Arthur Britannicus

by Paul Bannister

  The idea hit Carausius with almost perceptible force. Instead of chasing away the pirates, he could simply become a pirate himself. He would discover their home bases and intercept the corsairs as they returned, loaded with loot. He’d relieve them of most of it and release them. That way, he could pay his troops, put down the worst of the piracy, continue to increase his treasury and stamp out the land-based rebellions. “Get that money to the treasurer, Allectus,” he said thoughtfully. “You’ve done very well. Now, send just a few of the pirate crews but not the captains or their chosen men to the slave pens. You can discreetly let the pirate captains choose who we should take for the slave pens. That way, we’ll keep the pirates active and improve the quality of their crews. But,” he warned, “don’t enslave the brigands’ captives. They’re not rebels, they’re victims. We need the general goodwill if we’re to get information. Give the victims passage to their places, drop them along the coast, they can make their own way home from there. That’s enough, go. I have some business to get started.”

  Carausius wanted to use the captured bullion, and for that he needed to melt it down and issue it as coin. He needed to build a mint as well as a navy and an army, but he was light-hearted at the once-daunting prospects. He had gold. “Lycaon,” he called to his adjutant, “get a few amphorae of good wine to the Minerva crew who just came in, announce a weekend’s leave for them. Give them a good donative, and let the whorehouses enjoy some extra business. The mariners deserve my thanks. And, by the way, get a couple of flagons of that wine for us. We can drink to the future with better prospects now!”

  Carausius sent for his old shipmaster, and Cenhud came gladly from Forum Hadriani to the stone fortress of Bononia. He brought with him the several men Carausius had asked for, Belgic shipbuilders, expert on the rivers of the Rhine and Meuse. Cenhud greeted him warmly. “Caros, my son,” he said, “I am so proud of what you are and who you have become.” “Old friend, I want someone I can trust to run this operation,” the legate explained. “First, I want to build a fleet of warships that can transport my troops along the great rivers. You know how the army uses them in Germania? Even the smallest vessels can move about 40 men, and can cover 60 or more miles a day on the water. When we have that under way, I’ll subdue these bastards on the land, then next, you can build me a sea-going fleet, too, and we’ll knock out the pirates on the ocean itself.”

  His land-based plan was simple. Carausius would move military forces swiftly and almost without warning across Gaul and Spain by river, outflanking the rebel hordes and pinning them against impassable water obstacles so his troops could trap and slaughter them. At sea, he’d supplement his big warships with shallow-draught oared vessels that could intercept pirates close to the coast, so he could relieve them of their booty as they came home from their expeditions. His soldiers would have to learn some of the skills of sailors, but as they used the great rivers, they would be the fastest-moving troops the world had seen. Running ahead of any warnings, they would strike deep and hard into the heart of rebel territories, and be virtually immune to ambush along the way.

  The plan was a triumph and cemented the reputation the general had with his troops. They’d always had a grudging admiration for him, and he for them. They regarded him as hard but fair. Now, with a series of stunning victories, Carausius had brought them pride, and they loved him for it. The general himself led the first expedition, down the great Seine in its springtime floods, to the important stronghold at Lyon. He explained his intent to his commander Lycaon. “We’ll sail south and meet the scouts who went out a week ago, and we’ll leave one force north of where they find the brigands. Then we sail past the Bagaudae in the night, hopefully undetected because they won’t be expecting us, and disembark the rest of our force. With the river on our east, the disembarked troops north and us south, we’ll almost have them trapped. We’ll send cavalry out to the west to spook them, and drive them north or south, where we’ll be waiting. And if they don’t move, we just advance up the river bank and trap them that way.”

