On Hadrian's Secret Service

by Gavin Chappell

  As the Carvettians munched and chomped at their food, he felt himself growing tenser and tenser. It was vital that he should got to Italy and warn the emperor before his wife’s birthday, but what Marcus Placidus had said about the Ninth Legion sounded like bad news. What would happen to Probus? What would happen to Falco? Was this to result in the staged victory he had plotted with Catavolcos’ people? Flaminius sighed. At least it would keep them busy. He’d have no Caledonians on his tail. No, but his description had been cried all along the roads…

  Again he noticed Marcus Placidus eyeing him. He stared back defiantly.

  Drustica rose, mopped her lips with the back of her hand, and said, ‘Pardon me. I must go to the latrine.’ She blundered past them. Acco and Teutorix began muttering at each other in their own tongue, with frequent glowers around them.

  Flaminius sighed. The warrior woman was fascinated by this aspect of Roman technology, and had made a point of visiting every latrine from here to Bremetenacum[22]. He sat back and swallowed the last of his oysters, then finished off his wine, hoping the fresh horses would be ready soon.

  Marcus Placidus was looking in Drustica’s direction. He turned back to Flaminius. ‘Nice,’ he said with a grin. ‘No barbarian, you’re right, but no tame Roman matron, either.’

  ‘Don’t talk about her like that,’ Flaminius snapped. The two Carvettians gave Marcus Placidus unfavourable stares.

  ‘She’s only a peregrine,’ Marcus Placidus said.

  ‘She’s a good friend,’ Flaminius added, ‘and worth a century of legionaries in a fight. Like Acco and Teutorix. Their people live on the very edge of civilisation. It’s made them tough.’

  Acco gave Teutorix a smug grin. Marcus Placidus leaned forward. ‘So what’s she doing with you? And these two… gentlemen? You’re down from the North, you say. What’s happening up there, and why are you and three peregrines leaving the province?’

  ‘How do you know we’re leaving the province?’ Flaminius demanded.

  Marcus Placidus shrugged. ‘Why else would you come to Rutupiae, unless you like oysters more than most?’ Flaminius felt foolish. ‘Besides,’ the man added, ‘everyone who’s able to leave is leaving this province.’

  Why was he talking with this man? Flaminius wished Drustica would return from her ablutions, the tide would turn, and they could all cross the ocean to Gaul without further problems.

  ‘Tell me about the North,’ Marcus Placidus went on, looking at the two Carvettians as he spoke. ‘I’ve never been there. Is it true, what they say?’

  Flaminius tried to sum it up, but what could he say? The closest he could come to doing it justice was to compare Caledonia with Greece in the days of Agamemnon, but that didn’t come close. In some ways it went too far, in others not far enough. He was sure the courier would think the comparison nigh-on blasphemy.

  He started explaining this to Marcus Placidus but then Drustica returned to the booth. Acco and Teutorix went quiet again. She glared at them and went to sit with Flaminius.

  ‘I’m glad you’re all together now,’ Marcus Placidus said, interrupting Flaminius suddenly. ‘I don’t know where the peregrines fit in, but you, my lad, are a wanted man.’

  Flaminius felt the blood drain from his face. The man had just been waiting for his opportunity. Flaminius turned, tried to stand up. Drustica glared angrily at Marcus Placidus. Acco and Teutorix gaped around in confusion and also tried to stand up, finding it difficult when their thighs collided with the table top. Marcus Placidus made a sign. Four men marched up from the bar, legionaries with drawn swords.

  They had been found already.

  ‘Look, you can’t keep us here,’ Flaminius babbled, turning back to Marcus Placidus. ‘We’re all on a mission to save the emperor…’

  ‘Ha!’ Marcus Placidus said. ‘A likely story. I have my orders. And my orders are to secure your arrest and send you back to the provincial governor. I…’

  But he stopped abruptly at the noise from the booth entrance. Flaminius swung round to see Drustica, bloody sword in hand, standing over the body of the first legionary. Shouts and shrieks came from the people in the bar. The second legionary, face pale, lunged at the warrior woman. Flaminius drew his own sword and cut him down before he could reach her. Acco and Teutorix scrambled over the table and flung themselves at the remaining two legionaries.

