Britannia: The Watchmen

LIBER I

Chapter I

Calleva Atrebatum, Decembris 

C

aesar! Caesar! Caesar! Caesar!’

The roar of their thousands echoed and re-echoed through the great stone gate of the town. The wind whipped the winter cloaks and the legions’ standards shifted. The VI Victrix had sent a vexillation from Eboracum in the north, the XX Valeria Victrix from Deva in the west and the II Augusta from Isca and the Saxon Shore. They had tramped the ridges, iron hard at the death of a year, the boots thudding along the roads their great-grandfathers had made. They had come to elect a Caesar, to choose from their ranks a living god. And if some of the soldiers there that day already had a god whose son was called Jesus; well, they could live with that.

A weak winter sun gilded their arms as they stood in hollow square before the granite walls of Calleva, dazzling the multitude who had come to see this day. These were the tribal lands of the Atrebates and they were there in the greatest numbers, whispering and muttering to each other in awe. It wasn’t every day a new Caesar was chosen, a new emperor of the west. From the south had come the Regni and the Belgae, the people who had lived with the eagles the longest, whose old women still told tales of Vespasian and his legion from three hundred years before. The Cantiaci were there too, the men who had stood against the great Julius, slaughtering his men at the water’s edge; the men who had gone down to Aulus Plautius a generation later. The Trinovantes and the Iceni, once sworn enemies in the days of the flame-haired Boudicca, stood as brothers and sisters now, watching the day. The Dobunni, the Coritani, the Silures and the rest – all of them had sent deputations, with promises and praise and presents for the new god.

Old Cerialis would not see another spring. He had been lucky to see the last two, but he was determined to be here today and make his obeisance to the Caesar. The legionary tribunes had walked forward first. They had unbuckled their damascened helmets and removed them. They had smashed their right fists against their left breasts in the time honoured way that loyal soldiers had done for centuries. Then they had laid their swords in the grass, pommel first, in front of the dais.

Now it was the civilians’ turn and Cerialis was first among them. His family had ruled the Atrebates with a will of iron long before the Romans came and if he was only a member of the Ordo, the council, these days, so be it. There were still rebels, he had heard, in the north; wild men who ate each other and worshipped wood and stone. Good luck to them. If they believed they could destroy Rome after all this time, perhaps God would smile on them. Here, in the safe south, old Cerialis was a Christian. He lounged on Roman couches, ate from Roman crockery and drank Roman wine. He was at peace with the world.

‘I solemnly swear,’ his voice was thin and reedy over the wind, ‘that I will be an enemy to those who I learn are enemies to Magnus Caesar Maximus. If I knowingly swear falsely, then may Jupiter highest and best and the Lord Jesus Christ cause me and my children to be deprived of fatherland, safety and all good fortune.’

A mighty cheer went up as he finished and he staggered to his feet to clasp the arm of the new Caesar. Magnus Maximus hugged the old man, feeling his body scrawny under the pallium he wore. He looked into the face of Cerialis, at the old eyes watering in the cold, at the pinched, blue nose. But the mouth was smiling and the heart, he knew, was good.

‘Jupiter highest and best smile on you, Cerialis of the Atrebates,’ Maximus said, ‘and your Lord Jesus Christ.’

The old man passed along the line with the help of his people and another groveller was ready to take his place. Maximus, the purple cloak on his shoulders and a gold laurel wreath on his head, turned back to the dais for the next solemnity. At the foot of his throne, rich in velvet and studded with silver, a huge brindled mastiff lay curled, half asleep. The animal raised an eyebrow and caught his master’s glance.

‘I know, Bruno,’ Maximus murmured, ‘Boring as Hell, isn’t it? But if you want to be Caesar’s dog, you’ll grin and bear it.’ He turned to the next supplicant. ‘Salve, Aulus Orderis of the Durotriges.’

Londinium

The candles guttered in the sudden draught that swept in from nowhere, rustling the parchment on the consul’s desk and making the littlest child blink. She was Neria, the daughter of a river whore and a passing sailor and she was five years old. She was sitting on Honoria’s lap, curled against the warmth of the woman’s breasts and she felt rather smug. Because, of the eight children in the consul’s secret apartments, she was the one on Honoria’s lap and the others had to make do with the floor. They sat in a semi-circle, knees tucked under their chins, eyes wide in the candlelight.

Almost every night they came here, as dusk fell and the sounds of the day in the great city died away and became the weird whispers and rustlings of the night. And almost every night, Honoria told them stories. Stories that made their eyes widen still further and made the hairs on the backs of their necks stand on end.

When she knew they were ready, she began. ‘There were once,’ she murmured softly, ‘four heroes of the Wall.’

‘What’s the Wall, Mama Honoria?’ little Neria sat upright, looking at her. To Neria, Mama Honoria was the most beautiful woman in the world. And she knew all about the world, whereas little Neria knew nothing.

‘It’s a thing made of stone, stupid!’ the curly-haired lad nearest the door said. ‘They’re all around the city.’

