The mob were out in force behind the ropes that cordoned off the stake; the arena might provide more in the way of excitement, but it was not every day they had the opportunity to watch a citizen of consular rank burn. No clean strike with an axe for Scribonianus. A traitor’s death for a traitor.
The poor deluded fool must have convinced himself he would be sent into exile and somehow escape death. When the magistrate read out the sentence he had begun mewing in a disturbing, childlike way that reminded Claudius of a dog whimpering in its sleep. Did the man have no dignity? He began pleading as soon as he saw the raw baulk of timber with its chains and the pile of pitch-soaked brushwood at its base. ‘Caesar.’ The high-pitched cry echoed across the execution ground. ‘Not this, I beg you. I throw myself upon your mercy. Remember my long service to the Empire. It must have some value. Caesar, please.’
The prisoner’s shouts were greeted with laughter and from the crowd a dozen voices mimicked the condemned man, but Claudius kept his face cold. He closed his ears to Scribonianus’s increasingly urgent cries and watched. Watched as the former governor was chained to the post and the brushwood piled high around his feet. Watched as the torch was put to the wood and the pitch-fuelled flames exploded in an instant. Watched as the fiery breath first consumed Scribonianus’s clothing, then his flesh. Watched as his adversary’s face melted from his skull like candlewax.
So die the enemies of Rome.
Tiberius had said ruling Rome was like taking a wolf by the ears, and it was true. Loosen your grip just a fraction and the wolf would turn on you. Scribonianus had not been the first, nor would he be the last, Claudius reflected, trying not to breathe in the stink of roasting flesh as he was carried past the smouldering, blackened ruin that had once been a man. He had never wanted this. Truly he had not. He had fought long and hard for a return to the Republic. Had risked his life for it. But it was for the best. If chance had not given him the imperial purple, the plotters would have served him in the same way as Caligula’s wife and daughter, butchered on a silken carpet.
His mind went back to the moment the heavy curtain had been drawn aside, exposing his pathetic refuge on the palace balcony. He had stared death in the face. Seen it in the wild eyes of the Praetorian who believed he had discovered another of Caligula’s assassins. Then had come that unforgettable moment of release when the man had recognized him; when the sword raised to strike him down was instead raised in salute. ‘Senator Claudius?’ A long, terrifying pause. ‘Hail, Caesar!’
Sometimes he had difficulty believing he’d heard the words.
Narcissus, who else, had charmed, bribed and badgered the German faction of the Praetorian Guard to put the succession in place for just such an eventuality as this. It had cost 15,000 sesterces for each Praetorian, more for the officers. Expensive, but not excessive, for an Empire. From the palace, Claudius had been taken in a litter to the Castra Praetoria, the great red-brick Praetorian barracks to the north of the city. He learned later that he appeared so downcast as he was borne through the streets by burly, heavily armed legionaries that sympathetic Romans mourned an innocent man being taken to his execution. Even when the Guard proclaimed him, survival was not certain. There were those in the senate who would sooner have seen him dead.
The crisis had hung in the balance as senators bickered over the merits of Republic or Empire. In the meantime, Narcissus had carefully salted the mob with supporters, and when a senator who had been well paid for just this moment finally stood up and mentioned the name of Claudius, the cry was taken up by a dozen more of the crowd, then twenty, then fifty, until eventually thousands chanted his name. Within the hour he had marched on the Senate with four thousand trained soldiers at his back, to take his unwanted and undeserved place in history.
Yet, three years on, he still had the wolf by the ears. When he looked out over the Senate, what did he see? Enemies? Yes; they were all there in plain sight, the ones who hated or envied him. But what of the friend with the dagger beneath his toga? What of the assassin who came in the night? When they stared at him, he knew they were searching for some sign of weakness. Weakness! How he despised the word. It had followed him since the day he was born. He was a weak baby, his mother said. A weak child. A cripple who couldn’t take part in boys’ games; who became the helpless target of his peers’ cruelty.
If they ever discovered the true extent of his weakness they would be on him like a pack of rabid dogs. He slumped back in his litter and closed his eyes. He needed the support of the army. He needed a triumph, a triumph such as no Emperor had been offered before. Only one man could deliver it. He must trust Narcissus.
