The War at the Edge of the World (30 page)

‘Where have you come from?’ the tribune said in a low hard voice. Castus told him – the north, Pictland – but he was stammering the words, exhaustion fighting through the energy in his blood.

‘You’re under arrest, centurion,’ the tribune said. ‘Surrender your belts and weapon.’

Two soldiers seized his arms. Castus stood passively for a moment, baffled. Then he shrugged the soldiers roughly away from him.

‘Arrest? On what charge?’

‘Desertion in the face of the enemy,’ the tribune said. ‘The penalty is death. Take him away!’

‘Over forty days ago,’ the governor said, ‘you left this fortress in command of a century of men, with orders to escort an envoy and my secretary into Pictland. Now you return and tell me that all these men are dead and you alone have survived. In the meantime, the Picts have crossed the Wall, devastated my province, defeated my legion in the field and surrounded my capital. It doesn’t look good, does it?’

‘No, dominus,’ Castus said. He was standing at attention, tunic unbelted, still bloody and unshaven after three days in the guardhouse.

Aurelius Arpagius, governor of the province and prefect of the legion, paced across the mosaic floor of his private chamber in the headquarters building. His beard, once so neatly groomed, was now wild and ragged. His eyes were sunken, and his dark skin had a yellowish tinge from lack of sleep.

‘Do you know how many deserters have flooded into this fortress in recent days?’ he asked. ‘Half the Wall garrison fled when the enemy first raised their heads above the horizon! My troops at Isurium broke after the first engagement! Panic, centurion, is eating through this whole province. It must be
stopped
– discipline must be restored. That’s why I’ve ordered the arrest of any further deserters who come through the gates. And that’s why I’ve ordered the execution by stoning of any officer, centurion or above, found to have deserted his command.’

Castus nodded. He had already given his report, in as simple and soldierly manner as he knew how. He had told Arpagius almost everything about what had happened: the Pictish muster, the capture of Marcellinus and Strabo, the defence of the hilltop fort. He had told him of his own surrender and imprisonment, Strabo’s murder, their captivity and Marcellinus’s death, his escape. All he had left out was the involvement of Cunomagla; he remembered his promise, but this was not the moment to mention her.

‘Your duties,’ the governor said, ‘were to protect the envoy and the safety of your men. You have failed utterly in both. Understand?’

‘Yes, dominus.’

‘But… bearing in mind the circumstances, I am prepared to suspend the sentence of death for the time being. You will remain under arrest and confined to quarters until I have time to decide whether you should be discharged without honour or reduced to the ranks…’

Castus kept his shoulders straight, his chest out, but anger was boiling inside him and he could feel his face reddening. He could hear the scratching of the clerk’s stylus on the wax tablet. The soldiers at the door were already pacing forward to lead him away.

‘Dominus!’ he said, tight-throated. Arpagius glanced up at him sharply. ‘Dominus… the Roman renegade I mentioned…’

‘Yes?’ The governor’s eyes narrowed, and his face grew still. ‘You put the man to death, you said?’

‘I did. But before he died, he told me… certain things.’

A long pause. The tribune Victorinus, perched at the end of the couch, looked at the governor and raised his eyebrows. The clerk paused in his writing. Then they all looked at Castus.

‘
Things?
’ Arpagius said. He cleared his throat quietly. ‘Vic­torinus, Proclinus, leave us and take the guards with you.’

The tribune and the clerk stood up, saluted, and then paced out of the room. The guards closed the door behind them. Arpagius circled the desk and leaned back against it. The gov­ernor was a head shorter than him, but Castus felt the searching pressure of the man’s gaze.

‘So – tell me,’ Arpagius said quietly.

‘Dominus, the renegade and traitor Julius Decentius claimed that he had been acting under imperial orders to raise a rebellion among the Picts. He claimed that he was receiving instructions from an imperial agent in the province, who had come from Treveris, and had promised him a pardon for his crimes. He said… that my men and I had been sacrificed by our superiors.’

Arpagius was silent for a long time. He tugged at his beard, and Castus noticed that the man’s forehead was beaded with sweat.

‘Did you believe him?’

‘Dominus… it’s not for me to believe or disbelieve. I can only report what he said to me.’

‘Well, I know nothing of it. The words of a renegade – a man you describe as a traitor? A man trying desperately to talk his way out of a just execution…? It seems to me this sort of man would invent any plausible excuse, no?’

