The Boat of Fate (35 page)

‘The Magister Militum,’ I said coldly, ‘is an honourable man.’

‘A Roman talking of honour,’ he said bitterly. ‘God, what next!’

I opened my mouth to answer him, and he shouted me down. ‘Be silent,’ he said. ‘I gave you no leave to speak. You are a courier, remember your words. I am the Dux Britanniarum. I control the forces of the Province. I, and no other.’

‘You did control the forces of the Province,’ I said, finally stung into retaliation.

‘What?’

‘I said you did ....’

‘And damn your insolence, I say I do!’

‘Your forces, sir, have rebelled ….’

‘They have not rebelled!’
He brought his fist crashing down on the table. He was still holding the wine-cup. It shattered; splinters flew, and he flung the thing away. He sat gripping his wrist; blood coursed brightly across his palm.

There was a circle of spectators at the open flap of the tent, drawn by the sound of raised voices. He stared round them, slowly, and shook his head. ‘Leave us,’ he said. ‘Stand apart. Leave us alone.’

A splash of blood dropped on to his knee. He seemed unaware of it. ‘I am ... subject to pressures,’ he said. ‘And have been subject to pressures, greater perhaps than you . . . understand. My ... office has proved a difficult one, hard for one man adequately to fulfil.’ He looked up at me with a species of mute appeal. ‘The Augustan garrisons have marched,’ he said. ‘I rode to intercept. As yet I . . . don’t understand. It seems we are surrounded by traitors.’ He leaned back wearily. ‘Read me the despatch,’ he said. ‘Read it again.’

I read, quietly. When I had finished he nodded, eyes closed. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I see. I understand. There has been no rebellion. There will be no rebellion. All units listed will embark for Gaul. I will be seen to have done my duty.’

There was a silence that I chose to break. I said, ‘What are the Duke’s orders in respect of me?’

‘My orders? In respect of you?’

‘The Magister Militum,’ I said, ‘instructed me to place myself at your disposal after delivery of the despatch.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course. The Magister Militum denudes the Province, but he sends us the reinforcements we begged for. A Palatine officer, and a numerus of cavalry.’ He stared round him vaguely. ‘Do you see a cloth?’ he asked. ‘As you see, I have cut my hand.’

There was a side table, set with a meal. I took a napkin, passed it to him silently.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Would you help yourself to wine? Perhaps you would pour some for me too. There are ... cups behind you, on the table.’

I did as I was asked. When he lifted the goblet his arm wobbled violently. ‘I shall ... camp,’ he said. ‘Outside Rutupiae. You will take your men south, to Portus Adurni. You will deliver your despatches to Hnaufridus, Count of the Saxon Shore. Yes, I must ... despatches ... the Fleet Praefect must be made ... aware. And perhaps too we shall commandeer ... You will write to Mediolanum, stating that in all respects I have--complied--with orders received. There has been no ... rebellion. Do you ... understand?’

I said, ‘It will be as the Duke wishes.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes. Thank you. I’m sorry, Praefect, I ... this is all ... distressing to me.’ He set the cup down, stared at the table. ‘Meet me in Augusta in two weeks,’ he said. ‘The Provincial Council will be in session. I shall explain the ... steps we have taken to secure the country’s safety. And may God help us. God help us all ....’ He peered at the red-stained cloth round his hand, pressing his finger against the palm. ‘Mine was the first blood shed,’ he said. ‘The first British blood, for Rome. Perhaps it will be remembered of me.’

I saluted, stepping to the tent flap. I turned away quickly, but not before I had seen a curious thing. Marcus Tammonius Vitalis, Duke of the Britannias, was in tears.

I rode south grimly, by long stages. Valerius for once left me alone, warned, I think, by my expression. We travelled across country under the Tribune’s guidance, eventually striking the main road to Noviomagus. A short further journey brought us to our destination. Despite my bitter mood I was impressed by the appearance of the fort. None of these British towns and camps seemed to have suffered the attrition that was commonplace in Gaul; everywhere I saw high, well-kept walls, over the tops of which loomed line after line of heavy catapults. If, as Valerius claimed, they all maintained limitanei of their own, I couldn’t see any casual raiding party getting much satisfaction from them. The state of the country maybe wasn’t so parlous as I had imagined, or Tammonius inferred. The rich villa estates between the towns presented quite another problem in defence. It seemed what was required was a series of mobile, well-armed units that could be moved rapidly to any threatened point. There were cataphracti, heavily mailed cavalry, in both the northern and southern commands, that much I knew; maybe they could be made nuclei of the new-style forces. It was something I must discuss both with Hnaufridus and the Duke.

