I looked up from the man’s face, disgusted, my fear forgotten for those few moments of contemplation; but then it rushed back as, with an abrupt escalation of the battle’s cacophony, the Roman centre began to buckle.
Gradually it fell back, stretching the line, forcing some of the second rankers to fill the gaps as it became more and more concave.
And then, for an instant, it broke.
Before the line managed to reseal the gap, half a dozen warriors had surged through, just twenty paces from me and my brother, as what was left of the second rank turned to protect the line’s rear. Finding themselves cut off from the war band and with a shield wall preventing them from fighting their way back through to their comrades, the warriors swerved and sprinted towards us in an attempt to get around the right of the Roman line. I was transfixed at the sight of these large, bloodied men bearing down on me, snarling, with their long swords or spears raised and dripping gore. I stood there, rigid, with an arm around Chlodochar, eyes wide with terror and my knife, waving at the oncoming bringers of death, in my trembling hand.
The air exploded from my lungs as I was punched to the ground and in my petrified state it took me a few moments to realise that I had gone forward, not back, and I was lying on top of Chlodochar. I heard harsh fighting over my head and hot blood splattered my neck and hair; the desolate screams of dying men in mortal pain filled my senses. I opened my eyes to see a severed hand, still grasping a long sword, and Roman military sandals; beyond them were bodies with beards and long hair. As I looked, another crashed, with a wail, to the ground. I came to my senses and pulled myself back, dragging my brother with me until we were clear of the legionaries’ feet. I got to my knees as the last of the six warriors fell, spilling offal, and saw Centurion Sabinus urging the eight men with him to strengthen the centre; as they rushed to obey their orders, Sabinus turned to me. ‘I thought we’d lost you.’
I was still shaking and, I am ashamed to say, I felt warm fluid in my breeks; I managed to control myself enough to croak: ‘Thank you.’
Sabinus nodded. ‘Stay there.’ With that he sprinted after his men whose added weight had managed to straighten the Roman line; it was now going forward, again, as one.
The rest of the action was a blur; how long it lasted, I don’t know, not long I should think, certainly not as long as it felt. Eventually I became aware that there was relative quiet; the screams of the dying had been replaced by the pitiful moans of the injured. I looked around and saw the legionaries walking amongst the dead and wounded, tending to their own and despatching the enemy’s. I got to my feet, hauling Chlodochar up as well, and walked towards Sabinus who was supervising the retrieval of the Roman dead, about a dozen in all.
Sabinus looked us up and down. ‘Neither of you are hurt, I hope.’
‘No; thanks to you, centurion.’
He grinned. ‘I promised my general to see you both safe to his house; you don’t break a promise to Drusus. However, I’ll admit that it was luck that I came when I did; luck or the will of the gods. Perhaps they’re saving you for something.’
I have often thought about that conversation and can only assume that they evidently were because I had been no more than a hand’s breadth from death. It makes me wonder whether Centurion Sabinus, if he lived to hear of my victory at Teutoburg, saw the irony in saving the life of the boy who would go on to be responsible for the deaths of so many of his countrymen.
‘How many were there?’ I asked, surveying the bodies littering the ground.
‘About two or three times our number, I should think; we killed about half of them before the rest ran off Almost a hundred of the buggers didn’t make it into contact.’ He pointed to a line of dead warriors, twenty paces away, lying in twisted heaps amongst scores of pila. Pierced by the long iron heads, some with their faces pulped by the lead ball at the shaft-end of the head that weighted the weapon and made it so deadly, most of the corpses looked like they had been thrown back many paces by the heavy impact. I saw then the effectiveness of the legionary’s primary weapon and realised that, again, my father was right: soldiers with a weapon like this cannot be beaten head-on.
‘The pila volleys took the weight out of their charge; without them we would have been overwhelmed without a doubt.’ Sabinus shook his head and spat on the corpse of a gutted warrior. ‘This area’s supposed to be pacified; the Marsi have sworn oaths and given hostages. I wouldn’t give much for their lives when I report this at Castra Vetera on the Rhenus.’
I shuddered, thinking of the fate that awaited the men and boys who found themselves in the same position as me, and then noticed something around the neck of the gutted warrior, almost obscured by his beard: a collar of iron, two thumb widths across. Looking around I could see that many of the warriors wore the same thing. ‘They’re not Marsi, centurion.’
‘No? What makes you say that?’
‘The iron collar is only worn by the Chatti, my father told me.’
‘Chatti? This far north?’ He looked down at a couple of the dead warriors and then nodded. ‘You’re right. Well, Erminatz, you might have saved some Marsi lives.’
‘But condemned Chatti hostages.’
Sabinus looked at the Roman dead now being piled onto a pyre. ‘I wouldn’t worry about them; their people killed my men and for what? Nothing. They didn’t deserve to die here.’
Perhaps they didn’t but then again they should not have been here, I thought; but I kept that to myself.