VII
Bersheba was nervous.
Rufus could feel the tension in her shoulders and from time to time she would raise her trunk and cautiously sniff the air. Her normally certain steps were uncharacteristically hesitant. Occasionally she would stop altogether — a massive grey dam — causing the long column to concertina behind them and the overseers to scream abuse.
He studied his surroundings to see if he could identify the source of her concern. Sometimes the scent of wolf or some other predator would affect her, but he could see no sign of any danger. A pair of young buzzards circled high above, their shrill ‘ky-iiiik’ cries sharp in the clear air. He was tired and not a little nervous himself. He had been woken in the night by the shuffling of feet and the muffled clink of armour shortly after drifting into unconsciousness. It was pitch dark, so he could see nothing, but there must have been some movement of men from the front to the rear of the column. It was unusual, but not unknown. Nevertheless, he had cursed them for his hours of lost sleep.
The baggage train snaked through the centre of a steep-sided, wooded valley with a small stream wandering along it. On each side of the stream for a hundred paces the terrain was flat water meadow: sweet, knee-high grass scattered liberally with tiny flowers of blue and yellow. The meadow looked inviting, but the slippery sward made difficult going for the heavy-laden wagons and progress was slow. The cart containing Bersheba’s feed had already become bogged down twice and they’d had to enlist a dozen slaves to push it clear. He prayed no one was wondering why such a light load should cause such a problem, and scattered the straw a little thicker across the cart’s floor. A wide gap was developing between the drab-clothed baggage minders and the glittering plate armour of the close-ranked legionary formation ahead of them. As Rufus watched, a mounted officer galloped back to confront the quartermaster responsible for the Second’s transport.
‘If you don’t get this column moving and catch up with the main force, General Vespasian will have your testicles for a paperweight and your cock for a fly whisk,’ the horseman roared.
The quartermaster stared back at him contemptuously. He was a veteran of campaigns from the dusty African plains to the snowy wastes of Germania. He had been shouted at before and was not going to be cowed by any young staff peacock. ‘If the legate thinks he can move this shambles any faster than it’s going he can have any part of me he likes, and I’ll throw in my poor old piles as a bonus. The fact is,’ he said with exaggerated patience, ‘whoever led us into this mud patch didn’t take any account of my wagons. The only way we’re going to catch up in the next hour is if you stop, and we both know Vespasian isn’t going to do that. So you go back there and tell him we’re doing the best we can, and that we’ll make better time once we’re out of this swamp.’
Rufus heard the younger man suggest that the gap in the column threatened the security of the legion. The quartermaster took a long look at the receding backs of the legionaries and spat on the grass beside the officer’s horse.
‘The more time we spend standing here arguing the worse it’s going to get. Send back a squadron of cavalry if you like, but by the time you’ve got them organized I’ll probably be sitting in my tent drinking wine and dreaming of women, which is what I generally do of an evening.’ He pointed to the thin line of auxiliary infantrymen escorting the baggage train.
‘We’ve barely seen a sign of the enemy for a week, and these lads are more than a match for a few spearmen.’
‘The responsibility is yours, then.’
‘The responsibility was always mine, sonny. That’s what they pay me for, and nothing you pretty boys who wipe the legate’s backside say will make it different.’
The young officer muttered an obscenity and galloped off after the main column, his horse’s flying hooves spattering the quartermaster with muddy sod. For a moment the man stood grinning, pleased with his small victory, then he turned on the soldiers who had stopped to listen to the argument. ‘What do you layabouts think you’re looking at? Get back there and get these tortoises on the move. Use the whip if you have to. I want this shambles back with the main force before they make camp. Move, you lazy bastards.’
‘The beating heart of the Empire.’ The mild voice came from just below Rufus’s left foot and he looked down to see Narcissus walking by Bersheba’s side, four of his Celtic bodyguards at his back. The Greek still wore native clothes, but he was clean-shaven and his bald head glowed pink in the early-afternoon sun. He noticed Rufus’s puzzled look. ‘Men like these,’ he explained, nodding to where the quartermaster stood shouting out his commands, ‘are the beating heart of the Empire, for without them there would be no Empire.’
