In the Shadow of the Wall

by Gordon Anthony

  “It’s taken me a long time to get home,” Brude said. “You have done well while I was away, I hear. You have a fine son and people tell me you are head man now.”

  Colm nodded. He did not seem to know how to respond to Brude’s sudden reappearance. Realising his men were looking at the two of them curiously, he remembered his manners. “I’m sorry, this is quite a shock. You obviously have a story to tell us. I’ll have some men escort you to my… to our village. I’m sure your mother will be pleased you have returned to us.” Without giving Brude time to respond or ask any questions, he then looked at Castatin. “Where’s my bull?”

  “Oengus still has him,” the boy replied nervously. “They’re not far away, though. They’re going through the woods toward Peart. Only three of them. I can take you to where we left them.”

  Colm shook his head. “You are going home.” To Brude he said, “I will leave four men to escort you. I have some cattle thieves to catch.”

  “If you find them, do me a favour.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t harm the man called Fothair. The tall one.”

  “What is he to you?” Colm demanded.

  “Nothing. But he seems a good man.”

  “I’ll bring them all back in chains,” Colm snarled. He quickly told four riders to stay with Brude and Castatin, then jabbed his heels to his mount’s flanks and led the rest of his men along the track. Brude watched him go, bemused by the reception Colm had given him. He didn’t know what he had expected, but it wasn’t that coldness.

  “He doesn’t seem very pleased to see you,” Castatin said.

  “It will take him time to get used to it,” Brude replied. “After all, I’ve been dead a long time.”

  <

  A.D. 196

  Brude was being crushed. He tried to open his eyes but only his right eye responded and all he could see was darkness because his face was pressed against the ground. His left eye was caked shut. He made an attempt to move his arms, to push himself up but he felt weak and dizzy and there was something heavy lying across him. His throat was parched and his lips were dry and cracked. He had to get up. He groaned with the effort as he managed, at last, to free his left arm. He reached up to feel his face. There was a crust of what he knew must be dried blood all down the left side, clogging his eye shut. He ran his fingers up to his forehead, feeling a damp stickiness.

  Then he heard voices. He could not make out the words but there were people nearby. Or were they far away? His befuddled brain could make no sense of his surroundings but he tried to call for help, to wave his arm, to let them see he was still alive.

  The pressure weighing down on his back was suddenly eased. He knew that whatever was on top of him was being lifted off. Then it was gone altogether, allowing him to roll to his side, to let his right eye see daylight. He immediately wished that he was blind again. The weight that had been on him was that of his father’s corpse. Anndra of the Boresti now lay on his back, his unseeing eyes staring skywards, just like the dead Roman sentry they had seen in the watchtower. Brude lay there, staring at his father, feeling numb all over. His father had worn a fine breastplate of bronze, which was battered and bashed, but what had killed him was a stab to his throat where the flies now gathered round a raw, open wound.

  Brude was hauled to his feet, staggered, nearly fell, and got a slap on his face for his trouble. Strong arms dragged him away and he was dimly aware that he was passing more bodies lying scattered across the grass. Then he was unceremoniously thrown to the ground where he lay still, unable to move.

  “Get up!” a voice hissed in warning. “Get up or they’ll just kill you.” Hands reached for him, supporting him until he managed at last to sit up. “Here. Drink!” Someone held a clay beaker to his lips. He swallowed, desperate to quench his thirst. The water was tepid and unpleasant but he drank it all. Then he looked up and saw a man he recognised but whose name would not come to him. “You’ll be all right,” the man told him. “I think you took a nasty blow to the head, but you’ll survive.”

  Gradually Brude’s senses recovered. He felt better when more water came, brought by a Roman soldier, allowing him to wash the dried berate to qrom his face. After some cautious rubbing, his left eye was freed from the congealed blood and he was able to see reasonably well.

  What he saw dismayed him.

  There were thirty-four of them, all men, most of them wounded, although none too seriously. Four Roman soldiers stood guarding them while other Romans wandered the battlefield, checking for survivors. Brude saw that any fallen tribesman who was too badly wounded was simply despatched by a thrust of the short Roman swords. One more tribesman, his right hand mutilated by the loss of three fingers and limping badly, was brought to join the prisoners. The rest were either dead or gone. There was a cluster of bodies where the two battle lines had met but most had obviously been killed when they turned to flee. The corpses, both men and women, were scattered in a long line, heading back over the rise and, he supposed, beyond that. It had been more a slaughter than a battle, for the actual fighting must have lasted only a few moments while the Romans had thrown their javelins and then marched forwards, swords stabbing in those terrifying, short, brutally efficient killing thrusts.

  He tried to count the corpses but he had such a headache that he had to give up. All he was able to count was the number of Roman dead because they were laid out on the grass only a few paces from where the prisoners sat. There were only four of them, lying on their backs still wearing their armour. He looked at his companion, a man from Broch Tava whose name suddenly came back to him. He was Frual, one of the village’s best fishermen. Brude recalled that he had two children, with a third on the way. He was a quiet man, strong yet gentle and not given to too much boasting. “What happened?” Brude asked him.