With the pyre lit and the wounded loaded onto makeshift stretchers of cloaks and pila shafts we moved off and, within two days, were at Castra Vetera on the Rhenus. Here I encountered the first in a series of the biggest things I had ever seen and the rest of the journey was punctuated with them. I shall take them in order. I had always thought that the Albis was the widest river possible in the world and then I saw the Rhenus; it was so wide that people on the far bank could only just be made out by the most sharp-eyed. Five times wider than the Albis, its magnitude made the next thing I saw even more impressive: a bridge across it. A wooden bridge constructed of whole tree trunks somehow sunk into the riverbed to support a frame that carried a road wide enough for eight men to march abreast. My wonder was magnified tenfold by Sabinus telling me that it was only a temporary bridge built by Drusus to take his army across the river for the campaigning season and it would be destroyed on his return. What were these Romans that they could build such things and think nothing of their destruction after so little time? Later I came to realise that it was because they are a practical people and they measure a thing’s worth not by the effort needed to construct it but by its usefulness.
This wonder of construction spanning a wonder of nature led to a third wonder: a town built of stone with more buildings than I had ever seen in my whole life put together and then filled with more people than I had ever seen in one place outside the mustering of the tribe. But the muster is only for a few days; here they lived side by side all year round. How could so many people be fed? All the land for miles around must be cultivated to achieve such an enormous feat; and, of course, it was.
We stayed in Castra Vetera for two days and nights; my brother and I slept in a room on top of another room to which you climbed by stairs, a sensation that I would have made more of had my head not already been full of new sights.
On the third day yet another marvel: a ship with two banks of oars and a deck enclosing the rowers to protect them from missile fire. This new wonder took us up the Rhenus for more miles than I thought it possible for a river to flow and, when Sabinus told me that we were not even halfway to Rome, I despaired of ever returning home.
We left the Rhenus and marched overland, past mountains so tall there was snow on their peaks even in the summer, to a port on the Rhodanus and took a ship there down to the greatest marvel so far: the sea. Never had I imagined anything so huge; it stretched further than the eye could see and, so Sabinus informed me, it would take seven days to cross north to south or
thirty days to go east to west and then he staggered me by saying that Rome owned or took tribute from all the lands surrounding it.
All this made our embarking on a ship twice as long as the two we had already sailed in an event of little remark and I barely gawped as I walked up the gangplank. We sailed east and then south, following the coastline for four days, until we came, at the beginning of July, to a port that made Castra Vetera seem like a collection of the meanest hovels; but I won’t waste time describing Ostia because, four hours after our arrival there, I entered Rome.
If I had felt a hatred of Rome before travelling up the Via Ostiensis it was as nothing compared to my feelings as I passed under the triple arches of the Porta Trigemina, in the shadow of the tree-speckled Aventine, past the crowds of beggars, and then on into the Forum Boarium. Rome was magnificent: to my right towered the Circus Maximus, above it loomed the newly built, marble-clad Palace of Augustus on the Palatine with the shining Temple of Apollo beyond it; ahead and slightly to my left the ancient temples on the Capitoline soared to the sky over the Forum Romanum as if Jupiter and Juno were presiding over the heart of their children’s empire.
Of course I did not know the names and functions of all these buildings when I first beheld them that day; I did not need to in order to hate them for what they represented. As I gazed around, no doubt slack-jawed in amazement, all I could think was: why? Why, when they had all this, did they demand more? What could Rome possibly take from the Cherusci that would in any way embellish the magnificence of what surrounded me? It seemed to me that Rome had need of nothing other than an antidote to avarice; and from that moment on I have hated her for her unremitting greed.
Sabinus guided Chlodochar and me through the teeming streets; just two of his men, divested of their uniforms and dressed in simple tunics, accompanied us, the rest had camped outside the walls of the city as armed soldiers were not allowed within its boundaries. As we climbed the northern slope of the Palatine, Sabinus pointed out the other six hills of Rome and named some of the buildings standing on them; he spoke in Latin now as our proficiency in the language had developed during the course of our almost two-month journey; however, his words hardly registered with me, deep as I was in my own thoughts. Now that we had come to the end of our journey I felt so far from home and so lost in a city whose magnitude overwhelmed me that I now truly despaired of seeing the forests of my homeland again.
‘Where will you go once you’ve delivered us to Drusus’ house, Sabinus?’ I asked as we reached the summit of the Palatine.
‘I’ll allow my men one night in the city and then we’ll start back to Germania tomorrow.’
‘Will you go to the Cherusci’s lands?’
‘I should think so; Drusus is meeting your father with his auxiliary recruits at the first full moon in September, we’ll easily be back by then.’
‘Would you take something back to my mother for me?’ I detached my knife from my belt and handed it to him.
‘Why do you want to part with this?’
‘I’m not parting with it; I just want my mother to have it whilst I’m away. Tell her that I’m sorry that I didn’t say goodbye and that I hope to reclaim the knife from her one day.’