‘Did a philosopher write that?’ When Rufus had been an animal trainer for the arena, his master had paid for the young slave to be taught to read and write and given him access to an extensive library. But Fronto had been accused by one of Caligula’s aides of cheating the young Emperor and Rufus’s chances of freedom had died with the trader.
Narcissus laughed. ‘Yes, it sounds like something Cicero would have put in one of his speeches, but I’m afraid it’s all mine. I quite like it. I must write it down and expand upon it. Narcissus’s History Of, and Peroration Upon, the Empire and its Officials. It should sell well, don’t you think?’
Rufus smiled politely. ‘I didn’t expect to see you again so soon,’ he said, casting a wary eye towards the cart, where Britte sat beside a boisterous Gaius watching them suspiciously. Narcissus followed his gaze and shook his head ruefully.
‘Women. They are such fickle creatures. I have been wooing a certain haughty lady who is important to our cause, but I fear she will be an expensive mistress.’ Rufus was surprised. This was hardly an appropriate time for romance, and Narcissus seemed the least romantic of men. ‘Do you notice anything different?’ The Greek changed the subject abruptly.
Rufus shrugged. ‘You seem to have lost your horses and you shaved this morning. I haven’t shaved for a week.’
‘Your personal hygiene is of no interest to me. And you know very well no sensible horse will come anywhere near this lumbering monster.’ He patted Bersheba on the shoulder to show no offence was meant. ‘No, do you notice anything about your surroundings?’
Rufus looked around him. Nothing seemed to have changed in the last hour. The valley was perhaps a little wider, the legionary formation ahead of them a little further in the distance. But there was something. The column itself. It seemed… thicker? The crowd of baggage slaves about him was packed closer and many of them were wearing their cloaks despite the afternoon heat. He gave Narcissus an enquiring look, but the Greek’s only reply was an infuriatingly enigmatic smile as he kept pace by Bersheba’s side.
It was one of those peculiarly beautiful British days when sharp, clean air and a cloudless sky seemed to combine to create an effervescence in the blood: a heady elixir that heightened the senses but, conversely, lowered the guard. Rufus felt the moment it changed, and he saw Narcissus’s expression turn serious as he felt it too. Two heartbeats. A tiny oasis of calm in the midst of a thunderstorm. An unnatural stillness, as if for an instant the entire universe, god, animal and man, paused to take breath.
A pair of fat wood pigeons exploded from the trees at the edge of Rufus’s vision. The earth sprouted men.
Rufus’s eyes didn’t believe what they were seeing. There must have been five hundred warriors hidden among the trees, but such was the level of concealment it seemed their gods had made them part of the landscape. One moment the valley was a tranquil forest scene, the next it was filled by an avenging army with a single objective.
Bersheba.
For the first heart-stopping instant of the charge the Celtic warriors ran in silence, but when they had covered half a dozen paces the air was split as five hundred throats united in a single scream that chilled Rufus’s blood and made Bersheba shift uneasily between his knees. They could have attacked anywhere along the column, but their chieftain had bided his time until the Emperor’s elephant was directly opposite his ambush. Every eye in that sweating, racing mass of men was focused on her. Every sword and every spear thirsted for her blood. None of the warriors wore armour, because this was a lightning attack designed to break the thin screen of auxiliary troops. Its power was in the speed and momentum of the attackers, which would take them through and beyond the defensive line and into the mass of unarmed baggage slaves. To slaughter. To Bersheba.
‘So that is their intent?’ Narcissus said calmly. ‘Take your elephant and your family to the far side of the column. You will be safe there.’
Safe?
Only now did Rufus notice the figures around them shrugging off their thick cloaks, revealing the pot helmets with their neck-protectors and cheek-pieces, the faded red tunics, and the gleaming plate armour — the lorica segmentata — of the legionary heavy infantry that clinked rhythmically as they marched. They were already in their sections and they moved purposefully through the auxiliaries to form a double line, perhaps two hundred paces in length, precisely where the British attack would strike. The first Britons were still fifty yards away when, at a shouted order, the legionaries hefted their brightly painted rectangular shields shoulder high and locked them in an impenetrable defensive wall. A second order and the razor-edged short swords they carried on their right hips sang free from their scabbards in a single practised movement.
