Arthur Imperator (3 page)
Authors: Paul Bannister
Davius Perseqius Ansonii was lolling in a wineshop, enthralling a handful of young soldiers with gory tales of his occupation. They pressed leather cups of rough red Gallic wine on him, and in return, he recounted the death struggles of the mad, the bad and the unlucky. For Davius was an official
carnifex
, crucifixioner to the emperor, and he’d nailed up, chopped up, sawed up, burned up, strangled or bled out hundreds of the doomed during his career.
He’d
come close to adorning a crucifix himself a few months before, and he inwardly shuddered to consider that. Davius had been sent out from the port of Bononia, which was then held by Arthur, to execute a score of Bagaudae bandits captured further along the coast of northern Gaul. During his absence, the emperor Maximian’s forces had unexpectedly struck and laid siege to the citadel.
The
general Constantius had ringed the whole of Bononia with palisades, blocked the harbour entrance and trapped the garrison without hope of relief. Davius and his escorting troops had returned, cautiously come close, seen the impassable siegeworks and quietly slipped away again, knowing that they would join those selected for painful death once the Romans breached the walls.
The
platoon moved steadily west, commandeered a fishing boat and crew at spear point and sailed across the Narrow Sea to Britain, a reunion with their legion, and safety.
This
day, Davius was in a tavern in London, readying for the execution of a Caesar, and he was explaining some of the finer points of his craft to the open-mouthed soldiers. “Crucifixion hurts a lot,” he said. “You flog the perp with a metal-tipped flagellum to bleed him, weaken him a bit, then you make him carry the crosspiece to the execution place. There, you already have an upright waiting. It has a squared end at the top, and there’s a squared hole cut in the middle of the crosspiece, so they fit together nicely, like a big letter ‘T.’
“You
fasten the perp naked to the crosspiece. You can rope him to it, but it’s better to use nine inch nails and you knock them in either through the forearms or just under the fleshy bit of the thumbs, angling them through the wrist. If you just nail straight through the palms, the perp’s weight pulls the fingers off and you have to do it again. Keep the nails straight so you can re-use them, or sell them: people use them as charms if someone’s died on those nails.
“When
you have him snugged on the crosspiece, you haul him up and drop it onto the squared end of the upright. Then you nail his feet to the sides of the upright, nailing through the heels sideways. It’s best to put the nail through a little block of wood first so the heel can’t be jerked loose.
“If
you want the perp to last longer, you can fasten a block of wood near his feet for him to take his weight. You can also make him sit on a spike, to make the blood and crap run. That brings the insects and adds to his punishment with a bit more humiliation. The whole point of crucifixion is to provide a long and painful death, to encourage the others not to do whatever the perp did. Do it right, and he can last two or three days, and the sight concentrates the minds of the onlookers wonderfully. Of course, if someone gives you a small incentive to be kind, you can break his legs so the weight goes on his arms and chest and he’ll suffocate in an hour or so.”
One
of the young legionaries licked his lips and asked: “Will this be how you do the Roman general?”
Davius
looked pointedly at his wine cup, which was hastily refilled. “No,” he said, morosely. “Most Roman citizens don’t usually get crucifixion, it’s generally reserved for slaves, rebels, traitors. Romans get strangulation or a slit throat, but nobles get it even easier, and I expect that’s what I’ll be told to do to Constantius: lop off his head.”
Decapitation
was regarded as a relatively painless exit, he said. The eyes of the detached head sometimes moved and blinked for as long as a half minute, maybe indicating that the brain lived, but it was still a lot better than the other death throes he’d seen… the problems came if the executioner didn’t get the first blow right and had to hack at the neck to sever it. In the early days, he said, carnifexes had used an axe, but it was now regarded as more honourable to use a sword, which was trickier. You had to hit hard and exactly to sever the spine, and not just anyone could do it, he said, puffing out his chest a little.
“One
fellow, a big Saxon, fought his bindings, and I had to run around the scaffold after him, whacking away at his head and back with my sword until he collapsed and I could take off his nut,” he grumbled. “Since then, I usually have an assistant to hold the perp by his hair to keep his neck still, and I also make sure they’re blindfolded so they can’t flinch away when they see I’m about to strike.”
Davius
was settling more comfortably in his corner of the tavern when a passing centurion spotted the group. “All right, you lot,” he shouted, “ ’aven’t you got no work to do?”
One
of the soldiers turned nervously and replied: “We’re waiting for orders, sarge.”
“Never
mind that, fall in behind me, I’ve got something for you,” said the officer.
