Arthur Imperator

by Paul Bannister

  I considered how satisfying it would be to beat his white face to a pulp, but restrained the boiling urge. He should not appear to have been mistreated when he was executed. I turned away. “Just get him out of my sight.” I heard the slight scuffle as his guards hauled him around and pushed him out, but I did not look. I’d see him dead, soon enough.

  VI Execution

  Two days later, the Caesar Constantius Chlorus was led out to a crude scaffold outside the camp that guarded the Thames bridge. It was usual for military executions to be held outside the entrenchments. A crowd of citizens had gathered for the spectacle, and ranks of armoured soldiery created a hollow square around the scaffold.

  At one end of the platform was a whipping post where two provosts waited, each dangling a metal-tipped flagellum, the brutal multi-thonged whip used to flog slaves and rebels. At the other end of the platform was a wooden block that replaced the usual dug pit with block in it that was the normal site of a decapitation. I wanted the mob to have full view when they witnessed the death of a Caesar.

  Chlorus’ face was as white as his linen shirt as he stumbled up the scaffold steps, prompting raucous laughter and jeers from the crowd, laughter that intensified as his clothing was pulled clear and his blinding-white body revealed.

  As the escort tied him to the stake, I climbed the scaffold steps and turned to the assembly.

  “This man treacherously acted against me and against my brother emperors,” I declared. “He broke his sacred oath of loyalty and attempted to steal Britain for himself. He is a common thief, and he will be punished for that before he pays the price for being a traitor. From respect for the customs of Rome, he will be beheaded, not crucified. My brother emperors and I are agreed. Now, flog the thief.”

  The flagella whistled as they struck in sequence, first one prefect striking, then the other. In moments, Chlorus was shrieking, his back and buttocks sheeted crimson as the iron tips stripped flesh from his ribs and spine, and spattered torn tissue and blood on the planking. After 40 strokes, the prefects stopped, panting heavily. Chlorus was slumped against his bindings, whimpering, semi-conscious.

  The executioner Davius’ assistant stepped forward with a wooden bucket of water and soused the man’s ploughed back, the prefects cut him down and hauled him, feet dragging, across the scaffold. Chlorus was on his knees before the headsman’s wooden block, moving his head from side to side as if to dispel the pain of his lacerated back. At a gesture from Davius, the assistant slipped a blindfold over the Caesar’s eyes, being careful to tie it underneath his long hair. Davius stepped forward. In his right hand he held a Spanish gladius, the standard sword of the old republic. I noted with some interest the thing was an antique, longer than the standard Mainz armoury sword, not as broad, a bit heavier. I supposed that even though it was more unwieldy than the legions’ usual equipment, it was excellent for this job.

  I pulled myself back to the present. Chlorus had his neck on the block, probably pushed down by the executioner, and the assistant was holding the Roman’s hair to keep him in place. Davius glanced at me, I nodded. He levelled the sword above Chlorus’ neck, not quite touching it, then raised it high, one-handed and brought it down with a wet thump.

  A red mouth-like gash open at once and welled blood. The blow had not been clean and Chlorus half-fell sideways, groaning. The assistant yanked the head back by the hair, across the block and Davius swung swiftly and hard again. He hit exactly into the gaping wound, severing the half-separated vertebrae, and the head tumbled free, spouting arterial blood from the jugular and carotids, splashing several feet of planking. The assistant looked down, open-mouthed. He was still holding the hair, and now Chlorus’ whole head was dangling from his fist. He shook the head as he raised it, and the blindfold slipped. For two long seconds, I was looking straight into Chlorus’ dying eyes, and they blinked.

  I crossed the scaffold, and took hold of the hair in the assistant’s hand, then turned to face the mob. I held the head above me, its blood running down my wrist and dripping onto my shoulder. “Hail Caesar!” I shouted, and a ragged chorus of ironic “Hails!” came back at me. I tossed the head to the executioner, who had bundled up the dead man’s clothes for himself. “Above the gate with it, spiked,” I said. Then I thought: “I must ask Davius where he got that old sword.”

