by Angus Watson
“Ha, ha! Magnificent! Your Latin is better than mine! By Venus, men are idiots. I like you very much, young Spring. It’s too dangerous for us to speak more, but I do wish you well.”
Clodia turned to go, then leant back in with a waft of perfume. “One more thing I have to know. This wedding’s a sham, right?”
“Yes, but Caesar will maim me and leave me to be eaten by wild animals if I don’t pretend to enjoy it.”
“I see.”
“But I am sort of enjoying it.”
“Good!”
And Clodia was gone.
Spring enjoyed the rest of the afternoon even more. They drank several amphoras of wine and ate roast boar which Ragnall had arranged to be cooked in the British way and everybody said was delicious. After the feast, Cornelia played the lyre and they all sang. Spring hummed the verses, but sang along to the choruses tunefully but in a tortured language that sometimes sounded a bit like Latin. Everyone thought this was very funny, including, apparently, Clodia. The woman was an excellent actress. Spring had worried that she might give her the odd knowing look or wink which Ragnall might ask about, but Clodia didn’t show the tiniest sign of having sussed Spring’s secret.
They sang and drank late into the night. At one point, pissed, she staggered into another part of the garden to see if Dug was around, but she couldn’t find him anywhere.
Chapter 5
They rode north through Italy, over cloudy mountains sodden, noisy and often beautiful with melting snow, and up through Gaul. The new Roman territory reminded Spring of parts of Britain after a ravishing by her father. The previous year’s harvest had been pitiful and people were starving. As they rode by, black-eyed beggars lifted their arms in wretched supplication and mothers held screaming babies aloft. The legionaries didn’t register their pathetic entreaties, but the endless miserable onslaught worked on Spring like a pilum twisting in her guts. She couldn’t do anything since she was chained and manacled all the time, so she asked Ragnall to give away three-quarters of their rations. He gave away half. One of her praetorian guards commanded him to stop. Caesar had ordered that nobody was to give food to Gauls. Ragnall told the man to fuck off and handed almost all of their next meal to beggars while the praetorian glowered at him. Spring was proud. He would be a good husband to someone one day, she thought, but never to her. Their marriage had been neither a proper British nor Roman wedding, plus it hadn’t been consummated which made it void in Roman eyes. You weren’t considered to be properly married in Rome until you’d had a child, which Spring found odd, but she was happy to go along with it. She and Ragnall were exactly as married as two bards who’d pretended to wed in a play.
Word in the army was that the harvest had failed due to drought, and everyone seemed to accept this. Their self-delusion was staggering. The harvest had failed because everyone had been busy fighting the Romans, because so many had died and been enslaved that there was nobody left to tend the fields, and because Caesar had stolen so much food for his huge army. Anyone over the age of five, surely, could see this, but the Romans genuinely didn’t seem to. “Terrible thing, drought,” they’d say when they passed another pile of dead Gaulish men, women, children and babies. The babies always made Spring cry, but she did her best to hide it.
She talked to Ragnall about the Roman delusion.
“The Roman invasion may have contributed a little to the lack of food,” he said, “but everything would have been fine if there hadn’t been a drought. You can hardly blame Caesar for the weather.”
“But there was no drought!” She shook her head.
“Really? Why would everyone say there was if there wasn’t? Or were you over here measuring rainfall?”
“You were in Gaul last year. Was it very dry?”
Ragnall hesitated. “I think it was a bit drier than normal, yes. Look, the Roman experts say there was a drought. That means there was a drought.”
She looked into his eyes. He really did seem to believe what he’d just said.
“What’s more,” he added, “in future, Roman farming means, storage practices and distribution methods–better roads, better carts, better planning–will mean that droughts won’t have this effect. People might go hungry for a moon or two but nobody will ever starve again. I can see why these piles of bodies make you sad–you haven’t seen real war like I have–but you can see them as a symbol of the old, bad Gaul dying. They’re like the dead flesh being eaten from a wound by maggots. Things will be much better from now on, as they will be in Roman Britain.”
