They made the crossing six times in the next few hours. It was hard, gruelling work, but Bersheba never faltered, and, eventually, Frontinus was satisfied he had enough ropes to ferry his remaining force across without the elephant’s help. On the final trip, Rufus persuaded the Batavian to forgo the pleasures of a freezing swim and be carried across on Bersheba’s back. When they reached the bank, the auxiliary commander slid down the elephant’s side and stood listening, gauging from the sounds around him whether all was going to plan. Eventually he was satisfied and motioned Rufus to leave Bersheba and follow him.
‘Now we must wait. Time is short and we still have far to go, but I have my orders.’
The Batavians had created a wide perimeter around the landing ground, an unbroken half-circle of kneeling men staring into the dark from beneath the brims of their iron helmets. When they reached the picket line, Frontinus took his place just behind it, staring as hard as any of them. The prefect was clearly nervous and Rufus, who had thought him unflappable, decided that should make him nervous too. He fingered the hilt of his gladius and gained comfort from it, if not courage.
‘Listen.’ The urgent whisper came from a Batavian officer in the front line.
Frontinus’s eyes narrowed and his face took on a look of total concentration. Rufus listened too, straining his ears for any sound that was alien to the natural rhythm of the night. Even so, he saw them before he heard them. They came out of the darkness, a line of silent shadows that turned into solid, all too human figures as they approached. A hundred tall, moustached men, clad in trews and chequered shirts, well armed and moving with a disturbing sense of purpose. One of Frontinus’s men raised himself and lifted his spear to hurl it into the mass of enemy warriors.
‘Hold,’ Frontinus snarled. The approaching line halted within a few paces of the auxiliary troopers, and opened to allow a stocky figure to march to their front. Frontinus turned to Rufus. ‘The Greek who advises General Vespasian said you would recognize him.’
Rufus stared hard at the small man and nodded. He was just as Narcissus had described him two nights before: short, stout and full of his own importance.
‘Are we to scowl at each other all night, or may we go?’ Adminius, king of the Cantiaci, demanded. ‘Our enemies await us.’
XXVI
Caratacus stared into the darkness.
They were out there. He knew it as he knew the scent of his firstborn. A natural knowing made without effort or thought.
The three bridges were close now, almost to the point where the charging hordes who would thunder across at daylight could reach the shallows with their first leap. His best archers and spearmen had spent the last hours peppering the night with unaimed fire, rewarded occasionally by a loud splash or a shrill scream that testified to a legionary engineer who would not be alive to fight in the morning. He knew it wouldn’t stop them, didn’t intend it to. But they would expect it, and he was eager to give Plautius what he expected.
‘Epedos, you understand what you must do?’
The war chief of the Atrebates nodded gravely. All the kings of the united tribes of southern Britain had gathered on the whaleback hill overlooking the crossing point. ‘We wait until you have the enemy pinned against the river. They will be forced to deploy left and right, thinning their line. When they are at their weakest, we strike.’
Caratacus turned to Bodvoc, whose Regni warriors would man the British left flank alongside the Atrebates. ‘Remember that, Bodvoc. When your blood boils in the furnace of battle and the clash of iron calls you like a bed-ready maiden, you wait. You must not act without Epedos. This is our chance to crush them. Yours is the vital blow; you must strike it with all the force you have. And when the Romans are driven in chaos and confusion across our front, you, Lord Scarach, will fall upon them with your Durotriges, our Iceni friends and my Catuvellauni and Trinovantes, and it will be as a wolf falls upon an injured doe, swift and deadly.’
Scarach’s face split into a grin. ‘Hear that?’ He slapped his enormous son on the back. ‘Like a wolf. Booty and plunder and blood. And all before breakfast.’
‘And I?’ Togodumnus didn’t appreciate being left to last and his voice mirrored his petulance.
