and experienced enough to know that the growing feelings she harboured for this Celt were reciprocated. It was in the way he looked at her, the smile she saw that was given to few others. She could make him laugh too, and took pleasure from doing so, the guilt of that first night, at even speaking with an enemy, weakening as time went by.
As a man Brennos was naturally tactile, much given to touching those with whom he was in conversation. This applied to his tribal commanders as well as her, leaving her to wonder if they felt the same sensation, that feeling that imbued every pore on her skin with an ache of impatience. Claudia Cornelia went to sleep beside her husband recalling that it was she not Brennos who had acted to bring matters to a head. Pointedly she wore that same cloak with which he had covered her nakedness the first day they met. Not a shred of remorse did she feel as she took the hand of her tall blue-eyed Celt, to pull him to her and place her lips on his. There was no image of Aulus when she let that cloak slip from her shoulders to reveal the same naked body. Brennos had resisted, but feebly, unable, despite his vows, to cope with so determined a woman.
It was she who removed his smock, then knelt, her head against his groin, to untie the thongs that held on his sandals. Brennos was half pleading with her to desist, but only vocally. For once, Claudia had the elemental power not him, a power strong enough to lead him to the sheepskin-covered bed, to pull his naked body onto hers. It was her hand on that eagle charm, not his, holding it behind his head so that it would not cause her pain. What came from Brennos’s throat as he made love to her sounded very much like that. She remembered it now, just as she remembered the sensations she had undergone, feelings that were as new to her as they were to her barbarian lover.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Titus Cornelius returned to Spain not as the youngest son of the great Macedonicus, a boy mounted on a cob, but as a fully fledged tribune commanding several centuries, to the very locality where his father had begun his campaign so many years before. He had even visited the battlefield, that long shallow valley where he had first experienced action. It was hard after so many years and in surroundings so peaceful to recall the thousands engaged, the clouds of dust, the clang of swords, the clamour of battle, the smell of blood and death. What lingered was the memory of what followed: the long, hard campaign; the constant risk of ambush as his father’s cohorts pushed their way into the mountains to flush out the enemy; the burning and pillaging that was necessary to suppress each tribe in turn; how his father had borne his own burden in silence, concentrating on the tactics necessary to isolate and finally defeat Brennos. The endless list of tribes and chieftains who had eventually agreed to peace, each one obliged to leave blood relatives as hostages in the Roman encampment until the campaign was over, as a token of continued good behaviour.
Titus had regarded these sons and nephews of the tribal chiefs with all the arrogance of his race, but that mellowed with contact; they were barbarians, uncouth in speech and manners, but they also held a fascination for an enquiring mind. Tentative contact was established after the ritual exchange of a suspicious glare, this encouraged by his father’s habit of treating them as honoured guests instead of prisoners. The reasoning was simple; if these young men knew Rome better, they might respect her more.
Facets of their very different life were absorbed during the games they played; mock sword fights in which each side would learn how to parry each other’s weapons, short Roman sword against wooden falcatas. They engaged in archery and spear-throwing competitions, bouts of wrestling and boxing, horse races at which the Celts excelled and, once the campaign had reached a certain point of success, hunting expeditions. Titus learnt to tell one tribe from another, how to communicate basic expressions in their tongue, while teaching them the rudiments of Latin. They were not content to compete with him, but more intent on besting some rival from another tribe. The interlocking relationships, hatreds and disputes between the various clans were too complex to master, and tact was necessary to avoid offence. In particular Aulus encouraged his son, when peace was finally brought to the frontier, to show respect and friendship to the leader of the Bregones, only a few years older than Titus, but a hereditary chieftain. In this case curiosity was mutual; Masugori could speak some Latin and wanted to know as much about Rome as Titus did about Celt-Iberian culture, and he became the person who tutored the young Roman in the language, local dialects, customs, and more importantly who hated who, knowledge that allowed him to understand more clearly those with whom he had contact.
Listening to Masugori describe the endemic quarrels of the various tribes, of shifting alliances, the way they continually raided each other’s lands, stealing cattle, crops and women, made him wonder how this Brennos had ever got them to combine, for it was plain that these Celt-Iberians were not only fractious but their disputes were of long duration. Masugori was not himself immune to this; he had his hatreds for the tribes on the borders of his own lands, as well as many beyond, and he talked of events in a way that made them seem as if they had happened yesterday, only for Titus to find he was speaking of raids and counter raids which had been stories told to him by his grandfather.
On seeing the landscape again, the flat coastal plains interspersed with mountains, Titus was conscious of how much he had forgotten. Yet gradually, through contact with the nearest tribes, some things came back; words and phrases, tribal identification through clothing and the decorations on head-dresses, torques, buckles and the pommels of swords, all of which he found useful in his present task, one which required peace. The duties he undertook, supervising the building of a section of the Roman road from New Carthage to Saguntum was to him just as vital as the notion of combat. It had been drummed into Titus Cornelius, just as it had been drummed into every young Roman, that the roads they built were the sinews of the Imperium, part of the genius of their Republic. By these arrow straight highways their empire would last where others, grown too large to control, had failed.
There had been some confrontations with roving bands, the odd skirmish with small groups intent on plunder, which forced him to keep a mounted mobile force ready at all times. A proper battle had seemed impossible until that morning, an attitude that the events of the last hour had altered dramatically.
Titus bit hard on the leather strap when the surgeon tended the gash in his arm. Despite the pain, he could not help but feel pleased, the memory of the recent action suffusing him with the warm glow of success. It is the moment each soldier dreads, that first taste of real warfare, the time when every nerve in your body screams for safety, yet you know that you must stand and fight and — if need be — die. The Celt-Iberians, hundreds instead of the usual few dozen, had come out of their mountain retreat under cover of darkness, waited, hidden in the nearby pine forests until the soldiers had breakfasted and set about their road-building tasks; then they had attacked. Titus, with his few men armed and mounted, had charged to blunt their progress, finding himself surrounded in a matter of minutes. This was no ordinary band of marauding, local tribesmen, so no shame would have attached to his name if he had turned and tried to escape, for even during his charge, and in the midst of the subsequent fighting, he had registered that he was engaged against men of more than one tribe. But flight was impossible; the men on the road, who would be outnumbered, needed time to get their weapons and shields, time to form up and attack as a disciplined body. He trusted them, and his second in command, to do the right thing. Titus, shouting over the clash of metal, ordered his men to dismount, kill their horses and stand in a circle.
The ploy worked; the Celt-Iberians, with such an easy prey before them, could not resist the opportunity. Ignoring their real goal and the growing danger from their rear, they tried to get at the surrounded Roman cavalry, slipping in the blood from dead horses and men, as they struggled to leap across the low rampart made by the dead animals. Titus and his party nearly died under the sheer weight of the attack, as those behind the men they were fighting, unable to engage themselves, still pressed forward eagerly, pushing their companions onto the Roman swords, thus increasing the height of the obstacle they had to climb. This, rather than their own defensive strokes, saved the cohort from being overwhelmed.
Gaius Julius, the other military tribune, later confessed that he had written Titus off, along with his men and, instead of worrying about their fate, had concentrated on forming up his own troops without disruptive haste. The sound of the trumpets, as the relief finally advanced, relieved the pressure on Titus at once, as those warriors at the rear turned to fight Gaius’s infantry, which actually increased the danger. Now the men attacking him, without any pressure, took more care with their strokes, using the increased space to deadly effect. His soldiers began to die, each one selling his life as dearly as he could, a fate to which Titus Cornelius was himself resigned; Gaius would win, but it would be too late for him.
Whoever commanded the enemy saved him. The horn blew twice in the distance, two long notes, and with a
