by Jack Whyte
"Very well." Lucca sounded and appeared disconcerted. "Speak to them. While you do so. I will furnish you and your officers with horses."
"My thanks. Tribune."
Britannicus caught my eye and we turned to leave, but Lucca stopped us. calling Britannicus by name. We turned back to face him again, seeing the wish to believe in his eyes.
"You really believe you can establish your innocence?"
"I have said so."
"You must know it seems impossible."
I agreed with Lucca. At that point, I was half convinced that, on returning to our own men, Britannicus would tell them what had happened and then try to fight his way out of this valley. But to where? My mind had not been able to stretch that far. I found myself staring at Britannicus, awaiting his answer as eagerly as Lucca was. Britannicus looked at me and saw the lack of understanding in my face. He smiled at me and looked back at Lucca.
"Impossible? It would be, had I not decided the day the Wall went down to keep a daily record of our campaign. I have those written records, faithfully compiled day by day by our clerk, dated and signed by me. The written record of almost five hundred days, signed and dated by me each day. I began it on a whim; I maintained it out of habit and discipline; and it seems now I retained it and protected it by the will of God against this day and these charges."
Lucca's eyes had grown round in surprise, and he began to shake his head slowly in wonder. "That would be proof to me, if I could read, " he said.
"My friend, " said Britannicus softly, "it will be proof to Flavinius Tesca, no matter what the Legate Seneca may say."
The mention of his commander's name wiped the smile from Lucca's face. He stood to attention and snapped a salute, which we returned.
"Tribune, " he said, in a voice filled with strength and resolution, "you and your men may retain your weapons for the present. My cohorts will escort you, not convey you."
"Are you sure you wish to do that, Tribune Lucca?" Britannicus spoke in a low voice. "Seneca will not thank you for the failure to disarm convicted felons."
"Yes, Tribune, I am sure. The Legate will have my head for it, I think, but only if you fail to make your case." Lucca smiled again. "This is my tribute, a personal one, to Julian. I believe you, and I believe in him. Besides —" he turned his smile for the first time on his companion, young Barates Placidus "— it may be the only way to bring you into custody. Your men are hardened veterans, survivors, where mine are little more than unblooded recruits. Is that not so, Barates Placidus?"
The young man blinked. "Yes, Tribune."
"So be it, " Britannicus murmured. "We shall not forget this, Tertius Lucca."
We returned to our own men, and Britannicus informed them of the conversation that had just taken place. Grim-faced, they listened in silence as he outlined the situation and emphasized the importance of the journal carried by Luscar, the clerk. He ended his address by reassuring them and making them laugh, in spite of the gravity of our situation.
"I have brought you here safely, " he told them, "and I do not intend to abandon you now. I have spoken at length with each man among you several times since we began this odyssey of ours. You know that all of you are important to me. Trust me now. I will not let you down. But, for the love of God, look after Luscar for these next few hours. He is to be the hero of this day, but if we lose him now, we are all lost!" Almost two hours later, we reached the camp. Lucca had sent word of our coming, and they were ready for us. Taking their direction from Britannicus, our men were solemn and unsmiling. The gates of the camp opened to greet us in silence, and beyond them we could see rank upon rank of legionaries standing stiffly. There was no sign or sound of welcome as we passed through the gates, and my belly was cramping with apprehension, terrified by what I was seeing.
The entire garrison was turned out and battle-ready, formed up in the hollow square into which we were marching. At the far end, opposite us, stood a magnificently uniformed legate, surrounded by his staff officers. Britannicus rode straight towards this group and reined his horse in, holding up his right hand in the signal for us to halt, which we did, coming to attention. The silence in the square was absolute. I was aware of the civilians in the background: three tall men and a shorter one, all wearing amazingly clean, brightly coloured clothing.
The Legate, a vision in silver and scarlet and black. spoke in a high, neighing voice that dripped with dislike and a kind of triumph.
"The prisoner will dismount!"
Prisoner? I felt the tension of the men behind me increase immediately. Even my own skin broke out in goose-flesh at the sound of the horrible word, even though I had been expecting it and rehearsing the sound of it in my mind. I swung around and barked, "Stand fast!" over my shoulder. The few faces I saw in the brief glimpse I had of my men were confused and incredulous.
