Marching With Caesar- Conquest of Gaul

by R. W. Peake

  That was the first glimmer of hope that Atilius might have a chance to escape with his life, and I pounced on it. “Atilius, this is very important. Did anyone else see you two together talking in the market?”

  For a moment, Atilius looked puzzled at my question, then just as quickly my hopes, and his, were dashed. “Talking sir? I wouldn’t say that we were talking. We didn’t exactly have a conversation, sir. She just let me know by…….you know how women are sir. It’s not what they say, it’s the way they look at you.”

  There was a chorus of groans from his comrades; they knew then that Atilius was doomed, except he still seemed to be oblivious to his rapidly approaching demise. He responded to the reaction of his friends by protesting, “You boys know I’m right, you just don’t want to say so in front of the Pilus Prior. A woman doesn’t have to tell you she wants you for you to get the message, you boys know that.”

  “Atilius, if what you say is true, why are her clothes ripped off?”

  I watched him closely as I asked the question; seeing the flicker of guilt flash across his face, my heart hardened towards Atilius in that instant. If I were convinced that he honestly thought that he was invited into the girl’s room, no matter what transpired, while it might not have changed his fate, it would at the very least make me more sympathetic and more inclined to seek some sort of alternative to what would probably be his punishment. But in that moment I saw that Atilius knew that what he was doing was wrong, if not morally then at the least against the law, and my sympathy for him vanished like a drop of water thrown into a sizzling pan. Regardless, Atilius was stubborn, although I imagine that by this point he realized he was fighting for his life and was not about to give up without putting up some sort of defense.

  “Sir, you know that some women like it……rough. They like to play at being afraid, and like to put up a struggle. It just spices things up a bit. That’s all that happened here, there wasn’t no harm meant. We were just having fun.”

  “It doesn’t look to me like she would agree, Atilius, I replied coldly. “So I guess you have a good reason why her throat’s cut?”

  Atilius at least possessed enough humanity at this point to look ashamed. “That was a mistake sir. The two men came busting through, and she began fighting me….”

  “Wait,” I interrupted, “I thought you just said she was already fighting you. Playing around, as you say, but still putting up a struggle.”

  He reluctantly nodded. “That’s true sir, but she really started putting on a show when those two came in. Before, she was bucking around and trying to throw me off of her, but that was just playing around, like I said. But the instant they came in, she had to make it look real, sir.”

  I was beginning to put this together, and I was struck by another thought. “Atilius, when exactly did she scratch you?”

  If he knew where I was going, he was either too frightened or too resigned to try to lie. “After I put paid to those two bastards sir.” He brightened for a moment. “It was a neat piece of work, if I do say so myself sir. You'd have been proud. I didn’t even get off her; I held her down with one hand, and I ran those bastards through with the other, neat as you please.”

  Immediately after the words left his mouth, he realized that he was not helping himself, a look of helplessness and resignation coming back to his face, settling there and ultimately never leaving.

  “So, once she saw you kill her father and brother, she started fighting back harder? Is that about the size of it?”

  I was making no attempt to hide my contempt and anger now, seeing out of the corner of my eye the head of one of the Gauls turn towards me to study me, obviously trying to divine whether or not my outrage was real, or was a show for them. Atilius did not answer; there was need to, but I was not done.

  “So she scratched you, and you cut her throat for it?”

  He stared at the floor, refusing to meet my eyes, now fully understanding what awaited him. There was no question in anyone’s mind that Atilius’ fate was sealed, at least among his comrades. I am sure the Gauls still believed that we would pull some sort of trick and Atilius would escape the punishment he deserved. Oh, we might flog him, but there was only one real punishment that was worthy of his crime, and we all knew it. The question in their minds was if we Romans would carry it out.

  With the interrogation done, I ordered Vibius, since he was the ranking Legionary, to bind Atilius, who submitted without protest. His tentmates surrounded him as we exited the house, followed by the three Gauls, and they immediately began calling for their friends and neighbors to surround us. In moments, before we could move halfway down the muddy street, we were completely encircled by a mob of very angry people. One of the three men, an older, scarred warrior with ginger colored hair and the long mustaches that was their mark of manhood, stood in front of me.

  “Give him to us, Roman.”

  It was a simple statement, not a request but a demand, and I felt my chest tighten. I knew we would give a good account of ourselves; I congratulated myself for making sure that the men donned their armor, weapons and shields, except there were only five of us, not counting Atilius, who I would only cut loose and arm as a last resort. No, I was going to have to use my brain for once. Stepping forward to stand directly in front of the Gaul, I positioned myself so that my men were directly behind me.

  “No.”

  I said it quietly, except my body language obviously sent a clear signal of my answer, causing the crowd to growl like it was some huge animal, which in a sense it was. Rome had disarmed all of the native townspeople except for the nobles and their household warriors some years before, but staves and axe handles are formidable weapons by themselves, and when there are a hundred or so people waving them about, someone is liable to get hurt.

