Masters of Rome Boxset: First Man in Rome, the Grass Crown, Fortune's Favourites, Caesar's Women, Caesar

by Colleen McCullough

  *

  Vercassivellaunus conferred with Commius, Cotus, Eporedorix and Viridomarus; Gutruatus, Sedulius and Drappes were also there, together with one Ollovico, a scout.

  “The Roman defenses on the northwestern mount look excellent from here and from the plain,” said Ollovico, who belonged to the Andes, but had made a great name for himself as a man who could spy out the land better than any other. “However, while the battle raged last night, I investigated at close quarters. There is a big infantry camp below the northwestern mount adjacent to the north river, and beyond it, up a narrow valley on a tributary stream, a cavalry camp. The fortifications between this cavalry camp and the main line are very heavy; there’s little hope there. But the Roman encirclement is not quite complete. There is a gap on the banks of the north river beyond the infantry camp. From here or from the plain it’s invisible. They’ve been as clever as they could given the terrain, for their fortifications go up the side of the northwestern mount, and really do look as if they go right over the top. But they do not. It’s an illusion. As I’ve explained, there is a gap going down to the river, a tongue of unwalled land. You can’t get into the Roman ring from it; that’s not why finding it excited me. What it does do is enable you to attack the Roman line at the infantry camp from downhill—the fortifications are aslant the sloping flank, they don’t go up and over. Nor is the ground outside the camp’s double ditch and wall mined with hazards. The ground’s not suitable. Much easier to get inside. Take that camp, and you will have penetrated the Roman ring.”

  “Ah!” said Vercassivellaunus, smiling.

  “Very good,” purred Cotus.

  “We need Vercingetorix to tell us how best to do it,” said Drappes, pulling at his moustache.

  “Vercassivellaunus will cope,” said Sedulius. “The Arverni are mountain people—they understand land like this.”

  “I need sixty thousand of our very finest warriors,” said Vercassivellaunus. “I want them hand-picked from among those peoples known not to count the cost.”

  “Then start with Bellovaci,” said Commius instantly.

  “Foot, Commius, not horse. But I will take the five thousand Nervii, the five thousand Morini and the five thousand Menapii. Sedulius, I’ll take you and your ten thousand Lemovices. Drappes, you and ten thousand of your Senones. Gutruatus, you and ten thousand of your Carnutes. For the sake of Biturgo I’ll take five thousand from among the Bituriges, and for the sake of my cousin, the King, ten thousand of the Arverni. Is that agreeable?”

  “Very much so,” said Sedulius.

  The others nodded gravely, though the three Aeduan co-generals, Cotus, Eporedorix and Viridomarus, looked unhappy. The command had been thrust upon them unexpectedly at Carnutum when Litaviccus, for reasons no one began to understand, suddenly climbed upon his horse and deserted the Aedui with his kinsman, Surus. One moment Litaviccus was sole leader, the next—gone! Vanished east with Surus!

  Thus command of the thirty-five thousand Aeduan troops had devolved upon Cotus, old and tired, and two men who were still not sure that they wanted to be free of Rome. Besides which, their presence at this council, they suspected, was mere lip service.

  “Commius, you’ll command the cavalry and advance on the plain under the northwestern mount. Eporedorix and Viridomarus will take the rest of the foot to the south side of the plain and use it to make a huge demonstration. Try to force your way to the Roman ramparts—we’ll keep Caesar busy there too. Cotus, you’ll hold this camp. Is that clear, you three Aedui?” Vercassivellaunus asked, tone confident, voice clipped.

  The three Aedui said it was clear.

  “We time the attack for the hour when the sun is directly overhead. That gives the Romans no advantage, and as the sun sinks it will shine in their eyes, not in ours. I’ll leave camp with the sixty thousand at midnight tonight with Ollovico as our guide. We’ll climb the northwestern mount and go part of the way down the tongue before dawn, then hide ourselves in the trees until we hear a great shout. Commius, that’s your responsibility.”

