Sarum

by Edward Rutherfurd

  They now saw Agricola canter up to the governor.

  “It’s over, sir,” he called. “Do I regroup the men and take prisoners?”

  But to Porteus’s surprise Suetonius’s face was stony.

  “No.”

  “There are women and children,” the tribune began.

  “Kill them all.”

  And Porteus remembered what a friend of Graccus’s had told him before he left Rome:

  “Suetonius – a fine general: none better. But when he is angry, then he is truly terrible.”

  As the massacre of women and children took place before their eyes, a silence descended on those watching, but it did not seem to affect the governor. When it was done, he turned to his staff:

  “Remember, gentlemen: when the natives forget to respect Rome, they must be taught to fear her.”

  On the day of the battle, hardly any of the rebels escaped. Boudicca is dead for certain. The governor refused to stop to count the dead but Marcus and I think there were more than seventy thousand.

  We went to Verulamium, then on to Londinium. In both places there was nothing left – just charred ground, as though the rebels had burned all the houses down and then trampled on them. I could not believe that places of such size, especially Londinium, could be so completely destroyed. All the inhabitants had been butchered – all.

  As for our own people, the procurator Decianus Catus has run away to Gaul and we are to have a new procurator in his place; the most disgraceful performance of the whole business has been the behaviour of the prefect in charge of the II at Glevum. He heard about the defeat of the Ninth and so he disobeyed the governor’s orders and stayed like a coward in his garrison. No wonder we couldn’t find him! When he heard about our victory over Boudicca he fell on his sword.

  Now the governor is taking vengeance on the whole island. Vexillations are being sent to every settlement in the country and any dissidents are being slaughtered. Suetonius says he will offer one choice only: absolute obedience or instant death. He means what he says.

  This letter was sent by Porteus to his parents from the charred ruins of Londinium. His feelings for the governor were now mixed. He had come to admire the testy old soldier’s coolness and generalship during the rebellion: for if Suetonius had made one mistake, then certainly every Roman soldier in the province could have been massacred in the general uprising that must have followed. To Suetonius therefore, he owed a soldier’s loyalty. But he could not help being disgusted by the reign of terror that followed when the governor, seeing the ruins of the port of Londinium and the Roman colony of Camulodunum pounded his fist into his hand and shouted:

  “Now they shall taste Roman revenge!”

  Up and down the country the Romans went, killing and confiscating in a huge act of administrative anger; and as Suetonius intended, the islanders were cowed into submission. It was a correct military solution, but it left the new province poorer and more unhappy than ever, and the unease Porteus had felt before only grew stronger.

  “The governor is a great soldier,” he acknowledged to Marcus one day, “but he is destroying this province. The natives fear us, but they do not trust us.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” his friend replied, “though frankly I don’t think so. But no one else would agree with you. The legions are all with Suetonius and from what I hear, the emperor would put the whole province in chains if he could.”

  “They’re wrong,” Porteus insisted.

  “Then all the more reason to keep quiet. Be sensible, young Porteus: forget the whole thing and let others do the worrying; just do as you’re told.”

  This was good advice, and had he been wiser, Porteus would have taken it as his guide for the rest of his career. As it was, though he kept his thoughts to himself during the winter, he continued to ponder the matter.

  In other ways, his life took a turn for the better. Suetonius, who knew nothing of his opinions, thought well enough of him after the revolt to send him on several missions, including one to the depleted garrison of the IX Legion at Lindum in the north, in the company of Agricola the tribune. And on that visit he was given further encouragement.

  “Later on, we shall have some important campaigns in the north of the island,” Agricola told him. “Perhaps you’d like to come on my staff?”

  “Oh yes,” he replied, and blushed with pleasure.

  He wrote to tell his parents of what was passing; to Graccus he sent letters of respect; and to Lydia he wrote:

  I think the governor is pleased with me and that by next year your father will have cause to be satisfied with my career.

