The Furies of Rome (30 page)

‘Then we wait here; they should arrive by mid-afternoon at the latest.’

Magnus pulled on his hounds’ leads as they attempted to pounce, with a view to breakfast, on a passing small child. ‘Boudicca could arrive by mid-afternoon at the earliest; did you notice a similarity there?’

Vespasian shaded his eyes as the sun rose. ‘What? The mid-afternoon bit?’

‘Yes, that bit; the bit that puts us in the same vicinity as one hundred thousand or more hairy-arse savages with a new-found taste for tearing out Roman hearts.’

Vespasian pointed down to the river. ‘What’s that?’

Magnus looked down at the murky brown water and frowned. ‘It’s a river.’

‘Well done. And what floats on rivers?’

Magnus grinned, now playing along. ‘Birds, logs and boats.’

‘Excellent; and which one of those will Sabinus and Caenis be arriving in? I’ll give you a clue: it’s not a duck.’

Magnus pretended to think for a few moments as Pollux deposited a turd of admirable proportions on the wooden road; it was immediately subjected to Castor’s close and vigorous scrutiny. ‘So we just jump on Sabinus and Caenis’ log, carry on upstream until we are safe to land and then cut across country to rejoin Paulinus.’

‘Exactly.’

‘And what if the Britons start sacking Londinium before the rescue-log arrives? Do you think that we’ll be able to explain nicely to them that we’re just waiting for our log which will be along at any moment and would they mind massacring someone else?’

‘You could try doing that, if they could hear you.’

‘What?’

Vespasian raised his voice. ‘I said: You could try—’

‘No, I meant: what do you mean?’

‘Ah. I meant if they could hear you from the other side of the bridge over the gap that Paulinus is just about to make in it.’

Magnus looked south along the bridge. ‘Of course; I’m a little slow this morning.’ As he spoke a horse carrying a huge man in the uniform of a prefect of auxiliaries stepped onto the bridge: behind him marched rank after rank of auxiliaries in chainmail and with oval shields. ‘Here comes our royal mate.’

‘What?’ Vespasian took his attention away from the river. ‘Cogidubnus; I knew he would remain loyal.’

The Britannic King held his head high, his long moustaches fluttering in the river breeze, as he led his two cohorts, each eight hundred strong, across the Tamesis bridge. Centurions bawled out an order and the entire company broke step so that the wooden structure did not vibrate itself to destruction.

‘Vespasian and Magnus, my friends,’ Cogidubnus said, drawing near, his ruddy round face breaking into a broad smile. ‘I wish it were in better circumstances that we meet again.’

‘So do I, old friend,’ Vespasian said, reaching up to grab the proffered, heavily muscled forearm; behind the King his men passed by, Britons in the uniform of Rome. ‘What will happen to your people if this goes badly for Rome?’

‘We have no wish to go back to the old days of constantly fighting amongst ourselves; it’s bad for business, and business is something that the Regni and the Atrebates are getting very good at.’

‘Really?’

‘Put it this way: if Rome stays then all those estates and mines that I and others have bought back off Pallas for under twice what he paid us for them will be worth more than twice what we paid him. In just three months we would have doubled our money and my loan that the Cloelius Brothers called in last month will seem as nothing.’

‘Pallas sold you back his investments! He was going to send me to negotiate that with you the year Agrippina died; I have to say that I’m pleased he didn’t in the end.’

‘I might have given him a better deal had you been negotiating for him rather than Paelignus.’

‘Julius Paelignus?’

‘Yes, a horrible little crookback; do you know him?’

‘I did; the last time I saw him he was lying at the bottom of a latrine with his throat ripped out, being shat upon by a dozen of Boudicca’s men.’

‘How gratifying; I’m pleased to hear that the Iceni have done some good in amongst all this carnage.’

‘But what was Paelignus doing working for Pallas?’

Cogidubnus shrugged. ‘I don’t know but you can be sure that he was getting a commission judging by his determined negotiation and bitter disappointment when I would go no higher than one and nine tenths of what Pallas had paid.’

‘That would explain his strongbox that he was trying to take with him,’ Magnus pointed out.