‘You, Togodumnus, will be the knife in the heart of the Roman attack; the anvil against which we destroy them for ever.’ Caratacus’s brother gave no sign of appreciating his flattery. ‘With Epedos and Bodvoc on their right, unbearable pressure on their centre and the river at their back, they will inevitably be forced to retire to the west. Then you kill them.’ He turned to the men on the hill, looking each in the eye in turn. ‘You kill them all. This is the day the Romans learn the true price of stealing our lands and enslaving our people. No slaves. No prisoners. Only souls for Taranis. The legions of Plautius must vanish into the mist as if they had never existed, so their fate is the stuff of Roman nightmares for fifty generations and more.’
‘Aye.’ A dozen voices sounded in unison.
Caratacus closed his eyes and allowed himself a vision of victory. He saw a river choked with Roman dead, running red with Roman blood. A Roman baggage train burning. A shining eagle trampled in the dirt. He thought of his wife Medb and the boy Tasciovanus. They would be proud. Then, with a pang of guilt, he remembered the day on the hill. And Cartimandua. Would she leave her mountain fastness to seek his forgiveness and an alliance, or wait until he inevitably made his way north to impose his overlordship on her Brigantes?
‘Yet these are Romans.’ His thoughts were interrupted by the quiet, life-weary voice of Antedios of the Iceni. ‘We have seen how the Romans can fight. They are both flexible and disciplined. What if
… and I defer to your wisdom in this, Lord Caratacus… what if this Plautius does not see fit to stray meekly into your trap? What if he has a trap of his own?’
Caratacus felt the liquid ice in his guts as the question he had not dared ask himself was put into words, but when he replied his own voice was hard and unyielding. ‘Then, Antedios, we fight the Roman on his terms… and we win or we die.’
Five miles downstream Ballan rode westward along the riverbank to join his lord. He had been right, it had been a fool’s errand, but he didn’t grudge Caratacus his certainty. It was that kind of attention to detail that made the Catuvellauni a leader worth following. They had reached the high ground where the estuary met the sea just before last light. It wasn’t a hill, exactly — just a gentle elevation in the flat landscape — but there were signs that people had lived in this inhospitable, wind-scoured place; the rotting fallen timbers of a building and blackened stones that had once been part of a hearth were just visible among the tufted grass. From this platform they were able to see far along the coast to north and south, over the bog and marshland inhabited only by ducks, herons and frogs, and the mudflats that were just visible as the tide turned. Ballan saw nothing to fear. No war galleys or troop transports, not even the timbers of an ancient merchant ship that had fallen foul of this treacherous, ever-shifting coastline. When he was certain, sure enough even for Caratacus, he and his eight men turned their horses west. They could have made better time cutting inland, but the Iceni scout elected to follow the twisting river. If Caratacus believed there was even the slightest chance of a small enemy force crossing this far down he might as well check. They would still be back with the king by daylight.
Four hours later he was regretting his decision. In the darkness and the rain that now drifted down to soak their clothing he could barely see beyond his horse’s ears. The river was blanketed by swirling mist that men’s eyes turned into sprites and ghostly figures come to relieve a warrior of his soul. The ground beneath their feet was as treacherous as the shoals of the estuary, full of sink holes and soft spots, buried branches with spikes as sharp as any spear and gullies that could swallow a man and his horse.
Behind him, his men rode with their heads down, praying that Ballan would see sense and end their misery. He could feel their resentment and he grinned.
He hadn’t proved to Caratacus that an Iceni was worthy of the position of chief scout by being sensible. He had proved it by doing the impossible. Again, and again and again. He had spent more time in enemy territory in the last month than he had by his own fire. When word of the Roman invasion was first brought by the refugees from the coast, whom had Caratacus dispatched to confirm it? Ballan. And when his lord had decided to see for himself, who had brought him by the secret ways and placed him so close he could almost smell his enemy? No, they would stick with their fool’s errand. Let his men curse him.
