5. Caesar

by Colleen McCullough

  The roast goose looked imminent when the army reached its main camp behind that long, sandy beach. Unfortunately Cassivellaunus had other ideas. With what he had left of his own Cassi, he went the rounds of the Cantii and the Regni, the two tribes who lived south of the Tamesa, and marshaled another army. But attacking this camp was to break the Briton hand against a stone wall. The Briton horde, all on foot, bared naked chests to the defenders atop the fortifications and were picked off by javelins like so many targets lined up on a drill field. Nor had the Britons yet learned the lesson the Gauls had: when Caesar led his men out of the camp to fight hand to hand, the Britons stayed to be cut down. For they still adhered to their ancient traditions, which said that a man who left a field of defeat alive was an outcast. That tradition had cost the Belgae on the mainland fifty thousand wasted lives in one battle. Now the Belgae abandoned the field the moment defeat was imminent, and lived to fight again another day. Cassivellaunus sued for peace, submitted, and signed the treaty Caesar demanded. Then handed over hostages. It was the end of November by the calendar, the beginning of autumn by the seasons. The evacuation began, but after a personal inspection of each of some seven hundred ships, Caesar decided it would have to be in two parts. "Something over half the fleet is in good condition," he said to Hirtius, Trebonius, Sabinus, Quintus Cicero and Atrius. "We'll put all the cavalry, all the baggage animals save for the century mules, and two of the legions on board that half, and send it to Portus Itius first. Then the ships can come back empty and pick up me and the last three legions." With him he kept Trebonius and Atrius; the other legates were ordered to sail with the first fleet. "I'm pleased and flattered to be asked to stay," Trebonius said, watching those three hundred and fifty ships pushed down into the water. These were the vessels Caesar had ordered specially built along the Liger River and then sent out into the open ocean to do battle with the two hundred and twenty solid-oak sailing ships of the Veneti, who thought the Roman vessels ludicrous with their oars and their flimsy pine hulls, their low prows and poops. Toy boats for sailing on a bathtub sea, easy meat. But it hadn't worked out that way at all. While Caesar and his land army picnicked atop the towering cliffs to the north of the mouth of the Liger and watched the action like spectators in the Circus Maximus, Caesar's ships produced the fangs Decimus Brutus and his engineers had grown during that frantic winter building the fleet. The leather sails of the Veneti vessels were so heavy and stout that the main shrouds were chain rather than rope; knowing this, Decimus Brutus had equipped each of his more than three hundred ships with a long pole to which were fixed a barbed hook and a set of grapples. A Roman ship would row in close to a Veneti ship and maneuver alongside, whereupon its crew would tilt their pole, tangle it among the Veneti shrouds, then sprint away under oar power. Down came the Veneti sails and masts, leaving the vessel helpless in the water. Three Roman ships would then surround it like terriers a deer, board it, kill the crew and set fire to it. When the wind fell, Decimus Brutus's victory became complete. Only twenty Veneti ships had escaped. Now the specially low sides with which these ships had been built came in very handy. It wasn't possible to load animals as skittish as horses aboard before the ships were pushed into the water, but once they were afloat and held still in the water, long broad gangplanks connected each ship's side with the beach, and the horses were run up so quickly they had no time to take fright. "Not bad without a dock," said Caesar, satisfied. "They'll be back tomorrow, then the rest of us can leave." But tomorrow dawned in the teeth of a northwesterly gale which didn't disturb the waters off the beach very much, but did prevent the return of those three hundred and fifty sound ships. "Oh, Trebonius, this land holds no luck for me!" cried the General on the fifth day of the gale, scratching the stubble on his face fiercely. "We're