Wolves of Rome

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  So would Germanicus be the man designated to avenge Teutoburg as well? Or were there other reasons behind the move, besides dealing with the legionaries who were asking for more humane living conditions? In the crucial moment of succeeding Augustus, what were Tiberius’s priorities? To avenge the dead? To kill more of the living and give a boost to the new monarchic order? To deal the final blow against residual Republican institutions?

  The Hermundur later informed him that after Tiberius took power, a centurion landed on the island of Planasia and, not without difficulty, killed Augustus’s remaining grandson. He was part of the Julian family, while the new emperor was Claudian. The two situations could not co-exist. The young man was murdered, but he had a fine funeral and was buried in the family mausoleum.

  Germanicus thus left for Germania. His soldiers adored him because he was the son of General Drusus. He looked like his father and even had the same personality: he was friendly, affectionate, even-tempered and a formidable combatant. He travelled on the Via Flaminia and passed through Ariminum. As he proceeded with his escort of a hundred praetorian guards, people lined the roads to cheer him on.

  He reached Bononia, where he found a much larger crowd than he had expected. It felt a bit odd to be receiving such acclamation, which would have been more suited to an emperor.

  All of a sudden, he heard a voice shouting, ‘Germanicus! Take me to Teutoburg!’

  Germanicus scanned the crowd and couldn’t pick out anyone in particular. But the shout was becoming louder and more insistent, until it drowned out the other voices: ‘Take me to Teutoburg! Take me to Teutoburg! Take me to Teutoburg!’

  Germanicus stopped, and then he saw him; he was the only one running through the crowd, apparently so he would stay within earshot. He called over one of the centurions of his guard and said, ‘Do you see that man running and yelling?’

  ‘Certainly, Germanicus. And I hear him.’

  ‘Bring him here to me.’

  The centurion obeyed and led the man who was shouting to Germanicus.

  ‘Why do you want me to take you to Teutoburg?’

  It was a rather corpulent man of about sixty with thinning hair, and a bristly two- or three-day-old beard. He said, ‘Germanicus, my name is Publius Caelius and I run an inn here in Bononia.’

  ‘Your name isn’t new to me,’ said Germanicus.

  ‘I’m the brother of Marcus Caelius, known as Taurus, first-line centurion of the Eighteenth Legion . . .’ He dropped his head to hide his emotion. ‘Fallen at Teutoburg.’

  ‘That can’t be . . .’ murmured Germanicus.

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘I can see that,’ replied Germanicus. ‘You look like him.’

  Publius Caelius gazed at him without understanding.

  ‘Your brother was my instructor. He’s the one who taught me to use this,’ he said, putting his hand on his gladius. ‘And to be a soldier. There are very few men of his stature. It was a terrible loss. But why would you want to go to Teutoburg? It’s a cursed place.’

  ‘I want to find the remains of my brother and give him an honourable burial.’ His voice was cracking now. ‘I’ve been told that . . . he was cut to pieces. It won’t be easy.’

  Germanicus felt a knot in his throat and he couldn’t say a word, but he embraced Publius Caelius like an old friend who he hadn’t seen in a long time.

  ‘You’ll come with me to Teutoburg, Publius Caelius,’ he said in the end. ‘And we will do all we can to render honour to Marcus Caelius, known as Taurus, your brother and a hero of the Empire.’ The crowd was mute; they were seeing the son of General Drusus in tears embracing an innkeeper in the middle of the road in Bononia.

  That innkeeper was invited that very evening to dinner by Germanicus, next in line to become emperor of Rome. The next day Publius left with the troops, a mule carrying his tent and personal belongings.

  Armin learned from one of his men serving among Germanicus’s auxiliaries that there had been a mutiny among the legions in Pannonia and Illyricum, and that the revolt had spread to the legions of the Army of the North, which was under Germanicus’s command. This situation was all to Armin’s favour. He could boast to the other chieftains who were members of his coalition that this terrible crisis of the imperial army was the consequence of the harsh defeat suffered by Varus at Teutoburg, at his hand.

