Tullio growled, ‘The damn legions didn’t deploy.’
‘But they might have had to,’ Sabinus said with effortless command.
Nepos nodded to the tribune. ‘I’ve seen the report. You may summarise its findings, Iulius Sabinus.’
Sabinus was good-looking, strong-featured, with thick dark hair. Brigonius imagined he might actually be a native Roman – and if he was a tribune he must be of the senatorial class, in the course of a career which might one day lead him to a post like Nepos’s own. Brigonius always reminded himself that to men such as Nepos and Sabinus, whatever happened in Britain was but an incident in a long career progression.
‘We of the sixth, concerned about the practicality of the Wall even before the uprising, have since mounted a major exercise to test its utility. All this is detailed in the report…’
The idea of the Wall was that in the event of major disturbances to the north, the legions would deploy from their forts in the rear, march through the gates, and meet the enemy in open battle north of the Wall. When detachments of the sixth had actually tried this they hit problems. First you had to walk a few miles to the Wall itself. Then you had to break formation to make your way to one or other of the gates and file through, and just as Tullio himself had anticipated, legionaries in full battle armour found themselves queuing behind farmers’ wagons and herds of sheep. Even on the other side of the Wall you then had to form up again into marching order. During all this time you were terribly vulnerable to attack.
‘It just didn’t work,’ Sabinus said with bold bluntness.
Tullio said, ‘In fact it’s worse. In some places you have to cross the river to get from the forts to the Wall! The Wall’s been my baby, and I hate to say it, but we should pull down the whole wretched thing. We did better under Trajan without a Wall at all.’
Xander stood immediately, plump, anxious, shaking off Severa’s restraining hand. ‘We must finish what we have started,’ he insisted in his heavily accented Latin. ‘You can’t judge the performance of the Wall as a system when it is not completed, any more than you can expect a cart to run on only two wheels. When my design is fully realised—’
‘It’s still not going to work,’ Tullio said bluntly. ‘Because it will still have the flaws we have identified today. A vulnerability from the south. Inadequate crossing points.’
Sabinus nodded. ‘My legate would agree. We have to think too of the longer term implications for the empire as a whole of such a static, frozen frontier. The economic consequences alone—’
Nepos held up a hand to silence him. ‘Now your education is showing, Iulius Sabinus,’ he said dryly. ‘I have only a few years in this chair, and I have to think of the short term, not the long.’
Severa said quickly, ‘In the countryside the Wall has already become a highly visible sign of Roman strength. To abandon it now would be a clear sign of weakness. A retreat.’ Brigonius saw she was trying to manipulate the soldiers’ sensibilities, trying to keep some control of the project.
Nepos sighed. ‘Unfortunately I have to agree with you about that, madam. The Emperor would not accept an abandonment. It would harm him back in Rome. The Wall exists, for better or worse. We have to consider where we go from here, not where we would wish to have started from.’ He turned again to Xander. ‘We will not obliterate your precious monument, architect. But how would you modify it to correct its deficiencies?’
Xander, unfortunately, had retreated into a shell of hurt pride. He all but shouted at the governor, ‘The design cannot be modified! It must be expressed!’
Tullio raised an eyebrow, and a ripple of exasperation passed among the Romans in the room, Brigonius thought. Greeks will be Greeks.
Sabinus, ambitious, saw his chance. ‘If I may, Governor? I’ve taken the liberty of drawing up a few modifications to Xander’s design that might accommodate the objections we’ve heard today.’ He held up a scroll. On Nepos’s nod of permission, he spread this on a low table before the governor. Brigonius saw it was a rough sketch done in charcoal of the Wall curtain, forts and ditches.
‘To begin with,’ Sabinus said, ‘the vulnerability at the rear. You can see that I’ve added a further earthwork on the south side.’ The cross section he had sketched showed a ditch some twenty feet wide at the top and ten deep. There were mounds twenty feet across to either side, each set some thirty feet from the lip of the ditch. ‘This earthwork will be set back from the Wall to create a protected zone to the Wall’s south, an “annexe” if you will, where civilians will be excluded or controlled. There will of course be controlled crossing points and causeways at the forts.’