  Frual shrugged. “We lost. We couldn’t break their line and they just killed us. Most of the men ran when you and your father went down. We thought you were dead.”

  “Colm! Did you see what happened to Colm?”

  Frual shook his head. “He’s not with us and I don’t think he’s among the dead here, but the Romans chased us all the way back to where we crossed the wall. The horses got a lot of men as we ran and when we got to the tower there wasn’t enough space for us all to get out. Nechtan got away, and so did Gartnait, but a lot of us were stuck on this side of the wall. Then the Romans caught up with us and we laid down our weapons.” He looked apologetically at Brude. “It was either that or be killed.”

  “Maybe Colm got away then,” said Brude.

  “Forget him,” Frual told him roughly. “We have to look after ourselves now.”

  A wagon arrived, pulled by two large horses. The Romans gathered all the weapons and armour they coul and began piling them on to it. The prisoners, though, were prodded to their feet and marched westwards along the road. Brude felt weak and dizzy but Frual helped him and it turned out that they did not have far to go. Beyond the next rise was a large Roman fort, enclosed within a massive stone wall. Brude realised that this was where the sentries had been signalling. No wonder, he thought, that the Romans had found them so quickly. He suspected the Selgovae must have known how close the fort was, which was why they had headed in the opposite direction, leaving the Boresti to bear the brunt of the Roman attack. He felt he should be angry about that, but all he felt was numb and empty.

  They were herded into a large building made with walls of brick with small, high windows and only one door. There was little talking. They sat or lay on the bare floor, tired, hurt and lost. Brude tried to sleep but Frual kept him awake. “Not good to sleep after that bang on the head,” he told him. “You might not wake up.” Brude must have dozed off anyway and when he awoke he saw by the change in the angle of the sunlight coming through the high windows that it must be afternoon.

  They were brought some food and water. A little while later a young soldier came in and spoke to them in a language they could make out though his accent was
strange and some words were unfamiliar. He told them that he was called Carallus and they were now slaves of imperial Rome. Then he told them all they had to strip, bathe and have their hair shaved. “You may bring disease here,” he explained. So they were marched out, forced to strip naked and pile their clothes onto a fire which had been lit in an open space within the fort. Then they were given cold water and some hard, grainy soap to wash with, always under the eyes of the Romans. Many soldiers came along to watch in a disinterested sort of way. Brude saw some who wore fine red cloaks and solid breastplates. He could tell these were important men but he got a cuff on the back of his head from a soldier who barked at him in Latin. Carallus translated, “Keep your gaze lowered, slave.”

  After they had washed, their heads were shaved which to most was the worst part of the day for the Pritani were proud of long, strong hair. It showed their virility and to lose it was a source of shame. “It will grow back,” Carallus reassured them. Once they had all been shaved, they were examined by a small man who was, according to Carallus, a doctor although he did little to help the wounds they had other than to wrap some linen bandages round them. Then they were given short tunics to wear before being taken back to their large cell room.

  Another light meal of plain oatmeal gruel and some water was brought to them as evening came. There was barely enough to go around but one of the men, a large warrior called Drugh, one of Nechtan’s men, insisted that they all share the food equally. Nobody argued, despite the hunger; they were all in this together.

  They had no blankets and nowhere to sleep except the hard, beaten earth floor so they lay down and tried to sleep, though some men whimpered because of the pain of their wounds or the loss of their freedom. Brude did not cry, not en when he remembered his father’s death. He wanted to, but no tears would come. Instead, he burned with a deep resolve that he would escape this captivity and return to Broch Tava to marry Mairead. It was the only thing he could think of that kept him feeling alive.

  Brude soon learned that escape would not be easy. They spent a week cooped up in the fort, during which time two men died when their wounds became infected. They discovered that Carallus was a Pritani, from a tribe who lived far to the south, which was why he had the job of speaking to them. Drugh, the big man who had become their nominal leader, asked him once why one of the Pritani would fight for the Romans. Carallus just shrugged. “The pay’s good,” he said. “And you get regular meals.”

  Then one morning they were taken outside, heavily guarded, and the Romans put them in a long coffle, iron rings fastened about their necks and linked together with long iron chains. They could move their arms and they could walk but they had to keep together for if any man did not keep pace or changed direction, his neighbours were dragged by the neck chains and choked.

  So began the long years of Brude’s slavery.

  They walked along the road behind the Wall, prodded by the guards if their pace flagged. At night they were taken inside the nearest fort and Brude began to realise just how many soldiers the Romans had. They had heard that most soldiers had gone away to fight in some other part of the empire but there were still hundreds of them in the forts along the Wall, every man armed and armoured with enough iron to make a Pritani a wealthy man.

  They turned south, sometimes handed from one guard party to another. Some of them were now starting to pick up a few words of Latin. Brude was able to recognise the words for water, food, orders to get up, march, stop and rest. They all knew the word for slave, for they heard it constantly. They were just serui. They had no names as far as the Romans were concerned.

