Hero of Rome (4 page)

Surviving women and children huddled for protection amongst the wreckage of the wattle-and-daub huts by the south wall. Close by, the bodies of the elders who had stood with them only a few moments earlier still twitched in an untidy heap. Valerius studied the prisoners, but none would meet his eye. He was reminded of cattle marked for slaughter, disturbed by the smell of blood from those who had gone before but helpless to escape their fate. Meanwhile, fighting continued all around him: small skirmishes involving groups of warriors who had defended the west gate; individual Britons fleeing for their lives from a dozen legionaries still lost in the frenzy of battle. The air was filled with screams. But one scream was different.

It was a child’s scream of pure terror.

He knew he should walk away: what was another child’s life in this slaughterhouse? But the scream was repeated and he realized it came from one of the few surviving huts less than twenty paces away. Two legionaries stood in the doorway with their backs towards him beside the crumpled body of a woman in a torn grey dress. He dropped his shield against the fence of a nearby animal enclosure and advanced to place the point of his
gladius
below the closer man’s ear. The legionary froze.

‘First rule of war, soldier,’ Valerius said quietly. ‘If you don’t keep your mind on the job, you get yourself killed.’

The second legionary turned with a nervous grin. He looked towards the first soldier questioningly, but Valerius shook his head and maintained just enough pressure on the sword to keep him honest.

‘Nothing in there you’d want to see, sir.’

‘I think I should decide that for myself, soldier. What century are you?’

‘Third of the Second, sir. We—’

A muffled cry of distress interrupted his words and Valerius pushed past him and stepped into the hut. At first he could see nothing in the darkness, but as his eyes acclimatized to the gloom he heard a rhythmic shuffling and traced it to a white blur at the rear of the hut. On closer inspection the blur was identified as a pair of male buttocks heaving and thrusting at something below it. He gave the buttocks a sharp kick and the heaving stopped. The man turned his head and stared up at him. The pale eyes were no longer expressionless. They could have been those of the Briton Valerius had killed earlier. The only difference was that in Crespo’s the killing rage was more controlled.

‘Go and find your own whore.’ The centurion’s voice was slurred with lust and contained a clear warning. He turned contemptuously away and began deliberately thrusting his hips back and forth in a brutal, almost violent motion. Over his shoulder Valerius could see two terrified, pain-filled eyes. He remembered the screams and wondered why the girl – she could be no more than twelve years old – now stayed silent. Then Crespo moved again and he understood. As he held his victim down with one hand, with the other the centurion had forced a dagger between the girl’s lips, the point at the back of her throat. He only had to shift his weight and she would be dead. Valerius almost gagged on the wave of disgust that swept through him. He turned as if to walk away, then spun and with all his strength swung a kick that took Crespo on the side of the skull, pitching him clear off the girl and catapulting the dagger from his hand.

The kick would have knocked a lesser man senseless. Crespo only shook his head and launched himself across the hut. Valerius was able to half sidestep the charge, but Crespo caught him with just enough force to throw him off balance and send his own sword flying. A fist landed a glancing blow below Valerius’s left cheek and he felt fingers clawing for his eyes. He retaliated with a punch of his own that took the centurion square on the chin and knocked him backwards, so he stumbled and almost fell. When he stooped to the floor Valerius thought he had stunned or disabled him, but Crespo straightened with the knife glittering in his right hand.

The Sicilian didn’t hesitate. He came in fast, holding the dagger low, point upwards, and feinting right and left, but Valerius knew he would go for the soft flesh of the lower belly just below the armour. He had no doubt that Crespo wanted to kill him, but he felt no fear at the sight of the blade. It was what made him a soldier. He knew instinctively he was quicker than his opponent. He allowed the centurion to come in close before twisting his body so that the thrust slid down his left side. The blade scored his hip and he gasped at the lightning streak of pain, but the sacrifice had been worthwhile. As he pivoted he grasped Crespo’s knife arm with both hands and used the man’s momentum to swing him against the centre post of the hut with a force that shook the whole structure. The centurion’s unprotected face took most of the impact and he reeled back spitting blood and teeth, with one eye already swelling closed. Still he retained the strength to stagger towards Valerius. Would the man never give up? The tribune allowed Crespo to take two tottering paces then stepped forward and smashed the reinforced cross-brace of his helmet into the centurion’s forehead, dropping him like a poleaxed bull.

Valerius picked up his sword and stood over the prone body. He remembered the feeling of power when he had killed the Briton and fought back the urge to experience it again. It would be neater. Crespo was capable of anything. He would never forgive or forget the disgrace of a defeat. But the moment passed quickly and all Valerius felt was a curious emptiness.

