He drank again from my wooden goblet and became even more animated.
“Naturally the Britons must in time adopt Roman customs and Roman culture,” he said, “but I’ve begun to wonder if we couldn’t civilize them more easily by knowing their own customs and prejudices, rather than by killing them. This would be just right at the moment, when we want peace because our own best troops are leaving Britain and we’re waiting for another experienced commantler-in-chief. But as you’ve killed a Briton yourself, I suppose you want to take part in Aulus Plautius’ triumph, as your descent and your red border give you the right to do. Naturally I’ll give you my recommendation, if you want to go. Then I’d know I had at least one friend in Rome.”
The wine was making him melancholy.
“I have my son Titus, of course,” he went on, “who is growing up and playing with Britannicus in Palatine and who is getting the same education as he is. I have guaranteed a better future for him than I myself can hope for. Perhaps he will finally give Britain peace.”
I told him I had probably seen his son with Britannicus at the riding exercises before the centenary feast. Vespasian said that he had not seen his son for four years and would not be able to this time either. His other son, Domitian, he had not even held on his knee, for the boy was the result of Emperor Claudius’ triumph and Vespasian had had to return to Britain immediately after the celebrations.
“A lot of noise and not much else,” he said bitterly, “the whole of that triumph. Nothing but a mad waste of money to please the mob in Rome. I don’t deny that I too would like to creep up the Capitoline steps with a laurel wreath on my head. There isn’t a legion commantler who hasn’t dreamed of doing so. But one can get drunk in Britain too, and much more cheaply.”
I said that if he thought I could be of any use to him, I should be glad to stay in Britain under his command. I had no great desire to take a part in the triumph which I had not earned. Vespasian took this as a great sign of confidence and was obviously moved.
“The more I drink from your wooden goblet, the more I like you,” he said with tears in his eyes. “I hope my own son Titus grows up like you. I’ll tell you a secret.”
He confessed that he had taken a British sacrificial priest prisoner and was keeping him from Aulus Plautius, just when Aulus was collecting up prisoners for the triumph parade and the battles in the amphitheater. To give the people a special treat, Aulus especially wanted a genuine British priest who would sacrifice prisoners at a performance.
“But a real Druid would never agree to do such a thing just to please the Romans,” said Vespasian. “It would be much easier for Aulus to dress up some suitable Briton as a priest. People in Rome would never know the difference. When Plautius had gone, I was going to set the priest free and send him back to his tribe as evidence of my good intentions. If you are brave enough, Minutus, you could go with him and make yourself familiar with the customs of the Britons. With his help you could make ties of friendship with their noble youths, for I have a secret suspicion that our successful merchants have been in the habit of buying safe-conducts at high prices from the Druids, even if they daren’t admit it.”
I had no desire whatsoever to get involved in an alien and frightening religion. I wondered what sort of curse it was that seemed to follow me wherever I went, for in Rome I had been forced into an acquaintance with the Christian superstition. But one confidence for another, I thought, and I told Vespasian the real reason why I had ended up in Britain. He was very amused at the thought of the wife of a commantler who had gained a triumph being judged by her husband because of a shameful superstition.
But to show he was aware of the gossip in Rome, he said, “I know Plautia Paulina personally. As far as I know she went wrong in the head after letting a young philosopher-Seneca, I think his name was-and Julia, Emperor Caesar’s sister, meet in secret at her house. They were exiled because of this and Julia finally lost her life. Plautia Paulina couldn’t stand a charge of procuring, became temporarily insane and, going into mourning, she withdrew into solitude. Naturally a woman like that gets strange ideas.”
Lugunda had been sitting all this time crouched in a corner of the hut, watching us intently, smiling when I smiled and looking anxious when I was serious. Vespasian had absentmindedly looked at her occasionally and now surprisingly said, “Generally speaking, women do get funny ideas in their heads. A man can never be quite sure what they have in mind. The god Caesar had the wrong idea about British women but he didn’t respect women particularly anyhow. I think that there are good women and bad women, whether barbarians or civilized. For a man there is no greater happiness than the friendship of a good woman. Your wild one here looks like a child, but she can be more useful to you than you think. You probably don’t know that the Iceni tribe has applied to me and offered to buy the girl back. The Britons don’t usually do such things. They usually reckon that members of their tribe who have fallen into the hands of the Romans are lost forever.”
He spoke laboriously to the girl in the Iceni language and I understood little of what they said. But Lugunda looked confused and crept nearer to me as if seeking protection. She answered Vespasian shyly at first and then in a more animated way until he shook his head and turned again to me.
“This is another hopeless thing about the Britons,” he said. “The people who live on the south coast talk a different language from the inland tribes, and the northern tribes don’t understand anything of the southerners’ dialect. But your Lugunda has been chosen since infancy by her priests to become a hare-priestess. As far as I can gather, the Druids think they can look at a child even in infancy if it suits their purposes and see whether it can be trained for the priesthood. This is necessary, for there are Druids of many different grades and ranks, so they have to study all their lives. With us, a priest’s office is almost a political honor, but with them the priests are physicians, judges and even poets, insofar as the barbarians can be said to have any poetry.”
It seemed to me that Vespasian was by no means as crude and ignorant as he himself liked to make out. He seemed to have adopted this role in order to draw out other people’s self-assurance.
It was news to me that Lugunda had been marked as a Druid priestess. I knew she was not able to eat hare flesh without being sick and that she would not tolerate my catching hares with snares, but this I had presumed was some barbaric whim, for different families and tribes in Briton have different sacred animals, in the same way that Diana’s priest in Nemi may not touch or even look at a horse.
When Vespasian had once again spoken to Lugunda, he burst out laughing and slapped his knees.
“The girl doesn’t want to go home to her tribe,” he cried, “but wants to stay with you. She says you are teaching her magic which even their priests know nothing about. By Hercules, she thinks you are a holy man because you haven’t tried to touch her.”
I replied with annoyance that I was certainly no holy man. I was just bound by a certain promise and anyhow, Lugunda was only a child. Vespasian gave me a sly look, rubbed his broad cheeks and remarked that no woman is ever completely a child.
“I can’t force her to return to her tribe,” he said, after thinking for a moment. “I think we’ll have to let her ask what her hares think about it.”
The following day, Vespasian held the usual inspection in the camp, spoke to the soldiers in his crude way and explained that from now on they must be content with cracking their own skulls and must no longer go out after the Britons.
“Do you understand, dolts?” he barked. “Every Briton is your father and your brother, every British hag your mother, and even the most tantalizing maiden your sister. Go out to meet them. Wave your green branches when you see them, give them presents, let them eat and drink. You know only too well that the rules of war punish individual plundering with death at the stake. So see to it that I don’t have to scorch the hides off you.