In the Shadow of the Wall

by Gordon Anthony

  “I can admire the man’s skill,” Brude agreed, “but Hector had a family and was simply trying to protect his home. He still faced Achilles even though he knew he could not win. Achilles never had to be brave because he knew he was invincible. It takes a real man to do a brave thing even though he is afraid.”

  Lucius, though, was imbued with the invulnerability of youth. It made Brude feel old in comparison when Lucius hankered after some real action, wanting to emulate Achilles. Brude hoped the young man would live long enough to appreciate the old soldiers’ desire for a quiet life.

  The winter brought snow such as Brude had never seen. It piled against the buildings in deep drifts, blanketing the earth in white, which soon turned to a dirty brown and degenerated into a horribly wet slush as the men tramped through it. Lucius had never seen snow at all, except on high mountain peaks. He was at first amazed and delighted with it, then cold and miserable like everyone else, as the winter frosts took a grip.

  Tertius, though, drilled the troops whatever the weather. Brude was kept busy as the infirmary filled with men coughing and sneezing, requesting cures the surgeons were unable to provide because nobody could cure a winter chill. Brude caught a cold himself but recovered after a few days in bed, getting up and about just in time to tend Lucius who also succumbed.

  The rest gave Brude time to do some more reading. He started on the second batch of scrolls Cleon had given him, the story of the hero Odysseus and his twenty-year journey to return home after the Trojan War. Again Lucius helped him with the reading, as he so often did but, sitting there in the small room with winter gripping the outside world as he read of Odysseus’ homecoming, Brude felt the call of home growing inside him again. Lucius saw that something was bothering him and asked him what it was. “I want to go home,” Brude told him.

  “You miss Rome so much?” Lucius asked through a sniffle.

  “That’s your home,” Brude told him. “I mean my own home in Broch Tava.”

  Lucius was amused and alarmed at the same time. “Whatever for? What does your home village have to offer that life in the empire does not have?”

  “Friends. Family.” It was the same conversation he had had with Curtius the day after he had won the rudis. Brude could not explain but there was an ache in his belly, the more he thought of Broch Tava. He had been away for so long that it hurt him to think of it. He recalled Curtius’ warnings about going back but the thought was there and it would not go away.

  Lucius was not receptive and refused to discuss it any more. He could not conceive of anyone giving up the luxuries of Roman life for the barbarous lands beyond the empire, so Brude was forced to tuck the idea away though he decided to make plans for the journey anyway. He was not sure when he would get the chance to go, but he felt he should be ready if the opportunity arose.

  Letters arrived from Rome when the first thaw came. Small clay tablets with the characters carefully picked out by small, sharp writing sticks. Lucius read them avidly. “Vipsania is married now,” he told Brude. “She asks for you and so does my stepmother. She says she misses your company when she visits the forum or the baths now.”

  Brude had to look away. The last thing he wanted was to get involved in a discussion about Agrippina. “How is Cleon?” he asked, changing the subject as quickly as he could.

  “The same as ever. He urges us to keep studying our Homer.”

  “That’s no problem,” said Brude, gesturing towards the scrolls.

  “I shall write back and tell him how well you are doing,” said Lucius. “Then we shall read some more.”

  The winter passed slowly but, in the first months of the new year, while the frosts were still hard and the rain was still threatening to turn to snow, Tertius marshalled his troops and led the better part of two legions eastwards, deep into the forests. Lucius was delighted, excitedly telling Brude, “There’s talk of some tribes raising rebellion. We are off to crush them. We shall show them what it means to defy Rome.”

  The Romans were organised with an astonishing efficiency. The baggage train was packed, the sacrifices made and auspices taken. When the officiating priests announced that the signs were propitious, the legions were on the march a mere two days after Tertius told his officers what he intended. Lucius, mounted on his finest horse, joined the legate’s staff while Brude tagged along with the medical detachment, helping to load their small wagons with supplies. He wasn’t sure whether he should go with them but he had promised Aquila that he would look after Lucius and nobody told him he couldn’t go, so he looped his gladius over his shoulder and followed the Roman army into war, only too aware of the irony that raised.