  The operation went as if its script had been chiselled into marble. The scouts questioned travellers, drovers and shepherds and found that about 1,200 brigands had sacked and burned several small towns west of the Seine and were camped about a half mile from the river. Lycaon took command of the northern force, landing troops and cavalry three miles short of the rebels, while Carausius waited until dusk and, led by several smaller craft with shielded lanterns to guide them, set off under sail and oars to glide past the unsuspecting horde under cover of dark. Landing the horses and the artillery was the most difficult part of the exercise, but it was done before dawn and the cavalry set out north and west to close the circle on the sleeping insurgents. The scouts and the two bodies of legionaries kept in contact with fire and signal flags to synchronize their attack, and the cavalry pushed the rebels eastwards like beaters driving game. Both forces moved forward in double ranks, finding their line of advance impeded only twice by small copses of trees. The westernmost troops curved inwards as they advanced, better to trap the enemy, who were milling in confusion at the sight of the pincering phalanxes of metal coming at them.

  Some army deserters with the rebels tried to organize a defensive line, but they were too few and the undisciplined peasants and brigands were more concerned with gathering their loot and their slaves and fleeing, unaware that they were in a noose of steel. Carausius ordered the catapults and ballistae forward, to add to the rebels’ panic. The catapults fired huge darts into the massed horde; the ballistae also hurled pots of blazing pitch into the mob. Then the brass trumpets sounded and the legions marched forward.

  At 20 paces, they let their heavy javelins fly in first one, then a second volley that destroyed any cohesion the rebels might have had. The infantry followed that deadly hail of missiles with two more, short-range barrages of heavy darts, then, in wedge formation, levelled their spears over the tops of their shields and tramped in a saw tooth array straight into the mob. The legionaries used the heavy bronze bosses of their shields to pound the rebels backwards and their stabbing lances and swords battered and killed the Gauls as they scrambled over each other to escape.

  Most of the brigands knelt in surrender. Those who fled found themselves caught between the river and the lances and slashing swords of the cavalry. After several hundred had been hacked down, the rest knelt to beg mercy. Soon, Davius the executioner and his crew were occupied in their grisly work with the ringleaders of the rebellion, but the armourers were even busier, chaining the captives for the slave coffles and their long march to the auction block.

  Carausius had created a successful strategy, and over the next several years he sailed the coasts and quartered Gaul on its great rivers, patrolling the Loire, Seine and Rhone to trap bandits, repeat the butchery, liberate the rebels’ loot and fatten his coffers. Always, he took along his executioners, whose crosses appeared outside town after town. The rotting corpses nailed up high reminded rebels of the long, cruel arm of Roman retribution. “They can respect us or they can fear us, or both, but they’ll not defy us,” said the general, reinforcing his own belief that the cruelties were justified because making examples of the lawless saved many other lives.

  After an expedition along the Garonne that mopped up much of the brigandage in the southwest, Carausius’ ship-borne troops edged along the coastal waters of Our Sea, outflanking the snowy, steep passes of the Pyrenees. The flotilla emerged without warning at the Ebro River. There, the legionaries surprised and slaughtered the Iberian insurgents who had looted great swathes of countryside right to the gates of Gerona, and marched onwards to capture the gold mines at Leon. The rewards came every month, when ships and a heavily-guarded mule train took back bullion to the riverfront mint at Rouen. There, Allectus was busy producing the best coinage anyone had seen in 200 years. His moneyers were skilled at taking silver or gold and blending them with brass and bronze into an alloy that looked like pure gold. This they would beat into the pro
per thickness before cutting them into small square blanks. These were slightly larger than the circular dies a moneyer used. He’d place the blank onto the die, then strike it with a mallet to impress one side of the coin. Next, he would put another die on the remaining blank side and hammer down on it to make the second imprint. When the edges were trimmed, the result was one new coin.

  “Our money’s been taken right down since Septimius Severus,” Carausius grumbled to Cenhud as the pair shared a jug of wine and looked over plans for a new warship. “It’s been debased so far that it’s a joke. Rome’s latest double denarius, for example, is just bronze washed over with silver. Nobody wants money like that but it was all we had to give the troops, so why would they fight for us? Now, with decent money, they have every incentive. Remember, Gaius Julius paid his troops with his own money when Rome wouldn’t send him their pay, and the boys remembered that, and stayed loyal when he needed them. It was fair, and it made him emperor. Anyway,” he grinned, “I make a far more handsome head on a dupondius than old Julius ever did. I’m surprised anyone would want to part with me just for food or wine.”

