‘Callistus, prepare my chair and call an emergency session of the Senate.’
He had kept his face suitably grim as he made the short journey from the Palatine to the forum. As his bearers reached the foot of the Clivus Palatinus he could see that a crowd had already gathered among the marble columns and the gleaming temples along the Via Sacra. The steps of the Domus Publica and the frontage of the House of the Vestals nearby were packed with staring, wide-eyed faces. Of course the mob would be aware of some impending crisis, but he ignored every shouted call for information. Instead, he admired the perfect proportions of the temple of Divine Julius and paid a silent tribute at the little shrine to Venus Cloacina. Then he was there, in that hallowed place. The Senate House.
Why was it only here that he truly felt like an Emperor; when he was faced by his rivals, his enemies and his detractors? Look at them, dewy-eyed and solemn, yet every one of them exulting in his discomfort. Each ready to take what advantage they could from his dilemma. Why, Galba was even snivelling like a child, no doubt lamenting the greatest military disaster since Varus lost his legions among the swamps of the Teutoberg forest. Well, let him snivel. It was difficult to keep from feeling smug. No. The mask must not slip. This was his time. Remember. The performance.
He looked out over the rows of tiered benches and felt the power rising in him, his brain taking on the icy sharpness of the surgeon’s scalpel. He kept his face immobile, and as the seconds stretched into minutes the fat backsides filled with aristocratic blood began to fidget on the worn white marble. Let them wait. The gods had given him a gift to offset the disabilities and the humiliations they had heaped upon him at the moment of his birth, but they had hidden it well. Only Augustus, that most prescient of Emperors, had recognized it. Had seen that, while Claudius dribbled and stuttered like the most ill-starred lunatic when confronted on equal terms by anything born of mortal woman, he was still capable of charming, seducing and convincing when he spoke to an audience. What had the old man written to his grandmother? Oh yes. The pompous, growling voice filled his head as if he were mimicking it. ‘Confound me, dear Livia, if I am not surprised that your grandson could please me with his declaiming. How in the world anyone who is so unclear in his conversation can speak with such clarity and propriety when he declaims is more than I can see.’
He felt a smile threatening at the memory, but was just able to suppress it. Now. Now was the time. He got to his feet, hitching the toga over his shoulder. His eyes ranged over the benches once more, acknowledging the powerful and the influential, ignoring the others. ‘Senators of Rome.’ He projected his voice so that it seemed to rattle from the marble columns of the house, and those in the front ranks of the crowd beyond the ropes outside the building could hear each word and pass it on to those behind. ‘Senators of Rome, I have called you here on a matter of the gravest importance. The honour — no, the very future of the Empire lies in the balance.’
A murmur of dismay ran through the white-clad ranks on the benches. He raised his hand for quiet.
‘General Aulus Plautius, whom all here know, and I tasked with the long overdue annexation of the peoples of Britain, reports a set-back. The British tribes, which he had supposed defeated, have united under the command of a new and resourceful leader, Caratacus, king of the Catuvellauni. This Caratacus now gathers a mighty host to his standard, a host which threatens the very existence of General Plautius’s army. Four Roman legions — four, I say — are now held with the point of Caratacus’s spear at their throat, beyond reach of their supplies, without reserves, with no hope of succour, unless,’ he paused to let his words and their message be absorbed, ‘unless we, the conscience and the conviction of the Empire, give them hope.’
He stopped again and allowed his head to drop slightly. His voice seemed quieter, but somehow still reached every ear he intended it to reach.
‘I blame myself for placing Rome’s bravest and most honoured in such deadly peril. General Plautius asked for more troops — indeed, he outlined this very situation — but I — and you — denied them to him.’ He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe his own foolishness, and with that one act included every man in the Senate House in his guilt. ‘Too expensive, we said. We need them in the east, we said.’ His voice rose in volume again, its power growing with each word. ‘What price do we put now on Roman blood, what price on Roman honour? Is there any price we would not pay, any gift we would not give, to turn defeat into victory?’
