Masters of Rome (28 page)

Reaching the bottom they began to scramble along the rocks back to the isthmus. As they negotiated the treacherous slabs of rock, Vespasian felt the urge to stop and look back at the sheer cliff above; seeing Myrddin standing there, he knew that the thought had been placed in his mind.

‘Vespasian!' the druid cried. ‘We will let you go. Your guardian god's will has proven too strong for us and our power cannot fight it – this time. Go! Leave this island and return to Rome where you may yet fulfil the prophecy laid out for you. But remember, nothing is absolute; there are many ways for a man to accept death willingly without him realising. We failed to secure yours because we made the mistake of allowing you to see the true extent of our power before you came here. Therefore you feared us. We see that now; Alienus will pay dearly for leading you to Sullis. We pray that another will succeed where we have not and by your death, which we still demand, help to bring to an early end the abomination that threatens the freedom of us all that, even now, grows in the bosom of Rome. The abomination that, although you will have the power to do so, you will not crush.' Myrddin extended his right arm and held his palm towards Vespasian for a few moments before walking backwards to disappear behind the brow of the cliff.

‘What was that all about?' Magnus asked.

‘I've no idea; what he said made no sense to me whatsoever.'

‘Said? He didn't say a word; you just stared at each other. And none of us could move.'

Vespasian looked into Magnus' one remaining eye and saw he was in earnest. ‘I've had enough of this; let's get away from here.'

*

Vespasian's chest was tight by the time they descended into the haven, following the downhill path of the stream that flowed into the inlet. A marine optio met them, looking nervous to see his commanding officer whom he had left to die.

‘It's all right, optio,' Vespasian reassured him, ‘I can't blame any man for running from that horror.' He looked over the man's shoulder to his men who were busy floating the Cornovii's currachs. ‘Have you sighted the ships?'

The tension on the optio's face cleared and he looked mightily relieved. ‘Yes, sir; they're about a quarter of a mile offshore.'

Four of Cogidubnus' followers pushed a currach over and held it steady for Vespasian to climb in. ‘Good; how many men have you got here?'

‘Just seventy-four, sir.'

‘Seventy-four! That's worse than I thought.'

‘Well, it's seventy-six actually.' The optio nodded to the men holding the boat as Magnus got reluctantly aboard. ‘But a couple rowed one of Cogidubnus' men with your message out to the master trierarchus about half an hour ago.'

‘I didn't send any messages.' Vespasian turned to Cogidubnus. ‘Did you?'

‘No.' The King shook his head and raised his eyebrows in admiration as he swung himself into the currach. ‘But you've got to hand it to the man; he's got balls.'

‘I don't suppose the two lads floating with their throats cut are feeling that complimentary about him right now,' Magnus pointed out, settling heavily in the bow.

‘We could chase him.'

Vespasian sighed in resignation as Cogidubnus' men pushed the boat out before jumping in to man the oars. ‘No, he'll have headed further southwest. By the time we're all aboard he'll have a two-hour head start; we'll never catch him. I'd like to know how he escaped from Judoc, though.'

Cogidubnus took up the steering-oar. ‘There seems to be
nothing that can hold him; best just to kill him as soon as you have him.'

‘Well, that's down to you now, Cogidubnus. Kill Alienus when you find him. Although where he will go with Rome, you and Myrddin all wanting him, I don't know.'

The King's florid, round face cracked into a smile as his men pulled on the sweeps, propelling the boat out into the harbour. ‘He'll turn up. Men who want vengeance always do.'

‘Yes,' Magnus muttered, dabbing at his seeping socket, ‘and normally they turn up just when you least expect them to.'

‘Oh, I'll be expecting him every day; it'll give me great pleasure to send his head to you in Rome.'

Vespasian patted the Britannic King's shoulder. ‘Cogidubnus, my friend, when I'm back in Rome the last thing I shall want to receive is a souvenir of this island, however pretty it might be.'

PART III

R
OME
, J
UNE AD
47

CHAPTER XI

T
HE SEA
,
CALM
and azure, reflected a myriad of tiny, transient suns off its gentle undulations. Vespasian squinted and pulled his face into an expression even more strained than had become the norm during his last six years under the Eagle of the II Augusta. Above, the cause of each fleeting flash of golden light burnt down from its midday high onto his uncovered, thinning hair with an intensity that had been just a memory to him after so long in northern climes far away from Rome. Feeling the strength of the sun warming his body warmed his heart in equal measure as he watched the warehouses, cranes and tenements surrounding the ship-lined harbour of Ostia, just a mile away on the southern bank of the Tiber mouth, come closer with every shrill-piped pull of the trireme's one hundred and twenty oars.

The flitting shadows of gulls played on the wooden deck, bleached by sun and salt and worn smooth by sailors' calloused feet; swooping and soaring above, they serenaded the ship with their mournful cries as they escorted it on its final leg of the sixday voyage from Massalia via Corsica. Vespasian turned his head left, shading his eyes, and tried to focus on the huge construction site a couple of miles north of the Tiber and Ostia; two great curving moles extended into the sea enclosing what would be a spacious harbour at whose centre, on a rectangular man-made island, stood the beginnings of a lighthouse.

The trierarchus, standing next to him, saw the direction of his gaze. ‘Claudius had one of the great ships that Caligula built to transport obelisks from Egypt filled with rocks and concrete and then sunk to provide the foundations for the lighthouse.'

Vespasian whistled softly as he surveyed the thousands of tiny figures slaving away – literally – on the new port and the buildings surrounding it. ‘That is a massive undertaking.'