Insensibly, I had worked myself into a better mood. My meeting with Hnaufridus further raised my spirits. The Count, a stocky, phlegmatic German, took my news, when it was translated to him, more stoically. Stilicho was likewise stripping his command, paring it to the bone; but the Burgundian merely shrugged. There was, he explained in a halting combination of Latin and German, a legend of a Day of Fire so consuming that the Gods themselves would be destroyed. If the deities included Roma, then that was well. For his own part he desired nothing better than to die with a sword in his hand, having first won general approval by the valour of his conduct and by killing many enemies. He showed a polite interest in my suggestions, though I had the notion he was more impressed by the gold torque I had been careful to wear than by what seemed to me at least well-reasoned arguments. I rested the Celts for a few days at the fortress before striking back towards Augusta, the administrative and trading capital of the Province.

I had heard a lot about the town. None of it prepared me for the reality. Outside Rome herself, it was the biggest city I had seen, but it seemed built to no discernible system or plan. Shops and tenements, warehouses, churches and disused temples jostled and crowded each other; there were mile on mile of dank, ill-smelling alleys and wharves, choked with filth and garbage, overshadowed by decrepit, leaning houses of wood and stone, the haunt of cats, curs, and naked, unscrubbed children. In every direction sprawling suburbs shoved and nestled against the massive walls; the houses had even crept out on to the one great bridge, till it seemed the timber piles could scarcely support the superincumbent weight of building.

Scattered at random, like ships riding a crooked sea of roofs, were vast public edifices. I made my way to the largest of them, the town basilica. I found the conference promised by Tammonius had been called for the following day. Most of the delegates, quinquennales from every major town of the Province, had already arrived; more were still crowding into Augusta. The town had been thrown into a tumult by news of the evacuation; it seemed I was in for a stormy session. I saw Riconus and his men settled in--empty stables, temples and warehouses all over the city had been pressed into service for the occasion--and asked Valerius to find us beds not too thick with lice, and not too distant from the great basilica. I was tired from the long days of riding, and would have preferred to sleep; but no sooner had we installed ourselves in moderately clean-looking quarters than a flamboyantly liveried escort arrived to conduct me to the presence of the Vicarius, already in session with Tammonius and the Praesides of Britannia Prima and Maxima Caesarensis, in which administrative division Augusta itself lay. The extraordinary conflation of civil and military authorities alone would have convinced me of the seriousness with which the Province viewed current developments.

The session took place at the private house of the Vicarius, a vast, rambling palace of a place a few streets from the basilica. It went on noisily and inconclusively well into the night. I took a back seat as far as was possible, content to listen and observe. By the time the meeting broke up, the officials with their trains of assistants making their several ways by litter and carriage to their lodgings, I at least understood what Valerius had meant by his veiled sneer about the merchant classes. It seemed they formed one of the most powerful and vociferous groups in the Province. One and all were terrified of the possibility of connections with Rome being severed; from the remarks of the elderly Vicarius--himself a prominent Augustan banker, and the owner of a considerable fleet--it seemed they stood solidly in favour of British intervention on the mainland in face of the growing threat from across the Rhine. From their point of view nothing but good could come of the evacuation; they were less concerned with the individual fate of the Province than the maintenance of trading links with Gaul. But a numerically stronger group, consisting mainly of the curiales and lesser landowners, was equally violently opposed to any reduction in British strength. Surprisingly, it was this latter' view that Tammonius championed, in the face of dogged opposition. He seemed to be fully in command of himself again; no reference was made to our unfortunate earlier meeting. ‘You all know me, very well,’ he said wryly. ‘I’ve spent a small fortune already on behalf of the Province; I even gave up my privileges for the Army. Now I tell you this. We must protect ourselves; we can't hold Gaul.’ Whatever his actual merits as a soldier, he was clear and level-headed in debate; and his loyalties were wholly British. Nobody asked me for my views, which was probably just as well. The noise, and the airless heat of the room, made my head spin; when I finally left it was with a grim sense of foreboding. A Council so badly divided against itself seemed a poor tool with which to soothe an angry and disgruntled populace.