“Ragnall, these people are dying now, in Roman Gaul. They’re not symbols.”
“Under the structures of old Gaul. It’ll take a year or two before Roman ways bed in properly. Then they will see the benefit.”
“The dead babies won’t.”
“They didn’t have lives worth living.”
There was no point screaming and her hands were tied so she couldn’t strangle him, so she clamped her lips shut and fumed. She was glad he wasn’t really her husband.
They journeyed on. Riding near them most days was Quintus Tullius Cicero. Despite having invited himself to their wedding, the old man didn’t acknowledge Spring or Ragnall but he did ogle her regularly, which was about as comfortable as being lowered naked into a bath full of sexually aggressive eels. The lecherous goat didn’t look nearly as grumpy as he had at the fake wedding because, Spring soon gleaned, his wife Pomponia had demanded to travel next to him with the legions, but Caesar himself had told her to get to the back of the marching order with the rest of the civilians. Quintus Cicero told the story to everyone who came close. His own wife being upbraided by the general was apparently the most excellent and funny thing that had ever happened. It did upset him, though, when people rode up and asked him about “Cicero”. They always meant his famous older brother, seeming to forget that it was his name, too. It obviously galled Quintus to be reminded regularly that there was only one notable Cicero and it wasn’t him. By the amount that it happened, she guessed that everyone knew this and enjoyed riling him.
Spring wondered who the civilians were that Quintus had mentioned and why they were following the army. She was waiting for Ragnall to tell her the story of Quintus’ wife so that she could ask about the civilians, but he didn’t, even though she knew he knew the story–he must have overheard it as many times as she had. In the end she asked him directly if he knew where Pomponia was and he pretended not to know. He was a strange one, Ragnall. He had committed the greatest treachery possible by betraying the land of his parents and he believed the wicked lies of the Romans, but he wasn’t one to pass on gossip. Luckily, one evening as they crossed a bridge that had been erected in a morning by the astonishingly efficient engineers, it began to rain and he said:
“I hope this rain doesn’t swell the river, for the sake of the following civilians.”
“What civilians?” she asked. “And can you pull my hood up for me, please? Or unchain me so that I can do it?”
He rode closer, so that their horses bumped, and pulled the leather hood of her riding cape–a present from the older, non-dickhead Cicero brother (the Real Cicero, as Spring called him in her mind)–up over her head and said: “There are thousands of them, following the army. Some are wives, girlfriends and families of the soldiers, engineers and others in the army, but most are chancers, hoping to make their fortune by following Caesar. I’ve heard that some are carrying their own ships, broken down in carts and ready to assemble at the Channel.”
“And you’re still happy to support this Roman invasion?”
“Of course.” There was no trace of doubt in his voice. “I’m stunned that you can’t see it, even though you’ve been to Rome. Roman culture has so much to give Britain.”
“These soldiers and your thousands of civilians don’t intend to give. They plan to take.”
Ragnall shook his head at her despairingly, then told her guards, in Latin, that he was riding on ahead and they should keep an eye on
her.
When he was out of sight, she leapt off her horse and jogged along next to it, as she’d done all the way from Rome when he wasn’t watching.
The main talk on the march and in the nightly camps, other than the excitement of invading Britain, was about what a marvellous time it was to be a Roman. The world, apparently, was about to come fully under the heel of the Roman sandal and its wonderful new trio of heroes–Caesar, Crassus and Pompey. Crassus was heading east to invade Mesopotamia, Pompey was consolidating Iberia in the west–albeit from a command post in his country house just outside Rome–and Caesar had the biggest adventure of all, into the unknown wilds of Britain. When Ragnall wasn’t sulking about Spring’s latest accurate observation about the Romans, he translated all this for her.
“But how can they say Britain is unknown when half the slaves in Rome are British?” she asked.
“Nowhere near half.”
“A lot. Enough that they should definitely know a lot more about Britain.”
“I guess they’re not in the habit of conversing with their slaves.” And he headed off again, sulkwards.