  VII View

  The parade had gone well, processing out from the camp and under the impaled head of Chlorus, whose eyeless, raven-pecked visage was decidedly darker now. We had followed a loop down the hill, past the baths, to the Temple of Mars where the priests had blessed our endeavours. Then, the donatives had been handed to the legions, the civilians had caught the scatters of small coin, the brass trumpets had sounded and the swaying files of bright-armoured soldiery under their nodding, plumed helmets had made a brave show. Finally, the troops had been dismissed to the pleasures of the whorehouses and taverns.

  Guinevia had watched the parade and now joined me in my quarters, followed by my tribune Lycaon and my aide Androcles Lethius. The former was still recovering, as he’d been flogged and crucified when King Mosae’s citadel fell, but several of his troopers had cut him down the same night and carried him out of Belgica and back to Bononia. From there, he’d been moved to Dover for medical treatment, sailing out only days before the Gallic fortress itself was surrounded and eventually surrendered.

  “Lucky Lycaon,” the men called him, and the terrible scars from his flogging testified to his incredible survival. Not a man could recall anyone else who’d been crucified and lived to tell the tale. About the only thing that had saved him from dying was that he’d been among the last of the condemned to be fastened up, and the executioner had used ropes because he’d exhausted his supply of nails. “I’d have died of blood loss, otherwise,” Lycaon would tell anyone who’d listen.

  “Brought back some memories, eh?” Androcles grinned at his fellow officer, gesturing back to where Chlorus’ head stood above the arch.

  “I felt every blow when he went under the flagellum,” said Lycaon. “Being flogged isn’t exactly a habit-forming thing to do.”

  I gestured to a slave to bring everyone wine, then led the two officers to a polished mensa on which an unusual map was unrolled. Unlike the normal itinerum, which listed way stations, towns and landmarks along the roman roads, but gave no hint as to what was off to either side of them, this map provided a picture of the southern shores of Britain as an eagle would view it.

  The map had been drawn for me by my lover, the sorceress Guinevia, who had the ability to send out her mind across the world to view places without visiting them. She told me once of how she did it, meditating quietly with a silent scribe to record her spoken thoughts, then drawing what she saw, without attempting to interpret it.

  “I can feel the wind rushing, see the grasses waving, even catch the scent of the salt air or the blossoms in the place I wish to view,” she told me. “The gods give me the grace to see the place I want to see and I allow my mind to draw whatever is its vision.”

  In the past, Guinevia had been able to sketch dispositions of troops for me, and once to describe a vast river on whose bank my enemy Maximian was entrenched. My enchantress provided enough details of a bridge, cliffs and fortress for me to recognize part of a waterway I had often travelled as a young sailor who plied the Rhine, Meuse and other great rivers. Knowing where my enemy was camped had told me his intent, and had allowed me to deploy my forces to advantage.

  The power of viewing something from a remote place so intrigued me, I’d asked Guinevia to reach out with her mind’s eye and survey a whole coastline, to give me the view of a seagull hovering above Britain’s Saxon Shore. When she had completed her task, I was able to compare her map to my own seaman’s knowledge of the cliffs, bays and inlets that border the Narrow Sea, and I found her rendering astonishingly accurate.

  If I could persuade her to map the coast of Gaul in similar fashion, then later to send out her spying mind to tell me where my e
nemies were along that coast, I would have a magician’s powers harnessed to my military ones and could have a good ability to predict where and when my enemies might strike.

  For now, I kept this wonderful secret to myself, and merely allowed my aides as we stood in a chamber in faraway Londinium, to look with astonishment at the unprecedented eagle view of the Saxon Shore.

  “The Litus Saxonicum,” murmured Androcles, a flamboyant dandy with a great sense of personal style and a most distinctive war helm, a Gaulish thing with green-bronze mallard wings on its sides. We teased him that his tunic always had to be immaculately clean and fragrant, his weapons and equipment kept polished to mirror-like perfection. How he did it, we never knew, but he was a hardened campaigner and experienced soldier, and nobody could say that he was just a parade ground toy soldier. “I have sailed this coastline and marched along it, too,” he was saying. “This big island is off Portus Adurni where the tides come in twice as often as elsewhere, each day. I served in that fort. The locals call it Port Chester.”