the Greeks on the beach at Ilium," said Trebonius. Which remark seemed to make up the General's mind; he turned cold pale eyes upon his legate. "I am no Agamemnon," he said through his teeth, "nor will I stay here for ten years!" He turned and shouted. "Atrius!" Up ran his camp prefect, startled. "Yes, Caesar?" "Will the nails hold in what we have left here?" "Probably, in all except about forty." "Then we'll use this northwest wind. Sound the bugles, Atrius. I want everyone and everything on board all but the about forty." "They won't fit!" squeaked Atrius, aghast. "We'll pack 'em in like salt fish in a barrel. If they puke all over each other, too bad. They can all go for a swim in full armor once we reach Portus Itius. We'll sail the moment the last man and the last ballista are aboard." Atrius swallowed. "We may have to leave some of the heavy equipment behind," he said in a small voice. Caesar raised his brows. "I am not leaving my artillery or my rams behind, nor am I leaving my tools behind, nor am I leaving one soldier behind, nor am I leaving one noncombatant behind, nor am I leaving one slave behind. If you can't fit them all in, Atrius, I will." They were not hollow words, and Atrius knew it. He also knew that his career depended upon his doing something the General could and would do with complete efficiency and astonishing speed. Quintus Atrius protested no more, but went off instead to sound the bugles. Trebonius was laughing. "What's so funny?" asked Caesar coldly. No, not the time to share this joke! Trebonius sobered in an instant. "Nothing, Caesar! Nothing at all." The decision had been made about an hour after the sun came up; all day the troops and noncombatants labored, loading the stoutest ships with Caesar's precious artillery, tools, wagons and mules on the beach. The men waited until the ships were pushed into the choppy sea, doing the pushing themselves, then scrambled aboard up rope ladders. The normal load for one ship was a piece of artillery or some engineer's device, four mules, one wagon, forty soldiers and twenty oarsmen; but with eighteen thousand soldiers and noncombatants as well as four thousand assorted slaves and sailors, today's loads were much heavier. "Isn't it amazing?" asked Trebonius of Atrius as the sun went down. "What?" asked the camp prefect, knees trembling. "He's happy. Oh, whatever grief he bears is still there, but he's happy. He's got something impossible to do." "I wish he'd let them go as soon as they're loaded!" "Not he! He came as a fleet and he'll go as a fleet. When all those highborn Gauls in Portus Itius see him sail in, they'll see a man in absolute command. Let the bulk of his army limp in a few ships at a time? Not he! And he's right, Atrius. We have to show the Gauls that we're better at everything." Trebonius looked up at the pinkening sky. "We'll have three-quarters of a waning moon tonight. He'll leave when he's ready, no matter what the hour." A good prediction. At midnight Caesar's ship put out into the heaving blackness of a following sea, the lamps on its stern and mast twinkling beacons for the other ships to follow as they swung into a swelling teardrop behind him. Caesar leaned on the stern rail atop the poop between the two professionals who guided the rudder oars, and watched the myriad firefly lights spreading across the impenetrable darkness of the ocean. Vale Britannia. I will not miss you. But what lies out there in the great beyond, where no man has ever sailed? This is no little sea; this is a mighty ocean. This where the great Neptune lives, not within the bowl of Our Sea. Maybe when I am old and I have done all that my blood and power demand, I shall take one of those solid-oak Veneti ships, hoist its leather sails and go into the West to follow the path of the sun. Romulus was lost in the ignobility of the Goat Swamps on the Campus Martius, yet when he didn't come home, they thought he had been taken into the realm of the Gods. But I will sail into the mists of forever, and they will know I have been taken into the realm of the Gods. My Julia is there. The people knew. They burned her in the Forum and placed her tomb among the heroes. But first I must do all that my blood and power demand.

