The Horse Changer (3 page)

I was soon feasting on scraps and caging drinks at taverns where a man could get knifed for the sake of his fine tunic, which I had fortunately already lost. One night a young beauty persuaded me to borrow a sum of money on her behalf. All I had to do was sign my name and the matter was settled. If I didn’t, she was headed to a brothel to pay off the debt her father owed. There is no fool to compare with a nineteen-year-old boy, especially where a presumably innocent young beauty is concerned. With her cupid-bow lips and limpid eyes, how could I possibly allow that sweet creature to become public fodder? It was unthinkable. I signed and got a sweet kiss on my cheek for a thank you.

The debt collector came to the house early next morning for the money. I was still sleeping it off and didn’t recall signing anything. Not at first, at any rate. Then I saw my name, my province, my father’s name, and where I lived in Rome. Yes, it seemed I had agreed to pay something. But such a figure as that? I couldn’t believe it. The patriarch of the family protecting me bought me out of my debt without a word to my father, who would have ordered me back to Tuscany at once. It was a handsome sum, I can tell you, and I promised to pay it back as soon as I could, though in fact it took some years before I possessed an amount sufficient to close the account. By then I had to repay the heirs. Civil wars are especially cruel in that respect.

By chance I saw that same girl some nights later at a different tavern and learned from my companion in debauchery she was the finest fellatrix in all of Rome; he could attest to this from personal experience. ‘For two
asses
and a wink,’ he whispered, ‘you’ll remember those pretty lips for the rest of your life.’

A wiser man would have laughed at his own folly and promised himself to take more care next time. Young Caesar that I was, I went to claim my just desserts. I got them, too. Three of her bully boys with clubs answered my demands. The boon companion watching my back? He was nowhere to be seen. But he was right about one thing. I never forgot those sweet lying lips and the kiss of faux gratitude she had given me.

After that, I swore I would change. In the end I only changed my haunts. I had not even recovered from my bruises when I heard a retired legionary of Pompey Magnus’s army cursing Queen Caesar, the catamite. One-on-one, it was about as fair as a fight in the streets will ever be, but I fought as boys are taught to do. He fought to win. I spent the night on paving stones, properly kicked into submission and lucky I hadn’t been stabbed in the bargain. Next morning I went home late, only to learn I should have mustered on the Camp of Mars an hour before.

The family slave helped me gather my belongings. After I gave a hasty farewell to the master of the house and his wife, the slave and I ran through the city, though I must confess I had to stop and vomit three or four times along the way.

At the meeting point on that great field I put on the uniform of a young cadet, starting with short leather trousers under a long leather cuirass, military grade sandals, and a bronze helmet that never quite fit properly no matter how I padded it. A cavalry centurion received me irritably and sent me into the line, where I stood with several other young men of redoubtable virtue. The centurion looked me over with more contempt than he offered the rest. He smelled the stink of my breath. He touched the lumps under both eyes and my cut lip. He poked a bruise on my arm and watched me wince. Finally, he asked my name. Getting it, he said to me, ‘You’re a perfect disgrace, Quintus Dellius!’

I dropped my chin, imagining I was about to be washed out even before our training began. ‘Look at me, when I give you a compliment, lad!’ I met his gaze, though I expect I was blinking stupidly. ‘You’re in Caesar’s army now. Off duty we drink like Bacchus, brawl like the mad furies, and ride whatever sassy mare swings her tail. On the march we’re the scourge of the earth, the greatest army that ever fought under the standards of Rome! You’ve had your time off now and put it to good use, if I’m any judge of it. Unlike your mates here, who come with their clean faces and combed hair. Now it’s all business for the next three or four months, nothing but work and pain, and you’re the only one in the whole lot who’s got a memory of good times to hold him over.’ He turned on all of us now. ‘You’ll ride and you’ll march, lads; you’ll dig holes and then fill them up again; you’ll build walls and you’ll tear them down. You will fight day and night, bleeding as you do, until you earn a night like our Quintus Dellius just enjoyed. And when you get it, by Dis! you had better come back stinking of vomit and bruised from fistfights, like our friend here. How else will the guard of the watch know you’re Caesar’s men and not the pretties that used to dance with Pompey Magnus?’