  “Understood,” said Commius, whose rather homely face was grossly disfigured by a scar across his forehead, the wound Gaius Volusenus had been responsible for during that meeting primed for treachery. He burned to avenge himself; all his dreams of being High King of the Belgae were gone, his people the Atrebates so reduced by Labienus a scant month before that all he could bring with him to the muster at Carnutum was four thousand, mostly old men and underaged boys. He had hoped for his southern neighbors the Bellovaci; but of the ten thousand Gutruatus and Cathbad had demanded from the Bellovaci a mere two thousand came to Carnutum, and those only because Commius had begged them from their king, Correus, his friend and relative by marriage.

  “Take two thousand if it makes you happy,” said Correus, “but no more. The Bellovaci prefer to fight Caesar and Rome in their own time and in their own way. Vercingetorix is a Celt, and the Celtae don’t know the first thing about attrition or annihilation. By all means go, Commius, but remember when you come back defeated that the Bellovaci will be looking for Belgic allies. Keep your men and my two thousand very safe. Don’t die for the Celtae.”

  Correus was right, thought Commius, beginning to see the shape of a vast fate hovering above Alesia: the Roman Eagle. And the Celtae didn’t know anything about attrition or annihilation. Ah, but the Belgae did! Correus was right. Why die for the Celtae?

  *

  By midmorning the watchers in the citadel of Alesia knew that the relief army was massing for another attack. Vercingetorix smiled in quiet satisfaction, for he had seen the flash of mail shirts and helmets among the trees on the northwestern mount above the vulnerable infantry camp. The Romans would not have from their much lower position, even including, he thought, those in the towers atop the southern mount, for the sun was behind Alesia. For a while he fretted that the watchtowers on the northern mount might have seen the telltale glitters, but the horses tethered to the feet of the towers in readiness remained tethered, drowsing with heads down. The sun was coming up over Alesia, directly opposite; yes, Alesia was definitely the only place able to see the glitters.

  “This time we’re going to be absolutely prepared,” he said to his three colleagues. “They’ll move at noon, I’d think. So we will move at noon. And we concentrate exclusively on the area around that infantry camp. If we can breach the Roman ring on our side, the Romans won’t be able to hold on to both sides at once.”

  “Far harder for us,” said Biturgo. “We’re on the uphill side. Whoever is in that tongue of land is on the downhill side.”

  “Does that discourage you?” demanded Vercingetorix.

  “No. I simply made an observation.”

  “There’s a great deal of movement inside the Roman ring,” said Daderax. “Caesar knows there’s trouble coming.”

  “We’ve never thought him a fool, Daderax. But he doesn’t know about our men inside the gap above his infantry camp.”

  At noon the relief army, horse massed to the north side of the plain and foot south of them, let out the huge bellow heralding attack and commenced to run the gauntlet of the goads, the lilies and the tombstones. A fact which registered on Vercingetorix only vaguely; his men were already halfway down the hill, converging on the inner side of the ring at the infantry camp held by Antistius and Rebilus. This time they had mantlets with them, equipped with clumsy wheels, some shelter from the scorpion bolts and grape-sized pebbles being fired from the tops of the Roman towers, and those warriors unable to squeeze beneath the mantlets locked their shields above their heads to form tortoises. The goads, the lilies and the tombstones by now had well-worn paths through them, packed with bodies or earth or hurdles; Vercingetorix reached the water-filled ditch even as the sixty thousand men belonging to Vercassivellaunus were throwing earth into the ditches on the other side, working much faster because the slope was downward.

  From time to time the King of the Gauls became aware of Gallic successes elsewhere, for the infantry
camp was well up the slope and enabled him to see down into the Roman ring across the end of the plain of the two rivers. Columns of smoke arose around several of the Roman towers on the outside perimeter; the Gallic foot there had reached the wall and were busy demolishing it. But he couldn’t quite sustain a feeling that victory was imminent there, for out of the corner of his eye he could see the figure in the scarlet cloak, and that figure was here, there, everywhere, while cohorts held back as reserves were poured in wherever the smoke rose.

  There came a huge scream of joy: Vercassivellaunus and his sixty thousand were up and over the Roman wall, there was fighting on the Roman battle platform, and the disciplined ranks of Roman foot were fending them off by using their pila as siege spears. At the same time the prisoners of Alesia managed to bridge the two ditches; grappling hooks were flung upward, ladders everywhere. Now it would happen! The Romans couldn’t fight on two fronts at once. But from somewhere came an immense inrush of Roman reserves, and there on a dappled grey Italian horse was Labienus, coming down the hill to the north of the oblivious sixty thousand; he had brought two thousand Germans out of the cavalry camp beyond, and he was going to fall on Vercassivellaunus’s rear.