They arrived at the huge Roman pre-invasion camp, a frighteningly regular city of prim tent rows and efficiently teeming industry spread across the well-drained former farmland of north-west Gaul. The four praetorians that had guarded Spring since her capture marched off to undertake more manful duties and were replaced by only two. Presumably they thought Spring less likely to escape, now that they were in a camp surrounded by nothing but Roman men for several miles. These two were much more friendly, albeit in the bluff, rude manner that passed for friendliness among soldiers. Unlike the other four, they actually bothered to introduce themselves by name–Tertius and Ferrandus. They did it by pointing at themselves and repeating their names loudly and carefully as if Spring were a stupid child or a clever animal, but she still appreciated it.
Despite Spring’s protests that she would love nothing more than a good walk after all that time on horseback, in fact he’d be cruel to deny her, Ragnall left her behind with Tertius and Ferrandus and headed for the coast. He was desperate for some time away from her incessant, wrongheaded prating.
The route was choked with carts, boat builders, mercenary gangs, legionaries and others all accusing each other of not knowing how to use the road, so Ragnall walked cross-country, through pillaged fields and denuded woods, five miles to Portus Itius, the launch site for the second invasion. Ragnall didn’t know the Gaulish name for the place, and it was a shame that Publius Crassus, who always knew the Gaulish name for everywhere, wasn’t there to tell him; not because he gave the tiniest crap about the seaside village’s name, but because he missed his only friend in the Roman army. Publius had gone campaigning with his father off into the east, hoping to find Alexander the Great-style fortune and glory.
From his position on a low cliff top, Ragnall could just make out the remains of the Gaulish village in the centre of a long, open bay that swarmed with Roman activity. A river met the sea at the village, splitting a broad, pale sandy beach which was fringed with low, brown cliffs. At the far end of the beach, to the north, the cliffs soared upwards into the same type of white chalk cliff common on the south coast of Britain.
He took all this in with his peripheral vision while gawking at the astonishing amount of ships pulled up above the high-tide mark, in various stages of loading. There were hundreds upon hundreds of them. Almost all were the same design–transport vessels larger than the eighty from the previous year’s invasion–each kitted out with oar-slots and benches for rowing as well as rigging for sails. Moored out to sea were even more impressive boats, huge multi-levelled things with row after row of holes for oars, towering mini castles fore and aft, prows wickedly pointed into metal rams. Their visible upper decks were lined with giant arrow-firing scorpions and platforms, presumably for archers and slingers.
Ragnall smiled. Nobody would call this invasion a reconnaissance mission. There was absolutely no way that this kind of power could fail to take Britain.
“Quinqueremes,” said a jaunty voice behind him. It was Quintus Cicero. “My pig wife has caught up with me again so I ran off, telling her I was coming up here to survey the fleet. Guess you’ve done the same? She’s all right, your piece, great legs and nice tits, too–a rare and welcome combination–but I bet she’s a bitch the second that the world isn’t watching. Women, hey? Can’t live with them, can’t kill them.”
Ragnall was torn between wanting to flee this boorish bullshit and his fascination for the great boats. “Quinqueremes?” he asked.
“Five-decked rowing warships. Crew of six hundred in each; three hundred rowers, three hundred archers, slingers and scorpion crew. Those dirty Britons are in for a big surprise, if they can stop fucking their own daughters for long enough to realise they’re being invaded.”
“I suppose they are.” Despite being at his wedding, Quintus didn’t seem to have worked out that Ragnall was originally British.
“Tell you what, I can’t wait to get among the women of Britain. Apparently you don’t even need to rape them, they just lie down waving their legs in the air with their snatches open. That reminds me–that wife of yours, do you ever hire her out? I’ve got a two-hundred-year-old Macedonian spear that you can have for a night with her. I bet she’d love some Roman cock.”
