Swords Around the Throne Read online

  The column moved on, and the barbarian labourers stood for a time to watch the soldiers go by, before once more bending to their work.

  On the evening of the fifth day, the twin legion detachments reached Bagacum, nexus of the road systems of northern Belgica.

  Two hundred years before, in an excess of civic pride, the citizens of Bagacum had erected for their city a forum and basilica to rival anything north of the Alps. But those days of glory had long passed: Frankish raiders had sacked the city two or three times, and the grand forum was now surrounded by ramparts and bastions, a fortified redoubt and military supply depot for the army of the Rhine. The city itself had shrunk from its heyday, and the grid of brick streets had more abandoned than occupied buildings. The descendants of the proud decurions of ancient Bagacum now ran taverns and brothels for the soldiers that passed so frequently through the city. They knew all too well the rough tramping of hobnailed boots along their streets, and the favourite obscene songs of half a dozen different legions.

  They also knew what happened when the army detachments came through: the legion’s billeting officers had arrived earlier that day, chalking their quotas on the doors of houses. A third of any requisitioned property must be given up for the accommodation of troops. Not surprising, Castus thought, that so many towns in northern Gaul seemed deserted when the army arrived. He had seen the same thing all across the empire.

  Not that he was complaining; he had little use for the scruples of civilians. Besides, the legion mensores had done well for him: he was billeted with two other centurions in the upper rooms of a grain merchant’s house two blocks south-west of the old forum. Good rooms, comfortable beds, and the merchant had even instructed his slaves to feed the noble soldiers from his own larder, before departing for his house in the country.

  ‘If only all civilians were so prompt and generous,’ Valens said, propping his boots on the dining table, ‘a soldier’s life would be a lot less arduous!’

  ‘Arduous?’ Castus said, glancing up with a wry smile. ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word!’ He wiped a hunk of coarse bread around his earthenware bowl, scraping up the last of his meal of chopped olives in fish sauce.

  ‘Oh? All this marching up and down, risking blisters and cramps in the service of the emperor? Is that not arduous?’ Valens ran a chicken bone through his teeth, then tossed it over his shoulder and belched. ‘Anyway, at least I know how to spell arduous.’

  The third man at the table, Rogatianus, a dark wiry soldier from north Africa, laughed down his nose. Castus just nodded, still smiling, trying not to blush. When he had first joined the Sixth Legion four years ago, he had been unable to read or write. Since then, in sporadic and entirely secret lessons with Diogenes the former teacher, Castus had picked up the rudiments of literacy. Valens still mocked him about it, slyly, although there was a rough affection in his humour. Not many men in the legion knew, after all.

  Since birth, people had taken Castus for stupid. It had started with his own father, then almost every officer he had known and most of his fellow soldiers too. And most civilians assumed soldiers to be little better than brutal animals. It did not worry him unduly. Sometimes it suited him for people to think that way, to expect little of him beyond strength and loyalty. His appearance suggested it: the heavy torso, with the blunt, broken features and thick neck that had given him, in successive units, the inevitable nickname ‘Knucklehead’. But all the same, just occasionally, his lack of learning needled him. His ignorance of so much in the world, beyond the narrow regulated margins of army life. He had hoped that learning his letters might broaden his mind, but the stuff Diogenes tried to get him to read just baffled him. In fact, it had often occurred to Castus that if Diogenes had been such a good teacher, he would never have had to join the army...

  ‘Centurion!’ A shout up the stairs, then a hammering of studded boots on boards, and a soldier pushed past the slaves and into the room. He was one of Castus’s century, legionary Aelianus.

  ‘No enlisted men!’ Valens called, flourishing a chicken leg at the soldier. ‘This drinking and dining club is officers only!’

  ‘Centurion,’ Aelianus gasped, breathing hard, ‘message from optio Modestus – there’s trouble; you have to come quickly.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Castus said, sobering at once. He pushed aside his bowl and picked up his centurion’s stick.

  ‘Men from the Second Legion,’ the soldier said, already halfway back down the stairs with Castus at his heels. ‘They pushed their way into a bar over in our part of town – there’s a lot of them... some of ours are down already...’

