Rome’s Fallen Eagle (34 page)

‘Your Emperor has raised for you Rome’s fallen Eagle,’ Narcissus almost shrieked as soon as he could be heard. ‘He gives you back the Eagle of the Seventeenth!’ The heralds echoed his words along the ranks of now silent soldiery. An eruption of cheers broke from the Praetorian cohorts to be taken up by the legions on either side, spreading in a wave from cohort to cohort and travelling through the army just a hundred paces behind the heralds’ relayed cries, until every man knew what he was looking at and was voicing his approval as loudly as his comrades in front.

Vespasian and his fellow officers joined in the celebrations wholeheartedly, as much for the return of the fallen Eagle as for the theatrical way that Narcissus had turned around the situation. Plautius turned and saluted the golden image hovering over the invasion force, crashing his arm across his chest and stamping to a rigid attention. Centurions throughout the legions caught this gesture and roared at their men to do the same; within a few heartbeats forty thousand pila-clenching fists pointed towards the Eagle as the Praetorians chanted ‘Hail Caesar!’ Soon that chant was unanimous, in unison and deafening.

Narcissus let it ring out, pumping the Eagle in the air in sympathetic timing until men were becoming hoarse. As the chant began to wane he lowered the Eagle and with a melodramatic flourish handed it to Plautius, who kissed it and then held it with his left hand whilst holding up his right, appealing for silence. ‘The Emperor’s loyal soldiers thank him for his gift,’ he called as the noise died away.

‘The Emperor is pleased to bestow such a gift on his valiant legionaries and auxiliaries,’ Narcissus replied, turning to the quietening ranks as the words were relayed. The final herald finished his cry and Narcissus carried on: ‘The Emperor has done this for you; will you now do his bidding? Will you, free-born soldiers of Rome, now embark?’

There was complete silence as the whole army stared at the Emperor’s freedman appealing on his master’s behalf.

Vespasian felt his heart thumping within him.

‘Io Saturnalia!’ a voice bellowed suddenly from the crowd.

Vespasian felt two more beats in his chest and then heard laughter, rough and raucous, mingled in with more jovial shouts of ‘Io Saturnalia!’ that quickly spread, along with the hilarity, until every man present was laughing except for Narcissus, who was obliged to stand and be mocked as the slave or freedman allowed to wear his master’s clothes and run his house for one day over the course of the Saturnalia. He looked at Plautius, appealing with his eyes for him to stop this; but Plautius knew better than to curtail the release of so many days of tension.

‘So they have extended the Saturnalia without telling us,’ Sabinus said through his mirth.

‘Evidently!’ Vespasian replied, enjoying Narcissus’ humiliation as much as the army’s change of mood. ‘And it’s put the lads in a holiday mood. I think that after this they’ll be on for an outing.’

CHAPTER XV

‘W
HERE THE FUCK
are we?’ Magnus grumbled, peering into the thick fog that had greeted them upon waking an hour before dawn.

Vespasian took a bite from a hunk of bread. ‘The same place as we camped yesterday evening, I would have thought, alongside a trackway about three miles from Cantiacum; unless of course some god of the Britons has swooped down and moved ten thousand men during the night to somewhere inconvenient.’

‘Everywhere on this island’s inconvenient.’

‘Not true. This trackway is very convenient; it will lead us directly to Cantiacum. What
is
inconvenient is the fog and the fact that Adminios’ emissaries haven’t yet returned and he’s not due back until the second hour of the morning. I need to know the mood of the town before I dare move forward blind in case we’re attacked from the flank; I won’t be able to send out covering patrols because just west of here the trackway passes through very wet land with marshes to either side.’

‘There you go, then, they’re inconvenient.’

‘Not to the Britons they’re not; Adminios warned me about feeling complacent if my flank was protected by marsh; the locals know their way through, even in fog. I wouldn’t like to be taken in the flank with only a swamp to fall back on; remember what happened to Varus.’

‘So we wait, then?’

‘Yes, old friend, we have to wait for the fog to lift but every hour we delay is another hour’s warning for the Britons. Hopefully Adminios’ emissaries will be back soon and we’ll know more. I’ll see you later.’ Vespasian turned and walked back through the marching camp’s gates.