He wasn’t sure at first; how could a man be sure of anything on a night like this? They had just reached a point where the action of the river had taken a massive circular bite out of the soft material of the bank. It was nothing unusual, but it meant another half-hour detour and an extra element of care. If the river could undermine one piece of dirt it could undermine another, and a horseman had to be wary of ground that might fall away beneath him and pitch him straight into the water. Still, the cloud blanket seemed to be thinner, and there was even a glimmer of shadowy moon showing somewhere up there. At least they would have the illusion of light to ease their way. The rain continued to fall gently and the river mist was thick as his wife’s oatmeal porridge, but there was a hint of breeze that made it whirl and eddy in an ethereal imitation of the water it covered. He sighed and was about to turn and follow his men when he saw it.
It wasn’t a shape, nothing as substantial as that. Just a section of mist that was more… solid wasn’t the word. Perhaps there wasn’t one? He told himself it was only another eddy in the fog, but it awoke something in him. He felt a shiver run through his body, as if a dead man had just run cold fingers down his spine, and he stared harder, trying to understand what the mist was telling him. For a few more moments it was still just mist, and he thought he was imagining what he had or hadn’t seen; had or hadn’t sensed. Then the wind shifted again, and the vapour curtain was twitched aside, and he was more frightened than he had ever been in his life.
Romans. And they were walking on water.
XXVII
Claudius had never liked tents. True, this was more of a silken palace, with its six separate rooms, wall hangings of golden cloth and a raised floor covered with soft rugs — even a small shrine where he could pray to his ancestors for the success of this enterprise — but it was still a tent. He had been brought up in real palaces. Monuments of stone and marble that gave a man a feeling of security and superiority. A tent could be blown away by a puff of wind, and no one, not even an Emperor, could do anything about it.
Still, he was better housed than the comitatus, the gaggle of consuls and senators who accompanied him and who had grumbled all the way from Rome; a thousand miles of whining and complaint. Most of them had served in the army at one time or another, but you would never have believed it. The food was ‘bad’, the accommodation ‘uncomfortable’, the latrine facilities ‘unacceptable’. When he had pointed out that they ate a hundred times better than the legionaries packed into the stinking transport ships bobbing a mile upwind, they had sniffed and replied that they were representatives of the Empire, and not mere plebeians who had been brought up to expect nothing more than slops and discomfort.
The fleet had landed on a wide beach on the south-east coast of the island and they had made their leisurely way here, a day’s march south of the main army encamped at the river. He had been nervous at first, there was no denying it. But his confidence had grown with every mile they advanced north and west through a landscape cleared of any threat. There had been no need to hurry; Narcissus had arranged everything. The legions of Plautius’s force would do their duty and — though they did not know it yet — their Emperor would arrive in the hour of their triumph, dispense the honours their valour had won them, and lead them onwards to the final conquest of Britain.
Nothing he had seen on the march had changed his attitude to the place he had decided should be Rome’s greatest conquest. It was a miserable country, with none of the grandeur even of Gaul, which was hardly memorable itself. Green, yes, verdant even, but poor. He had seen nothing but poverty. The people lived in mud hovels and worshipped gods who drank blood. Well, he would change that. He would give these people civilization whether they wanted it or not.
A small desk had been set up for him and his secretary had placed on its rosewood surface the papers he couldn’t escape even on campaign. It was after midnight, but the Empire wouldn’t run itself. Vitellius would keep those thieves and vagabonds in the senate as honest as they would ever be, but the important decisions would be made here. He signed the order which finally authorized a start on the harbour at Ostia. Picked up another from the pile. Hesitated. One scroll had been placed discreetly to one side. He knew what it was. Knew who had sent it. Didn’t want to open it, but knew he must. He reached for it and noticed his hand was shaking. The stiff parchment between his fingers felt somehow unclean. He knew it was his imagination, but the thought persisted as he unrolled it and pinned it to the desk. The trembling increased. It was worse than he had imagined. How could she think this would go undetected? Even if his own spies hadn’t been watching her, someone would have informed him. Agrippina had warned him of what was happening, but oh, Messalina, not in public, and not with him.
‘General Plautius is here, Caesar.’