  He met with his informer among the ruins of an abandoned village on the right bank of the Rhine. ‘The situation was getting out of control,’ he reported, ‘but then the commander arrived and realized that the legionaries were right. These men were living and toiling in quite cruel conditions, much harsher than military service would warrant. Many of them were convinced to revolt and demand what they were owed: a small increase in salary and a reduction of their mandatory enlistment from thirty to twenty years. They were exhausted and desperate, but most thought of the army as their only home and wouldn’t dream of actually leaving. I saw a veteran take Germanicus’s hand and put it in his mouth. With my own eyes! He didn’t want to bite it. No, he wanted the commander to touch his gums and see that he had no teeth left. He’d lost them all in twenty years of service under the Roman standards.’

  ‘Well? Is it true that he put down the revolt?’

  ‘It is. Most of them were convinced by his promise to guarantee the increase in wages with his own personal holdings. The firebrands found themselves isolated and they suffered for everyone: whipped in front of the drawn-up legions until their bare bones were showing, then decapitated.’

  ‘Divide et impera,’ concluded Armin. ‘Divide your enemies, set them one against the other, and then conquer. And you’re free to exercise your power. They do the same thing with us and they’ll continue to do so until we manage to become a single people. What else do you have for me?’

  ‘His wife is here as well. His beloved Agrippina, Julia’s daughter and Augustus’s granddaughter. She’s six months pregnant. It seems they fell in love as adolescents and they’ve become as inseparable as General Drusus and his wife Antonia. She’s expecting, as I told you, and she’s brought little Gaius Caesar as well, Germanicus’s first son. This has bound the legionaries even more greatly to their commander.’

  ‘What else?’ insisted Armin.

  ‘Once he had re-established discipline among the ranks, the legionaries offered to follow him to Rome and proclaim him emperor in Tiberius’s place. He refused, of course.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, the emperor is his uncle, his adoptive father, and was his commander in Illyricum and Pannonia.’

  ‘So you mean to say he’s loyal.’

  ‘That’s what it looks like. He’s a man I would trust.’

  The informer got back into his boat and departed from the shore to return to the left bank of the Rhine. Armin remained to ponder what he had heard, wandering among the gutted houses and burned beams of the village. He then called Borr with a whistle and the stallion ran up to him and made a smart half-turn, reins falling loose over his chest. It was all clear to him now: Germanicus was the man sent by the emperor to avenge Teutoburg. The togaed boy of marble on the Altar of Peace was now a man. They were the same age. This time they wouldn’t be fighting with wooden weapons. It would be iron against iron and in the end only one of them would survive. He felt like going home, to Thusnelda, but he stopped first to see his mother. Her house was not far away.

  ‘Be careful,’ said Siglinde. Nothing in his actions or his words escaped her. ‘Your victory is a kind of treasure that you’ve collected thanks to your bravery and your intelligence. You have to spend it wisely. Don’t let anyone see that you’re so proud of it. The envy of others is your most dangerous enemy and it could destroy you.’

  Armin didn’t answer, but he knew his mother was right. How could he use his prestige without giving rise to jealousy and rivalry?

  ‘There’s something else, my son. Germania has never existed before and no one knows where this word comes from. You learned it in Rome, a
nd it means something to you, but not to the rest of us. You father knew what it meant; he’d learned the word from General Drusus, I believe. It means that all the peoples that live between the Rhine and the great eastern plains are one people, on a single territory. But it also means that that people and that land have to have a single leader. You know who that is.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Who else? Who else forced three legion commanders to their knees? Who decapitated the governor? Who exterminated half the Roman Army of the North?’

  ‘What must I do now?’

  ‘Nothing more than what you’re doing. I’m just telling you to be careful: the Romans haven’t forgotten Teutoburg, and you have bitter enemies among our own people who would like nothing more than to kill you. Don’t let yourself be caught between two fires.’

  ‘I know. I’m alone. I can’t even count on my brother.’

  ‘Try to see him if you can. In secret would be best. Tell him that I want him to join us.’