Davius
sighed. He’d have to buy his own wine now. Funny though, it was Constantius who would have ordered him executed in Bononia. In a day or so, it would be him who was executing Constantius… better go, he wanted to grind a really sharp edge to his sword.
At that moment, the defeated Caesar was having his shackles removed, preparatory to be taken out of his cell to meet his conqueror. His escort took him from the underground strong room in the old castrum of Londinium and walked him, shuffling stiffly, across the parade ground to the administration building where Allectus and I were conferring with several senior officers.
“Ah,
Constantius,” my greeting must have sounded almost cordial, as his head came up in surprise. “How are you being treated?” The Caesar - I spat inwardly at the title - shook his head, uncertain. “Look,” I told him, my voice even to me sounding a tone of false bonhomie, “I won’t keep you long, just wanted to go over a couple of things with you before, er, well, before. You know.” Then I let loose. “I hear you gave my commander Lucius Cornelius a good flogging before you shamefully crucified him, and that all came after you’d given him assurances of safety if he saved his soldiers’ lives.
“Is
that true, Caesar? Is that true? And did you,” I continued without waiting, “did you also execute five other of my officers of the Bononia garrison after they had agreed to lay down arms? Is that true, too?”
Constantius
was no coward, but the natural pallor that gave him the nickname ‘Chlorus,’ or ‘Pale’ had been enhanced by his sunless incarceration and he stared back at me completely white-faced, then dropped his eyes. His voice was almost inaudible. “I did my duty, Lord.” He looked like a dog about to be dropped in the pit with a bear.
I
felt fighting anger rising in me. “You treacherously murdered those good men, and I’m going to have you punished. There will be no ransom for you, no return to your corrupt Augustus. You will be flogged like a criminal and then beheaded. I’m giving you a painful punishment, then swift death as a Roman even though you do not deserve it. You gave my officers a long and ugly death, but I am showing the world that what you get is just, not revenge. Now, know this: throughout your empire, you will be reviled as a traitor. I am telling the world that you acted against the orders of the Augustus and invaded Britain to make yourself emperor.
“The
Augusti, both Maximian and his countryman Diocletian will publicly agree because they cannot be seen to ignore my liberation of Britain from them, but they are powerless to act. However, by declaring you a traitor, they will save their face, and hail me as their brother emperor who put down the treacherous Chlorus while they defended the empire from the Alemanni hordes in the east. Your family will be disgraced, your name expunged.”
I considered how satisfying it would be to beat his white face to a pulp, but restrained the boiling urge. He should not appear to have been mistreated when he was executed. I turned away. “Just get him out of my sight.” I heard the slight scuffle as his guards hauled him around and pushed him out, but I did not look. I’d see him dead, soon enough.
Two
days later, the Caesar Constantius Chlorus was led out to a crude scaffold outside the camp that guarded the Thames bridge. It was usual for military executions to be held outside the entrenchments. A crowd of citizens had gathered for the spectacle, and ranks of armoured soldiery created a hollow square around the scaffold.
At
one end of the platform was a whipping post where two provosts waited, each dangling a metal-tipped flagellum, the brutal multi-thonged whip used to flog slaves and rebels. At the other end of the platform was a wooden block that replaced the usual dug pit with block in it that was the normal site of a decapitation. I wanted the mob to have full view when they witnessed the death of a Caesar.
Chlorus’
face was as white as his linen shirt as he stumbled up the scaffold steps, prompting raucous laughter and jeers from the crowd, laughter that intensified as his clothing was pulled clear and his blinding-white body revealed.
As
the escort tied him to the stake, I climbed the scaffold steps and turned to the assembly.
“This
man treacherously acted against me and against my brother emperors,” I declared. “He broke his sacred oath of loyalty and attempted to steal Britain for himself. He is a common thief, and he will be punished for that before he pays the price for being a traitor. From respect for the customs of Rome, he will be beheaded, not crucified. My brother emperors and I are agreed. Now, flog the thief.”
The
flagella whistled as they struck in sequence, first one prefect striking, then the other. In moments, Chlorus was shrieking, his back and buttocks sheeted crimson as the iron tips stripped flesh from his ribs and spine, and spattered torn tissue and blood on the planking. After 40 strokes, the prefects stopped, panting heavily. Chlorus was slumped against his bindings, whimpering, semi-conscious.