‘It would,’ Vespasian agreed, ‘and I suppose it would be cheaper for Pallas to get someone who was already here to negotiate for him for a smaller percentage than it would have cost him to persuade someone like me to go but still it—’

‘Prefect!’ Paulinus’ shout cut across Vespasian’s thoughts. The Governor came striding onto the bridge with a bodyguard of a dozen legionaries fending off desperate-looking citizens shouting pleas, weeping and tearing at their hair; Paulinus acted as if they were not there. ‘Welcome to you, indeed; your men are sorely needed.’

Cogidubnus saluted. ‘The united tribes of the Regni and Atrebates will always be loyal to Rome, Governor.’

‘I’m pleased to hear it. Now, I need your men to dismantle the bridge once they’ve crossed; it doesn’t have to be pretty, just effective. Get as far as you can with the job by the sixth hour and then follow us north up the road, which should mean that you will be at least four hours ahead of Boudicca. Keep going at night until you catch up with us; we won’t leave the road. I would hope to be—’ Paulinus stopped abruptly and stared down towards the port; the trireme was under oars and heading out into the river. ‘What the …? That’s the last ship; it’s not meant to sail until all my despatches are on board begging the Emperor and the Senate for help.’ He put his hand to his forehead, rubbing it. ‘And the letters to my wife and sons; how will they know if …? Who gave the order?’

But the answer to that question was obvious as, in the stern looking back towards the bridge, stood a portly man in an equestrian toga; he had a bandage wrapped around his face, holding his jaw in place. Procurator Decianus raised an arm in a farewell wave to Paulinus and the chaos that he had caused.

‘I’ll eat his liver,’ Paulinus snarled.

By the look on the Governor’s face, Vespasian could well believe he meant it.

‘Governor! Governor! Don’t abandon us!’

The shouts from the citizens trying to petition him impinged on Paulinus’ conscience and he turned to vent his anger upon them. ‘I have told you: we cannot hope to defend Londinium and crush Boudicca, and if we don’t crush Boudicca, Londinium will fall eventually, so the logical thing to do is to let it fall now.’

‘And march north to save Verulamium?’

‘I will give the people of Verulamium the same choice as I’ve given you.’

‘But our livelihoods, our property, our wives and children!’ The shouts were mixed and emotional, growing in clamour; but they failed to move the pragmatic Governor.

‘Come with us, if you want to, or cross the bridge before it’s destroyed or stay here and defend yourselves; I don’t care what you do as long as you do it now and leave me alone.’ He turned back to Cogidubnus as the last of the auxiliaries left the bridge. ‘See that it’s done.’

Cogidubnus pointed to a couple of centuries who were stripping off their chainmail at the middle of the bridge. ‘I’ve just given the order.’

‘Good. I shall see you later tonight.’ Paulinus nodded, satisfied, and then looked at Vespasian. ‘Are you coming, senator?’

‘No, Governor, not yet; I have to wait here for my brother and my … er … Antonia Caenis; they’ll be here soon in a boat. We’ll follow you as best we can.’

‘Well, good luck, Vespasian; may the gods of your family hold their hands over you.’

‘Thank you, sir; and I wish the same of yours.’

Paulinus gave a curt nod and turned; his bodyguards ploughed into the crowd surrounding him and cast them aside, strewing them on the ground so that the Governor walked freely as if he were completely alone.

‘You had better get across,’ Cogidubnus suggested as the first planks were ripped up from the centre of the structure.

Vespasian saw Hormus coming through the crowds, loaded with luggage, followed by Caenis’ two slave girls and the other slaves, equally as laden. ‘I’ll see you on the north road, my friend.’

‘I hope so; it’s been a while since we drew our swords together.’

They grasped forearms again and then, once Magnus had said his farewell, they crossed the bridge, along with surprisingly few refugees, to wait for Sabinus and Caenis, praying they would arrive before Boudicca.

Although the gods had, in the past, listened to many of Vespasian’s prayers, they did not listen to that particular one and by the time Cogidubnus had been gone for a couple of hours, having torn up fifty paces of the bridge and pulled four of the great piles from the riverbed, the first fires appeared on the northeast side of the town. Soon the screaming could be heard and the fires broadened. Vespasian sat with Magnus and his dogs on the southern bank of the Tamesis wondering at the folly of those who had chosen to stay in the town when to do so could only mean certain death.

