Britannia: Part I: The Wall

by Richard Denham

  ‘She’s lucky to be alive,’ the general nodded, staring into the flames.

  ‘Lucky?’ Justinus looked into the hut and saw by the firelight Fanna of the holy parentage crooning softly to herself and pulling out tufts of her hair. ‘Yes, you could say that.’

  They took Fanna with them as they marched south and found another village, this time untouched. It took a while to negotiate but in the end, Justinus persuaded the people there to add one more lost soul to their number and they marched on.

  There were no roads to the south, just miles of desolate moors, purple with heather that was a hard and springy surface for the marching boots. The cavalry scouts of the Victores had vast experience of trailing armies and this was a large one, perhaps five thousand men. They had carts with them, the wheel-ruts cut into the mud frozen hard now with the coming of winter. And they passed one or two graves, too, fresh dug by the side of the path they travelled. There were wooden carvings there, hideous gods chiselled into oak and ash, no doubt companions who would take the dead to whatever afterlife the barbarians believed in. One thing was certain; if this was Valentinus, he was in no hurry. He had had time to bury his dead and to mark the place. He was probably only a day ahead; less because a raiding party that huge took time to move and the barbarians did not march like the Romans. On a good day the Victores could manage twenty five miles; but who was to say if this was a good day?

  Maximus halted his column on the low plain with a thick forest to his right. His scouts had come galloping back with news. They had found a dragon standard.

  ‘Skirmish advance,’ the general gave the order and the cavalry fanned out. The first two cohorts slid their shields off their backs and the front ranks hoisted their spears to the upright. The marching column was transformed into a fighting unit in minutes, Maximus and Justinus in the centre, the other tribunes with their cohorts. The wind was whipping through the general’s scarlet flag, its gold fringes flying over Maximus’ head. But most of the noise came from the solid tramp of the Victores, flattening the heather as they took the gentle rise of a scarp slope.

  The cavalry outriders halted, their horses snorting and whinnying with alarm. The ground fell away suddenly, a steep ravine beyond the slope. And the ravine was full of bones, jumbled and picked clean by the crows and the ravens.

  ‘Let me see that again.’ Maximus flicked his fingers and his signifer handed him the battered draco. Its bright red paint was peeling badly and the snarling mouth had lost most of its teeth. ‘Is this the dragon of the Ala Invicta Brittaniaci?’ he asked Justinus.

  ‘It could be,’ the tribune said, but he was already looking at the landscape. The dragon standards were carried by so many units and there was rarely any way of telling one from another. But the words of the signifer Metellus were echoing in Justinus’ mind. In front of him, the ravine with its bodies. To his left a scarp slope steeper and higher than the one they stood on now; to his right, an oak forest, dark in summer but naked now the leaves had gone. Justinus nodded to himself, then turned to Maximus. ‘Welcome, sir,’ he said, ‘to the mouth of hell.’

  They had no time to bury the dead from the ravine. Scattered over the fields ahead, they saw trinkets lying in the grass, the amulets of bone and wood that soldiers carried to keep them safe from harm. Here were the rays of Sol Invictus, like the spokes of a wheel. There the dying bull of Mithras. There was even a Chi-Rho, the looped cross of the Christ. They all knew, the men of the Victores, that what they were looking at was a deadly reminder. They were marching, once again in column, shields on their backs and spears at the slope, over a battlefield. Any more valuable trinkets would have been picked up by the victors of the field. All the weapons and armour would have been taken. So would the horses. This was the way it could go for any of them – bleached bones in a crack in the ground, a ground that had no official name; dead men defending a frontier they could not hold.

  Maximus felt it too. Somewhere on this springy turf, the Dux Brittanorum had gone down fighting, a man with a higher rank than him, a man too arrogant, too careless. He turned in the saddle to scan the grim faces of his men, marching over the field of the invisible dead, chasing ghosts that had kept one step ahead of them all the way.

  ‘Close up!’ he snarled at them, wheeling his horse round and riding back through the ranks, which parted to let him through. ‘Sing, you bastards!’ he shouted. ‘The Girl from Clusium – let me hear it. And make it loud. I want those poor sods back there in that pit to hear it too.’

