Arthur Britannicus (23 page)

XXVIII
. Stirling

Hadrian’s famous Wall was Rome’s only stone frontier, and ran 74 miles from sea to sea, but for all of its short-lived useful life it was never intended to keep the Picts out, merely to deter raiders and control and tax travellers. The rampart that formed the spiritual and physical northern boundary of the empire began as a series of 15 forts that were gradually, through the efforts of three legions and part of the British fleet, linked by a high battlement right across the country. It was originally called ‘The Aelian Rampart’ after the Spaniard Hadrian’s family name, for he was properly called Publius Aelius Hadrianus and was heir to a fortune made from the clan’s Iberian olive groves. The family was important and influential enough that the emperor Trajan himself had been Hadrian’s guardian.

Publius Aelius Hadrianus’ Wall stretched from the bridge named for him – Pons Aelius – in the east to Bowness, on the Solway Firth in the west, the latter short stretch made of turf and timber, not stone, but all of it boasted watchtowers every one-third of a mile, with fortified, manned gateways at every mile or so. The rampart itself was 15 Roman feet high, ten feet wide for much of its length and sat behind a wide berm that had forward of it a deep defensive ditch. Where possible, the builders used local landscape features to make it more formidable, building it, for example, along the crest of a ridge.  When the legions had finished building the Wall itself, they turned their attention to the land south of it, and dug a parallel, 20 feet wide flat-bottomed ditch with earth ramparts on either side, to protect the rear and create a zone controlled by the military. In its glory, it was a wonder of the world. When Carausius came to inspect it, however, the legendary frontier barrier once simply called The Entrenchment was in a sorry, neglected state.

“We just don’t have enough soldiers to man the whole thing properly, lord,” a harried cavalry commander told the emperor. “The fact is, the Wall was mostly abandoned after only a handful of years, when Antoninus built another wall of turf and timber about 100 miles further north of here. We did return to this as the frontier after a while, but it’s never really been a proper military fortification, more a customs barrier.” The emperor, standing in the wooden gateway of a mile-castle, could see for himself the outlines in the ground where a onetime fortification had been dismantled, the stone and timber removed for use elsewhere and the ground sealed with a layer of clean clay and turf, ready for rebuilding. Standard Operating Procedure, he thought. Army orders were that nothing was to be left for the enemy to use.  He turned back to the equestrian. “We’re going north, beyond the Antonine, so we’ll take a look what’s there. I don’t suppose there’s much.”

Two weeks later, Carausius found he was right. Antoninus’ timber palisade had gone, rotted into the ground in the two centuries since it had been abandoned and the turf walls had crumbled into the ditch. About all that was left were some gently-sloping old excavations with trees growing out of them. A grown man would hardly break stride as he crossed the onetime barrier that marked the high tide line of Roman conquest. Nothing here to use, thought the emperor, tapping his horse’s sides to move on, and glancing across to the raeda carriage where his mistress Guinevia and
a wet-nurse tended his baby son.  Carausius smiled to himself. She was so excited to be travelling back to her homeland, and to be taking their son Milo to meet his grandfather. Not many soldiers made a military expedition a family outing, he chuckled to himself. Well, I’m the emperor, and she’s my best advisor. So be it.

The legion continued its march north behind its sacred gilded Eagle, along the old road of Dere Street, which was in fine condition even after a century without maintenance. The troops crossed the Forth River and turned north to the huge dolerite crag that outcropped steeply from the plain at Stirling. The old Romans had built a strongpoint there, on the site of a hill fort so ancient it had probably been built by the gods.

A temple of good, square Roman stone still stood there, the structure intact, roof a little damaged, the floor inches deep in animal droppings where it had been used as a byre. Its inscriptions showed it had been dedicated to Mithras, the legionaries’ god who was born from rock, so Guinevia, a pagan sorceress who had daily been growing more animated as they marched deeper into her native land, insisted on making sacrifice in the old place of worship. It was, she explained, a site of ancient magic, a perfect place to consult the auguries for the coming campaign.  All she would need was a day or two to purify it first, and as she was in her homeland, the gods would hear her voice. The emperor shrugged. He and most of his legionaries worshipped Mithras. It was appropriate. He ordered detachments down into the plain and woods to forage for fresh beef and venison, and decided to spend a week or two on the natural fortification of the great rock while he sent out scouts in search of enemy war bands.

