Sarum

by Edward Rutherfurd

  Tosutigus said nothing. He knew that his ancestral lands were protected by many gods. The five rivers were protected by Sul, the healing goddess of springs; in the woods to the east there was a sacred oak tree beside which was the shrine of Cernunnos, the horned god of the forests who protected the hunting. Sometimes Cernunnos would go about in disguise, taking the form of an old man with a hood over his head: and if any man saw him then, he knew that he would have good luck all year. The fields were protected by the corn maiden, whose sacred rites were held at Samain, the great feast at the beginning of winter. And the chalk ridges were protected by Leucetius the god of lightning, who would strike dead any invader who dared to disturb the ancient tombs on the high ground. The henge, too, was protected by his own ancestors the ten giants, the greatest of whom had three heads which grew again if they were cut off. The dune was protected by Modron the war goddess with her ravens. His own family – were they not under the personal protection of great Nodens the cloudmaker, to whom they had built a shrine?

  Sarum and its ruling family might have fallen from their former greatness, but they still had powerful allies amongst the gods.

  Tosutigus still possessed, locked in a great oak chest, the huge iron sword of Coolin the Warrior. All Sarum knew that with this sword, centuries ago, the mighty Coolin had slain a chief from the north. Everyone knew the story of how he had then cut off his head and made the skull into a drinking cup; of how, the first time he had raised it to his lips the skull had righted itself and, in front of all his companions, had started to speak and had prophesied that as long as the family of Coolin dwelt there, Sarum would never be taken in battle.

  With such protection, the people of Sarum believed, their dune was impregnable.

  As Tosutigus contemplated these matters with a grim smile, he realised that the old man was still talking to him.

  “You have the protection of the Druids as well,” Aflek reminded him smugly. “There is nothing to fear.”

  The power of the Druids varied from tribe to tribe, depending upon the attitude of the ruler. The Belgae often favoured these priests because their secret network helped to stir up trouble for the Romans in Gaul. The Durotriges also honoured the priests because they represented the Celtic gods in defiance of everything Roman. In other parts of the island, while the gods were worshipped, the Druids often had little power. Recently however, Tosutigus knew, Druid priests had travelled far and wide performing a flurry of ceremonies and sacrifices to the war gods to ensure that the Roman invasion would be beaten back. Until five years before, a community of Druids had worshipped at a sanctuary near Stonehenge, and his father had been obliged to support them. It had been costly and the Druids often complained about the meagre provisions they were given. Then they moved north-west to a council of Druids that was held at the island of Anglesey, two hundred miles away, and to his family’s relief they had never returned. Two months before, however, Aflek had arrived at Sarum from Maiden Castle; and the young chief had no doubt that he had been sent by the Durotriges as a spy.

  Tosutigus did not reply to the Druid; for even as the old man spoke, his eye was caught by a flash of metal in the woods to the south. All four men had seen it, and all four now stared intently at the place from which it had come. Several minutes passed, and then they saw what they had awaited for so long – a column of Roman soldiers crossing a small patch of open ground two miles away.

  At last. The moment had come. His plan was ready.

  “Bar the gate,” he said curtly to Numex: “When I give the order, everyone is to man the walls.” The carpenter and his brother hurried away.

  The Druid began to shout imprecations. “Modron, goddess of war, smite our enemy; Nodens the cloudmaker, protect your people!”

  He seized the young chief by the arm.

  “Modron will give you victory,” he reassured him earnestly. “The gods will destroy these invaders.”

  But Tosutigus was paying him no attention.

  “You Druids said they would never get across the sea,” he muttered.

  This was true. The year before, the Druids had sworn that the sea god would swallow up the Roman fleet before it ever reached the island’s shores.

  The young chief turned to face the older man.

  “You must go now,” he said calmly.

  Aflek stared at him in astonishment.

  “I will fight at your side, Tosutigus,” he replied; for even if he had been sent as a spy, the elderly Druid was no coward.

