Theodoric (17 page)

Murmuring polite platitudes, Myrddin acknowledged to himself that the other's profile – eagle nose, lofty forehead, determined chin – did indeed add up to everyone's ideal image of a Roman emperor. What drove the man? Syagrius, son of Aegidius, a general of the great Aetius who had defeated Attila at the Catalaunian Fields, was living in a
fantasy world, he decided. All this talk of ‘reoccupation by Rome', ‘client kings', ‘Belgica Secunda', ‘donning the purple', ‘new imperial coinage', suggested that the man was acting out a dream in which the barbarians were a temporary nuisance who, in the course of time, would surely be removed. Everyone – except Syagrius, it seemed – knew that the Western Empire was finished,
*
a fact tacitly acknowledged by the Eastern Emperor, Zeno, by not contesting Odovacar's usurpation. (Although Odovacar had seemed to hedge his bets at first, by having Julius Nepos' head stamped on his coinage.) Even Sidonius, who had heroically defended Arverna against the Visigoths, had accepted that the game was up, and was now living amicably among the barbarians he had once despised.

During the next few days, while enjoying Syagrius' hospitality (Myrddin was waiting to join an armed party who would escort him to Gesoriacum
†
on the coast when they went there to pick up supplies), the Briton's sense of inhabiting a strange dream world grew ever stronger. In ‘Belgica Secunda', Syagrius had succeeded in creating a Roman ministate which somehow worked. Everything ran on Roman lines: administration, taxes, law. Even the Frankish war-bands who, under Childeric, had penetrated the region in a rather haphazard way, seemed to have accepted the authority of their Roman ‘governor'. They were apparently happy to be judged by Roman rather than by Salic law – an exception to the situation obtaining in the rest of Gaul, where barbarians and Romans adhered strictly to their own separate legal codes.

The glue holding the whole tenuous fabric of the ‘province' together appeared to be nothing more substantial than charisma – a quality Syagrius possessed in overflowing measure. Like Aetius before him, he had the ability to establish a rapport with barbarians, chatting easily with the Franks in their own tongue, tempering their natural ferocity with tact and humour, and persuading them to integrate peacefully as part of the Roman ‘
communitas
'. Under the mild and just regime established by Syagrius, whose vast estates covered much of the area
he claimed to rule, the machinery of society ran smoothly: the economy flourished, roads and public buildings were kept in good repair, and law and order maintained – with the help of veterans from the old Roman Field Army of Gaul.

It was all
too
perfect, Myrddin told himself. Sooner, rather than later, the bubble had to burst. And in fact, on the very day he departed with the ‘cohort', there came a hint of cold reality waiting to intrude. Syagrius was visited by a messenger from Clovis, bearing a challenge to meet the Frankish king in battle on a day and at a place of Syagrius' choosing. The latter seemed to relish the prospect, cheerfully remarking to Myrddin that he would teach young Clovis, an upstart scarcely out of his teens, a lesson he wouldn't forget. He would show the presumptuous pipsqueak that a disciplined Roman force was more than a match for a rabble of disorderly barbarians.

‘Sin', sin', sin'-dex'-sin',' chanted the
campidoctores
,
*
as – with ancient titles resurrected from the glory days of Rome, Syagrius' ‘legion' marched to meet Clovis's Franks outside Remi.
†
The force, arrayed in antique ridge helmets and ring-mail hauberks dug out of storage and patched up, and with dragon standards streaming, made a brave show. Someone had even managed to find a battered old legionary eagle; now, burnished till it gleamed like gold, it swayed proudly at the head of the column. In the van, together with his senior ‘centurions' and ‘tribunes' – young Gallo-Roman aristocrats – rode the ‘legate', Syagrius, looking every inch the Roman general.

The mood, as evidenced by the soldiers' singing as they marched, was confident, even carefree. Training in tactics and marching evolutions had been thorough; weapons and equipment were sound – certainly superior to those of the Franks, who mostly went into battle unarmoured and armed only with spears. The older officers alone, many of them old sweats who had seen service under Aetius against Burgundians and Huns, harboured reservations. They knew how the guts shrivelled up with fear when you faced a screaming wave of barbarians, and only the
knowledge that disciplined steadiness would usually guarantee survival and victory kept you from throwing down your shield and turning tail. If enthusiasm alone were enough to win battles, a Roman victory was assured. If. The young Gallo-Romans, mostly
coloni
*
and artisans, who had flocked to the standard of Syagrius were commendably eager. What they lacked was that important element, experience. Only the test of battle would discover if that lack would prove fatal – or otherwise.

