The Roman sotk-2

by Mika Waltari

  As if he had read my thoughts my father looked at me, fingering the worn wooden goblet, and said, “I must stop partaking in the love-feasts, for my presence simply does harm to the Christians, as it has to Paulina. Tullia has, in her mortification, sworn to have them all banished from Rome if I don’t leave them. All this because of a few innocent kisses which are customary after the holy meals.”

  “Go to Britain,” he went on, handing me his beloved wooden goblet. “The time has come for you to take over the only inheritance you have from your mother, before Tullia burns it in her anger. Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews, once drank from it, almost eighteen years ago, after he had risen from his tomb and gone to Galilee with the scars from the nails on his hands and feet and the sores from the lashes on his back. Don’t ever lose it. Perhaps your mother will be a little closer to you when you drink from it. I have not been the kind of father I should have wished to be.”

  I took the wooden goblet which my father’s freedmen in Antioch maintained was blessed by the Goddess of Fortune. I thought that it had not protected my father from Tullia, if one did not consider this fine house, all the comforts of life and perhaps the honor of being a senator the greatest possible earthly success. But I felt a secret respect as I took the wooden goblet in my hands.

  “Do me one more service,” my father said gently, “On the slopes of Aventine, there lives a tentmaker… “

  “… whose name is Aquila,” I said ironically. “Quite. I am taking a message to him from Paulina. I can tell him at the same time that you too are leaving them.”

  But my bitterness dissolved and melted away when my father gave me his beloved goblet as a memento. I embraced him and pressed my face against his tunic to hide my tears. He clasped me tightly to him, and we parted without looking at each other again.

  Tullia was waiting for me in the high-backed chair of the mistress of the house.

  “Have a care in Britain, Minutus,” she said. “It will be important for your father to have a son serving the State and the common good. I don’t know much about army life, but I’m given to understand that a young officer is more quickly promoted by being generous with his wine and playing dice with his men than by going on unnecessary and dangerous expeditions. Don’t be mean with your money, but incur debts if necessary. Your father can afford it. Then you’ll be considered normal in every way.”

  On the way home I went into the temple of Castor and Pollux to inform the Curator of the cavalry of my journey to Britain. At home my Aunt Laelia and Claudia had become firm friends and had chosen the best kind of woolen underclothes for me as a protection against the raw climate of Britain. They had gathered other things for me too, so much that I should have needed at least a wagon to take them all. But I was not even going to take my armor, except my sword, as I thought it best to equip myself on the spot in accordance with what the country and circumstances demantled. Barbus had told me how they used to laugh at the spoilt Roman youths who brought quantities of unnecessary things with them on active service.

  In the moist warm autumn evening, beneath the uneasy red sky, I went to see the tentmaker, Aquila. He was obviously quite a wealthy man, for he owned a large weaving business. He met me suspiciously at the door and looked around as if afraid of spies. He was about forty and did not look at all Jewish. He had no beard and no tassels on his mantle, so I took him for one of Aquila’s freedmen. Claudia had come with me and she greeted Aquila like an old friend. When he heard my name and the greetings from my father, his fear left him, although the uneasiness in his eyes was the same as I had seen in my father’s. He had vertical lines on his forehead like a soothsayer.

  He asked us kindly to come into his house, and his fussy wife Prisca at once began offering us fruit and diluted wine. Prisca was at least a Jewess by birth, judging by her nose, a managing, talkative woman who had probably been very beautiful in her youth. Both were upset when they heard that Paulina had been denounced and that my father considered it best to leave their secret society so as not to harm them.

  “We have enemies and people who envy us,” they said. “The Jews persecute us, hound us out of the synagogues and beat us in the streets. An influential magician, Simon from Samaria, hates us bitterly. But we are protected by the spirit who puts words in our mouths and so we need fear no earthly power.”

  “But you are not a Jew,” I said to Aquila.

  He laughed.

