Arthur Britannicus (8 page)

Next, the emperor turned to the action that had brought the Briton his wounds and gave him news of the commander who had led his legion into ambush.  “I’ve had Gaius Utrius busted, and he’s lucky to have kept his head”, he said bluntly. “The useless bastard made a right shit dinner out of the situation. He should never have been made tribune in the first place. If he’d paid any attention at all, instead of strutting about smelling his own musk, he’d have seen he was doing exactly what Varus did at the Teutoburger forest. He’s just lucky it didn’t turn out the same way.” 

The old cavalryman was speaking of an ambush engineered by a Germanic chieftain who’d lured three legions into a trap.  Almost all, including women and children who’d been allowed to accompany the troops, had been slaughtered in the forest or taken for horrific sacrifice to the Teutons’ gods. Rome never forgot, but Carausius’ commander did. He simply had not learned the lesson, and only the Briton’s diversion and delay of the enemy by challenging one of their chieftains to personal combat had bought time and turned a near-certain massacre into a victory. An aide appeared at the emperor’s elbow and whispered in his ear. Carus nodded. “Yes, right now. This fellow Carausius will appreciate seeing a real man getting his reward. He’s like me; he has a deep affection for his troops.”

The courtier returned in moments with a nervous-looking individual with a broken nose, cauliflower ears and battered, scarred cheekbones. He walked with a slight limp, his eyes casting around warily. On balance, he looked like a well-used and inexpert prize-fighter. “This, lord,” the aide bowed to the emperor, “is Timminus Radclifori, a gladiator of the Penninus stable who was also trained here in Rome at the Ludus Magnus.”  “Ah, yes, and is it thirty or is it six?” Carus asked, beaming amiably at the old gladiator. Carausius raised an eyebrow, but the emperor anticipated the question and turned to him. “Gladiators who survive for six years or thirty bouts are freed,” he explained. “I retire them myself, and award them a rudis as token of their honourable service.”  Leaning towards Carausius so the creased, weathered old fighter would not hear, the emperor said out of the side of his mouth, ”Few survive more than six bouts, so this is a lucky one.”

He turned back to Timminus, who was nodding his head and smiling vacantly, eyes shifting from side to side. “I see,” said the emperor, handing over a wooden sword as symbol that from now on, the man’s arena days were ended. He patted the fellow on the shoulder. “Enjoy your peaceful years. Go and grow vegetables on your farm and sire a score of children on a fat wife.”  The gladiator nodded wordlessly, the aide tugged at the man’s sleeve and the pair backed away, bowing. “Poor bastard,” said the emperor. “We usually keep them on as instructors, but too often they’re like him and are brain damaged.”

Carus switched his attention to Carausius. “Now, for you my ursine friend, it’s the day the Eagle shits, and I have a reward for you. Kneel down there.” The emperor motioned for an aide, who brought a cushion holding a small gold crown. “This is the corona aurea,” Carus said as he ceremoniously placed the crown on Carausius’ head.  “We give it to iron-balled bastards like you for victory in single combat, but only if you hold the ground until the fighting’s done. You did more than that, and there’s a lot of Saxons gone toes-up to prove it.  This crown is to show that Rome thanks you, as would the legionaries whose lives you preserved.

“Now, I have a reward of my own for you. I want you in northern Gaul, and you’ll command a couple of legions there. I want those fucking pirates, rebels and brigands cleaned out, and I think you’re the fellow to do it.” The emperor waved a hand and another aide brought him a fustis, the legate’s baton of office, resting on a folded white robe with purple stripes.  “Here’s the whole kit,” Carus grinned at the astonished Briton. “You might not be one of those patrician
bastards who think they’re the only ones fit to command, but you’ve earned the broad stripes and I can notify the senate that you are noble born.” He paused, then added: “In Britannia, anyway. I suppose that will do, and as I’m the emperor now, it fucking well will have to.”

IX
. Claria

For Carausius, the next month in Rome went by in a blur of preparations as he readied to take up his new command. He called for several trusted officers from his old legion to be transferred to his new headquarters, or ‘hindquarters,’ as he privately called it, in the northern Gaul port of Bononia. He met Sucia again, pleased at the opportunity to speak in British, and she presented him with a gift.  “Caros, my dear, I saw how you admired my brooch,” she told him, “and it means much to me, as it is a symbol of my father’s family, as was yours.  I went to the silversmiths, took some Baltic amber and had this made for you.”  It was a surprisingly-close replica of his father’s badge of office, and Carausius realized he must have spoken of it in such detail that the astute businesswoman had accurately pictured it. It warmed the new legate so much that he embraced and kissed the young widow. She returned his affection with a warmth that surprised them both. In a swamping rush of physical desire, and before either could consider what was happening, he was slipping her robe from her shoulders to cup her breasts and was lifting her kirtle; she was tugging at the belt of his tunic, and their garments were sliding to the floor.  Sucia knelt before the big soldier. “I have another gift for you,” she smiled up, before she bowed her head and took him into her mouth. The hours passed in passion and two independent souls sealed a friendship that would last for a lifetime.