Castus looked directly at the governor for the first time. ‘I would have killed him anyway. He knew that.’

The governor held his gaze, the silence bristling between them, and Castus felt the anger rising in him again.

‘Who have you told about this? Anyone?’

‘No, dominus.’

‘What about that girl you brought in with you. Marcellinus’s daughter. Did you mention this to her?’

‘I did not.’

‘Good… I’ve got twenty thousand civilians sheltering in this fortress, centurion. The last thing I want is for evil rumours to start circulating amongst them. The same goes for the troops, of course. I would strongly advise you to say nothing of what this renegade told you to anybody. Is that clear?’

‘Quite clear, dominus.’

‘When I received warning of the enemy attack on the north­ern forts,’ Arpagius went on, pacing back to the couch and sitting down, ‘I at once sent an urgent message to the Augustus Constantius in Gaul. As we speak, he is assembling a field force and preparing a rapid march to relieve us. When he gets here… I will perhaps raise the matter with his staff. Meanwhile, I order you to put it out of your mind. Do you understand?’

‘I understand, dominus.’

‘Good. As far as you or I are concerned, whatever happens beyond the Wall
stays there
.’

Strong hands gripped and lifted him, and he fought against them, still lost in the fevered dreams of grief. In his mind he saw again the grisly tree, and he thought the voices were Timotheus and Vincentius, calling to him from the far side of death.

‘Easy, brother, easy now,’ one of them said. The hands were dragging him up off the cold flagstone floor. He lashed out, but somebody caught his wrist and held tight.

‘How long’s he been like this?’

‘Two days, centurion,’ said another voice. Castus knew this one: the thin-necked youth with a frightened stare who had been set as sentry outside his door. Castus had never seen him before. The other speaker was his friend Valens.

‘Get him up, careful now. By the gods, he must weigh twice what I do!’

The world swung, and Castus let himself swing with it. His head reeled with the fumes of the wine; his mouth was dry with the taste of it, and his eyes felt gummed shut. He had never drunk to excess before – that was his father’s weakness.

A bolt of cold water struck him in the face, splashing down his chest, and he gasped and cried out as he opened his eyes. Valens and two guards stood before him. Castus aimed a kick at the man with the bucket, but missed. His head was screaming and his hands ached.

‘Look what he’s done to the wall!’ the sentry said. Above the bed Castus could see the plaster cracked and broken to the brickwork. That explained his battered fists, he thought. The painful grazes on the forehead too. Between them the guards dragged him up to sit on the bed and gave him water. He gulped back three large cups of it.

Officially, he remembered, he had been forbidden to leave his quarters, but he had been granted a trip to the baths and to the hospital to have his wounds dressed. Then they just gave him a big clay jug of wine and left him to it. How long had he spent like this, drunkenly raging or sprawled on the floor? He could no longer properly account for the time that had passed, nor did he want to remember.

Valens ordered the other men out, kicked a stool over to the open window and sat down on it. ‘You look disgraceful, brother,’ he said. ‘Still, you should be grateful you were out of this. It hasn’t been warming to the heart, these last ten days.’

Castus had not seen his friend since returning to the fortress. Valens looked as worn down as everyone else in Eboracum, his expression soured with a mixture of anger, fear and shame at what had happened.

‘Arpagius even neglected to tear down the scaffolding where we’d been repairing the walls,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘The Picts made a rush at it when they first got here – almost got inside too. We had to burn it ourselves in the end to keep them back. It was chaos – half the centurions and tribunes dead or missing after the battle, refugees pouring in. The enemy destroyed all the buildings along the river – they even burned the Blue House! But don’t worry, everyone escaped, except that old eunuch doorkeeper – the Picts killed him. And since then we’ve been stuck in here and they’ve been out there.’

‘What happened at Isurium?’ Castus asked, squinting against the light from the window, the thunder and flashes of lightning in his head. He had been unable to find anyone willing to tell him about the defeat.

‘Bloody shambles,’ Valens said, worrying at a stalk of grass with his teeth. ‘The enemy had us flanked before we’d even deployed from line of march. Arpagius ordered us to form square, but the baggage train was still spread out along the road and the Picts fell on it before we could form up. Everyone giving different orders. No discipline. The First and Sixth Cohorts managed to put up a fight and withdrew intact, but for the rest of us it was just a rout. Balbinus and Galleo died. Ursicinus saw his battle at last, after forty years of service. Last thing he’ll ever see. I don’t mourn them exactly, but… The legion’s in rags, brother.’

