Theodoric (11 page)

When quasi-stability was restored in Gaul by the great general and co-emperor Constantius, Severinus had made his way south in stages to Italy, earning a living by practising the medical skills he had learnt among the Bagaudae. So much in demand did his craft become in Rome that he had been able to live in enough comfort and security to attend classes in law and philosophy at the university. Crossing to Roman Africa, he had continued his studies at the University of Carthage, and conversed with the famous scholar Augustine, bishop of
Hippo. When the Vandals crossed the Pillars of Hercules
*
and seized the diocese, he had moved to the Eastern Empire, first to Egypt, where he had studied medicine at Alexandria – Galen's alma mater – then to Constantinople, at whose university he had attended lectures in philosophy and rhetoric.

And so, in an unplanned Odyssey as a wandering scholar-cum-healer, he had completed the whole vast circuit of both empires, returning to Britannia (now abandoned to its own defences) as part of Germanus' second mission to combat the influence of the Pelagian heretics. Here, he had met and befriended Ambrosius Aurelianus, son of a Roman senator and resistance leader against the inroads of the Saxons. After helping Aurelianus to organize a system of self-defence among the island's cities, he had returned to imperial soil. Finally, these fifteen years past, he had made his home in Noricum where, to his amusement, he had become venerated as a ‘holy man' and sage.

When at last the barbarians came, Severinus had slipped naturally into the role of leader, organizing the defences of Castra Batava, Lauriacum
†
and a dozen other places. Apart from an intermittent trickle of pay for the few surviving Roman units, no help from the central government had been forthcoming. When that, too, ceased, some Roman soldiers based at Castra Batava had volunteered to make the journey to Ravenna and bring back the funds themselves. Severinus had tried to dissuade them; the way was long and arduous, beset with danger. Moreover, the political situation in Italy was in a state of melt-down. The latest wearer of the diadem and purple, one Julius Nepos, having murdered the previous incumbent, Glycerius, and proclaimed himself emperor, was in conflict with the commanders of the Army of Italy. (Severinus had actually met one of them, Odovacar, of the old Scirian royal line. En route to Italy to seek his fortune, Odovacar had sought out the famous holy man of Noricum. Severinus remembered being impressed by the big German's intelligence and self-confidence, predicting Odovacar would go far.) Despite Severinus' warnings, the Batavan soldiers, brave and stubborn, had insisted on going. Two months having passed since their departure,
the old man was now making his way to Castra Batava, to find out if they had returned.

‘Nearly home, lads!' At the rear of the straggling line of soldiers and pack-mules laden with coin, the
circitor
*
pointed ahead to a dramatic gash in the saw-toothed crest of the Alpes Carnicae.
†
The men, travel-stained and weary, raised a ragged cheer and quickened their pace. A few hours later they reached the summit of the pass and began the descent into Noricum.

They had found Ravenna, the imperial capital and terminus of the outward journey, in a state of confusion, with harassed heads of state departments rushing about like so many headless chickens. No one seemed to know who was in charge of anything; the latest emperor, Julius Nepos, had apparently quarrelled with his top general, Orestes, and sailed for Dalmatia – abandoning the Roman West and creating, in effect, an interregnum. After endless requests, the Batavans were eventually granted an audience with the two chief financial ministers, the
Comes Rei Privatae
and
Comes Sacrarum Largitionum
– the Counts of the Privy and Public Purses respectively.

‘Until I get the emperor's permission,' the Privy Purse, a thin, intense man, had bleated, ‘I cannot issue funds. And as the emperor is – not forthcoming, shall we say, my hands are tied, completely tied.' The Public Purse, a plump, jolly individual clearly sympathetic concerning their predicament, had proved more accommodating. ‘I think we can, ah, “liberate” a small amount from the pay chest of the Army of Italy,' he said with a conspiratorial wink. ‘After all, they're federates – barbarians, not Romans like yourselves. Anyway, everything's going to hell in a handcart just now; I doubt if I'll ever be called to account. Best assume, though, that this'll be your final pay instalment.'

Now, relaxed and carefree to be nearing journey's end, the Batavan soldiers abandoned their usual caution. Helmets and heavy hauberks loaded on the pack-mules, they made their way beside the sparkling Oenus, eagerly anticipating the welcome that awaited them in Castra Batava, which was expected soon to come into view.