  But Tosutigus shook his head.

  “If the Romans find you here, they will kill you,” he stated. “Besides, I don’t want you.”

  Aflek gazed at him uncomprehendingly. And then the young man revealed the plan that he had been secretly forming for so long.

  “I am going to surrender the dune,” he said. “I intend to join the Romans.”

  It had been so easy. The four Roman legions had landed in Kent in the summer of A.D. 43, led by Aulus Plautius. They had marched rapidly through the south-east, routed the brother of the impudent chief Caractacus and a few days later smashed the little army of Caractacus himself. As soon as he heard that all was well, Claudius came over with his elephants and watched the submission of the fiery Catuvellauni a few miles north of the river Thames. Sixteen more of the island’s tribes, including the now weakened Atrebates, immediately sent messages of surrender; some because they thought they could get advantages over their neighbours, others because they knew the Roman legionaries would cut them to pieces. But other tribes did not surrender; and certainly not the proud Durotriges.

  Claudius did not care. He had his military triumph, and he only stayed on the island for sixteen days.

  “Clean up the rest of this country,” he told Aulus Plautius, who was appointed the first governor of this new island province of Britannia. Then he returned to Rome and, as he had always wanted, the senate voted him a triumph.

  “We must strike north and west,” Aulus decided. “The II Legion shall reduce the hillforts in the south-west.” He considered the commanders at his disposal. “Vespasian shall lead the expedition,” he added. “I can trust him to do it well.”

  Vespasian was everything a Roman commander should be: already a veteran of several campaigns he had a hard, blunt, but handsome face that inspired respect in his men and admiration in women; he was intelligent, cool, ambitious, and ruthless. He was also young. His remarkable qualities were one day to bring him to the throne itself: and he certainly did not intend to allow the islanders and their Celtic warriors to stand in his way. The following spring the young legate led the II Legion swiftly along the southern coast.

  The first of the Durotrigan forts that he encountered was not impressive: it was a long, low hill beside a sheltered harbour, and around the hill and its headland had been thrown a pair of walls twenty feet high and ending with a mound at the harbour’s edge. In the centre of the wall was a large wooden gate, reinforced with heavy posts at each side, and studded with fearsome iron spikes. Had it not been for this gate and the walls, it was clear that nature had destined the shallow harbour to be a quiet and peaceful place, a settlement and a port, but never a fortress. The waters were calm and herons glided over them. But the defenders were confident that their walls would deter the invaders. The settlement inside the walls was similar to that at Sarum, except that there were two small wooden jetties by the water’s edge where several boats were moored, and a collection of small barns for storing merchandise. There was also a small round building with a hole in the roof which had a vital purpose in the life of the harbour: for here silver coins were minted for the king of the Durotriges which were of a sufficiently good quality to be accepted by the merchants from Gaul.

  When the hard-faced young commander saw the defences, he shrugged with contempt. He knew what to do.

  The Durotriges stood along the top of the walls. Their bright cloaks and golden ornaments made a dazzling display and as the Romans approached, they shouted challenges and shook thei
r spears. One of the warriors waved a red flag, for red was the colour worn by the god of war; and several of the young men cried out:

  “Send forward your bravest warriors, Romans, to fight us in single combat!” While others shouted: “Show us your leader that we may know him in battle.”

  But the Romans did not attack; they took their time. To the surprise of the natives, they calmly dug a small fortification in front of the gate. This took them two hours. Then, from the back of their column, they slowly wheeled a huge catapult and brought it to the little fortified rampart they had built, together with a cart containing several enormous rocks.

  While this work proceeded, Vespasian sat on a leather stool, out of range of the walls. He took no notice of the Durotriges at all, but coolly dictated a memorandum to a scribe:

  The first fort we have encountered belonging to the Durotriges is beside the sea. There is a shallow harbour behind it, which the hill protects from the sea. The fort had two walls. As our reports suggested, the warriors of the tribe are brave but undisciplined.