  A semisallis famous for his golden voice struck up the notes and others joined in. There were sad songs the legions sang, songs of home and the hearth fire. And there was The Girl From Clusium. It was not the sort of song you’d teach your children or even sing in front of your wife and the physical positions in verse four were pretty unlikely, but it always brought a smile to the face of a marching soldier and Maximus knew it. ‘Shove, shove, shove, shove!’ the refrain thumped out to the thud of the boots.

  Maximus swung his horse in alongside Justinus. ‘That should keep the buggers happy for a while,’ he said. ‘Where the hell are we?’

  Justinus pointed. ‘That should be the Wall,’ he said. ‘Brocolitia, dead ahead.’

  What sun there was lit the Wall just before it died. It glowed fierce and red through bars of purple cloud gilding the stones of the fort of Brocolitia. Maximus’ army halted here, their singing stopped, their throats hoarse.

  ‘The bastards have smashed the Mithraeum,’ somebody shouted and dozens of men dashed over to look. The roof of the little temple had gone and the top stones toppled into the grass. The bull-pit was full of roof debris and the statues of the torch-bearers, Cautes and Cautopates had had their heads struck off. The three altars at the far end had been daubed in shit, old and caked now by the weather. Of Mithras and the great bull, there was no sign. The Victores muttered darkly, the brighter mood of their singing gone now, in this insult to their god.

  ‘What’s this?’ Maximus was not with the others, clustered around the desecration to the east of the abandoned fort. He was standing to the west, where the ground was marshy and a stone circle surrounded a pit, dark and deep. Justinus, as the only man there who knew the Wall, took a coin from his purse and threw it into the darkness. ‘Listen,’ he said.

  For two seconds, perhaps three, there was nothing; then an eerie thud, like two wooden plates clashing together. ‘That’s water down there,’ he told the general. ‘This is the Well of Coventina. She’s a water goddess the Brigantes worship; the Selgovae too as far as I know.’

  ‘Seal it,’ Maximus ordered.

  ‘Our men worshipped her too, sir,’ Justinus said. ‘The garrison here, I mean.’

  The general rounded on his tribune. ‘Well, shame on them,’ he said. ‘No man deserves to be butchered, Justinus, but I can't help thinking if you Limitanei had been truer to your vows …’

  He checked himself. He knew he was being unfair and that in these insane days, many a man was losing his religion. ‘Seal it,’ he said, more softly now. Then he turned to his staff, still sitting their horses some yards away. ‘We’ll set up camp here, Camp Master. Pickets out. Third and Fourth cohorts to dig.’

  They sealed the well of Coventina, goddess of the deep water, with stones from the Mithraeum; and they rebuilt as much of the soldier god’s shrine as they could. Usually, Maximus would not have wasted time with this but he knew it did the men good to see their holy place restored and an inconsequential piece of barbarian rubbish destroyed for ever. It helped morale and it kept them busy while the general waited for news.

  He had sent his cavalry scouts out at first light and by midday they were back. They brought the news he had expected to hear, but, as was usual with scouts’ reports, it could be interpreted a dozen ways. He stood on the ramparts of the Wall that afternoon, his tribunes with him. There had been a time, and that only a year ago, when the guardians of the Wall only looked north because that was where the potential threat came from; not from t
he Selgovae and the Votadini but from the painted madmen further north. Now, the watchers on the Wall looked in all direction; the south was just as suspect, just as dangerous.

  ‘Valentinus has split his army up,’ Maximus told the tribunes. ‘Ten miles to the south. The scouts report at least six different war bands, heading south and west, but none of them north and none of them east. That either means …’ and he was still wrestling with the problem, ‘… he’s going to attack us everywhere, across Brigantia. Or …’ he looked to the north where the sky lay dark and heavy with unshed snow, ‘Or he’s going into hiding for the winter.’ He caught Justinus’ eye. ‘Yes, I know he attacked out of season last year,’ he said, ‘but he can't keep an army in the field for ever.’ He smiled. ‘Only we can do that. Of course, it’s possible he’s lost control of them. That’s the trouble with a conspiracy – there are too many parts that make up the whole. Different tribes, different leaders. He’s only going to hold them together as long as there’s booty and plenty of it. And look at this place.’ He waved his hand over the scene, the shattered gate, the smashed walls. ‘He didn’t do this. At least, not recently. Only the shit on the altars is relatively new. Everything else was done when this fort was hit last year. So he’s taking his people over old ground, played out and dead. And the snows are coming. He’ll need to find shelter and he has too many men to do that in one place. He’s going to find a bolt-hole and so are we.’

