Volisios’s eyes shone. Gwlym knew the Iceni was seeing not just Colonia and Londinium, but all of south Britain under his thrall. The new Caratacus.
He had sown the seeds of doubt as he intended and he would nurture those seeds as the opportunity arose. But how to bring the hare to the trap?
XXVI
April AD 60
The march west seemed much shorter than seven months before, when the First cohort had made its way towards Colonia under the dank grey clouds of autumn. The very obvious manifestation of spring put a little more bounce in every man’s step. Not even the sixty-pound loads they carried could dent their spirits. Wherever they looked leaves fresh from the bud turned the hedgerows emerald green and buttercups, dandelions and primroses studded the meadows with gold. Each farmer’s field had its flock of newborn lambs jostling playfully for position on the nearest hummock of grass and watched over by a shepherd boy ready to fend off any enterprising fox or buzzard, or passing hungry-eyed legionary.
As they marched through the hills towards Glevum, Valerius heard a familiar bass voice take up the simple cadence of the first verse of the ‘March of Marius’.
There was a Mule, he was no fool,
He had a girl in every fort
Another one in every port In
Allifae she was not shy…’
By the time they reached the Twentieth’s base above the Severn, the Mule had shown much imagination and inventiveness and he’d left a trail of worn-out working girls from one side of the Empire to the other. Lunaris’s voice never let up and he was still going strong. Valerius sang along with the rest.
He barely recognized the fortress as the place he’d left the previous year. Supply trains carried a constant stream of equipment and provisions from the river to a separate temporary encampment protecting the mountain of stores gathered for the campaign ahead. Engineers had constructed a series of double-ditched annexes to house the various auxiliary units who would accompany the Twentieth and the Fourteenth to attack Mona: veteran infantry from Frisia, Batavia and Tungria, a five-hundred-strong wing of Sarmatian light cavalry scouts and another of Raetian bowmen.
Travel-stained and leg-weary, the men of the First cohort gathered on the parade ground to say farewell to their tribune. Valerius had never seen a unit more battle-ready or eager. Brick red, dust-coated faces grinned at him from below their polished helmets, and dark patches of sweat stained their tunics, but every man was honed whip thin and tough as seasoned saddle leather. War held no illusions for them but they had had enough of mending roads and mock fights. He felt a wasp sting of guilt at the knowledge he wouldn’t be going to Mona and worse when they cheered him to a man as he dismissed them.
‘Good luck, Julius. Look after them,’ he said to the centurion. ‘I’ll announce our arrival at the principia, and after that, who knows?’
‘There’s a pretty whore called Thalia in the brothel up by the gate on the Prata Flaminia. Say hello to her for me and give her a big kiss, or something else.’ Julius laughed and took him by the arm, looking up into the young- old face with the wary fighter’s eyes. ‘I can’t imagine you in a law court, Valerius, but you’ll scare the life out of the opposition.’
Afterwards Valerius reported to the legate on the status and condition of his men. He was pleased by the general’s reaction.
‘I know, I watched them march in. They are a credit to you and their officers. They’ll have plenty of time to rest. The Fourteenth sets off in a week from their base at Viroconium. It will take a month to force a way through the mountains. We go in after that. That’s when the First cohort will be needed. When we reach Mona.’
Valerius nodded his thanks and turned to the request that had been dominating his thoughts for the final five miles of the march. ‘I would like to ask for a meeting with the governor, sir.’
Livius pursed his lips and tutted. ‘You won’t change his mind, Valerius. He won’t keep you in Britain.’
‘I don’t expect him to, sir. It’s another matter.’ He knew he could ask the legate to pass on the information supplied by Cearan, but there was no guarantee it would reach the governor. He owed it to the Iceni to argue the case himself.
‘Very well, I’ll arrange it, but I warn you he’s in a dangerous mood. He heard this morning that Corbulo heaps success upon success in Armenia. The governor’s future rests on this campaign and the Emperor is impatient for victory. It will mean a triumph and a consulship if he wins, but… I hope it’s good news you are bringing him.’
Staff officers and messengers bustled to and from the governor’s headquarters with the regularity of bees supplying a hive. A harassed aide ushered Valerius inside, where he found Paulinus at a plain wooden desk writing unhurriedly in confident strokes across a piece of parchment. It was undoubtedly an important report; normal orders would be issued on the wax writing block at his right hand and transcribed by clerks. Valerius felt the first flutter of nerves. This man had the power of life and death over every soldier and civilian in the province, and he was a man to be feared.
In the silence he considered what he knew of the governor. Paulinus had spent his first campaigning season in Britain in the south-west, annihilating the last remnants of resistance from the Dumnonii and their Durotrige allies in the rugged peninsula where they had fled the swords of the Second legion. The governor counted it a great success, reaping the double benefit of guaranteeing Rome the tin it needed and spreading word of the new total war he had brought to these shores. Every king, prince or warrior who resisted was butchered. Only widows and orphans survived to wail their funeral songs and spread the tale of his coming.
Paulinus had plotted and conspired to win his position as governor, but he hated this island and he despised its people. He combined a hard, unbending and utterly ruthless character with a forensic intelligence. He was also a brilliant soldier who had been the first Roman general to fight his way across the Atlas mountains.
A sharp scrape announced he had completed his correspondence. Valerius drew himself up to his full height. The shaven head lifted and he found himself being studied by two flat, basilisk eyes squinting from beneath a heavy brow. Paulinus maintained his gaze for a full minute, as if he was trying to define what species of life form had dared interrupt him. Valerius felt the first prickle of sweat in his scalp.
‘I am told you have important news for me?’ The voice was as rough-edged as the face it emerged from, the accent from somewhere to the south of Rome.
Valerius repeated what Cearan had told him about the likelihood of political upheaval among the Iceni when King Prasutagus died, the clandestine meetings in the woods and his certainty that druids were spreading poison among his people.
When he had finished the governor snorted impatiently. ‘So, in short, I am expected to endorse the claim of this woman, this Boudicca, over other worthy candidates on the word of some barbarian opportunist.’
Valerius took a deep breath. ‘Sir, it is my opinion that Lord Cearan is a man to be trusted. If he has concerns, then I think we should also have concerns.’
The pebble eyes glowered in surprise.
‘You would give me advice? Young man, I have so much advice that I am forced to sit at this table twelve hours a day considering it. The Emperor advises me how to squeeze more profit out of this benighted province. My officers advise me their forces are not strong enough yet to take the Druids’ Isle. My priests advise me that it is a fine day — as if I cannot see that for myself. And my doctor advises me that if I don’t calm down my piles will burst.’
Paulinus slapped his palm on the table hard enough to make stylus and scroll airborne.
‘Everything you say assumes that these Iceni seek a war. They would not be so foolish. I would wipe this country so clean of any rebellious vermin that neither their children nor their children’s children would pose a threat to any Roman again.’
Valerius suppressed a soldier’s instinct to keep his mouth shut and used his lawyer’s experience to place a doubt where it would do most good. ‘Perhaps we underestimate them, sir,’ he said, thinking of the hate-filled eyes of the mourners at Lucullus’s funeral.
