Part I - Chapter VII - 'Road Warriors'

by Michael Wyndham Thomas

The story so far... It is 51 AD, 6 years after the Roman invasion of Britannia, and Tribune Marcus Vinicius Spatula of the XX Legion has been securing the salt workings at Salinae (Droitwich) and the bridge on the river Sabrina (the Severn) at Vertis (Worcester). Having run into strong resistance from the tribes living west of the Sabrina, Governor Ostorius Scapula has decided to consolidate the Roman advance along the line of the river. Spatula and his men have been engaged engaged for over a year in building a road and small forts linking the legionary bases at Virconium (Wroxeter), to the north, and Glevum (Gloucester), to the south. Despite frequent hit and run attacks, from across the river and by locals loyal to the British resistance, Spatula and his command are now nearing the end of their engineering mission ...

By the time of Saturnalia AD51, the last fort before Viriconium was complete and the final stretch of road begun. In all senses, the festival was a more full-throated affair than its predecessor. A vital project was nearing completion. Anyone listening to Vectis, now thoroughly comfortable in his old role as chief engineer, would be left in no doubt about its importance. Firmus chose not to, preferring instead to mutter about 'Cambrian johnny-come-latelies.' In fairness, however, Vectis regarded Tignum as his equal, lavishing praise on his efforts from Glevum to the Salinae region and beyond. In fact, he had requested that Marcus officially elevate his assistant to the position of co-chief. Marcus readily assented--not least because he thought that this, at least, would show Firmus that his old enemy had a pinch of humanity about him.

Building progress had actually slowed after Vectis's return (and not because of it, contrary to Firmus's eloquent opinion). True to their plans, the Cornovii had harried the foraging parties, and continued to do so. They had also mounted some night raids--more to break a few heads than to make off with valuables. In general, they caused disruption at the fringes of the project, as blight eats the edge of a leaf. Besides that, the ground to the north-east of Brannogenium was proving harder to work than in the south. Autumn had taken its usual toll; spirits had sunk, especially once Currerus and other scouts, returning from long patrols, had announced that Viriconium was visible, albeit faintly, in the distance. For a few days towards Saturnalia, Marcus had even begun to wonder whether he would have to face the unthinkable--mutiny among the men. But this proved illusory, so that he was glad he had kept his fears to himself: he could never have remained as Tribune if he'd made unwarranted accusations.

Saturnalia, however, put everything into glowing perspective. Even the insidious Cornovii were forgotten--or regarded as irritants at best, like a cloud of midges. Doing obeisance to the gods--especially with the aid of good liquor--gave everyone a fresh will to work. By early spring, the last stretch of road was well advanced. The arrival of labour from Viriconium itself did much to raise the collective spirit further. By early summer, the extra legionaries were walking back through the entrance to their own fort with Marcus at their head. Spesis, commander of the fort, staged Saturnalia for them all over again, crowning the proceedings with a mirth for which he was widely famed.

'Here's to a job well done,' said Spesis one June evening, toasting Marcus and his team from what appeared to be a bottomless amphora. 'And now, Tribune?'

Marcus paused, his own goblet halfway to his lips. All round him, sounds faded away. Vectis, Tignum, Currerus and Firmus were at his shoulder, yet they seemed as insubstantial as ghosts. Spesis' question was apt: it was the first time Marcus had thought about the future. Of course, he and the others would receive further orders, along with standard compliments from Rome on their efforts. But the road had consumed time--around eighteen months' worth. Completing the task was like walking out of a cave into the light. There was the future, the rest of the world, other things to be done--all looking so strange.

'I fear I've capsized your good mood,' said Spesis, clapping Marcus on the shoulder. Marcus shook his head; the immediate world returned: 'My apologies, Spesis--I simply hadn't considered such a question. Well, word has been sent to Scapula that all is finished. We simply await his response--and his decision about what we do next.'

Spesis stroked his chin: 'Yes . . . Scapula. It's shaken him badly, the Cambrian business. I met up with him, you know. Last year. Expeditionary business, testing the lie of the land west from here. It was all he could do to leave his chair. Had to be carried to the front line of engagements. Tragic, really. Valiant leader. The gods know how he's hanging on.'