Annius nodded, pulling at his lip. ‘That would work. I’ve seen such designs before.’ He squinted at the architect. ‘And how long will this earthwork be?’
Sabinus said forcefully, ‘Why, it must shadow the Wall for its whole length. What use is it otherwise?’
Nepos held up his hand. ‘We’ll discuss the practical consequences later. I think we all agree that some system such as this will be necessary. Now, Sabinus, concerning your legate’s objections about the gates—’
Sabinus directed their attention to another corner of his sketch. ‘It is clearly impractical to have the major forts set back from the line of the Wall, and to have crossing points so narrow as the mile-forts. The solution is clear. We must build new forts, each large enough to house an auxiliary unit, along the line of the Wall itself.’ He showed a sketch of a fort, the classic rectangular shape lying astride the line of the Wall. ‘You can see that half the fort’s gates will give directly into the northern area, giving it the equivalent of six mile-fort gates. The unit will be able to deploy immediately from its fort into the north.’
Nepos glanced at Tullio. ‘Prefect? Will this do?’
Tullio shrugged. ‘The northern walls of the forts will be vulnerable—’
Annius said cheerfully, ‘You can fix that. A few pits with stakes would do the job. But this will cut the number of crossing-points in the Wall. The locals will resent it.’
Nepos eyed him. ‘The locals just tried to burn the Wall down, soldier. Let them resent.’
Tullio growled, ‘Sir, you told me to bring this project in on time, within your governorship. We already had to make compromises – the turf sections for a start. Now to build these new forts – how many, tribune?’
‘Twelve,’ the Roman said smoothly.
‘Twelve, then—’
Sabinus added, ‘And I’d advise rebuilding the turf sections in stone while you’re at it. A mix of turf and stone in the long run will only invite attacks along the more vulnerable turf section.’
Tullio laughed. ‘Yes, let’s chuck that in too! Look, Governor—’
Nepos said, ‘I know, Tullio, I know. Before we accept the inevitability of a rescheduling, is there any way we can speed things up? What if we reduce the width of the stone curtain, for instance? Does it have to be ten feet? What if were eight feet, or six? Wouldn’t that do?…’
They began to talk around such time-saving compromises. Sabinus expertly made himself the centre of the technical discussion, excluding Xander and his sponsor Severa. Xander rolled his eyes in mute horror at this destruction of his vision.
Brigonius was more interested in Severa. As the scope of the project changed before her eyes, she was clearly losing any control over events she might once have had. Not that anybody had any sympathy for her; she had made too many enemies for that. But Brigonius wondered what was going on behind her cold, bitter face.
At last Nepos sat back. ‘Well, I think we have a solution, for all but one of our problems: the timescale. Tullio?’
Tullio sighed. ‘I don’t imagine the Emperor will assign me the Rhine legions to finish the job?’
Nepos smiled. ‘You’re an honest man. I don’t want you to commit yourself until you’re ready. But we’re talking of years more, aren’t we?’
‘I’m afraid so, sir.’
Nepos tapped his teeth. ‘So whatev
er the future holds the Wall will no longer be my problem – or my glory. Well.’ He stood stiffly. ‘I had better begin composing my letter to the Emperor. Good day to you all.’
As he left, the others gathered up their belongings. Everybody was silent, sullen.
But Tullio slapped Brigonius on the back. ‘I don’t know why you’re looking so serious, Brittunculus,’ he said. ‘Seems to me the governor has just ordered an awful lot more of your stone.’
XVIII
It took another month for the final act of the rebellion’s aftermath to play itself out.
The execution was to take place outside the camp at Banna. Everybody within half a day’s walk of the place was summoned to attend, as were the leaders of the civitas.
At the appointed hour Brigonius walked out of the camp. He joined a dismal gathering, a hundred people or so, men, women and children, gathered around the cross on the ground. The August day was unusually warm: it was a Roman heat, Karus said, a heavy heat that flattened your lust and puddled your thinking, the heat of the conquerors.
To Brigonius’s surprise, Severa joined him, with Karus. ‘I wasn’t expecting you two. I didn’t know you had a taste for such a spectacle.’