Another enemy might have hesitated; might have seen their defeat in that wall of painted shields. But not this enemy. From his position on Bersheba’s shoulders Rufus saw them, not now as an amorphous mass, but as individuals, mouths gaping and eyes bulging with pent-up hate. They fought naked from the waist upwards, though it was difficult to tell because their bodies were so densely covered in intricate blue-veined tattoos they appeared clothed. Each man was magnificently muscled and carried a seven-foot throwing spear or a heavy, straight sword. Many had limed their long hair into jagged spikes that made them appear even taller than they were. Their feet were bare, the better to find purchase on the slippery grass. Every one was a warrior, bred for battle.
The attack had no tactical formation, but it seethed with bloodthirsty intent. The fastest and strongest gradually emerged from the pack to take the lead. They were the champions, the battering rams who would smash great gaps in the enemy line and allow the long swords the space to carve left and right, cutting bone and sinew and enlarging the break still further. But the men facing them behind the big shields were warriors too. Each soldier of the Second Augusta was a battle-hardened veteran of the German frontier wars. He had eaten and passed wind, served and suffered, laughed and cried with the comrades to his left and right for longer than he cared to remember. They were his family and he trusted them, quite literally, with his life. For if their sword arms should fail them after an hour of hard fighting, or the curve-edged shields that protected them give way before a charging enemy, they were all dead. So he trusted them. And they trusted him. They had confidence, because they were the best-equipped army in the world and they knew it.
‘The Second won’t use their throwing spears,’ Narcissus predicted. ‘They want them in tight, buckle to buckle, where they will become entangled.’ For the first time Rufus noticed that the front rank of legionaries had embedded the heavy metal-pointed spears they carried into the dry ground at the rear of the line, while
the second rank held the heavy spears shoulder high in two hands ready to stab at any exposed throat or chest which showed itself.
Closer now, so Rufus could actually hear the muted thunder of a thousand charging feet slamming into the turf above the panicked gabble of voices around him. With twenty paces between the opposing forces one man broke clear of the other attackers, not a giant, but with long legs that flew across the grass.
‘Hold. Hold. Hold.’ The shout of a centurion was repeated along the line by the double-pay men.
The warrior with the long legs screamed a mindless, high-pitched message filled with venom and launched himself from ten paces, feet first, at the painted insignia of a legionary shield. It was a suicidal one-man bid to crack open the Roman line that appeared as if it must succeed. But the Romans were ready.
‘Now… brace!’ The centurion roared his command. Three hundred forearms tensed in the leather shield-straps, three hundred fists tightened on the hand grip behind the heavy bronze boss and three hundred shoulders pushed forward against the bare wood of the shield’s rear surface. The attacker struck the centre of the line with the force of a charging bullock, but the shock of his flying leap was absorbed not only by the man whose shield he had targeted, but by those on his right and left who had, at the last instant, edged their own shields behind his. The Briton was smashed backwards to sprawl dazed in front of the shield wall and in the same second fifty of his fellow tribesmen hit the legionary line in an avalanche of bodies with all the power of hate behind it. When they met, the very air shook with the impact. The Roman shield wall buckled and contorted, but, incredibly, it held, and the frustrated warriors leapt to their feet and began pounding the hated insignia with their swords. But a long sword needs room to be swung and before they could make more than two or three swingeing cuts the main British force was crushing them forward against the Roman line. Trapped between the two pressures, they could only jab ineffectually at the helmeted heads showing behind the shields. Now it was time for the scorpion sting of the gladius. The legionaries’ short swords with their needle-sharp triangular points had been designed for just this close work. Rufus heard the shrieks of surprise and pain as the first Britons died, their exposed bellies pierced as the defenders stabbed between their big shields at the nearest foe and wrenched the blades free in the classic gutting stroke. From between each pair of legionaries, the spears of the second rank darted and jabbed at neck, face and shoulder, ripping at eyes and throats. The first blood of the afternoon stained the crushed blooms of the blue and yellow flowers and ran down to nourish the fertile earth of the meadow.
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