  Paternus had no memory of being taken north to the holy well. Arbeia, the Wall and all things Roman lay to the south and he had never been this far north before. In the early days, as he lay in Brenna’s arms, he had been delirious with fever. His wound had become infected and his mind boiled with demons and things of the night.

  Now, all that had changed, and he was himself again. She changed his dressings every day and he sat around the camp fire in the autumn mists, listening to the sad songs of the Votadini. Across the circle, eyes shining in the flames, the queen of the people who called themselves Gododdyn, smiled at him. She was always there, as her little band of people went about their business in the shelter of the holy grove. They rebuilt the huts, piled with stones and the wattle and daub that gave them warmth. While the warriors kept a constant watch from the hills, the women wove their cloth and kneaded their bread.

  At first, Paternus was loath to join them. His side was stiff from the rib that had cracked and the wound was still angry and inflamed. He had lost the track of time but the cascading leaves and the chill from the north told him that winter was on the way. He had heard nothing from Justinus, not a word from the army of Maximus. For all he knew they were lying in the heather somewhere, yet more victims of the man in the silver helmet whose very existence had come to blight them all. He wondered, as he wandered the hills above the pool and saw the Votadini patrols letting their horses graze, how it went for Leo and Vit in Londinium. What had Maximus said? They were Theodosius’ pets now, feted wherever they went. Leocadius would love that. Vitalis? Well, Paternus was not so sure.

  ‘You’re leaving us, aren’t you?’ A voice made him turn. Brenna stood there, her long cloak around her, the torque around her neck shining in the bright, brittle light that broke the snow clouds.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I must. You have saved my life, but I am a tribune of the VI Victrix. I must get back.’

  She crossed to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘What if there is no going back?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he frowned.

  ‘How long have the Romans been here?’ she asked, ‘in these islands?’

  ‘In Britannia?’ Paternus said. ‘I don’t know. My father came here from Germania and the Empire was old then. How do we measure this? In years? In men’s lives? Who knows? Why do you ask?’

  ‘Perhaps it’s meant to be,’ she shrugged. ‘Perhaps one day the light of Rome will be extinguished for ever.’

  Paternus laughed. It was not a sound anyone heard often. ‘Perhaps one day, Leocadius Honorius will buy his own drinks.’

  ‘You miss him, don’t you?’ she laughed as well. She knew all about Leocadius, Vitalis, Justinus, all the heroes of the Wall. The only one she did not know about was Paternus, the silent, the still. Because he never talked about himself.

  ‘A little,’ Paternus smiled. ‘I miss Vit more. He has a sort of … I don’t know … vulnerable quality about him. From what little I’ve heard of Londinium, they’ll eat him alive there.’

  Brenna closed to him and took his face in both hands, looking steadily into his eyes. 'Don't go, Paternus,’ she said. ‘We all lose friends, people we love. We’ve lost already, you and I. Let’s not lose anyone again.’

  And she kissed him. It may be that she had kissed him before, while his mind had been ranging, in the time of his dreams. But if so, he could not remember it. And this was more than a kiss of friendship, of one comrade to another in this strange war they were both fighting on the frontier. Her tongue entwined with his and they stood, locked together in an embrace, arms wrapped around each other. He breathed in the scent of her hair, her skin and kissed all the harder. His hand slipped under her cloak to feel the swell of her breasts and her eyes closed and she shuddered.

  ‘Rider!’ A Votadini voice broke the moment and the pair sprang apart.

