‘There’s my boy.’ Titus grinned, ruffling Stumps’s unkempt hair as if he were a child. ‘What now?’ he then asked H.
‘We draw rations and kit. Leave as soon as it gets dark.’
‘Enjoy your dog,’ Stumps grunted from his bed, his back turned to us but mind fully in the conversation.
‘I think I’ll lie low here,’ Titus said to me. ‘Don’t want Malchus having second thoughts, so it looks like you’ve lost your bed.’
There were plenty of empty ones in the room. After a moment, I caught my friend’s meaning.
‘I’ll go and see her before we leave,’ I promised.
‘Now,’ he said, and I felt the eyes of my other friends burning into me, telling me to find my balls.
‘Now,’ Titus urged again.
‘Don’t tell me you put my head through a bunk for nothing,’ Stumps rumbled from his bed.
Titus laughed.
‘I’ll go—’
‘Now!’ my comrades shouted in unison.
And so I did as I was ordered.
I left to find Linza.
60
Walking through the fort I felt the same edge of fear that had descended on to the parade square following Metella’s final words. It clung to every person in the fort. Shrouded figures moved sullenly from building to building, avoiding eye contact at all costs. There were no thoughts of the greater good, only of their own person, or the smallest band of brothers and sisters.
Such pessimism made finding Linza difficult. My questions were met with suspicion and scorn. Combing the grid-like layout of the fort, I eventually found her cutting wood with a dozen other women, their faces ruddy from effort and biting cold.
‘Linza,’ I said.
There was no happiness in her expression when she saw me. I felt as though I was being watched and judged for intention, the way a horse warily eyes a dog.
‘Felix,’ she finally said, walking clear of the prying eyes and ears of her group. ‘What do you want?’
‘I want to speak to you,’ I answered, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
‘To me?’
‘With you.’
‘About what?’
I faltered then. Even her tired look of annoyance brought back memories that I treasured – did I truly love this German woman, or was I chasing a ghost?
‘I’m not sure,’ I finally said. ‘I’m going away for a while,’ I added, as if it explained everything. Perhaps it did, because I saw the tension in her shoulders soften.
‘What the prefect was talking about on the square? He has a mission for you?’
I nodded. She shook her head as if disappointed with a child.
‘I suppose you volunteered?’ she accused me.
‘I had no choice,’ I tried, recognizing a deep note of worry hiding amongst the simmering anger.
‘Of course you did. That’s why it’s called volunteering.’
I said nothing. How to explain to her the ties of comradeship when I could not understand them myself? Titus was a friend, and putting my own life at risk had been the only way to give him a chance of survival. There was nothing heroic or glorious in those actions. They simply happened because they had to. There was no other choice.
‘Do you know what a snowball is?’ I asked, earning a look of contempt.
‘I’m Batavian.’
I blushed a little at my foolishness. ‘Volunteering is like a snowball,’ I tried to explain. ‘You do it once, roll it once, and it just keeps getting bigger. Once you volunteer for one thing, they’ll always expect you to do it the next time. It gets to the point where if you don’t volunteer, you’re not standing still, but pulling back.’
‘So it’s about pride?’ Linza snorted. ‘What a surprise. Stupid of me to think you weren’t as arrogant as the next Roman.’
‘I’m no Roman,’ I told her, meaning it.
‘You dress like one. You kill for them. Now you risk your life for them.’
‘I’m not doing it for Rome,’ I told her honestly. ‘Fuck Rome. I just want to see my friends get home alive. I want to see you get home alive.’
‘Why?’ she pressed me.
And I knew then that she wanted me to kiss her. To take hold of her. To be a man.
But I could not. I could not, because I was looking at a ghost, and she was looking at a husband lost to the forest.
‘Stay with Stumps and the others when I’m gone,’ I urged, watching the moment sail by me as I had once watched the ships leave the pier of my home.
‘What do you think is going to happen to me?’ she asked. She was angry with me. Angry with our place in the world.
‘You’ll be all right with them.’
‘I’ll tell you what will happen to me, Felix.’ Linza spoke over me, closing in so that her flushed face was inches from my own. ‘If Malchus doesn’t rape and kill me here, another man will. German, or Roman. That’s my place now. That’s what you soldiers see me as. Plunder.’
‘That’s not true,’ I urged, but I could hear the frailty of my words.
‘Of course it’s true,’ she snapped. ‘Sooner or later this fort is falling. I will not fall with it, Felix,’ she vowed. ‘I will take my own life before that.’
Her words hit me harder than any blow I had suffered at the hands of Titus. The thought of a man forcing himself on Linza revolted me, angered me and filled me with shame in the same moment – shame that I could not protect her. Guilt that I had failed before.
‘I can show you a way to make it quick?’ I tried.
She laughed at me then. It was a bitter, furious laugh. Instantly, I knew that I had failed a test. My soul and manhood had been on trial, and both had now been condemned.
‘You think that’s what I wanted to hear?’ She shook her head, her face made ugly by bile. Resentful that she had let her shield and defences down, as I had my own.
‘Go and fuck yourself, Felix,’ she snarled at me. ‘Go and look for your war.’
