side, high enough for a sea-going vessel to pass underneath, handsome as any sculpture, a testament to the engineers of the legions who could create beauty and utility together. A man could weep for the beauty of it, and the inevitability of its loss.
Tired of the bridge and its township before the others, Corvus watched instead a haze of smoke on the eastern horizon and so was first to see the Eceni scouts.
“Enemy,” he said quietly. “East of here and north of the scrub oak with the anvil-shaped cloud behind. Fifteen that I can see and I will bet there is at least one more. Youths on foot. Knives only. War braids and kill-feathers. They are equal in numbers to us, and most are women. That won’t be an accident.”
They were seasoned men and they had fought in the west, where for every one of the enemy seen, there were a dozen unseen in the rocks and crannies of the mountains. They did not spin their horses, or shout, or stare, but talked and bantered amongst themselves and shifted their mounts a little to lessen their boredom and eased their blades in their sheaths for the practice of it until, as if by coincidence and certainly by chance, they were all facing a little more eastward and could look without seeming to at the place Corvus had described.
The scouts rose from their hiding, one by one. They stood half naked among the scrub elder and seeding thistles, wide-legged, with their knives in their belts, not deigning to unsheathe them in the presence of Rome. They were sixteen, of whom eight were women.
Once, the governors of Britannia had flogged men for suggesting that women fought in the native armies. Now, Suetonius Paullinus, fifth of the governing line, said, “They send us the flower of their youth.”
“They send them to look down on Vespasian’s Bridge, to show that the attack will come with the dawn,” said Corvus. “Their gods do not support a battle of which fair warning has not been given.”
“They don’t fear that the magistrates and people will rally a defence?”
“Do you see one happening?”
They did not. Fighting men know the sounds of panic and they were issuing now from the port at Vespasian’s Bridge. Where before had been chaos was now clear panic.
On the bridge, the bottleneck became a logjam and carts broke their axles rather than back up or give way. Figures climbed over them and round them and fell into the water and were ignored by the others who thought that safety lay south.
On the river, the ship loading at the wharf was flooded, suddenly, with men and their families who abandoned the need to preserve their family silver and fought each other instead for room on the gangplank and then on the deck. The whistle of the master shrieked loud enough to be heard on the hillside. The men it summoned were armed.
Paullinus leaned on the front arch of his saddle. He ran his tongue round his upper teeth, thoughtfully, and the fifteen men around him found other things to watch, rather than catch his eye and so his attention. Twice in his past, once in Mauretania and before that in Parthia, Paullinus had faced a decision and had given the men with him the opportunity to vote on their action. Those who chose wrongly were allowed to fall on their swords before the rest moved on. The ones who hesitated had been staked out and left to die at their leisure.
The governor drew his horse to one side. “Plebius?”
From the beginning, Plebius had ridden at his general’s right hand. A one-eyed duplicarius of the Second cohort of the XIVth, he had a natural head for numbers and was obsessively conscientious. By default, he had become the quartermaster of their small troop, and carried the coins and gold they needed for bribes and payment. Wooden-faced, he pushed his horse beyond the hearing of his peers and listened while the governor explained what he wanted.
Given his orders, Plebius nodded and searched his packs and emptied what he found into the bowl of his helmet. Metal chimed heavily on metal.
Suetonius Paullinus swung his horse on its quarters and faced the semi-circle of men he had chosen to accompany him and whose opinions he professed to respect. His face was never expressive, but his eyes, for the most part, on most days, spoke from his soul. Now, in the cold wind that soughed up from the river, they were flat and watchful.
He said, “You will each take one denarius and one as from the helmet.”
The helmet passed round. Corvus was last. The as was a copper teardrop against the dull iron. He resisted the temptation to bite it and feel the texture of the metal. The denarius was silver and too obviously foiled to be worth the biting. A young, thin Augustus stared moodily east from its one surface. On the other side, a younger, thinner bull stood haltered and garlanded, awaiting the sacrifice. Corvus closed his hand over it; the bull god had never been his.
The governor said, “Two choices: we can stay and rally a defence in the township in an effort to preserve the bridge which is our best route to the south coast; or we can leave now, and ride hard for the coast and take ship and return in due course with the legions to face the Eceni war host en masse. Each of these has points to recommend it; I will not labour them. You will hold out your right hand containing a coin. When I request it, you will open your hand to reveal what is hidden. The silver coin votes to stay and defend the bridge. The copper votes to return to the ship and meet the legions wherever we may. Is anyone unclear as to which coin denotes which choice?”
