‘I did not do it,’ Arviragus maintained, but his voice trembled.
Vindex came at him, arm whirling as he slashed down again and again. The prince took the blows on his shield, which started to split as the relentless scout came after him. Ferox pushed himself up. Gannascus had beheaded Brigantus, but stayed back, understanding that this was something Vindex had to do on his own.
‘It was him!’ Arviragus gasped. ‘Not me!’ He sounded like a child caught stealing apples. His shield collapsed into fragments. He lunged desperately, and Vindex was so wild that he had left a gap and the sword broke mail rings and came back red. Arviragus smiled, and then the scout stabbed him through the mouth. Vindex held the corpse upright for what seemed like a long time. Then he spat in his face and let him fall.
Ferox was sitting up, his back and side burning with pain. Vindex sat beside him, hand clamped to his side, which was clearly the nastier of the two wounds he had taken. A pale face peered out at them from one of the huts.
‘Trouble?’ Ferox asked.
‘They may help. Unless they are bound by oaths to the prince. Then they probably won’t be so friendly.’
Gannascus went over to the corpse of the prince and prised off the torc.
‘My king sent me for this,’ he said.
‘Take it.’ Ferox said. He had always suspected Tincommius wanted more than to simply help his Roman allies. He did not care. ‘Tell him to keep it.’
‘We go now.’
‘I’m not going to stop you!’
‘No, you won’t, but some Romans might try, so we will not give them the chance.’ Gannascus came over to stare down at them. ‘You will live,’ he announced. ‘Probably.’ He gave them a big grin. ‘I hope we will not be enemies one day.’
‘I’ll try to send you the girl,’ Ferox said.
‘Keep her. I don’t think she would like the north very much. And she’s fond of that boy of yours.’
‘Philo?’ Ferox had not had the slightest idea, and it felt odd that the massive German had realised what he had not seen.
‘Farewell. You are my friends always.’ The grin was back. ‘Unless the king says otherwise. Farewell.’ He and the archer strode off, going back to the horses
Ferox and Vindex sat in silence side by side. The scout began cutting up his cloak to bandage their wounds. There were faces in the doorways, and hopefully soon the people would come and help them. He doubted that they owed any particular loyalty to the prince, and the Brigantes were hospitable folk as a rule. Crispinus still crouched by the pen, muttering to himself, and he wondered what they had done to him and whether his wits would ever return. The prince’s words were in his head, but he did not have the energy to think about them.
‘Still think this was a good idea?’ Vindex said.
Ferox laughed, and his side hurt, which only made him laugh the more.
HISTORICAL NOTE
LIKE ITS PREDECESSORS, Brigantia is a novel set at a time when very little indeed is known about events in the Roman province of Britannia. While I have tried to depict the Roman army and government, and also Roman and tribal societies, as plausibly as possible, the key events of the story had inevitably to be invented.
Some of the people were real. Lucius Neratius Marcellus was the provincial legate at this time and was probably accompanied to Britain by his friend Quintus Ovidius, but we do not know much about either of them. Similarly, Cerialis, Lepidina, Brocchus and Severa appear solely in the Vindolanda writing tablets, which give no more than glimpses of their lives. Thus their characters in the story are invented, although I have done my best not to contradict anything we do know about them.
Much of the rest of the cast, from Ferox and Vindex through to Acco and the Brigantian royal siblings, are pure fiction. The name Arviragus occurs in Juvenal’s Satires, where he seems to have been a British king who fought against the Romans during Domitian’s reign. He is otherwise unknown and I have simply taken the name. There is no evidence for a succession dispute among the Brigantes at this time or indeed for any rebellion in Britannia. In fact, there is no certain evidence for any revolt in lowland Britain after Boudicca in ad 61. Recently, one scholar has re-interpreted the hundreds of skulls found in the Thames at Walbrook as signs of Roman reprisals after a rebellion in the area during Hadrian’s reign. It is an intriguing possibility, and I was sorely tempted to twist his chronology and use this material for our story, but did not feel justified in doing this. Perhaps one day Ferox will get caught up in that business, whatever it proves to be.
The Brigantes were the largest tribal group in Britain described by the Romans, who sometimes used the name as synonymous with Britons. The true relationship between the Brigantes and neighbours like the Carvetii and Textoverdi is unclear, as is the extent to which any of these groups were politically united. In some cases the Romans imposed clearer structures on indigenous peoples, most probably for administrative convenience. We know, for instance, that the boundaries of the three Galatian tribes, Gauls who had migrated to Asia Minor in the third century bc and settled there, were altered by the Romans. Written evidence for Britain comes solely from Roman sources and post-dates conquest, often by a very long time, so apart from the strong chance of cultural misunderstanding it is always possible that tribal structures had changed by the time they were described.
In ad 43 some or all of the Brigantes were ruled by Queen Cartimandua, who allied with Rome from the start and remained steadfastly loyal to this alliance. We know nothing about her age or ancestry. Mandubracius was a king of the Trinovantes and was supported by Julius Caesar, and the similarity in name has led to the speculation that he was an ancestor of the queen. We know of at least one Gallo-Roman aristocrat who claimed descent from Caesar on the basis of an alleged affair with one of his ancestors, so there seemed no reason not to have Arviragus believe the same thing.
At some point Cartimandua fell out with her husband Venutius, taking his armour bearer as her new consort. This led to war between them and Roman intervention to rescue her on one or possibly two occasions. The passages describing this are confused and no one is sure whether the historian Tacitus describes two separate incidents or gives slightly different versions of the same event. The huge walled enclosure at Stanwick may well have been the main centre of Cartimandua’s power, although as usual nothing is certain. We do not know when and where she died, just as we do not know the age of Caratacus in ad 43 or how long he lived on as an exile. An early phase of the villa at Holme House, near to Stanwick and also not far from the Roman fort at Piercebridge, had both a rectangular stone structure with a veranda on each side and a very substantial round house beside it. The date would just about fit for our story, and I liked the idea of an elderly Cartimandua returning ‘home’ in her last years and living in a way that allowed her to be both Roman and Brigantian.
The goddess Brigantia appears on inscriptions from the second century ad onwards. Her origins are unclear. She may have been promoted or even created under Roman rule as a unifying central cult for the tribe. For this reason she barely appears in the story, but the name has a good ring to it hence its use for the title of the book. Ruling dynasties survived in many communities for generations after the imposition of Roman rule. In most cases the families had become Roman, were often equestrians and might have careers in imperial service. We do not know what happened with the Brigantes, but it is quite possible that pre-existing tribal structures of kings and other aristocrats adapted to the new circumstances and continued within the empire. The Roman inclination was to let provincial peoples run their own affairs as far as possible, not least because the empire lacked the resources and enthusiasm for direct rule. The monument to her is an invention, while the presentation of her as a mystical figure owes a lot to the early Medieval Irish literature, especially Medb of Connaught in the Ulster Cycle.