  “Here,” I said, jabbing at the map, “was my palace at Fishbourne, and here is the shingle of Dungeness where our antique chariots did the damage.”

  That was a day, I thought. Chlorus’ men had come within an inch of turning our flank, and we would have been dead or slaves now, but for the help of the gods. And, maybe, as I kept hearing, thanks to the help of the dead. At a critical phase of the battle, we had thrown our charioteers into the fray on their pensioned-off vehicles. The surprise was total, the Romans wrecked. Mysteriously, our warriors had reported that among their frenzied horses and flying wheels, a spectre had urged them on. They said the shadowy figure of a long-haired woman, bare-breasted, helmeted and wielding a sword, had run wheel to wheel with them in her ghostly chariot, and that those who walked the killing ground to finish off the enemy wounded had found numbers of Romans dead on the shingle without a mark on their bodies.

  I had questioned Guinevia about this, and she, adept of the witch goddess of the Wild Hunt, had shrugged. “I expect that the shade of Boadicea came to the aid of Britain,” she remarked.

  I’d stared at her. “The ancient queen of the Britons? Dead for two centuries?”

  Guinevia raised her chin and looked at me steadily. “Nobody dies,” she said flatly. “They might go to another place of existence, but their shades are with us. Why would the queen who slaughtered Romans not come back when her nation needed her?”

  Behind her, I saw Lycaon and Androcles make the sign against the evil eye, and I secretly touched the well-polished iron of my belt buckle as protection, too. You must show respect when speaking of the dead lest their souls visit you as you sleep.

  A new voice intruded on my thoughts, as my tribune Cragus Grabelius entered the chamber. “The ghost of Queen Boadicea would be a powerful ally, Lord,” he said, slapping his forearm across his chest in the old salute.

  I turned to him. “My friend, where have you come from?” I asked. “The last I saw you were knee deep in Roman bodies on the beach!” Cragus had led a flanking movement that pincered the invaders on the shingle at Dungeness, and was a longtime battle comrade.

  “Better Roman bodies than dog fleas, Lord,” he grinned. That made me laugh. He’d once halted a pack of war dogs launched at our shield line by setting loose a collection of mongrels that included some bitches in heat. The enemy dogs had settled for love, not war, and had mounted a different kind of penetration of our ranks.

  “I didn’t come alone, Lord,” he said, gesturing. Behind him in the doorway was my British tribune, Quirinus, the officer I’d sent with fire ships to destroy Maximian’s newly-built fleet. “We rode together from Colchester to Eboracum with dispatches for that garrison, and crossed from there.” The news was interesting.

  I nodded to Quirinus, who was a capable and intelligent officer. “Give me a report on the condition of the roads, bridges and bandit activity across the Pennines, and an assessment of how swiftly we can move a half-legion between Londinium and Eboracum, and again to march them across the spine of the country. Report on the availability of posting stations, mansios, smithies, food and equipment dumps, water sources for cavalry and anything that could affect our rapid response troops. Also, get me a condition report on the progress of the Car Dyke to Eboracum.”

  VIII Council

  When finished, the north-south canal named for me would run from the hills north of Londinium to the fortress of Eboracum, and I had ordered it dug and fortified as a main supply line to carry leather, wool, corn and other heavy supplies to our frontier headquarters and garrison. My engineers had thousands of slaves working alongside our legionaries to create one of Britain’s most modern and greatest engineering works, a ditch longer and more valuable than Hadrian’s Entrenchment, and a great artery for our troop movements.

  Hadrian had 12,000 Spaniards, Dacians, Gauls and Tungrians to man the ditch and wall he’d built as a control and customs barrier. I didn’t have that luxury of numbers, but I was building an inland chain of forts along the canal to back up the coastal strongpoints. These two lines of defences were in contact by signal towers and would let us quickly deploy troops to respond to any invaders, while the canal traffic would move the vast quantities of supplies we needed under the protection of those forts with good speed and safety.