‘No!’ ‘None!’ ‘Anything!’ The words were repeated along the benches, taken up by one senator after another, and he knew he had them. Had them all.
‘Then I propose we send the Eighth legion to the aid of our beleaguered commander. I have already taken the liberty of alerting their legate at his base in Dacia, and they have begun a forced march through the Alpine passes.’
There was a murmur of assent, but one senator ventured his concern. ‘Will a single legion be proof against an enemy who have the measure of four already?’
Claudius allowed himself a grave smile. Thank you, Lucius Vitellius, for playing your part. You will have your reward.
‘Not just a single legion, Vitellius. The expedition will be accompanied by a force consisting of the Praetorian Guard and auxiliary cavalry, which is equal to a second legion.’
He waited until the full impact of his words was rewarded by a murmur of surprise. The Praetorian Guard was the elite of the Roman army, headquartered in Rome and the personal bodyguard of the Emperor. He never went anywhere without them, or they without him.
‘Yes, senators of Rome, I, an old man, will personally lead the relief force.’ He let his eyes range across the tiered benches. ‘But who will join me? You? You? Or you? Will you come to General Plautius’s aid and redeem the glory of Rome?’
What could they do, when the senator seated next to them was clamouring to be included? To gainsay him would be to admit cowardice or lack of patriotism. So one by one his enemies stood and clamoured with the rest. And, one by one, he swept them up.
‘Yes, you brave Marcus Vinicius. I accept your gracious offer. Valerius Asiaticus, you live up to your noble name. Lucius Sulpicius Galba, I am humbled by your sacrifice and will willingly serve beside you. Gallus, old friend, and now comrade.’
One after the other he netted them, the cunning and the ambitious, the plotters and the backstabbers, until every danger of consular or senatorial rank was safely in his basket. When it was done he studied his haul like a hunter weighing his bag at the end of a long day. Asiaticus and Vinicius had both married into the imperial family, and been involved in the plot to kill Caligula. But for the accident of Claudius’s discovery by the Praetorian Guard, Vinicius could have been sitting here in his stead, for he had been nominated by the plotters to replace the Emperor. Nobody had more reason for hate than he. Gallus was a fool, but he could not be left behind when he wore his contempt for the Emperor like a badge of honour and waved his ambition like a flag. Sulpicius Galba was more dangerous still, since he was the most able of them all, and kept his ambition hidden behind his patrician scowl. Yet he talked ceaselessly of what was needed to make Rome great again, and all knew that he believed what was needed was Lucius Sulpicius Galba.
It could not have gone better, and when he had them eating from his hand like caged lovebirds, he convinced them to appoint his most trusted ally, Lucius Vitellius, to govern in his stead during the campaign.
Yet, when it was over, elation had been replaced by a strange melancholy. Would there ever be another day like this? Would he ever reach these heights again? He knew he had only won a brief respite from the pressures ranged against him. To truly cement his position he needed a victory and a triumph.
So he had returned to the Palatine — to arm himself for war.
XXI
Why don’t they come?
‘Why don’t they attack?’
Caratacus kept his eyes on the far bank where the Romans waited, the tents of their geometrically p
recise encampments stretching as far as the horizon. It was the eighth day he had watched them. The sky above the camps was made hazy by the smoke from a thousand cooking fires. On the flatland beyond the river he could see squadrons of cavalry wheeling and manoeuvring as they’d done every evening for the past week. The Roman engineers had begun building three separate bridges within hours of their arrival. They were sited four hundred paces apart, which Plautius obviously believed was far enough to stretch the British forces but close enough for each bridgehead to support the other in case of need. But the work lacked urgency and each slim artery seemed to progress only a few feet a day, inching out as if the Romans were nervous of reaching the British bank. At this rate it could be weeks.
‘I don’t know, Bodvoc. Perhaps they are frightened of us.’
The Regni war chief didn’t smile. ‘We have supplies for only another few days.’