  The Gaul smiled grimly, then with a nod of his head, indicated the mob around us. “Perhaps you do not understand the situation Roman. That was not a request. We can take him. All I have to do is give the word. Now, give him to us.”

  I stood looking him in the eye, not answering for a moment, then spoke quietly enough so that only he could hear. “He's going to die. And I can promise you that the manner of his death won’t be pretty. In fact, it’s going to be very much what would happen to him here, now, if we gave him to you and this mob. But this I will not do. He’s a Roman Legionary, and he’s subject to Roman military justice.”

  He snorted, his lip curling up in a sneer. “So you say, Roman. But you know as well as I do that these things have happened before, and the men involved were never properly punished. You may have conquered us, but we will show you that just because you have a boot on our neck, it does not mean we will lick it.”

  I could hear the bitterness, anger and frustration oozing through every word as he talked; I also knew that what he said was true, at least as far as Legionaries escaping punishment in the past. But the circumstances were different now; Gaul was conquered and we were ordered to ease up on the Gauls in order to try to win them over. The political situation dictated a change in the way we managed our relations with these people, and now that I was a Centurion, I was a representative of that new policy. However, I also knew that, just like Uxellodonum, there was a limit to how far we would allow ourselves to bend.

  “Consider this,” I said, in the same tone as before, conscious that my next words could tip us off the sword edge we were balanced on, “you could probably take our man,” he snorted again at my use of the word probably, but like Rome I was only going to bend so far. I leaned forward a little and repeated, “You could probably take our man, but at what cost? How many bodies would we leave behind? There are only five of us, that’s true, but we’re Caesar’s men, and from Caesar’s most favored and feared Legion.”

  I could see the beginning of doubt creep into his eyes, so I pressed harder.

  “And the one thing I can promise and you know that it’s no idle boast, that you may win a victory here, but this whole part of Narbo, and all the peopl
e who survived this initial fight would cease to exist. Do you want to be the man who'll be known by his people from now until the end of time as the one who destroyed the Gallic quarter and everyone in it?”

  He pursed his lips, then I saw his eyes dart around to the crowd, and I realized then that he was in as difficult a predicament as I was. True, he was the one to create this situation, yet now he was prone to being carried away by the flood just like we were. His status as a leader hung by a thread; if he was seen as weak, the mob was just as likely to turn on him as it was on us. Such is the changeable nature of the Gauls, as ever.

  “What's your name, by the way?” I asked, startling him back to reality.

  “Vetorodumnus,” he replied, clearly puzzled by my question.

  “Well, Vetorodumnus, my name is Titus Pullus. I’m the Pilus Prior of the Second Cohort of the 10th Legion. I’m going to give you my word as a Roman Centurion that this man will be punished in a manner that you'll find suitable. Do you know what the punishment for rape and murder in the Roman army is?”

  He nodded; it was well known throughout all of Gaul by this time the various punishments that we employed.

  “If that's not the punishment rendered for Gregarius Atilius, then I'll return, and offer myself in his place for whatever punishment you deem fit as a substitute. Will you accept this?”

  In truth, I was asking if the mob would accept this, except it served no purpose to make this fact obvious, because as tenuous a grip as he may have had on the mob, he still could call it down on our heads if I pushed him too far. The look of relief was momentary, but it was enough to tell me that I had given us both a way out of the immediate situation. He nodded, so I offered my hand, which he took solemnly. This quieted the crowd, sensing that something important had just happened. After we shook, he turned to address the crowd in his tongue, of which I knew just enough to determine that he was relaying the essence of our agreement. As he explained, I turned to Vibius and motioned for him to come to me. Quietly I told him what was happening, and I saw the warring emotions cross his face, all at once. We were friends too long for me not to know exactly what he was thinking. He understood that having made such a bargain, I ensured that Atilius would be executed, and that he and his comrades would have to be the ones to do it, beating Atilius to death, but not before breaking every bone in his body.

  I will not describe in any detail the execution of Atilius, except to say that the sentence was carried out and that the men of his Century, including his oldest friends, as well as mine, did their duty. The one incident that I will describe happened the night before the sentence was carried out, when Vibius came to see me.

  “We’re going to bust Atilius out and help him get back to Hispania,” he announced without waiting to finish the cup of wine I had offered.