  Marcus continued to take a friendly interest in him. Several times he asked to see Lydia’s portrait and on each occasion he told Porteus what a lucky man he was.

  “I even wrote to my family to tell them what a splendid fellow you were,” he said laughingly to Porteus one day. “Not good enough for that lovely girl of yours, of course!”

  Late in the winter, while the snow was still on the ground, a new figure of great significance arrived on the island. He was tall, middle-aged, with a thin, kindly face and receding hair. He had two peculiarities that Porteus observed: he stooped when he spoke to people, as though concentrating intently on what they said; but when not involved in conversation his eyes often seemed to grow distant as though he were dreaming of some far-off place. He was Julius Classicianus, the new procurator and replacement for the disgraced Decianus Catus. His responsibility included all the island’s finances. Under the Roman system of divided authority, he reported direct to the emperor.

  “He seems a decent man, but a bit vague,” Porteus commented to Marcus. “I don’t think he’ll make much headway here.”

  In this assessment he was completely wrong.

  Classicianus was, like him, a member of the minor provincial aristocracy, having come originally from the town of Trier on the Moselle; but by a combination of great astuteness and honesty he had worked his way up to the highest offices in the state. Kindly he was, but he missed nothing; and within weeks of his arrival he was secretly compiling a report that was to change the province completely. Of this, naturally, Porteus had no idea.

  In the early spring, a letter came from Lydia, which Porteus read with joy.

  The aunt of one of the other men on the governor’s staff, Marcus Marcellinus, was here at the house recently. She told us all the high opinion that he and the governor have of you and father was pleased. Marcus has written to Rome about you. His aunt showed me a picture of him like the one I have of you. Write to tell me the news of all that you do, and tell me about Marcus also.

  This was good news indeed, and Porteus was grateful for the loyalty of his friend. He wrote to Lydia at once, telling her more of his successes, and gave her a warm and friendly account of Marcus too.

  It was towards the end of winter, as the snows still lingered, that the governor camped in the windy eastern colony of Camulodunum which his legionaries were busily rebuilding; and it was there one day that he sent for young Porteus and said to him gruffly:

  “You are to undertake a mission.”

  He was delighted. Up to now, he had only accompanied the tribune or one of the beneficarii – the governor’s personal emissaries. Now at last he was being entrusted with a mission of his own: it was clearly a chance to prove himself, and he listened eagerly as Suetonius outlined his task.

  The mission was simple enough: he was to take a centurion and eighty men and make a tour of inspection of some of the minor tribal settlements in the north west of the land under Roman control, close to the territory of the Deceangli where they had been lighting recently.

  “They haven’t paid any taxes and they may be rebels. They’re to pay at once: if they don’t, kill their chief and burn down their houses,” the governor ordered.

  Porteus opened his mouth to protest, but then said nothing. This was his first mission, and if he started arguing with the governor he could be sure it would also be his last. He prep
ared to leave at once.

  They reached the place ten days later: Porteus, the eighty men, and a stocky, elderly centurion, who had served under Suetonius several times before, and who hated natives.

  “Hammer them. It’s the only thing,” he told Porteus.

  “Suetonius – he knows what he’s about.”

  It was a dreary spot. Like many of the north western settlements at that time, it was poor; the tribe had been forced to abandon their earthwork, which was more a corral than a defensive fortress, and to rebuild their tribal centre at some distance from it. This was what Porteus found: an untidy clutter of huts, a small round shrine, two cattle pens each containing a small collection of thin, long-haired beasts, and a dozen small fields of barley on the hillsides. On the open ground above, however, there were many flocks of small, squat sheep who roamed over a large area. He toured the entire place carefully. The population was not large: at the centre, some five hundred people huddled together; in the foothills around, another two hundred lived in widely scattered homesteads. They were unlike those stout, thatched round houses with their wattle palisades and rich fields of corn that he had encountered all over the south: these were stone hovels, dug into the ground on windy hillsides, relics of an earlier age. The natives watched the progress of the legionaries silently. At the end of his inspection, Porteus confronted the chief – an elderly grey-haired man with a heavy woollen cloak over his shoulders. He stood in front of a gaggle of his people and stared at the Romans insolently. Porteus addressed him sharply.

