In the Shadow of the Wall (11 page)

Brude sneaked a surreptitious glance at his fellow slaves to see whether any of them understood what this was about. He had no idea who the people Tiberius was talking about were. Few of the slaves showed any comprehension. Tiberius continued, “Septimius Severus is now Augustus Caesar and all the property of Arminius Rufus, including this estate, is forfeit to him. An imperial freedman has arrived and will now be in charge of this estate. You are all to come outside for him to inspect you.”

Tiberius had to repeat the last bit and start to physically usher them outside before it sank in. As they made their way through the outer doors to line up outside the villa, Brude whispered to Batix, “What does this mean?”

The older man shrugged. “I don’t know, but I expect it might not be good.”

When the slaves were standing nervously in a line, Brude saw a troop of Roman soldiers emerging from the villa. They were escorting a large man in a toga who walked briskly over towards the line of slaves. There was no sign of the usual guards but Marcus Arminius was anxiously following in the man’s wake. The new arrival cast a disdainful look over the slaves, then slowly walked down the line, casually looking each of them over. Brude kept his head down and his eyes firmly fixed on the ground so all he saw was the man’s well-made sandals as he passed him. The man went back to where Marcus was waiting, hands clasped together, then beckoned Tiberius. There was a brief discussion before the man in the toga went back inside the villa, Marcus following after a short and hurried exchange with Tiberius. The little man came back, six soldiers with him. He walked down the line and as he went he pointed out some of the younger men to the soldiers who took them aside, sending the others back into the slave quarters. Brude watched Julia being sent back, then Tiberius reached Batix and Brigid. He sent Brigid back, hesitated over Batix but sent him back as well. He stepped in front of Brude and pointed to him before moving on. A soldier grabbed Brude’s arm and shoved him to where the other chosen men were standing under the watchful eye of the other guards. Brude glanced back over his shoulder in time to see Batix giving him a lost, hopeless look before being shoved out of sight through the door that led to the slave quarters.

In all, Tiberius selected twelve of the younger men. They were chained into a coffle and led off without another word, four of the soldiers accompanying them as escort. Brude saw Tiberius watching them and thought the little man’s eyes looked full of tears though no words were spoken. Brude was once more on his travels. For the second time, he had been abruptly taken away from his friends without an opportunity to say farewell and this sudden break hurt almost as much as when he had been taken from his fellow Boresti after the slave market.

It was a long time before he was able to piece events together but from listening to the soldiers as they chatted on the march, he figured out most of it eventually. It seemed that the owner of the villa, Arminius Rufus, had been a supporter of Clodius Albinus, one-time Governor of Britannia, the man who had taken away the bulk of the legions from the province to support his bid for the rule of the empire. Albinus had set himself up as ruler of Britannia and
Gaul
but he had formally declared himself emperor of
Rome
when he fell out with Septimius Severus, who had also claimed the imperial throne. Some great battles had been fought between the armies of the two rival emperors and, obviously, Severus had won. Clodius Albinus had committed suicide and Arminius Rufus, his loyal supporter, had done the same, allowing the new, undisputed emperor to seize his property. Brude wasn’t entirely sure but it seemed that the estate he had been working on was not the only such place owned by Rufus. Brude had already had trouble conceiving of one man owning an estate as huge as the one he had worked on and having so many slaves, but to learn that this was just one of his estates was even more difficult to comprehend. Brude wondered idly what he would ever do if he was that wealthy. Try to back the winner, he decided; Arminius Rufus had lost everything by supporting the wrong man.

They marched south, another leg in the long journey that took Brude inexorably away from his homeland. The soldiers who guarded them were talkative, chatting among themselves with tharshot of the slaves. By listening carefully, Brude learned they were heading for somewhere called Hispania. The name meant nothing to him but one of the soldiers had been born there and was looking forward to returning. That made Brude think of his own home and family. He still felt the loss keenly and now, after only a year in captivity, he had lost his second family by being separated from Batix, Brigid and Julia. He decided that he would not suffer a loss like that again so he stayed distant from the other slaves on the march. He knew them all, of course, but he was not close to them and he was determined that it would stay that way. He reckoned he could survive on his own. Batix had taught him a lot about how to get by and, despite his youth, he had learned the lessons well.

It took weeks to march all the way to where the sea met the mountains and the season had turned by the time they got there, the trees shedding their leaves and the wind whipping up a chill. Brude overheard the soldiers discussing what to do. Apparently they had to cross the high mountains to get to Hispania and they were worried about being caught by winter snows. In the end, the soldiers requisitioned some warm clothing for themselves and the slaves before pushing on.

Brude thought he knew mountains but he soon discovered that what were mountains in his homeland were really only hills. The mountains they crossed into Hispania were jagged peaks, which towered to dizzying heights above them, the summits often lost in the clouds, their tops covered in snow even though winter had not arrived. The Roman road forged through the passes and the soldiers kept them moving at a wicked pace, fearful of being caught by snow. Fortunately, they made it through the mountains before the first snowfall of winter, eventually reaching a hilltop town on the coast that the soldiers called Saguntum.

After only a few days’ rest they pushed on, now heading westwards, through more hills and valleys, following the Roman roads that Brude was so used to now. What he had also learned on this march was that the small stone markers he had thought marked holy places were actually called milestones. When he counted the paces from one to the next he was astonished to find that the distance was exactly one thousand paces at the soldiers’ military pace and that the markings on them indicated how far it was to the next town or city. It was a revelation that staggered him and brought home to him just how organised and uniform the empire was. The Romans seemed to build everywhere. Roads, towns, cities, they stamped their mark on the countryside wherever they went.