  Behind him, Castus heard Valens and Rogatianus jumping up to follow him. Their steps thundered on the stairs, then they were all spilling out into the street and marching quickly towards the forum. By the time they reached the corner they could hear the sounds of fighting. Bellows of rage, screams, the thud and crash of breaking wood, the grating clatter of studded boots on stone paving.

  Castus held himself back from running. Already he could feel the energy of combat rising in him, the heavy beat of his blood. He tried to slow himself, calm himself: he needed a clear head. It was his duty to stifle the trouble, whatever it might be, but his sympathies were with his men. Five days of forced marching had put a lot of strain on them, and the presence of the rival legionaries of the Second only stoked the tension higher.

  Up the street there were running figures, some of them his own men. Others formed a gang around a gate in the wall; as Castus approached, two men shoved their way out and into the street, throwing punches at anyone who tried to bar their way.

  ‘Let them through,’ Castus said, in his drill-field bark. A few of the men at the gateway noticed him and straightened up, saluting. One of them was Modestus, the optio, and Castus caught him by the shoulder and dragged him close, fixing him with a level stare. Modestus had been a drunk and a shirker once, but if he had over-indulged earlier tonight, the fighting and riotous confusion had cleared his head. Castus nodded curtly at him.

  ‘Hold this gate,’ he said. ‘Don’t allow anybody else in. Anybody wants to leave, let them.’

  ‘Yes, centurion!’ he heard Modestus say as he strode through the gateway. Valens and Rogatianus were somewhere behind him, with a knot of other men from the Sixth, but he didn’t have time to check now. He could only hope there were enough of them to back him up.

  A narrow paved yard, wooden balconies on two sides, rooms above and below. For a moment it looked as though blood was pooled on the cobbles – then Castus saw the shards of broken pottery sprayed across the yard and realised it was wine from a shattered amphora. There were men on the ground, others gathered around them, and at the far end of the yard, indistinct in the dusk shadow, a brawling melee.

  Castus noticed the graffiti scratched on the wall by the steps. He squinted, deciphering it: ‘EPPIA SUCKS THE BEST’, ‘ANTHIOCA HAS A FINE ARSE’, ‘I SHAT HERE’. The place was a brothel, amongst other things.

  Lowering his brow, jutting his jaw, he marched on across the yard, crushing broken pottery underfoot. Movement from above him, and he stepped aside smartly as another heavy amphora came toppling over the balcony and exploded across the cobbles. Screams of laughter, quickly cut short – Rogatianus was already storming up the stairs with three men behind him. Was this really a fight, Castus wondered, or were they just destroying the place?

  ‘Centurions!’ men were shouting – his own or theirs he could not tell – ‘Centurions, get out!’ Bodies collided with him and he shoved them aside.

  He grabbed a man by the tunic, hauled him off his feet and flung him back towards the gate. A figure barged against him, bloody-mouthed, shouting. Not one of his own.

  ‘Cocksucker!’ the man screamed, and swung a wild punch. Castus leaned out of the man’s reach, then jabbed the heel of his palm against his breastbone, knocking him back. The man reeled; one swift blow to the jaw and he dropped cold.

  Castus strode on across the yard in
to the surge of bodies around the far door. Diogenes was at his side, and Flaccus the standard-bearer.

  ‘Stay close at my flank,’ he said. ‘The rest of you keep in behind.’

  He glanced back and saw Valens casually headbutt a soldier of the Second Legion. The man fell sprawling, and Valens grinned and shrugged.

  There was another man on the ground near the door, ringed by bodies. In the spill of firelight Castus recognised one of his own soldiers. Unconscious, blood all over his face. One of his tent-mates kneeling beside him, screaming.

  ‘They’ve killed him, centurion! The bastards have murdered him!’

  Castus leaned over the fallen man. Cut scalp, shallow but bleeding heavily.

  ‘He’s not dead. You three, get him back to his billet. Go!’

  Flaccus and Diogenes had cleared the other men from the entrance to the lower room. The heavy door was half-shut, with something wedged behind it, a bench or table. Castus took a step back, drew up his shoulders and then kicked at the boards. Sound of shattering wood from inside.

  ‘After me!’ he said. ‘If anyone resists, drop them.’