  “You have not paid the annona you were assessed last year.” This was the corn levy used to feed the army. The chief did not reply but shrugged. “You have not paid the tributum soli, or the tributum capitis – your land tax or the poll tax,” Porteus went on. “Why not?”

  The chief regarded him dully. Finally he spoke.

  “With what?”

  “You have barley, cattle, sheep,” Porteus replied firmly.

  “We cannot pay. You can see for yourself, Roman. Your emperor is too greedy,” the man replied.

  “There’s no statue to the divine emperor anywhere in the settlement,” the centurion grumbled at his side. “And their shrine is to some native god we can’t recognise.”

  This too was a serious matter. It was the policy of Rome to discover the characteristics of the gods the natives worshipped and to join them to whichever seemed the closest of the vast pantheon of Roman gods. In this way, the provinces passed easily into Roman forms of worship without abandoning their own ancestral gods. It was a practical compromise which usually worked; as long as they abandoned the cursed Druid sect and paid due respect to the divine emperor they were left alone. But the curious hooded figure that the centurion had found in the little shrine, who held a snake in one hand and a raven in the other, did not seem to be identifiable with any Roman deity.

  “These ones are trouble,” he muttered. “We’d do better to burn the whole place down.”

  But Porteus shook his head. It seemed pointless to destroy these miserable folk. He was also concerned to see that the taxes they had been assessed by the procurator Decius were obviously too high: for they amounted to more than half the cattle in the pens, and to two thirds of all the barley.

  “I shall have their taxes reassessed,” he stated. “For the moment we shall take ten cattle, and one wagon of grain.”

  “That’s letting them off lightly,” complained the centurion.

  “They must pay it at once,” Porteus continued. And turning to the old chief he announced: “We shall take taxes from you now, but new assessments will be made in the future – less high than these, and those you must pay promptly.”

  “Take the ten cattle,” Porteus said to the centurion, and the Roman legionaries moved quickly into the cattle pens.

  It was then that the trouble began. The natives, seeing their livestock being taken, began to jostle the soldiers and the old chief, with great foolishness, did nothing to stop them. A scuffle began as the legionaries pushed the ragged natives aside with their shields. And then suddenly, as if from nowhere, an elderly woman appeared with a spear and rushed towards them. Before anyone could stop her, she hurled the spear with ferocious accuracy at one of the soldiers. It struck him in the neck and he fell. As soon as he saw it, Porteus knew what must follow.

  “Form a line,” the centurion shouted. “We’ll deal with them,” he cried to Porteus. Before he could do anything about it, Porteus saw the battle line drawn up.

  “Hold them steady,” he called out to the centurion. “Don’t move.” But it was useless. Without taking any notice of him, the centurion and his force were already advancing with deadly efficiency towards the natives.

  “These are not my orders,” he shouted.

  “They’re the governor’s orders,” returned the centurion. And as he watched, the disciplined troops began to cut down the terrified people in the little settlement, while Porteus watched helplessly.

  In an hour, it was all over. They had collected ten wagons of grain, fifty cattle, and the settlement was a smouldering ruin. The chief had been caught and butchered, his shrine completely destroyed.

  “A good day’s work,” the centurion remarked with a grin. “Where to next, Caius Porteus?”

  Porteus said nothing.

  In the brief report of this incident that he delivered personally to the governor when they returned to Camulodunum, he said only that there had been resistance to the payment of taxes and that accordingly the settlement had been punished. He also recommended a new tax assessment for the surrounding country. Suetonius received the report casually.

  “Quite right,” he commented.