They were not. A man may die cleanly who falls on his sword; every one of them had faced a worse death daily in battle. Each made his choice alone, as a soldier, as an officer of the legions, as a veteran with twenty years of fighting experience, as a man prepared to live and die by the quality of his tactical judgement.
Corvus had made his decision before he saw the scouts; the volume of smoke on the wind told him as much as he needed to know of the size of the advancing war host and the speed with which the port of Vespasian’s Bridge would be crushed. He placed his two hands together and when he drew them apart the lighter, smaller, brighter, younger coin was in the right, so light as to barely be there.
He looked around. The rest sat easy on their horses and held out their closed fists so that the governor was ringed by brown skin laced with battle scars.
Only Gaius, the scout, looked uncertain. He cou
ld not have missed out on the story of Suetonius Paullinus and the doomed officers of Parthia, but he did not have the years of service to tell him that the only possible answer he could give was the one that military sense dictated. To survive, he had to make the decision as if he led a legion, or a full army; only then would he command Paullinus’ respect. What killed men, what caused them to forfeit their honour and their lives in the governor’s eyes was sycophancy, or an attempt to buy an ovation from the senate at the expense of winning the war.
They waited, because Gaius could not decide. The veins on his temples beat blue and matt with sweat. His skin was as yellow as his hair. He made a decision and unmade it and for that alone he faced death, and knew it. A watery sun shone on them, making the day hot. In the flowering elder behind, a thrush called. The scouts of the Eceni sat in the long grass and seeded nettles through which they had crawled forward and watched with interest.
In silence thick as curdled whey, Gaius thrust his right arm forward into the ring.
“Reveal yourselves.”
Corvus felt his arm turn of its own accord, and his fingers uncoil. Ursus was on his right. He saw the spark of copper on the grubby palm of the man’s hand before he saw his own. The wolfskin had been left behind. He wondered, idly, if that might make them both unlucky.
Flavius, on his left, opened his palm a fraction later. He, too, held copper.
Around, fourteen men held copper tears on their palms. The fifteenth, bearing silver, was Gaius.
The governor’s head turned slowly, as an owl’s does, without blinking. “You think Vespasian’s Bridge can be fortified?” he asked.
Gaius was not a coward. “I think the people can be rallied.” His voice was commendably strong.
“Get off your horse.”
He did so.
“Kneel.”
He did so.
“I promised you citizenship and now I grant it. You are Gaius Fortunatus, citizen of Rome and auxiliary officer of the legions in the rank of decurion. Your pay is one sestertius per day. You have been paid in advance. You will earn it.”
The man blinked in the poor light. “How?”
“By rallying a defence amongst the people of Vespasian’s Bridge. How else? You will go there now and hold it or die in its defence. If I hear you have fled, I will have you named traitor throughout the empire and your family will pay for it. Am I clear?”
“You are.”
There are worse ways to die and citizenship passed through the male line unless it was revoked. Gaius turned to look down at the place in which he would die and it seemed to Corvus that the smile that flowered on his face was genuine. He saluted up to the sun and across the river’s water and spoke to them in a tongue that had not the least trace of the Tiber in its accent.
They watched him ride down. The Eceni stood at his passing, as if they had some idea of what had taken place.
The governor turned first, and sought out Flavius, who had care of the pigeons, and the centurion of the XXth who acted as his scribe and dictated a brief message to be sent to Agricola, and Galenius of the XIVth who commanded at Mona.
Flavius’ care of the birds was of a man with a new horse. He held them gently between careful palms and made sure the message carriers on their legs were firm and would not chafe. He spoke to them in words no-one else could hear so that they bobbed at him, bright-eyed and ready.
He threw them up high, and they were waiting for the lift he gave them and spread their wings and cracked the air and rose and flew straight, one after the other, until four of the six were gone.
The governor saluted them, as he would have done a legate leading a legion to a distant battle. “If the dreamers set falcons on them, I will have them all crucified.”
They rode west, fast. No-one felt the need to point out that their guide had just been sent to his death; they were all good trackers in their way, and could retrace any path they had taken once. The Eceni scouts put up a war cry as they left, a long ululating howl that echoed from one to the other to the other and lasted long after they were out of sight.
Later, as the sun reached over their heads and sank towards the west and the sea that they were seeking, Paullinus pulled his horse back alongside Corvus’ black colt.
“You understand the native tongues better than most. What was it he said to the sun and the river before he rode down to Vespasian’s Bridge?”