"Stand fast, damn you!" I roared again.
Britannicus made no move to dismount. He remained motionless and silent.
"Dismount, I say, or die." The Legate raised his arm in a signal, and suddenly lines of archers swarmed up the steps and along the platforms on the camp's parapets, where they nocked arrows and aimed at us. Britannicus turned from one side to the other and looked at the archers, and then he eyed the assembled soldiers who hemmed us in. His face was expressionless. Finally, he looked again towards Seneca, in whose face I could see the resemblance to his brother, my former legate in Africa.
"In the absence of criminals, I can only assume that you are addressing me, Legate Seneca?" The expression on Seneca's face was one of triumph.
"I see criminals aplenty, Britannicus. You, and your rabble."
I swung around again to still my men, but there was no need. They were white-faced, most of them, and straining to see over the heads of the men in front of them, but their eyes were on Britannicus, whose voice came again, hard-edged.
"You had better explain that, Seneca."
"There is no need. You and your rabble were convicted as deserters a year ago. No one expected that you would crawl back seeking clemency, but then your character is such that it does not really surprise me."
I could see the tension in every line of Britannicus's being, but his voice remained calm.
"On whose authority was I convicted? And for what cause?"
"For what cause?" Seneca scoffed openly. "For what cause? Is not the loss of a province cause enough? Your incompetence, and that of the others like you, caused the loss of almost the entire land to barbarian invaders, and in recognition of your culpability, you fled the Empire's justice to hide and cower in the hills. Now you have been starved out and come crawling back, hoping for clemency. Enough of this! Order your men to throw down their arms and surrender themselves, or I shall order mine to exterminate them and you."
Britannicus raised his voice. "Flavinius Tesca! Will you come forward, please? And Senator Opius?" There was an uneasy stirring everywhere as all four of the civilians at the back of the ranked soldiers began to move forward. Seneca was not pleased, and was obviously surprised by Britannicus's appeal.
"There is no need for that!" he snapped. "The Senators have no authority here in the field."
The civilians continued to approach, regardless of his words. When they reached the front they stopped, and the tallest of the four nodded to Britannicus, his expression non-committal. Seeing him do so, one of his companions also recognized the Tribune with a tiny nod. Britannicus spoke to the first man.
"Tesca, you are familiar with the situation between my House and the House of Seneca. Am I to be constrained and killed with all my men? For serving the Empire and winning back to civilization? Are we all to stand condemned? By a Seneca? In front of imperial senators?" Tesca looked uncomfortable. "The condemnation is not Seneca's, Caius Britannicus. He is correct. You were convicted in absentia of desertion."
"Why? On whose word?" For the first time, Caius Britannicus allowed his voice to show anger. Tesca shrugged his shoulders. Britannicus kept his voice high, so tha
t everyone in the camp could hear him.
"Flavinius Tesca, I appeal to you as one Roman of senatorial rank to another. Do deserters march into armed camps, under full discipline, to surrender as meekly as we have done? I wish to call one of my men forward. May I do so?"
"No! You may not!" This was Seneca.
Britannicus ignored him. "Senator Tesca? My appeal is to you." Tesca nodded.
"Luscar! Step forward!"
Curullus Luscar, the senior and only surviving clerk of our cohort, marched forward and stood at attention.
"Produce your records, Luscar, and present them to the Senator."
As Luscar complied with the order, my eyes were fastened on Seneca's face, which registered suspicion and puzzlement. Luscar's pack was oversized, but it held few military contents. The entire space within his rigid, thick-sided leather pack was filled with the tightly rolled papyri on which, for the entire duration of our wanderings, he had kept his meticulous record of all our doings, making ink out of soot and urine, and filling the back sides of every document he had carried with his tiny, crabbed scrawl. Britannicus nodded to the piled papyri on the ground.
"I had Luscar keep a record of the events that followed the attack on the Wall last year. Since then, he has recorded everything, writing on the back of his precious records when he ran out of fresh material. He is a scribe by nature and by training, and I see now that God Himself had a hand in keeping him alive.
"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's 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's 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's 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 aga
inst 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 remained 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.