He straightened and drove all thoughts of Valeria Messalina’s infidelity from his mind, unpinned the scroll and turned it face down on the desk. He would deal with it later. Plautius marched briskly into the tent with two of his aides. The invasion commander was burned brown by the sun, and the weathering of his skin emphasized the lines in his face and made him look more like a startled eagle than ever. His expression was cold, but his eyes held a message that made Claudius’s heart quicken.
‘Welcome, General.’ He waved a hand towards a pair of couches set by the wall of the tent. ‘You must be tired. Bring the general some wine.’
They sat in silence for several moments, each man taking the measure of the other. They were related, distantly, and Plautius had quietly supported Claudius through the years of trial under Caligula. In the interim he had excelled in his governorship of troublesome Pannonia. His reward was command of the invasion of Britain and an honoured place in history.
‘Are the barbarians defeated?’ Claudius already knew the answer, but some questions had to be asked.
Plautius shook his head. ‘Not yet, Caesar. But I can assure you victory will not be long delayed.’
‘Yet you are here, on the eve of battle, a battle which could be decisive — the outcome of which could be… fatal.’ To both of us. He didn’t say it. Didn’t need to. ‘Are you so confident?’
Plautius nodded, not arrogant — he was too astute for that — but assured. ‘My forces are disposed. My orders are given. My men are in good hands. And my enemy’s doom is certain. So, yes, I am confident. By the time you reach the river the battle will be won and, if the gods will it, I will present you with this Caratacus’s head.’
‘And it will be a great victory?’
‘A victory worthy of the Army of Claudius.’
‘And after?’
Plautius stared. He was giving this man the triumph which would place him beside Julius Caesar in the ranks of Roman heroes and still he wanted more? Yes, he thought, of course he wanted more. The more battles won, the more the glory, and the more glory, the more secure his position. And every Emperor craved security above all things.
‘Afterwards, you will lead us to more victories and your valour will rank above any Roman’s since Romulus made Rome the greatest city the world has ever known.’
‘Then a toast.’ Claudius raised his golden goblet. ‘To victory.’
‘To victory.’
Victory was far from Rufus’s mind. The only thing that concerned him, as he steered Bersheba through the darkness towards the encamped enemy, was survival. Each of Frontinus’s centuries was guided across the broken country north of
the river by one of Adminius’s bands of Cantiaci warriors. The prefect was understandably wary of his new British allies, but the column made steady progress through the night and they halted two hours before dawn in a forest a mile from the crossing point. Frontinus called Rufus forward to a small clearing where his officers gathered for a conference at which Adminius did most of the talking. The Batavians created a tent wall around the clearing to mask the torches that lit the forest floor where the Cantiaci king used his sword to sketch out the enemy positions among the leaves.
‘Caratacus is here, in the centre.’ He circled a low mound close to the line of the river. ‘His forces are stretched to the east and west of his position, from the Atrebates and the Regni here at the farthest point downstream, to the Dobunni farthest upstream, here, less than two miles from us. I have selected a defensive position for you at this point,’ he jabbed with the sword, ‘where a line of cliffs runs down towards the river. There is a gap about three hundred paces wide. I was told this was the ground you would need.’
Frontinus nodded. He knew that if Adminius had chosen the wrong position they would all be dead before morning. ‘It will do.’
‘The cliffs can be climbed, but only with difficulty. Any attempt to flank you will take more time than Caratacus can afford.’
‘And the enemy?’ the Batavian demanded. ‘He would be foolish not to patrol his flank, and nothing I have heard about this Caratacus tells me he is a fool.’
Adminius’s eyes shone in the torchlight. ‘Not Caratacus. His brother Togodumnus, who is as lazy as he is arrogant. He sulks in his hut because Scarach of the Durotriges stands in the place of honour at Caratacus’s right hand, while the Dobunni skulk like dogs waiting to be fed scraps from their master.’ He laughed. ‘He believes the only honours to be won tomorrow will be in the battle of the three bridges and that is where his attention is drawn. He cares nothing for flanks, only glory.’
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