PART I
CHAPTER I
Vespasian secured the leather thongs of his chinstrap with a tight knot, pulling the articulated cheek-guards close about his face. He shook his head; the helmet stayed firm. Satisfied, he nodded at the slave waiting upon him; the man — in his early twenties — stepped forward and draped a deep red, heavy woollen cloak about his shoulders, fastening it with a bronze brooch in the shape of a Capricorn, the emblem of the II Augusta. Despite the two mobile braziers in the tent, there was a morning chill and Vespasian was pleased with the garment’s extra warmth. He grasped the hilt of his sword, tugged it, checking the weapon was loose in its scabbard, and then glanced at the slave as he stepped back, his task complete. ‘You may go, Hormus.’
With a short bow, Hormus turned and disappeared through dividing curtains into the sleeping area at the rear of the praetorium tent — the headquarters of the legion and living area of its legate at the heart of the II Augusta’s camp.
Picking up a cup of warmed wine from a low table, Vespasian strode over to his desk, covered in neat piles of waxed wooden tablets and bundles of scrolls; he sat down and opened the despatch that had caused him a sleepless night. Sipping his morning drink, he reread it a couple of times, his full face drawn into a strained expression, and then clacked the tablet down. ‘Hormus!’
‘Yes, master?’ the slave answered, scurrying back through the curtains.
‘Take this down and then have a messenger set out with it immediately.’
Hormus sat at his smaller, secretary’s desk, took up a stylus, poised it over a clean sheet of wax and nodded his readiness to his owner.
‘To Gaius Petronius Arbiter, senior tribune of the Fourteenth Gemina, from Titus Flavius Vespasianus, legate of the Second Augusta, greetings.
‘My brother, Titus Flavius Sabinus, did not arrive at the Second Augusta’s camp around the time of the spring equinox; nor was there any meeting scheduled here between General Plautius, myself and my brother. I know of Tribune Alienus; he is the grandson of the late Verica of the Atrebates. I vaguely recall coming into contact with him a few times whilst he has been serving on Plautius’ staff during the last two years and I have no reason to doubt his integrity; but neither do I have any reason to believe that his loyalties may not still lie with the rebels. What was he doing leading my brother to a meeting that did not exist? If you are positive that it was to here that they set out fifteen days ago then I can only assume that Alienus was, after all, never truly one of us but, rather, a Britannic spy. Therefore, my brother is either a prisoner or, the gods forbid …’ Vespasian paused, not wanting to say the word that had tormented him all night as he contemplated Sabinus’ possible fate.
Although Sabinus — almost five years Vespasian’s senior — had terrorised him as a child and treated him with scorn as a young man, their relationship had gradually changed over the last dozen years or so and matured into one of mutual respect. It had been Vespasian’s part in helping his brother recover the lost Eagle of the XVII Legion that had brought the two siblings close enough to communicate without constant bickering. Sabinus had been under threat of death from the Emperor Claudius’ powerful freedman, Narcissus, for his part in the assassination of Caligula; his fellow conspirators had all been executed. However, owing to the intervention of the brothers’ old acquaintance, Pallas, fellow freedman to Narcissus, Sabinus’ role had been covered up and his life spared on condition that the siblings retrieved the final Eagle still missing after the German rebel, Arminius, destroyed three legions in the Teutoburg Forest in the year of Vespasian’s birth, thirty-six years previously.
Although the Eagle’s return to Rome did not go exactly as planned, it was recovered and the brothers found themselves back in favour with the real power in Rome: not the Emperor but his freedmen. Their success had forced Sabinus to admit that he owed his brother his life and it was with a heavy heart that Vespasian completed his sentence: ‘… dead.’
Vespasian waved a hand, dismissing his slave, and downed the rest of his wine, praying to Mars, his guardian god, that somehow Sabinus was still alive; although why the Britons would spare any captives he did not know as they were well aware that Plautius refused to bargain with their lives. To be sold into slavery to the tribes in the north or the west was the best that any man could hope for and that was a living death. But, if that was the case, at least there would be a chance of finding him.
The two guards outside the tent crashing to attention and the sound of someone entering brought him out of his reverie. The prefect of the camp, Maximus, the third most senior officer in the legion, marched briskly in and snapped an immaculate salute honed by almost thirty years of service.
Vespasian stood out of respect for his junior in rank but senior in experience. ‘Yes, Maximus?’
‘The legion is deployed, sir! We’re awaiting your orders should the parley prove to be unsuccessful.’
‘Is Cogidubnus talking with them?’
‘They wouldn’t allow him and his two bodyguards to enter the fort so he had to negotiate from outside the gate; he’s still up there.’
‘Very well; I’m on my way.’
Vespasian walked out through the gates of the II Augusta’s camp, built on a low flat-topped hill that ran gently down to a stream at its base. The guards on the gate, staring rigidly ahead, presented arms with overemphasised stamps as he passed.
His primus pilus, Tatius, the most senior centurion of the legion, and his thick-stripe tribune, Valens, were waiting outside along with the thin-stripe tribunes: five of them, teenagers or in their early twenties, and here to learn. A quarter of a mile ahead of them stood another hill, round like a giant molehill, three hundred feet high and half a mile across at its base, which stood apart from the surrounding undulations for no apparent reason other than to provide a formidable fortified refuge; and fortified and formidable it was. Three-quarters of the way up its summit, two great ditches, each ten feet deep, had been carved out of its circumference and filled with fire-hardened, pointed stakes. The slope before them was steep and had been cleared of all trees and bushes, except, as Vespasian had noted on his circuit of the fort upon arrival, the western slope on the far side; that was too steep for an assault and bushes had been allowed to flourish on it. Behind the inner ditch, the excavated earth had been piled up and packed down to make a steep mound on top of which a palisade of thick logs, twice the height of a man, had been constructed. Hundreds of warriors lined its length and behind them, amongst the scores of round huts that covered the summit, waited many more along with their women and children, plenty of whom, Vespasian had learnt from bitter experience, were capable of using a sling or hurling a javelin to deadly effect.
On the downwards slope between Vespasian and the hill-fort stood the II Augusta in two lines of five cohorts each; rank upon rank of iron-clad heavy infantry, their burnished helmets glowing golden in the newly risen sun as they stood, motionless, beneath their standards fluttering in a chill breeze. Vespasian had ordered this display not because he intended to send the full might of his legion against the enemy; the ditches would make that impracticable and a waste of legionary life. No, the noncitizens of the more expendable Gallic auxiliary cohorts would make the first assault. The parade was purely to intimidate the defenders and aid Cogidubnus, the new King of Rome’s allies, the confederation of the Atrebates and the Regni, in his negotiations with the chieftain of this sub-tribe of the Durotriges who had been trapped in their hilltop redoubt by Vespasian’s lightning move inland, to the northwest, in the first days of the new campaigning season.