by Derek Birks
As he rode between two teetering, stone edifices, Ambrosius felt he was witnessing the death throes of the empire. Where were the builders of these great monuments? Where were the Roman giants who had conquered and shaped these places? They were, as he knew very well, long gone for he had been through Augustodunum before. Half the population now bore a striking resemblance to folk north of the Rhine, for these lands had been occupied for years by many of the Burgundi tribe - men like his comrade, Germanus. It seemed strange to hear their deep, guttural tones so far south; but that was the empire in the west for you… a jumble of broken shards that would no longer fit together.
When, in late October, the straggling column left Augustodunum and passed into Gallia on a road which would take them all the way to the western coast, the landscape at last began to change. It was blessed with plenty, as the full granaries demonstrated. He noted the warm glow in the eyes of his men but, mindful of the pursuing Puglio, Ambrosius dared not linger and instead, hurried on, desperate to shake off the imperial hounds.
Using the last of the gold coin they had liberated from some of the fallen scutarii, he bought much needed supplies to ease their passage. Yet, the presence of Rome seemed increasingly tenuous the further they travelled across Gallia. The closer they got to the coast, the more nervous many of the men became. Like Ambrosius himself, they were uncertain what their destination would bring and, as the early November frosts became harder and more frequent, they were obliged to contemplate where they might be spending the worst of winter.
How much more worried might they have been if they had been aware – as only his closest comrades were – that the tribune, Puglio knew exactly where they were going? In the flourishing heartland of Gallia, a few more of his men deserted - no doubt attracted by the rich pickings they observed all around them. Despite the protests of several of his bucellarii, for whom desertion was the worst offence imaginable, Ambrosius just let them go. Such men owed him nothing, for they were volunteers who had shed enough blood in his service and many of their comrades had already paid with their lives.
The road north-west took them past the ruined town of Juliabona – destroyed long before his birth. It was mostly overgrown now, with only a few low walls of the old town visible to testify that it had ever existed. Anxious to press on towards Caracotinum, he did not dwell upon the site for, like the rest of the men, he had already seen enough other places in decline and each was another reminder of their perilous predicament.
When he estimated that they must be about thirty miles from the sea, he halted his much-diminished column on the north bank of a great bend of the river Seine and sent out scouts ahead. But, even before his men returned he noticed the first, worrying spirals of smoke away to the west. By the end of the day, when the scouts cantered in, one by one, they warned of trouble ahead. All reported the same: the Roman port of Caracotinum was under siege by a small army.
Thus forewarned, he decided upon a more circuitous route which would ignore the valley road and instead follow a path up onto the slope which overlooked the port, so that he could assess the state of Caracotinum for himself. As they rode on, he found that some of the local farms had been attacked – indeed many had been looted and destroyed. Only then did he begin to regret allowing men to desert so easily.
“Who’s attacking it?” he asked Marcellus.
“According to one of the scouts, it’s the Franks.”
“Nonsense!” scoffed Ambrosius. “It can’t be; the man’s a fool!”
“Well, he may be a fool,” conceded Marcellus, “but he should know, because he’s a Frank himself!”
Ambrosius knew very well that for decades, perhaps longer, a small number of Franks had settled near Caracotinum as foederati, pledged to defend the town. Some of them even dwelt inside the town itself. There were no other Franks this far south – at least there had not been… ten years before.
When Ambrosius fled from his father's house at the age of 13, it was to the Franks he went. It was they who had spirited him out and sent him to live with a family outside the walls. Had he tried to hide within the port, the locals, fearing his father’s wrath, would have handed him over before he could say spear. But the Franks, caring rather less for Roman authority, took him in – aye, and fed and clothed him too. Perhaps they did it just to spite his father who was a prominent Roman official; but, whatever their reasons, it was no exaggeration to say that it was the Franks who made a man of Ambrosius Aurelianus.
But had the Franks turned against Rome now? Surely, even if they had, there were not enough of them to pose a threat to Caracotinum. It was a mystery, but if they truly were besieging Caracotinum, it was very likely that his adopted father, Clodoris would be among them. Nevertheless, he wished that the Franks had waited a few more weeks longer before flexing their muscles against the Roman port. Yet, could he blame them? Everyone else seemed to be doing it; every day a few more of Rome’s remaining soldiers trickled away to become someone else’s soldiers.
Here and there, a Roman commander would emerge to battle against the odds and, in his gut Ambrosius knew that his natural father, Aurelius Honorius Magnus, would be numbered among such imperial diehards. The old bastard would most likely fight to the last man to hold Caracotinum, oblivious of the fact that it would be overwhelmed no matter what he did. Yes, he decided, Magnus was just about bloody-minded enough to let the whole garrison, and all his own family, perish along with him. And into this chaos Ambrosius had delivered his comrades…
“What now then, Dux?” asked Marcellus, interrupting his thoughts.
“I suppose I’d better take a look,” he replied.
He paused for a moment, remembering the continuing threat of Puglio. If he split his company in half, it would be an invitation to Puglio to strike at those he left behind, yet until he knew exactly what was happening, he was reluctant to take them all to Caracotinum.