  As pandemonium broke out in the bar, Flaminius turned back to Marcus Placidus. All of a sudden he noticed that the man, who was crouching back in fear against the back wall of the booth, also wore a brooch in the form of a lance-head.

  He was about to speak, to explain, to tell Marcus Placidus how vital it was that they should get to Rome and warn the emperor before his wife’s birthday, when the assassins plotted to kill him. But before he could open his mouth, he heard shouts and screams and grisly sounds from behind him. Swinging round again he saw that the three Carvettians were now fighting their way through the bar, which was rapidly losing customers, either through the doors or to the warriors’ gory blades. Flaminius glanced at Marcus Placidus again, opened his mouth to speak, and thought better of it.

  ‘Come, Gaius!’ Drustica cried across the bar. ‘Let us leave this place!’

  Flaminius rushed after his companions. As he did so, the last of the living patrons fled, panic stricken, out of the door into the courtyard. Drustica, Acco and Teutorix raced outside after them and Flaminius followed, groaning.

  Out in the courtyard the exodus continued as the patrons streamed out through the main gate. Two grooms, halfway through saddling a horse, looked on, mouths wide with amazement as the running figures passed them on both sides. Seeing the Carvettians appear with their bloody blades, they bolted.

  The tethered horse neighed and reared up. Drustica wiped and sheathed her sword, then caught the trailing reins and soothed the horse. Acco and Teutorix found another horse and led it by the reins to join her.

  She turned as Flaminius approached.

  ‘Get up behind me,’ she said, as if everything was still normal, and then she leapt astride the steed. Shaking his head, Flaminius clambered up behind her. Acco and Teutorix mounted their own stolen horse, and they all rode out into the streets beyond.

  Legionaries from the garrison were hurrying towards them, shoving their way through the streams of fleeing people. Drustica rode straight for them, drawing her sword and swinging it about her. Teutorix whirled his sling and sent a man flying with a staved in skull. The legionaries scattered.

  The hooves struck sparks from the cobbles as they rode out of town.

  They found sanctuary from their pursuers, who galloped off down the road without realising their absence, in a wood on a hill looking down on the town. Rutupiae was still disturbed, seething like an anthill. Beyond the grid of streets and buildings, boats lay at anchor in the tranquil harbour that opened out into the estuary, beyond which the blue grey waters of the sea were visible.

  The sun was beginning to set behind them, throwing long shadows across the grass. Flaminius got down painfully off the horse. Drustica grinned down at him while Acco and Teutorix also dismounted and rubbed at their sore thighs.

  ‘We escaped,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Flaminius flatly.

  ‘You are not happy,’ Drustica told him, concerned. ‘What is it?’

  Flaminius indicated the town and its harbour. ‘We didn’t want to escape, we wanted to wait for the tide to turn so we could get ourselves passage on a boat to Gaul.’

  Drustica looked so downcast Flaminius couldn’t carry on feeling angry with her. ‘Alright,’ he told her, ‘here’s the plan. We sneak back in at nightfall and try to secure passage on the boat.’

  ‘It will be difficult,’ said Acco, looking repentant. ‘We have stirred them up now, have we not?’

  Flaminius nodded, then shrugged. He was beginning to wonder if he wouldn’t have been better staying with Medea.

  ‘Do you suppose it will even be possible now?’ Teutorix added dolefully.


  ‘We must try!’ Flaminius insisted, and they nodded, unspeaking.

  They waited for night to fall. As they did so, it came on to rain. ‘What will we do?’ Drustica said anxiously. ‘What will we do when night falls?’

  Flaminius motioned her to silence as he caught the drumming of hoofs from beyond the screen of bushes. Peering through the rain he saw the group of auxiliary troopers who had been searching for them gathered on the roadway, their armour glinting in the gloom.

  ‘Listen to me,’ said the decurion in charge, a wiry Batavian, as his men listened truculently. ‘We know that a known fugitive, proscribed on the orders of the provincial governor himself, and his Caledonian accomplices, are still at large in this area. We’ve not been able to find them in the surrounding area. They must have doubled back to Rutupiae! It seems likely that they’re hoping to get across to Gaul. We can’t let that happen. We’ll withdraw to the town and ensure that all roads are heavily guarded.’