They followed the riverside path into a wood. Suddenly, spears thrusting, axes hacking, armed Alamanni raiders burst from the trees and fell on them. Unarmoured, taken by surprise, the Romans could put up only token resistance. In seconds it was all over; the soldiers' lifeless bodies were tumbled into the stream, and the killers departed, delighted with their spoils.

When Severinus reached the Oenus and observed the threads of scarlet in the current, he had a premonition of disaster – soon to be confirmed, as the first body bobbed in sight. Tears flowing down his face, the old man hastened to break the news to the Batavans.

 

*
River Inn.

†
West Roman province, roughly corresponding to southern Austria –
Sound of Music
country.

*
A non-commissioned rank roughly corresponding to sergeant-major.

†
York.

†
Brittany.

*
The Straits of Gibraltar.

†
Passau; Lorsch.

*
A non-commissioned rank roughly equal to corporal.

†
The Carnatic Alps.

All their inhabitants [of British towns] . . . were mown down, while swords flashed and flames crackled

Gildas,
The Destruction of Britain
,
c.
540

‘Saxons, Sire – a mighty host,' gasped the scout, reining in his lathered mount before Ambrosius. ‘As thick as blowflies on a week-old corpse.'

‘Numbers? Distance?'

‘My guess is ten thousand at the least, Sire. Now about five miles off, I'd say.'

More than thrice our strength, thought the other grimly. Ambrosius Aurelianus:
Dux Britanniae et Saxum Britannorum
– Duke of Britain and ‘the Rock of the British' – son of a Roman senator and leader of the British resistance against the blue-eyed heathens from across the German Ocean. Within two hours, his rag-tag army, the
Exercitus Britanniae
, could be locked in battle with the Saxon host. Less than three generations ago, he reflected, when Britannia was still a diocese of Rome, the ‘Sea Wolves' had come as raiders only. Now, with the legions long gone and the forts of the Saxon Shore abandoned and crumbling, they arrived each year in ever greater numbers, driving the Britons from the land to seize it as their own. Already, the great province of Maxima Caesariensis
*
had fallen to the North and South Folk and the East and South Saxons, the native Britons fleeing to the west or across the sea to ‘New Britannia' in north-west Gaul.

Turning in the saddle, Ambrosius surveyed his force: civilian volunteers stiffened by
limitanei
– second-rate frontier troops, all that remained of the Army of Britain after Constantine, self-styled ‘the Third', had taken the legions with him to Gaul in a doomed bid for the purple.
Desperate appeals for help against the Saxon menace had been sent to Aetius, the greatest general of the Western Empire – appeals perforce ignored by a Master of Soldiers struggling to save the West from extinction by barbarian insurgents. Now, any hope of help from Rome had long vanished; Aetius was dead these twenty years, slain by a jealous emperor, and the West itself was tottering towards its end. With the aid of a remarkable man, one Severinus – scholar, healer, natural leader, a member of Germanus' second mission to counter the Pelagian heresy in Britain – he had encouraged the British to organize defence centres. These were fortified strongpoints within whose walls the local populace could gather and be safe whenever Saxon war-parties approached. It was his efforts in this field that had earned Ambrosius his nickname, ‘the Rock of the British'. For a time his scheme had proved successful, but of late the increasing frequency of attacks had begun to make such centres appear like islands in a raging Saxon sea.

Of Ambrosius' troops, the
limitanei
alone had proper armour – battered ridge-helmets and mail hauberks issued by the Roman government many years before and since patched up times without number; the volunteers made do with caps and cuirasses of boiled leather. Each man carried a long spear and oval shield, the
limitanei
also bearing swords. The cream of the army consisted of the cavalry, positioned at either end of the three-deep line of infantry. Handpicked, sons of Romano-British aristocracy, these were natural horsemen, needing only some basic training to weld into a formidable fighting machine.

Until this year, the Saxon conquest had been a matter of slow attrition by separate war-bands. This present threat was on an altogether different scale, a mass invasion which suggested a concerted plan, perhaps masterminded by a single leader. A century before, Britain had faced a comparable danger, when a Barbarian conspiracy of Saxons, Picts and Scots, had overrun the island. But Rome then had a mighty army, and within a year Count Theodosius, father of one of Rome's greatest emperors, had cleared the land of the invaders. Now that army was gone, replaced by federates as fickle and greedy as they were ill-disciplined and violent, ready on a whim to turn upon their masters.

