The Skystone

by Jack Whyte

  “I demand that these records be studied. They will attest to the loyalty of every man with me. The loyalty to Rome that brought us safely here after more than a year of struggle.” He glared, defiantly, at Tesca, who cleared his throat to indicate his discomfort and then bent to pick up one of the tightly rolled scrolls. No one else moved. After a few moments, Tesca raised his head and cleared his throat again, turning to Seneca for the first time.

  “Legate Seneca, the document I have here seems to indicate that an injustice may have been done.” He held up his hand to forestall an interruption. “I only say ‘may have’. This is a segment of a military log, dated eight months ago and signed by Tribune Britannicus as officer commanding the cohort.” Seneca was spluttering, his face suffused with anger. “It’s a trick, damn you, Tesca! Can’t you see that?”

  Tesca’s face became flinty. “No, Legate, I do not see that! What I see seems militarily correct, if highly unusual.” He turned and glanced up at Britannicus, and then at the rest of us, before continuing. “I wish to make a strong recommendation. A double recommendation: that the Tribune Britannicus surrender himself and his men, to be kept under guard, until I myself, with my three companions and four of your own officers, have had time to examine these — records — thoroughly.”

  “Are we yet to be treated, then, as criminals?”

  Tesca’s eyes went directly to Britannicus, without evasion. “In the eyes of the Empire, you are criminals. I do admit, however, that this —” he indicated the scroll he held, “— this record, as you call it, raises some doubt in my mind. In view of that, if you will consent to simple detention, you will be lodged comfortably, under guard, until we have had time to arrive at a decision, at this level only, regarding your guilt or innocence of the charges under which you stand convicted.”

  “What then?” Britannicus had lowered his voice again. “You said ‘at this level.’”

  “Then, if we are persuaded of your innocence of the crime of desertion, you will be taken to military headquarters in Lindum to face the Military Governor for formal exoneration.”

  “All four hundred of us?”

  Tesca frowned. “Of course not. You and your officers and your scribe.”

  Britannicus sighed deeply and looked back to the bowmen on the parapets.

  “Seneca,” he mused, “your bowmen will have cramps for a week if they do not relax soon.”

  Seneca, his face suffused with rage and frustration, raised his arm, and I felt my scalp prickle, but he brought it back down slowly and the threatening arrows were lowered. I heard a susurration of released breath from the men behind me.

  “That is far more civilized.” There was almost a smile in Britannicus’ voice. “Flavinius Tesca, I thank you for your level head. Centurion Varrus, pass the word for the men to lay down their weapons and to reassemble… where would you like them to go, Legate, apart from the obvious?”

  “Damn you, and them, Britannicus. They’ll stay right where they are, at attention.”

  I didn’t move. This was not yet over. Britannicus’ voice dropped low, intended for one pair of ears only. “Seneca, my men are hardened. Yours are babies. I will not have my people stand in the sun to soothe your spleen. I will have them assemble outside the gates, and you can mount a guard around them, but by the Living God, if you try to vent your petty anger at me on them, then I’ll turn them loose and very few men, yours or mine, will see tomorrow.”

  Seneca almost choked. “You threaten me? You dare, you gutter-dropped dung?” His voice was a venomous, choking hiss.

  Britannicus swung to me. “Do as I command. Have the men assemble outside the gate. Go with them, and permit no break in discipline.” He swung his leg over his horse’s rump and slid to the ground. I looked once more from him to the others as two soldiers stepped forward to flank him, and then I turned to do his bidding.

  The men spent the night and the better part of the next day under guard in a temporary horse stockade outside the camp. They were nominally prisoners, but they were well treated, and well fed, for the first time in months.

  I spent the night in the camp, under guard, having washed with hot water and been issued with decent clothes that made me feel human again.