  The gate of the fort was breached and the place taken.

  “You may carry this to the governor now,” he remarked to the scribe. “This place will be ours by sundown.”

  At a nod from the legate, the catapult was now put into action. A huge stone rocketed in a great arc and crashed against the gate, which split. A minute later, a second rock burst the entire gate wide open.

  “Take it,” he ordered.

  Now, for the first time, the Durotriges discovered the perfect, impersonal efficiency of the fighting machine that the young commander was so coolly directing against them.

  A century, eighty men in military organisation of that time, had drawn up in formation under their centurion. Now those in the inside ranks raised their shields above their heads, each shield touching the next to form a solid metal covering. Those in the first and the outside ranks held their shields in front of them or at their side so that the front and flanks were protected in a similar manner: this formation was the famous testudo, or tortoise and was neither more nor less than a human, armour-plated tank – a favourite formation of the Romans, and almost impregnable. At a nod from the centurion, the testudo moved smartly forward and went through the open gate of the fort while the spears, arrows and sling-stones of the defenders bounced uselessly off its raised shields. A second century followed at once; then a third.

  Slow, mechanical, indestructible, these man-machines then set to work upon the Durotriges inside the fortress. The shield wall of the testudo would suddenly flash open, like a line of shutters, and the pila – the Romans’ short, heavy, bolt-like spears – would shoot out. At close range the pila could drill a neat, square hole in a man’s skull. Those who came within reach would receive a harsh thrust from the legionaries’ short, flat-bladed swords. The Romans moved along the inside of the walls and across the open ground below the hill while the brave Durotriges dashed themselves to pieces upon their metal shell. They hacked the defenders unmercifully. By mid afternoon, as Vespasian had known they would, they had cleared the entire fortress.

  The Romans took the merchandise from the barns and the boats in the harbour. The controller of the mint had just time to bury his stock of silver coins in the ground under his hut before the soldiers walked in and killed him – a little hoard which archaeologists would find nearly two thousand years later.

  The massacre was watched by a single figure from a safely concealed point in the rushes on the opposite bank of the harbour. He was tall, thin and stooped, with a lean, hard face and narrow-set eyes. After he had carefully watched the gate being smashed and the Durotriges cut to pieces, and satisfied himself that the defenders had no chance of success against the Romans’ fighting methods, he loped along the bank on his curious, long-toed feet, and stepped into a large canoe made of hides stretched over a wooden frame, with a broad, shallow draught. Taradoc the canny riverman made no attempt to paddle up river to warn Tosutigus and the waiting defenders of the dune at Sarum. Hugging the bank, he slipped quietly to the harbour entrance and out into the open sea.

  The force which was now arriving at Sarum three days after the taking of the harbour was no more than a vexillation – a detachment of a single century under their centurion, with two cavalry outriders and one siege engine, similar to that used at the harbour. As Tosutigus watched the Romans approach, he noticed that there was also a single figure on horseback riding in front of the column, and he wondered who it was.

  The dune was ready. Everything was prepared in order to make exactly the right impression on the Romans when they approached its gates. Only moments before, Aflek had been let down from the ramparts by rope on the northern side, out of sight of the Romans; but before he had gone, the Druid had uttered a terrible curse upon the young chief.

  “May the gods turn their backs upon you, Tosutigus: for the other tribes will. Be warned – you have broken your oath to the king, and from today, all men will call you Tosutigus the Liar.”

  This warning proved to be correct, and it was by this name that every Celt on the island would refer to him for the rest of his life.

  But Tosutigus did not care. His mind was already filled with the dreams he had for Sarum’s future. It would all, he was sure, go according to plan.

  The ambitious plan that he had made was in all respects a young man’s plan, but there was, it must be admitted, some sense in his reasoning.