  ‘I will, Mother. I hope that your words convince him to make the right choice, but I’m afraid it won’t be easy.’

  He thought of the bronze mask, so dark that he couldn’t see the expression of the eyes behind it.

  28

  ARMIN RODE ON TO the secret place he’d made for Thusnelda and he spent the night there with her. There was love, and fire, but not only that; it was a sad night, even though the sky was clear and filled with stars. He confided his hopes, and the fear that Seghest’s continued hostility kindled in him. He would have liked her father to be on his side; he respected him and appreciated his strength, his courage and the influence he had over their people.

  ‘Your father wasn’t there at Teutoburg . . .’

  ‘I know. His men were burning to be part of the coalition, but his will prevailed. He is inflexible.’

  ‘Can’t you do anything to convince him?’

  ‘If he so much as sees me, he will take me away with him and you would never see me again.’

  ‘I’m tormented by doubts. After Teutoburg, I thought that all of our peoples would join me in my plan for unity. Join me in building a single great nation. But I’m realizing now that this nation doesn’t even have a name. I have to find a way to make our victory a beginning, not an end. But if the Romans remain on the other side of the Rhine, where’s the reason for us staying united? We’ll just start fighting among ourselves again.

  ‘I have to find out what intentions the Romans have. I’m setting up a system to learn what they’re doing and what they’re thinking. Men who have eyes and ears everywhere.’

  He hadn’t finished speaking when they heard the sound of a gallop drawing near. He went outside to receive the man as he jumped to the ground.

  ‘Germanicus has unleashed his legions on this side of the Rhine.’

  ‘That can’t be. His legions are still stirred up by their own revolt.’

  ‘It started three nights ago. Germanicus convinced them that it was time to redeem themselves in the eyes of the emperor, to prove their loyalty. They set out from the forts that were built or repaired by Tiberius, the same ones you attacked . . .’

  ‘That I failed to seize . . . Go on.’

  ‘They fell on the Marsi, who had just celebrated the rites of spring, and it was a massacre: men still half drunk, old people, women and children. They devastated an area fifty miles wide and now they’re making their way back to their base through the forest.’

  ‘We have to attack them now, while they’re still in the forest. Let’s go.’

  ‘The neighbouring tribes have already reacted. The Bructeri, Usipetes and Tubantes are already on them.’

  ‘We’ll make this another Teutoburg!’ shouted Armin. He rode off with the messenger without a moment’s delay.

  He disappeared before Thusnelda’s eyes. She stood watching the clear, star-filled sky with a heavy heart.

  THEY ARRIVED AT dawn and made contact with the warriors of the tribes who were already in the fight. The chieftains held council but did not invite Armin to assume command.

  ‘How are you carrying out the attack?’ he asked.

  The Usipete chief, a warrior nearly five cubits tall, wearing iron mail, sword and shield, answered: ‘We’ve attacked them continuously on their flanks to make them believe that is our objective, but the real offensive will come from behind, once they’ve entered the forest. We’ll attack in great numbers.’

  ‘Good. Wait until they’ve disappeared into the forest,’ said Armin, ‘and then strike with everything you’ve got.’

  ‘I know what I need to do,’ retorted the Usipete chief. It was clear he wanted to claim his part of the glory; he wanted another Teutoburg as well.

  The first legion at the head of the column had to keep the road open, and cohorts of auxiliaries and cavalry units rode ahead. The Twenty-First and the Fifth Alaudae protected the baggage trains from the right and left. The Twentieth was the rear guard and was followed by light allied troops. The Usipete chief waited until the entire column had entered the forest and then ordered the attack.

  Suffering the brunt of the assault of tens of thousands of warriors, the allied infantry at the column’s end were quickly routed, collapsing onto the Twentieth on their march. It looked like everything was going well for the attackers, but Armin was worried. There was something wrong. The rush to win such an easy and resounding victory had tricked the Germanic commander into ordering the attack too soon, without waiting for the Roman marching column to be deep enough in the wood.

