‘If we all survived, one more after him; then us four,’ Faustus replied.
The priest kept up a constant stream of prayers and ululations as the legionary was stripped, then pegged out on the ground between the two pyres; his mouth was gagged to quell his screaming. Ten men, naked to the waist, started to circle the writhing sacrifice on horses; each had a huge log or rock across his saddle. The priest drew a knife from his belt and raised it to the heavens. The first horseman lifted his log and hefted it down on to the Roman. It smashed his ribcage. A second followed, then a rock, then another log, each crushing and mangling the body part it landed on. The man was dead before the last rock landed on him.
Vespasian watched and understood what was being acted out; he could guess what would happen next. He put a hand to the pendant that Caenis had given him as the priest stepped forward brandishing his knife. He grabbed the dead man’s genitals in one hand and with a flash of the blade severed them. The Thracians roared. The priest then presented the blood-dripping pile of flesh to the chief who took it in two hands and held it over the small pyre. He muttered a private prayer and laid his grisly offering on his dead kinsman’s chest. A torch was plunged into the oil-soaked wood and the pyre burst into flames.
‘They do weird stuff here,’ Magnus said, making the sign to ward off the evil eye. ‘What was all that about?’
Vespasian remained silent, thinking of the story that Caenis had told him when she had given him his pendant.
‘It’s like something in Publius Ovidius’ Metamorphoses,’ Corbulo said, but got no further. Whatever literary observation he was going to make was interrupted by screaming from the large pyre.
A wooden cage, similar to theirs, was being hauled up the side of the huge mound of seven hundred or more corpses. In it was the last russet-clad legionary. He knew what fate awaited him, but was helpless to prevent it. Once the cage had reached the top the priest embarked on another set of prayers. Men with burning torches surrounded the pyre. The caged legionary screamed out pleas to the gods, his comrades, his mother, none of whom could help him. They drowned out the voice of the weasel-faced priest, who pressed on regardless.
From across the river the men of the first and second cohorts crashed their pila against their shields three times and then began to sing the Hymn of Mars. The doleful voices booming out the ancient hymn carried up the hill to their comrade and seemed to settle him. He stopped his cries, raised himself to his knees and bowed his head in silent prayer to the gods below.
On a signal from the priest the torches were thrust into the base of the pyre. The flames caught, consuming first the hair, then the tunics and cloaks of the fallen, before taking hold of the flesh itself. That in its turn blistered, then sizzled and spat, giving off the aroma of roast pork as the fat within melted and oozed flaming droplets that were consumed as they fell into the blaze below. The heat had become intense; no smoke was given off, only flames. They licked their way ever upward until the top layer of bodies caught.
The man in the cage stayed motionless, as if he’d found peace through the singing of his comrades. The flames spread towards him. His hair was singed, and then his chest started to heave with irregular jerks – but not in pain. He couldn’t breathe: the fire had consumed all the oxygen. He lost consciousness as his tunic started to smoulder. His lungs collapsed. He was spared the agony of being burnt alive.
The Romans sang on.
The fire had now completely engulfed the pyre. Vespasian looked away; he exhaled and realised that he had been holding his breath for a long time. None of his comrades uttered a word. What was there to say? They were all busy with their own thoughts of death and how they would face it, and prayed that, when the time came, they would have the strength that the young legionary had shown.
The Thracians started to strike camp. It didn’t take long; they had travelled light.
The four prisoners were roughly manhandled out of the cage and dumped unceremoniously on to the floor of a mule cart.
‘Nothing but the best for us, it seems,’ Vespasian said. ‘I was expecting to have to walk; we’ll be the envy of everyone.’
Corbulo nodded in acknowledgement of the attempt at humour as the four struggled to sit up with their hands and legs still bound.
‘Something to eat would be nice,’ Magnus said. ‘I don’t think much of the service. Where’s a nice plump serving wench to take our order?’
The cart jolted. They were off. The column plodded its way up the hill leaving the three pyres burning and, next to them, still pegged out, the gelded legionary.
The Romans stopped their singing and began jeering.
Corbulo smiled. ‘Poppaeus will be pleased when he receives those men. They’ve shown good character; they won’t disgrace the Fourth Scythica or the Fifth Macedonica.’
‘Then we shall have to make sure to be there when he does, so we can see his face,’ Faustus said.
But the idea of escape seemed absurd, bound as they were hand and foot and surrounded by guards. They lapsed into silence.
The column climbed out of the valley and turned to the southeast. It plodded on for a few miles under the searing midday sun. Conditions in the cart started to deteriorate as the call of nature, so long resisted in the cage, became impossible to ignore. Although they were used to hardship, it was an affront to their dignitas to lie so close together in soiled clothes, like slaves being transported to the mines.
Vespasian, to avoid the eye of his fellows in these humiliating circumstances, spent his time staring back out of the cart. As he scanned the crest of the last hill they’d descended a lone horseman appeared. He stopped and was soon joined by a few more, and then more, until at least a hundred sat watching the disappearing column from their vantage point, three or so miles away.
‘Corbulo!’ Vespasian whispered so as not to attract the guards’ attention. ‘They’re our Gallic auxiliaries, I’m sure of it. Look. Gallus must be coming to rescue us.’
Corbulo smiled ruefully. ‘If he is, then he’s a fool. He doesn’t even know if we’re alive or not. No, I’m afraid they have just been sent out to make sure that the Thracians are really pulling back, so that Gallus knows that he is safe to move off, free from pursuit.’
As he spoke the horsemen turned and disappeared back over the crest of the hill.
‘I’m afraid that that is the last we’ll see of them.’
Vespasian turned his eyes back to the hill, willing the cohorts to appear. But he knew it was futile. Corbulo was right: they had seen the last of their comrades whose duty was to the north.
They were on their own.
CHAPTER XXIII
For two days they bumped along in the cart. Their bonds were checked regularly; any progress that they had made in loosening them was discovered and cruelly repaired. Occasionally the inside of the cart was sluiced out with water, washing away the refuse that they were forced to lie in. They received no proper food, only sheep’s milk, which temporarily sated their hunger, or the odd crust of dry bread unceremoniously stuffed into their mouths. Their joints ached and they grew weaker.
Unable to sleep for more than short periods at a time Vespasian passed the days and nights by writing letters to Caenis in his head, vowing that he would live to write them for real. He wrote of his love for her and how he first felt that love the moment he saw her outside the Porta Collina. He wrote of his fear for her when he heard that she was Livilla’s captive, and his pride at being a party to her rescue. He promised her that he would win enough money to be able to buy her freedom. But most of all, he promised to love her for ever. When he ran out of things to write he composed her replies; they were full of love for him and pride at his achievements and successes, and always written on wax tablets that he imagined to be somehow imbued with her scent.
And so he passed the time in his head. The others did likewise, conversation being pointless, as it only ever led to one subject – that of escape – and the hopelessness of their situation would again be reinforced. So with an unspoken common consent they remained silent in order to preserve what morale they had.
They left the Rhodope Mountains behind and passed down into a wide valley through which ran the slow- flowing Hebrus. Although fertile, much of the valley was uncultivated and covered with forest, the inland Thracian
