Hero of Rome (31 page)

XXXIX

When they rode west in the wake of Boudicca’s army, Cearan led, on one of his horses, and Valerius and Maeve followed side by side. Valerius was still barely conscious and he only stayed upright in the saddle with her help. They had dressed him in the Celtic fashion and he rode with the hood of his cloak raised to disguise his features. The way took them past the smouldering remains of Colonia, and in a moment of semi-lucidity Valerius saw the city as if through twenty feet of water, shimmering and swaying and never staying still for a moment. The arch of the west gate remained, solid as ever, though the statues which had adorned it lay smashed around its foundations. Beyond, for half a mile, where houses had once stood tall and shopkeepers hawked their wares, nothing remained except a broad field of thick grey ash, interrupted only by the odd charred stump or remains of a wall which had proved too solid even for Boudicca’s unbalanced hatred. No living thing moved within the sterile cordon of destruction. No dog, nor cat, nor bird. They had killed them all. Valerius doubted if even the city’s rats survived, so total was the destruction.

But the truly remarkable sight lay beyond the swathe of burned ground.

Because the Temple of Claudius still stood.

Fire and smoke had scarred the white walls and the proud, fluted columns. The roof was gone, the thousands of marble tiles torn away and thrown down to shatter on the ground around it. But the
sum
of the most potent symbol of the Roman domination of Britain remained, massive and enduring in the centre of the ruined compound Valerius had been unable to hold. He remembered Numidius’s boast that it would stand for a thousand years and wondered if it might, indeed, be true.

‘They tried to burn it, but of course stone cannot burn,’ Maeve explained. ‘Even when they used every ounce of their strength to try to pull it down it defeated them. They smashed everything they could but those tasked with its destruction gave up and left in search of easier employment.’

Valerius veered towards the building, but Maeve took his bridle and pulled him away. ‘I do not think you want to see what is inside.’ She was right. The memories were too fresh.

But sometimes the gods do not grant wishes, or perhaps they are as cruel and as capricious as their detractors say. When they passed through the gap in the great turf rampart west of the city, Valerius noticed a long avenue stretching into the distance, as if someone had set up a fence on each side of the roadway. Closer, the avenue became an endless row of posts, each topped with a round object.

The crows alerted him to what was to come, thousands of them, wheeling in dark clouds above the road ahead, and then the wind carried the smell to him: the unique, over-sweet scent of rotting flesh. His first thought was that someone had taken a great deal of time and trouble. Each stake stood precisely the same height as its neighbour and each severed head stared directly at the centre of the roadway. The final roll call of the Colonia militia. Some were so mutilated as to be unidentifiable but others he recognized instantly: Falco, Saecularis, Didius and even Corvinus, united once more with his comrades. He searched without success for Lunaris. Farewell, old friend. For Rome. For a mile they rode in silence between the serried ranks of the dead and Valerius felt every blank eye accusing him. Why, of all of them, had he been saved? Swallows swooped between the poles emitting sharp, excited cries, their jaunty flight patterns and scarlet cheeks inappropriately festive as they feasted on the swarms of flies which, in their turn, feasted upon the faces of his friends. Maeve looked to neither right nor left, but he noticed that the colour had drained from her face and a tiny muscle in the corner of her jaw twitched with the effort of keeping her teeth clenched.

Exhaustion or the effects of his wounds played games with his mind. He remembered Cearan taking the rein of his pony and guiding it away from the road and the trees closing in around them, the branches tugging at his cloak like clutching hands. Quiet forest paths echoing with the sound of birdsong. The comforting warmth of Maeve’s shoulder leaning against his as she struggled to keep him in the saddle. Two obscenities with vaguely human shapes hanging from the charred doorway of a burned-out Roman farmstead.

They travelled mainly in silence, although Cearan, riding slumped over his horse’s neck, whispered incessantly to himself through his destroyed lips, and once he let out a sharp cry that made Maeve rush to his side. By the second morning, Valerius could barely stay in the saddle, but constant draughts of Maeve’s elixir somehow gave him the strength to continue. At dusk they halted close to a copse of trees in the lee of a conical hill and, even before she spoke, something in the way Maeve positioned her pony beside Cearan’s told Valerius they were abandoning him.

