“He’s in his tent, sir.”
Nodding his thanks, Fronto strode off towards Priscus’ tent, gesturing at the guard standing beside that doorway. The legate himself had never bothered with a personal guard around his command as most senior officers did, but the praetorian cavalrymen had extended their remit from the general himself to the entire command section. Against all expectations, Priscus seemed to like it.
“Fronto, from the Tenth” he said to the cavalry trooper.
The man saluted, rapped on the tent’s doorframe and ducked inside. Fronto heard his name being announced in a muffled voice within, and the barked command to let him in. Priscus sounded in a worse mood than usual.
Thanking the soldier, Fronto ducked inside. Priscus stood behind his large desk, leaning on it with his left hand, his right curled around a solid wooden wine cup. He looked up at the new arrival and Fronto caught the look of desperate aggravation within his friend’s eyes.
“Bad day?”
Priscus nodded and slumped back down to his seat, the wine slopping in the cup. “You have no idea. And you?”
“Bet mine beats yours.”
Priscus’ brow rose and Fronto strode across and dropped into one of the two rickety wooden chairs opposite the prefect. “I’ve discovered that I was saved from gruesome death by a wet little coward with no experience who
Priscus grinned.
“Good. Well, the tribune saved you and, whatever you think of him, you have to be grateful for that. You
“Good. But it’s still been a bad day. What’s got you so bothered, then?”
“Other than the standard camp crap, added to all the extra work provided by the presence of a civilian population? Caesar’s got me handling all the bloody merchants that he’s called in, and setting everything up for Volusenus.”
“What merchants? Who’s Volusenus?”
Priscus slid the jug of wine across the table, indicating the three spare cups at the side. Fronto eyed it suspiciously for a moment, wondering how much of Furius’ invective stream he’d be proving right if he poured that drink and in the end giving up and doing so anyway. As if to cheat the centurion, he gave it an unusually healthy dose of water.
“Go on.”
“It’s not general knowledge, but Caesar’s had the call out for merchants who have knowledge of Britannia. He had local scouts sent out before we even left the Rhenus to gather information. Most of them, and the scouts, will be waiting for us at Gesoriacum, but a couple of the more enterprising ones have come here and met the column, hoping to get the choicest reward for their help.”
“So you’ve been collating all their information?”
Priscus’ look was rather sour. “It didn’t take much collating. They’ve given us some scant knowledge of the tribes and the geography, but they all seem to disagree on everything but the most basic points. And on the one thing they’ve all emphatically stated.”
“What?”
“That it’s too late in the season for safe sailing to Britannia. That if we attempt to cross after this month we risk the fleet being torn apart and sent all over the ocean with the army drowned. Apparently the autumn currents here are bloody awful. They all think we should wait for spring.”
“But Caesar doesn’t?”
“Correct. Unless we get a lot more useful information at Gesoriacum — and that looks exceedingly unlikely if this lot are any indication — the general’s going to send a scout across to check it out. Hence: Volusenus.”
“Still don’t know him.”
“He’s senior tribune of the Twelfth. Distinguished himself at Octodurus apparently. Anyway, he’s apparently got history with ships, so Caesar’s planning to send him across to Britannia in a bireme to fill in the gaps in the knowledge and clear up any points that we’re not certain of. Can’t say I envy the poor sod. But I’ve had to have everything ready for him on the assumption that, as soon as we reach Gesoriacum, he’ll be off to explore.”
Fronto glanced down at the desk and noticed for the first time the hastily drawn map of the Gaulish coastline, marked out in charcoal on a piece of expensive vellum. A short distance from the town marked ‘GESORIACVM’ a wavering line of grey denoted the coast of the land of the druids: Britannia. A shudder ran through Fronto which chilled him to the bone.
“No. Can’t say I envy him either. But then we’ll all get the chance soon enough. In three days we’ll be at the coast. Then we’ll just have time to recover and shave before Neptune gets to drag everything I’ve eaten for the last two weeks out of my face and make my life a living Hades.”
As Priscus took another pull on his drink, Fronto gazed across the map, trying to decide what would be worse: the journey or the destination.
Gesoriacum was everything that Fronto feared it would be: maritime-obsessive. Absolutely everything about the place was centred about its mercantile shipping, its port and its fishing industry. The whole place smelled of dead, landed fish and brine — a fact that had caused Fronto’s first vomiting session before they’d even clapped eyes on the rolling waves. He could remember a time when he’d enjoyed fish as a meal and slathered the ‘garum’ fish sauce from Hispania over everything he ate — not so now.
The population seemed to consist almost entirely of fishermen, fish-sellers, fisher-wives, retired fishermen relying on their fisherman families, and inns with names like ‘Drunken Codfish’, ‘Thundering Barnacle’ or ‘Jolly Fisherman’. It was almost as though the Gods had set out to create a native settlement perfectly designed to keep Fronto at maximum smelling distance.
The army had camped on the high point at the landward side of the town, forming a solid fortification that loomed over the native settlement, with a commanding view. The increased altitude and distance from the docks were the only reason that Fronto had remained a pale grey-pink colour for the last week, rather than tipping into the grey-green tone he’d gone whenever he’d had cause to visit the waterfront. At least on one such visit he’d managed to secure a new ‘Fortuna’ pendant from a merchant. It looked decidedly like a bandy-legged Gallic fishwife to Fronto, but the merchant had been insistent that it was the Goddess of luck. Somehow he’d rested a little easier wearing it, for all its misshapen ugliness.
Barely had the legions begun the ditches and ramparts before the veritable army of native fishermen, traders and opportunists had descended on the camp, drawn by promises of a healthy reward for any pertinent information they could supply concerning the land of the druids across the ocean. Their idea of pertinent had apparently differed greatly from Caesar’s, and many had left the camp with a scowl of discontent and empty pockets, glowering at the newly arrived and heavily armoured soldiers that reminded them so heavily of the armies that had passed by this way a year before, ‘pacifying’ the north coast.
A few interesting titbits had floated to the surface though, two of which had helped mollify the dreadfully unhappy Fronto: Firstly, three different men, all of whom had good credentials, had confirmed that the centre of druidic power in that horrible island was more than a fortnight’s travel to the northwest. This was welcome news to every man in the army. The druids had caused enough trouble in Gaul; their religion, power and practices were still largely unknown and frightening, and Britannia was the home of that power. To know that the chances of an encounter were so distance-dimmed was a great consolation.
Secondly, the most warlike of the native tribes all lived in the north of the land. While those tribes to the south could be expected to be every bit as dangerous and duplicitous as the Gallic, Belgic or Aquitanian tribes; the talk had always been that the worst tribes of Celts had lived in Britannia. Nine-foot-tall cannibals with painted bodies, supposedly — reports delivered by enough trustworthy scholars that it was hard to refute. But to know that