  All over the island in the years A.D. 43 and 44, the tribal chiefs had been faced with a stark choice. If they resisted the Romans, they faced probable defeat followed by a military occupation. But if they went over to the empire’s cause, it was well known that Rome could be generous: and in due course a number of chiefs emerged from those years as independent client kings of great wealth. The empire continued its wise policy of enriching these clients, building them sumptuous villas and educating their children as Roman gentlemen. In a generation, or at most two, the petty kings turned into provincial aristocrats, their authority was assumed by magistrates, and their kingdoms quietly slipped into the stream of provincial Roman life.

  The young chief was wise enough to know that he could not hold Sarum against the might of Rome, and to guess that the Durotriges too would be defeated. So how could he survive? Only by keeping up an appearance of loyalty to the powerful Durotriges until it was safe to desert them, and then by throwing in his lot with Rome. As soon as Claudius had landed, this was his secret intention.

  But Tosutigus was young, and for a long time he had nursed a plan that was more ambitious than this alone. The Durotriges hated the Romans; they would fight, he knew, hillfort by hillfort, and they would lose. The Romans would subdue them – but what then? Surely, it seemed to him, the Roman officials, as they had done in other parts of their huge empire, would look for loyal Celtic leaders, local men they could trust in the area. And that, perhaps, was where he could, turn the situation to his advantage.

  “After all,” he reasoned, “I am a Celt who speaks Latin and who is ready to be loyal to Rome. I am not one of the Durotriges who hate the empire and whom Rome can never trust. I could be useful to the governor.”

  Sometimes during those months, as he had allowed his mind to dwell on the many advantages he believed himself to possess, he imagined a grateful emperor bestowing upon him a commission to rule over the fierce old king of the Durotriges himself. At the very least, he decided, I shall ask for control over the harbour, as my family used to have in ancient times. I’m sure the Romans won’t want the Durotriges to have that.

  Now the moment had come. In order to impress the Romans with his importance, he had ordered every man and boy on to the walls. It seemed to him that they made a formidable showing.

  The Roman contingent had halted in front of the gate. The legionaries were gazing up at the high chalk walls of the dune with curiosity. The man he had noticed riding at the front had dismounted and was obviously searching the defences for weak spots.

  This was the crucial
moment of his plan. He strode down from the rampart and ordered:

  “Open the gates.”

  His meeting with the Romans did not go quite as he had planned, although he had rehearsed it many times. It began with his walking alone, slowly and sedately, down the path from the dune to where the Romans waited. At the foot of the hill, he found himself facing the Roman officer whom he had seen dismount and who now stared at him with a hard, unsmiling face. He noticed the large, square chin, the jutting nose, and the intelligent brown eyes which at that moment seemed expressionless. For a second, the young Celt hesitated, then, as he had planned, he opened his arms in a friendly gesture and cried in Latin:

  “Welcome! I am Tosutigus, lord of Sarum; and the ally of Rome.”

  Vespasian, who had led the vexillation himself, looked at him coldly, but said nothing. The dune had not impressed him, but if the young man did not want to fight, it would save time. He intended to rejoin the rest of the legion the next day.

  “You speak Latin,” he said at last.

  “So did my father and his father before him,” Tosutigus replied eagerly. “My grandmother,” it was his great-grandmother, but this sounded better, “was a princess of the Atrebates, friends of Rome.”

  Vespasian nodded. He understood. This young man with his small fort wanted to ingratiate himself. It was of no importance whether he was friendly to Rome or not, but the legate would not discourage him, as long as he did not waste time.

  “Tell your men to evacuate the fort,” he said curtly.

  Tosutigus had hoped for a more encouraging response than this, but he signalled to those on the wall to descend.

  “Are there any Druids here?” the Roman next demanded.

  “There was one. I sent him away,” Tosutigus replied truthfully.

  Vespasian looked at the landscape around him. He had no interest in Sarum, in Tosutigus or his dune. He had come inland because he had heard reports that there was a temple on the high ground which might be a cult centre of those cursed Druids. Since he intended to wipe the island priests out, he had decided to make a detour to see for himself, before continuing west to deal with the main strongholds of the Durotriges.