  Thunderstruck, I sat for a moment, unable to reply. I know why he told me; he was relying on our friendship and the years spent slogging about with Atilius, except Vibius underestimated the pull of my own ambition. When I was younger, I would be dictating to Diocles some high-flown drivel about how once I was promoted to Centurion, I had to become more politically astute since I was directly responsible for carrying out the policies not just of Caesar, but of Rome. But I am old now, and near the end of my string, so I no longer feel the burning passion within to put myself in the best possible light that I once did. The simple truth is that I would not allow this to happen because it would be a probably irreparable blot on my career. It was bad enough that it was one of my men, although sooner or later every Centurion is put in the same position. However, having a condemned man escape is a career killer. The fact that the would-be escapee was a long-time comrade, and was aided and abetted by my closest friend could very well mean that I would be walking the gauntlet in place of Atilius and that was simply not happening. That was not how I put it to Vibius, at least as far as my career was concerned, but I certainly did point out that a possible consequence of their actions was in me replacing Atilius. Once I put it like that the plan was quickly dropped, and we spent the rest of the evening in glum silence, drinking ourselves into a stupor to gird ourselves for the coming day.

  The execution of Atilius did have one positive effect; I no longer found myself plodding into town to pay off townspeople, since my men were on their best behavior from that point forward. There is nothing like witnessing the brutal death of another Legionary at the hands of his own comrades to sober a man up and convince him that good behavior is a wise course. None of my old tentmates were ever really the same after that, at least as far as I was concerned. The laughter around the fire was more muted; despite the fact that the boisterousness and cruel humor that is as much a staple of camp life as the bread we eat was not completely gone, it was not something that happened every day as in the past. The one benefit, if it can be called that, at least to me, was that it distracted Celer from his constant picking at me and I believe it was because the men felt some sympathy for what I was forced to do to Atilius. We had all been together a long time, almost every man in the Legion part of the dilectus now ten years ago, so all knew that Atilius had been a tentmate of mine. Despite thinking that I carried out my duties with a grim detachment, clearly those around me could see through the mask I wore and how much watching one of my oldest friends beaten to death by my other oldest friends tormented me. Celer was a lot of things but he was not stupid, and he evidently saw that his continual attacks on me had a high probability of backfiring at this point. He was patient as well; he would wait until the execution of Atilius was a more distant memory before picking up the offensive once again. For my part, I did not care what the reason was, I was just happy for the respite from having to pay attention to the whispers around the fire.

  Not everything in my life was bad; my professional trials aside, my life off duty became more interesting. It probably will not surprise you gentle reader, when I recount that it was during this period at Narbo that I took a woman, and that woman was Gisela. I could say that it was an accident, that it was just something that happened but that would be a lie, because I had been determined to make her mine a long time before, and I was happy to learn that she was as interested in me as I in her. I am not now, nor was I then, completely blind to the fact that there was a fair amount of self-interest in her receptiveness to my advances; I was climbing rapidly through the ranks, and as one of Caesar’s hand-picked men, I could provide for her comfort in a better manner than Calienus ever had. We never spoke of him, although I do not know why. Perhaps it had to do with the idea of arousing his spirit and not wanting to anger him if he saw that I had taken his woman, but I think that was more in Gisela’s mind than mine; she was always more superstitious than I was, and am. To help woo her, I bought a house that belonged to a Roman merchant that gambled his business away and was forced to return back to Rome, yet when I tried to present her with her very own slave, I thought she was going to scratch my eyes out. She absolutely refused to have any slave in the house, forcing me to hire a freedwoman and her husband, although the extra expense was worth the peace in the house. I spent perhaps three nights a week at the house; I was still too insecure in my control of the Cohort to spend more than that outside the camp. It was apparently enough, however; about four months after Gisela became my woman, she got pregnant, as my life suddenly changed in so many ways it was hard for me to comprehend. I was a Centurion, with a wife in all but name, I was about to be a father, and I was a still month shy of turning 27 years old. Vibius, while happy for the news that he was going to become a quasi-uncle, was clearly stung by the fact that I was now at the place in life that he longed to be, and had longed to be for almost ten years. One evening, sitting in my tent and playing idly at alea, I saw how melancholy he was, so I set down my wine cup and cleared my throat, which I have been told is the sure sign that I am about to broach a subject that I consider to be important, or potentially contentious. Vibius looked up from the board, one eyebrow arched as he clearly perceived something was afoot. />
  As I sat trying to compose what I wanted to say, he said impatiently, “By the gods, Titus. Quit chewing on what you want to say like it’s a piece of gristle. I’ve known you too long, so out with it.”

  Very well, I thought. “Have you thought that it might be time to send for Juno, and go ahead and make her your woman?”

  I saw his face darken; this was a topic we had been over so many times that I could not count, and I held my hand up in a placating gesture. “Wait a moment, Vibius. Hear me out.”

  He gave a curt nod, but I could tell by the set of his mouth that I would have to summon an argument worthy of Cicero if I wanted to persuade him of what I was thinking. “I know why you don’t want to do so, Vibius and believe me, I understand and respect it. And you know how much I care for Juno; she’s been a friend of mine nearly as long as you have. But that’s what grieves me, because when you read me her letters, or at least the parts you don’t want to keep to yourself,” I grinned, and I was heartened to see that despite his initial displeasure, he grinned back, “she longs for you just as much as you long for her. What kind of friend would I be if that didn’t hurt me, for both of you?”