It transpired that Scapula wasn't. Messengers came from Cambria to Viriconium, bearing responses to Marcus's news about the road. Scapula had died, worn out at last by the spirited resistence of the Silures, the Ordovices, everyone who had rallied round Caratacus's flag. In his final days, it seemed, Scapula had insisted that Caratacus was still there, fighting at the head of the tribes. He hadn't gone mad: instead, it was as though the chieftain's valour had inscribed itself on his heart. In a profound sense, he was right: the Cambrian campaign had not been the sterling triumph of Rome's assumptions. After Caratacus's betrayal, the tribes had behaved and fought as though a dozen such leaders had replaced him.

The messengers had arrived about a week after Marcus's talk with Spesis. Marcus read the dispatches alone, walking through the Viriconium compound on the kind of sunlit evening which awoke thoughts of Cremona in his mind. In the distance he could see Vectis, Currerus and Fretus, one of the scouts who had brought the engineer safely out of Cambria. They were admiring a trio of thoroughbreds, new arrivals to swell the cavalry numbers. Loitering just outside the group was Firmus, intent on distracting Vectis with what had, by now, become a very old routine:

'Come on, Vectis,' he called. 'Turn out your pockets. Let's have a bit of this gold, then.'

Vectis turned to him, delivering his words through theatrically gritted teeth: 'I did not find so much as a dusting, good centurion. I seem to recall telling you this already.'

'A nugget for every mile of that road, every beam that rose to the sky. I'm worth that much, engineer, surely?'

The engineer turned back to the others, resuming a good-natured dispute about the height of one horse: 'Look,' said Vectis, and was just kneeling for hand-on-hand measurement when he felt a peremptory tap on his shoulder. To his astonishment, Firmus dropped beside him and pressed and ear to the ground:

'This how you find it, eh, Vectis? Stay in a heap and pick up the golden vibrations? Let's have a look at the colour of your ear.'

Marcus could tell, from the twist of his body, that Vectis was about to spring at the centurion. To prevent an unseemly scuffle--and the throttling of a much valued though unsubtle centurion--he stepped smartly forward, saying 'Scapula has crossed Lethe, gentlemen.'

'Did we build a fort there?' chuckled Firmus, scrambling to his feet and assuming that the others would support his mirth.

Marcus stared hard at him: 'Someone, Firmus, will be hot on Scapula's heels if he does not discover some sense of respect.' Firmus cleared his throat and shuffled like a wayward schoolboy: 'My apologies, Tribune. May the spirits crown him.'

Vectis was on his feet by this time: 'No-one could have led us more bravely against those Cambrian devils, Firmus. And their mettle would profit the Empire no end. If I could cast one spell, I should change them into Romans.'

'Or swine,' chipped in Fretus. 'They're halfway there already, and I could just murder some juicy pork tonight.'

Vectis turned to him: 'Remember that time at Gobannium, when we had only--?'

'Gentlemen,' interrupted Marcus. 'We shall pay our due respects to the great man at Viriconium tonight--minus any Saturnalian extras.'

'And the new governor, Tribune?'

'Didius Gallus,' said Fretus, startling Marcus, who had been about to say that another dispatch would shortly inform them.

'Indeed, scout?' asked the Tribune, not without amusement. 'And has Rome favoured you with revelations yet to be granted me?'

Now it was Fretus who looked abashed: 'I'm sorry, Tribune. Spoke out of turn. It's just that his name was forever on the lips of our commanders before we left.'

'Was it?' asked Vectis. 'I didn't notice.' To his credit, Firmus fought off the urge to observe that, well, he wouldn't, spending his days crouched like a spaniel, fawning all over the earth till it coughed up its gold.

'And what did they say of him, Fretus, your commanders?'

