Walking briskly until he was outside the fortress walls, Marius slowed to a more leisurely pace once he was sure Decimus wouldn’t see, and mistake his need for some thinking time for a lack of resolve, and strolled back to the parade ground deep in thought. When his optio saw him returning, he snapped out a command to one of his two watch officers to keep their men working at their sword drill and walked across to meet his centurion before Marius could get within range of the century’s eager ears.
‘What was it then? A recruiting trip across the river? I could do with a week or two of looking down my nose at the local boys and down the length of my prick at—’
‘We’re ordered to make an arrest.’
The other man’s jocular tone turned professional in a heartbeat.
‘Arrest? Who?’
‘A Batavian prince by the name of Civilis. He’s been fomenting rebellion, so we’re ordered to take the century to their capital and bring him back here so that the legatus augusti can apply some old-fashioned Roman justice to him.’
The optio whistled softly.
‘Eighty men against a town full of those maniacs? You know they could rip us a new one if he decides that he’s not going with us willingly? And you can never tell with those Germans, can you? Sometimes they’ll go for their iron just because they feel like it. Wouldn’t it be better to go and get this Civilis in cohort strength?’
Marius shook his head briskly.
‘Quite possibly, but I wasn’t consulted and I certainly wasn’t going to make myself look like a cry baby by telling Decimus that my century isn’t up to the task of marching from here to the Island, collecting one man and then marching back again. So get them fully kitted up, two spears apiece like we were marching away to battle, swords sharpened, and daggers too, and let’s go and get him, shall we?’ He leaned closer, speaking so quietly that his comrade had to bend closer to hear him. ‘I’m told there’s a promotion in it for me if we bring him back with a pulse, but not much more than a lot of slaps on the back and a cup of wine or two if he’s a stiff. And if there’s something in it for me, there might well be something in it for you. I’ll recommend you for Centurion, if I get moved up to lead the cohort, but unless we bring this Civilis back alive, that’ll just be a nice dream that I wake up from to find the beautiful girl whose legs I thought I was going to get between is actually old enough to be my mother. And looks like your mother.’
His optio nodded solemnly.
‘You’re not going to have to worry about him getting killed, because nobody with any brains is going to kill the man. Because if we do end up with him as a prisoner, he might well be the only thing stopping the Batavians from lopping our ears off and decorating their roof beams with our severed pricks.’
Oppidum Batavorum, The Island, December AD 68
Hramn was eating his morning meal, sitting at the table in Draco’s house and still groggy from a troubled night’s sleep, plagued by dreams in which he relived the gut-wrenching moment when his guardsmen had been dismissed from their service. Chewing disconsolately on a piece of bread, he shook his head at the memory of the self-important runt of a freedman who had first revealed to him the emperor’s decision to disband the unit, which had guarded the rulers of Rome for almost a century, doing it in such a matter-of-fact tone that he could have been reading a list of goods to be purchased from the market, rather than destroying the lives of five hundred men. Tearing off another piece from the loaf, he considered his options for what felt like the hundredth time since he and his men had returned from Rome.
‘What would you do if you were me, Draco? The men of the Bodyguard are starting to get restive, now that Saturnalia has been and gone, and we’ve no more information to share with them than we had on the day we left Rome.’
The older man looked at him over the rim of his water cup.
‘There’s still no word from the legatus augusti at Colonia Agrippina?’
‘No.’ Hramn shook his head dismissively. ‘Kivilaz’s letter to him got no response at all. I had a word with Decimus, the Fifth Legion’s senior centurion, when we played their harpastum team, and he promised to take our case up with his legatus. He suggested that we might be recruited to their service as a mounted cohort to support them in the field, but he also told me not to hold my breath, and I sensed a distance between us that was never previously the case. This matter with Kivilaz seems to have turned the legions against us, and made our men little better than outcasts as long as he commands us. The most galling thing about it is that I don’t even know whether their enmity is justified.’
