The Boat of Fate (19 page)

I laid the book down finally and looked up. Patermuthis was watching me. ‘Who wrote this, sir?’ I asked him.

He took the manuscript from me. ‘I did,’ he said. ‘When I was younger and more enthusiastic, and felt the Empire might yet be saved.’ He rolled the parchment neatly, slid it back into its jacket. ‘Very few have ever seen it,’ he said. ‘Those who have consider it a literary curiosity but nothing more. Perhaps they’re right. Nobody, except you, knows the identity of its author; and I’ll charge you, if my friendship means anything at all, to keep that to yourself.’

‘But, sir,’ I said, ‘I’ve never seen ideas like that before. They should be put to the test. It should be sent to the Emperor.’

‘It was,’ he said shortly. ‘The noble Valentinian was not amused. For my part I’ve become convinced no single voice will ever now be heard, much less heeded. The Empire will go its own way, regardless of what you or I might wish. Even to acknowledge that thing, now, would bring down more ridicule on my head than I could stand. What, folk would ask, does a librarian know of soldiering? Or an historian of machines of war? No, Sergius, let it be. ...’

He was my mentor; I could do no other than respect his wishes. He is dead now, and I hope at rest; so his secret can do no harm. As for the book itself, I’ve wondered since what happened to it. Burned, perhaps, in the wreck of half the world, that wreck it so vividly, and so uselessly, foresaw.

Between my visits to the home of Patermuthis I practised hard at weapons drill. My life in Rome, I felt, had softened me considerably. I set myself a rigorous training programme, and adhered to it through what remained of the year. I was afraid the new injury to my hand might have once more weakened my grip; certainly I was clumsy at first, but I found my old skill rapidly returning. With the short sword I was more than a match for any of the Arcadians, though I was less happy with the long German spatha and never came to terms with their other favourite weapon, the axe. It’s a frightful instrument. Swung or hurled, it’s capable of inflicting ghastly wounds; and no shield will ever stand against it. The Arcadians were adepts in its use, charging home against the practice stakes which they splintered with fearsome yells. Sheer strength, of course, accounted for a good deal; though they possessed an unerring aim and for all their bulk could be as nimble as cats. One and all prided themselves on their skill and fitness for battle; I was reminded again, watching them in training, what unpleasant adversaries they would make.

Vidimerius, when he came to hear of my preoccupation, expressed his approval in no uncertain terms. Nothing would suffice but that the staff officers set aside a period each day to join me in my practice. It was a development I had not foreseen; it destroyed my remaining stock with Ruricius completely. As ever, the wineshops beckoned him; he seemed to feel puffing and grunting on a parade ground was no part of life for a soldier of Rome. I avoided, as far as was possible, further ruffling his feelings, but I might have spared my efforts. On the evening when Vidimerius came in person to inspect our progress Ruricius threw caution to the winds, attacking me with something very like murder in his eyes. He made, I think, a mistake that was to be made again. I hold a sword as a gourmet holds a wine-cup, delicately, with the little finger raised. But the grip is stronger than it looks. I had the advantage in age, weight and reach; added to which he was in a thoroughly flabby condition, and an indifferent swordsman at the best of times. A prod from the blunted practice weapon doubled him up; I tapped him lightly above the ear, and sidestepped. He measured his length, cursing, while Vidimerius, roaring with delight, made immediate preparations to engage me himself. He was a crafty, dangerous fighter; in the end I barged him as Marcus had once taught and he joined Ruricius on the ground, my blade prodding his throat. We fought twice more. Both bouts were equally decisive, so much so that I began to fear I would suffer later for showing him up in front of his men. I needn’t have worried; whatever faults a German may have, ungenerousness is not usually one of them. Vidimerius was highly amused, insisting I should join him at dinner. Over his habitual trencher of oysters he asked me how I had come by my skill. ‘I thought you spent your days messing about in libraries,’ he said. I answered, straight-faced, that I grubbed it out of my books; he stared at me suspiciously for a while, but said no more.

Overall, my life in Burdigala was extremely pleasant. The summers were warm and long; I spent days in sea and river fishing, or riding in the surrounding countryside. For once the frontiers of the Empire were quiet; dangerously quiet, perhaps. What unrest existed on the borders made no impression on us deep in Gallia.