  Eight thousand legionaries, five thousand auxiliaries and a thousand auxiliary cavalry made the march into the dark forests of Germania, accompanied by a horde of supply wagons and a contingent of artillery. There was also a rag-tag group of camp followers, prostitutes and traders, the permanent accompaniment to every army on the march, no matter how much the officers tried to stop them. The army crossed the Limes, the frontier line of forts they used to keep watch on the German hinterland, and kept going eastwards, the long column stretching for miles along the narrow an at paths. Brude had heard the legionaries tell stories of how three Roman legions had been destroyed by the Germans, two hundred years before, caught strung out on just such a march through the deep, dark woodland, but Tertius was too canny to be caught in a similar trap. They sent out scouts and used their cavalry to screen their infantry and supply column.

  Memories of his long march from Broch Tava came to Brude but this march involved many more men and was far better organised. The Romans, he grudgingly accepted, knew how to wage a war.

  Against his expectations, the Germans tried to fight. He was too far to the rear to know much about how it happened but he soon found that the army had deployed along a low ridge overlooking a lightly wooded valley where there was a fortified town. The Germans had mustered several thousand warriors, who were grouped in front of the town. One of the older men in the medical detachment grunted to Brude, “Poor fools. They’ve not caused trouble for near a generation so they don’t know what to expect.” Brude, who had personally experienced the might of Rome from the receiving end, felt a pang of sympathy for the Germans.

  It was past midday. He wondered whether the Romans would delay until the following morning. For the moment, the soldiers took a light meal, waiting in their ranks. Brude thought they might try to simply hold the ridge, inviting the Germans to come up the slope to them. Lucius, riding along the ridge, came over when he saw him and said, “We are just waiting for the scouts to return. Tertius wants to make sure there are no others hidden in the woods, where we can’t see them.” If Lucius was surprised to see Brude there, he did not say anything. “Isn’t this grand?” he asked cheerfully.

  “Just try to stay out of trouble,” Brude warned, knowing Lucius would pay no attention to his words.

  The scouts must have given Tertius the news he wanted because the Roman artillery soon began firing. The ballistas and onagers flung long wooden bolts and large rocks, smashing into the German warriors, disrupting their cohesion and spreading confusion. Then there was a blast of a trumpet. The Roman infantry marched forwards, leaving the high ground and heading straight for the enemy.

  Brude knew what it was like to face an attack like this. Yet the line of troops he had faced twelve years previously had scarcely been two hundred men strong. This army comprised over fourteen thousand men.

  The Germans cheered and yelled their war cries but the Romans advanced steadily, silently, an ominous tidal wave of armour and steel. They threw their javelins, the dreaded pila, which bent on impact to disable their opponents’ shields, causing more confusion and panic in the German ranks. A second volley, then each soldier drew his gladius, hefted his shield and marched forwards.

  The Germans died in their hundreds. If a man fell, the Romans trampled over him, allowing the men in the second rank to stab down with their swords t
o make sure he was dead. The Germans who still stood slashed with their long swords and axes but the Romans, fighting as a unit as they had been trained, could get in between the warriors who needed room to wield their huge weapons. And still the Germans died. They were outnumbered and outclassed, and they had no chance to do anything except run or die.

  It was, as Lucius had said, a bloody exercise. This was where the Roman training paid dividends. It was all over in under half an hour. The Germans were either dead, wounded, captured or fled. While the auxiliary horsemen pursued the fleeing warriors, the Roman infantry stormed into the town in search of women and loot. For Brude, it was like watching the slaughter of the Boresti once again. The battle had followed precisely the same awful pattern he remembered so vividly, although this time he was thankful that he was on the winning side.

  Now he had a job to do. He and the other medical troops ran down the slope, carrying their small bags of bandages and ointments. There were not many Romans who actually needed treatment, a few score at most, but Brude was busy for an hour or so, patching men up or organising stretchers for those who could not walk. Beyond where the dead and wounded lay, the town was starting to burn as the looting continued. He could hear the screams of the women as the Romans killed the ones they considered too old or too young to rape. The price of defeat, Brude knew, was high.