Inside the temple, shafts of sunlight that fell through broken roof tiles dramatically illuminated the stone altar which Guinevia had readied for the ceremony. She had overseen a work party of legionaries eager to clean up the old temple to their god, and the restoration had gone well. Under the dung that had padded the floor, a wonderful mosaic was revealed, an
image of the sacrifice of a bull. In it, as a radiant-haloed Sol looked on, Mithras in his Phrygian cap was pulling back the head of a bull with one hand while thrusting his dagger into its throat with the other. Relatively undamaged, the floor’s black and white image glinted in the shafts of Sol-sent light, as did the bronze of an incense burner and a drinking horn on the altar. Beside them, a small silver bowl held sacred mushrooms and a glass flask stoppered with a pine cone contained the wine that would substitute for the blood of a sacrificed bull.

Carausius and a congregation of soldiers listened respectfully while Guinevia called on her witch goddess Nicevenn to witness, and she dedicated the sacrifice
to  Mithras, asking him to observe that they had re-purified his temple as true believers. From somewhere, a small cloud of vapour had gathered under the arch of the broken roof. Guinevia looked up at it and smiled, and the congregants who noticed shuddered, and made protective signs. The priestess walked to the side wall of the temple, where soldiers had brought in three Picts as possible offerings.

Two of the captives were miserable dark creatures taken as they herded some scrawny brown sheep and she dismissed them as unsuitable. The third, a gross-bellied mule trader called Leoni, a man with an oversized bald head and large teeth, was more acceptable. She gestured at him. The soldiers quickly stripped away his coarse blue striped wool gown, bound his hands before him with a length of leather and pushed him towards the altar. Sixty or more legionaries crowded around in a rough circle.

Guinevia motioned to a bearded centurion who was the pater, or head, of the legion’s Mithraic devotees. As a woman, she could not belong to the cult, so would not make the sacrifice, but she could read the auguries, and her role as a priestess fitted her to conduct the ceremony. The centurion stepped forward with a slender-bladed skinning knife half-hidden at his side and looked again at the priestess. She caught his gaze and nodded. The pater moved quietly, almost humbly towards Leoni. The muleteer, dazed and nervous had no warning of what was to come, and the pater looked into the prisoner’s eyes. Leoni blinked stupidly in the centurion’s almost-hypnotic gaze and never saw the man’s movement as he punched the knife forward, then across. The soldier drew the knife steadily, unhurriedly from right to left in a long slash across the muleteer’s gross white belly. Leoni’s mouth opened in an O of shock and he looked down as a blue-green spill of guts cascaded to his knees. He stooped, clutching the slippery, warm intestines with his bound hands, then whimpered and looked up at the unmoving, impassive centurion almost questioningly.

A little blood flowed over the backs of the fat man’s hands. Then the prisoner was on his knees, weakly trying to scoop up his steaming entrails. The soldier looked again at Guinevia.
She nodded. As gently as a lover, the big centurion leaned forward and jabbed the knife carefully under the man’s jaw, into the left carotid artery. Suddenly, there was blood. Bright, oxygenated arterial blood, it spurted in a thin jet, pulsing with the man’s pounding heartbeat, then sheeted over his bare shoulder and chest. The victim somehow staggered to his feet, his bluish guts flopping and trailing, his bound hands clutching at the side of his neck where the blade had entered. He took three paces, weaving like a drunk, stumbled and sank slowly to his knees.

For the first time, he spoke, breaking the silence that had gripped everyone in the old temple since Guinevia uttered her incantations. “I’ll tell Mother,” he said thickly. It was all anyone said, then, as the sacrificed Leoni died, he mewed like a cat. Several legionaries sniggered, drawing reproving looks from the pater. High above the sorceress’ head, unnoticed, the vapour cloud seemed to pulse with a dim light several times, then dissipated.