  I looked around the chamber. These were men with whom I had shared much. Present were my three tribunes Lycaon, Quirinus and Cragus. The first - ‘Lucky’ Lycaon - was onetime commander of my holdings in Gaul and, like me, a survivor of the sack of King Mosae’s citadel in Belgica. Bold Quirinus had sailed into the Roman anchorage and burned their invasion fleet. Cragus had personally led his men through chest-deep marsh on a flanking movement that had helped decide the bloody battle at Dungeness. Dandy Andy, my perfectly-presented aide, would have shuddered to have waded through those miles of mud, I grinned to myself, but he had done his bloody work in the shield wall, unflinching.

  Allectus, my treasurer and close confidant who’d helped me seize an empire, was there, sleek-headed and smooth, a man to whom I had never quite warmed but with whom I shared an alliance that was as close as it was uneasy. Maybe, I told myself, it was just that he was a very private person, unlike my own bluff, outgoing self. Or, maybe, there was more. He seemed abstracted and I noticed that he twice moved purposefully to study the picture map that showed the land from its eagle’s eye view. He caught my glance and raised an eyebrow. I shook my head. I had no intention of telling how Guinevia had seen the kingdom from that view. Something about his look, veiled and almost insolent, rang a tocsin bell in me.

  I scanned the chamber again. A few of my closest officers were missing. My twin brothers had vanished after Mosae’s defeat and the collapse of his Belgic fortress, and I supposed them dead or slaves. I had no time to grieve, and I had hardly known them, having been separated for 15 or so years. Besides, my life as a soldier had inured me to loss, and I had hardened my heart. Missing too were my longtime quartermaster Suetonius, whose knowledge of a coincidence had started me on this path to an empire, my aide Quintus, a good man and a good friend, and Papinius Statius, my baggage master and transport general whose efforts had brought us success across Gaul and in Britain. All had died under Roman blades on the shoreline of the Narrow Sea.

  Then there was Guinevia, a slight, slender figure posed as usual discreetly at the corner of the chamber. I nodded to her, cleared my throat and launched into it. “We’re all here, we’ve done this before, we’ll likely do it again. The basics we have to consider are objective, intelligence, personnel, communications, supply and…” I paused. Like schoolboys, they all chorused: “Transport!” I grinned. “Well, there’s a surprise, someone’s awake.” They grinned back at me, sunburnt, experienced young faces, men who’d stood by me on fields of battle, and who had walked from those killing places bespattered with hostiles’ blood, and were willing, even eager to repeat the operation.

  “The objective, gentlemen,” I said like a schoolmaster,
“is to turn back all these bastards who want to come here without our permission.

  “Allectus, once again your overpaid spy ring will provide us with intelligence. I especially want to know about the Picts up there, trans vallum, and whatever you can discover about these Saxons. That, I accept is more difficult, but your merchants and traders should have something, and so should the shipbuilders around the Scheldt and Meuse and Rhine. We can’t monitor every single clan or family that opts to set sail for our lands, but we can get tabs on the military movements.” Allectus lowered his cropped head in agreement and murmured something inaudible.

  I looked at Cragus and Quirinus, the Lycian from the home of the fire-breathing female Chimerae, the other, Quirinus, a Briton who had boldly sailed a fleet of fireships into the Romans’ anchored fleet to destroy it. They were perched side by side on one end of the mensa, obviously relishing that we were preparing another series of campaigns. “You pair of fiery fellows,” I nodded, “work your usual communications and personnel magic. Quirinus especially get on top of the construction and repair of the coastal fortifications and signal towers. I’ll work with you on the Saxon Shore forts.

  “Both of you focus on recruiting more auxiliaries, look to Gaul and even Wales, there should be warriors in both places we can take on as mercenaries. If you can, get some of those Syrian fellows, the Hamian archers who were posted up there south of the Wall. Cragus, you will liaise with me over building cavalry forces. That, gentlemen, will be a major thrust of our force in the next couple of years and you’ll all be involved. I see us using horses from the southern downs and the plains south of Aquae Sulis, establishing breeding farms and studs for a considerable expansion of our cavalry as the Saxon and Frankish threats grow. We could also get some mountain ponies from the Welsh hills or from Cumbria, tough little horses that can go anywhere. We’ll be needing to build some training facilities, too. Let’s consider where best to place them.