He threaded his way through huddles of cold legionaries taking a miserable breakfast, fires being impossible in the conditions. Grumbling to one another about spending the night under a heavy sky with no more than a blanket each to protect them from the elements, they did not lower their voices as he passed. Vespasian disdained to notice the complaints but resolved to chase up the mule train with their leather tents that had arrived at Rutupiae with the third wave of the landings.

The landing itself had been an anti-climax in that it was unopposed and uneventful; which is exactly what the prayers at the numerous sacrifices made before the fleet sailed at midnight had asked for. Although the livers indicated that the gods seemed to favour their endeavour and the sacred chickens had pecked at their grain in an auspicious manner, there had been a time when every man thought that they may have been deserted by the divine. Mid-voyage the wind had got up and had started to blow them back to Gaul; the light from Caligula’s massive lighthouse at Gesoriacum, made in imitation of the Pharos at Alexandria, had started growing in size again for a couple of hours no matter how hard the rowers strained at the oars. Their minds were eventually put at rest, however, by a dazzling shooting star streaking across the night sky heading west in the direction that they would conquer. The wind had soon died, easing their churning stomachs as they squatted on the vomit-slick decks, and as dawn broke the coast of Britannia was in full view; and it had been empty. Plautius’ hunch had proved correct: the Britons had disbanded their army and there was no dark horde shadowing them north along the coast to oppose their landing.

Plautius had been the first man ashore, keeping the promise he had made to his men once they had finally mastered their mirth the day before. Being unaware of how the politics in Rome were developing, the experience of the Emperor’s wishes being conveyed to them by his freedman had seemed so upside-down to them that when Plautius made a final appeal to their honour they had acquiesced to him with a mighty series of cheers. Vespasian had supposed that this had been mainly because they were pleased to have the established order of things returned in
the shape of a general of high birth commanding them – although they had been visibly impressed by the resurrection of the Eagle as well as Plautius’ offer of a bounty of ten denarii per man.

They had struck camp and begun the embarkation immediately – an efficient operation owing to the months of practice – and the first wave had sailed twelve hours later as the tide turned. Vespasian and Sabinus’ wave left an hour after that in the hopes that they would be at the landing area soon after dawn. But the wind had delayed them and it was midday by the time the II Augusta clattered down the ramps onto the beach and formed up on the crunching shingle just as they had done in training, so many times before. Vespasian had allowed his men to eat a cold meal of bread and dried pork whilst remaining in formation as Paetus’ cavalry patrols ranged out. They had returned an hour later to report nothing between the beach and Cantiacum except a few deserted farms with fires still glowing in the hearths; the Britons had pulled back and Plautius ordered the advance.

Sabinus had taken his legion south and Vespasian had led the II Augusta, accompanied by Adminios and his fellow exiles, along a well-used trackway west as the third wave of ships had appeared on the horizon beyond the island now occupied by Corvinus and the VIIII Hispana.

After three hours’ marching, Vespasian had, on Adminios’ advice, called a halt on the last dry ground before entering an area of low-lying marshland between two rivers, to give them time to build the huge marching camp, necessary for so many men, before nightfall. Adminios’ emissaries had continued on to Cantiacum to ascertain the mood of the town and, if possible, negotiate its surrender, whilst Adminios himself went to the meeting with his loyal kinsmen to the north close to the estuary. Vespasian had hoped that the emissaries would be back by nightfall, but now, twelve hours later, they had still not returned; it was the only thing of concern in what had been otherwise a remarkably smooth operation, Vespasian thought, as he headed for the praetorium – that and, of course, the fog.

‘Good morning, sir,’ Mucianus greeted him as he entered the praetorium, which was, naturally, just an area marked out on the
ground because their baggage was yet to catch up with them; the legion’s Eagle and cohort standards stood at one end guarded by a
contubernium
of eight men. ‘I’ve just received the verbal reports from all the senior centurions from each cohort both legionary and auxiliary: we are less than a hundred men down from our full strength and the mood of the lads is good apart from being cold, damp and in need of a hot meal.’

‘And a hot woman, no doubt?’

Mucianus grinned. ‘Well, there’s always that, sir; it seems pointless wasting your time reporting it to you.’

‘Thank you for your consideration, tribune, I shall be sure to mention that in my report to Plautius. Tell Maximus to bring Adminios to me as soon as he returns to camp.’