  Clouds scudded, but the moon shone well enough and the ships stayed together, so shoved along that the single linen-canvas sails were as swollen as a woman near her time, and the oars were hardly needed. The crossing took six hours; Caesar's ship sailed into Portus Itius with the dawn, the fleet still in formation behind him. His luck was back. Not one man, animal or piece of artillery became a sacrifice to Neptune.

  GAUL OF THE LONG-HAIRS (GALLIA COMA
TA) from DECEMBER of 54 B.C. until NOVEMBER of 53 B.C.

  "With all eight legions in Portus Itius, we'll run out of grain before the year is over," said Titus Labienus. "The commissioners haven't had much success finding it. There's plenty of salt pork, bacon, oil, sweet beet syrup and dried fruit, but the ground crops from wheat to chickpea are very scarce." "Nor can we expect the troops to fight without bread." Caesar sighed. "The trouble with drought is that it tends to strike everywhere at once. I can't buy in grain or pulses from the Spains or Italian Gaul; they're suffering too." He shrugged. "Well, that leaves only one solution. Spread the legions out for the winter and offer to the Gods for a good harvest next year." "Such a pity the fleet didn't stay in one piece," said Quintus Titurius Sabinus tactlessly. "I know we sweltered there, but Britannia had a bountiful harvest. We could have brought a lot of wheat back with us if only we'd had all the ships." The rest of the legates shrank; keeping the fleet safe from harm was Caesar's responsibility, and though it had been wind, sea and tide which foiled him, it was not politic to make statements in council which Caesar might interpret as reproach or criticism. But Sabinus was lucky, probably because Caesar had deemed him a prating fool from the moment he had reported for duty. He received a glance of contempt, nothing more. "One legion to garrison one area," the General went on. "Except in the lands of the Atrebates," Commius volunteered eagerly. "We haven't been hit as hard as most places; we can feed two legions if you'll lend us some of your noncombatants to help us plough and sow in the spring." "If," Sabinus butted in, voice loaded with irony, "you Gauls above the status of a serf didn't deem it beneath your dignity to man a plough, you wouldn't find large-scale farming so difficult. Why not put some of those hordes of useless Druids to it?" "I haven't noticed the Roman First Class behind a plough in quite some time, Sabinus," the General said placidly, then smiled at Commius. "Good! That means Samarobriva can serve as our winter headquarters this year. But I won't give you Sabinus for company. I think ... that... Sabinus can go to the lands of the Eburones and take Cotta with him as exactly equal co-commander. He can have the Thirteenth, and set up house inside Atuatuca. It's a little the worse for wear, but Sabinus can fix it up, I'm sure." Every head bent suddenly, every hand leaped to hide a smile; Caesar had just banished Sabinus to the worst billet in Gaul, in the company of a man he detested, and in "exactly equal" co-command of a legion of raw recruits which just happened to bear a calamitously unlucky number. A bit hard on poor Cotta (an Aurunculeius, not an Aurelius), but someone had to inherit Sabinus, and everyone save poor Cotta was relieved that Caesar hadn't chosen him. The presence of King Commius offended men like Sabinus, of course; he couldn't understand why Caesar invited any Gaul, no matter how obsequious or trustworthy, to a council. Even if it was only about food and billets. Perhaps had Commius been a more likable or attractive person he might have been better tolerated; alas, he was neither likable nor attractive. In height he was short for a Belgic Gaul, sharp-featured of face, and oddly furtive in his manner. His sandy hair, stiff as a broom because (like all Gallic warriors) he washed it with lime dissolved in water, was drawn into a kind of horse's tail which stuck straight up in the air, and clashed with the vivid scarlet of his gaudily checkered shawl. Caesar's legates dismissed him as the kind of sycophant who always popped up where the important men were, without stopping to relate what they saw to the fact that he was the King of a very powerful and warlike Belgic people. The Belgae of the northwest had not abandoned their kings to elect annual vergobrets, yet Belgic kings could be challenged by any aristocrat among their people; it was a status decided by strength, not heredity. And Commius had been King of the Atrebates for a long time. "Trebonius," said Caesar, "you'll winter with the Tenth and Twelfth in Samarobriva, and have custody of the baggage. Marcus Crassus, you'll camp fairly close to Samarobriva about twenty-five miles away, on the border between the Bellovaci and the Ambiani. Take the Eighth. Fabius, you'll stay here in Portus Itius with the Seventh. Quintus Cicero, you and the Ninth will go to the Nervii. Roscius, you can enjoy some peace and quiet I'm sending you and the Fifth Alauda down among the Esubii, just to let the Celtae know that I haven't forgotten they exist." "You're expecting trouble among the Belgae," said Labienus, frowning. "I agree they've been too quiet. Do you want me to go to the Treveri as usual?" "Not quite so far away as Treves. Among the Treveri but adjacent to the Remi. Take the cavalry as well as the Eleventh." "Then I'll sit myself down on the Mosa near Virodunum. If the snow isn't ten feet deep, there'll be plenty of grazing." Caesar rose to his feet, the signal for dismissal. He had called his legates together the moment he came ashore, which meant he wanted the eight legions at present encamped at Portus Itius shifted to their permanent winter quarters immediately. Even so, all the legates were now aware that it had been Julia who died. The news had been contained in many letters to those like Labienus who had not gone to Britannia. But no one said a word. "You'll be nice and cozy," said Labienus to Trebonius as they walked away. The big horse's teeth showed. "Sabinus's stupidity staggers me! If he'd kept his mouth shut, he'd be cozy. Fancy spending the winter up there not so far from the mouth of the Mosa, with the wind shrieking, the sea flooding in, the hills rocks, the flat ground salt fen or peat marsh, and the Germans sniffing up your arse when the Eburones and Nervii aren't."