Sabinus took the knife and hung it on his belt and smiled down at me. ‘You’ll get home.’
‘Will I?’
‘Your gods preserved you against the odds; why would they go to that effort just to have you die so far from them?’
I shrugged and shook my head, contemplating that, and I have to confess it heartened me. As we approached a large house, less ostentatious than its neighbours on the Palatine, I grasped the hammer amulet around my neck and pledged myself to Donar if he should bring me safely home.
We mounted the few steps up to the front door and Sabinus pulled on a chain; I heard the sound of a bell tinkling inside and then a viewing slot opened to reveal two eyes.
‘Centurion Titus Flavius Sabinus, charged by Nero Claudius Drusus to bring two hostages of the Cherusci to his household.’
The door opened and we walked in leaving our escort outside. I found myself in a room that would have encompassed my father’s longhouse and was full of more riches than belonged to the entire Cherusci tribe: gold and silver ornaments and bowls on low marble tables with legs carved in the shape of animals; statues painted so lifelike that for a few moments I thought they would suddenly move or talk; a floor made of tiny stones fitted together to form pictures of animals and men, surrounded by geometric designs. But most unbelievable was a statue that spouted water constantly from its mouth into a rectangular pool at the centre of the room. White marble columns at each corner rose up to the ceiling, which had been left seemingly unfinished so that the sun shone in, casting a thick shaft of golden light that cut through the calm atmosphere of the chamber and reflected off the many precious items with a dazzling array of colour.
As my eyes took in all these things an elderly man dressed in a fine tunic spoke briefly to Sabinus and we followed him out, into a high, wide corridor that remained cool despite the July heat outside, and on into a smaller room – although had I seen it first it would have been the largest that I had ever seen. It was furnished even more sumptuously and decorated with richly coloured frescoes. Its high ceiling had a mist floating beneath it as if it was so tall that thin clouds had been captured within the room and at any moment there might be a gentle summer rain; I soon realised that this was the fumes from the many oil lamps and candelabras that augmented the light from three windows on the far wall through which I could see a garden in full bloom. The elderly man left us, giving no indication that we should sit on one of the plumply upholstered couches that populated the room. I stood there with my arm around my brother’s shoulders; his eyes were as round as slingshots as he struggled to make sense of the splendour of our surroundings. Sabinus stood to one side, in front of a pair of curtains in which were woven mysterious signs in silver thread; as I looked at the signs, trying to work out what they represented, the curtains twitched and a small eye peered through the gap. I held the gaze for a few moments wondering who was observing us until footsteps coming through the door caused it to hastily withdraw and the curtains to be resealed.
‘Centurion,’ a woman’s voice said, at once soft and authoritative.
I turned to see a lady of outstanding beauty come through the door; so elegant was her movement that she seemed to glide.
‘I am Antonia; my husband wrote to me of your impending arrival. Thank you for fulfilling your duty; you may leave now.’
Sabinus saluted – a sight that I found strange having never witnessed a man do such honour to a woman – and then with a curt nod and something nearing a smile to my brother and me, he marched out of the room. That was the last time that I saw him. I pray to the gods that he has a good excuse for never delivering my knife to my mother because I cannot believe that he wilfully stole it; it would have been worth nothing to him. Perhaps he died on the return journey.
Aius stopped reading and rolled up the scroll.
Thumelicatz examined the knife and then looked at the two brothers. ‘So we know now why your father never delivered the knife to my grandmother; but why did he never return it to my father?’
The younger brother bristled visibly. ‘He didn’t steal it, if that’s what you’re implying. The campaign in which he got so badly wounded that he was invalided out of the army happened seven years after he’d met your father; by the time that he’d recovered from his wound and returned to Rome, the following year, Erminatz was serving as a tribune in an auxiliary cavalry ala. He did try to return it; he told us so when he gave the knife to us last month.’
Thumelicatz studied the younger brother’s face, sensed the truth and then thought for a few moments. ‘Very well, the timing fits; Erminatz did begin his military service for Rome at the age of seventeen. But we get ahead of ourselves.’ He looked over to Tiburtius who had the second scroll unrolled. ‘Begin.’
CHAPTER III
The Lady Antonia scrutinised my brother and me for a few moments; I felt her startling green eyes boring into mine and had I not reminded myself that I was the son of the king of the Cherusci, I would have bowed my head to her. My sexual feeling for women had not yet developed but I felt my pulse quicken at her beauty: pale skin, full lips stained an intimate shade of pink, high cheekbones and a mass of auburn hair intricately braided and piled high upon her head secured with bejewelled pins and partially covered by a long turquoise garment that fell around her shoulders, wound around her body and draped over one arm; beneath that she wore an ankle-length, pleated dress of deepest red that swayed gently from side to side as she moved forward. I was smitten. I had never seen such beauty and elegance; I felt my nostrils flare as I inhaled her scent that made me desire something that I could not comprehend – it was not until a few years later that I realised what power the sense of smell had over both men and women.
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