‘It's even bigger than what you can see; Claudius has ordered that a canal be cut to the southeast to link the port to the Tiber. That way the river transports won't have to brave the open sea with the prevailing wind blowing straight up the river mouth as they have to when coming to and from Ostia.'

‘It'll put Ostia out of business.'

‘I doubt it; Rome is becoming so big that she needs two mouths to feed her.' Laughing at his wit, the trierarchus began to issue incomprehensible orders of a nautical nature, sending bare-footed sailors scurrying around the deck in preparation for docking.

Vespasian adjusted his toga and walked over to join Magnus, leaning on the larboard rail and admiring the scale of the project. ‘Do you remember when we sailed into Alexandria and saw the Pharos, and I said that's the way to be remembered: build something that benefits the people?'

‘What of it?' Magnus asked, not bothering to turn his blind eye to Vespasian.

‘You asked who built the Circus Maximus and when I didn't know you said, “See, it doesn't always work.” Well, this time it will work: Claudius will be remembered as the Emperor who built Rome's great harbour and not the drooling fool who invaded an irrelevant island to fake a victory that will never and can never be complete because the inland tribes have little interest in the benefits of becoming Roman.'

‘You're wrong, sir; he'll always be remembered for that and future emperors will curse him for giving them a thorn in their side that they can't walk away from without losing face and endangering their position. And Claudius has chosen the wrong project to be remembered by: the Pharos is finite; it's as big as it's going to be. That port, however, can always be improved upon. I'll bet whatever you like that the next few emperors, whoever they are, will expand it or just change its name out of spite as they struggle to put down another expensive rebellion in Britannia.'

‘Just to diminish Claudius' legacy?' Vespasian considered that for a moment. ‘I suppose so; that's what I'd do. After four years in Britannia I can see that the money spent holding those parts already pacified and expanding the frontiers until the whole island is under our control is going to be far more than the tax revenue for many years to come. You're right, Magnus: if Claudius wants to divert attention from his folly then he should have chosen something else, because there is a lot of folly to mask.'

Vespasian fell silent as he contemplated the immensity of the task that he, Sabinus and Plautius had left unfinished in Britannia. Having returned to the Roman sphere of influence, leaving the druids depleted but still in place and Judoc unpunished for his treachery, Vespasian had spent the next month, before the arrival of his replacement, probing into Dumnonii territory in strength, destroying everything that could be destroyed until Arvirargus had seen sense and realised that if he wanted to keep his kingdom and his precious horses then he had to come to an accommodation with Rome. This had cost him far more than it would have done a couple of months earlier: not only did Plautius oblige him to pay a greater annual tribute in tin than might be considered fair but also, at the request of Vespasian and Cogidubnus, he was obliged to ensure that a hundred of Judoc's followers lived out the rest of their lives mining that tin. Judoc himself was to work in the mines until the time came for him to be transported to Rome to be displayed in Plautius' Ovation, which the Senate had recently voted him – at Claudius', or rather Narcissus', request.

Most gratifyingly for Vespasian had been Plautius' insistence that Arvirargus clear the remaining druids off Tagell and ensure that it remained unoccupied – apart, of course, from the Lost Dead. Vespasian shivered as he remembered the cold grip of an unseen hand and then the squeezing of his heart as if another hand constricted it; the Lost Dead were welcome to that forsaken spit of land.

The arrival, in November, of Publius Ostorius Scapula, the next Governor of the infant province, along with the new legates, had meant that Vespasian's work was complete and all that remained for him to do was to brief his replacement, Titus
Curtius Ciltus, thoroughly in the geography, people and politics of the II Augusta's theatre of operations. Finding Ciltus to be a nonentity with a very limited capacity for independent thought and hearing Plautius' assessment of Scapula as a man who made him seem calm in temper but reckless in action, Vespasian had left Britannia with the feeling that it was a problem never to be solved and he wanted no more part in it. He was put in mind of the legend of Pandora's box – but without, at the end, Hope flying out of the casket that should never have been opened.

With Caratacus still at large and resentment building as the tax-farmers ploughed their fresh fields, Britannia was far from pacified. Indeed, news had reached him on his way home, during his two-month sojourn at Aventicum to complete the sale of his parents' estate, that the Iceni, who had hitherto been an independent client-kingdom, ruled by their king Prasutagus, had revolted after Scapula had tried to disarm them. The foolishness of needlessly provoking a peaceful ally into rebellion summed up for Vespasian everything that had been wrong about Rome's approach to her reluctant province: they had been too tough on their friends and allies in their attempts to keep them subdued and to extract the taxes to pay for the invasion; yet they had failed to crush their enemies because, quite simply, there was not the manpower to fight an aggressive campaign and at the same time police what had already been won.

The multifarious odours of a port in high summer cutting through the salt-tanged sea air and the ship's smells of musky warmed wood, pitch and hemp rope brought Vespasian back to the present as the trireme entered the harbour mouth with its oars dipping in slow and steady time. He was almost home after his longest ever absence; and, what was more, he had made it in time for Aulus Plautius' Ovation and then his brother's inauguration as suffect-consul for the last six months of the year, which was to be on the day after: the calends of July.

As the ship manoeuvred, with much shouting from the trierarchus, in preparation for berthing, Hormus appeared on deck with Vespasian's travelling luggage, the main bulk of his possessions having been sent overland in the spring.

‘Find a carriage to take us to Rome as soon as we dock, Hormus,' Vespasian ordered.

With a bow, Hormus went to stand by the gangplank waiting for it to be lowered; down on the quay a crowd of traders and whores had started to gather, eager to sell their wares to voyage-weary sailors.

‘I think I'll go to my uncle's house first,' Vespasian informed Magnus, ‘before going to the palace to see Flavia and the children.'