Draco sipped from his beaker of water before responding.
‘You’re asking me if Kivilaz and his brother Paulus were in collusion with this man Vindex? I can’t say. Kivilaz certainly travelled to Lugdunum to meet with him, once the fool had rebelled and started stamping Nero’s coinage with the letters SPQR, but by Kivilaz’s own account, his only intention in going to meet with him was to counsel the idiot, not to attempt an armed revolt. If he was plotting to support Vindex and Galba in return for the restoration of the Batavi kingdom, with himself as the natural king, then he’s not saying. And Vindex took the truth of it with him when he fell on his sword after being defeated by the legions from Germania Superior. But I’d have to say that they probably had a lot of common ground, given the fact that they might well both have been kings of their people if Rome hadn’t conquered the Batavi and the Aquitani, and might have been restored to those positions by a grateful emperor had Vindex’s revolt paid off. Who’s to say that Galba hadn’t quietly promised Vindex a kingdom within the empire, and if he could have been made the offer, then why not Kivilaz?’
Hramn nodded.
‘And now he’s been made prefect again by the new emperor, in what must look suspiciously like a reward for services he would have rendered if he had had the chance. This senator Vindex must have written to Galba frequently, given he’d raised Gaul in support of the man’s first bid for the throne, and if he thought he’d reached an agreement with the Batavi tribe, surely he’d have told his friend so before he died? I can’t see how else Kivilaz went to Rome condemned as a traitor and came back with a new command. And since it was the legions at the Old Camp that arrested him and his brother, killed Paulus and sent Kivilaz south to Nero, then surely they must still harbour a grudge? What if we end up in the field together? How could they even trust us, if they believe Kivilaz to be a traitor?’
Draco shrugged.
‘It’s of little importance what we think, or what the legions at the Old Camp make of it for that matter. All we have to worry about, and them too, is fulfilling our oaths to the emperor. Whatever Galba decrees is the law for us all, so now that he’s restored Kivilaz to the rank of prefect I doubt anyone’s going to trouble him, given he’s so favoured by—’
The door burst open, and one of Hramn’s men blurted out the news he had been sent to deliver.
‘Roman legionaries approaching from the east!’
The two men hurried to the city’s main gate, from where the wooden fort inside which Tiberius Claudius Labeo’s auxiliary cohort was based could be seen, perched on the escarpment that commanded the landscape around the city. By the time they reached it the unexpected visitors were within two hundred paces, and Hramn stopped to appraise the oncoming soldiers for a moment. Marching at the standard pace, they looked like nothing more than a legion century on a training march, but Hramn’s trained eye was quick to spot the differences as they drew nearer.
‘Two spears apiece. That’s a war load. And they’re holding their shields ready to use, rather than having them slung over their shoulders, and look at their faces …’
Draco followed his gaze, and immediately recognised what it was that the younger man could see in the oncoming legionaries.
‘Some of them look shit scared. And some of them look ready to fight. See how pale they are?’
Hramn nodded.
‘Ready to air their iron and lay about themselves
.’ He turned to the guardsman who had fetched them to the gate. ‘Gather as many of our men as can be found, and order them to arm themselves and be ready to defend the city, but to keep out of sight unless it comes to blows.’
Draco was clearly gathering himself to walk out and greet the Romans, but the younger man put a hand on his sleeve.
‘Leave this to me. I think I recognise that centurion.’
Walking forward with the easy gait of a man supremely confident in himself, he raised a hand in greeting and waited impassively as the marching century came on with a grinding of hobnails on the road’s cobbled surface, and the perpetual jingle and rattle of equipment that accompanied the Roman soldier on the march. The centurion marching at the column’s head barked an order, and the men halted with impressive precision, stamping their booted feet in perfect unison and grounding their shields and spears at a second command. Nodding his satisfaction, the officer turned back to Hramn with a nod of recognition but without any smile of greeting, his facial expression betraying the stress he was feeling.