‘I certainly don’t,’ Karus said, his face grey. ‘I see it as duty, of a grim sort. It is sometimes my role to argue for the death penalty. I think I should remind myself from time to time what that entails.’
Severa was expressionless, wrapped in a white cloak. ‘As for me, I thought I should drain the dregs of a foolish disturbance which did so much damage to my ambitions. I thought that my daughter might be here, however. After all she worships a god who died in such a manner. You’d think she would see this as part of her theological education.’
‘You’re too hard on the girl,’ Karus murmured. ‘This isn’t the place for her, you know. You’re crushing her spirit.’
‘I know my own daughter, I think.’
Karus regarded her. ‘Once I admired you. I lusted after you – I’m sure you knew it. And your mind astonished me; your gaze pierced centuries. But perhaps your aloofness from history has leached you of your humanity, Severa. Perhaps you have something of the Weaver’s manipulative coldness in your heart…’ But his words tailed away, and Severa’s glare held only contempt for this man who had been her closest ally.
As for Brigonius, he had nothing to say to Severa. Somehow the company of this vicious, thrusting woman felt appropriate on this awful day.
There was a disturbance. Brigonius turned to see a detail of soldiers dragging a prisoner out of the camp. They towered over him; he was only a boy. Brigonius and his companions had to step back to allow the party through. For a moment the boy’s glance met Brigonius’s. It was Similis, Tullio’s British slave. The boy seemed to recognise Brigonius, who had once thanked him for bringing him a drink. Then the moment was lost, the link between their souls broken.
The soldiers briskly pushed the boy to the ground. They strapped his arms to his cross. Then they laid one foot over the other, and to pin both feet to the cross upright, drove a long iron nail through them. The sound was extraordinary, like a skewer driven into a side of pork. The boy stayed silent; he panted hard, panicky. Brigonius had heard that there was comparatively little pain associated with the nailing, oddly. With a grunting effort the soldiers raised the cross, and pushed its base into a hole in the ground. As the cross was jolted into position, Brigonius thought he heard the flesh in the boy’s feet tear. Now the screaming began.
‘Oh, have mercy!’ Karus said, but it was a whisper, too quiet for the soldiers to hear.
Severa said bleakly, ‘Mercy? The suffering is necessary. Not for him and the crime he committed, but for us, so we will not transgress in future.’
‘But he didn’t commit a crime,’ Karus blustered. ‘That’s what’s so monstrously unfair about it!’
The boy’s guilt or otherwise didn’t matter, Brigonius knew. Severa was right about that. The rebellion had been broken up, its leaders punished. But for the soldiers at Banna one loose thread had remained. Nobody had been found who had supported Matto in his strike at the very heart of their camp, nobody who had ordered him to do it, nobody who had helped him. The soldiers couldn’t bear the idea that one individual acting alone could have penetrated so far into a base they thought of as secure. So somebody had to be blamed, a conspiracy concocted. And there, conveniently, was a Brigantian boy serving the prefect himself. Some whispered he had been seen at the gate when Matto arrived, or at the headquarters building before it was torched, or—
‘All lies,’ Karus moaned. An empathetic man for a lawyer, Brigonius thought; he felt the boy’s agony himself. ‘All rumours, misunderstandings – a will to see blame where none exists!’
Brigonius put a hand on his shoulder. ‘For once Severa is right. His suffering is necessary; it is closure. Let’s just be grateful it isn’t one of us.’
Karus spat on the ground, an uncharacteristically crude gesture. ‘Sometimes you are too pragmatic, Brigonius. This may be necessary but it isn’t for me.’ He stalked off, and Severa, her face unreadable, followed.
Blood dripped steadily from Similis’s feet. If he let himself hang from his arms, so sparing his torn feet, he couldn’t breathe. But if he tried to raise himself on his feet so he could get some air, the tearing got worse. So he jerked and struggled, shifting his weight from one source of pain to another, his movements minute but agonised.
As the boy fought to stay alive, one by one the crowd drifted away. Brigonius felt he ought to stay, though he wasn’t sure why.