She walked away from me. Defeated, I made no attempt to follow. No attempt to call out. Instead, I vowed that I would take her guidance, and do what I had been doing since the first moment I had known loss, and true pain.
I would look for my war.
61
It was dark by the time I joined Titus and H in the barrack room. Neither soldier was surprised, assuming that my time had been spent doing what every soldier wants to do when he sees the end of his life hanging by a thread.
‘That much fun, was it?’ Titus smiled, his teeth yellow in the flame of the room’s flickering stove.
‘Where are the others?’ I asked.
‘Guard duty.’
My stomach turned sour. My self-pity had cost me the chance to say goodbye to my comrades.
‘Get your kit and let’s go,’ H instructed me. ‘The runners are waiting for us at the gate.’
We joined them soon after. Having ruined my farewell to both Linza and my comrades, I was anxious to be free of the fort and to place myself in danger, where my thoughts would be occupied with survival and not recrimination. The two runners were young men, and carried themselves with confidence. Both had been known and trusted by H for years.
‘We’re not in any rush to get there,’ H told us as we let our eyes adjust to the darkness. ‘Priority is to get the runners clear to the Rhine. Once that’s done we’ll lie up, and start working out the goat-fuckers’ positions and routines.
‘Any final questions?’ H asked. Once we left the gate, we would only speak when strictly necessary.
‘Don’t you mean last words?’ One of the runners grinned, keen to show indifference towards the danger that lay ahead.
We chuckled darkly at the joke. That was the soldier’s way.
H turned to the men of the guard. ‘Open the gate.’
Without armour and shield we moved quietly through the night. The air was cold but not vicious, and I felt beads of sweat trickle down my lower spine. I had a blanket rolled and looped over o
ne shoulder and down to my waist, and alongside that rested a bundled pack of drinking-skins and rations. There was little weight to either – we would be returning to the fort in a fortnight, or we would be the ones providing meals to nature’s creatures.
It was a still night, and the moon was low and shrouded. We knew that Arminius had scouts watching the fort, but we didn’t fear them. The land surrounding Aliso was vast and the number of enemies in close proximity few. Should we happen to stumble upon them, then the more pious amongst us would take that as a message from the gods that the mission was doomed to fail from the start.
My own thoughts on a chance meeting were a little different. If we found the enemy then we could steal their mounts. As far as our reconnaissance was concerned, it wouldn’t be helpful to announce our presence thus, but the beasts could carry the runners to the Rhine more quickly than their feet. However, before leaving the gate, H had been fast to veto my suggestion of hunting the enemy scouts for such a purpose.
‘If we unsheathe our blades, something’s gone wrong,’ he told me. ‘Don’t be in such a hurry, Felix,’ he added, sensing something in my nervous energy. ‘There’ll be killing to do if we’re ever to reach the Rhine.’
He was right about that, of course. He was also right that I wanted to draw blood, I then realized. I wanted to fight. I wanted to lose myself in that chaos. That savagery.
There was nothing savage about the way we crossed fields and woodland. Our approach was calm and methodical. H led from the front, and we followed in a loose single file. I brought up the rear, pausing often to watch and listen that we were not being tracked.
There was no need or room for words. We took our lead from our centurion: walking where he did; stopping when he did. There was little of this, as we aimed to cover twelve miles in the darkness. The Roman soldier marches at four miles an hour with full equipment, and is expected to cover twenty miles a day in such conditions. Though unburdened, we were required by stealth and terrain to moderate our pace, and so pauses in our advance west were limited to the time it took to piss, and to draw a few gulps of water from our skins.
The spectre of dawn was threatening the sky when H broke from a farmer’s trail and led us towards the darkness that promised the refuge of trees. We found what we wanted there, and so we set about building our hide. Fallen branches formed the support for blankets. Each had thin rope stitched into the corners, and we used pegs to stretch the material tight, as we would a tent. We then covered this structure with the decaying leaves that autumn had left thick on the woodland floor.
‘Everyone inside,’ H whispered. ‘Get some rest. I’ll take first watch, and check the hide and position once it gets lighter.’
With the others, I slithered inside our temporary home. Titus struggled to enter without shaking leaves free, and I knew that the big man would be cursing inside his head. There was little room for personal space, nor did we want it – following our labour, sweat was now growing cold. Our collective body heat beneath the blankets was our best defence against the German chill.
We were not out of danger, but we no longer had to have our senses on high alert, and so thoughts that I wished left in the fort began to fight to be heard. I wanted none of them. Fortunately, the day and night had been long, and my emotions were as exhausted as my feet. I tucked my chin against my chest as Titus began to snore. It wasn’t long until I followed his example.
The daylight hours passed without incident. I was woken sometime in the afternoon by Titus, and took my turn at the opening of our hide, my eyes and ears tuned to the autumnal woodland and the shuffling of bronzed leaves, the dank of wet earth and mulch rich in my nostrils.
There was no escaping my mind as I lay beneath the trees. As the coming winter stripped the branches above me, so too were my thoughts laid bare.