A sob attracted his attention and he turned to see the girl standing naked against the rear wall of the hut with one hand to her mouth and the other covering her sex. Fresh blood stained her inner thighs and Valerius had to look away. ‘You!’ he snapped to the two men staring wide eyed from the doorway. ‘Cover her up and put her with the rest.’ He took a last sickened look at the figure on the floor, noisily snoring through a broken nose. ‘When he wakes up tell him to report to the legate.’

IV

‘You are a fool, Valerius. You should have killed him and had done with it. Instead you burden me with trouble I don’t need and paperwork I don’t have time to deal with.’ Valerius stood at attention in front of the legate’s desk, exactly where Crespo should have been standing. The general pursed his lips and frowned. ‘Did you really think I would arrest Crespo? The man may only be a centurion but he has powerful friends. When I took command of this legion I received letters of commendation about him from my three predecessors. Look!’ He waved a document he had been reading. ‘One of them is now a consul, another a military adviser to the Emperor. I do not need enemies like that.’

‘He raped—’

‘I know what you say he did, but where is your evidence? The two soldiers you say watched him claim they saw nothing.’

‘The girl—’

‘Is dead.’

Valerius remembered the helpless, sobbing figure being led from the hut. Of course. The legate was right. He’d been a fool.

‘Even if what you say is true – and I don’t doubt that it is – I would remind you that this is a punishment expedition. The men of this tribe murdered twenty of my cavalry and they have paid the price for it. Some would say the price was light and that centurion Crespo was only carrying out the punishment in his own fashion. He may have overstepped his orders but I’m too short of experienced officers to lose him. Tribunes come and tribunes go but our centurions are the backbone of the legion.’

‘But the law,’ Valerius protested. ‘We came here to bring these people under the protection of the Empire. Are they to be denied that protection? Allowing Crespo to do what he did and go free makes us as much barbarians as the Celts.’

A spark of anger flared in the legate’s eyes. ‘Do not try my patience, tribune. Not only are you a fool, but you are a naive fool. There is no law on the battlefield. Keep your high-minded arguments for the courts. You talk of civilization, but you cannot have civilization without order. We came to this island to bring order and order can only be achieved by the use of force. Rome has decided the tribes are a resource to be harvested. If we must flatter their kings to get the best crop, we will do so. If flattery fails, I am prepared to exterminate as many as it takes to ensure the message is heard and understood. If you do not have the stomach for the work say so, and I will have you on the first ship home.

‘It is important that we demonstrate to the Silurians who rule here. The scouting party they ambushed was no ordinary patrol. It included a metallurgist sent directly from Rome. Somewhere out there,’ he waved a hand to indicate the hills to the west, ‘is the primary source of British gold. It was his job to find it. Instead, he ended up with his head on a pole.’ He paused and stared out of the tent to where the legionaries and auxiliaries were busy dismantling the camp around them. ‘I had intended to continue this demonstration, but that is no longer possible. I have received orders to retire to Glevum and prepare for a major campaign next year. We will march on Mona.’

The name sent a shiver through Valerius. Every Roman had heard of the blood-soaked Druids’ Isle and the terrible rites that took place there.

‘The druids are at the heart of every obstacle we face in Britain,’ the legate continued. ‘But by the time next year’s harvest ripens there will be no more druids. Governor Paulinus intends to attack the sect’s stronghold with two legions, including the Twentieth. We will wipe the island clean of the vermin priests and every Briton who follows them, and when that phase is completed we will turn south and destroy the power of the Ordovices and Silures once and for all.’

He turned to face Valerius. ‘You will take the First cohort to winter at Colonia Claudia Victricensis. A season repairing roads in the snow is just what they need to keep them battle-ready. Work them hard and, when they’re not working, train them hard. They are my best fighting troops and you are my best fighting officer. Do not let me down.’ Valerius opened his mouth to protest. Colonia, Claudius’s ‘City of Victory’, lay a hundred miles to the east and was the last place he wanted to be posted when the legion was preparing for an important campaign. It had been the site of the British surrender to the Emperor, when it was known as Camulodunum, and was the first Roman city created in Britain, although it was becoming increasingly over-shadowed by the new port and administrative centre at Londinium. Livius continued before he could interrupt. ‘Centurion Crespo will only be fit for light duties for some weeks.’ The legate suppressed a smile, remembering the battered face and outraged protestations of innocence. ‘He will accompany the main unit to Glevum where he will be given duties commensurate with his standing and his rank. Under normal circumstances he would take over the First cohort when you return to Rome, but that may not be ideal. I will think on it.’

For a moment Valerius thought he had misheard: he’d been certain the summer campaign meant a reprieve. The legate read the look on his face.

‘Oh, yes, Valerius, you cannot escape your destiny. In the spring you will return the First to Glevum and then await a ship to take you back to Rome. I will be sorry to lose you, my boy. I did try to intercede on your behalf but it would take more than a legate and an impending battle to alter what is written on a bureaucrat’s scroll.’