  In that moment, Germanicus, at the head of the column, must have been informed of what was happening at the rear because be pulled hard on his horse’s reins and raced to the end of the column, along its left flank, at top speed, personally taking command.

  ‘Twentieth!’ he shouted. ‘About-face!’ And the legion, with a sharp metallic sound, reversed their march, by simply turning to face the opposite direction. The eagle alone seemed to fly from the first rank to the last, transforming into the new front line. The legionaries, led by the supreme commander in person, unleashed such a powerful attack against the Germanic warriors that they pushed them out of the forest and into the clear. There the Twentieth had all the space and time to draw up eight deep with a front more than two thousand feet long. These were no longer the exhausted, bleeding combatants of Teutoburg, but an avalanche of iron and fury that poured over the enemy front.

  Armin spurred Borr on at full force to throw himself into the fray, into the vortex of screams and blood raging in front of him. He wanted to infuse courage into the Germanic warriors; but he could sense that it was too late to change the course of the battle. There was a moment in which just one hundred steps separated him from Germanicus and he could clearly hear his voice, shouting ‘Avenge Teutoburg!’ He saw a little disc of gold shining on the Roman’s chest – the same one he had worn as a boy depicted on the marble frieze and as an adolescent in Taurus’s training ring. For an instant, hit by a ray of sun, it nearly blinded Armin, and he took that flash as a warning from the gods.

  Thor, help me! he thought, before he was completely surrounded. Borr’s dilated nostrils inhaled the stench of death and he reared like an ardent pegasus and leapt over the circle of enemies, carrying his horseman to safety.

  Late that night Armin returned to the field, lit by the moon. It was littered with pale blond lifeless bodies.

  IN THE AUTUMN, Germanicus returned to Rome. He crossed the forum in triumph, his children riding on his chariot and his prisoners in chains trailing behind him, between two lines of deliriously cheering Roman citizens. It was as if General Drusus had come back in the flesh. Now his name was no longer simply an inheritance from his father; his coat of arms had been earned on the battlefield. Germanicus was the Empire’s hero.

  On the day of the autumn equinox, Armin met with the Hermundur in the big clearing near the lake.

  ‘Augustus’s daughter is dead,’ he said. ‘Beautiful Julia. He showed a little pity in the end, moving her from t
hat black, rocky island to a decent house of the Strait of Sicily. But only until Tiberius, who had long suffered the humiliation of her betrayals, had her locked up in a single room where she died alone, in agony and anger.

  ‘Germanicus is preparing a new campaign, but it’s being kept very secret. Impossible to say when and where it will be. Farewell.’

  He disappeared.

  Armin joined Thusnelda in the bed he’d built with his own hands for her, and in her arms he forgot his anguish. An embrace of flames, their bodies tangled in the spasm of desire, their passion swelling minds and hearts. After, he thought of her in the procession of spring, flowers braided in her hair, Freya appearing behind her soft eyelids.

  ‘I’m pregnant, I will give birth to your child. It will be a boy, like you.’

  Armin rose to his feet and his body shone in the glow of the moon. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Didn’t you know that the girls who see Freya can foretell the future?’

  ‘When will it be?’

  ‘Soon, at the beginning of spring.’

  ‘I can’t believe this good fortune. Your words have lifted the darkness that’s been plaguing me. I find myself at the spring of life, after having given death to thousands. I will always protect you; the beating of my heart will reach him through your skin when I hold you in my arms. I’ll love you forever, beyond death.

  ‘I’ll have to leave soon, to rebuild our Germanic forces and to raise a wall of spears against the invaders. My every moment and every thought will be for you until I see you again.’ He paused. ‘Did Freya tell you what would happen after the great battle?’

  Thusnelda gave a half-smile, but didn’t speak.

  Three days later Thusnelda heard Borr whinnying and the drum roll of his hooves on the wooden bridge that crossed the torrent. She didn’t have the heart to watch Armin leave from the threshold of their house.

  ‘You will win the great battle,’ she said softly, to herself, ‘but you will lose your wife and your son.’