‘So do the Romans.’ It was true. His spies had reported a dwindling stream of wagons reaching the four great legionary encampments. But the Roman commander, Plautius, had cut his men’s rations by a quarter to eke out his food. Caratacus knew that if he did the same his army would melt away around him. He could almost feel the ripening harvest calling to the farmers among his vast force. There had already been desertions among the Dumnonii; it seemed greed for gold could not out-weigh the reality of Rome’s legions massed on the other side of the river.
‘Scarach grumbles. He says if the Romans do not attack us, we should attack them.’
‘Scarach was born to grumble. He knows we cannot cross the river, but he howls like a wolf to impress the rest of the pack. They will come, and when they come we will defeat them.’
The utter conviction in his voice surprised him and seemed to convince Bodvoc, for the big man just nodded, and strode off the hill-top towards the circle of rough huts where the Regni had set up camp. Caratacus could see the bright flame of a funeral pyre outside the ring of huts. A change in the wind brought him the familiar reek of cooking fires and carelessly ejected shit. They had been fortunate so far; the disease that always followed an army on campaign had not found them yet. The few men who had died were already sick. If the Romans did not come soon it would be different.
He closed his eyes and his hand strayed to the brooch at his shoulder. Come now. Taranis, use your power to make them come. He inspected the men working below him, screened from the Romans by the uneven mound of sand-covered flood debris that lined the bank for miles up- and downstream. He knew he could not have chosen a better position. It was perfect.
From the point where Plautius had set up his garish pavilion it appeared the terrain on the north side of the river was a flat meadow which stretched for perhaps two hundred paces before sloping gently upwards to form the grassy hill. The Roman commander would calculate that he would lose men, maybe hundreds of men, making the crossing. But once they were on the British bank and formed up he would be certain that no matter how hard the British fought, the out-come was inevitable. What he did not know, and what Caratacus sacrificed to the gods each night to ensure he did not find out, was that the ‘meadow’ and its approaches had been turned into a killing ground.
The harmless-looking bank where the legionaries would disperse when they crossed was full of deep pits, dug each night by reluctant warriors who thought wielding a shovel was slaves’ work, but many of whom would live because the Roman line would be fractured before it had fully formed. When they emerged from the river in their cohorts, the Romans would march straight into an ambush from mixed squads of slingers and spearmen hidden in the hollows. Those who survived, and Caratacus acknowledged there would still be many, would be held back by their officers until they could form the disciplined lines which made them impossible to defeat. But the delay would give the British ambushers time to flee back to their comrades ready to cause more carnage. That was when the legions would realize they had walked into a trap. But by then it would be too late.
The meadow which looked so inviting from the safety of Plautius’s pavilion a mile away was in reality a featureless bog. In itself it would have made a formidable obstacle for heavily armoured men, but Caratacus’s fertile mind had added its own deadly refinements. He had ordered his men to carve thousands of wooden stakes sharpened to a point at each end. When they were ready, the stakes were jammed into the soft mud of the bog, with three feet above ground angled towards the advancing legionaries at groin height. When the stakes were fixed to his satisfaction, the British war leader ordered the small stream which ran through the centre of the bog to be dammed a few feet from where it met the river. Now the bog was a shallow lagoon which stretched for two miles along the British front and was laced with invisible gifts from the gods which would kill and maim. He could imagine the tight, orderly lines struggling through the placid waters, tripping and stumbling, then the first man going down with a scream, writhing against the unseen horror that had punctured his lower belly. Then the next, and the next, until the water turned red.