“Gaius? He was speaking in the tongue of their ancestors. He commended his life and that of his three sons to Lugh of the Shining Spear, god of the sun. In the days when the gods were young, Lugh felt the thirst of eternal fire and came to earth to quench it. He drank the Great River dry and then laid his head down to sleep. Nemain and Manannan together sent rain and the river swelled to flooding, but would not touch the god. It curved round, to leave him sleeping and dry.”
“And so the river is sacred? And the place where it bends, where Vespasian built his bridge, especially so?”
“It is. They would never have built a bridge there. And they do not name it after a Roman general. In the native tongue it is named after the god who first made it sacred. In the tongue of the ancestors, it is Lugdunum.”
The single standing elder by the jetty on Mona was in full flower. A cascade of creamy white frothed and bobbed on the breeze that rose from the sea.
Graine picked a half-head and teased out single flowers and ate them, dusting the pollen on her tunic so that green became green-gold in smudges. Shuffling forward, she dangled her legs over the edge of the oak and felt the biggest of the waves slide up to kiss the soles of her feet. The tide was at its highest, covering what was left of the debris of battle. A warrior walked with a hound whelp at heel along the tideline. Watching them, Graine found she missed Stone for the first time since she had left him to take care of her mother.
She watched a shadow lengthen and slide across the rocks at the base of the jetty and made a bet with herself as to which of three people it might belong to, which meant she could not turn round early to look.
“May I join you?”
She lost the bet. “Of course.” She edged sideways just enough to be polite and Luain mac Calma, Elder dreamer of Mona, hitched up his tunic and came to sit beside her, dangling his long, lean legs over the edge and into the water.
“Who did you think I was?”
“Hawk. Or maybe Bellos, except you were not quite as quiet as either of them. So then I thought maybe Efnís had come back from Hibernia. If I had been asked, I would have said him.”
“He is back. I could get him for you if you want.”
“Not especially. Have you come to watch the legions leave? They have been striking camp since the tide turned. Maybe Manannan sent the big tide to scare them off.”
“I think it has more to do with the governor’s messenger pigeon that evaded the cliff falcons and returned to its roost at mid-morning.” Mac Calma made a hammock of his fingers and hooked it over the back of his head, stretching his arms. His shoulder joints cracked, scaring some wading birds out on the strand. “Your mother’s war host has set alight to the east and south,” he said. “I think the destruction of Mona is no longer the governor’s first care.”
The day became suddenly cold. Graine pulled her knees to her chest and her tunic to her toes. Wrapping her arms round her shins, she said, “Is mother …?”
“Healed? Her healing has begun, yes.”
He left room for her to ask a question. Graine discovered a wedge of dirt between her toes and rubbed at it with her forefinger. “Did you make the falcons leave the pigeons?” she asked.
“No. We couldn’t do that. But we offered them two of the laying pullets to feed their young and they did not hunt on the day it came through. The gods may grant what we ask, but sometimes we must act as our wisdom dictates and hope that is enough.” Mac Calma’s voice had not changed that Graine could notice, but they were no longer talking of falcons and Roman pigeons. He said, “Bellos tells me you have been dreaming.”
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Graine said, “Not proper dreams. There was no purpose to them. I didn’t know I was dreaming. I couldn’t ask anything except of the hares.” There had been two hares in her dream. They had each given an opposite answer. She had not told Bellos that, or the nature of her question.
“Thank you.” Mac Calma lay back and hooked his hands behind his head.
Graine said, “Will the people come back here to Mona now the legions have gone?”
“I think so. We might see what happens in the south first.”
“Will there be another battle?”
“I hope not. The legions will win if there is.” Mac Calma turned his head to look at her. Graine realized, with shock, that he was exhausted, as if he had fought the battle already, and alone. She had never seen him less than resilient, and always good-humoured.
He saw her look and smiled, wryly, in the way Valerius did when he was uncomfortable. He took a breath to say something and changed his mind and said instead, “Graine, will you go to your mother? I think it will make a difference to what happens when they come to fight the legions.”
“Because I am the wild piece on the board of the Warrior’s Dance?” She hated that. She had no idea what to do about it.
“I’m afraid so, yes. But only in part. The rest is because the Boudica needs you to be whole. And because you need her to be whole and each of you needs the other to find that wholeness. Mona has done all it can for you: you can dream a little and you can reach into the fire; it’s as much as anyone might have asked for when you came.”
It was not what Graine wanted to hear. Her eyes burned. Because anger was better than yet more grief, particularly in this company, she said caustically, “And I can fight. Hawk has taught me. Don’t forget that.”
He had taught her every morning for nine mornings while they watched the legions gather and plan their final assault, and plan, and plan, and never yet launch it. She was better than she had been, but she would never be more than a liability on a battlefield.