The three-deep Roman line presented a formidable appearance: an ordered mass of armoured men, protected by a triple wall of shields topped by a frieze of glittering spear-blades. Facing their opponents across a rolling plain, some of Clovis's veterans who had fought against Rome in the old days, and seen a Frankish charge break in red ruin against a Roman line, were for caution. ‘Better, Sire, to make honourable terms with Syagrius now,' one greybeard warrior advised the young king, ‘than see many thousand widows made this day.'

‘There's just one thing you're forgetting, old Look-before-you-leap,' smiled Clovis, clapping the aged veteran affectionately on the shoulder. ‘The last of Rome's armies was disbanded years ago. Those fellows over there may look like Roman soldiers, but they're not. They're unblooded boys dressed up in Roman armour, who'll break and scatter when we charge them. Mark my words.'

And so it proved. Before the tide of yelling fair-haired giants had closed with them, panic had begun to spread among Syagrius' troops. In twos and threes at first, then in groups, they dropped their weapons, turned and ran. In vain the veterans railed, pleaded, threatened; there were simply not enough of them to stop the rot. With horrifying speed the army lost cohesion, then suddenly disintegrated and became a fleeing rabble, to be cut down in their thousands by the pursuing and triumphant Franks.

Being mounted, Syagrius escaped. Making his way to Tolosa, he threw himself on the mercy of the Visigoths. Had Euric still reigned, he might well have afforded the ‘Rex Romanorum' protection. But the Council of Regency who ruled the kingdom in the name of his son, the boy-king Alaric, was divided and irresolute. They hesitated to
offend Clovis, whose name was already inspiring respect, even fear, far beyond the boundaries of Frankish territory. When Clovis threatened war, the Goths surrendered Syagrius to the Franks, who promptly had him executed.

Thus was extinguished the last flickering light of Imperial Rome in Gaul.

 

*
Soissons.

†
The Rhône.

‡
The Loire.

§
Headquarters building – either a palace or municipal offices.

*
It wasn't – quite. In the next century, much of it, though not Gaul,
was
restored (temporarily) by the generals of the Eastern Emperor, Justinian (see Notes).

†
Boulogne.

*
Sin' – sinister (‘left'); dex' – dexter (‘right').
Campidoctores
were drill-sergeants.

†
Reims – where Clovis along with his chief followers was baptised in 496 as a
Catholic
, not an Arian, Christian, an act which did much to reconcile the Catholic Gallo-Romans to Frankish rule.

*
Tenant farmers; peasants.

In this year Aelle and Cissa besieged Andredesceaster and slew all the inhabitants; there was not even one Briton left alive there

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, ninth century (the entry for 491)

Scudding through a choppy Fretum Gallicum,
*
the little ship, with a stiff sou-wester blowing on the quarter, approached the landing-stage of Anderida
†
the last of the forts of the Saxon Shore to remain in British hands, thus providing the only safe entry to Britannia along her southern shore. Beyond the pebble beach loomed the fort's mighty ramparts, studded with huge projecting bastions ribbed with bonding courses of red tile.

The fort's main gate opened, and a stream of people, mostly anxious-looking families clutching possessions, crowded on to the jetty. ‘Poor devils,' the skipper muttered to Myrddin, as the sailors prepared to lower the gangplank. ‘Refugees from the Saxons, hoping to re-settle in Aremorica. Best I can do is dump them in Gesoriacum; after that they're on their own. Some of them may make it – if they can avoid being killed or enslaved by Franks en route. 'Course, they'll have to pay me. Most do in kind, occasionally in coins, but there are precious few of those left in Britannia – mostly old nummi of Honorius, from the last issue ever sent.' Turning from Myrddin, he roared, ‘Get back there!' as the gangplank thumped on the pier and a swarm of desperate passengers tried to rush it – to be beaten back by burly seamen wielding belaying-pins.

Saddened by the sight, Myrddin, clad in his monk's black robe, with satchel over shoulder and walking-staff in hand, hurried ashore and sought admission at the gate before it closed.