Four days later Valerius led his men in full marching order past the wooden walls of Londinium, and smiled as he heard the subdued muttering behind him. The city called to him just as loudly as it did to his soldiers, but where the legionaries heard the siren sound of the inns and the brothels along the quay, Valerius craved only his first proper bath in three months.

‘They’re restless.’ His second in command, Julius, a twenty-year veteran who had replaced Crespo as the unit’s senior centurion, rode at his side. Auxiliary cavalry scouts ranged ahead and on the flanks, and behind the two commanders the cohort marched in its centuries.

‘They’re not alone,’ Valerius agreed. The men knew that the slaves captured at the hill fort would bring them a month’s pay each and a soldier never liked to keep money in his purse for long. ‘But we’ve been ordered directly to Colonia and that means another two hours on the road and two more with a shovel before we can rest. A pity; I’d have liked to visit Londinium again. It’s surprising how the place has grown in only a year.’

Julius followed his gaze. From behind the wooden palisade the smoke from hundreds of cooking fires hazed the sky. But Londinium had already overflowed the boundaries set by the engineers who had sited the port and the fortress which guarded it. Upstream and down, new buildings of wood and stone fringed the bank of the broad River Tamesa. Where once only willows had grown now stood the homes and the workshops of merchants of every sort, drawn to the town by the scent of profit. At each of the three gates a settlement of huts and shops clung to the edges of roads along which the bounty of an Empire passed each day. It must have been close to here that Claudius had fought the decisive battle which destroyed the might of the southern tribes. Valerius had heard fifty thousand men died that day, but he knew the figure would be exaggerated. Soldiers always inflated their successes and then the politicians inflated them a little more. No matter, it had been a great victory, one which had won Claudius the triumph that cemented his next dozen years on the throne. Now he was dead, and the Emperor was Nero, a man just a year younger than Valerius. Nero’s mother, Agrippina, had died only a few months earlier. He’d heard whispers she had been murdered, but that wasn’t something a lowly tribune dwelt upon if he valued his career.

The cohort had marched from the Silurian border on the military road through the Corinium gap, then on to the easier going of the gentle rolling downlands inhabited by the Atrebates, most romanized of all the British tribes. Military roads were designed to allow the legions swift passage, elevated on a bed of earth and compacted stone, and paralleled by two deep ditches. You knew Rome was here to stay when such roads spread their tentacles across the land. They were the ropes that bound a vanquished nation; ropes that could become a noose if circumstances required it. A legion in a hurry could march twenty miles a day along these roads, but Valerius had set a more leisurely pace. The men deserved some rest after their efforts in taking the Silurian fort.

‘You were here with Claudius?’

Julius shook his head. ‘Not with Claudius. With Aulus Plautius. Claudius didn’t arrive until the main battle was over. It was the Twentieth and the Fourteenth who forced the bridges, but if I’m being honest the Second did most of the fighting.’

‘I thought the Ninth were there as well?’

Julius spat. ‘You know the Ninth: last on the battlefield and first off it.’ Valerius grinned. The rivalry between the Ninth and the Twentieth was legendary; any bar where off-duty soldiers of the two met was certain to become a battleground.

A decurion approached and reported that one of the recent recruits to the fourth century was struggling to keep the pace. His centurion requested a short halt to allow the man to recover. Valerius opened his mouth to agree, but then he remembered the legate’s words of a few days earlier. Did he want to be liked or did he want to be a leader?

He shook his head. ‘I won’t stop the cohort because one man can’t keep up. Assign two of his section to help him. If he’s still lagging we’ll leave him at the next way station. He can rest there and follow on to Colonia in his own time.’

‘But—’ Julius interrupted.

‘I know,’ Valerius said sharply. If they left the man behind without written orders he’d have trouble persuading any military post to feed him and might well be accused of desertion. ‘This is the First cohort of the Twentieth, not a parade of Vestal Virgins. When he gets to Colonia make sure he gets extra training. Think, Julius. Think what would happen if he was left behind in some valley on the way to Mona.’

Julius nodded. He had seen the result when Roman prisoners fell into the hands of the Britons. He remembered a night on guard on a river bank: screams from the darkness and a terrible, flaming figure. And in the morning blackened lumps of charcoal that had once been men he had called friends.

They reached the halt by late afternoon; the scouts had already marked out the position of the cohort marching camp. Each legionary took his place without thinking in a combined effort they had carried out a thousand times before. Men dug, erected palisades or put up tents. A fortunate few formed hunting parties to seek out hare or deer to supplement the monotonous legionary rations. They had only covered a dozen miles since dawn but Valerius was satisfied. He knew they’d reach Colonia in four more days and he was in no hurry. The only thing that awaited him there was barrack-room walls and boredom.

He was wrong.