slaves in my will and have invited them to stay on the estate, and work as freed men under Attalus to keep it running until you return. When you do, Attalus will have certain documents in his possession that I wish you to have. I have also made him a substantial bequest to keep him in his old age, so that he won’t be a burden to you.’
‘He could never be a burden to me, Tute, because he will always remind me of you.’
Tertulla embraced her grandson and then, standing on tiptoe, kissed him on the lips. ‘Remember, do what is right for you and for Rome, and you will fulfil your destiny, which is greater than you imagine.’ She ran her hand through his hair, as she used to do when he was a child, and smiled at him. ‘You should go now, the others are all on board. Farewell, my darling boy.’
Vespasian climbed aboard as Magnus and Sextus hauled up the sail. The little ship edged forward and Marius at the helm eased it around and out to sea. Vespasian stood at the stern as he watched Tertulla get smaller and smaller. When she was no more than a tiny dot on the beach he dropped to his knees and broke down in a series of gut-wrenching sobs, mourning his beloved grandmother who, although still living, was now dead to him.
PART IV
CHAPTER IXX
‘What’s that arsehole up to now?’ Magnus spat as he looked with disgust towards Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, the commander of the reinforcement column. ‘If we change direction again today I’m going to mutiny.’
‘You need to be under military discipline to mutiny,’ Vespasian reminded his friend as he watched Corbulo engage in another heated exchange with their local guides. ‘And seeing as you’re here masquerading as my freedman, and therefore a civilian, I think that anything you say or do will be ignored, especially by someone as well-born and arrogant as Corbulo.’
Magnus grunted and removed his conical felt cap, the pileus, the sign of a freedman, and wiped his brow. ‘Pompous arsehole,’ he muttered.
They had crossed the border from the Roman province of Macedonia into the client kingdom of Thracia five days earlier. For three days, following the course of the Via Egnatia, they’d marched through the budding orchards and the newly sown cornfields of the narrow coastal plain wedged between the forbidding, cloud-strewn bulk of the southern arm of Rhodope mountain range to the north, and the azure blue of the beautiful but treacherous Thracian sea, sparkling in the warm spring sun, to the south.
Corbulo had received orders, waiting for him at Philippi on the Macedonian border, to rendezvous as soon as possible with Poppaeus Sabinus’ army at Bessapara, on the Hebrus River, in the northwest of the client kingdom, where the northern arm of the Rhodope range abuts the Haemus Mountains. It was here that Poppaeus had the Thracian rebels pinned down in their hilltop stronghold, having defeated their main army in battle about fourteen days before. Corbulo had cursed his luck. He had tried to find out the details of the battle, but the messenger had already departed for Rome to bring news of the victory to the Emperor and Senate.
Being a young and ambitious nobleman he was taking the request for speed very seriously, anxious to arrive before the rebellion was completely crushed and his chances of glory diminished.
They had met their guides and left the road at the eastern end of the Rhodope range, and were now heading northeast through its trackless foothills to pass around to the northern side of the mountains and follow them, northwest, to their destination. They were in the lands of the Caeletae, a tribe that had stayed loyal to Rome and its puppet, King Rhoemetalces, mainly out of hatred for their northern neighbours the Bessi and the Deii, who had revolted the previous year against conscription into the Roman army.
Vespasian grinned at Magnus as they watched Corbulo bellow at the Caeletaean guides, turn his horse and head back down the column towards where they were stationed, at the head of the first cohort of 480 legionary recruits.
‘I think our esteemed leader is just about to push another tribe into rebellion,’ he said, watching the red- faced military tribune approach past the vanguard of 120 auxiliary Gallic cavalry. ‘If he carries on like that we’ll find ourselves dangling in wooden cages over their sacred fires.’
‘I thought it was just the Germans and Celts who did that,’ Magnus replied, easing his travel-weary behind in his saddle.
‘I expect that these barbarians have just as nasty a way of amusing themselves with their captives; let’s hope that Corbulo’s arrogance doesn’t drive them to practise on us.’
‘Tribune,’ Corbulo barked, pulling up his horse next to Vespasian, ‘we are stopping here for the night; those ginger-haired sons of fox bitches are refusing to go any further today. Have the men construct a camp.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And, tribune-’ Corbulo peered at Vespasian over the long, pronounced nose that dominated his thin, angular face ‘-tell Centurion Faustus to double the guard tonight. I don’t trust those bastards, they seem to do everything possible to hinder our progress.’
‘I thought they were loyal to Rome.’
‘The only loyalty these savages have is to their filthy tribe’s rapacious gods. I wouldn’t trust them with their own grandmothers.’
‘We do seem to be taking a very circuitous route.’
‘They’re in no hurry to reach our objective. Every time I insist that we start to head northwest they find an excuse after a mile or so to turn back to the northeast. It’s as if they want to lead us somewhere completely different.’
‘Here, for example?’ Vespasian looked up at the rocky hills to his left, and then down to the thick pine forest, which stretched as far as he could see, below them. ‘This is not a place I would choose for a camp, far too enclosed.’
‘My point exactly, but what to do, eh? There’s little more than three hours to sundown, and without the guides we may not find anywhere better, so we’re stuck here. At least there’s plenty of timber, so get the men to it, I want a stockade camp tonight; we’ll act as if we’re in hostile territory.’
Vespasian watched his superior move off down the column. He was seven years older than Vespasian and had served on Poppaeus’ staff for the past three years; before that he had been on the Rhine frontier for a year. Although he too came from a rustic background, his family had had senatorial rank for the past two generations and he behaved with the arrogance of someone born into a privileged life. Being sent back to Italia along with Centurion Faustus, the primus pilus or senior centurion of the IIII Scythica, to pick up the column of recruits, and thus miss the start of the season’s campaigning, had hurt his pride. His subsequent impatience with the smallest of errors or misdemeanours by any of the hapless new recruits had resulted in many a flogging and one execution over the seventy days that they had been on the march. He was, as Magnus had rightly observed, an arsehole, but even Vespasian with his limited experience could see that his military instincts were correct, and he turned to relay his orders.
‘Centurion Faustus!’
‘Sir!’
Centurion Faustus snapped to attention with the rattle of phalerae , metal disc-like decorations worn on a harness over his mail shirt, awarded to him over his twenty-two years of service. The traverse white horsehair plume on his helmet stood as rigid as its owner.
‘Have the men construct a stockade camp, and set a double guard.’
‘Yes, sir! Bucinator, sound “Prepare camp”.’
The signaller raised the four-foot-long bucina to his lips and blew a series of high notes through the thin, bell-ended horn, used for signals within camp. The effect was immediate: the two cohorts of raw legionaries unshouldered their pack-poles and pila and then, guided by the vine canes of the centurions and the shouts of their