  Late the next morning I was taken under guard to a gathering in the Legate’s huge, walled tent. Flavinius Tesca, the three civilians and four officers had spent most of the night reading Luscar’s diurnal record, and they were genuinely satisfied that we were guilty of no crime. In their eyes we stood already acquitted of any wrongdoing, and they agreed that our soldiers were to be released immediately. A senior centurion of Seneca’s guard was dispatched to see to that, and Tesca called for wine to celebrate our salvation.

  The Legate Seneca strode from his tent in a fury.

  By late afternoon, Seneca’s quartermaster was issuing new uniforms and equipment to our men, who would maintain their integrity as a unit under temporary officers, and Britannicus, with the rest of his officers, myself included, was on his way south for an audience with the Military Governor. A squadron of Seneca’s cavalry escorted us, together with the four Senators whose presence in Seneca’s entourage had been so fortunate for us.

  V

  Theodosius, the new Military Governor, turned out to be a grandiloquent and pompous pain in the arse, with all the charm of an angry viper, but he had a viper’s strength and resilience, too, and he was, above all else, successful.

  He was also something of a showman — had he not been a soldier and a politician, he could have made a rich living as a lanista, producing and presenting public spectacles for the amazement of the populace. This was brought home to me when Britannicus and I were ushered into his audience room at his headquarters in Lindum. Theodosius had not yet arrived, and we had to wait for him. Our escort, a tribune and two troopers, came to attention behind us, and two more guards stood stiffly at attention facing us, flanking a large table of polished wood in the centre of the chamber. One cathedra, an armchair with a high back, stood behind the table, and four sellae, traditional backless chairs, were ranged side by side opposite it. We made no move to sit.

  On the table top, its naked blade almost glowing in the filtered light of late afternoon, lay Theodosius’ sword.

  This weapon was famous, justly renowned for its keen, silvery, intricately scrolled blade. When he was not wearing it, Theodosius kept it unsheathed, ostentatiously on display at all times for lesser men to admire. My breath caught in my throat the moment I looked at it and recognized its magnificence, and I was hard-pressed not to comment upon it. I did not dare to speak, however. We were still de facto criminals, condemned until Theodosius should formally repeal the proscription against our names. Until then we were forbidden to speak without permission.

  Theodosius entered the large chamber only moments later. He listened to our case, presented by the Tribune who accompanied us, and examined our written record briefly. He nodded, then told us he had discussed our case at length with Senator Tesca and was satisfied of our innocence. He even congratulated Britannicus on his forethought, his leadership, his example and his endurance, and ordered the destruction of all evidence of any charges laid against us.

  I found myself almost as fascinated by the man as I was with his sword. I was aware of his shortcomings, but spellbound by the aura of power his presence generated. He had landed in Britain with a consular army of four legions — between fifty and sixty thousand men, counting all personnel — just towards the end of the year 368, and had, in a matter of mere months, recreated the Pax Romana out of overwhelming chaos. He refurbished the diplomatic corps of the province, appointing a new Comes Britanniorum, or Count of Britain, to replace the incompetent Fullofaudes, the so-called Dux Britanniorum, or Duke of Britain, who had been killed in the invasion. He also appointed a new Vicarius of Britain, a civilian Roman Governor, to represent the Emperor in Londinium. Both positions were sinecures, and neither appointee made any mark during, or after, the brief period when Theodosius remai
ned resident in Britain.

  I met him personally shortly after our return and exoneration, when he summoned Britannicus, as one of the few surviving senior officers in the country who was not in disgrace, to attend a conference prior to the launching of his major campaign. The Emperor Valentinian had given Theodosius the title Comes Rei Militaris, Military Count, and as such, he was determined to make sure that everyone knew who he was. He was not a particularly pleasant individual, but he was a fine soldier and administrator, and his armies were spectacular. I suppose not everyone can be perfect. He was to be Emperor himself within ten years.

  As Military Count, however, Theodosius did make several significant improvements to the province’s general defences. He rebuilt and strengthened a number of badly damaged forts, and he greatly improved the defences of many towns — a major undertaking that he completed in an impressively short period of time.