  In the next months, Carausius shuttled back and forth between the green-topped, white cliffs of Bononia and Dover, overseeing legions in Britain and Gaul, and driving his sailors to harry the pirates of the narrows. He drove his men hard, he fed them well, he paid them well and they would have eaten out of his hand because he gave them fair rules administered fairly. Shrewdly, the Briton did not hesitate to let his troops know who was responsible for the good money they were getting. He had his own bearded image stamped on the coinage with the legend: ‘The new Golden Age is here.’ In another minting, aimed at the British jarls who ached for independence from Rome, he called himself ‘The Long-Awaited One,’ ‘Spirit of Britain,’ and ‘The Restorer of Britain.’ Not only did the coinage propaganda seem to validate Carausius’ right to lead, but as he cheerfully explained, “It pays to remind the footsloggers that Rome wasn’t always in the disarray it’s in these days, and if they want to think the gods sent me to bring back the good old days, so much the better.”

  The troops loved it, as they were better paid than ever. Payday, known in the barracks as, ‘The day the Eagle shits,’ was gratifyingly regular and their money was worth something at last. Plus, this general cut them in on the loot from time to time, and he made sure they had good equipment and good food. Being a legionary wasn’t half bad, and you could look forward to a guaranteed retirement pension and land, too. Car the Bear was all right, the troops agreed.

  Provisioning the troops was uppermost in Carausius’ mind as he sat at his writing table in his office above the harbour at Bononia, and he called for Suetonius, a quartermaster recently returned from an expedition to punish rebels near Spain’s River Tagus. The officer stood to attention until the legate motioned him to a stool, and they began discussing the problems of getting enough grain for the legions since the crop had been so poor that summer. “How did you enjoy Spain, by the way/” Carausius asked.

  “It was boring, all olive groves, a hot and dry place, no women, no loot, a miserable, uninteresting place, all in all,” was the quartermaster’s view, although, he recalled, they had made one unusual find that still puzzled him. “We came across a whole batch of scrolls, the gods only know where they came from, and I found a curious thing. I saw my own name, Suetonius, written in one. They were all in the Spanish tongue so I had the thing translated. As far as I can tell it was dictated by some old veteran who got a land grant in Spain at retirement,” he told his general.

  “Turned out the Suetonius in it was Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, the governor of Britain who had to put down a huge revolt in the colony. It was back in Nero’s day and it was kept very quiet, they didn’t want the public alarmed. Anyway, the story it told was that the rebels were led by a woman, and they destroyed the capital at Colchester, including the temple of Claudius, and slaughtered tens of thousands of people. The Ninth Spain legion, who weren’t too shabby - they’d earned their title for fine service in Iberia, went to save the place and were given a thorough kicking by the rebels. It was such a slaughter, almost nobody came back.

  “Even the standard bearer and his unit had to flee with the Eagle. Well, the rebels caught him somewhere short of Eboracum, the legion’s HQ, where he was headed for safety. What was most interesting was the scroll claimed it’s almost certain the rebels never did get the Eagle, or the legion’s pay chests, which the aquilifer had hidden. The story I got was written for an old soldier who claimed to have escorted the Eagle bearer for a while. The soldier dictated a testimony, saying he had an idea where the standard might have been concealed by the aquilifer, but he himself didn’t witness it, he wasn’t there, which was as well because he learned later the Eagle party had been butchered to a man. It could be interesting information, but who knows?”

  At mention of Eboracum, the provincial capital of Britain, and a place he’d visited as a child, Carausius got very interested. “Fetch me the scroll,” he demanded, “and keep your damn mouth shut about this.”

  Left alone, he pressed his fingers to his temples. There was a memory…. there was something he felt he had to recall. A drift of smoke floated in through the window, and his memory flashed bright. The wood smoke, scent of his father’s house in faraway, long-ago Britain. He was a young boy, sitting beside his father, whose arm was around his thin shoulders. He could feel again the smooth wool of his father’s tunic against his cheek. He heard his father’s voice, felt the rumble vibrate as his head rested against the man’s chest. His father was showing him a scrap of lead, a thin sheet with marks scratched on it. As clearly as if it were happening in the commander’s stone chamber of the Bononia fort, Carausius could again visualize the map and its scratching’s, and hear in memory his father’s voice.