*

‘Keep to the ridgeways
*
and you'll be all right,' Meurig, the fort's commander, told Myrddin. They were in the former's quarters in one of the twin towers surmounting the main gateway. The commander – a tough-looking grizzled veteran – was in charge of a four-hundred-strong garrison, the Numerus Abulcorum. This was the island's last surviving unit of
limitanei
, the frontier troops left behind when Rome's Field Army of Britannia had been withdrawn eighty years before. Since their profession was hereditary, with land being granted on discharge, the
limitanei
became bonded into the local community, continuing from one generation to the next. ‘The Saxons – lowland farmers to a man – seem to hate the hills,' Meurig continued. ‘So far, they've settled only in the plains and valleys. You want to reach Artorius, you say? Let's see; last I heard, he'd set up his headquarters near Castra Gyfel.
†
That's on the great Roman road running from Isca to Lindum – a hundred and fifty plus miles due west from here; say a week to ten days' walking.' He glanced at Myrddin quizzically. ‘Beats me why you'd want to come to Britain, when anyone who's able to seems anxious to get out. Still, no business of mine. Whatever your reasons, I expect they're good ones – especially if they're connected with Artorius. What a man! If it wasn't for him, the Saxons might have pushed us Brits back to Cambria by now.' He smiled at his visitor. ‘You'll stay the night of course; can't let you go without a proper Anderida send-off. Seeing we protect them, the locals keep us well supplied – boar and venison from Anderida Silva,
‡
washed down with home-brewed ale. At least you'll be setting out with a full stomach.'

Striding along the ancient ridgeway cresting the chalk downs west of Anderida, Myrddin felt his spirits lift on this glorious autumn morning. Below him, to the right, stretched the vast expanse of Anderida Silva, a sea of reds and golds, while before him, starkly beautiful, the sculpted hills rolled to the horizon, the nearest with an arresting figure cut
through the turf to the bare chalk, showing a giant holding a staff in each outstretched hand.
*

Sleeping at night in shepherds' huts, or among the banks and ditches of hill-forts which had been old when Roman legions stormed them, his thick wool robe proof against the worst of the chills, Myrddin made good progress westward. The ridgeways took him through a magical landscape: huge rounded hills like frozen billows, some with chalk-cut figures of giants and horses adorning their bare flanks; strange mounds like bells, inverted bowls, or upturned longboats – tombs from ancient times when men had only tools of flint or bronze; concentric rings of standing stones, one such overlooked by a tall hill so perfectly conical it could only have been raised by man – but why or when was something only to be guessed at.

On the eighth day, spotting far below the settlement of Castra Gyfel on a Roman road running arrow-straight towards the north-east, Myrddin descended from the ridgeway he was walking, to the plain – a land of streams and water-meadows, yet unconquered by the Saxons. Given directions to Artorius' headquarters by a farmer who spoke glowingly about the British leader, Myrddin found himself, after a pleasant walk of a few miles, approaching an extraordinary edifice, an ancient hill-fort from its earthen banks and ditches, reinforced with recent defences of stone and timber.
†
Presenting himself before a crude but massive timber gateway, Myrddin got ready to produce his documents.

‘This says you helped Aurelian, and that now you wish to help me. Should I feel flattered?' Artorius, a flame-haired giant, clean-shaven in the Roman manner, and with a hint of humour about the shrewd eyes and the decisive mouth, handed back Myrddin's letter of introduction. ‘Subscribed by Odovacar no less, I see,' he went on with mock reverence. ‘We
are
impressed.' He shot the other an appraising look. ‘Well, my friend, if you really are what you claim to be – a healer, not a quack – we might, I suppose, find some use for you. Let's put you to the test. As it happens, a man of mine's just come in from hunting, with a dislocated shoulder. Our own sawbones seems to be having a spot of bother putting it to rights.
Perhaps you'd care to have a try?' They were in a great timber hall (the largest of the many buildings – barracks, stables, kitchens, workshops – within the fort's vast courtyard), its roof supported by a double row of pillars made from tree-trunks, the walls hung with weapons and trophies of the chase: antlers, skins of deer and wolf. A dozen men, retainers of some consequence from their gold arm-bands and neck-torques, lounged on chairs or settles, chatting, drinking ale, playing dice or board games.