  The roads ran straight across the countryside, passing through villages and even large towns, many of them with streets laid out in orderly, rectangular patterns and surrounded by high walls. Sometimes they spent the nights sheltered in barns but mostly they slept outside, shivering in their short tunics even though it was high summer. “Lughnasa today,” said Frual one morning as they sipped the small ration of water and ate the dried oatmeal biscuits they were becoming used to. “I don’t suppose we’ll be celebrating, though.”

  Brude wondered how Frual knew it was Lughnasa; he had lost all track of time. He also wondered how Broch Tava would celebrate the summer festival this year when so many of their warriors were dead or captured.

  The march went on, much further than the trek they had made from Broch Tava to the Wall, yet the going was faster for the Roman roads allowed them to cover long distances easily. Brude noticed small stone markers at the roadside every so often; strange, unfamiliar symbols scratched on them. He supposed they marked some sort of holy place but on a much smaller scale than the high-standing stones the Pritani used.

  Day after day they marched, the Romans never allowing them any chance of escape. Brude whispered to Frual and some others that he thought they should try to overpower the guards one night, even if it meant all of them attacking in unison because of the restricting coffle. Nobody greeted his suggestion with any enthusiasm. “Where would you run to?” one man asked. “Even if you could get out of the chains, you’d soon get caught again.”

  “I heard they kill runaway slaves,” said another man gloomily.

  Drugh told Brude to forget his plan and the march went on.

  As they travelled further south the towns grew larger and became more prosperous. Brude marvelled at the sight of enormous buildings built of stone and brick, or even gleaming marble; some with huge round columns supporting triangular cornices decorated with incredibly lifelike painted statues. They made Broch Tava seem crude in comparison. And as they were marched through the towns they heard the people muttering and pointing, calling them “Picti” when they saw the blue painted designs on their faces and bodies. The paint was fading, its bright colour lost, but was still clearly visible, still marking them as Pritani warriors.

  After eighteen days they reached the biggest settlement Brude had ever seen. He heard the Roman soldiers call it Londinium although that meant nothing to him. After an overnight stay, locked in a large storehouse, they were shepherded out to the river where the wharves teemed with people and noise. They were marched onto a huge wooden boat, where they were shackled in the hold. Even Frual, who was a good sailor and knew his way round boats, had never seen a boat as large as this. Other slaves were brought in and shackled alongside them, including some women and children. When they thought the guards were far enough away, they exchanged whispered words and learned that most of the newcomers were of the tribe of the Brigantes who lived south of the Wall but had never sat easily under Roman rule. One of them whispered to Frual that the Romans were struggling to keep the Brigantes under control as most of their soldiers were across the sea, following the Governor of Britannia who had proclaimed himself emperor and gone off to fight the other claimant to the imperial throne. “It didn’t do us much good, though,” the man conceded. “They stomped on us pretty hard.”

  “Rome has two emperors?” Brude asked him.

  The man laughed. “Not for too long, I expect. One of them will kill the other one tually.”

  The voyage was a misery of darkness and terror as the ship pitched and rolled its way down the wide river and out to sea. Brude, like many of the others, was sick but had no choice except to lie there, filthy and stinking, praying for the awful movement to stop. When it finally did, they were all led up on to the deck where they were told to clean themselves up as best they could before being led off through the busy harbour town and out again onto a road for yet more walking.

  The summer sun was hot, hotter than the Boresti were used to. They suffered in the heat, as did some of the children who were treated no differently to the adults by the guards. These men were not dressed as soldiers but they were armed and just as harsh. They certainly watched the slaves just as closely as the soldiers had done and there was no chance of anyone escaping. Even if they could, the Boresti knew now that to get home they would have to cross the sea. What chance was there of that for an escaped slave?


  It took another six days of walking before they were herded into a large wooden enclosure on the edge of a town, which boasted a massive wall and gate towers built from stone that looked almost black. That evening they were brought plenty of food, water to wash in and clean tunics. They were ordered to wash off as much of their body paint as they could, so Brude scraped and soaped and scraped again until his skin was pink and raw and the blue marks were faded almost to nothing, leaving only the small tattoo on his right forearm. For Brude, it was not too bad but for most of the older men who had used the blue paint for years, their skin remained stubbornly tinted even when the patterns could no longer be made out. Many had tattoos which would never come off.

  There were other slaves already in the stockade. One of them, an older man with his hair starting to turn grey at the temples, approached Frual and asked which tribe he was from.

  “Boresti,” said Frual.

  “I knew you were from the north, from all that paint,” the man said. “Nobody but the northern Picti use that nowadays. I am Basillus of the Votadini.”

  Brude eyed the man cautiously. He remembered his father talking about the Votadini who were said to be friends of the Romans. Frual didn’t seem to bother. He and Basillus exchanged what little news they had. Basillus, it turned out, had been a slave for over ten years. “It’s not so bad if you’re careful,” he told them. “Keep your mouth shut, your eyes averted, your expression blank. Don’t step out of line and you’ll be fine. The Romans work their slaves hard but you’ll get fed and watered and they even let you have the run of the women slaves.”

  “I’ve got a wife back home,” said Frual.