  ‘Where?’ Brenna was a woman no more. A woman falling in love with a man. She was the warrior queen of the Gododdyn, with the blood of kings coursing through her veins.

  ‘To the south.’

  ‘How many?’ Brenna could not see beyond the trees.

  The scout who was answering her held up one finger. Obviously the stranger was within earshot now and any more shouts would alert him. Brenna and Paternus scrambled up the bracken-covered slope in front of them and lay at the top, peering through the fronds. The scout was right. All they could see was a solitary horseman, wrapped in a fur cloak against the icy blast of the winter wind. Neither of them was armed, so Brenna signalled to her people to move forward. Four of them urged their horses on, all of them in the shelter of the trees. They halted there, stroking their animals’ necks to soothe and keep them quiet. Then they strung their bows and slid the gut into the notch. The rider would have no chance. He was alone and in the open. He would be dead before he hit the ground.

  ‘Io, Justinus!’ Paternus shouted and was on his feet, crashing through the bracken now, all stiffness in his side forgotten.

  ‘Belacutadros!’ Brenna hissed through her teeth. She was on her feet too, waving to her horsemen to get forward. All four of them rammed their heels against their ponies’ flanks and came cantering out of the thicket.

  ‘Pat!’ Justinus was laughing, seeing his old friend struggling towards him in a borrowed Votadini cloak. He saw the horsemen seconds later and drew his sword, but Paternus was there first and, not for the first time, stopped the shedding of blood between the Votadini and Rome.

  By the firelight that night, the two heroes of the Wall sat nibbling the carcase of a rabbit. The Votadini had told their tall tales and the old jokes, they had sung and danced, clapping and jumping to the rattles and the drums. Now, as the fire dwindled and everyone had crawled off to bed, warm with the beer inside them all, the Romans were alone.

  ‘How long did you say it’s been?’ Paternus asked.

  ‘Three months. You missed the Saturnalia last week. I’d have given a year’s pay to see Maximus do what he promised and muck out the stables for the slaves.’

  ‘You missed it?’ Paternus asked.

  ‘He didn’t do it,’ Justinus laughed. ‘Called away at the last minute. Some urgent business along the Wall.’

  Paternus laughed too. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There’s always some urgent business along the Wall.’

  There was a silence and Justinus said, ‘You’ll miss this place.’

  ‘No,’ Paternus shook his head. ‘No, I won’t.’

  ‘The girl … er … sorry, the queen. Brenna. You’ll miss her.’

  Paternus looked across the deserted cam
p site, with the huts silent against the dark of the trees and the holy pool darker still in the night. ‘No,’ he said.

  Justinus spat out a bone he had been wrestling with for some minutes. ‘You know she loves you, don’t you?’

  Paternus’ head jerked up. ‘Since when have you become such an expert?’ he asked.

  Justinus tapped the side of his nose. ‘I’ve been around,’ he said. ‘It’s not only Leocadius who does the skirt chasing, you know. She loves you. I’ve seen it all day. The way she looks at you, touches you. She’s like a little girl in your presence.’

  ‘No!’ Paternus stood up sharply. ‘It’s not like that. And anyway,’ he cleared his throat, ‘we have places to be. Tomorrow we’ll be off to Arbeia and I’ll never see her again.’

  CHAPTER XIII

  Londinium, Hiems in the year of the Christ 369

  Everybody had told Count Theodosius that it never snowed this far south, yet that year it did. His men toiled in the margins of the river mist, their hands freezing to the blocks of stone they lifted. Shovels crunched into mortar that was setting as the engineers looked at it and the great cranes swung against skies heavy with yet more unshed snow.

  For three months, young Theodosius had ridden west and north at the head of the Heruli, Stephanus at the young man’s back just in case of trouble. The German was too loyal to say so, but he could not warm to the son as he warmed to the father. Where the Count was fair and kind, with a twinkle of humour and the heart of a lion, the boy was mean-spirited and secretive. The face, whether under his elaborate gilded helmet or beaming at some titled tart in the governor’s palace, gave little away. Even in his cups, the man remained an enigma, watchful and guarded, as though every word had been measured and weighed, every glance accounted for.