‘Good morning. Hramn, isn’t it?’
The Batavi smiled tightly.
‘Well remembered, Centurion Marius. And greetings. Welcome to Batavodurum. Your head has recovered from the game, I presume?’
The Roman inclined his head in recognition of the point.
‘I no longer see two of everything. And your eye seems to have reopened.’
Hramn grinned despite the tension of the moment.
‘You punch like the kick of an irritated mule, Centurion. I couldn’t see out of it properly for the best part of a week.’
The two men shared a moment of mutual appraisal, Marius breaking the silence.
‘I’m here in an official capacity.’
Hramn nodded.
‘So I have gathered. It was not hard to deduce that you are not here for a rematch.’
He gestured to the armed men waiting in their ordered ranks, and the Roman nodded.
‘I could wish it were not so, but I have been issued with an order that I have no choice but to see through. I am to take a member of your tribe into custody and return to the Old Camp with him, where he will face trial for treason. The prisoner’s name is …’ He made a show of consulting his tablet. ‘Civilis. Gaius Julius Civilis. Perhaps it would better if my men and I were to wait here, and give you the time to find this man Civilis and bring him to us, rather than make an already sensitive situation worse by entering your city on such business.’
Hramn looked at him for a moment, weighing his words, before speaking.
‘Kivilaz … Civilis will be with his family. His farm is not far from here, but it will take a good while for me to get a message to him, and for him to come here.’
Marius looked at him levelly.
‘I’d guessed he wouldn’t be waiting at the gate. But what guarantee do I have that he’ll surrender himself that easily?’
Hramn shrugged.
‘That’s down to the man himself. But given he’s been pardoned once already, and by an emperor, then unless you’ve got some fresh evidence of his crime perhaps he’ll consider this no more than an administrative error. Doubtless any failure on his part to obey this summons will result in … repercussions?’
He stared hard at the Roman, and Marius looked down at his boots for a moment before nodding unhappily.
‘For both of us.’
‘Say no more, Centurion. I see the position in which you’ve been placed. I suggest you settle your men down for something of a wait.’
He turned back to the gate where Draco was waiting impatiently.
‘What do they want?’
‘What do you think?’
They found Kivilaz waiting for them in the great hall, alerted to the presence of the Romans by one of Hramn’s men.
‘They’ve come for me then. I was half expecting it. After all, they have a new general who’ll be keen to show his men he means business, and to have a little of whatever was left of Fonteius Capito’s popularity with his men rub off on him.’
Hramn took a seat opposite him.
‘They clearly believe you to be guilty of this treachery they are so persistent in levelling at you. So tell me Kivilaz, before we discuss whether you should surrender to these men and allow yourself to be marched away to a legion cell in the Old Camp, is their accusation justified?’
He fixed his superior with a hard stare, and Kivilaz met his gaze for a moment before replying.
‘The specific charge against me, Hramn, is that I colluded with Gaius Julius Vindex, Roman senator and prince of the Aquitani people, to restore the independence of both his own people and the Batavi from the Romans. It seems that this was the agreement Vindex had reached with Galba, to be allowed to rule his people as a kingdom, rather than an administrative district within the province of Gallia Lugdunensis, and I seem to have been whitewashed with the same brush. Fonteius Capito was convinced of the truth of this alleged treason, so much so that he had my brother killed without his even being allowed to make a statement in his own defence. And while the bastard was unable to order my own death, I was beaten so badly that it took more than a week for me to be able to mount a horse again, and even then the pain in my ribs was excruciating.’
The big decurion nodded tersely.
‘I have heard this story before. I lament the death of your brother, and I sympathise with your tribulations. And I still want to hear you answer my question – did you commit an act of treason in your dealings with Vindex?’
Kivilaz smiled at him, unperturbed by his subordinate’s evident irritation.