  Vercingetorix shrieked a warning, drowned in another noise; even as the tower to either side of him came crashing and his men scrambled onto the Roman wall, there came a deafening roar from further away. Dashing the sweat from his eyes, Vercingetorix turned to look down inside the Roman ring on the edge of the plain. And there, riding at a headlong gallop, the brilliant scarlet cloak billowing behind him, came Caesar with his high command and tribunes streaming behind him, and thousands of foot soldiers at a run. All along the Roman fighting platforms the Roman soldiers were cheering, cheering, cheering. Not at a victory—this colossal struggle wasn’t over. They were cheering him. Caesar. So erect, so much a part of the horse he rode—the lucky horse with the toes? Was there really a horse with toes?

  The beleaguered Roman troops defending the outside walls of the infantry camp heard the cheering even if they didn’t see the figure of Caesar; they threw their pila into the enemy faces, drew their swords and attacked. So did the troops defending the inside wall against Vercingetorix. His men began to falter, were steadily pushed down from the wall; the squealing of horses and the howling of Gauls filled Vercingetorix’s ears. Labienus had fallen on the Gallic rear while Caesar’s soldiers went up and over the outside wall, crushing the sixty thousand warriors between them.

  Many of the Arverni, Mandubii and Bituriges stayed to fight to the death, but Vercingetorix didn’t want that. He managed to rally those near him, got Biturgo and Daderax doing the same—oh, where was Critognatus?—and returned up the mount to Alesia.

  Once inside the citadel, Vercingetorix would speak to no one. He stood on the walls and watched for the rest of the day as the victorious Romans—how could they have won?—tidied up. That they were exhausted was evident, for they couldn’t organize a pursuit of those who had fought along the plain, and it was almost dark when Labienus led a great host of cavalry out across the southwestern mount where the Gallic camp had been. He was going to harass the retreat, cut down as many laggards as he could.

  Vercingetorix’s eyes always sought Caesar, still mounted, still in that scarlet cloak, trotting about busily. What a superb craftsman! Victory his, yet the breaches in the Roman perimeter were being repaired, everything was being made ready in case of another attack. His legions had cheered him. In the midst of their great travail, beset on all sides, they had cheered him. As if they truly believed that while he bestrode his lucky horse and they could see his scarlet cloak, they couldn’t lose. Did they deem him a god? Well, why should they not? Even the Tuatha loved him. If the Tuatha did not love him, Gaul would have won. A foreign darling for the Gods of the Celtae. But then, the Gods of every land most prized excellence.

  In his room, lit by lamps, Vercingetorix took his golden crown from under its chaste white cover, still bearing the little sprig of mistletoe. He put it on the table and sat before it, but did not touch it as the hours dripped by and the sounds and smells came stealing through his window. A huge shout of laughter from the Roman ring. Faint mews which told him Daderax had brought his innocents into the citadel and was feeding them broth from the last of the cattle—poor Daderax! The smell of broth was nauseating. So was the stench of impaled bodies just beginning to rot among the lilies. And over everything, the brooding of the Tuatha like unspoken thunder, the lightless dawn coming, coming, coming. Gaul was finished, and so was he.

  In the morning he spoke to those who still lived, with Daderax and Biturgo beside him. Of Critognarus no one had heard; he was somewhere on the field, dead or dying or captured.

  “It is over,” he said in the marketplace, his voice strong and even, easily understood. “There will be no united Gaul. We will have no independence. The Romans will be our masters, though I do not think an enemy as generous as Caesar will force us to pass beneath the yoke. I believe that Caesar wants to make peace with us, rather than exterminate those of us who are left. A fat and healthy Gaul is more useful to the Romans than a wilderness.”