“I’ll take Varta, Onno and Germanus,” he said. “That’ll leave you with most of the men, Marco – just in case.”
“But you’ll need more than that with you, won’t you – just in case?” replied Marcellus.
“Perhaps,” agreed Ambrosius, after a moment’s consideration. “Varta, bring two more!”
“Two? But we’ve already been taken unawares once, Dux,” pointed out Marcellus.
“Yes, but the main threat lies behind us, from Puglio,” said Ambrosius, “which is why you’ll need every man I can spare. We’re just going to take a look and anyway, ahead of us are only Franks and Romans – neither of which are my enemies.”
“In your head, perhaps,” muttered Marcellus.
“Well, they weren’t my enemies last time I was here… and that’s all I have to go on, Marco. Now, you make camp and take any precautions you think necessary – but be ready to move up, in case I have need of you…”
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
Before the small advance party had ridden a dozen miles, Ambrosius caught the smell of death in his nostrils: the stench of blood – recently spilled and barely congealed. Gazing across the undulating lowlands to the west, bordering the broad river Seine, he found a landscape marred by the charred remains of several small farms. Built upon the ruins of some of the ancient ruined villas above Caracotinum, they had been thriving in Ambrosius’ youth – but no more, it seemed.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” he told Varta, with a sigh, “but I didn’t expect a burned out wasteland! By God, there was peace and plenty here when we left, Varta!”
Having stopped to inspect the first three incinerated farm buildings, he decided to ignore the rest. The gloomy faces of his comrades were enough to persuade him that nothing could be gained by doing so. Only when they reached his own father’s large, but now dilapidated, villa did he stop once again. It was one of the last to be abandoned and here he had taken his first breath. His earliest memories were of the family’s move into a prestigious house in Caracotinum, close by the town walls. Nothing was too good for the family of Aurelius H
onorius Magnus – well, some of them anyway.
Ambrosius was the son of Magnus’ second wife, Clutoriga, but once her beauty began to fade, so did his father’s interest and she was discarded after the birth of Ambrosius’ little sister, Lucidia. After that, his memories were darker: in that fine, new house he received his first beating – the first of very many as he recalled. Living like a slave in his own home, he was given only the meanest and most unpleasant tasks. A smile ghosted briefly across his face as he recalled that it was there too that he had smiled awkwardly at his first pretty girl, so perhaps not all his memories were so dark. But soon after that, he left, abandoning his mother and his sister to their life of continuing misery.
“Nice tower,” remarked Onno.
Ambrosius looked up towards the bluff above the port where a lone signal tower stood – built long before he was born, to warn of seaborne invaders. Now its position was marked by a feathery spiral of smoke drifting upwards from its interior.
“It was a nice tower once,” agreed Ambrosius, scowling at the stark edifice. “We’d better take a look, I suppose, before we head down to the port.
As they approached the turret, he turned to Varta. “You remember this place?” he asked.
“Last time we were here,” said Varta, “I think the gates were still intact.”
“They were,” agreed Ambrosius, “I remember hiding in there… before we ran off to see the rest of the empire…”
Varta gave a weary shrug. “And now we’ve seen it, here we are back at this sodding place again!”
“You came from here?” asked Onno.
Varta grinned. “Probably still be here now, if Dux hadn’t dragged me off into trouble!”
“You always found trouble easy enough to come by,” remarked Ambrosius, “even without my help!”
“Is that a body by the gate?” asked Onno.
They rode closer and then dismounted to examine the remains of the burnt-out gateway and the single corpse beside it.
“One man obviously cared enough to fight for this place,” observed Varta.
“That gate’s not been repaired for years,” said Onno. “Just look at the state of it. Even before it was fired, those gate timbers were rotten – hardly worth defending to the death...”
“Perhaps the fellow sought refuge here, as we did once?” suggested Varta. “But this time from the Franks?”
“You may be right,” murmured Ambrosius, as he stood before the blackened gateway. Crouching down beside the body, which had been left in an unnatural position, he noted that it had been stripped of all armour. When he saw the face, he took a sudden breath and, resting a gentle hand on the bare and bloodied chest, he bent his head.
“Dux?” said Varta, noticing his commander’s gesture.
“This was an execution,” said Ambrosius, staring down at the fallen man.
Save a few flecks of dried blood upon the victim’s face, there was hardly a mark on him – apart from the one ugly wound where a spear had been rammed through his chest. He was pinned to the base of the gate post, as if, after death, someone feared his body might steal away.
“Do you think he’s Roman?” asked Onno.
“Oh yes, he’s Roman,” said Ambrosius. “He used to wear a cross around his neck – you can see where it discoloured his skin.”
“Doesn’t mean it was a cross,” said Germanus, “or that he was Roman.”
“It was – and he was,” said Ambrosius.
Varta glanced at his commander. “How you can be so sure?”
“Because his name was Aurelius Honorius Gallo… and he was my half-brother.”
Varta bent closer. “Shit! So it is,” he murmured.