Before he had time to think of the consequences, Ragnall leant forward and said, quietly: “I catch you anywhere near her and I’ll stick that spear so far up your arse that you’ll be speaking Greek.” It didn’t really work as a threat, Ragnall realised as he said it, but it was the best he could do spontaneously and he could hardly say, “Oh, hang on, wait a moment while I think of a better insult”.
Quintus purpled and muttered, “You grubby barbarian. How dare you seek to preach morals to me? You British fuck your own daughters!” So he did know Ragnall was British, he was simply untroubled by tact.
“No, we don’t.”
“We’ll see when we get there. I’ll make them fuck their daughters. I’ll make them fuck their sons! And I’ll take your sordid, copper coin slut wife and I’ll—”
Before Ragnall knew he was going to punch him, Quintus was lying on the ground, blowing hard and holding his jaw. Immediately Ragnall realised he had made a big mistake.
Technically, Ragnall and Quintus were both legates and equal rank. In practice, Quintus was massively influential, famously cruel and vengeful and a hundred times more powerful. Ragnall was under Caesar’s protection to a degree, but someone like Quintus would easily find a way to kill him, nastily, without Caesar finding out. He would be certain to take it out on Spring too. He could not have chosen a worse man to punch. He might as well have climbed into a bag of snakes and hopped to the river himself.
“I’m sorry,” he said, reaching out a hand.
“Get back, get back! Praetorians!” hollered Quintus, scrabbling away. Thank Danu there was nobody close enough to hear him.
“Let me help you up. I’m sure we can put this behind—”
“Get away from me, or I’ll have you killed today!”
Ragnall walked off and didn’t look back. Spring’s company suddenly didn’t seem so unappealing. What’s more, maybe showing her the ships would help ram home just how advanced and impressive the Romans were in every field. Apart from, he thought with an inner smile at how witty he was becoming, the field in which Quintus the Roman had just been such an offensive moron.
“Do you want to come and see some boats?” asked Ragnall, as if he hadn’t banned her from leaving the boring tent just hours before.
“Yup!” she said. She held up her chained wrists to her new praetorians Tertius and Ferrandus and smiled.
Ragnall was strangely quiet and brooding on the walk to the coast. Spring wasn’t bothered. She’d heard enough of Ragnall’s Roman arse-kissing to last a lifetime, then a long stint in the Otherworld, then another lifetime. She concentrated on forgetting that she was a prisoner, that her wrists were
chained together, that she hadn’t killed Caesar yet and was unlikely to get a chance to, and focused instead on enjoying the walk. She missed everything about Dug, but possibly the long walks with him more than anything else. Her chief hope was to spot some rabbits, the funny little fat hares that they didn’t have in Britain, but there were none around, probably, Spring reckoned, because the sun was too hot for them in the middle of the day. Or because the Romans had eaten them all.
“The countryside’s better around mine,” said Dug, striding up beside her, dogs following. “And walking is definitely more pleasant without your hands tied together.”
Ragnall was ahead. Looking back, Spring saw that Tertius and Ferrandus were twenty paces behind, arguing.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
“Where haven’t I been?” Dug raised an eyebrow.
“You haven’t been in Rome.”
“I don’t like Rome.”
“How do you know if you’ve never been there?”
“Do you like Rome?”
“Not one bit.”
“There you go. I told you, I’m just made up by your mind. You don’t like Rome, I don’t like Rome.”
“But that doesn’t explain… oh never mind. How am I going to escape back to Britain?”
“Wait for your moment, then escape.”
“Wow. That is cunning. Dwyn himself would be proud of that plan.”
“OK. To begin, you might as well let them take you back to Britain. No point escaping while you’re still in Gaul.”
“True.”
“Then, maybe pretend you’re going along with their plans. Come over all Roman. Style your hair as if you’re in a most stupid hair competition, claim there’s nothing more delicious that wren foetuses floating in bulls’ spunk. Wait for them to drop the guard, then nip off when you get the chance. These two new guards seem a lot slacker—”
“No way am I pretending to have gone all Roman. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of thinking they’ve persuaded me that their way is better.”