  “I am a Jew and am circumcised, born in Trapezus in Pontus, on the southeast shore of the Black Sea, but my mother was a Greek and my father was baptized when he was celebrating Pentecost in Jerusalem once. There was much quarreling in Pontus when some people wanted to make sacrifices to the Emperor outside the synagogue. I moved to Rome and live here on the poor side of Aventine, like many Jews who no longer believe that to follow the law of Moses absolves them from their sins.”

  “The Jews on the other side of the river hate us most,” explained Prisca, “because heathens who have listened to them prefer to choose our way and think it is easier. I don’t know if our way is easier. But we have compassion and the secret knowledge.”

  They were not unpleasant people and lacked the usual superciliousness of the Jews. Claudia admitted that she and her Aunt Paulina had listened to their teachings. According to her, they had nothing to hide. Anyone could come and listen to them and some were moved to a state of ecstasy. Only the love-feasts were closed to outsiders, but that was also true of Syrian and Egyptian mysteries which occurred in Rome.

  They kept repeating that everyone, slave or free, rich or poor, wise or dull, was equal in the eyes of their God, and they regarded everyone as their brothers and sisters. I did not entirely believe this as they had been so depressed to hear that my father and Paulina Plautia had left them. Claudia had assured them of course that Paulina had not done so in her heart but only outwardly to protect her husband’s good name.

  The following morning I was given a horse for the journey and a courier’s plaque to wear on my chest. Paulina gave me the letter to Aulus Plautius and Claudia wept. I rode along the military highways right through Italy and Gaul.

  Book III

  Britain

  I arrived in Britain just as winter was setting in with its storms, mists and icy rain. As every visitor to Britain knows, the country can oppress any man. There are not even any towns in the sense that there are in northern Gaul. Whoever does not die of pneumonia in Britain gets rheumatism for life, if he has not already been captured by the Britons and had his throat slit in their ash groves; or been carried back to their priests, the Druids, who predict the future of their tribe from the intestines of Romans. My legionaries, who have thirty years’ service behind them, told me all this.

  I met Aulus Plautius at the trading station of London, which lies by a fast-moving river, and where he had his headquarters as there were at least a few Roman houses there. He was not angry, as I had feared he would be when he read the letter from his wife, but burst out laughing, slapping his knees. A week or two earlier he had received a secret letter from Emperor Claudius confirming his triumph. He was in the process of arranging his affairs in Britain so that he could leave his command and return to Rome in the spring.

  “Oh, yes,” he laughed, “so I’m supposed to summon the family together to pronounce judgment on my dear wife, am I? I shall be lucky if Paulina doesn’t tear the few remaining hairs from my head when she questions me on the kind of life I’ve been leading in Britain. I’ve had enough of religious matters here, what with cutting down the Druids’ sacred groves, and paying for a whole shipload of idols to stop people here making their revolting human sacrifices. And then they immediately smash the clay statues and start rebelling again.

  “No, no,” he went on, “superstition at home is much more innocent than it is here. This accusation is only an intrigue by my dear colleagues in the Senate who are afraid I’ll be much too wealthy after being in command of four legions for four years. As if anyone could get rich in this countr
y. In fact Rome’s money disappears as if into a bottomless pit, and Claudius has been forced to let me celebrate a triumph so that Rome will think that all is peaceful here. No one will ever make this country peaceful, for it is in a permanent state of turmoil. If one conquers one of their kings in honorable battle, another soon appears, caring for neither hostages nor treaties. Or else a neighboring tribe comes and captures the land we’ve conquered and slaughters our garrison troops. One can’t disarm them completely because they need their weapons to defend themselves against each other. I should have been glad to return without a triumph just to get out of this godforsaken country.”

  He grew serious and looked sternly at me.

  “Had rumor of a triumph already spread to Rome when you left,” he asked, “for a young knight like you voluntarily to offer to come here? I suppose you hope to share in the triumph with the minimum effort.”