He went on, as men like that do. He promised us a career of unending exhaustion if we didn’t get killed outright. ‘Live through it though, and this I promise you, lads: nothing will ever be sweeter than the memory of fighting for Julius Caesar.’

I forget the fellow’s name. He left us after delivering us in Narbonne; I’m not even sure he bothered to give it. Which is a shame. That centurion was the only man I ever met who paid interest on his promises.

Three weeks and six hundred miles passed before we arrived in Narbonne, the winter camp of Legio V, called the
Alaudae
—the Larks. Legio V was composed of non-citizen legionaries, all recruited in Gaul but in every other respect like any legionary camp. The men were back from war and had their freedom for the most part. Some helped with the training of recruits, including the cadets; others left camp to live with their families or common law wives just beyond the fortified perimeter.

Narbonne was safe country without any threat close at hand, but it was also perfectly located so that the Larks might respond quickly to uprisings in the more northerly provinces of Gaul and of course the troublesome Iberian Peninsula. The cavalry attached to the legion was composed of recruits from several of the Germanic tribes, then as now considered the most ferocious fighters on earth. These wild creatures, given Roman discipline, were an especially dangerous group.

The cadets would eventually become junior tribunes in the auxiliaries and, possessing that exalted status, run errands for senior tribunes of the cavalry. After a bit more time we could expect to serve as second-in-command for scouting squads. Until then, we were handed over to a training centurion, who treated us to misery piled upon misery.

The first rule we learned was the most sacred rule of camp life: no one, not even Caesar, rides inside the camp. The next twenty or thirty rules we learned more slowly, usually with the help of our training centurion’s
vitis
, a kind of swagger stick centurions use to dole out correction and punishment. This centurion, like the last, offered us no name by which to address him, or at least none I can remember; nor had he any affection for the whole lot of us. It did not seem fair in our perpetual exhaustion to be also hated, but there is good reason for it. Untried soldiers are dangerous to the whole army. Until they are blooded and proven true, they’re about as useful as virgins or unbroken horses.

By late October I had some feel for my duties. I knew the trumpet blasts and flag signals by heart. I had also distinguished myself as the best rider among all the recruits. That got me the right to train against the Germans. These men loved nothing so much as spilling Roman gentry on the grass, but pain is a fine teacher, and I was soon the equal of all but the very best lancers.

For the most part our training centurion wearied us with routine. This included cleaning the tack, grooming the horses, and mucking the stables, all work that slaves will do if there are no cadets available. As the season began to come to an end and the distant mountains grew white, the camp prefect started sending us out on scouting patrols, sometimes with infantry in support and sometimes with the entire legion on the move, for even in winter Caesar’s legions knew to stay fit for the sudden order to march.

Think of a summer storm arriving after a long hot afternoon of blue skies. First there is a low rumble of thunder and bit of haze on the horizon. Soon enough there is something in the air, intimations of a change one can almost smell; then suddenly the world is swallowed whole in a deluge. That is how Julius Caesar came to Narbonne. After his long summer holiday in Rome we suddenly got word he was laying siege to Marseille, a hundred miles east of Narbonne. In fact, it was old news. On the very day we learned of it Caesar and his general staff came leading their horses through the gate of our camp. This was just at sunset, and no one was really sure at first if it was only another camp rumour or fact. We knew soon enough. Orders came to pack for a march: we were to leave at midnight. Caesar, as I quickly learned first hand, loved nothing better than to take off in the middle of the night and march until past sunset next day.

Gnaeus and Sextus Pompey, the sons of Pompey Magnus, had fought against Caesar with their father. After Pompey’s assassination in Egypt, his sons joined Cato in Africa. In the wake of Caesar’s African victory, Cato killed himself, but Pompey’s sons made their way into the Iberian Peninsula, where the Pompey name still resonated. By late summer the two brothers had brought several of Caesar’s legions under their own standards. Those who resisted the prospect of deserting Caesar took shelter in the fortified city of Oculbo, thirty miles east of Cordoba. The commander at Oculbo was Caesar’s nephew, Quintus Pedius.

