The Forest House (38 page)

"Gaius Macellius Severus Siluricus reporting, sir!" He drew himself up and saluted, ignoring the water that dripped from the brim of his helmet. "The Procurator is well, and sends you his dearest greetings. As you may read in his letters, sir —"

"Indeed." Agricola held out his hand for the packet and smiled. "And best read under cover before they dissolve from damp. You must be wet as well, after your ride. Tacitus here will take you over to the officers' campfire and see to your billeting." He indicated a tall, saturnine young man whom Gaius later learned was his son-in-law. "Now that you are here, you had best wait for the conclusion of the fighting so that I can send a report home with you again."

Gaius blinked as the Governor withdrew into his tent. He had forgotten the man's charm, or perhaps it had never been directed at him personally when he was just one junior officer among many. Then Tacitus took his arm, and, wincing a little as his stiffening thigh muscles protested, Gaius followed him.

It was very good to sit around a campfire with his brother officers once more, eating hot lentil stew and hard bread and drinking sour wine. Only now did Gaius realize how much he had missed that camaraderie. Once the other tribunes had been reminded of his previous campaign experience and realized he was not just a parade-ground soldier they accepted him, and as the wine jug went round, even the rain that was still beading on his cloak did not seem so cold. The tension he sensed around him
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was only to be expected, and morale seemed high. The loricas of the men on duty were scoured and shining despite the weather, and new paint gleamed on battered shields. The young staff officers with whom he was sitting seemed serious, but not afraid.

"Do you think the General will be able to bring Calgacus to battle?" he asked.

One of the other men laughed. "More likely to be the other way round. Can't you hear 'em?" He gestured into the windy darkness. "They're up there all right, howling and painting themselves blue! The scouts say there's thirty thousand men up on Graupius -warriors of the Votadini and Selgovae, Novantae and Dobunni and all the other little clans we've been chasing these past four years, and Caledonians from northern tribes whose names even they don't know. Calgacus will give us a battle, no doubt of it; he has to, before they all start remembering old feuds and begin to fight each other instead!"

"And how many," Gaius asked carefully, "have we?"

"From the Legions, fifteen thousand: the Twentieth Valeria Victrix, Second Adiutrix, and what's left of the Ninth," said one of the tribunes, who by his insignia, was attached to the Second.

Gaius looked at him with interest. The tribune had joined the Legion since Gaius had been in Londinium, but there must be others here from his father's Legion whom he would know.

"And eight thousand auxiliary infantry, mostly Batavians and Tungri, some Brigantian irregulars and four wings of cavalry." This was from a troop commander, who shortly thereafter took his leave to return to his men.

"Well, that's not so unequal, is it?" Gaius said brightly, and someone laughed.

"It would be no problem at all, except that they hold the higher ground."

On the upper slopes of the peak the Romans called Mons Graupius, the wind was colder. The Britons gave the mountain other names - the Old Woman, ancient and enduring, Deathbringer and Winter Hag.

As the night wore on, it was in her latter aspect that Cynric was meeting her. Here, the gusts of rain that fell in the valleys were coming down in bursts of sleet that stung his cheeks and fell hissing into the fires.

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The Caledonians did not appear to mind. They sat around their campfires, draining skins of heather ale and boasting of tomorrow's victory. Cynric pulled his checked cloak over his head, hoping that it would hide his shivering.

"The hunter who boasts too loudly at dawning may find himself with an empty cookpot when night falls,"

said a quiet voice at his elbow.

Cynric turned and recognized Bendeigid, his pale robes a ghostly blur in the darkness.

"Our warriors have always chanted thus before battle - it raises their spirits!"

He turned and gazed at the men around the fire. This lot were Novantae of the White Horse Clan, from the south-east coast of Caledonia, where the Salmaes firth ran in towards Luguvalium. But at the fire beyond them Selgovae men were drinking, their hereditary enemies. The volume rose and he saw the figure of their commander lit suddenly as someone threw a new log on the fire. The chieftain threw back his head, laughing, and the light flamed anew in his pale eyes and his red hair.

"We're on our own ground, lads, and the land itself will fight for us! The Red-cloaks are driven by greed, which is a cold counselor, but we burn with the fire of freedom! How can we fail?"

The Novantae, hearing his words, left their own fire to gather around him, and in moments the two groups had become a single mass of cheering men.

"He's right," said Cynric. "If Calgacus has been able to persuade this lot to stand together, how can we fail?"

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?"

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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

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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 tor 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
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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 hi? 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.

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". . . 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.