  Indignantly I explained that I had heard nothing of any triumph. On the contrary, it was said in Rome that Claudius, out of sheer envy, would not allow any such thing for service in Britain because he himself had celebrated a triumph for quelling the Britons.

  “I have come to study the art of war under a famous commantler,” I said. “I was tired of the riding exercises in Rome.”

  “There are no glossy horses and silver shields here,” said Aulus briskly. “No hot baths or skilled masseurs either. There is nothing here but the war cries of blue-painted barbarians in the forests, daily fear of ambush, an eternally running cold, an incurable cough, and permanent homesickness.”

  And he was not exaggerating all that much, as I was to find out in the two years I spent in Britain. He kept me on his staff for a few days to have my descent confirmed, to hear the latest gossip from Rome and with the help of a relief map to teach me the shape of Britain and the positions of the legionary camps. He also gave me leather clothes, a horse, weapons, and some friendly advice.

  “Look after your horse well or the Britons will steal it,” he said. “They fight with chariots, so their horses are small and are not good for riding. As Roman war and politics here are based on our treaties with the British tribes, we also have several chariot auxiliaries. But never trust a Briton, and never turn your back on one. The Britons would like to have our large war-horses to start up their own cavalry. Claudius’ victory here was due to his elephants, which the Britons had never seen before. The elephants tore up their wooden barricades and frightened their horses. But the Britons soon learned to aim at the elephants’ eyes with their spears and to scorch them with burning torches. And the elephants could not stand the climate either. The last of them died of pneumonia a year ago. I’ll send you to Flavius Vespasian’s legion because he is my most experienced soldier and most trustworthy commantler. He is dull but never loses his head. His descent is humble and his habits crude, but he is an honest man who thus will probably never rise to greater heights than that of legion commantler. But you will learn the art of war from him, if that is what you want.”

  I met Flavius Vespasian on the shore of the flooded river Anton, where he had dispersed his legion over a wide area and had had wooden fortifications built far apart from each other. He was a man of about forty, powerfully built, his forehead broad and with good-natured lines around his stern mouth. And he was not so insignificant as one would have thought from Aulus Plautius’ superior description. He liked to laugh loudly and also to joke about his own reverses, over which a weaker man might have despaired. His presence alone gave me a sense of security. He looked at me slyly.

  “Is fortune coming our way,” he said, “now that a young knight from Rome comes of his own free will to the damp dark forests of Britain? No, no, it’s not possible. Confess what you have done at once and what boyish pranks you have fled from into the protection of my legion’s Eagle, then we’ll get on better together.”

  When he had questioned me minutely on my family and friends in Rome, he said that I would be neither a credit to him nor the contrary. Good-natured as he was, he decided that I should gradually get used to the filth and crudity and trials of military life. At first he took me with him on one of his tours of inspection so that I should get to know the country, and he dictated to me his reports to Aulus Plautius because he himself was too lazy to write. When he had made sure I really could ride and did not trip over my sword, he handed me over to the legion’s engineer to learn how to build fortifications.

  Our isolated garrison did not even make up a full maniple. Some of us went hunting for provisions, others felled timber in the forest and a third contingent was building fortifications. Before leaving, Vespasian exhorted me to see that the men kept their weapons clean and that the guards were awake and not idle, for carelessness with weapons was the mother of all vice and weakened discipline.

  After a few days I grew tired of wandering about the camp, listening to the barefaced gibes of the old legionaries. I took an ax and began to fell trees in the forest. At the pile-driving, I too, with dirt in my eyes, took a hand at the rope and joined in the song. In the evenings I stood both the centurion and the engineer some wine, which one could buy at an outrageous price from the camp trader, but often I joined the scarred old under-officers around the campfire and shared their porridge and salt meat. I grew stronger, coarser, cruder and I learned to swear, no longer minding about being asked how long I had been jveaned.

