Legatus Legionis: Book Two in the Gaius Claudius Scaevola Trilogy (44 page)

"Any idea how?" Vipsania smiled.

"Not the slightest," Gaius admitted.

"That's my Gaius," she said, and hugged him.

It was shortly after this that the others marched past. Quintus gave Lucilla his best effort at a reassuring smile, she waved a kiss. Then he was out of sight. They heard a door close, then silence.

The Tin Man reappeared, with four cups, some apples, and a jar of water. They ate in silence. Gaius felt a trace of vibration through the floor. They were being taken somewhere, but where?

After they finished eating, they stared at their surroundings. Gaius confirmed that the door was closed. He tried to look out, but the lights were dimmed. He checked his sack, untied it, and could feel his metal fittings, his scrolls, and most of all, his alien weapon. It was there. What could he do with it?

They tried talking about anything but their present predicament. Somehow the social life of Rome held little appeal. They began staring vacantly at their surroundings. Gaius gave Vipsania another hug, and suggested they all get what sleep they could.

They lay down, and tried to sleep. It was difficult, but eventually they drifted off. What they were unaware of was that a vapour had been introduced into their air supply, and it would be quite some time before they woke.

Chapter 33

Princeps

It is with regret that I must advise you that Gaius Claudius Scaevola, Legatus Legionis, Legio XX Valeria, must be presumed dead. Scaevola and a small party of soldiers were travelling south to coordinate the westward thrust with Vespasianus and the Augusta. One exploratore from the party has survived, and his account is as follows.

The party marched south and ran into a small squad of Celts who were attacking a squad of Roman soldiers, together with what the soldier called a demon. Scaevola's squad quickly disposed of the enemy, but the soldier informed him that other Celts had attacked and captured a small group of Roman citizens, one of which I understand was his wife. Scaevola sent this exploratore off to get help from the Augusta, and apparently set off to rescue his wife.

It is unclear what happened next. It is presumed that the rescue was successful, because a number of dead Celts were subsequently found. The party then appeared to flee from about four hundred Celts and formed a defensive position on a high hill. The Celts attacked, and while our soldiers fought valiantly, as judged by the dead Celts left behind, it is unclear what happened to the party of Romans. A cohort from the Augusta was sent and it encircled the Celts and disposed of them. However, no trace of the Romans could be found, apart from dead soldiers left at the top of the hill. It also appears that Scaevola had bags of objects that were to be sent to Rome. Nothing even close to the descriptions given to me by the Tribunes of the Valeria were found, either at the hill, or anywhere that could be described as a reasonable path along which they could have travelled. I presume they must have buried these objects to prevent the Celts from accessing them.

While we cannot find their bodies, there has been no sign of them for six weeks, and accordingly I assume they are dead. Apparently Titus' men interrogated some Celts before disposing of them, but all they got was nonsense. The most sane response was that they were taken by the Gods, from which I suspect means they died. On the hill there were a number of dead Celts with terrible burns. I understand that Scaevola was trying to build some weapon based on fire and steam, and since such a weapon is the only explanation for these burned bodies, I presume he got it going, he succeeded to a point, then the device exploded and turned the Roman party into air. No remains of this device were found.

I have assumed temporary control of the Valeria, which shall proceed towards Aquae Sulis
.

Aulus Plautius,

General.

Author's note

Thank you for reading this ebook. If you enjoyed it, why not write a reader's review?

First, my grateful thanks for permission to use an image on my cover. The finned boar on the cover is the emblem of the
Valeria
, and the image was cropped from one kindly provided by the Ermine Street Guard (
http://www.erminestreetguard.co.uk
). I also thank them for offering comments on questions I raised with them. Note that if you disagree with any of the historical facts in the novel, errors and unconventional interpretations are mine alone. Anyone interested in the Roman invasion of Britain will find the Guard and its website to be a very valuable resource, and I strongly advise on visiting the website.

I have tried to make the background to the first two novels in this trilogy as historically accurate as I could, although of course some is just plain fiction. In particular, all events involving Scaevola are imaginary, although I have tried to make such events in accord with history to the extent I could. Of the major events, the encounters with the Iazyges are purely fictional, nevertheless these sort of border encounters did occur from time to time, and the concept of having an adjacent client "kingdom" was fully in accord with policy laid down since Augustus. The fight on the bridge is, of course, fictional, but it also gave me the opportunity to have Scaevola discover the equivalence principle. It also gave me the opportunity to describe what it is like to make a fundamental discovery of significance to science that has been bothering the person making it for some time. That is a personal indulgence, which I hope you will forgive.

There are two main historical events in this book: the attempted coup by Scribonianus, and the invasion of Britain. The available information on both of these is at best sketchy, mainly because the only valid account of the history of this period is presumably in the missing volumes of Tacitus' Annals. Regarding the Scribonianus coup, if you look at the web, not only is the available information sketchy, but in many places it is contradictory. All that seems to be really known is that Scribonianus made an attempt in the Roman senate, but the two legions he was counting on found their eagles firmly stuck in the ground. The award of the name
Claudia pia fidelis
to the two legions is true. I confess to simply concocting a story that is at least in accord with these facts, and, of course, severely injuring the relationship between Scaevola and Vipsania.

Many of the same remarks relate to the invasion of Britain. There is so little information available, and what there is is frequently not very helpful. The refusal of the Roman soldiers to board is correct, the sending of Narcissus is correct, and Cassius Dio devotes most of his very limited explanation to the call,
Io Saturnalia
. That is not exactly helpful, but since that trivial event happened, I had to incorporate it somehow. I have tried to follow what is known of the invasion, but again, much of the information is unclear. For those interested, the best account I have been able to find is by Graham Webster:
The Roman Invasion of Britain
(Routledge, 1999). I was also influenced by Leonard Cottrell's
The Great Invasion
(Evans Brothers, 1958). I have tried to follow some combination of these, nevertheless there are some parts that I find hard to accept from a strategic point of view, and of course the story needed some minor additions.