‘You must find your own way now,’ she said, and although she struggled to keep her voice harsh there was a catch in it that told its own story. A gleam of gold at her throat gave him hope.

‘Come with me.’ Lack of use made his speech thick and clumsy and he had to clear his throat and repeat the words before she understood them. ‘Come with me and I can save you both.’ He wasn’t sure whether it was true, but he did not want to live without her.

The dark eyes turned liquid but her determination never wavered. ‘You were always a Roman, Valerius, and I was always a Trinovante. For a time we lived a beautiful lie, but no one can live a lie for ever. And now we are enemies.’ He shook his head. No, they would never be enemies. ‘Have you ridden with your eyes closed?’ she cried. ‘Things have been done, terrible things that can never be forgiven by you or by me. You want me to come with you, but the only way I will visit Rome will be in chains.’

‘You can’t win. Boudicca defeated the militia, but it was an expensive victory. Now Paulinus is coming with his legions and when they meet there can only be one victor.’

Cearan’s guttural growl interrupted them. Maeve listened and pointed to the hill above them, which was silhouetted against a bright orange glow. Somewhere, another city was burning. ‘He says that Londinium is destroyed, and with it Rome’s hold over this island. Andraste watches over Boudicca and every day thousands more flock to the wolf banner. Even your legions cannot kill us all.’

Valerius remembered a Silurian hill fort on an autumn afternoon when the relentless legionary swords had harvested one life after another and he wondered if that was true. He made one final attempt. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘And you returned that love. Tell me it is no longer returned and I will go.’

She closed her eyes and for one moment he believed he had reached the old Maeve. He knew she was thinking about the cave in the woods and the hours they had spent there. But it couldn’t last. Her head came up and she turned her pony away. ‘Keep north and stay away from the roads.’ She threw him the water skin and he caught it with his left hand. ‘Use it sparingly. It dulls the pain but take too much and you may not see another dawn.’

He watched her ride off with Cearan. They were almost out of sight when he remembered the question he had wanted to ask.

‘You told them about the ladders, didn’t you? Without the ladders they would never have taken the temple.’

She turned her head to look back at him but he couldn’t see her expression. ‘They are my people, Valerius. Whatever I felt for you, they were always my people.’ He sighed and all the strength went out of him. She had betrayed him. Yet on this day it seemed a small betrayal among all the others. But she had one more message for him. At the top of the rise she turned in the saddle. ‘Avoid Verulamium, Valerius. On your life, avoid Verulamium.’

When he looked up, she was gone.

*

He rode north in the gathering darkness, allowing the pony to steer its way across pasture and through woodland, instinctively choosing the path of least resistance. The spirits of the night held no fears for him because night was the colour of his soul. Endurance kept him in the saddle, that and occasional pulls at the water skin. While he rode, he dreamed of Maeve; the colour of her hair and the texture and firmness of her skin. In the dream he took her to Rome and she marvelled at the wonders there. But the farther he travelled the hotter the fire in his right arm burned, and the pounding inside his head increased until it became unbearable. He gambled on a longer draught of the liquid, but he must have fallen asleep in the saddle because at one point the pony stopped, snickering gently in alarm. Still with his eyes closed he dug his heels into its flanks, urging it on. It took a few faltering steps, but eventually it would go no further. As the world began to spin and he felt himself roll from the saddle he had the presence of mind to wrap the reins around his left hand.

When he opened his eyes his mind was clear but his body felt as if it had been used for sword practice by a legionary cohort; every muscle ached and his right arm was a savage throbbing trial. Delaying the moment when he must move, he stared up at a sky of perfect eggshell blue through branches thick with leaves that rustled and creaked in the light breeze. Something was missing, though, and he had a stab of panic before he felt the pull of the reins on his left wrist. Surprisingly, his head rested on an object that was soft and pliant that he couldn’t remember placing there. A thick scent hung in the air around him but it had become so familiar that his brain took time to react to it.