‘Would it matter? Not to this new Roman general Vitellius, it seems. He knows his men want my head on a sharpened post, and he is determined to give them what they want, whether I am guilty or not.’
Draco opened his mouth to speak, but Kivilaz raised a hand to forestall him.
‘Very well, since neither of you seem inclined to give me the benefit of the doubt, let me be absolutely clear. Did I visit Gaius Julius Vindex, before he confronted the army of Germania Superior and lost his gamble for power? Yes. I did. And why shouldn’t I have met with him? He was a respected Roman senator, indeed more Roman than Aquitani, and his aims seemed honourable enough in seeking the end of a thoroughly corrupted dynasty and its replacement with someone more suitable, with heirs to be named by the broad consent of the senate rather than simply inheriting power no matter what their faults might be. But did I offer him our support?’
He slapped an emphatic hand down on the table.
‘No! How could I have done so, when our cohorts were all deployed in Britannia at the time? So there’s the answer to your first question. Now you’ll want to know if I ever discussed the potential for Vindex’s ally Galba to re-establish the Batavi as a kingdom, presumably with myself as the king, in order to provide him with a set of eyes and ears in the north, and powerful allies in this part of the world to counterbalance the legions if they were to turn on him? Of course not!’
He shook his head in exasperation.
‘Of course I didn’t! You may not be aware of it, but Galba is widely known to be old-fashioned in the extreme, and not likely to give up control of a tribe that Caesar conquered. So no, I didn’t offer Vindex my support, much less that of the tribe, and no, I didn’t collude with him in any other way either.’
Hramn stared at him levelly.
‘So why did you bother going all that way? What more was there to discuss?’
Kivilaz raised his open hands in a gesture of innocence.
‘I simply wanted to talk with the man. To understand why he had chosen to take such a huge gamble. After all, he was already minting his own coins proclaiming that he was the saviour of humanity, so he was either going to be rewarded with a seat next to Galba’s throne or an unmarked grave. And do you know what I found?’
‘Surprise me.’
Ignoring the younger man’s acerbic tone Kivilaz leaned forward and whispered his answer.
&
nbsp; ‘I went looking for a man who might just be a leader we could get behind. But what I found—’
‘But you said—’
The prince slapped the table again with a sudden crack.
‘Fucking well listen! I said I didn’t discuss those things! And I didn’t! I went looking for the leader of a revolt, but what I found was nothing more impressive than a dreamer! Vindex? The man was hopeless. Anyone with an ounce of calculation would have made sure that Galba’s legion was marching to join his auxiliaries before declaring for the man. Instead of which he was more interested in putting his head on the fucking coinage! I spoke to him for long enough to realise that any hint of an alliance with him would have been a fatal mistake, told him to make peace with Rome before it was too late, and left as quickly as I could. Gods below, even Rufus Verginius didn’t want to fight him, despite the fact that his three legions were facing nothing more threatening than a ragbag force of auxiliaries, because he knew Vindex was harmless! It was his centurions who settled the matter by taking their iron to the Gauls despite the talk of a negotiated surrender, the bastards. But they were right.’
He leaned forward, stabbing a finger into the table for emphasis.
‘When you have a position of strength you play it for all it’s worth!’
Hramn sat back.
‘So you would have talked treason if Vindex had been worthy of your expectations. But you didn’t, because he wasn’t. And now the Romans have come for you for the second time, because they know all too well that you met with Vindex, and they can’t believe that you didn’t discuss the things you’re accused of. By meeting him at all you’ve laid yourself open to their charges, and it’s no mistake that they’ve sent the centurion we were playing harpastum against only a few days ago to come and dig you out. It’s a message to us that while we might be allies, they will do their duty to the empire. And why do you suppose they’ve sent a small unit of foot soldiers to fetch you back to the Old Camp, when they know we have five hundred guardsmen sitting around waiting for something to do?’
Betrayal: The Centurions I Page 12