Pressing on through the chill of winter, they reached Asturica, footsore and weary, early in the new year, before spring had started to turn the land green. The slaves were handed over to another group of soldiers. The guards who had accompanied them on the long journey from northern
Gaul
went off without a word; another lost farewell in the growing line of separations Brude was experiencing.

They found themselves in an enormous, strongly guarded camp which held over six thousand slaves. They soon discovered that they were there for a purpose and that purpose was to build. The town needed a new queduct so the new emperor was going to give it one. Army engineers and skilled masons would oversee the work but the manual labour was to be done by slaves and animals, which were treated much the same by the Romans.

The aqueduct had to cover a distance of twelve miles from a hillside spring to the city. The engineers had already plotted a route, the owners of the land the aqueduct would cross had been removed, either voluntarily or by force, and the stone was to be quarried from nearby hills then dragged into position by the slaves.

It was backbreaking work. Brude was assigned to the transportation teams. They used wagons, mules and oxen and he was shown how to use the incredible devices of rope and wood that the Romans used to lift heavy stones. Yet even with these, a lot of the work involved human muscle power to shift the huge blocks. His days turned into an agony of pushing, pulling, heaving and lifting, always walking a slightly longer distance as the weeks passed and the aqueduct grew longer and longer, closing on the town. He saw that the blocks were only the outer facing of the huge foundations and walls of the aqueduct. The Romans used what they called concrete to give the structure its strength, the stones being laid precisely around a central core of concrete, constantly watched by the engineers who had to make sure that the final result was a smooth gradient for the water to flow down at a regular speed for mile after mile.

A part of Brude recognised it as a brilliant piece of engineering but at the same time the greater part of him was usually too exhausted and concentrating on doing his own job well enough to avoid punishment to appreciate what they were achieving. The main object in his life was simply to survive.

He worked on the aqueduct all through the baking heat of the summer, all through the cold and snow of winter and then through the following summer. Men died from exhaustion, from exposure or from accidents when blocks fell or ropes gave way. Nobody paid much attention to the losses; slaves were plentiful.

By the end of the following winter Brude was twenty years old. His skin, once pale and white, was burned brown by the sun. He was strong, the muscles of his arms and legs more powerful than they had ever been. Above all else he knew how to survive as a slave. What he did not know was how he was ever going to gain his freedom.

By the following spring the aqueduct was nearly completed and some of the slaves began to speculate about what would happen to them. Brude was busy trying to think about how to get involved in some skilled work, perhaps carving the stone blocks or even learning how to sculpt the statues the Romans were so fond of. He was not sure whether he had the skill for it but he thought there might be a route to freedom that way. Annoyingly, he could not think how he could ensure he was chosen for that type of work. Bribing someone might work but as imperial slaves they received no pay and some of the other, less savoury ways of ingratiating oneself with the overseers did not appeal to him.

As unexpectedly as ever in the life of a slave, things changed again. One morning, as they were finishing their frugal breakfast, a stranger appeared, accompanied by two armed guards. The man himself was big, hugely muscled but slightly overweight, his hair cropped short and almost entirely grey. In his prime he must have been formidable; even now he did not look the sort of man who would back down from a fight. His keen eyes surveyed the slaves as he wandered around, one of the overseers accompanying him and answering questions, which the man snapped at him. Every so often the big man would stop to examine a slave, sometimes nodding his head. When he did this the slave was sent to stand near the gate of the camp. Brude recognised another slave sale; the aqueduct was nearly finished so some slaves would be sold off.

The big man approached Brude who lowered his gaze as he had learned was safest to do. The man, though, reached out and lifted his chin, staring him in the eye. He asked, “Where are you from?”

“
Caledonia
,” Brude answered, using the Roman name for the land north of the Wall.

The man’s eyes studied him carefully. “One of the painted people, eh?” He seemed amused. “I’ll try him,” he said to the overseer. Brude was sent to stand with the other chosen men.

After an hour of careful selection the big man had pulled out nineteen slaves. He had them lined up in a row, then he stood in front of them. “I am Gaius Lollius Curtius,” he announced in a deep, strong voice. “I am going to stand in front of each of you in turn and I want you to hit me.” That got their attention. The man grinned. “Don’t worry. If you do manage to hit me there will be no punishment. One punch, that’s all you are allowed. If you hit me hard enough I’ll take you away from this place.”

They watched him intently, hanging on his every word. Life in the camp was hard and all of them wanted nothing more than to get away from there.

Curtius marched purposefully to one end of the line, where Brude stood fifth from the end. Curtius approached the first man and stood two paces from him, thrusting out his chin. “Hit me!” he barked. The man swung a clumsy fist and Curtius swayed back, easily avoiding the blow. The slave overreached and stumbled. Curtius caught him and steadied him, pushing him back into place before moving on to the next man. “Hit me!” he said again. Another wild swing missed, much to the amusement of the watching guards and of Curtius himself. He gave the slave a mocking smile before moving on.

The third man managed to clip Curtius’ jaw with a straight jab. Curtius nodded, his eyes sparkling. He pushed the man back into place and moved on to the man beside Brude who tried the same jab but missed completely as Curtius ducked aside.