Guinevia waved the circle of soldiers back and carefully studied the blood trail and spatters across the cleared stone floor. She approached the dead man, who was facedown, and motioned again, still silent, to the centurion. He eased his foot under the bloated body and tipped it onto its back. The corpse gave off a death rattle as trapped air exited the body.  Guinevia leaned in to examine the man’s spilled guts, and glanced briefly at the fatted heart and enlarged liver. She looked more closely at the lungs, which were marbled grey and crimson, and surveyed the small bag of the stomach, which was fairly full of what looked like cabbage and greyish meat. The entrails made a repulsive, still-steaming snake that flowed from the corpse. Nobody spoke. Carausius found he was holding his breath. The priestess moved lightly around to the other side of the body, mindless of the puddling blood that wet the hem of her robe, and examined the man’s open eyes. She straightened up, looked across the corpse at Carausius, smiled and said: “The auguries, great Caesar, are good. The gods are with you.” As the soldiers roared their relief and approval, a white rat moved slowly across the rear of the temple.

A week later, Carausius remembered those auguries and their interpretation sourly. The gods were with him? His situation, it seemed, could not be much worse. He was tied by the wrists to the tail of his own horse, being dragged like a slave. Every so often, the rider above him would turn and spit, or slash him across the face with the willow withy he carried. Around them was a war band of Pictish raiders who were driving along four other prisoners, one of them his aide Aemilius. Four more of their hunting party lay dead and mutilated in the woods a few miles back. The gods, the captive emperor thought, had turned their backs, and it had all happened, as these things do, very quickly.

It was only a couple of hours since Carausius had opted to go and hunt deer or wild boar. His scouts were still out somewhere, the men were enjoying a make-and-mend day, he’d heard a stag belling in the distant wood and thought some fresh venison, or even hare or pork would be welcome. Hunting was a good thing for soldiers, a training session as well as a welcome means of filling the larder. It kept horse and rider in good shape, built camaraderie and trust in the spearman alongside you and taught the party to work together. The group was in high spirits as they rode, although they had not yet sighted any game. Aemilius was riding alongside his emperor as they trotted through a small wooded ravine. He was telling a convoluted story of waking up thick-headed in the bed of the wife of a man who’d come seeking trade with the military when the forest around them exploded into an ambush. The volley of spears and arrows put six of the nine riders on the ground in the first moments, and when the Pict war band emerged howling from the trees, Carausius remembered bitterly, things had gone from bad to worse.

His warhorse Ranter had stepped in a rabbit hole and stumbled, throwing the emperor clumsily into Aemilius, who was right alongside him. Both men had fallen and suddenly only one of their
party was in position to put up a defence. He died almost at once, with two short, thick boar spears through his chest. The Picts clubbed Carausius senseless as he scrambled to his feet and tried to fight, and when he came to consciousness he was bound and helpless. The Picts had disarmed and robbed the five survivors, finished off the badly wounded of the hunters and plundered and mutilated their bodies. They gathered up the spoils and the prisoners, then goaded them to their best speed away from the military camp and its likely patrols. The hapless Britons were driven like animals, whipped and threatened if they lagged, forced to a gruelling pace. It was a long day, and dusk was falling when the weary captives sighted the fires by the Roman bridge over the Tay river.

Under guttering rush lights in the timbered hall that was the residence of the chieftain, a Pict named Calderian waited. His thumbprint, Carausius knew, was on the broken treaty the Caledonians had agreed with him. The Pict looked at the emperor with interest. Carausius, his face striped purple from the lashes he’d received, stared back at the traitor and anger overwhelmed him. “You agreed a treaty with me; you are not man enough to keep your word. One day, I shall cut out your tongue.”

Calderian shot back: “That was no treaty, there was no agreement!”  The big man gestured his bound hands, imposing a moment’s silence on his captor. “Listening to you speak, hearing your falsehoods, is like watching a snake eat its own vomit,” he rumbled, but the Pict, his pale face flushed, cut him off. 

“You are a caged Bear now, and you will dance to my tune. You were foolish to invade my land,” he gritted. “For that foolishness, and for your upstart insolence, I shall make an example of you.  Beheading is too easy. I shall have you drowned in the cauldron tomorrow as we feast and watch.” He turned aside, signalling for the prisoners to be taken away.