“I don’t have room now for a woman in my life,” Carausius told her cautiously but firmly the next morning. “I would want it to be a woman just like you if I had the means and time, but right now, I want all my energy and attention to go to my soldiering. “ She raised an eyebrow, meaningfully. Carausius felt a blush rising. “I can get by with visits to the camp concubines,” he muttered.

Sucia was not offended. “I hope you find me better than that,” she teased him.

“You are wonderfully better, and you are my friend”, the young officer said solemnly. “I will kill anyone who offends you, and I will be there whenever and wherever you need me. That is my oath.”

The widow smiled. She liked the man’s earnest honesty, and although she was not deeply attracted to him, she was flattered by his attention and decided that a close friendship would be acceptable. She had other thoughts about physical relationships, and they involved soft, perfumed female flesh and gentle, caressing hands and lips.

As they spoke of Britain and the brooch, Sucia remembered a chance meeting. “I was at my friend Cassandra’s house a few days ago and I met two very pleasing British men. They were slaves, but such slaves! They were handsome, identical twins in their mid-twenties, and they had been taken from their home on the German Sea by Gael raiders. It was horrible. They told me of being sold at auction, and how they’ve spent more than a decade in service to their masters, when they used to be nobles themselves.”

Carausius went as pale as his weather-beaten face allowed. “Did you hear their names?” he asked. “Whose slaves are they?” Sucia flinched as the powerful soldier grasped her wrist, and she understood this was important, urgent to him.

“One was Dominus or some such,” she struggled to recall the name. “The other was, err, Baal?”

“Domtal and Mael, by Mithras!” Carausius was on his feet, pacing. “Are you sure? They’re my good brothers, and they’re here?” Within the hour, Carausius had chivvied a reluctant Sucia across the Palatine Hill to Cassandra’s house.

“It’s
late, we should leave this until morning. The streets are dangerous,” she protested.

“I have a sword,” said Carausius grimly, moving fast despite his limp, his hurts forgotten. But the quest was fruitless.

Cassandra’s guest, the twins’ wealthy master, was already at sea with his entourage, on his way back to Belgica and the Rhine estuary. “He would have sailed from Ostia the day before yesterday,” Cassandra, obviously intimidated by the big man’s urgent questions, told him. All the soldier could do was to get the trader’s name and hope to send a messenger and enough gold to buy his brothers’ release. “The general Maximian is a soldier I’ve met. He has connections in Forum Hadriani, that’s up there,” Cassandra offered. “Perhaps he could help.” The next noon, Carausius went to meet the wealthy noble who one day would be emperor, and whose fate was tied to his own, though neither yet knew it.

Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maximianus, or simply Maximian, was younger by a few years than Carausius, but was a big man, too, and they stood eye to eye.  They regarded each other warily, assessing their similarities. Both soldiers came from non-patrician backgrounds, one a minor noble’s son from provincial Britain, the other the offspring of Illyrian storekeepers. Both were energetic and aggressive but Maximian was utterly, selfishly ruthless.

He had risen to his high rank of praefectus through connections and menace. He was a coarse bully who used his huge hands and massive strength to stamp his will on anyone, man or beast. Once, when his horse kicked him, he broke the animal’s teeth with a single blow of his fist. Another time he choked to death an old, arthritic dog that snarled at him when he booted it aside.  He was notorious for his very strong sexuality, sampling both women and men, sometimes incurring accusations of rape. His rank and influence ensured that none of them caused him real trouble. One scandal from which he’d incredibly emerged unscathed involved the forcible deflowering of an elderly Vestal, who had afterwards taken poison before she could undergo the statutory punishment for her sect, of being buried alive outside Rome’s Collina Gate. 

Maximian, also facing the possibility of death for his profane actions, simply used his connections and bullied his way out of trouble.
The Vestal, everyone timidly agreed, must have been smitten by the gods and imagined it all. The fact that the body of the general’s accuser was found garrotted with his own tunic cord and left on the steps of the Temple of Mithras had no bearing on the case, all agreed, glancing nervously around. 

In military matters, Maximian had a notable understanding of tactics, although he was mule-headed about accepting the opinions of others, and was stubbornly unwilling to spend what he called ‘book time’ studying the scrolls of previous campaigns and victories. He’d work it out for himself, he declared. His soldiers gave him grudging respect, though they muttered that he’d torch his own grandmother to keep warm.