  The wounded men who were unable to move from where they had fallen were moaning in pain. Having attended to the Roman soldiers first, Brude now went to see whether he could help any of the German warriors. He heard one young man calling out, the pain clear in his tortured cries. Brude knelt beside him. The man was very young, hardly more than a boy, with long, fair hair now dirty and matted around his head. He had an awful wound in his belly and it was obvious there was no chance of him surviving. The boy clutched at him, gasping with pain, his eyes beseeching Brude for help. Brude gave him a drink of water from his canteen. The man muttered, “Danke,” before his face contorted with pain. Brude held him until he died, which did not take long, and he continued to hold him, looking into the boy’s sightless eyes as he cursed the folly of men who sought glory in war.

  A shadow fell over him and he looked up to see Farinus, one of the medical orderlies, a veteran legionary, looking down at him. “Poor kid,” Farinus said. “Has he got much on him?”

  Brude had not even checked the young German’s body for loot. Farinus laughed. “You’d better be quick, that’s a small town and the legions will be back soon enough to search the bodies.”

  Farinus began expertly patting down a nearby corpse, rummaging for hidden valuables. He clucked disappointingly when he found only a silver rinlly ad necklace. “They usually have more than that,” he cursed. He moved on.

  Brude was well enough used to death not to be sickened by the looting. What upset him was how pointless and futile the battle had been. He saw some legionaries streaming back out of the gates in the town’s wooden wall and heading straight for the fallen. Soon every corpse would be stripped of any valuables and any man who was not quite dead would be despatched by the sharp swords of the Romans. He moved quickly, searching the dead boy but finding only a small gold ring. He moved to another body nearby, a large man with a long coat of mail which would have been worth something but which he discounted as too cumbersome and heavy to take. Still, the man was obviously someone of high status so Brude checked him over. And found the means of going home a rich man.

  The warrior wore two golden armbands and had a torc of twisted gold around his neck. In a pouch tucked under his mail shirt Brude found several gold and silver Roman coins, more money than he had ever seen before in one place. The man also had a silver belt buckle fastening a wide, ornately decorated, leather belt which Brude unfastened. He tugged it off before rolling it up and shoving it into his medical case. Three gold rings completed his haul. He had time to quickly check two more bodies, adding a few more silver coins and a handful of rings and brooches before he decided the legionaries were getting too close. He did not want to end up in an argument over loot, especially with men who were fired up and excitable after a battle, so he picked up his bag and made his way back up the ridge to where the walking wounded were gathering.

  It took the army several days to return to camp. Tertius sent out some detachments, particularly the cavalry, to harass the defeated Germans. Another couple of villages were destroyed as the main force made its way back by a different route. Brude saw Lucius several times. The young man was ecstatic about the army’s success. “That will teach them a lesson they won’t forget in a hurry,” he declared. Brude could not argue with that.

  Back at the fort, Brude carefully hid his new-found wealth in several caches, usually buried in pots in the woods just out of sight of the fort. The town’s merchants were awash with wealth as many soldiers had managed to get hold of some loot, so Brude waited for a few months for the glut of gold and silver to diminish. Then he began slowly selling small pieces in exchange for coins, most of which he hid behind a brick that he levered out of the wall behind Lucius’ bed. He could easily retrieve it from there and, as he and Lucius were the only two who ever used the room, there was little chance of accidental discovery by anyone else.

  By the end of summer he felt ready to leave but he wasn’t sure how to raise the subject with Lucius. As a freedman, he had the right to go but he also had a conflicting duty to Aquila. Lucius did not really need him although he knew the young man would still object.

  His chance eventually came as the leaves were tng brown and beginning to cover the grass in the golden carpet of autumn. A messenger arrived from Rome, bringing Lucius the news that his father had died quite suddenly one evening. It was a shock for both of them but Lucius showed the stoic reaction of a true Roman and, at least outwardly, gave no display of emotion. The messenger had brought a short note from Agrippina, urging him to return to Rome to attend to his father’s affairs, so Lucius obtained Tertius’ permission to return home.

  “We shall leave tomorrow,” Lucius said to Brude that evening.

  “With respect, Master Lucius, I will not be coming with you. It is time for me to return to my own home.”

  Lucius sat on his bed, hands clasped together. He looked at Brude with some concern. “You do not wish to return to Rome?” He shook his head in wonder. “My dear Marcus, why ever not?”