  Over the wreck of splintered timber he pushed his way inside, four men at his back. A single glance took in the scene: the low brick-vaulted room fogged with smoke, bodies wrestling in the glow of the fire, other men cheering, yelling; a woman standing on a table in a ripped gown, shrieking with laughter. Stink of burnt food, sour wine, vomit and blood.

  With his stick thrust forward Castus forged his way into the mass of men. He grabbed at them, heaving them back towards the door as he pushed between them. The noise of the fight rang under the low ceiling – his own shouts were lost in it. He reached up, seized the shrieking woman around the waist and hoisted her to the floor, then leaped onto the table where she had been standing, bending his head beneath the low brick arch.

  ‘Enough!’ he shouted into the clamour. ‘That’s enough!’

  But now he could see over the heads of the mob into the depths of the room. He saw the man pinned to the floor between benches – another of his own men, a young recruit named Speratus – with three or four soldiers grouped around him, kicking him and stamping on his body. He saw, at the rear of the chamber, another table with men seated on it, watching the fight with expressions of drunken glee, like spectators at a gladiator bout.

  His own men were hanging back now, falling away towards the door, and only the gang of Second Legion men were left, with their prisoner, Speratus, trapped between them. Looking at the fallen man, Castus remembered how his father would beat him that way, stamping on him as he lay prone.

  Something crashed beside his head: a flung jug shattering against the bricks. Shards sprayed his ear. Down off the table in one bound, he shoved two men aside and grappled a third, dragging them away from Speratus. Somewhere behind him were Valens and Flaccus, but just for a moment he was surrounded by hostile bodies. Someone swung a fist and he blocked it; from the corner of his eye he saw the flash of a drawn blade. He was standing astride the fallen man, shielding him with his body.

  ‘What’s this?’ cried one of the men at the table, surging to his feet. ‘Who the bloody fuck are you?’ Castus saw the centurion’s stick, the scarred and weathered face of a veteran. He pulled himself upright.

  ‘Aurelius Castus,’ he said. ‘Centurion. Third Cohort, Sixth Legion. You?’

  The other man strode up to him, standing so close that Castus could smell his breath, his rank wine-sweat. He was a hand’s breadth shorter, but almost as heavily built.

  ‘Satrius Urbicus,’ the man said with a sneer in his voice. ‘Centurion. First Cohort, Second Legion. Now tell me you’ve come to apologise.’

  Castus held his stare, said nothing. The blood was beating in his head, and the cuts on his ear throbbed. Urbicus edged closer, his scarred upper lip twisted back from his teeth.

  ‘My men came here for a quiet drink. Your savages attacked them,’ Urbicus said. ‘So you owe us an apology.’

  ‘I think not.’ Castus spoke in a breath. All his life he had deferred to his superiors, and Urbicus was clearly senior to him. When he glanced down he saw the injured man, Speratus, lying at his feet, his face a pulp of blood, one eye swollen shut.

  ‘You trying to argue with me, young man?’

  The blow was sudden, a slashing upper-cut – Castus flinched, blinking, as the stick smacked against his skull.

  ‘You should learn to respect your elders, I’d say.’

  A heartbeat’s pause, too brief to think or balance the odds. Then Castus drove his fist up into the centurion’s chest, throwing the full power of his arm behind it. Urbicus let out a tight gasp. He was caught off guard, fighting for balance. His feet skated on spilled wine and he went down hard. Castus followed him, dropping to one knee, and drove two hard accurate punches into the other man’s neck. He drew back his fist to punch again, but his arm was seized – somebody else was wrestling his chest, pulling him back. He fought against them, but he could hear the other shouts now, and sense the swirl of the mob as it parted.

  Urbicus was trying to get up, but his own men had him pinned. Castus realised that Valens and Flaccus were gripping him; Diogenes had his arm tightly clasped.

  ‘Leave it!’ Valens was hissing in his ear. ‘The tribune’s here with troops – Infernal gods, leave it!’

  Numbed, breathing hard, Castus let them drag him upright and across the room to a bench. He could make out the noise from the courtyard now, the voice of the tribune Jovianus as he called for order. Armed men were in the room: Frisiavone auxiliaries, armed with staves. Sitting on the bench, legs spread, he let out a great gasping sigh and felt the red heat of anger rushing from his body. Hollowing remorse rushed in.