Accounts of the Battle of Medway often have Gnaeus Hosidius Geta leading a cohort or maybe a legion to harass the Celts in much the way I have described, except that the same soldier was also in Mauretania very soon after. Accordingly, I have interpreted this as being his brother Gaius at the Medway. Was Geta a Legate? Webster seems to think he may have been, Dio implies he was, but what he seems to have done makes no sense so I have demoted him to a
Tribunis Laticlavius.
He may well have become a legate later. Whatever else happened, if Geta took a whole legion over the river, he would be doing more than harassing chariots and he most certainly would not join the line unless the legion was almost wiped out. No legion was nearly wiped out. What Geta did, or is reported to have done, was more in line with the action of a cohort, but no legion commander, on the eve of a battle, would personally take one cohort and leave the other nine to their own devices.

According to Dio, Vespasian and the
Augusta
took part at the Medway, but that would make Vespasian a very busy man, and I have taken the liberty of having Scaevola and the
Valeria
there instead. There is also a point that there appears to be archaeological evidence of burnt villages to the south, although again, these may have occurred prior to the Roman invasion. Dating is not that accurate, but if there were fighting, Vespasian would have been involved there, and it is quite possible that Dio confused two battles. A point that worries me is that Dio seems to have insisted there were only two legions at the Medway (if it were actually the Medway, since as far as I can tell, there is no actual archaeological evidence of such a battle there), and it would make sense that the one that landed on the south coast would not be there. That, of course, assumes the landing pattern that I (and others) have assumed was the actual landing pattern. In short, there is little evidence to support the approach I have taken, but equally there is little evidence against it. To me, the guiding principle is that Cogidumnus was allying himself with Rome because Caratacus had effectively declared war on him. If Rome did not support such an ally, why would any other Celtic tribe support Rome? In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I believe Vespasian and the Augusta would ensure Cogidumnus and his domain were safe, and in doing that he may well have had to fight a battle. The two battles were not necessarily the same, and accordingly, I have concocted the story that the
Augusta
fought and badly mauled Caratacus' raiding party, which fled to the Medway, to once again fight Rome. (I have adopted Webster's spelling of Caratacus.)

The crossing of the Thames occurred, together, as far as we can tell, with a skirmish in which Togodumnus was killed, unless, of course, Togodumnus was killed at the Medway, assuming the battle was at the Medway. Again, we simply do not know what happened, but in one sense that leaves the writer some scope to invent.

Some doubt that Caratacus was at Camulodunum, preferring to think he had already fled west. My personal view is this is somewhat unlikely, because it was the senators that voted Claudius a triumph, and they would hardly do that in the absence of any battle. The senators, after all, were brought along because they were probably plotting against Claudius. Is this right? I have no idea, but it is believed Claudius brought elephants, so that made a battle there, albeit short-lived, somewhat desirable. Furthermore, Dio states there was a battle some distance from Camulodunum. Dio would have no idea what that distance was, but it makes sense from Caratacus' point of view to be close, because otherwise a legion could just go in behind his forces and sack his city. So, I had to have a battle, and one in which the elephants were critical. An important point about this battle is that again, there is no evidence of it, so it had to have been one that left little evidence. That eliminates the burning of the city. The people and soldiers would pick up spears, swords, etc, after the battle, and ditches would be there anyway, but "no evidence" implies that even the onagers did not fire massive stones.

So, all in all, my account of the invasion must be considered to be essentially fictional, but with what I could reasonably be sure of included, together with quite a bit of imagination.

Legio XX is usually considered to have earned the name
Valeria Victrix
after putting down the Iceni revolt, however, there is also a strong possibility that the
Valeria
part was earned in Illyria, somewhere just before 13 BC. That is why I have labelled it the
Valeria
.

What happened after Camulodunum fell? There is no evidence the twentieth went back to where London now is, but on the other hand, given that there had been no time for preparation, in my opinion the area around Camulodunum would have had trouble housing three legions, so I have separated them. There was a second reason. The direction of the breakout is known and the twentieth seems to have headed for Bath. Actually, there is no real evidence for that either. Some think the twentieth stayed in Camulodunum. I find that really strange. The standard Roman procedure was to leave the conquered time to accept that they were conquered, with the clear understanding they would be treated very badly if they revolted. At the same time, they needed to secure more territory, and you do not achieve that by leaving a quarter of your army doing nothing.

Further, from the point of view of military strategy, it is a very desirable objective to aim for the Bristol Channel, as that cuts the north from the south. There is no point in legions crossing paths, so I felt it desirable to start in the configuration they would march in. What happened after that is pure fiction. There is no evidence to support any battles, let alone a major battle with Caratacus, but for various plot reasons of the third book in the trilogy, I needed the last major battle. Further, we know there were battles. Vespasian, because he later became Emperor, has had his exploits better recorded, and it is alleged he fought thirty battles going west. Accordingly, two battles for the
Valeria
are not unreasonable.

As in
Athene's Prophecy
, my portrayal of Gaius Julius Caesar was a problem. There are various accounts of his behaviour, mostly from people who did not like him, but while there may be different versions, I had to settle on one, and be consistent. I hope I have succeeded. There is little doubt he was reviled by the senatorial class, and history has put him down as a mad tyrant. There is also no doubt that the masses really approved of him. It also appears that he frequently challenged a statue of Jupiter to actually do something, so that part of the story has at least some justification. Again, I have tried to follow the interpretation by Anthony Barrett, but as he notes, in many examples of what happened, details are ambiguous and often unreliable.