In some ways, Maximian was like Carausius, a pagan and a military man, but the Briton had what Maximian did not: an innate sense of destiny and purpose. The Roman simply wanted to be a soldier and climb the military ladder to power, at any cost.  Carausius, on the other hand, was beginning to feel he could do more than just that. He wanted to restore his downtrodden Britain, where his murdered father had been a nobleman and where the people now were being milked by rapacious landowners far away in Rome.  Maximian merely lusted after power and had no tiresome philosophical baggage about justice, freedom or betterment of the human condition.

In the event, after a brief meeting, Maximian agreed to have one of his scribes send messages to Belgica to see what could be done about Carausius’ twin brothers. It was the best he could do and the favour might be useful to him if he needed the Briton in the future. In a gesture that was hugely cordial for the brutish Maximian, but which also served the purpose of impressing his colonial visitor, the general invited his guest to view the work he was having done to his villa.

The pair strolled through the peaceful atrium, with its fountain and foliage where a slave sat discreetly to provide lulling music from a lyre, and crossed into a large, airy chamber. Nine small boys were working at long, low tables under the imperious supervision of a striking blonde woman.  “This,” said Maximian with unusual deference, “is the most talented mosaic artist in the whole of the empire. I was only able to induce her to work on my home through the personal intervention of the emperor’s wife herself.  Carausius, please meet Claria Primanata Scalae of Claros, home of the great Apollo.” 

The woman stood, brushing grout from her fine linen robe, and said offhandedly: “He’s quite wrong, as always.  Claros is famous for the temple and oracle of Apollo. It is not the home of Apollo at all.” Carausius was taken aback. Everyone he had seen so far deferred to the coarse, brute power of Maximian and this young Ionian was treating him like a servant. He glanced at the hulking soldier and was stunned to see he was almost simpering at being noticed.

To ease the moment and cover his thoughts, Carausius asked Claria, “What exactly are these children doing?”  She looked at him coolly. “We’re making a mosaic. It takes little boys’ fingers to accurately place small, sharp mosaic tesserae.  Sidonia,” she addressed a young, dark-haired girl who was overseeing the small boys. “This is my handmaid Sidonia Strada, and she keeps my small elves at their work.” Claria smiled at the slave. “Pass me a few tesserae, girl,” she said.  She turned to Carausius.  “See for yourself.”

She handed him a squared block of marble half the size of his little fingernail. “As you see, we first assemble the designs in panels on these tables, and grout them before we put them in place on the floor. For the mosaic pieces, we use marble, glass, stone, even precious gems where the householder has far too much money and too little taste.” She glanced meaningfully at Maximian, who lowered his head.  Carausius looked at the half-finished design, a stunning representation of a naked man, perhaps a wounded gladiator, half reclining on the ground, wrist supported on his upraised knee. “It’s very beautiful,” he said admiringly.  Claria looked at him properly for the first time, taking in the battered, scarred face, and flashed a dazzling, sympathetic smile.  “It’s a change from what people usually want; the picture of a snarling hound at the entrance, with ‘Beware of the Dog’ written under it.”

At that moment, a balding, dark-haired man in an unfashionable, very short tunic entered the room and bowed to the woman. She gestured to him and spoke to Carausius.  “This man’s from your country, he’s a slave but it’s only because he doesn’t know how to gamble with dice. He had to sell himself to me to pay his debts.” The man bowed to the new legate. “Lord,” he said.  The woman continued: “He’s a maker of images, and if he ever gets his lazy British self-working, we’ll have a fine mural on that wall.”

“I’ll see that he works, leave it to me
.“ growled Maximian. Claria brushed him off. “This is my domain. You go and polish your helmet or something.”  Maximian glared at the muralist, who retreated nervously, and a moment or two later the mosaic artist declared she had to attend to the drying grout work, indicating that the audience was over.

Carausius bowed as Claria swept out, leaving a waft of lavender on the air, and he murmured a comment to Maximian that she was as beautiful as her art. The Roman bridled in an instant. “Keep your dirty mouth shut,” he snarled.  The Briton, startled, looked directly at the other man and saw hatred blazing from his eyes. It was as if a storm had blown up from nowhere, an instant tempest of aggression out of a clear blue sky. Without rational thought, reacting purely on the instincts that had always served him well, Carausius knew a deep hatred of the brutish Maximian, felt it welling up inside him. They would be, he knew, lifelong enemies and he should be cautious at this moment. Instead he allowed a hot rage to sweep over him.  “Have you reason to be possessive of her?” he challenged. Maximian glared like a bull faced with a hostile rival. “Just get out. Get your crippled self out of here.” Carausius nodded.  “One day, Maximianus, you will feel my wrath, but it will not be because of a woman. I already have my own reasons.”   The Illyrian stared back at him. “One day, I will strangle you with my bare hands,” he retorted. He turned and stamped out of the room, backhanding across the face a slave who stood mutely by the door.  Carausius shook his head. He knew he had made a lifelong enemy, and a powerful one at that, although he wasn’t sure why. And deep inside his soul, he knew it was foreordained.