Sarum (42 page)

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Authors: Edward Rutherfurd

BOOK: Sarum
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“You’re to go to Sorviodunum at once,” the secretary told him bleakly. “Governor’s request. The procurator’s never heard of you and you probably won’t see him at all until next year.”
It was only then that Porteus realised the complete effectiveness of Suetonius’s action against him.
“And what am I to do in Sorviodunum?” he asked slowly.
The secretary shrugged. He was a short, bald man with many things on his mind, and he had only taken on this gloomy-looking young man, about whom he knew nothing, at the urgent request of the governor.
“There are some imperial estates there and you’re to supervise them. It’s a routine job,” he added. “Hurry up, will you – you’re expected there tomorrow.” And before Porteus could argue, the bald secretary’s attention was engaged elsewhere.
Sorviodunum: a place that scarcely existed. Porteus: a young Roman whom the administration had decided to forget. That night he faced the fact that his career was in ruins, and even though he did not yet understand the cause of his disgrace, there could be no mistaking its results. For the moment there was nothing he could do except go to the lonely outpost.
He wondered what he would find there.
 
Life had not dealt very kindly with Tosutigus since the conquest, and as he looked back, some of the memories were painful.
In the days after Vespasian left, the young chief had waited anxiously for developments. News soon arrived from the south west: every few days word came through the valleys of the fall of another of the many-walled hill forts.
“So much for the proud Durotriges,” Tosutigus would mutter with grim satisfaction; and it was not long before he had convinced himself that his surrender of the dune and the signing away of his lands had been a masterstroke of diplomacy.
The fortresses continued to fall and he waited expectantly for news from Vespasian or the governor; but no message came.
By the end of the summer, Vespasian’s campaign was over. The Durotrigan chiefs had fought hard, but the siege engines of the II had been too much for them; and the hard-faced tribune had cut a swathe through their entire territory from east to the far west, where he set up camp for the winter. All over the island the news travelled: “The proud Durotriges have been humbled.”
But if they were humbled, they had still fought; and they had not forgotten the betrayal of the young chief at Sarum.
It was one early autumn morning that a small party of prisoners arrived from the south west at Sarum and were led into the dune by a detachment of Roman soldiers. There were twenty prisoners, men of all ages, and the Romans ordered Tosutigus’s men to feed them.
“They tried to break into our camp and loot the stores,” the soldier in charge explained to him. “They’re bound for Londinium, to be sold as slaves.”
The party rested there the night, and while the soldiers rested, Tosutigus went to inspect the prisoners. One of them, he noticed, was only a boy of ten, and as he drew close he recognised the son of one of the Durotrigan chiefs. Feeling sorry for the boy, he approached him.
“I know your father and I am sad to see you like this,” he said.
But the boy only scowled at him.
“Better a slave than a traitor like you,” he cried bitterly. “Tosutigus the Liar.” And he spat on the ground to show his contempt.
Tosutigus turned and walked away. So that was to be his reputation – just as the Druid Aflek had warned him. He told himself that he did not care.
“The Durotriges may hate me; but it’s from the emperor that I shall get my reward,” he reasoned.
The autumn passed and no word came.
The snows fell; Sarum was silent. The huge gaping circle of the dune stood frozen and empty. Each day, Tosutigus would climb its high walls and pace about on the great rim of ice, scouring the horizon for signs of the Roman messengers he hoped for. Sometimes Numex and Balba accompanied him, waddling at his side, their red faces shining in the cold air, peering with him across the snow-covered wastes – but as the months passed, he had little conviction that anything would come out of them.
Throughout the long winter, the landscape remained empty. When the snows departed, Tosutigus noticed that the chalk sides of the dunes were sprouting tufts of new grass.
As the river grew to its full spate, and spring began, the people of Sarum went about their business quietly. The young chief guessed that they despised him for surrendering the dune, and compared him unfavourably with the Durotriges; already, while Vespasian’s troops were busy occupying their territory, they had begun to compose songs about the feats of bravery of their chiefs who had fallen in battle. But he was not discouraged.
“You will see,” he told Numex and his brother. “I have done well for Sarum.”
It was a full year after Vespasian’s visit that a little group of men was seen approaching across the high ground from the north east. It consisted of a tall, sallow, middle-aged man on a small horse, six slaves and six legionaries; the group came across the high ground towards the dune slowly, pausing frequently.
Eagerly, Tosutigus rode out to meet them. When he reached them, he saw that two of the slaves carried posts, on top of which rested a pair of crossed wooden bars, from the four ends of which hung small plumb lines.
“We’re surveyors,” the sallow man told him. “There are important roads coming through here.”
When the surveyors reached the dune, they inspected it carefully, and then went down the slope to the river below.
“There’s to be a road across the river,” the sallow man said, “and a new settlement.” He indicated a modest rectangular site by the bank.
A new settlement! The young chiefs eyes lit up. So the Romans had important plans for the place.
“Just a staging pose, a
mansio
,” the surveyor went on. But Tosutigus was not listening. Already he had visions of an extensive town under his control.
They came to build the roads two months later: this time a whole century of eighty men with their centurion swung over the high ground, each man carrying a spade on his back in addition to his other equipment.
They began with the settlement, and they worked with astonishing speed. On the site by the river that the surveyor had marked out, they threw upa bank of earth, just as though they were building one of their walled military camps. Down the centre they laid out a single small street, with three square plots on each side of it, making a grid. And that was all. There was no forum, no space for any large official building, no temple: just a few modest plots designated for a stable block, a guardhouse, and some simple dwellings. In one corner, a rectangular area was set aside for a little orchard within the wall. The entire work was done in under two days and when it was completed, the centurion remarked:
