The Forest House (32 page)

Bendeigid remained silent and, despite his bold words, Cynric felt the serpent of anxiety that had been gnawing at him since night fell begin to stir once more.

“What is it?” he asked. “Have you had an omen?”

Bendeigid shook his head. “No omens—I think the odds for this fight are so evenly balanced that even the gods will not wager on its outcome. We have the advantage, true, but Agricola is a formidable opponent. If Calgacus, great leader though he is, underestimates him, it could be fatal.”

Cynric let out his breath in a long sigh. He had fought so hard to prove himself to these tribesmen, who had begun by mocking him as the son of a defeated people even when they did not know his blood was tainted by that of Rome, defiance had become second nature. But with his foster father he need not pretend.

“I hear the singing, but I cannot join in it; I drink, but my belly remains cold. Father, will my courage fail me tomorrow when we face the Roman steel?” At times like this, he could not help wondering if he should have run off with Dieda when he had the chance.

Bendeigid turned him so the Druid could look into Cynric's eyes. “You will not fail,” he said fiercely. “These men are still fighting for glory. They do not understand their enemy as you do. But in battle your despair will only make you more terrible. Remember that you are a Raven, Cynric, and what you will seek down there tomorrow is not honor, but revenge!”

 

That night Gaius lay listening to other men's breathing and wondering why sleep came so hard. This was a drier bed than any he had slept in for some time, and he had been in battles before. But his other fights, he reflected, had been unexpected skirmishes that were over almost as soon as they had begun.

He sought for some distraction, and suddenly found himself remembering Eilan. During the journey north it had been Julia he thought of, imagining her amusement at some bit of odd gossip or army tale. But he could never admit to Julia the things that in this moment of darkness were haunting him—

Surrounded by all these men I feel alone…I want to lay my head on your breast and feel your arms around me…I am alone, Eilan, and I am afraid!

Finally he passed at last into an uneasy slumber, and in his dreaming it seemed to him that he and Eilan were together in a hut in the midst of the forest. He kissed her, and realized that her body was rounding with his child. She smiled at him and pulled her gown tight over her belly so that he could see; he laid his hand upon the hard curve and felt the child move within and thought that she had never been so beautiful. She opened her arms to him and drew him down beside her, murmuring words of love.

Gaius fell into a deeper sleep then. When he woke, men were stirring around him, pulling on their tunics and fumbling to lace their armor in the dim gray hour before the dawn.

 

“Why isn't he putting the Legions in the battle line?” Gaius asked Tacitus in an undertone.

They sat their horses with the rest of the General's personal staff on a little hill, watching the light infantry spread out in a long line below the mountain with the cavalry to either side. The pale light gleamed on the smooth tops of their bronze helmets and their spear points, and glinted on their mail. Rough pasture rose towards the lower slopes beyond them, where the dry grass gave way to broad swathes of garnet-brown bracken and the paler purple of heather. But much of the topography of Graupius could only be guessed at, for the lower part of the mountain was hidden by armed men.

“Because they're under strength,” the answer came. “The Emperor siphoned off men from all four Legions, remember, for his German campaign. As a result, three thousand of our crack troops are kicking their heels in Germania while the Chatti and the Sugambri laugh at them, and Agricola will have to use every trick he knows to compensate. He's got the Legions formed up in front of the entrenchments where they can support us if we fall back, but he hopes it won't come to that.”

“But it was the Emperor who ordered the Governor to secure northern Caledonia, wasn't it?” Gaius asked. “Domitian is a soldier. Wouldn't he know—?”

Tacitus smiled, and Gaius felt suddenly like a child.

“Some would say,” he answered softly, “that he knows all too well. Titus gave our Governor a hero's honors for his successes in Britannia, and when this campaign is over Agricola's term as Governor will be done. Perhaps the Emperor feels there is not room for two victorious generals in Rome.”

Gaius looked towards their Commander, who was watching the deployment of his troops with grave attention. His armor, of dagged scale over mail, glittered in the growing light, and the horse-hair crest of his helmet stirred slightly in the breeze. Beneath the mail, tunic and breeches were snowy white, but in the early morning light his crimson cloak glowed balefully.

Years later, on a visit to Rome, Gaius read the passage from the biography of Agricola in which Tacitus described that day. He had to smile at the speeches, which had been elaborated for literary effect in the best rhetorical tradition, for while they had both heard the General's words, the wind brought them only fragments of the harangue of Calgacus, which Gaius no doubt understood much better than Tacitus.

Calgacus had begun first; at least they could see a tall man with hair the color of a fox-pelt striding back and forth before the most richly dressed of the enemy, and assumed it must be he. Echoing from the slopes behind him, phrases drifted across the open ground.

“…they have eaten the land, and behind us remains only the sea!” Calgacus gestured northward. “…let us destroy these monsters who would sell our children into slavery!” The Caledonians began to roar approval, and the next words were lost. When Gaius could hear again, the enemy leader seemed to be talking about the Iceni rebellion.

“…ran in terror when Boudicca, a woman, raised the Trinobantes against them…do not even risk their own people against us! Let the Gauls and our brothers the Brigantes remember how the Romans have betrayed them, and let the Batavians desert them as the Usipii have done!” There was a little stir in the ranks of the auxiliaries from those who understood this as Calgacus continued his appeal to the Caledonians to fight for their liberty, but a word from their commanders calmed them.

The tribesmen were crowding forward, singing and shaking their spears, and Gaius trembled, hearing in that wild music a call that awakened memories almost too old for him to have words for them, of songs that he had heard among the Silures when he was a babe in arms. And the hidden side of his soul, the mother's side, wept in answer, for Gaius had seen the Mendip mines, and the lines of British slaves being marched on to ships for sale in Rome, and he knew that what Calgacus said was true.