  The towns of Britain had stone walls, backed by earthen ramps and fronted by deep, V-shaped ditches. Theodosius ordered these ditches filled, and then added exterior towers to the walls, towers constructed expressly to hold heavy artillery — catapults of varying sizes that could hurl projectiles ranging from deadly ballista bolts and javelins, to massive rocks and stones, and blazing containers of oil. That done, he dug new, deeper, U-shaped ditches, this time sited far enough away to stop an attacking force short of the town’s walls, but within range of the artillery on the new towers.

  His most important and immediate contribution to the welfare of the province, however, was an extensive refurbishment of Hadrian’s Wall itself, including the regarrisoning of the forts and mile castles along its length.

  These were sweeping changes, and they involved an intricate and convoluted redistribution of the military forces under his command. The remnants of our old cohort were split up and scattered among the new and reformed legions, and Caius Cornelius Britannicus was promoted to Legate, commanding one of these new units. He took me with him as his primus pilus, his chief centurion and second-in-command in all matters relating to the daily operations of the legion, as was his prerogative. Things were never the same after the Invasion, however. Britannicus had the reputation, but his new men didn’t have the balls to be anything great, and we did not have the time to train them before going into action. And then, in the closing months of Theodosius’ campaign, when we had the enemy well and truly on the run, heading north to the Wall again, we walked into that mountain trap and won ourselves a lengthy, if unwelcome, respite from war.

  Mitros, personal physician to Britannicus and now, by association, to Varrus, began his daily arrangements to lengthen my life by deepening my misery. Britannicus was still asleep, and after the briefest glance at him Mitros ignored him, and me, as he went about his work. I watched him with a thin worm of fear churning in my gut. I was already accustomed to the procedure he was preparing for, but I knew I would never become inured to the pain involved, in spite of the wondrous extent of his healing powers.

  Mitros poured white, crystalline powder from a phial into the pot already bubbling on his small brazier, and then removed the vessel from the coals almost immediately, pouring its contents into a shallow bowl to cool until I could drink it. The larger vessel on the big brazier contained a grey, viscous liquid that bubbled heavily, almost like the mud it resembled. Both mixtures, I knew, contained opiates that would dull my senses against the pain Mitros would shortly begin to inflict upon me. I would drink the mixture in the shallow bowl first, when it was cool enough. Even heavily flavoured as it was with fresh crushed mint, it tasted foul, but it was magical. Mitros had told me it was made from a substance rendered from the gum of poppies grown far to the east, beyond Byzantium. It conquered pain in proportion to its own potency. Each day Mitros made the mixture stronger, and each day my awareness of the pain diminished.

  When the opiate had numbed me sufficiently, Mitros would undo my bandages and wash and clean the wounds that swept up into the centre of me, using hot water and astringent cleansers that I could not have tolerated without the assistance of the potion. Then, when he had finished, he would dress the wounds again, packing the inner bandages with an almost unbearably hot poultice of the foul-smelling, clay-like mixture from the big brazier. The poultice itself also held a painkiller, more powerful in its own way than the other, so that by the time the effects of the draught had worn off, the magic of the poultice had numbed my leg completely, leaving me able to sleep again until the following day.

  Mitros tested the draught in the bowl with the knuckle of his little finger. It was evidently still too hot for me to drink. I swallowed a mouthful of saliva nervously, sniffed, and glanced towards Britannicus. He slept on, flat on his back, his great, hooked beak of a nose pointed to the roof of the tent. I remembered again his words to me on that first night we met, about having to decide what to do with me, and I grinned at the recollection. In the years that had elapsed since that night, Caius Britannicus had had more to concern himself with than what he would do with me. My grin grew wider, and I wondered what he might have done without me.

  “Here, now we drink, and we grow well.” Mitros was standing beside me, the bowl in his left hand as he reached with his right to support my head.

  “Do we, by God? Well, Mitros, since we’re doing it together, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you drink it today and I’ll watch, the way you usually do? That way, we share the pain and the pleasure.”

  “Not amusing. Come.”