“Well that’s it. That’s Sorviodunum.”
But to Tosutigus, even then, the drab little enclosure seemed full of promise.
“We’ll need labourers for the road,” the centurion said next. “What can you give us?”
Glad to have a chance to show his usefulness, Tosutigus at once provided them with fifty men, and to these he added Numex, despite the fellow’s protesting: “But I’m a carpenter!”
“Learn how the Romans build,” the chief ordered him. “You’ll be more useful to me then.” For he knew very well that Numex would quickly learn Roman skills and bring credit to Sarum and its chief in the future.
When he saw how the Romans built their roads, Tosutigus was astounded. The first main route lay across the high ground to the north east and was to stretch in an almost straight line from the dune to the port of Londinium some eighty miles away. As the men worked he would ride out to watch them, returning home shaking his head in wonder.
First the men dug two parallel trenches, about eighty feet apart, and piled up the earth they dug into a raised causeway in the middle, roughly twenty-five feet wide. This was the famous raised
agger
. Then on top of this they packed chalk, a handspan deep and cambered down from the centre, to ensure that the road surface would be well drained. Next, they brought carts of flint from local diggings, and these the legionaries laid over the chalk, packing each flint carefully down by hand until they were three or four inches deep, and filling in with chalk to make the surface even. Finally they packed six inches of gravel on top, stamping it down until it was hard and smooth.
“Sometimes, if there are ironworks in the area, we put the slag on top,” the centurion told him. “Then it rusts into a single sheet and it lasts for ever.”
Tosutigus also noticed that several roads were to intersect beside the dune. “Sorviodunum will be connected to places all over the island,” he thought happily. At the river Afon below, the soldiers built a stone causeway across the river bed and paved it to form an artificial ford.
“Why not build a bridge?” he asked.
“Bridges can be destroyed,” the centurion replied grimly. “Fords aren’t so easy to break up.”
The road across the river led south west towards the land of the Durotriges; he watched with fascination as, during the next two months, the Romans laid wooden underpinnings across the low marshy ground, laid the road surface over them, and then made the road zig-zag up the steep hill beyond. But it was what followed that made him gasp with wonder.
For across the rolling lands of the proud Durotriges, in a straight line that ran south west from Sarum, the Romans built a highway unlike anything the island would see again until the coming of the railways nearly two thousand years later. Between its deep ditches the
agger
was almost fifty feet wide, and it rose a full six feet high. It stretched across the landscape, straight, uncompromising and magnificent for thirty miles into the Durotrigan heartland before curving south towards the coast.
This was the mighty road known as the Ackling Dyke and its message was unmistakable: Your hill forts have fallen, it stated, but hill or valley, open land or forest, all are one to Rome. We march straight across them at our will.
As Tosutigus stood on the high ground and stared at this great new highway, so utterly unlike the ancient ridgepaths of the island that he had known before, he was lost in admiration.
“They are like bands of iron over the whole land,” he murmured. And for the first time he began to understand the real power of Rome.
That winter, word finally came from the governor, in the form of a dark, swarthy man from the governor’s staff, with small, hard eyes. He was accompanied by a clerk from the procurator’s office. He came to the point at once.
“This territory is being organised,” he told the young chief. “In view of your co-operation, the governor has decided to reward you.”
At last. This was what he had been waiting for.
“Which area am I to rule?” he asked eagerly.
The swarthy man frowned. Whatever was this young Celt talking about? He took no notice and continued.
“All the land of the Durotriges will remain under military occupation. Sorviodunum is excepted and will form part of the land for sixty miles to the east, which is to form a new client kingdom.”
Tosutigus went pale. This was all the land that the Atrebates had occupied in their heyday; a huge and magnificent territory.
“I am to rule all that?”
The swarthy man paused.
“Rule?” He decided he must have misunderstood the young native.
Tosutigus shook his head in wonder. He had never dared to hope that his letter would have impressed the governor so much.
It had not occurred to the swarthy Roman that Tosutigus expected to rule anything and even now he failed to realise the great delusion that still filled the young chief’s mind. He went on stolidly.
“The new king of all the Atrebates is the chief Cogidubnus – he’s your king now. In recognition of your gift to the emperor, you are exempt during your lifetime from all taxes on your estates – both the
annona
and the poll tax.”
Tosutigus stared at him, only gradually understanding what was being said. He had heard of Cogidubnus of course – a pro-Roman chief of the Atrebates with estates far away in the south east.
“He is my king?”
“Yes.”
“What am I to rule then?”
“Nothing.”
He turned it over in his mind.
“Is he a Roman citizen?”
“The emperor has granted him citizenship.”
“Am I?”
“No.”
“What am I then? What status have I?” he asked in sudden despair.
“
Peregrinus
: a native.”
“So, apart from the tax exemptions, that’s all I have?”
“That’s all.”
 
What Tosutigus should have realised was that the Romans were following their normal pattern in settling a new province, and that in fact they were dealing with him kindly.
The governor was wisely maintaining a military zone in the territory of the troublesome Durotriges, and rewarding the Atrebates for their longstanding friendship by, at least temporarily, restoring their lands. This would leave the troops and administrators free to deal with the north and the west of the island where most of the tribes were yet to be conquered. At that moment, the legionaries were constructing the great road known as the Fosse Way that ran from the western part of the conquered Durotrigan lands in a north eastern diagonal across the whole of the southern half of the island. This formed the frontier from which they would advance. In time, both the client kingdom of the Atrebates and the military zone in the south west would disappear – though perhaps not for a generation. Then there would be provincial capitals, councils and native magistrates with the chance to obtain the coveted Roman citizenship. But not yet. To have excluded this obscure young chief from the military zone and to have given him generous tax exemptions was to treat him better than he had any right to hope.

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