  The auxiliary decurion reined his horse and splashed off down the road to Rutupiae, followed by his men.

  ‘That’s really going to make things difficult,’ Flaminius told his Carvettian companions. ‘We’ve got to find some way to get back into the town, and to the harbour.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I suppose we could go to Dubris[23], or Lemanis[24], and try there. But Dubris is the base of the British fleet, and it’s a busier port than Rutupiae.’

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ Acco asked. ‘More ships.’

  Flaminius shook his head. ‘Yes, but also more guards to catch us. And Lemanis is miles away. It would slow us down considerably if we were to go there. And remember we have to be in Rome as soon as possible.’

  ‘It’s dark now,’ Drustica said some time after. It was true, shades of night had crept up like the hungry ghosts of Avernus as the rain eased off, and now all was sombre and funereal. Gloomily, Flaminius gazed towards the only lights visible, the town itself. How soon before the boat departed? Or had it already gone?

  ‘We’d better chance it,’ he muttered. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Hyah!’ The warrior woman spurred her horse into a gallop and they rode down onto the highway, followed by Acco and Teutorix on their own horse, then in the direction of the town.

  As they rode, Flaminius wondered how the hell they would get as far as the harbour. He’d been thinking about it ever since the auxiliaries had ridden away, but had reached no conclusion. Now there was only one thing for it, to ride and bluster their way in and trust to luck. What luck?

  ‘Who goes there?’

  The voice rapped out from the gloom up ahead as they approached the town. Flaminius couldn’t see the speaker. ‘This road is blocked,’ it added. ‘You can’t go this way. Go back the way you came, citizens. Fugitives are at large.’

  ‘We bring a special message from the provincial governor!’ Drustica yelled. ‘Out of the way!’

  As Flaminius stared at her, she rode straight into what turned out to be a group of legionaries. They scattered as she approached, dropping shields and spears clanging onto the road surface as they did so. Astounded by her audacity, Acco and Teutorix rode after her.

  To Flaminius’ surprise, as they approached the well-lit town Drustica galloped off the road followed by the other two, and immediately they vaulted a drainage ditch then struck out across the fields, leaving the pursuing legionaries far behind. Shouts and cries of alarm drifted through the night.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Flaminius cried, looking back. As he did, the town gates opened and a troop of auxiliaries rode out, some holding torches to illuminate the night.

  ‘We don’t want to go back into the town,’ Drustica said. ‘They’ll slaughter us. We want to get aboard that boat.’

  She reined the horse at the far end of the town wall, where it met the shore of the estuary. Here Flaminius jumped down, followed by Drustica, and the two warriors soon joined them. They slapped their horses’ rumps and sent them both galloping off into the darkness.

  The boat was still out there, riding at anchor in the roadstead, illuminated by a huge lamp in the prow.

  ‘Now what?’ Flaminius asked.

  ‘Swim,’ said Drustica, and leapt off the cliff.

  She hit the water with an audible splash and started swimming powerfully towards the waiting boat, carrying her sheathed sword in one hand and paddling dexterously with the other. Acco and Teutorix followed immediately afterwards. Flaminius gave the scene a grimace, then struggled out of his armour—that would only hamper him now—flung down his sword—after all, he’d stolen the thing—and leapt in after her.

  A quarter of an hour later they were all treading water only a dozen yards from the bobbing boat. Crewmen and passengers were visible on deck, dully watching the town, which was still in a state of uproar as patrols searched the houses for the escaped fugitives. They did not realise that Flaminius and his British allies were already here in the water.

  ‘Tide’s turning, cap’n,’ came a call.

  The captain on the poop deck shouted back, ‘Haul anchor. Begin rowing her out into the estuary.’

  ‘We’d better do something,’ Flaminius said, swimming in Drustica’s direction, ‘or we’ll be left behind.’ Her face was a pale blob in the darkness, but he saw her nod.

