Vindolanda

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  Longinus snorted. ‘Too damned good – the buggers were swarming all over us.’

  ‘Notice anything odd about them?’

  The eye was still fixed on him. Longinus stopped sharpening his sword and reached up to scratch his empty eye socket.

  ‘How did you lose that?’ Ferox asked, letting curiosity get the better of him.

  ‘Cut myself shaving. Now what did you ask before?’ The man’s Latin was good, for all his slang. He had a Rhineland accent, but did not clip the ends of words or roll his vowels like most of them.

  ‘You have been in Britannia a while.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Well, what did you think about the attackers? Were they like other Britons you have seen?’

  There was the slightest nod. ‘Some of them. Not seen those daft ones with the painted heads before. Not much skill in them, but they came on well enough. A couple were wearing tunics without breeches. Don’t see that much hereabouts.’

  Ferox had not noticed that little detail. Thinking back he thought the men he had fought had all been in trousers, but it was so hard to remember everything. At the time he had worried more about not getting killed. ‘And the others?’

  ‘Ah, you noticed.’

  ‘Big men, one of them really big, heavier set than Caledonians, if just as fair.’

  ‘Germans,’ Longinus said, ‘or I’m a Syrian.’

  ‘Germans?’

  ‘That’s right. Don’t tell me you had not thought the same thing.’

  ‘I wondered, but they told me I was a fool,’ Ferox said, half to himself.

  ‘Can’t say one way or the other about that, sir. But they were Germans. They did not have time to say much, but the words were in German. I met one of the Gotones once who talked like that. At least, people said that he was one of them and he certainly wasn’t from any tribe we knew well. These ones sounded the same. They’re from far away – the east, or maybe from the north, but enough akin to the closer races to recognise.’

  ‘Thank you, trooper, that is very helpful.’

  A horse whinnied loudly from the next room, then started to kick hard against something wooden. ‘Excuse me, sir.’ Longinus looked up and yelled through the trapdoor into the attic. ‘You there, Felix?’ There was the sound of panicked movement and then stillness in response. ‘I know you’re there, boy!’ There was a low acknowledgement. ‘Do your job, you little bugger!’ Longinus shouted. ‘They want feeding, so get on with it!’ The one eye fixed on the centurion again. ‘Good enough lad, but you have to chase him or he’ll dream the day away.’

  Ferox got up.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Yes, trooper?’

  ‘Bad business at the watchtower.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Longinus winked – or since he had just the one eye perhaps it was a blink, although Ferox did not think that it was involuntary. ‘Something is rotten, sir. And there is something in the air that isn’t good. Smelled it before, or something much like, and that ended in a lot of killing.’

  ‘Thank you once again, trooper.’

  Ferox wondered what the old soldier had meant, but did not doubt the conviction or the shrewd mind in that battered, one-eyed face. He also wondered why the man had not been promoted after all these years. Drink perhaps, or insubordination, or perhaps for all his sharp mind Longinus could not read and write well enough.

  Yet others sensed something similar. It had been growing for a while, but since the raid he noticed a dark mood among the Textoverdi. ‘Bad times,’ men said to him over and over again. ‘There’s a storm coming and a cruel winter.’ People were worried and they would not tell him why, or perhaps they could not explain, something they sniffed in the wind like the one-eyed Batavian. ‘Bad times.’

  Ferox launched a fresh assault on the post, hacking with more fury than skill until he was pouring with sweat. He had seen horsemen coming down the valley, but knew he could not hurry them so kept at his exercises.

  ‘I’ll give you five to four on the post,’ Vindex announced as he reined in.

  Ferox nodded, breathing heavily. ‘Well, it is a very good post.’

  ‘Got good news and bad,’ the Brigantian continued, his skull-like face serious even by his standards.

  ‘Let’s have the bad news.’

  ‘No, let’s have a drink and then all the news.’ Vindex sprang down and walked with him into the outpost.

  ‘We found the Goat Man’s boy,’ he said, staring down into his flagon of beer, sitting on a three-legged stool in the centurion’s quarters. The room still showed the damage from the struggle to rouse him all those days ago, in spite of Philo’s best efforts. Ferox was sticking to well-watered posca but was thirsty after his exercise and glad to have it.