Caesar had begun planning a spring campaign in Spain as soon as word came that Pompey’s sons had surfaced. Caesar advertised it in Rome as a ‘mopping up’ operation. Once he learned that his nephew had come under siege from two Pompeian legions, Caesar knew he must act at once or lose all of Spain before winter’s end. Despite the lateness of the season and the uncertainty of the autumn sea he sent two legions along the coast via a fleet of ships. Before these troops had even mustered, Caesar took a carriage north along the Via Cassia. Changing horses every ten miles, he and a handful of officers acting as his cavalry escort averaged a hundred miles per day. After picking up Legio X in northern Italy, Caesar changed to horseback.

In Marseille he had hoped to find fresh recruits, ships, and all the supplies he would need for the coming campaign. Instead, Caesar discovered the city leaders, friends last time they met, had ordered the gates closed against him. Not daring to leave a hostile force at his back, Caesar appointed elements of Legio X to form a blockade of the port. He then assigned other cohorts from that same legion to lay siege to the city. The force was insufficient for victory, but it assured containment until his fleet arrived and could finish the job. Caesar then moved in advance of the remaining cohorts of Legio X, which came more slowly and would ultimately transport Legio V’s baggage train.

Caesar arrived in Narbonne just two weeks after leaving Rome. Within two more weeks he hit Gnaeus Pompey’s legions at Oculbo. To say such a thing is easy enough, but consider this. Caesar travelled nearly twelve hundred miles by land in a month’s time, negotiating the Apennines, the Cisalpine Alps, the Pyrenees and the Sierra mountain ranges. And after such a journey he arrived with a fighting force of six thousand men. Such a thing ought to be beyond mortal capacity. It had certainly never been accomplished in the history of warfare, but that was Caesar’s way. From Narbonne Legio V marched six hundred miles in two weeks averaging forty miles a day. Cavalry, with the exception of the most senior officers and some couriers, packed their horses with grain and supplies and trotted on foot like everyone else.

We did not bother with anything but the weapons and armour we carried; we had no wagons to haul tents. We brought no siege instruments. Nor had we any of a legion’s complement of essential non-combatants. We bought and butchered livestock where we could. Sometimes we baked our bread on campfires. At other times we ate only the rations of hardtack every man carried on his belt. Two weeks passed without scouting parties or walled camps. At the end, we did not even light fires. Caesar’s only defence in a land committed to open rebellion was to move so quickly no force could possibly anticipate his arrival.

Once beyond the Pyrenees, Caesar sent messages by courier to his most trusted friends in the north. These were local nobility who had served him in his last campaign and were able to provide cavalry and whatever intelligence they could gather on the disposition of Pompey’s siege at Oculbo.

By the time Caesar arrived in Andalusia, Legio X’s cavalry had joined up with the Larks. Counting our allied cavalry, recruited quite literally on the run, we numbered some nine hundred horsemen against Gnaeus Pompey’s six hundred. As to the infantry, we had added only a few scouts to our solitary legion. That meant we were outnumbered two-to-one in infantry, which is the only fight that matters.

Two days before our arrival at Oculbo, Caesar sent the cavalry of Legio V and certain of our allied cavalry west through the mountains. In all we were five hundred horsemen. We had orders to stage our attack at sunrise two days after our departure. Not a moment before. The journey was off road, and we depended entirely on local guides to take us across winding goat trails that ran above vertiginously steep ravines. Matters were bad enough at night. In daylight we had to cover the heads of the horses before they would consent to walk along those treacherously narrow paths. In all we travelled forty hours without sleep. Arriving well before dawn, we settled down in a sparsely wooded gorge overlooking the plain west of Oculbo.

It is fifty years since that morning, and yet I can still recall the emotions I felt as I anticipated my first battle. I should have been exhausted from a fortnight of hard travel followed by our two-day march through the Sierras. Instead, like the perfect fool I was, I felt only euphoria.