  No flicker of emotion crossed his skull-like face; he went on dispassionately. “The Tuatha admire death on a battlefield, none is more honorable. But it is not a part of our Druidic tradition to put an end to our own lives. In other places, I have learned, the people of a beaten citadel like Alesia will kill themselves sooner than go into captivity. The Cilicians did it when Alexander the Great came. The Greeks of Asia have done it. And the Italians. But we do not. This life is a trial we must suffer until it comes to a natural end, no matter what shape that end might take.

  “What I ask of all of you, and ask you to pass on to those who are not here, is that you turn your minds and your energies toward making a great country out of Gaul in a way the Romans will not despise. You must multiply and grow rich again. For one day—someday!—Gaul will rise again! The dream is not just a dream! Gaul will rise again! Gaul must endure, for Gaul is great! Through all the generations of subservience which must come, hug the idea, cherish the dream, perpetuate the reality of Gaul! I will pass, but remember me for always! One day Gaul, my Gaul, will exist! One day Gaul will be free!”

  The listeners made no sound. Vercingetorix turned and went inside, Daderax and Biturgo following. The Gallic warriors slowly drifted away, holding the words their king had spoken within their minds to repeat to their children.

  “The rest of what I have to say is for your ears only,” Vercingetorix said in the empty, echoing council chamber.

  “Sit,” said Biturgo gently.

  “No. No. It may be, Biturgo, that Caesar will take you prisoner, as the King of a great and numerous people. But I think you will go free, Daderax. I want you to go to Cathbad and tell him what I said here this morning to our men. Tell him too that I didn’t embark upon this campaign for self-glory. I did it to free my country from foreign domination. Always for the general good, never for my own advancement.”

  “I’ll tell him,” said Daderax.

  “And now the two of you have a decision to make. If you require my death, I will go to execution here inside Alesia, with our men witnessing it. Or I will send envoys to Caesar and offer to give myself up.”

  “Send envoys to Caesar,” said Biturgo.

  *

  “Tell Vercingetorix,” said Caesar, “that all the warriors inside Alesia must give up their weapons and their shirts of mail. This will be done tomorrow just after dawn, before I accept King Vercingetorix’s surrender. They will precede him by long enough to have thrown every sword, spear, bow, arrow, axe, dagger and mace into our trench. They will divest themselves of their mail shirts and toss them in on top of the weapons. Only then may the King and his colleagues Biturgo and Daderax come down. I will be waiting there,” he said, pointing to a place below the citadel just outside the Roman inner fortifications. “At dawn.”

  He had a little dais built, two feet higher than the ground, and on it p
laced the ivory curule chair of his high estate. Rome accepted this surrender, therefore the proconsul would not wear armor. He would don his purple-bordered toga, the maroon shoes with the crescent buckle of the consular, and his oak leaf chaplet, the corona civica, awarded for personal bravery in the field—and the only distinction Pompey the Great had never won. The plain ivory cylinder of his imperium just fitted the length of his forearm, one end tucked into his cupped palm, the other nestling in the crook of his elbow. Only Hirtius shared the dais with him.

  He seated himself in the classical pose, right foot forward, left foot back, spine absolutely straight, shoulders back, chin up. His marshals stood on the ground to the right of the dais, Labienus in a gold-worked silver cuirass with the scarlet sash of his imperium ritually knotted and looped. Trebonius, Fabius, Sextius, Quintus Cicero, Sulpicius, Antistius and Rebilus were clad in their best armor, Attic helmets under their left arms. The more junior men stood on the ground to the left of the dais— Decimus Brutus, Mark Antony, Minucius Basilus, Munatius Plancus, Volcatius Tullus and Sempronius Rutilus.

  Every single vantage place on the walls and up the towers was taken as the legions crowded to watch, while the cavalry stood horsed on either side of a long corridor from the trench to the dais; the goads and lilies were gone.

  The remnants of Vercingetorix’s eighty thousand warriors who had lived for over a month inside Alesia appeared first, as instructed. One by one they threw their weapons and mail shirts into the trench, then were herded by several squadrons of cavalry to a waiting place.

  Down the hill from the citadel came Vercingetorix, Biturgo and Daderax behind him. The King of Gaul rode his fawn horse, immaculately groomed, harness glittering, feet stepping high. Every piece of gold and sapphire Vercingetorix owned was set upon his arms, neck, chest, shawl. Baldric and belt flashed. On his head he wore the golden helmet with the golden wings.