Winter, and a succession of iron-hard frosts, put an end to such diversions. Christmas passed before the weather broke, with a month or more of deluging rain. The river rose, flooding half the town; the Germans, confined to their barracks, grew sullen and awkward-tempered. Vidimerius took to watching his men anxiously. What was needed, he told me in a sudden access of confidence, was a spring campaign. There had been no opportunity lately for the Arcadians to win either plunder or glory in battle. Under the circumstances it was natural they should become restive; unless their attention was diverted by a little healthy warfare they would almost certainly start to desert, drifting back in twos and threes to their homeland. The Duke viewed the prospect dismally; he at least had no wish to return to his old way of life. His father, he told me, had been a petty chieftain across the Rhine; many of the Arcadians were descendants of his original war band. He described to me something of tribal life and custom; how able-bodied warriors would gather at the hall of a successful chieftain, whose popularity depended thereafter on the quantity of spoils he gained in war. It was an attitude too deeply ingrained to break; the Arcadians, despite their nominal status as soldiers of the West, still thought largely in such parochial terms, looking to Vidimerius for a steady supply of booty and excitement. A mutiny, he admitted, was by no means out of the question; he warned me to handle the men, when I had to, with the lightest possible rein.

There were other reasons for caution. Under Theodosius--who had borne, among his other honours, the somewhat lugubrious title ‘Friend of the Goths, and of Peace’--Germanic tribesmen serving within the Empire had been treated with toleration. Now, with the Emperor gone, the older, deep-rooted distrust of barbarians was once more making itself felt. I was conscious of the altered atmosphere even in Burdigala; folk were beginning to look askance at Vidimerius’ men, and avoid them in the streets. The Arcadians, for their part, took to going about in bands, all heavily armed; the massacre after Hadrianopolis had by no means been forgotten. When their pay once more failed to arrive the Duke quietly made up the deficit from his own pocket; he could have offered no more convincing proof of the seriousness of the situation. A few days later he took it on himself to summon the duovirs of the town to his headquarters. Burdigala, he told the shocked curiales, must be prepared to dig into its own pocket; to amuse his men he proposed holding games in true Roman fashion, in honour of the German Trinity. The glad news would be passed to the Arcadians without delay; after that, if Burdigalans valued their skins, the entertainment had better be forthcoming.

As things turned out, the plan was never put into effect. The reprieve came in early April, in the form of an urgent despatch from Mediolanum. Once more the roads of Gallia were passable; in the north campaigning had already begun. During the winter, war bands of Alamanni and Franks, supported by Saxon pirates from the mouth of the Rhine, had succeeded in establishing themselves on the coast of Belgica. Siege had been laid to Remi and Rotomagus, and a strong auxiliary force was being raised to disperse the menace. It would be backed by detachments from Marcus’ old Legion, II Italica, and commanded by the Frank Merobaudes. We were ordered to force march with half our parade strength, and rendezvous with the main column at the old Celtic settlement of Parisi.

Vidimerius was converted on the instant to roaring good humour. Orders were bellowed, horns blared; within a remarkably short time decurions and captains of centuries were gathering at the Praetorium. ‘Damn this bit about half our strength,’ said the Duke scornfully. ‘I want you to round up everybody you can lay your hands on. This lot have been on the rampage for weeks, they’re bound to be fat. Best chance of pickings we’ve had since we came down here.’

So much, I thought, for Roman discipline. In the end Ruricius was left behind, to his unconcealed delight, with a handful of the least warlike of the Arcadians, to oversee the defence of Burdigala in our absence. The rest of the cohort paraded a couple of mornings later. Sitting my horse beside the town gates as the column debouched to the north, I thought I had never seen an untidier-looking rabble. At its head marched trumpeters, sounding from time to time the long, harsh-throated horns of which all Germans are inordinately fond. Next came Vidimerius, clad for the occasion in a vast and complicated war helmet, all knobs and rusty iron points. A heavy night at mess had left him in far from the best of tempers; he was bellowing himself crimson in the face in attempts to close the men up into some sort of order. Behind him rode the cavalry on their heavy, shambling horses. No two troopers were dressed alike; each vied with his neighbours in the gaudiness of his attire. Multi-coloured cloaks fluttered and swirled, pennants floated from the heads of lances. Behind again were the infantry, in a straggling mass that occupied the entire width of the road. On their heels lumbered the supply train. Each waggon was piled high with camp-followers, mainly women; it seemed half the whores of Aquitania had embarked on the enterprise, to see at first hand this amusing game of war. At the rear, last but by no means least, trundled a heavy onager, Burdigala’s one and only war engine and the apple of Vidimerius’ eye. I had never seen it used. Onagers are bulky, unhandy affairs; the tails of these engines are apt to kick violently as the shot is discharged, earning them their name of wild asses. Why the Duke wanted to bring one on the march I couldn’t imagine, except that it pleased the specialised sense of humour of Germans occasionally to pelt the heads of captured enemies about the countryside. I saw the contraption clear of the gates, nodded a curt farewell to Ruricius and rode ahead towards the front of the column.