  “This is a map, Caros, a treasure map. We have yet to understand what it shows. It is the secret to a very important Roman treasure and brave men died to keep that secret. One day, I shall find it.” The boy looked hard at the little sheet of metal, burning its pattern of lines and letters into his sharp young mind. His father hugged his shoulders, approving as he saw the boy’s effort. The child glanced up, and snuggled against his father. It was reassuring, comforting to have his father’s affection, although the idea of great treasure was a little bewildering. It didn’t matter. His father was there, and that was all that really mattered. Carausius the soldier felt his body surge with the memory, and heaved a gusting sigh. The map was as clear to his inner eyes as if it were on the desk in front of him. He knew the gods were putting before him a thing of importance. He would have to think long, and think hard how to proceed. In a straw-lined nest in a nearby wharf side warehouse, a white rat stirred, then slept again.

  Far to the east, and a few hours later, the trader Gracilis walked across the atrium of his house in Forum Hadriani to stand under an oil lamp. He took out the scrap of lead he’d taken from his twin slaves in Massilia and studied it yet again. What he saw had been scratched out at knifepoint two centuries before by a desperate man shortly before he was killed. The metal bore a crude sketch of several lines that intersected. At the top of a vertical line was the part-word ‘Ebor.’ Running diagonally to it, from the southwest, for the metal scroll was a rough map, a second line had an ‘N’ and an ‘AA’ inscribed on its length. The third line ran from the ‘AA’ north and west to another part-word, ‘Manc.’ Finally, at the bottom of the metal scrap the word ‘plumbum’ had been scribed, then scratched through and the word ‘bluion’ was written. None of it meant anything to Gracilis, but it might mean something to the clever administrator, Mullinus, whose lamp in the house across the street was burning, which indicated that he was still awake…

  Mullinus looked at the map with a sense of shock. Ebor? Eboracum? A map of the area where he’d been a slave? Was this some sort of trap related to his runaway past? He concealed his feelings from the slave master. “It seems to be a map, where did you get it?” he asked smooth
ly.

  Gracilis was evasive. “Just something I picked up in Gaul from my slaves, it seemed amusing.”

  “Well,” said Mullinus, “leave it with me and I’ll do some studying.”

  “Oh, no call for that, it’s just a curio,” said Gracilis, hastily pocketing the thing. Then he added, “Do you have any idea at all what it means?” Mullinus, accepting that there was no danger to him, saw no harm in answering, and his vanity pushed him to demonstrate his world knowledge.

  “Well, it seems to be a map of part of Britain. I’d say that ‘Ebor’ is short for Eboracum, and that ‘Manc’ for Mancunium. They’re significant towns there. I’ve been to Eboracum, you know. Oh, and this word ‘plumbum’ is Latin for ‘lead,’ of course. I have no idea what a bluion is.” It was about all he could tell Gracilis until he could find a great library with the tax gatherer’s scrolls or maps that might give him clues to what the other letters signified. The next time he was in Rome or Milan, he thought. Gracilis left, also thoughtful, and wondering if perhaps he should consider a trading trip to Britain. If there really was a great Roman treasure, and this was the key to finding it…

  Mullinus pulled at his chin; he’d have to think about this. Those twin slaves were somehow involved. They were British. Maybe they knew more, even where the treasure was. Clinia was concentrating on her embroidery when the Briton came into her room. “I just had an odd conversation with that fellow Gracilis,” he began. “There’s something going on, he seemed very agitated when I looked at some old bit of metal, a sort of map, that he showed me.” As he detailed the business to her, Clinia thought she’d faint. “Was it scratched on lead, this map? Was it about this size?” she asked quietly, holding up forefinger and thumb. It was Mullinus’ turn to be surprised. “How on earth did you know that?“ he demanded. “Were you spying at the door?” Clinia took a deep, deep breath to calm herself. “This is the second time the Fates have caused something wonderful to cross our path. You may have found my sons,” she said. “Let me tell you about it….”