The
executioner Davius’ assistant stepped forward with a wooden bucket of water and soused the man’s ploughed back, the prefects cut him down and hauled him, feet dragging, across the scaffold. Chlorus was on his knees before the headsman’s wooden block, moving his head from side to side as if to dispel the pain of his lacerated back. At a gesture from Davius, the assistant slipped a blindfold over the Caesar’s eyes, being careful to tie it underneath his long hair. Davius stepped forward. In his right hand he held a Spanish gladius, the standard sword of the old republic. I noted with some interest the thing was an antique, longer than the standard Mainz armoury sword, not as broad, a bit heavier. I supposed that even though it was more unwieldy than the legions’ usual equipment, it was excellent for this job.
I
pulled myself back to the present. Chlorus had his neck on the block, probably pushed down by the executioner, and the assistant was holding the Roman’s hair to keep him in place. Davius glanced at me, I nodded. He levelled the sword above Chlorus’ neck, not quite touching it, then raised it high, one-handed and brought it down with a wet thump.
A
red mouth-like gash open at once and welled blood. The blow had not been clean and Chlorus half-fell sideways, groaning. The assistant yanked the head back by the hair, across the block and Davius swung swiftly and hard again. He hit exactly into the gaping wound, severing the half-separated vertebrae, and the head tumbled free, spouting arterial blood from the jugular and carotids, splashing several feet of planking. The assistant looked down, open-mouthed. He was still holding the hair, and now Chlorus’ whole head was dangling from his fist. He shook the head as he raised it, and the blindfold slipped. For two long seconds, I was looking straight into Chlorus’ dying eyes, and they blinked.
I
crossed the scaffold, and took hold of the hair in the assistant’s hand, then turned to face the mob. I held the head above me, its blood running down my wrist and dripping onto my shoulder. “Hail Caesar!” I shouted, and a ragged chorus of ironic “Hails!” came back at me. I tossed the head to the executioner, who had bundled up the dead man’s clothes for himself. “Above the gate with it, spiked,” I said. Then I thought: “I must ask Davius where he got that old sword.”
The parade had gone well, processing out from the camp and under the impaled head of Chlorus, whose eyeless, raven-pecked visage was decidedly darker now. We had followed a loop down the hill, past the baths, to the Temple of Mars where the priests had blessed our endeavours. Then, the donatives had been handed to the legions, the civilians had caught the scatters of small coin, the brass trumpets had sounded and the swaying files of bright-armoured soldiery under their nodding, plumed helmets had made a brave show. Finally, the troops had been dismissed to the pleasures of the whorehouses and taverns.
Guinevia
had watched the parade and now joined me in my quarters, followed by my tribune Lycaon and my aide Androcles Lethius. The former was still recovering, as he’d been flogged and crucified when King Mosae’s citadel fell, but several of his troopers had cut him down the same night and carried him out of Belgica and back to Bononia. From there, he’d been moved to Dover for medical treatment, sailing out only days before the Gallic fortress itself was surrounded and eventually surrendered.
“Lucky
Lycaon,” the men called him, and the terrible scars from his flogging testified to his incredible survival. Not a man could recall anyone else who’d been crucified and lived to tell the tale. About the only thing that had saved him from dying was that he’d been among the last of the condemned to be fastened up, and the executioner had used ropes because he’d exhausted his supply of nails. “I’d have died of blood loss, otherwise,” Lycaon would tell anyone who’d listen.
“Brought
back some memories, eh?” Androcles grinned at his fellow officer, gesturing back to where Chlorus’ head stood above the arch.
“I
felt every blow when he went under the flagellum,” said Lycaon. “Being flogged isn’t exactly a habit-forming thing to do.”
I
gestured to a slave to bring everyone wine, then led the two officers to a polished mensa on which an unusual map was unrolled. Unlike the normal itinerum, which listed way stations, towns and landmarks along the roman roads, but gave no hint as to what was off to either side of them, this map provided a picture of the southern shores of Britain as an eagle would view it.
The
map had been drawn for me by my lover, the sorceress Guinevia, who had the ability to send out her mind across the world to view places without visiting them. She told me once of how she did it, meditating quietly with a silent scribe to record her spoken thoughts, then drawing what she saw, without attempting to interpret it.
“I
can feel the wind rushing, see the grasses waving, even catch the scent of the salt air or the blossoms in the place I wish to view,” she told me. “The gods give me the grace to see the place I want to see and I allow my mind to draw whatever is its vision.”
In
the past, Guinevia had been able to sketch dispositions of troops for me, and once to describe a vast river on whose bank my enemy Maximian was entrenched. My enchantress provided enough details of a bridge, cliffs and fortress for me to recognize part of a waterway I had often travelled as a young sailor who plied the Rhine, Meuse and other great rivers. Knowing where my enemy was camped had told me his intent, and had allowed me to deploy my forces to advantage.