  I obeyed him, quietly and meekly, in the absence of alternatives. The concoction tasted awful. I can still remember the acidic bitterness of it, decades later.

  When the bowl was empty, Mitros returned my head to the pillow and wiped my brow with a damp cloth. “There, now. Soon you will be asleep.” And soon I would, but not immediately. Sleep drifted in very slowly after that draught, and sometimes it did not come at all; consciousness remained in a kind of dream state, where awareness still functioned but earthly problems like pain and discomfort disappeared completely.

  Mitros had returned to his braziers, and now he lifted the other pot away from the heat, using a stout, wooden handling device to distribute the weight of the heavy vessel. He carried it to the sturdy table at the foot of my bed and left it there before crossing to the door of the tent, where he signalled for two soldiers to come and remove the braziers. I watched all of this in a kind of daze, eventually realizing that everyone had left the room and that I was alone, except for Britannicus.

  Caius Cornelius Britannicus was a true Cornelian, a direct descendant of the pure, patrician stock of the founding families of the Roman State. During those early days of confinement, practically strapped to his bed and unable to influence anyone to change anything, Britannicus talked, sometimes for hours and hours, about his life in Britain as a citizen, rather than as a soldier. I remember I found that surprising at first, primarily because I had known him until then only as the military Legate Britannicus, the taciturn, professional commander who normally kept his company and his opinions to himself. As time passed, however, I discovered that I barely knew him at all. Whatever intimacies he and I had shared as companions in arms had exposed only a few small facets of the man’s fascinating character and personality to me. Now, as he talked and I listened, more and more of the man inside him began to emerge. A paternal ancestor — his great-great-grandfather, in fact — had won his cognomen, Britannicus, through his efforts on behalf of the province in the time of Hadrian, more than a hundred and fifty years earlier, and his whole family had come to think of Britain as home over the intervening generations, although their primary allegiance remained always to Rome. For my part, I had been born in Britain and had grown to manhood without ever being really aware of it. I never thought of it as being an important place; it was simply Britain, the place where I lived. It took a few years in Africa, followed by years of enthusiasm on the part of Britannicus, to show me what Britain really meant to me.

  He talked at great length and with real affection about
his family and about their home, a villa close to Aquae Sulis, the famous hot water spa in the south-west. I heard the pride in his voice when he spoke of his wife, Heraclita, whom he evidently worshipped and whose imperial Claudian blood was as ancient and noble as his own. He spoke proudly, too, of his first-born son, Picus, who, like Caius and all his forebears, would join the ranks of the legions when he reached sixteen. The boy was eight now, almost nine, so there was no rush to find a place for him in the imperial ranks. For the next five years at least, young Picus would remain at home with his younger siblings: a sister, Meleiia, who was seven years old and the favourite of her doting father, and four-year-old twin brothers Marcus and Paulus. He talked of a sister called Luceiia and a brother-in-law called Varo, who owned an estate beside the Britannicus lands in the west and who acted as caretaker cum estate manager to the family in Caius’ absence. Someday, he swore, when his duties were over and the Empire no longer required his services, he would return and assume stewardship of his own lands.

  Early on in our association, Britannicus and I had discovered that we had both been born in Colchester, the oldest Roman settlement in Britain. His family had moved away early in his boyhood to live in the region south of Aquae Sulis, in the family villa, but he had always retained happy memories of Colchester. Traditionalist that he was, however, he always insisted on calling it by its original name of Camulodunum. Colchester, he maintained, was a bastard name, Celtic and Roman mixed, which stood only for “the camp on the hill.” As a name, he said, it lacked character.

  In the course of one discussion it came out that his father had had a friend in Colchester who had been a smith, and owned his own forge. This man’s name had been Varrus, too. Britannicus didn’t connect the name with me, personally, because no Roman citizen of his connection would have willingly worked with his hands. When I told him that this Varrus had been my own grandfather, his eyes widened with surprise, and he had wanted to know how Varrus the Elder had come to pursue a life of manual labour.