The Romans, understanding the tone if not the words, were stirring angrily. It was in that moment, when it seemed that their discipline, if not their loyalty might break, that Agricola raised his hand and reined his white horse around to face them, and his officers drew close to hear what he would say.

The General seemed to speak quietly, like a kindly father reassuring an excited child, but his words carried. He spoke of the distance they had covered, their courage in going beyond the boundaries of the Roman world, and gently pointed out the dangers of trying to retreat through such a hostile country.

“…a retiring general or army is never safe…death with honor is preferable to life with ignominy…Even to fall in this extremest verge of earth and of nature cannot be thought an inglorious fate.”

As for the Caledonians, whom Calgacus had called the last free men in Britain, in Agricola's version they became fugitives. “…the remaining number consists solely of the cowardly and spiritless; whom you see at length within your reach, not because they have stood their ground, but because they are overtaken.” For a moment, listening to that calm and kindly voice destroy the Caledonian vision of glory, Gaius almost hated him. But he could not deny the General's conclusion, which was that a Roman victory today could bring an end to a struggle that had gone on for fifty years.

It seemed to Gaius that in this man he saw the essence of what Macellius meant by a Roman. Despite the fact that Agricola's family was of Gaulish extraction and had risen through successful public service first to the middle rank of equestrian and then to senator, he made Gaius think of the old heroes of republican Rome.

Licinius's clerks held their master in affection, but in the way Agricola's officers watched him Gaius sensed something else, an intensity of devotion that kept them steady even when the savages on the mountain began to raise their courage to battle heat by war cries and beating on their shields. Apparently this attitude extended to the men under Agricola's command, and Gaius, observing that stern profile and hearing the General speak as calmly as if he had been conversing in his tent with a few friends, thought suddenly,
This is the kind of devotion that makes Emperors.
Perhaps Domitian was right to be afraid.

The Caledonians were ranged upon the rising ground, their ranks rising in tier upon tier above the plain. Now their chariots came rushing down the slope with the horsemen ranging about them, agile ponies careering at full tilt with their drivers swaying on the wickerwork platforms while the spearmen they carried shook their weapons and laughed.

To Gaius they were an image of beauty and terror. He understood that he was seeing the warrior soul of Britannia as Caesar and Frontinus had seen it, sensing that after this it would never be seen in all its glory again. The chariots hurtled forward, turning at the last moment as their javelins thudded into the Roman shields, and the warriors ran out along the poles between the horses, throwing their swords glittering into the air and catching them again. They had come to this battle as if to a festival, and the sun glinted from torques and armrings. Some had mail and helmets, but most fought in brightly checked tunics or half naked, their fair skin painted with spiraling designs in blue. Gaius could hear their boasting above the rattle of the chariot wheels, and felt not terror but a terrible sorrow.

One of the tribunes protested loudly as Agricola dismounted and a man came up to lead his horse away, but the faces of the others set grimly at this evidence that whatever happened to his army, Agricola would not flee.
They would give their lives to protect him,
thought Gaius,
and so,
he realized suddenly,
would I.
Some of the General's personal staff were dismounting as quiet orders set others cantering down the lines. Gaius reined back, uncertain what to do.

“You.” The General gestured him closer. “Get down to the Tungri and tell them to spread out further. Tell them that I know it weakens the center, but I don't want the enemy outflanking us.”

As he kicked his pony into a gallop, Gaius heard the thunk of javelins slamming into shields behind him and realized that the British chariots had pulled away and their first line of infantry were moving in. He bent over the animal's neck and urged it to better speed. The space between two armies that were closing for the first, devastating exchange of missiles was no place to be. He saw the gleam of the Tungrian standard before him and the line parted to let him through; then he was gabbling his message, moving behind the men as they began to press sideways, and watching from the corner of his eye as the enemy attack expanded outward.

The British warriors were good, he thought as he saw them deflecting Roman spears with their round shields. Their greatswords were longer even than the Roman spatha, slashing weapons blunt at the tips but wickedly sharpened along the side. The Roman trumpets blared and Agricola's center bulged forward, closing with the enemy.

Gaius knew he could do no more good here with the infantry, but the General had given him no further orders; with sudden decision he kneed his mount further down the line to join the cavalry there. Over the heads of the auxiliaries he saw the battle lines breaking up into a close, confused struggle in which the Caledonians had no room to swing their longer swords. This was the Batavians' favorite kind of fighting; they pressed forward, stabbing with their gladii and smashing enemy faces with the bosses of their shields. There was a shout from the Romans as the first line of foes gave way, and Agricola's center began to advance up the lower slopes of the mountain after them.

More slowly, the infantry to either side tried to follow them, but now the British chariots, seeing their lines thin and sensing a weakness, plunged towards them, bouncing on the rough ground. In another moment they were in among the infantry like wolves in a sheepfold, savaging the foot soldiers with sword and spear. Someone screamed at the men to close ranks; men and horses and chariots swirled in confusion; Gaius saw a blue-painted warrior loom up before him and thrust with his spear.

In the moments that followed, things happened too fast for thinking. Gaius stabbed and parried as weapons flared around him. A chariot plunged towards him and his pony whirled, throwing him hard against the back horns of his saddle. He felt the spear wrenched out of his hand and ducked as a javelin sped towards him. The missile clanged on his helmet, caught for a moment in the crest and fell away. Gaius blinked dizzily, understanding now why only officers wore crests on their helms in battle, but the pony, wiser than its master, was already carrying him out of danger.