Vespasian shared the tension of the officers surrounding him.
‘What can that duplicitous shit do to help?’ Sabinus muttered against the growing tumult.
‘I think he’s trying one last throw of the dice,’ Vespasian replied as Narcissus joined Plautius in front of the army. ‘The dice that we risked our lives for.’
The two guardsmen hefted their burden up onto the dais and retreated back towards their unit. The rhythmical pounding continued to grow and here and there shouts of ‘No!’ and ‘We won’t go!’ could be heard over the din.
Narcissus knelt down to open the box and reached inside.
The army grew increasingly vociferous with more and more men declaring their refusal to go. Centurions and optiones, outnumbered as they were by forty to one, were unable to prevent the escalation, and stood glowering, furious at their impotence in the face of such mass disobedience.
Narcissus got back up, holding with both hands a wooden pole, one end of which remained hidden in the box; with an effort he swung the pole up and raised aloft the Eagle of the Seventeenth.
The front ranks of the central two legions gradually ceased beating their pila on the ground; their stillness radiated out to the two flanking legions and back along the files to the auxiliary cohorts behind. All eyes were soon fixed on the symbol of Rome held up before them.
‘Your Emperor has raised for you Rome’s fallen Eagle,’ Narcissus almost shrieked as soon as he could be heard. ‘He gives you back the Eagle of the Seventeenth!’ The heralds echoed his words along the ranks of now silent soldiery. An eruption of cheers broke from the Praetorian cohorts to be taken up by the legions on either side, spreading in a wave from cohort to cohort and travelling through the army just a hundred paces behind the heralds’ relayed cries, until every man knew what he was looking at and was voicing his approval as loudly as his comrades in front.
Vespasian and his fellow officers joined in the celebrations wholeheartedly, as much for the return of the fallen Eagle as for the theatrical way that Narcissus had turned around the situation. Plautius turned and saluted the golden image hovering over the invasion force, crashing his arm across his chest and stamping to a rigid attention. Centurions throughout the legions caught this gesture and roared at their men to do the same; within a few heartbeats forty thousand pila-clenching fists pointed towards the Eagle as the Praetorians chanted ‘Hail Caesar!’ Soon that chant was unanimous, in unison and deafening.
Narcissus let it ring out, pumping the Eagle in the air in sympathetic timing until men were becoming hoarse. As the chant began to wane he lowered the Eagle and with a melodramatic flourish handed it to Plautius, who kissed it and then held it with his left hand whilst holding up his right, appealing for silence. ‘The Emperor’s loyal soldiers thank him for his gift,’ he called as the noise died away.
‘The Emperor is pleased to bestow such a gift on his valiant legionaries and auxiliaries,’ Narcissus replied, turning to the quietening ranks as the words were relayed. The final herald finished his cry and Narcissus carried on: ‘The Emperor has done this for you; will you now do his bidding? Will you, free-born soldiers of Rome, now embark?’
There was complete silence as the whole army stared at the Emperor’s freedman appealing on his master’s behalf.
Vespasian felt his heart thumping within him.
‘Io Saturnalia!’ a voice bellowed suddenly from the crowd.
Vespasian felt two more beats in his chest and then heard laughter, rough and raucous, mingled in with more jovial shouts of ‘Io Saturnalia!’ that quickly spread, along with the hilarity, until every man present was laughing except for Narcissus, who was obliged to stand and be mocked as the slave or freedman allowed to wear his master’s clothes and run his house for one day over the course of the Saturnalia. He looked at Plautius, appealing with his eyes for him to stop this; but Plautius knew better than to curtail the release of so many days of tension.
‘So they have extended the Saturnalia without telling us,’ Sabinus said through his mirth.
‘Evidently!’ Vespasian replied, enjoying Narcissus’ humiliation as much as the army’s change of mood. ‘And it’s put the lads in a holiday mood. I think that after this they’ll be on for an outing.’
CHAPTER XV
‘Where the fuck are we?’ Magnus grumbled, peering into the thick fog that had greeted them upon waking an hour before dawn.
Vespasian took a bite from a hunk of bread. ‘The same place as we camped yesterday evening, I would have thought, alongside a trackway about three miles from Cantiacum; unless of course some god of the Britons has swooped down and moved ten thousand men during the night to somewhere inconvenient.’
‘Everywhere on this island’s inconvenient.’
‘Not true. This trackway is very convenient; it will lead us directly to Cantiacum. What is inconvenient is the fog and the fact that Adminios’ emissaries haven’t yet returned and he’s not due back until the second hour of the morning. I need to know the mood of the town before I dare move forward blind in case we’re attacked from the flank; I won’t be able to send out covering patrols because just west of here the trackway passes through very wet land with marshes to either side.’
‘There you go, then, they’re inconvenient.’
‘Not to the Britons they’re not; Adminios warned me about feeling complacent if my flank was protected by marsh; the locals know their way through, even in fog. I wouldn’t like to be taken in the flank with only a swamp to fall back on; remember what happened to Varus.’
‘So we wait, then?’
‘Yes, old friend, we have to wait for the fog to lift but every hour we delay is another hour’s warning for the Britons. Hopefully Adminios’ emissaries will be back soon and we’ll know more. I’ll see you later.’ Vespasian turned and walked back through the marching camp’s gates.
He threaded his way through huddles of cold legionaries taking a miserable breakfast, fires being impossible in the conditions. Grumbling to one another about spending the night under a heavy sky with no more than a blanket each to protect them from the elements, they did not lower their voices as he passed. Vespasian disdained to notice the complaints but resolved to chase up the mule train with their leather tents that had arrived at Rutupiae with the third wave of the landings.
The landing itself had been an anti-climax in that it was unopposed and uneventful; which is exactly what the prayers at the numerous sacrifices made before the fleet sailed at midnight had asked for. Although the livers indicated that the gods seemed to favour their endeavour and the sacred chickens had pecked at their grain in an auspicious manner, there had been a time when every man thought that they may have been deserted by the divine. Mid-voyage the wind had got up and had started to blow them back to Gaul; the light from Caligula’s massive lighthouse at Gesoriacum, made in imitation of the Pharos at Alexandria, had started growing in size again for a couple of hours no matter how hard the rowers strained at the oars. Their minds were eventually put at rest, however, by a dazzling shooting star streaking across the night sky heading west in the direction that they would conquer. The wind had soon died, easing their churning stomachs as they squatted on the vomit-slick decks, and as dawn broke the coast of Britannia was in full view; and it had been empty. Plautius’ hunch had proved correct: the Britons had disbanded their army and there was no dark horde shadowing them north along the coast to oppose their landing.
Plautius had been the first man ashore, keeping the promise he had made to his men once they had finally mastered their mirth the day before. Being unaware of how the politics in Rome were developing, the experience of the Emperor’s wishes being conveyed to them by his freedman had seemed so upside-down to them that when Plautius made a final appeal to their honour they had acquiesced to him with a mighty series of cheers. Vespasian had supposed that this had been mainly because they were pleased to have the established order of things returned in the shape of a general of high birth commanding them — although they had been visibly impressed by the resurrection of the Eagle as well as Plautius’ offer of a bounty of ten denarii per man.