‘I suppose they’ll have nothing if all their property is destroyed,’ Magnus opined after Vespasian had mentioned to him that one of the refugees had told Hormus that he thought that there were upwards of thirty thousand people who had decided to throw themselves on Boudicca’s mercy or just hide until the storm passed over.

‘They’ll have their lives,’ Vespasian said, still trying to get his head around the size of the massacre that was about to be perpetrated.

‘But what good is that if there is no way to feed and clothe yourself, let alone your wife and children? If you’ve got nothing you’ve really got nothing in this world and that includes chances; it’s something that people of your class find impossible to see the reality of and then comprehend it. Nothing is exactly what it says and it’s very bleak indeed.’

Vespasian thought on that for some time as the people on the further bank who preferred to chance death rather than face the reality of nothing began to die in droves, judging from the clamour of death that floated across the river. And then they appeared, hundreds of them, running to the bridge to find that it really had been cut and it was not just some cruel joke being played upon them. More emerged on the shoreline along half a mile to either side of the useless structure as fires grew behind them so that a thick grey pall hung over the town as if put there by the gods so as to shield their eyes from the atrocities happening below. And Vespasian could see that what was happening below was truly terrible as the Iceni flooded in their hundreds through the streets and buildings down to the shore and trapped thousands of the populace between them and the river so that the massacre could really get under way.

Pitiless they were as they turned the waters of the Tamesis red.

In their thousands the Iceni butchered the citizens of Londinium, regardless of age or sex. Novel ways they found to massacre, so that it would not become too repetitive for them. Vespasian watched with macabre curiosity as they nailed children to the bridge’s upright supports, hung old men from its beams, sliced off women’s breasts before impaling them on the water’s edge; they disembowelled, ran-through, bludgeoned, severed, strangled, flayed, hacked, ripped out hearts and then decapitated at will in an orgy of death that even the most avid fan of gladiatorial combat in the circus could not, for one moment, have imagined.

The few who could swim managed to save themselves by taking to the river, others who could not tried anyway and drowned in the attempt for the tide was nearly at full height. Many chose this death in preference but the majority lacked the necessary strength to end their own lives and, instead, died screaming on the vengeful blades of the Iceni. As the piles of heads and hearts grew and grew so did the fires in the town strengthen, driving even more victims from their hiding places down to the shore that soon became the only place safe from the conflagration, for Boudicca had surrounded the entire town with the best part of her hordes so that none could escape by any other way. But death waited for them there as sure as it did in a cellar beneath the inferno and, for what seemed to be endless time, Vespasian and his companions watched the horror unfold on the north bank. Silent and grim they were, unable to take their eyes from the slaughter as the warriors of the Iceni stained themselves red with the blood of the Roman citizens of Londinium. For a whole mile along the river frontage of the town, red monsters roamed, killing at will, knowing that they would be punished for what they had done, for Rome would not forgive so great an outrage, so better, therefore, to make the crime as great as possible. And that they achieved in a spectacular manner and by the time the four transport vessels, under full oars, appeared around the river bend Vespasian had seen more death in one day than he felt he had ever seen in his whole life; he gazed at the ships for a while unable to register what they were and their significance, so full was his mind with the images and sounds of brutal murder.

‘Cavalry transports,’ Vespasian said eventually.

‘What?’ Magnus asked vaguely, unable to tear his eyes away from a screaming, naked girl as she sank lower and lower onto the upright stake between her legs.

Vespasian repeated himself.

Magnus turned his head as the girl lost her struggle against gravity. ‘So they are; what are they doing here?’

‘Don’t you see? They must be the first part of the reinforcements from the mainland. I sent the messages to Germania Inferior and Gallia Belgica five days ago; two days to get there, a day to react and then two days to get back. Come on.’ Vespasian began to walk at pace east, towards the ships that had begun to steer towards the south bank now that the crew had seen the situation in Londinium.

For half a mile they walked until the ships were less than a hundred paces away and then they hailed them, proclaiming their Roman citizenship across the water that even here bore the unmistakeable hue of blood. But there was no need to stress who they were for they were recognised; the lead ship veered towards them and in the bow Vespasian saw Caenis standing between Sabinus and another man in the uniform of a military tribune, his helmet resplendent with its red horsetail plume.