  ‘He is dead?’

  Vindex nodded and there were tears in his eyes. ‘The bastards buried him.’ He could see that the centurion did not understand. ‘He wasn’t dead. They just trussed him up and buried him on a mound beside a stream.’

  He drank for a while, brooding and angry, and Ferox thought it better to let him. He knew that his own rage would grow. People did not come and do this on his patch.

  ‘We caught one,’ Vindex said after a long wait, the silence only broken by the crackling of the fire. ‘One of the mad buggers with the horse on his head. He was Hibernian, came across the water to follow the Stallion, the seer blessed by Cocidius and the Morrigan to lead the peoples in the war that will end the world. Reckon that’s the lad we saw at the ambush, waving them on. This boy swore that this Stallion has powerful medicine, and is blessed by the gods, who want him to purge the whole island of the corruption of Rome.’

  ‘Nice names and nice ambition,’ Ferox said. ‘But you said “was”?’

  ‘We didn’t do it – not that we didn’t want to after finding the boy. He strayed from the rest. Told us a dream told him to look for a sacred oak and cut a branch from it. He left a track a blind man could follow and we took him by surprise. Knocked him around a bit to get answers, though in truth he talked readily, boasting almost, so knocking him about was more for fun.

  ‘The next day we had him with hands tied behind his back and a man leading his horse, when he just starts chanting. On and on he went in a nasty, high-pitched voice. Then all of a sudden his horse gallops off and he flings himself down. Head hit a stone, lights out forever. Think it was deliberate, but can’t be sure.’

  ‘That is a pity.’

  ‘Aye. Still, he told us a lot. The Stallion and his men set out from the far north-east, sent by a high king of the Vacomagi. Said he didn’t know his name.’

  Ferox whistled through his teeth. ‘Didn’t know the Vacomagi had a high king.’

  ‘Well, that’s what he said, and from the way they were going they were heading that way. The lad claimed this king realised the truth of the gods’ purpose for this great Stallion or horse’s arse or whatever he’s called and gave him warriors and horses to help in his quest. Some of the warriors were from deep beneath the sea, summoned to help by the great druid.’

  ‘Not horse’s arse?’ Ferox asked.

  ‘No, this one is different, much more powerful. The lad said something about the Stallion being a great storm to sweep the land clean, while this great druid is part of the land itself. Old and wise, he is able to change his shape and work even greater magic. They say he walks among the Romans when he wants and they do not see him. That he can make them turn their swords on each other. He wasn’t with the raiders, but they saw him now and again, shaped like a raven and flying above them.’

  Ferox listened as the Brigantian continued, telling everything he had learned about the Stallion and this carefully planned raid..

  ‘What did they want to do?’

  When Vindex told him the room turned cold, even on this bright day and with a good fire burning.

  ‘Bad times,’ he muttered.

  ‘Aye.’

  VI

  IT WAS THE sixth day after the Ides of September and th
e birthday of the new Caesar, Marcus Ulpius Trajan, adopted son of the deified Caesar Nerva who had ascended to the imperial purple on the same day. It was also raining steadily, had been raining since before dawn and showed every sign of raining for the rest of the long day. Ferox hoped it was not an omen, although if every drab, dank and windy morning in these parts were a bad omen, then the world would be a grim place indeed.

  Bad times. A storm coming. The phrases kept going through his head.

  Vindex was unhappy, although not for that reason. ‘Do I have to go?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Both men wore hooded Gallic cloaks, drawn tight around them. The hood shadowed the Brigantian’s face and made his expression especially bleak and sinister.

  ‘I do not like crowds,’ he said, in the tone of a man announcing that he did not care to have his feet roasted over an open fire, but was resigned to the ordeal. They were riding to Vindolanda to witness the sacrifices to mark the occasion and the festivities to follow. There was also to be a meeting of senior officers on the following day and Ferox was required to be present to explain what he had learned about the ambush and report on the mood in his region. He wanted the Brigantian to be there if this was permitted, or at least be on hand in case he needed to ask him about anything. For all that Ferox remained unsure how much he would reveal. He feared treachery, probably by someone of high rank, and knew none of the men well enough to trust.