'Not much apart from his name, sir.' He pursed his lips, in a way that made Marcus frown. Had they said only that? The man's demeanour suggested that they had said more, and that it wasn't complimentary. He checked himself: his brain was up to its old tricks again, reading meanings into the blink of an eye or a discreet sniff. And anyway, no-one knew for definite that Didius Gallus would be the new governor. He himself awaited the next dispatch. It may be Suetonius Paullinus, whose reputation Marcus knew only too well. He would lay Cambria to waste in short order; under his command, fire and the sword would be busy night and day. Suddenly he noticed that Firmus, having decided that the official part of the conversation was over, was preparing to goad Vectis further:

'Centurion,' he barked, in a manner that surprised everyone, himself included. 'I have had Vectis and his effects thoroughly searched. I have had him turned upside down and suspended from a turret. He-has-no-gold!' So saying, he wheeled round and left them.

Spesis read the dispatch over Marcus's shoulder: 'Gallus it is, then,' he said at last.

'I thought it might be Paullinus,' murmured the Tribune.

'Di meliora!,' said Spesis. 'Don't misunderstand me. He's a great, great warrior, but singleminded as a fury. Once the enemy is in his sight, he'll conquer at all costs. He'd chop us to pieces if we got in his way.'

'And this Didius?'

Spesis stroked his chin: 'Hmm, unknown quantity, apart from his knack of putting his name about in the right places. Could be a good thing, of course, as long as his masters give him intelligent orders to carry out.'

'And if they don't'

'Well, let's just see how far he can think for himself.'

They had longer to wait than they had hoped. Before Didius Gallus arrived, the Silures mounted one of their strongest rebellions yet, and a Cambrian legionary detachment--including men whom Marcus and Vectis knew--suffered one of the worst defeats in the campaign. Marcus grew restive. No orders had arrived for his next move. It grieved him that, having completed the road, he and his men should simply lean on their shovels, as it were, while compatriots died deep in Cambria. But in late summer of AD52, his waiting was ended. The Cornovii had turned their interest from foraging parties to the road itself. For several miles south of Viriconium, they had been happily gouging the surface and damming the drains. One sweltering morning, Marcus returned to the fort from yet more restoration work, to find Spesis at the entrance with a dishevelled messenger:

'Hail Marcus,' called the commander. 'And hail the next phase of your career.'

The messenger gave him his orders verbatim, as he had received them from the newly arrived Gallus. They were threefold and simple. At all costs, Marcus was to maintain the road and its forts. He was to ensure that all soldiers from Viriconium to Glevum were suitably divided into detachments and kept on a battle footing. And, whenever and wherever ordered, he and Spesis--with Benevolus at Glevum--were to engage with the Cambrian enemy.

'This will need some organising,' said Spesis when the messenger had departed. 'Unless we find a way to take the road with us.'

'I suggest we arrange to meet Benevolus, at Vertis.'

Spesis looked puzzled: 'And where might that be?'

'The place of the bridge,' Marcus explained. 'My first great commission. Did I not tell you of it?'

'Refresh my memory,' Spesis requested. As he did so, Marcus felt a glow of accomplishment. So much had happened in two short years--even though, in a dry ledger maintained by some Imperial clerk, it would merely appear as 'built bridge, worked salt, dug road (plus forts, legionaries for the use of).' Inwardly, he laughed at his times of frustration and low spirits, at those moments when he'd asked himself what he was in Britannia for. And now, it seemed, he and his men were to be--what? warriors of the road? noble campaigners of the graded miles? navvies and fighters from Tartarus? Yet again, he recalled his father's imagined words--so, you've turned navvy, Marcus--and a spirit of impishness possessed him. As soon as he'd spoken with Spesis, before he did anything else at all, he would write to venerable Gravis and say that, yes, before he asked, he was a navvy and proud of it. To be a navvy, he would explain, was henceforth to be leader, battle strategist, swordsman, diplomat and builder all in one. Most useful to have one word doing the work of so many--rather a navvy itself, didn't Gravis think? But the wave of elation ebbed; and, while Spesis was talking of plans for meeting Benevolus, Marcus began to wonder when he would next see his father's face.

End of Chapter VII

Part I - I - II - III - IV - V - VI - VII - VIII - IX - X - XI - XII - Part II - Part II

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