From outside came the sound of horns, and then the shout and stamp of the watch being changed. The usual female screech­ings from the married quarters at the end of the barracks. Most of the women would be widows now. Castus felt a roll of nausea in his gut; he was glad he had managed to avoid facing them.

‘There’ll be a forced conscription levy on the civilians,’ Valens went on with a weary sigh, ‘and we’ll enlist any of the men who retreated from the Wall garrison that don’t have standing cohorts left. But it’ll be months before we can take the field again.’ He swabbed at his brow, and then smiled ruefully. ‘And what about you?’ he asked. ‘Adventuring in Pictland? Picking up stray women?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Castus said, more sharply that he had intended.

Valens’s smile slipped. He gripped Castus by the shoulder. ‘Sorry, brother,’ he said quietly. ‘At least we’re alive, though. Thanks be to the gods.’

Castus nodded, and planted his thumb and finger upon his brow.

‘Valens,’ he said as his friend turned to go. ‘The woman who came in with me. Aelia Marcellina. Do you know what happened to her?’

Valens sucked his cheek, shrugging. ‘Probably given a billet somewhere. Half the barrack blocks have been turned over to the refugees. I’ll ask around.’

‘Thanks, brother,’ Castus said. He waited until Valens was gone, and then closed the shutters and threw himself down on the bed in the welcome darkness.

Summer passed to autumn, and the rains turned the packed streets of Eboracum to mud. Castus remained in his quarters, pacing the narrow room, sleeping as much as he could. Valens came by once or twice a day, bringing news: the prefect was sending out patrols into the surrounding countryside to try and break through the Pictish blockade. A party of the enemy had been surprised while swimming in the river, and forty or fifty cut to pieces, naked and unarmed. But food was running short, and everyone was on half-rations of barley and water. The civilians were rioting, and there was still no news from the south, and the expected relief force led by the Emperor Constantius.

There were other visitors too. The ten men who had been on leave, sick or on detached duty when Castus had taken the century north had straggled back to find their comrades dead and their centurion under arrest, but they presented themselves outside his window, in twos and threes, and reported themselves fit for duty. Even Modestus, the habitual shirker, who had been discharged from hospital in time to fight at Isurium. He had somehow managed to distinguish himself in the rout; Castus thought he looked more wretched than ever, but the man wore a bandage around his head like a gold crown for valour.

‘No fear, centurion,’ Modestus said. ‘You’ll be out and in command again any day now. Me and some of the others are putting together a petition to the governor, asking him to release you.’

‘Don’t bother,’ Castus said, but he was pleased. Even small scraps of mercy were a blessing to him.

It was the fourth day of September, a grey and blustery morning, when Valens banged on the door and leaned into the room.

‘They’ve gone,’ he said. Castus sat up from the bed.

‘Who?’

‘The Picts! They left in the night, and the patrols report them heading south. The emperor has his field force at Danum, and they’ve gone to try and hold the river crossing at Lagentium against him. Least, that’s what I’ve heard…’

Danum was only three days’ march south. Castus dashed his face with water from the bowl beside the bed.

‘Oh, and another thing,’ Valens said with a sly smile. ‘You’re released from quarters. Forbidden to leave the fortress, though – in case you were thinking of running off after them…’

The Emperor Flavius Valerius Constantius, Pius Felix Invictus, Augustus, Ruler of the West, Restorer of Britain, Conqueror of the Franks and the Alamanni, arrived at Eboracum on the fifteenth day of September, riding in through the ruins of the city and across the bridge with his mounted bodyguard all around him.

It was a drizzly afternoon with a cold breeze from the river, and Castus stood with the gathered soldiers on the wall rampart near the Praetorian Gate. He leaned across the parapet, gazing down, and picked out the emperor among the mounted men: a stooped figure on a large grey horse, riding with his head lowered, wrapped in a purple cloak. The gates opened, the governor Arpagius marching out with his tribunes and the city notables to greet the imperial party, and as the horns blared from the gatehouse the assembly along the walls, soldiers and civilians, threw up their arms and cried out the salute. ‘
Ave Imperator!
Ave Imperator!
’