  Behind the two horsemen trailed an unhappy Philo, riding a borrowed army mule. The Alexandrian had insisted on accompanying his master to make sure that Ferox was turned out respectably. No doubt the boy had long since begun regretting his persistence.

  ‘There it is.’ Ferox did not bother to point as the fort was barely a quarter of a mile in front of them. On a clear day they would have seen it long ago, not least when they crossed the ridge to the north, but today the mist and rain had hidden the base until the last minute.

  ‘Too big,’ Vindex muttered. ‘They must live like rats down there.’

  There were dozens of buildings in front of the fort – houses, shops and bars. Wherever the army stopped, such settlements or canabae grew up, filled with people wishing to take on contracts for the army or sell things to the soldiers. It was a safer place to live in wilder country, governed by law – if a law that usually favoured the state and the army.

  ‘You have been to Eboracum.’

  ‘Aye,’ Vindex admitted. ‘Once.’ He thought for a while. ‘It stank.’

  Eboracum was the depot for Legio IX Hispana – or VIIII as the legionaries usually insisted just to show that they were different. The Batavians here at Vindolanda had campaigned alongside the legion when they were first formed and had picked up this affectation.

  Vindolanda was built to house the double-strength Batavian cohort, over a thousand men with a fifth of them cavalry when at full strength – which of course, like the rest of the army, they rarely were. It also had space for detachments, some of them large, from other units, and like any base individuals and small parties regularly passed through. Eboracum was ten times bigger than Vindolanda, and Ferox would be the first to admit that it did stink. The military mind was keen on cleanliness. Every base was provided with latrine blocks flushed by a flow of water and sewers to carry the waste away. Yet once it was outside the walls they tended to lose interest. At Eboracum the excrement of thousands emptied into the river and it reeked to high heaven, especially in summer when the water was low. It was the same at most bases. Here at Vindolanda the sewer pipes drained into the pretty little valley on the eastern side beyond the fort. No one complained, and would not have got far if they had tried, and all the while vegetables grew very well on that slope.

  ‘Too big,’ Vindex said. ‘Just too big.’ Most Brigantes lived on farms or in small villages, with only a few of the more important chieftains maintaining larger holdings. In the old days of the kings and queens it had been different, although even then there were few big towns compared to the tribes of the south. Ferox wondered whether he could ever convince Vindex of how small this was compared to the many great cities in Gaul and how plenty of people liked to live in them – let alone explain that vast, teeming, beautiful and filthy anthill that was Rome. He had only spent a few months there and after all these years the memory had an unreal, dream-like quality. He had no great desire to go back.

  They followed the road running just north of the fort, the land gently sloping down. A couple of buildings stood apart from the rest of the canabae. There was a cluster of beggars by the roadside. They tended to get driven away from the houses, so there were usually a few here, even in bad weather. Some were familiar, such as the hunchback with the drooling lip, the one with both hands gone, and the two old women who went everywhere together, one of them blind and the other deaf. All started to call out for money or food, but one voice cut above the others.

  ‘Alms for a blessing!’ It came from a hunched man standing a little apart, leaning on a stick. His long white hair was plastered against a dark and ragged cloak. Both hair and the garment were filthy, as was the toe poking out from a hole in the front of one shoe. He had a straggling white beard and a face lined with age, suffering and dirt, but kept his eyes down, staring at their horses’ feet. A little mongrel, almost as filthy as its master and with several bald patches, was curled up by his heels. The two old women shrieked and spat at him, but he ignored them.

  Vindex reached into his pouch and tossed him a bronze coin, which the beggar caught without looking up.

  ‘Generous?’ Ferox said as they rode on.

  ‘Bit of luck never did anyone any harm,’ Vindex told him.

  ‘Only if it’s good luck.’ He blinked as heavy drops of water fell from the edge of his hood and blew into his eyes.