  But as Porteus was leaving, the governor gave him a quiet, shrewd look and said:

  “No centurion will risk his men in a place like that. No honour in being killed by native women. Don’t hesitate next time, Caius Porteus. This province has got to be tamed.”

  But if the governor thought that this was the end of the matter, he was wrong. The butchering of the natives, whose only crime had been poverty, the sense that he was now actively engaged in a brutal policy which he knew would fail, preyed increasingly on Porteus’s mind. All over the province, he knew, other troops were performing similar cruel and useless acts of repression, and the thought of it sickened him.

  The islanders hate us more every day, he thought and it is only a matter of time before there is another rebellion, another Boudicca. Will there be another Suetonius then, too, or will the entire Roman population be cut to pieces?

  He could no longer close his mind to what was being done, but what could he do about it? Should he resign his position and go back to Rome? That would probably end his career. Should he write to Graccus, or some other powerful figure to warn them of the tragic mistakes that were being made? That would be disloyal. In the end, he concluded that there was only one proper course of action, which was neither of these; but before taking it, he decided to consult Marcus, who had always taken a kindly interest in his affairs, and whose judgement he knew was excellent. He believed he could trust him.

  He explained his dilemma to him at length, and Marcus listened attentively.

  “I must be loyal to the governor,” he concluded, “but the whole policy is a terrible mistake, and I can’t stand by and say nothing.” He frowned. “If he sent me out to destroy another settlement like last time . . .” he made a gesture of despair. “I couldn’t.”

  “What do you want to do then?” Marcus asked him.

  “I think I should go direct to the governor,” Porteus replied, “and make my complaint to him.”

  Marcus nodded slowly. It was obvious that young Porteus was determined to make a fool of himself: the question was, should he try to stop him? And on this point Marcus Marcellinus now faced a difficult moral dilemma of his own: did he want his young friend to continue his successful career, or did he want him to take a foolish step which, knowing the temper of the governor, would almost certainly ruin his prospec
ts? He was not sure. For that very morning he had received a long letter from his aunt in Rome, and as a result of what she had told him, his own motives where Porteus was concerned were now mixed. He thought carefully, not liking the choice, and being wise he temporised.

  “If you do as you say, the consequences could be serious for you,” he said carefully.

  “Perhaps, but what else can I do?”

  Marcus looked at the young man with pity. He liked young Porteus, and he could not help frankly admiring his honesty and his courage. But . . . He shrugged. After all, he knew, each man must look out for himself.

  “You do what you think is right, Porteus,” he said gravely. “You are a man of honour – and a brave man too,” he added.

  It was enough. Porteus thanked him gratefully and went back to his quarters. His mind was now at rest, and Marcus’s words – a man of honour – were still ringing in his ears as he sat down to prepare what he must say to Suetonius.

  It was his great misfortune that at this most critical moment of his life, he did not possess a highly important piece of information.

  For the entire matter of the governor’s mistreatment of the new province had already been taken up by hands which were far stronger than his. After a careful inspection of the province’s affairs, the new procurator, Classicianus had been appalled by the destruction of the island’s wealth.

  “If we go on like this,” he judged, “we shall be lucky to raise any taxes at all in a few years. This oppression must stop at once.”

  He had exercised his official right to send his own independent report to Rome – a document far more damning of the governor than anything Porteus had dreamed of.

  Such reports were not unusual, for it was the policy of the empire to encourage the financial and military authorities to watch each other jealously: every major official was spied upon in this way, and this was how the bureaucrats in Rome could control their far-flung empire with such efficiency. When Nero received the adverse report he was furious. But there was nothing that even the emperor himself could do about it without upsetting the whole administrative machine, and unbalanced though he often was, Nero knew the value of Rome’s huge system of checks and balances. Favourites or no favourites, a commission of inquiry would have to be sent from Rome to investigate Suetonius’s administration of the province – that was the only correct procedure.