The little girl glared daggers at him, but Honoria’s response was more withering. For all the boy was her own son, he could be an oaf at times and got more like his father every day. ‘Not just any wall, Scipio, the Wall. It stretches from coast to coast of Britannia, standing against the mountains to the North. It is far, far from here and beyond it are men with one eye and their heads in their chests. They breathe fire and that single eye can turn you to stone.’

Silence filled the chamber. Sixteen eyes were glued to hers and the candles guttered again.

‘Stop filling their heads with nonsense,’ the consul swept in and ruffled the curls on the head of his boy.

‘Your papa,’ Honoria went on, smiling at them both, ‘was one of those heroes.’

‘That was then,’ the consul said, ‘when Leocadius Honorius was a flat-footed pedes, mounting his shield on the Wall. All,’ he looked at her indulgently, ‘a long time ago.’

Honoria got up, lifting the little girl with her. ‘Wouldn’t you go back?’ she asked him, adjusting the brooch on his shoulder. ‘Even now, wouldn’t you go back?’

He looked into her clear, bright eyes, the candle-flames dancing in them. ‘Back to Justinus, Pat, Vit ... One of us is dead,’ his gaze fell away, ‘and the others? Only the gods know.’ He turned to the boy at his elbow. It was like looking into a mirror. He ran his fingers along the boy’s cheek. ‘Don’t let your mother fill your head with fairy stories, Scip,’ he said.

‘Aren’t there monsters out there, Papa?’ the boy asked, unsure, for all his eight summers, what the answer was.

‘Oh, yes,’ Leocadius nodded solemnly. ‘Yes, there are. And I’m on my way to see one tonight.’

The consul was less than pleased. He would normally expect to hold a council with the vicarius in daylight, surrounded by his lackeys and recorded for posterity by an arse-licking scribe with a stylus. Instead, the vicarius had summoned him near midnight, and he was to come alone. He slipped out of the secret door and the city guard clicked to attention. He paused while he heard the slave bolt the door behind him and walked across the night-frosted courtyard where the fountain still played, despite the cold. The shadows fell long here, the bushes of the palace huge in the near-darkness. No moon. No stars as yet, although the night was crisp with frost.

Leocadius took the stairs two at a time and padded along the balcony. He paused at the child’s door and peered in. The nursemaid was sitting asleep, snoring softly and the shutters were closed against the cold. Aelia was lying on her side, her eyes closed and little bubbles forming and breaking at her lips. Leocadius preferred her in this state and the half-light of a candle. Awake in the day she was a fractious child, with a snotty nose and her mother’s whine. The consul closed the door again and was gone.

In the next chamber, Julia sat upright sewing by the light of a dozen candles. Leocadius caught her frigid stare and thought how much she looked like a Vestal Virgin in the great days of old. Such women were living goddesses in Rome, untouchable. And Leocadius had not touched Julia for a long time.

‘Hope I didn’t wake you,’ he mumbled, striding to a press in the corner. The tone sounded as if he didn’t care whether he had or not.

‘I wasn’t asleep,’ she said, lips pursed. He glanced at her again. Sol Invictus, she was turning into her mother. ‘Where are you going? To see your whore again?’

Leocadius fished a dagger out from its hiding place under some woollen cloth and held it briefly in his hand. One day ... one day ... He slid the blade into his sleeve. ‘Affairs of state,’ he told her.

‘At this hour?’ She arched an eyebrow.

‘I can’t help thinking,’ Leocadius said, ‘that the vicarius has the least appropriate name in the business. Civilis. Uncivilis would be better.’

‘What does he want?’ Julia asked.

‘Time will tell, my sweet,’ the consul straightened his pallium and checked his hair in the mirror’s bronze glow. ‘Don’t wait up.’

There was no point in doing that. Leocadius Honorius, consul of Londinium in the province of Maxima Caesariensis, ran two households. One was the household of the day where his wife Julia dutifully entertained the Ordo and the merchants of the city, travelling gentlemen and officers of the church. Here, she laid on lavish banquets for the vicarius and anybody else her husband needed to cosy up to. She did this, not because she loved Leocadius any more – in fact she seriously doubted whether she had ever loved him at all – but because she was the daughter of a consul and of a consul’s wife and it was bred in her bones.

The household of the night belonged, beyond that locked and guarded door, to Honoria and her people of the streets. There were merchants here too and members of the Ordo, the city council, but they came after dark and in disguise. They came for the girls and the drink and the dice and whatever black art the consul and his whore chose to provide for them. This was home to the real Leocadius Honorius, who had more in common with that happy-go-lucky soldier of the Wall than he cared to admit.

‘Here’s to our wives and sweethearts,’ as the old toast ran when the wine flowed in the secret apartments, ‘may they never meet.’

He made his way east, following the river that lay silent under the night. There would be no moon but the stars were out now, winking in the inky blackness like disbelieving eyes. The consul could see the masts of the merchant ships stabbing black into the purple and he could hear their ropes creaking taut against the anchors. He turned sharp left along the Via Officionale, the broadest street in his city. To right and left the alleys lay dark and deadly, the home of the drunks, the whores and the cut-purses. Life was cheap here, death was the companion of a Roman mile. And Leocadius the consul knew every inch of them.