  The Brigantian was not listening. ‘Look familiar?’ he said.

  There was a tall building just on their right beyond where the road forked and a branch led down to the main gateway of the fort. A square central tower topped with a pyramid-shaped roof of red tiles was surrounded by covered galleries on all sides, although these had large windows open to all weathers. It was the Temple of Silvanus – or Vinotonus as the Brigantes knew him, god of the hunt and of fertility – and outside the entrance waited the four-wheeled carriage. Ferox felt sorry for the driver, sitting in front, hair drenched and cloak sodden. Still, at least his luck was better than that of his predecessor.

  They took the track towards Vindolanda, and as they came level with the temple’s entrance saw a short woman standing in the shelter, dark hair carefully arranged. It was the lady’s maid and Vindex gave a grin and big wink. She looked around to see whether anyone else was watching, realised that she was safe and stuck her tongue out at him. Shifting slightly and twitching her arm, the girl let her cloak part to show a bright white dress, cut rather low in front.

  ‘Making friends?’ Ferox said, wondering just how much time the Brigantian and the freedwoman had spent together on the day of the ambush, given her injuries. She looked well enough – and lively enough – a week later.

  ‘She’s a grateful lass. Hope so, any road.’ Losing two wives had done nothing to dampen the Brigantian’s enthusiasm for women.

  Ferox was tempted to linger in spite of a fresh deluge of rain driving into their backs, but did not have to, as a moment later the lady appeared. She was in pale blue again and it suited her, so that he rather regretted the maid handing her mistress a heavy cloak in a grey wool even darker than the skies.

  He clambered down, limbs stiff after a couple of damp hours spent in the saddle, and opened the door of the carriage. The repairs had been done well, and apart from one deep gouge made by an arrow he could see no sign of damage.

  Sulpicia Lepidina smiled and then she and her maid dashed for the shelter of the carriage, each of them holding their hooded cloaks tight with one hand and using the other to lift their hems.

  ‘It appears I am in your debt once again,’ the lady said after clambering inside, foll
owed by her servant. The curtain to the carriage window was clipped back so that she could see out.

  Ferox bowed his head. ‘Happy to be of service, my lady.’

  ‘Are you well?’ She looked over him to Vindex.

  ‘Thank you, lady. I am much restored. Your treatment has worked wonders.’

  The centurion pulled himself back into the saddle and they rode beside the carriage as it went back to the fort.

  ‘It is an indulgence to travel this way on so short a journey,’ Lepidina told him, ‘but on a day like this…’

  ‘Do you go there often?’ Ferox took pleasure in talking to her, seeing the life in her face, although he wondered whether he ought to suggest that she close the curtain and travel the rest of the way in more comfort.

  ‘I go most days. There is much to be said for silence and seclusion. Have I said something amusing?’

  ‘My apologies, it is just that someone else said something very similar to me earlier on.’ Ferox heard Vindex chuckle.

  ‘Today there was a greater reason. I made an offering for the recovery of young Flavius. He has a bad stomach and a fever and it has not improved after two days. I am not sure the camp seplasiarius is that skilled in preparing his potions. Apart from his back, he is a strong child, and may recover even without aid, but there is no harm in seeking help from the heavens.’

  ‘You should visit the Spring of Covventina, lady,’ he said automatically, without giving it sufficient thought, for the sacred spring and grove lay to the east, along the road past where she had been ambushed. ‘The waters have a potency, they say, against many evils, but then men say many things that are false.’

  Sulpicia Lepidina gave a gentle laugh. ‘Yes, men do.’ Her deep blue eyes sparkled. She wore her hair simply, tied back in a bun by a deep blue ribbon. ‘But thank you for your concern.’

  ‘It is nothing. I can only imagine the dreadful worry of a mother for a sick child.’

  ‘Flavius is not my son,’ she said, the laughter gone. ‘He and his little sister and brother are the children of my husband. His first wife died giving birth to the second boy. I have no children, so I suppose that I have failed in the duties the divine Augustus and most of the other Caesars have encouraged, but my husband is father of three and has all the benefits and respect that entails.’