To meet this new and terrible Saxon threat, Ambrosius had hastily assembled a scratch militia, organizing instruction in elementary drill and tactics by officers drawn from the all-but-vanished landowning
and administrative class. On first news of the route of the enemy's advance, using the terrain to maximum advantage he had drawn up the Romano-Britons on the crest of a low ridge flanked by woods, to negate as far as possible any Saxon superiority in numbers. Far away across the plain, the trilithons of the ancient Hanging Stones appeared as a faint tracery of concentric rings.

The hot summer afternoon bled away, the army standing down to snatch some rest before the coming encounter. At last, a swirling haze on the horizon, accompanied by a sound like breakers on a distant shore, announced the approach of the Saxon host. As the dust-cloud rolled nearer, a myriad of tiny specks interspersed with glints and flashes appeared at its base, while the noise swelled from a murmur to a muted roar. The Britons stood to arms, the ground beneath their feet beginning to tremble.

‘Is there no end to their number?' breathed the young cavalry officer beside Ambrosius. ‘They blacken the earth like the locusts in the Bible. We'll never hold them, surely?'

‘True,' the general replied to his second-in-command. ‘But we can sting them, teach them that the price of British soil's a heavy one – in blood.'

Like an incoming tide, the Saxon host – flaxen-haired giants, unarmoured and on foot – flowed across the plain, lapped the foot of the ridge, surged up it to break against the British shield-wall with an ear-shattering crash. For a time, the two armies swayed back and forth, the British footsoldiers holding the ridge while their cavalry mounted charge after charge to carve bloody swathes deep into the enemy mass. Forced to fight on a narrow front, the Saxons were at first unable to bring their overwhelming strength to bear. But, inexorably, sheer weight of numbers began at last to tell. The British line thinned from three deep to two, then one, while the cavalry returned from every charge diminished. His horse killed under him, Ambrosius fought on foot until brought down by a Saxon javelin. Rushing to the general's side, his second-in-command dragged him behind the battle-line and made to pull the shaft from his leader's armpit, where the opening in the antique Roman cuirass left it unprotected.

‘Leave it, Artorius,' gasped the general. ‘I'm finished. Now it is you
who must carry on the fight. We've done all we can here. Given them a mauling they'll not readily forget. Withdraw with what's left of the army, and regroup. Cambria, the mountains of the north, the moors and uplands of the west – that's the terrain we can best defend. Raise and train a force of heavy horse; strike them hard and often, using hit-and-run tactics. You saw today the damage cavalry can inflict.' Ambrosius forced a grin. ‘Your sword's broken, I see. Well, at least that means a few less Saxons. You'd best have mine.' He handed to Artorius not the customary long
spatha
of Rome's late armies, but a bloodstained
gladius
, the short stabbing sword with which the legions had won an empire. This one had been handed down from father to son of the Aureliani for two centuries and more, since the days when the dynasty of Severus had worn the purple. Struggling to hold back tears, Artorius took the venerable weapon from the dying ‘Rock'.

Out of such fleeting moments, mythologies can grow. Thus did Arthur take the Sword from the Stone.

 

*
It covered most of south-east England, from East Anglia to Hampshire, and was governed from London.

Are you ignorant that it is the constant policy of the Romans to destroy the Goths by each other's swords?

Jordanes (quoting Strabo taunting Theoderic),
Gothic History
, 551

Entering the foothills of the Haemus range,
*
Theoderic looked back at the long, long column snaking behind him almost to the gates of Novae, his base in Moesia Secunda.
†
First came the host, fit men aged sixteen to sixty, mostly on foot and armed with spears; then the train of baggage – mules and ox-drawn wagons accompanied by women, children and the elderly, with nursing mothers, the sick and the feeble carried in the vehicles. To his left and right, now invisible because of intervening spurs, marched two similar columns, one under Soas, his trusted second-in-command, the other led by Thiudimund, to whose care he had entrusted both their mothers. (Reasoning that the circumstances hardly gave scope for Thiudimund to effect any mischief, also unwilling, for the sake of appearances, to advertise any family disharmony, Theoderic had decided, albeit reluctantly, to give his brother the charge.) Barring those Goths who had migrated with Vidimir, brother of Thiudimer, to Italy (and ultimately Aquitaine to join their Visigoth cousins), the three columns together comprised the entire Amal nation. Fixing his gaze on the formidable mountain chain looming above them, Theoderic reflected on the highs and lows of his career these last ten years: from his homecoming in Pannonia, to this new beginning, which a wonderful offer by the Romans had made possible.