The
power of viewing something from a remote place so intrigued me, I’d asked Guinevia to reach out with her mind’s eye and survey a whole coastline, to give me the view of a seagull hovering above Britain’s Saxon Shore. When she had completed her task, I was able to compare her map to my own seaman’s knowledge of the cliffs, bays and inlets that border the Narrow Sea, and I found her rendering astonishingly accurate.
If
I could persuade her to map the coast of Gaul in similar fashion, then later to send out her spying mind to tell me where my enemies were along that coast, I would have a magician’s powers harnessed to my military ones and could have a good ability to predict where and when my enemies might strike.
For
now, I kept this wonderful secret to myself, and merely allowed my aides as we stood in a chamber in faraway Londinium, to look with astonishment at the unprecedented eagle view of the Saxon Shore.
“The
Litus
Saxonicum
,” murmured Androcles, a flamboyant dandy with a great sense of personal style and a most distinctive war helm, a Gaulish thing with green-bronze mallard wings on its sides. We teased him that his tunic always had to be immaculately clean and fragrant, his weapons and equipment kept polished to mirror-like perfection. How he did it, we never knew, but he was a hardened campaigner and experienced soldier, and nobody could say that he was just a parade ground toy soldier. “I have sailed this coastline and marched along it, too,” he was saying. “This big island is off
Portus
Adurni
where the tides come in twice as often as elsewhere, each day. I served in that fort. The locals call it Port Chester.”
“Here,”
I said, jabbing at the map, “was my palace at Fishbourne, and here is the shingle of Dungeness where our antique chariots did the damage.”
That
was a day, I thought. Chlorus’ men had come within an inch of turning our flank, and we would have been dead or slaves now, but for the help of the gods. And, maybe, as I kept hearing, thanks to the help of the dead. At a critical phase of the battle, we had thrown our charioteers into the fray on their pensioned-off vehicles. The surprise was total, the Romans wrecked. Mysteriously, our warriors had reported that among their frenzied horses and flying wheels, a spectre had urged them on. They said the shadowy figure of a long-haired woman, bare-breasted, helmeted and wielding a sword, had run wheel to wheel with them in her ghostly chariot, and that those who walked the killing ground to finish off the enemy wounded had found numbers of Romans dead on the shingle without a mark on their bodies.
I
had questioned Guinevia about this, and she, adept of the witch goddess of the Wild Hunt, had shrugged. “I expect that the shade of Boadicea came to the aid of Britain,” she remarked.
I’d
stared at her. “The ancient queen of the Britons? Dead for two centuries?”
Guinevia
raised her chin and looked at me steadily. “Nobody dies,” she said flatly. “They might go to another place of existence, but their shades are with us. Why would the queen who slaughtered Romans not come back when her nation needed her?”
Behind
her, I saw Lycaon and Androcles make the sign against the evil eye, and I secretly touched the well-polished iron of my belt buckle as protection, too. You must show respect when speaking of the dead lest their souls visit you as you sleep.
A
new voice intruded on my thoughts, as my tribune Cragus Grabelius entered the chamber. “The ghost of Queen Boadicea would be a powerful ally, Lord,” he said, slapping his forearm across his chest in the old salute.
I
turned to him. “My friend, where have you come from?” I asked. “The last I saw you were knee deep in Roman bodies on the beach!” Cragus had led a flanking movement that pincered the invaders on the shingle at Dungeness, and was a longtime battle comrade.
“Better
Roman bodies than dog fleas, Lord,” he grinned. That made me laugh. He’d once halted a pack of war dogs launched at our shield line by setting loose a collection of mongrels that included some bitches in heat. The enemy dogs had settled for love, not war, and had mounted a different kind of penetration of our ranks.
“I
didn’t come alone, Lord,” he said, gesturing. Behind him in the doorway was my British tribune, Quirinus, the officer I’d sent with fire ships to destroy Maximian’s newly-built fleet. “We rode together from Colchester to Eboracum with dispatches for that garrison, and crossed from there.” The news was interesting.
I
nodded to Quirinus, who was a capable and intelligent officer. “Give me a report on the condition of the roads, bridges and bandit activity across the Pennines, and an assessment of how swiftly we can move a half-legion between Londinium and Eboracum, and again to march them across the spine of the country. Report on the availability of posting stations,
mansios
, smithies, food and equipment dumps, water sources for cavalry and anything that could affect our rapid response troops. Also, get me a condition report on the progress of the Car Dyke to Eboracum.”