He rolled over, careful to protect his injured arm, and stared at the thing beside him. A human leg. The body the leg belonged to lay two or three feet away, the flesh white as the marble that clad the Temple of Claudius, except for the obscene red gashes where the limbs and head had been hacked away. Unwillingly, he allowed his eyes to scan the scene around him. His first impression was of a shoal of dead fish on a beach; ivory pale, scattered, random and utterly lifeless. The corpses lay on the grass and among the trees and bushes, some with heads and some without, others with stomachs torn open or genitals removed. Each corpse had been stripped of everything of any value, but what little clothing remained told him they were Roman soldiers, either auxiliaries or legionaries. He struggled to his feet and vomited a thin spew of yellow bile, momentarily overwhelmed by the enormity of what surrounded him. But duty and a soldier’s instinct for survival told him he must try to make sense of it.

At first the distribution of the bodies – hundreds, perhaps even thousands of them – confused him. However, as he walked further, he began to discern a pattern. They had been marching south, which made them part of the Ninth, and the lack of a baggage train said they were travelling light and in a hurry. He tried to imagine the order of march: mounted scouts ranging in front, flank guards to the side, legionaries trudging in the van of the column, auxiliaries eating their dust behind, and the cavalry – there must have been cavalry accompanying a force this size – ready to react to any attack. Yet all their precautions had counted for nothing when their commander had brought them through this broad, wooded valley.

He reached a point where the dead appeared more numerous and lay in untidy ranks. Yes. It had begun here: the destruction of a legion. He studied his surroundings carefully before moving warily into the nearby trees. Crushed bushes and dead grass showed where the ambushers had sat, and the many blackened piles of excreta told of a long, patient wait. A large force, and more, if he was correct, on the opposite side of the valley. The attackers had struck here first, along a quarter-mile front, and forced the legion to adopt its favoured defensive line. There would have been no panic. If they had feared the numbers facing them they would have formed a square and fought their way to a more suitable position, but there was no sign they had done so. With their flanks and rear properly protected it should have been a simple matter of shield against shield and
gladius
against sword and spear; a battle the legionaries must win. But somehow a force of similar size had attacked from the rear, making the second line turn and face them. How? Had the cavalry been drawn off by some ruse? Certainly few of them had died here; he had seen, at most, four dead horses, probably the mounts of the cohort or auxiliary commanders. And finally, the fatal blow, a crushing attack on the left flank which had started a rout. Or not quite a rout. He followed the line of withdrawal and it was possible to see where small knots of legionaries had fought to the death to defend their comrades, but they became fewer and fewer as they were driven inexorably back. The bodies led him into an isolated clump of trees with a giant oak at the centre. The oak formed the bastion for their final stand. He could see it now, the launch of the last
pila
, the
signiferi
protecting their unit standards, hacking and chopping at the multitude surrounding them, until only one remained, who had fought to his last breath. He knew all this because, unlike every other corpse, this small cluster of bodies had been left untouched; they even retained their armour. One, a leather-skinned giant still in his wolfskin cloak, lay a little apart beneath his shield, which showed the distinctive charging bull of the Ninth on its metal boss. At first Valerius believed the attackers had been disturbed before they could desecrate the corpses, but there was something almost reverential about the manner in which the last man had been laid out. The Britons esteemed courage and valour above all else. Was this their chief or their king’s way of honouring a fellow champion?

He sat by the dead men for a few minutes, attempting to understand the scale of the disaster which had overtaken them. The whole of the south must have risen against Rome. An entire legion had been smashed here. Had they died fighting for their eagle? It would account for the ferocity of the defence. But a full legion at the hands of barbarians? It didn’t seem possible, yet he had seen the results with his own eyes and he remembered the warriors who had fought their way across the piled bodies to reach the Colonia militia. There could be three or four thousand dead lying in and around the valley. The loss of an eagle would taint every legionary who had ever marched with the Ninth. Worse, the disgrace of a defeat on this scale would be felt in Rome. Paulinus, too, would be touched by it, even if he was a hundred miles away when it happened.