‘Yes, sir.’

As Mucianus left the praetorium, Vespasian sat down on the moist blanket that had been his only shelter during his brief few hours of sleep, pulled his cloak tight around his shoulders and chewed on his hunk of bread as he contemplated his options should Adminios’ men not return.

Maximus, the prefect of the camp, approached what would have been the entrance to the tent with Adminios and snapped to attention, bringing Vespasian out of his thoughts. ‘Permission to enter, sir?’

Vespasian beckoned them through, standing. ‘Did your kin submit, Adminios?’

Adminios waved a dismissive hand. ‘Yes, but they only count for a couple of thousand warriors.’

‘That’s a couple of thousand swords fewer pointing at our backs.’

Adminios grunted a reluctant assent. ‘But it was good to see them after five years of exile.’

‘I’m sure. So, what do you think about your emissaries?’

‘They’ll be back very soon, legate, they would have left shortly after dawn.’

‘What’s taken them so long?’

‘They’ve been drinking.’

‘Drinking?’

‘Yes, they’ve evidently negotiated the town’s surrender with the elders otherwise they would have come back – or been killed; it’s our custom to seal a deal like that with an all-night drinking session.’

‘How do you know they haven’t been murdered?’

‘One would’ve been sent back alive with his tongue cut out if the elders had decided to kill them, to emphasise that negotiations were over.’

‘Then we’re safe to approach the town in column seeing as the marsh prevents us from deploying in battle order?’

The exiled King nodded.

Vespasian’s mind was made up. ‘Maximus, have Paetus send a couple of turmae along the trackway and report back within the hour. The men will strike camp; I want them ready to move as soon as the fog lifts enough to see a hundred paces ahead. We’re already behind schedule; there’s not a moment to lose.’

Maximus turned and barked an order at the bucinator on duty outside the praetorium; he lifted his horn to his lips and blew a call of five notes. The call was taken up by his fellows in each cohort, invisible in the fog, and was then replaced by the shouts of centurions and optiones rousing their men from the remains of their cold breakfast; soon, from all around, Vespasian could hear the fog-dulled sounds of a legion preparing to march. ‘Adminios, come with me back to the gate, I want to talk to your men as soon as they’re here.’

Magnus was still there, chatting with the centurion of the watch, when they arrived. ‘I thought you weren’t going to move until the fog lifts or you knew whether the town was ours or not, sir.’

‘It’s a calculated risk that I have to take; Plautius will tear me apart if I’m not at Cantiacum soon, I’m late enough as it is.’

‘Yeah but that ain’t your fault; we were late landing and couldn’t make it all the way last night, and then this.’ He waved a hand in the swirling air.

Vespasian looked at Magnus with raised eyebrows.

‘Ah, stupid of me. This is the army. Of course it’s your—’

A challenge shouted by one of the sentries cut him off. Twenty paces away along the trackway silhouettes slowly materialised.

‘Is that your men, Adminios?’ Vespasian asked, feeling a deep relief.

‘Yes, legate; I’ll speak to them.’

Adminios walked forward to greet his followers as two turmae of Paetus’ Batavians, led by Ansigar, rode out of the gate; the decurion saluted Vespasian and gave Magnus a cheery wave before disappearing into the fog.

Adminios’ men dismounted and, after a few words with their King, they approached Vespasian with bloodshot eyes and reeking of alcohol.

‘We may walk into the town, legate,’ Adminios informed him, ‘the elders will open the gates.’

‘I’m relieved to hear it.’

‘There’s just one problem.’

Vespasian’s face fell. ‘What?’

‘Yes, a lot of the young warriors didn’t like the elders’ decision. About a thousand slipped away during the night in the fog to join Caratacus in the Atrebates’ main township southwest of the Afon Cantiacii. By tonight he’ll know that we’re here.’

Vespasian closed his eyes. ‘Plautius will crucify me.’

‘Why the fuck didn’t you stop them and kill them, legate?’ Plautius exploded as Vespasian reported the embarrassing news to his general upon the latter’s arrival at Cantiacum, two days later.

Vespasian winced at the ferocity of the question. ‘We didn’t have time to get to the town on the first day, sir. With two hours until sundown I had a choice between making camp or leading my men through three miles of marsh that the tail of the column wouldn’t have cleared until well after dark.’