  Flaminius swam slowly and quietly to the side of the ship, as far from the lantern and the watching passengers as he could manage, and as the oars began to splash the harbour waters, he found a way to clamber up the rounded hull. Drustica and her fellow Carvettians followed him and they peered over the gunwale, left and right like anxious rodents, to find this section of deck deserted. Flaminius straddled the gunwale and hauled Drustica up beside him. Acco and Teutorix copied them. Then they all dropped lightly to the deck.

  Shouted orders drifted from the stern. The passengers were below, the crew busied itself above in the rigging as the sails bellied out in the wind.

  ‘Head for the hold,’ Flaminius hissed, dripping. ‘We need to find somewhere to conceal ourselves.’

  They scurried over the deck to a hatch. Unbattening it, Flaminius revealed a dark space below from which came a stench of uncured hides and badly kept seafood. The sound of approaching sailors galvanised him and he jumped down into the darkness. Landing in a pile of rope, he looked up as the shaft of light from the hatch was cut off. His Carvettian companions were still following him.

  ‘Close it behind you!’ he hissed. Teutorix’s burly silhouetted form nodded, reached out and shut the hatch. Flaminius heard the thumps as the others dropped down beside him.

  ‘Now we’d better find somewhere we won’t be discovered,’ he told them.

  Blindly, with their hands outstretched, they explored the hold. The creaking boat entered the faster waters of the estuary and the vessel picked up speed. At last Flaminius found a group of bales and boxes behind which was a narrow space between cargo and hull. He hissed to his companions. As rats squeaked in the scuppers around them and the creak of the strakes and the wind whistling in the rigging drifted down to Flaminius’ ears, they took refuge.

  ‘Will we be safe, Gaius?’ Drustica whispered.

  ‘Luckily we got aboard without anyone seeing us, so I don’t see why not,’ Flaminius replied. ‘That was good thinking.’ Maybe his Carvettian companions weren’t such a liability after all.

  He was wet through and felt like he might be developing a cold. All the same, it was good to be turning his back on Britain, to be on the road to Rome at last. He began to squeeze the water from his clothes and the Carvettians copied him.

  ‘I’ll keep first watch,’ Drustica offered.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Flaminius. ‘Acco next, then Teutorix. I’ll take last watch.’ Weary, he rested his head on a convenient bale and fell asleep.

  He awoke to find sunlight streaming in through the open hatch above. When he moved, he found his clothes had dried crustily on his body. Grimacing with displeasure, he raised his head to see Drustica sitting nearby, sword across her legs. She seemed
to be listening intently. Acco and Teutorix were both asleep. What had happened to the watch he’d established was a mystery.

  Copying Drustica, Flaminius cocked his head. He realised that there was no sense of motion from the ship, that the whipping crack of the shrouds had died away, and that the wind was no longer whistling in the rigging. He turned to Drustica who looked at him and raised a finger for silence.

  ‘Gaul?’ he hissed. She nodded shortly.

  A shadow blocked off the hatch and a sailor began to descend. Drustica shook Acco and Teutorix into wakefulness then began to unsheathe her sword. Flaminius reached out and gripped her wrist as the two Carvettian men looked around blearily. Drustica looked at him and he scowled, shook his head.

  The sailor thumped across the strakes in the direction of the cargo, followed by two more who with him returned soon after carrying boxes. They were beginning to offload. It looked like the ship had reached its destination, Gesoriacum[25]. But their hiding place was soon going to be exposed. Flaminius bit his lip and looked at Drustica again. Her sword was still half unsheathed.

  The sailors huffed and panted as they manhandled the boxes back up the companionway. As soon as the last of them vanished out of sight, Flaminius looked round the hold. The men would soon be back for the rest of the cargo. Could the four of them mingle with the passengers and escape that way? Sunlight streamed down the hatch. If only they had reached the port under cover of darkness.

  ‘Where’s your sword?’ Drustica hissed.

  He looked at her. ‘I left it behind in Britain,’ he said.

  ‘You left it behind?’ Drustica was incredulous. So were Acco and Teutorix. ‘We have to fight our way to Rome and you left your sword behind…?’

  ‘With any luck,’ Flaminius said, nettled, ‘we won’t have to fight.’

  He got up and scrambled over to the companionway. Looking up he saw a square of blue sky framed by the hatch. No one was about. He glanced back.

  ‘Time we had a look around,’ he said.