‘Io, pedes!’

The voice came from the darkness to his right and his dagger was in his hand already. Some low-life hailing him as a common soldier; what the hell? But then, he thought it was a voice he knew. A voice from long ago, but one that would ring in his ears for ever.

‘Vitalis? Vitalis Celatius?’ Leocadius’ own voice echoed in the alleys. ‘Vit, is that you?’

A man a little younger than the consul himself strolled into the half light of the street. It had been well over two years since they had seen each other. In some ways, it was like yesterday. Leocadius sheathed the knife and slapped the man in both arms, pulling him towards him, but Vitalis held back.

‘How have you been, Leo?’ he asked.

‘Well,’ the consul laughed. He noticed Vitalis looking him up and down and he patted his own stomach. ‘Too well, perhaps. I told you I could get used to the food down here. I thought you’d gone. With that Christian ... what was his name?’

‘Pelagius,’ Vitalis said.

‘That’s right. You were going to Rome, weren’t you? Shrine of St Petrus or some such rubbish.’

Vitalis smiled. ‘It’s not rubbish to Pelagius,’ he said. ‘Nor to me.’

Leocadius put his hands on his hips. ‘So you did become a Christian after all? I haven’t seen you at any of Dalmatius’ services.’

Vitalis was still smiling. ‘So,’ he said, ‘it’s a mad world, isn’t it, when a worshipper of Sol Invictus and Jupiter highest and best kneels down with the Bishop of Londinium?’

‘Mad indeed,’ Leocadius nodded, ‘but while I’m wearing this pallium, it’s what I have to do. I’ll get over it.’

‘Pelagius never went to Rome,’ Vitalis told him. ‘He’s somewhere in the north converting pagans.’

‘Good luck with that,’ Leocadius grunted. ‘Wild horses wouldn’t get me to the north again. What are you doing now?’

‘I haven’t got the fire in my soul that Pelagius has. Perhaps one day, I’ll go to the shrine of Petrus, but for now, I’m just staying alive,’ Vitalis said. ‘And that’s not easy in this city of yours.’

‘Mine?’ Leocadius laughed. ‘You’d have some argument with the vicarius over that, I think.’

‘Still playing politics, eh?’ Vitalis shook his head.

‘Goes with the territory,’ the consul shrugged. ‘Look. Vit, there are places I have to be. Come to the palace tomorrow. I seem to remember you’ve got a good hand. I’ve got an opening for a scribe.’ He winked at the man. ‘All creeds accepted.’

Vitalis laughed. ‘That’s mighty Roman of you,’ he said. Then, suddenly serious. ‘No, thanks, Leo,’ he said. ‘I don’t think so. Too much water. Too many bridges.’

The consul nodded. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said and held out a hand. Vitalis caught it.

‘You still wear the ring, I see,’ Leocadius smiled.

Vitalis looked down at the gold and ebony on his finger, inlaid with the four helmets. An identical one glittered on the consul’s finger too.

‘It’s become part of my hand,’ he said.

‘Well, look after yourself, Christian,’ Leocadius walked off into the night.

‘And you, pagan.’ But when the consul turned, Vitalis was already a ghost, vanished into darkness.

The vicarius’ wine was good, his quarters in the huge basilica spacious and comfortable. Leocadius knew them well, because they had been his before the vicarius had arrived and Leocadius rather resented that. Civilis was the last appointment made by Count Theodosius, but that was before the Count had reached Carthago and had fallen foul of the Emperor. Now the great man was dead and all of Britannia, especially Leocadius the consul, was stuck with the great man’s choice.

‘You’ll forgive the hour of course,’ Civilis stretched back on his couch, the firelight burning in his eyes. He had dismissed his slaves and the two men sat alone as a new day dawned along the Thamesis long before the light itself crept into the east.

‘I assumed you have your reasons,’ Leocadius ran his index finger around the rim of the goblet. The dagger still lay up his sleeve, along with a variety of tricks, just in case.

‘Magnus Maximus,’ Civilis said. The elephant in the room had just trumpeted.

‘Ah.’

‘My scouts tell me he was at Isca Dumnoniorum a week ago, bound for Calleva.’

‘He’s coming east,’ Leocadius nodded.

‘He is,’ Civilis said, ‘and at every step on the way, he is being proclaimed Caesar.’

‘I know.’

Civilis straightened. ‘You do?’

Leocadius spread his arms, careful not to spill any of the vicarius’ good wine. ‘I’m the consul here,’ he said. ‘Not much happens without me knowing about it.’

Civilis’ eyes narrowed. ‘But you’re a friend of his, aren’t you? A hero of the Wall? The Count told me all about that in Gaul.’

‘I have fought under Maximus, yes,’ Leocadius said, twisting the gold and jet ring on his finger and watching it glow and sparkle in the firelight. ‘But I wouldn’t say we were friends.’