  Thin rain misted the paved plaza of the forum. Grey morning, sore heads, and the incense smoke from the sacrificial altar sickening men’s stomachs. The cohorts were drawn up in two facing lines, the men of the Sixth on one side and those of the Second on the other. On both sides bruised faces, raw scars. Between them, the praepositus Jovianus intoned the words into the thin smoke.

  ‘Sacred Concordia, Sacred Disciplina, hear our prayer and accept our sacrifice. In your name we cast aside our strife. In your name we bind ourselves in true brotherhood.’

  Four elders of the Bagacum curia stood with covered heads, acting as officiating priests for the ceremony. They mumbled the prayer between them, looking far from pleased. The altar was a rough, temporary thing, a stone with a painted dedication, but money would be deducted from the funeral funds of both cohorts to pay for a stonecutter to make a proper inscription. Money would be deducted, too, to pay for the damage caused by the night’s affray.

  The punishments should have been much greater, Castus knew. Two men from his own century were invalided with broken limbs, and many of the others had sprains and bruises. The cohort as a whole was down four fighting men, and the Second Legion looked to have suffered similarly. There should have been floggings at the very least for what had happened. Brawling in public with a fellow officer could have cost Castus his rank, even his life – he had risked all that for a moment’s rage, and the thought sickened him. But Jovianus had a duty to get his detachments to the army muster; he had lost men and he had lost time, and could not afford to lose more of either.

  ‘Soldiers,’ he cried, turning from the smoking altar. ‘Last night you disgraced the honour of your legions. The emperor has summoned you to join his campaign against the barbarians. Instead, you have turned your anger upon each other. What use does the emperor have for men who cannot control themselves? Men without discipline? Such men are not soldiers, but savages.’

  He paced down the lines, tapping the ground before him with his staff. A small man with a well-groomed appearance, but his authority was palpable and his anger unfeigned. He halted at the centre of the line. To one side of him Castus stood at attention, hands clasped at his belt. To the other, Urbicus of the Second Legion held the same stance.

  ‘We have made a sacrifice,’
Jovianus called out, ‘to the divine spirits of Concordia and Disciplina, the presiding goddesses of the parade ground. May they restore to us the true spirit of soldiers! May they restore the brotherhood of the legions, and allow you to redeem your courage in the purity of battle!’

  He gestured with his stick, and Castus took four long steps forward. Urbicus marched out to meet him. Castus could still feel the smart of his cut ear, the bruise on his temple, but he was glad to see that the other man showed more obvious marks of violence.

  ‘Clasp hands in good faith,’ Jovianus ordered.

  Castus took a breath, then stuck out his hand. Urbicus grasped it. A squeeze of hard bone and muscle.

  ‘Let all strife end,’ Jovianus called out, ‘and the order of the legions prevail!’

  The two centurions stepped close, shoulder against shoulder, and embraced.

  In his wounded ear, Castus heard the older man’s breathing hiss.

  ‘If I meet you on the battlefield, you’re a dead man.’

  2

  On the evening of the twelfth day after leaving the coast, the men of the marching detachments came in sight of the walls of Colonia Agrippina, the great fortress city on the banks of the Rhine. The massive drum towers of the fortifications, with their decorative brickwork glowing in the low sun, were a welcome sight. The troops had marched hard since leaving Bagacum, making up for the day they had lost, but Jovianus led them away to the north of the city and on down the river another three miles to the camp ground of the field army. It was almost dark by the time the weary legionaries of VI Victrix raised their tents in the lines allotted to them.

  For Castus, the end of the march was a relief. The tensions and resentment left by the riot at Bagacum had not eased, and his mood had been black for days afterwards. No matter that he was provoked, that Urbicus had struck first, no matter that he was defending his men. He had lost control of himself; he had been goaded, and had given in to blind rage – the same goading, the same rage had caused him to attack his father once. Castus had believed he had murdered the old man, and fled to join the legions. Now, with a similar uncontrolled outburst, he had almost undone all that his career in the army had given him. Some of his men had tried to thank him for coming to their aid, or to congratulate him, and he had snarled them into silence. He was not proud of his actions. He had been careful to avoid centurion Urbicus of the Second Legion too.