  They had had this discussion before. Brude had rehearsed his response many times in his head. He could hardly say that he did not want to return to Rome because he wanted to avoid the temptations of Lucius’ stepmother. He had thought up some other reasons but now that the time was right to put them into words, he felt awkward and clumsy. “What is there in Rome for me now?” he asked. “Apart from Cleon, who I loved like a father, the home will not be the same. Your father is dead, your sister is married and, the truth is, you do not need me any more. Any slave could do for you what I have done these past months. I am closer now to my home than I have been for many years, so I think the time is right for me to return. I want to find out whether I still have friends and family there.”

  “It will not be easy for you,” said Lucius. “You know that Rome does not approve of citizens travelling beyond the borders of the empire.”

  “I will go as a trader,” said Brude. “Who knows, if there is nothing for me when I get back home, perhaps I will trade some goods and return to Rome.” That was the other temptation. Brude, who had seen what the empire could offer if a citizen was wealthy enough, had a worry that Broch Tava would disappoint him when he did eventually get there, just as Curtius had warned him it would.

  “You have thought this all out, haven’t you?” Lucius asked him. “But to travel as a trader you will need some goods. Do you have money to buy some stock to maintain your pretence?”

  align="justify">“A little,” Brude replied, knowing he had more than enough for what he needed.

  Lucius reached into his pack and withdrew a small pouch, which he tossed to Brude. Brude caught it easily, his react
ions still sharp. The small bag was heavy with coins. “Use that,” Lucius told him. “If you do return, I will expect a share in whatever profit you make on your journey.”

  Brude felt embarrassed by the young Roman’s generosity but it was impossible to change his story now so he could do nothing except thank Lucius profusely.

  Lucius left the following day. Brude, having recovered his stash of coins, said farewell to him at the gate of the fort, under the eyes of the Roman sentries. Lucius took with him Cleon’s scrolls containing the Homeric poems along with a clay tablet bearing a short note from Brude, the words clumsily carved out in large, awkward letters. Lucius had offered to write it but Brude felt he at least owed Cleon a farewell note in his own hand. Now, all he carried was his gladius, his pack with a sleeping blanket, his manumission papers, his rudis and a small piece of flint for lighting fires. And, hidden away at the bottom of the pack, his hoard of gold and silver coins. Lucius insisted on giving him one of his horses to make his journey swifter. “I am your patron now,” Lucius told him. “I want to make you a gift of this horse.” He would take no argument about it.

  Lucius clasped Brude’s hands, thanking him for his help and advice over the past three years. Then he mounted his own horse, waved farewell and, accompanied by Agrippina’s messenger, set off on the long road south to Rome.

  After a backward glance at the legionary fort, Brude rode as far as the nearest main town before selling his horse. He knew he would travel faster with it but he was never comfortable in the saddle and a man alone on horseback was often a target for thieves and bandits. He decided it would be safer to hide under a guise of poverty so the horse was sold and his supply of coin was increased.

  He followed the road north, trying to stay in sight of other travellers when he could, finding somewhere to sleep in towns where possible, but outdoors if he had to. After five days he felt fitter and leaner than he had for some time, although his feet were protesting at so much walking. He reached the city of Augusta Treverorum and was stopped in his tracks when he suddenly recognised the great black stone of the gate tower. This was the town where he had been brought with the other slaves to be bought by Marcus Arminius, who had taken him away to work the farmland of Sextus Arminius Rufus. In a kind of daze, he wandered slowly through the massive gateway. Inside, he found the slave pens. Even after so many years, the memories flooded back as he gazed around at the crowds of people and the high wooden walls of the slave pens with their iron gates. There were slaves in there now, waiting urn to be sold to the highest bidder who would soon have them working for the continuing glory of the empire. He looked back out through the open gates, realising that he must have passed the estate that had formerly belonged to Arminius Rufus without recognising it. He had a fleeting temptation to go back to see it again but he quickly dismissed the notion. Even if Batix was still alive and still there, what could Brude, now free, say to him? And if Julia, his one-time lover, was still there, she would have another man by now and children as well. Even if one of the children was his, he had no right to see them for they belonged to whoever their master was now. The weight of his coins at the bottom of his pack hinted that he might be able to buy their freedom but then what would he do? With his conscience mocking him, he turned away from the east gate and headed northwards through the city.