Perhaps confused by this revelation, the other men gathered close around their leader, in silence. It was left to Onno, as ever, to bridge the sudden chasm between the leader and the led.
“How is possible that he’s your brother, Dux?” he asked.
“I told you: this is where I came from – like this poor fool…”
“So, why do you think Gallo’s body has been… arranged like this?” asked Varta.
“He was left here as a message,” said Ambrosius.
“Of course; that much is obvious,” said Onno, “but no-one could possibly have known you would come here – except of course Puglio...”
Ambrosius stood up, though his eyes remained fixed upon his older brother’s corpse.
“No, Puglio would not have known this young man’s connection to me. The corpse wasn’t left for me to find; it was left for any Roman to find as a signal of a different sort… and a powerful hatred lies behind it…”
“If your father’s still alive, Dux,” said Varta, “you know only too well that he was always capable of provoking such a feeling.”
“You remember him well then, Varta,” said Ambrosius.
Varta gave a grim nod. “Magnus? Oh yes…”
“The thing about my father is that he manages to stir even the most placid of men to anger. You can be sure he’ll be at the heart of all this trouble - it sounds just like him.”
“Perhaps we should go somewhere else,” said the Frank. “He almost killed you once, Dux.”
“But I’m not the untried youth I was then…” growled Ambrosius. “But for Aetius’ murder, I’m not sure I’d ever have returned here…. But somehow, his death made me think of the unfinished business I left behind here.”
Grasping the spear, he removed it carefully from Gallo’s corpse and flung it aside. Allowing no-one else to help, he secured the lifeless body to the back of their spare horse, before re-mounting his own. Then he led them down across the slope overlooking the port and drew abruptly to a halt. In the valley below, which carried a narrow, winding river into the port, was a sprawling mass of people camped in a broad swathe around the eastern walls of Caracotinum.
“By God, they really are besieging the town,” said Varta.
“I don’t remember there being quite as many Franks here before,” murmured Ambrosius.
As he recalled, they had established their own settlement scarcely a few yards away from the long east wall, but it had been small - hardly forty fighting men at most, along with their kinfolk. It was there that Ambrosius fled after leaving his mother; there, he found a family who cared for him and a steadfast friend in Varta – there too, he found himself. Though he was living barely a hundred yards from his father’s luxurious house, he was brought up in a different world.
Since then, somehow, the Frank numbers had swelled – and recently by the look of it.
“How are there so many of them?” breathed Varta.
“After the war against the Huns, it was bound to change…” said Ambrosius. “It’s changing everywhere else; we’ve seen it for ourselves – why should this Godforsaken place be any different.”
“But… the Franks have been foederati here for a long time, Dux,” protested Varta. “Why, we’re virtually Romans!”
“But you’re not, are you? You’ve always kept your own customs, dress… and Romans like my father, Magnus, just saw you as hired men - and unreliable hired men at that.”
The light from the scattered camp fires reminded Ambrosius that night was closing in swiftly and, with the growing chill of winter, he decided to make camp at the ruined signal fort and approach the town the next day.
“Those in and around the town may see our fire,” Onno pointed out.
“Very likely,” agreed Ambrosius, “but no-one will come looking for us before morning.”
“What if they do?” asked Onno.
“Then they’ll have to wake us up!” laughed Varta.
Only later, when they were huddled around a small fire, did Varta probe his commander a little more.
“Why did you bring us here, Dux?” he asked. “I don’t remember this town having many good memories for you…”
Ambrosius gave a little shake of the head. “In truth, my friend, I prayed my father was long dead. That way, I would have been able to
see the rest of my family.”
“Even Gallo?”
“Alright, it’s true I never liked Gallo,” said Ambrosius. “He resented every breath I took, but he was my half-brother – and I’ve another one, along with two sisters still, as far as I know.”
“And your mother?”
“I don’t know; could even be dead by now…”
“Perhaps Magnus is dead too – and a new Comes has brought in more Franks?”
“I don’t think so, my friend. The weapon that butchered Gallo was Frankish – don’t you think?”
After a shrug, Varta nodded agreement.
“So, most likely a Frank killed him...”
“What will you do about it?” asked Varta.
“Me? Not much. If I’d stayed here I’d most likely have gutted Gallo myself!” he told his friend. “He was a bastard, so I’ll not fall out with our Frankish friends over it, but I would like to see my mother and little sister. So, if my father still lives, I propose to take Gallo’s body to him.”
Varta looked aghast. “Are you mad, Dux? Why risk it? He’ll hardly be pleased to see you, will he?”
“As I said, my friend, unfinished business…”
11
Early November 454, near the Roman port of Caracotinum
After a nervous night, they set off at dawn to the port of Caracotinum, descending into the wooded river valley to follow it all the way to the town. Before long, as they approached the outlying parts of the sprawling encampment, they could smell the smoke from the Frankish cook fires. Their arrival caused women and children to scurry away to their tents; when men emerged, they had spears in their hands and scowls upon their faces. Some were mere youths, but many looked strong and, Ambrosius judged, they were spoiling for a fight with any man who looked as if he might be Roman. Yet, for the moment, the Franks made no move against them.