I loved Linza. I loved her because she had told me to go and fuck myself. I loved her because she was scared, but she was defiant. I hadn’t understood it at the time, but after she had got so angry I had come to realize that she didn’t need me, but that she wanted me. I was as certain of that as I was that my misreading of her emotions had cost me my chance.
A chance at what? I chided myself. Had I forgotten where I was, and who? Even if I survived the reconnaissance of the German force, we would still need to slip by the enemy army eventually. Even the most optimistic soldier in the fort could not expect such a thing to happen smoothly. At some point, there would be bloodshed.
And what if we did survive? What if we did make it to the Rhine? What then? Since Linza had reminded me of the better part of my past – at least, until it had been taken from me – I had forgotten who I was, and fallen into the role of the soldier. The legionary. But the bases on the Rhine were not my final destination; Britain was. Would that change if I were with Linza? Would she love me once we were free of imminent death, and away from the compressed and chaotic world of siege? Would she come with me to Britain if she did?
I had a head and heart full of questions, but only one certainty – I knew that I had failed her.
Knowing that sleep would now evade me, I kept the watch until darkness was falling. Under its blanket we rolled away our own, and H led us westwards. We were like animals now, grunts and looks all that we needed to know our pack leader’s intention.
The ground was cold and hard, and so we made good distance on that second night. H and one of the runners had bands of beads threaded with cords, and these they used to measure our distance in the darkness. To achieve this they had walked a hundred yards within camp, counting the steps it took them to cover the distance. Now in enemy territory, they counted their steps and moved one bead for each hundred yards covered. It was a skill they had practised, and became an automatic rhythm that was as natural as breathing.
I had no beads, but experience of my own had made me a good judge of time and distance. I estimated that we had made fifteen miles that night, putting us roughly halfway between Aliso and the Rhine.
Once more, H led us to a place beneath branches and shrouded by undergrowth. Once more we made our shelter and rested concealed in our hide. My time on watch was again one of questions without answers, and it was with relief that we began the third night’s march, and then the fourth.
It was that night that we reached our closest point to the Rhine. It was beyond our sight and hearing, but H estimated that we were within ten miles of the waters that separated the Empire from the enemy.
‘Make another few miles tonight,’ he whispered to the two runners. ‘Lie up, then cross tomorrow. Good luck.’
Titus and I added our own farewells through pats on the men’s shoulders. After leaving what rations they had with us, they took their leave.
‘We’ve got a long spell ahead,’ H murmured once the quiet rustle of the men’s movements had died away. ‘We’ll lie up here tonight. It’s a good spot.’
We formed our hide in silence. Titus took the first watch, and I was still in the laze of near-sleep when I heard him speak up. I kept my lids tightly shut, willing my mind to disengage, but it caught like a hook on the big man’s conversation with the centurion.
‘You look surprised to see me,’ he said, his whisper like a forge’s bellows.
‘Not really,’ H replied. ‘But I am glad to wake up alive, at least, so thank you for that.’
For days we had stayed silent, but I could tell by their surprised words that both men needed the closure of this conversation. I feigned sleep, not wanting to become an intruder.
‘Why would I kill you?’ Titus asked, bemused. ‘You saved my life. Dragged it out a little longer, anyway.’
‘What happened with Statius,’ H explained. ‘You don’t strike me as the kind of man who likes witnesses, Titus.’
‘It wasn’t my crime. You were as much a part of hiding it as I was.’
H had nothing to say to that.
‘How did you know I wouldn’t run?’ the big man pressed.
‘You didn’t run a black market to
go home poor, and you’re not weighed down with coins.’
‘You bet I want those coins more than my life?’ Titus asked, amused.
‘No,’ H conceded. ‘But you’d never leave without Stumps and Micon, would you?’
There was silence then. With certainty, I knew that Titus would be picturing the moment he had chosen to walk away with a legion’s pay chests rather than to stand and die alongside his comrades. The situation had seemed hopeless, and yet I was sure the shame of that moment gnawed away at his core. Titus was more complicated than he seemed.
‘I wouldn’t leave them,’ he admitted, and there was steel in that promise. Titus had been given his chance for redemption, something I had always been denied. He would not spurn it.
‘You’re a good man, H,’ Titus added after a long moment. ‘I can see that this shit with Statius, the raid and Malchus eats at you. That’s the problem with being a good bloke. But you are one, and I just wanted to tell you that.’
‘Before we die?’ the centurion asked darkly.
‘Of course,’ Titus answered, unashamed.
When darkness fell we left our shelter and the men’s words behind. We went forth, and sought out the enemy’s army.
62
For ten days we lived like animals in the undergrowth that touched the encampment of the blocking force. The German army was where it had been the night of our failed raid, straddled across the paved road that led to the crossing on the Rhine twelve miles distant – far enough to avoid tempting the Rhine garrisons to battle, close enough to make escape for us impossible.
We hoped to make a fool of Arminius’s claim. To that end we skulked in depressions in the earth during daylight, watching the enemy from tree-cloaked ridges and hillsides. At night we emerged alongside fox and wolf, creeping so close to the enemy positions that we could smell the ale on the cold air. We heard the bored voice of their sentries. We heard their laughter, and farts. We were close enough to kill them, but we watched, we noted, and we learned.
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