Valerius roused me at some indeterminate hour before dawn. The first thing I became conscious of was the renewed pounding of rain on the roof. I had a headache, and a raging thirst; my throat felt as dry as on that long-ago morning in Belgica when I stormed the hill-top fort with Vidimer and his men, I dressed and shaved, working awkwardly by lamplight, forced myself to eat a little bread and fruit; then Valerius and I set out together through the slowly brightening streets towards the basilica.

Early as it was, the Forum and the ways that led to it were noisy with carriages and hurrying pedestrians. They splashed indifferently through the rubbish-choked swirls of the gutters, chattering to each other in the high-pitched British tongue. I had instructed Riconus to present himself with a dozen men. I found them waiting outside the basilica, muffled in damp cloaks, heavy-eyed and sullen after a night’s carouse in whatever fleshpots the town possessed. Riconus it seemed had changed his mind about the Province; his muttered comments on towns in general, Augusta in particular and the grasping, untrustworthy nature of the British innkeeper did nothing to improve my temper.

We shouldered our way by main force into the body of the hall. It was immense, echoing and cheerless. Light from the big half-round windows to either side fell grey and livid on the mass of humanity that filled the floor. There was a reek of damp cloaks and tunics; while above the grumble of voices was the steady roar of rain on the long roof, the crash and splatter of water spouting from the eaves to the carved stone channels of the gutters.

On the rostrum at the far end of the place sat the dignitaries I had met the night before, with some new arrivals. Prominent among them were the Praeses of Britannia Secunda, a fussy, pompous little Roman, and the Bishop of Londinium, a Gallic nobleman of ponderous girth and even more ponderous dignity. The Vicarius, frail-looking and silver-haired, had robed himself for the occasion in a toga complete with massive purple stripe; the others, with the exception of Tammonius--once more in full military uniform--were dressed more familiarly in richly embroidered tunics. I deployed the Celts in a business-like formation to either side of the platform, and mounted the steps with Valerius to join the Duke. Shortly afterwards some measure of quietness was achieved, and the proceedings opened with a short address from the Vicarius.

He told the assembly, somewhat circuitously, what it in fact already knew: that the Magister Militum, acting with the Emperor’s full authority, had seen fit to withdraw from Britannia the regiments newly seconded to her defence, along with all remaining Legionary troops. Unrest was already evincing itself before he finished; when he sat down, the place burst into angry uproar. I looked down on a sea of shouting faces and waving fists. Riconus and his men, casting anxious glances behind them, began to edge towards the rostrum; the other guards moved forward, struggling ineffectually to quell the disturbance. Half a dozen individual skirmishes developed; the din was at its height when Tammonius rose, arms spread wide. The simplicity of the gesture achieved what no amount of bludgeoning seemed likely to do; the crowd grew quiet again, by slow degrees.

The Duke didn’t begin to speak until the dim noise of the rain had once more reasserted itself. His speech was brief, blunt and to the point. He upbraided the audience for its sad lack of dignity; he reminded the curiales that their collective security depended on the continued strength of the West and stressed that Rome herself, the hub of the Empire, was in deadly peril. ‘If Roma falls,’ he said to the now-silent hall, ‘which of her Provinces--Hispania, Gallia, Belgica, Africa-will survive? Will Britannia survive? For this is where our troops have gone; to Rome, to help her in her hour of greatest need. Rome first sent her Legions to us, in the time of our forefathers; are we, now, to grudge her our aid? What sort of people are we?’

There was a sudden commotion in the front ranks of the audience, down by the foot of the rostrum. An old man pushed himself forward, raising a long, gnarled staff. He was white-haired, thin to the point of gauntness; the eyes he turned up towards the platform were blank and blind.

‘My eyes no longer see,’ he said, ‘but it seems I see clearer than any of you. What rights has Roma over us? You say she takes back her own. What right had she to take my son? Was he a Roman? Am I? Was my father, or his father before him, who also served her?’