‘I’d say he was acting honourably,’ Vespasian observed. ‘After all, he didn’t know the message was false so he was trying to do his duty to Rome and to his friend by going to Arminius’ aid.’
Magnus grunted and looked dubiously at Vespasian. ‘Anyway, they pressed on all day with a few minor skirmishes and made another camp. The following day the main body of the Germans had caught up and that night our lads fought almost without reprieve to keep the savages out of the camp; then in the morning of the fourth day the Germans withdrew and the remnants of the column moved on. But the Germans harried them all the time, making sure that they always travelled in this direction and eventually they ended up here. And that was that, they were surrounded; nowhere to run to. The surviving cavalry tried to make a break but were ridden down. Varus fell on his sword and the lads had a choice between going down fighting, suicide or surrender to either be sacrificed or to endure a life of slavery. Only a very few managed to slip away; under fifty, out of all those lads.’ Magnus pulled up his horse suddenly. ‘Shit! We took all those down.’
Ahead of them on either side of the path skulls had been nailed to trees by long spikes through the eyes.
‘Looks like the Germans put them back up,’ Sabinus observed.
Magnus spat in disgust and clenched his right thumb in protection from the evil-eye. Past the skulls, the path opened up into a wide sandy area, two hundred paces across and half a mile in length; strewn all around it were thousands of human bones of all shapes and sizes, weathered and tinged with lichen. ‘They’ve done more than that; they’ve dug a lot of the lads back up.’
The column crunched along through the clearing; the last desperate earthwork of Varus’ legions to their left was broken down in places as if trampled upon by hundreds of feet; the rotted hoof of a dead mule protruded from one section. The reek of stagnant water wafted across from the extensive bog to their right and ahead the trees closed in again making it a perfect killing ground. Although birds were singing in the boughs of trees laden with spring-green leaves, Vespasian found the atmosphere oppressive, as if thousands of eyes were watching them. He tried not to look down at the bones of the long-dead legionaries but his morbid curiosity got the better of him. Leg bones, arm bones, vertebrae, ribs, skulls and pelvises were all scattered haphazardly; some were whole, others had been cut or hacked into and more than a few showed signs of being gnawed at by wild animals. Here and there they passed crude altars fashioned out of stone; on them more bones lay but these were blackened by fire. ‘How long ago were you here, Magnus?’
‘Must be twenty-five years now.’
‘What’s so strange is that they haven’t been buried over that time by nature. It’s as if someone looks after them.’
‘Them, perhaps?’ Magnus suggested as a group of five horsemen rode out of the trees and blocked their path a hundred paces ahead of them.
The Chatti warriors leading the column raised their hands to signal a halt. Two of them rode forward to talk briefly with the new arrivals before returning and speaking to Ansigar.
The decurion nodded and turned to the Roman officers. ‘They are Cherusci; Thumelicus is waiting for us at the summit of this hill.’
The hill was not high, no more than three hundred and fifty feet, and they mounted it swiftly, even though it was thick with trees; Vespasian could well imagine how so many warriors could have concealed themselves on its slopes. Towards the summit they took a detour around a clearing with a grove of beech trees at its centre in which a tethered white horse grazed peacefully next to an altar. Three heads, one of them fresh but the rest in various states of decomposition, hung by their long hair from branches around its edge; skulls with scraps of flesh and hair still clinging to them lay on the ground beneath them as testament to the ripening of this ghastly fruit. Blood dripped from the altar.
As the slope petered out so did the wood; they reached the summit, which had been cleared of trees to leave an incongruous meadow, alive with spring flowers, but dominated by the most unlikely of sights: a ten-foot-high, fifty-foot-square, red leather tent next to a solitary, ancient oak.
Vespasian took one look at it and knew what he was staring at.
‘Mercury’s sweet arse,’ Magnus exclaimed, ‘that must be Varus’ command tent, captured amongst the abandoned baggage all those years ago.’
Sabinus was equally awed. ‘I suppose they got everything that the column was carrying; they couldn’t have burnt it because it would’ve been too wet.’
The five Cherusci riders dismounted at the tent’s entrance and signalled for the column to do the same; their leader, an older man in his sixties, went inside. After a few moments he reappeared and spoke to Ansigar.
‘You may go in,’ the decurion informed Vespasian, Sabinus and Paetus. ‘We’ll graze the horses whilst you’re gone.’
‘Coming this time?’ Vespasian asked Magnus, heading for the entrance.
‘Does the Emperor stutter?’
Vespasian pushed the leather flaps aside and found himself in a short, leather-walled corridor, just like the praetorium tent in Poppaeus’ camp back in Thracia, although this one did not have a transportable marble floor and made do only with waxed bare boards. He walked a few steps down the corridor and through a door into the main part of the tent. Tallow candles flickered all about, illuminating a room elegantly furnished with wellupholstered couches, finely carved chairs and tables and decorated with small bronze statues in amongst ceramic or glass bowls and vessels. At the far end was a sturdy oaken desk with rolled-up scrolls arranged on it; next to it, on a curule chair, sat a Roman Governor in full military uniform. And yet it could not be, for he was too young to be a governor and he wore a full black beard.
‘Welcome, Romans,’ the Governor said, ‘I am Thumelicus, son of Erminatz.’
Vespasian opened his mouth to greet Thumelicus but was halted by the raising of a hand.
‘Do not tell me your names,’ Thumelicus insisted, staring at him from beneath a firm brow with penetrating, blue eyes, devoid of feeling. ‘I have no wish to know them; after I escaped from your Empire I swore to Donar the Thunderer to strike me down with a lightning bolt from above if I ever have anything to do with Rome again. However, at the behest of my old enemy, Adgandestrius, I have asked the god to make an exception this one time for the sake of my tribe and Germania.’ He indicated to the couches around the room. ‘Sit down.’
Vespasian and his companions accepted the invitation, making themselves as comfortable as was possible whilst under the glare of Thumelicus’ intense gaze. His nose was pronounced but slender, showing signs of many breakages. His cheekbones were high and his luxuriant, well-combed black beard climbed almost up to them. The long hair of his moustache partially obscured thin, pale lips. Vespasian concentrated on his chin and was able to make out its outline beneath the beard; there was a cleft, this was definitely the man.
‘Adgandestrius tells me that you wish for my help in finding the one remaining Eagle lost by your legions at my father’s victory here in the Teutoburg Wald.’
‘He is correct.’
‘And why do you think that I would help you?’
‘It would be in your interests to do so.’
Thumelicus scoffed and leant forward, pointing his finger at Vespasian’s face. ‘Roman, at the age of two I was paraded, with my mother, Thusnelda, in Germanicus’ triumph; a humiliation for my father. Then in another humiliation to him we were sent to Ravenna to live with his brother Flavus’ wife; Flavus, who always fought for Rome even against his own people. Then in a third humiliation I was taken at the age of eight and trained to be a gladiator; the son of the liberator of Germania fighting on the arena sand for the gratification of the mob of some provincial town. I fought my first bout when I was sixteen and I won my wooden sword of freedom fifty-two fights later, four years ago, at the age of twenty. The first thing that I did once I was free was settle my score with my uncle Flavus and his wife, and then, with my mother, I came back here to my tribe. With all that Rome has done to me, how could my own interests and yours ever coincide?’