  There were a score or so of cavalry men from Gaul attached to our garrison. When their commanding officer realized I was not competing for his command, he decided it was time for me to kill my first Briton, so he took me on a provisioning raid. After crossing the river, we rode a long way to a village where the inhabitants had complained that a neighboring tribe was threatening them. They had hidden their weapons, but the veterans, who had come after us on foot, were used to finding weapons in the earthen floors of the round huts and in the heaps of manure outside. After finding the weapons, they plundered the village of all the corn and some of the cattle and mercilessly killed the men who tried to defend their property, on the theory that Britons were not even any good as slaves. The women who had not had time to escape into the forest, they raped as a matter of course and with friendly laughter.

  This pointless destruction appalled me, but the commantler just laughed and told me to calm down and be prepared. The demand for protection was merely a customary trap as was proved by the weapons we had found. Nor was he lying, for at dusk a howling mob of blue-painted Britons attacked the village from all directions in the hope of surprising us.

  But we were on our guard and easily withstood the lightly armed barbarians who had no legionary shields with which to protect themselves. The veterans, who had the day before destroyed the village and whom I thought I should never forgive for the bloody deeds I had witnessed, enclosed me in their midst and protected me in the hand-to-hand fighting. When the Britons turned and fled, they left behind one of their warriors, who was wounded in the knee. He bellowed wildly, supporting himself on his leather shield and swinging his sword. The veterans opened their ranks, pushed me forward and shouted laughingly, “There’s one for you. Kill your Briton now, little friend.”

  It was easy to protect myself and kill the wounded man, despite his strength and his sword. But when I had finally cut his throat with my long sword and he lay dying on the ground with blood pouring from his body, I was forced to turn away and be sick. Shame for my weakness drove me quickly back into the saddle to join the Gauls as they followed the fleeing Britons into the undergrowth until the trumpet recalled us. We left the village prepared for another attack by the Britons, for our centurion was convinced that the fighting was by no means over yet. We had a difficult journey ahead as we had to drive the cattle and carry the corn in baskets back to the garrison and at the same time ward off attacks from the Britons. I felt better when I had to defend myself and also ride to the assistance of others, but I did not think this was a particularly honorable way of waging war.

  When we finally recrossed the river and had
returned with our spoils to the protection of the fort, we had lost two men and a horse and had a number of wounded. Exhausted, I went to rest in my wooden hut with its earthen floor, but I kept waking and seemed still to be hearing the Britons’ shrill war cries outside.

  The following day I did not feel the slightest desire to join in on the division of the spoils, but the cavalry commantler jokingly boasted to everyone how I had distinguished myself and slashed around with my sword and bellowed with fear almost as loudly as the Britons. So I had the same right to the spoils as the others. Presumably in jest, the veterans pushed toward me a half-grown Briton girl with her hands bound together.

  “Here’s your share of the spoils,” they cried, “so that you won’t find life dull and leave us, brave child knight Minutus.”

  I shouted furiously that I did not want to keep and feed a slave-girl, but the veterans were all innocence.

  “If one of us takes her,” they said, “she’ll just cut his throat with a knife as soon as her hands are free. But you are a noble youth with fine manners and you can talk Greek. Perhaps she’ll like you better than us.”

  They willingly promised to give me advice on how to train such a slave-girl. At first I must beat her morning and evening, on principle, just to tame her wild ways. They also gave me more experienced advice, but that I cannot put down on paper. When I roughly refused, they shook their heads and pretended to be sad.

  “Then there’s nothing else for it but to sell her for next to nothing to the camp trader,” they said. “You can imagine what’ll happen to her then.”

  I realized I should never forgive myself if I were the cause of this frightened child’s being trained with a stick as a camp whore. Reluctantly I agreed to take the girl as my share of the spoils. I drove the veterans out of my hut and sat with my hands on my knees, looking at her. She had smuts and bruises on her childish face and her red hair hung untidily over her forehead. She looked like one of the Britons’ colts as she peered at me from beneath her fringe.