Several days’ march, skirting the coast most of the way, brought us to the border of Lugdunensis, where we turned inland for Parisi. The cumbrousness of the train caused innumerable delays; in the end Vidimerius left most of the waggons to follow behind under light guard and we made better time. A few miles from our destination we sighted the standards of Italica. This was considerably better. The column, cohorts of horses and infantry and a mixed bag of Galician and Cantabrian auxiliaries, was marching in good order, point troops flung out in textbook fashion to either side of the road. Merobaudes was leading the van. He and Vidimerius greeted each other boisterously; they were apparently old acquaintances. The Arcadian cavalry closed up ahead of the Legionaries. Our infantry were posted to the rear, after the last Galician contingent but preceding the train; for no German will follow baggage carts. The dispositions, necessary though they were, occupied some little time; it was late afternoon before I rode into the town. I found Parisi scruffy and malodorous; what public buildings existed looked dilapidated in the extreme, while the streets were thick with a litter of straw and ordure. Under the circumstances it was odd to hear strongly inflected Latin being spoken. The place still possessed a town senate of sorts; the curiales, resplendent in togas embellished with vast faded purple stripes, delivered an address of welcome followed by an attempt at a panegyric lauding the noble and peace-loving nation of the Franks. Merobaudes, whose presence had only been made necessary by the depredations of his countrymen, cut the oration short with a curt demand for supplies. Horses and men were quartered in the town; and I for one passed a restless night, turning and tossing on a straw pallet shared with what seemed an entire Legion of minute but voracious bedfellows.

We were joined shortly after first light by a further Pannonian contingent and a dashing troupe of Hispanian horse; after that the forces divided, Merobaudes taking the Italicans and Pannonians on to Belgica, the rest under Vidimerius turning west to the relief of Rotomagus. Most of the talk in the mess was in clanging German; from it I gathered that Remi was already clear of the enemy, who had fled at our approach. My commanding officer was more distressed by the failure of his beloved onager to put in an appearance than by the other difficulties of the march, considerable though they were. The column spoke three or four tongues; I spent an harassed morning dashing forwards and back along the line trying to instil some sort of order. We camped that night twenty miles from Parisi. At dawn despatch riders reached us from the coast with news that units of the British Fleet, riding menacingly a mile or so from shore, had put most of the Saxons to flight; there had been a skirmish, and some ships had been burned. Rotomagus was no longer in danger; the bulk of the invaders had gone north, hoping probably to reach some rendezvous further up the coast. Vidimerius, after some grumbling indecision, turned north himself; the messengers were sent on to appraise Merobaudes of the situation, and the column lumbered in pursuit.

So far we had seen no sign of the enemy; now our scouts reported concentrations of war bands from a dozen or more points ahead. At our speed of march we were unlikely to overtake them; Vidimerius detached the cavalry, both Hispanian and Burgundian. They charged for the horizon in fine style, uttering piercing whoops. It seemed to me a most unsatisfactory decision; the column was left without an effective screen, while the lancers, unsupported by infantry, could find themselves in difficulties if they did happen on the enemy in any strength. The Duke later condescended to explain his reasoning to me. His own men, he said, would not have remained in check much longer once they had scented plunder; if it came to a choice he would rather lose a few by enemy action than by defection, while the weaker the main column appeared the more chance there was that the raiders would be persuaded to make some sort of stand. My opinion must have been reflected in my expression, for he growled disgustedly. ‘All your diagrams and bits of paper might look well enough in libraries,’ he said, ‘but they’re no damned good for Germans in the field ….’