When people called him ‘pragmatic’, he had learned, it was meant as an insult. He didn’t think of himself as cowardly, or a traitor to his ancient nation. He could see very clearly how the Romans brought unhappiness to many – and misery or death to those who opposed them. It was just that he couldn’t imagine any way of striking at the Romans that would do anybody any good. Surely Matto’s futile gesture proved that. But that didn’t make him feel any better as he stood here and watched an innocent child die on a cross.
The boy’s whimpering quieted and he fell into unconsciousness. As darkness gathered, one of the soldiers who stood at the foot of the cross, taking pity, smashed the boy’s legs with the hilt of his sword, and the boy’s body slumped further. Unable to support himself, he would surely soon be dead of asphyxiation. But his body would hang there until the crows had his flesh.
Brigonius turned and walked back into the camp.
XIX
The letter from Lepidina was a slip of wood covered in her own rounded, still girlish handwriting. She had returned to Britain from Rome, she said, and would visit the Wall. She said that her mother was coming too – indeed, the purpose of her visit was somehow connected with Severa.
And so Brigonius was going to see Lepidina again. He was shocked to reflect that since the fateful day of the Decision, when before Governor Nepos the Wall had been redesigned from end to end, fifteen years had already passed. And Lepidina was no girl now; she was to stay in the fort at Banna with a party led by her husband of fourteen years: Galba Iulius Sabinus, once a pushy young legionary tribune, now a senator.
Brigonius clutched the letter to his heart, wondering what to tell his wife.
On the appointed day he made his way to the fort at Banna. He was passed through the west gate. The double-arched gateway alone, he sometimes thought, was grander than anything seen in Brigantia before the Romans came.
Leaving his horse to be stabled by a slave, he walked along the main drag through the fort, called – as in every Roman fort of this type right across the empire – the via praetoria. Banna was no tent city now. Buildings clustered around him like huge bricks: the barracks to either side, and before him the squat blocks of the praetorium, Tullio’s commander’s residence, and the principia, the fort’s formal headquarters. Beyond that he glimpsed the hospital, and more barracks, stables and workshops. An empty area was laid out with the foundations of two granaries, enough to sto
re a year’s supply of grain for a thousand men, which would have raised floors for protection from the elements. But these were yet to be constructed. Progress was always slow, hampered by a lack of local resources. One of the grandest buildings was a drill hall where the soldiers could be trained during the most inclement northern weather; it was a monument of stone big enough to allow javelins to be thrown indoors.
The streets were busy, not just with soldiers but with their slaves, and with local traders and workmen. Payday had been only a couple of days ago, and the vendors prowled the streets and pushed their heads inside open doors, looking for likely buyers of their wares and services. Enclosed within its walls, self-contained, the fort shut out the untamed countryside around it; it was like an island of Romanness, Brigonius thought, independent of the world outside.
But of the Brigantian settlement that had once stood here not a trace remained. The old Roman watchtower had been demolished, the forest cleared and marshland drained. Even the ancient barrows that had lined the escarpment, the tombs of deep ancestors, had been levelled. This was the place where Brigonius had been born, and the ancestors of Severa and Lepidina; it was here that Nectovelin’s birth had long ago been heralded by the strange Prophecy. These days the only Brigantians lived in a shanty town that had grown around the walls of the fort, just as at Vindolanda. Coventina was banished now.
Brigonius reached the headquarters building. He crossed the broad cloistered courtyard with its well, heading for the central cross-hall, the basilica. These two areas were large enough to hold all the troops in the fort. To the rear of the basilica was a row of offices, at the centre of which was the shrine, the aedes, with its statue of Hadrian, the standards of the fort units, and other religious tokens. Two rooms to either side were the offices of the adjutant, the cornicularius, and of the signiferi, the standard-bearers. The shrine and offices had open fronts with low ironwork screens. This little area was the fort’s heart. The signiferi were responsible for the crucial issues of the soldiers’ pay and savings, and behind the shrine itself was a strongroom containing the fort’s cash. Brigonius had watched this being built from the ground up, and indeed had sold the Romans much of the stone they had needed. It was all still so new he could smell the mustiness of fresh plaster.
Emperor: Time’s Tapestry Book One Page 21