By the time they reached the temporary safety of dry soil, they would be exhausted and demoralized. That was when he would launch his first attack. It would be his elite: the champions of the Catuvellauni and the Trinovantes, the Regni and the Atrebates, the Durotriges and the Iceni — Britain’s mightiest warriors. They would smash the Roman line as it struggled to free itself from the grasping mud of the bog. The weight of the assault would force the Romans back into the ranks behind them, creating a tight-packed logjam into which the spearmen and slingers would cast their deadly rain of missiles. As his men screamed and died and drowned, Plautius would throw in reinforcements, but they would only add to the chaos, more cattle to the slaughter. That was what Caratacus counted upon; what he had planned for since the night his conversations with the slave Rufus had divulged Plautius’s fatal weakness. The Roman commander was under so much pressure to win a quick victory he would accept battle wherever he found it. Even on British terms. Togodumnus, in his stupidity and his arrogance, had unintentionally helped lay the trap. The easy victory on the first river could only have made Plautius more certain of his overwhelming superiority. Caratacus had led him onwards to this place, the doom of his army, in the certain knowledge that Plautius would follow as a dog follows a bitch in heat.
He waited on the hilltop until the sun was almost down, enjoying the aloneness of it and listening to the different sounds of the two camps; the Roman was silent apart from the occasional shouted order or strident trumpet call, while from behind him came the raucous clamour of men arguing and women shrieking. When would it start? Ah, there it was, the roar of massed voices singing some repetitive marching song. It happened every evening at this time and would last until just before daylight. Was this some Roman superstition — a rite to be performed on the eve of battle — or was Plautius attempting to keep the British warriors from their beds in the hope they would fight less well? Either way it would not affect the outcome of the battle.
But first the Romans had to come to him.
‘Why are they singing?’
‘Soldiers like to sing. They have few enough pleasures.’
Narcissus had taken an almost fatherly interest in Rufus since he had returned to the column. He had insisted the young slave enjoy the most nourishing foods from General Plautius’s personal supply: fillets of fish and breasts of fowl, great slabs of suckling pig and slices of succulent, fat-heavy beef. Rufus was pleased enough to accept the Greek’s unexpected generosity, but sometimes he couldn’t rid himself of an image of a calf being fattened up for slaughter.
‘They seem to be singing the same song over and over again.’
‘Yes. I believe it’s entitled “The March of Marius”. Some of the verses are quite obscene, but it has a rhythm that keeps going round in my head. I much prefer it to that other dirge, what is it? Oh yes. “The War Anthem of Mars” — it hardly stirs the blood, does it?’
They stood in silence for a while, listening to the pulsating chant, which always seemed to come f
rom their right, downstream. When Narcissus spoke again his voice took on a commanding edge and his words sent a shiver through the young slave. ‘It is time to fulfil your oath. Tomorrow after dusk I will send a messenger for you and your elephant. You will accompany them where they direct you, and when you reach your destination you will follow your orders to the letter. Is that clear?’
Rufus nodded. ‘Is it time, then?’
The Greek pursed his lips. It was something he had considered, but one element of the puzzle still remained to be put in place before the contents of Bersheba’s wagon could be revealed. ‘No, but you, I think, would be wise to wear the uniform of the Guard. And Rufus?’ Rufus stared at him. ‘Say nothing of this matter to anyone. Your life may depend upon it…’
Rufus returned to the baggage train, his mind ablaze with visions of battles and wounds and terrible ends. But men survived battles. He had fought before, when he had killed Dafyd, and at Cupido’s side when they had saved Caligula from the assassins, and again, on that awful day in the passageway from the theatre when the world had changed for ever. He thought of Cupido, the calm stillness of the man and the reassurance in his pewter-grey eyes, and knew that the gladiator would keep him safe, or, at the very least, save a place beside him in the feasting halls of his ancestors.
He didn’t expect to sleep that night, but when he woke at dawn his head was clear and his mind sharp. Neither was matched by the day, which was a sulphurous, brooding trial of airless heat crushed beneath a blood-red ceiling of low cloud. Soldiers called days like these ominous, and with good reason; a sky the colour of new offal seemed to be filled with omens for a legionary on the eve of battle. It was the kind of day Rufus had learned promised rain, and plenty of it, but the rain never came and the heat never abated. Instead, the air crackled with an almost physical tension. Men who had never exchanged a sour word cursed each other as they worked. Centurions lashed out with the thick vine sticks of their office at the slightest provocation. And there was no lack of provocation.
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