Masters of Rome: VESPASIAN V (Vespasian 5) Read online

  MASTERS OF ROME

  Robert Fabbri read Drama and Theatre at London University and worked in film and TV for 25 years. He was an assistant director and worked on productions such as Hornblower, Hellraiser, Patriot Games and Billy Elliot. His life-long passion for ancient history inspired him to write the Vespasian series. He lives in London and Berlin.

  Also by Robert Fabbri

  THE VESPASIAN SERIES

  TRIBUNE OF ROME

  ROME’S EXECUTIONER

  FALSE GOD OF ROME

  ROME’S FALLEN EAGLE

  Coming soon…

  ROME’S LOST SON

  SHORT STORIES

  THE CROSSROADS BROTHERHOOD

  THE RACING FACTIONS

  THE DREAMS OF MORPHEUS

  First published in hardback in Great Britain in 2014 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

  Copyright © Robert Fabbri, 2014

  The moral right of Robert Fabbri to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Hardback ISBN: 978 0 85789 962 0

  Trade paperback ISBN: 978 0 85789 963 7

  eISBN: 978 0 85789 964 4

  Printed in Great Britain.

  Corvus

  An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

  Ormond House

  26–27 Boswell Street

  London WC1N 3JZ

  www.corvus-books.co.uk

  For my friends through life: Jon Watson-Miller, Matthew Pinhey, Rupert White and Cris Grundy; thank you, chaps.

  And in memory of Steve Le Butt 1961–2013 who sailed west before us.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE: BRITANNIA, MARCH AD 45

  PART I: BRITANNIA, SPRING AD 45

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IIII

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  PART II: BRITANNIA, SEPTEMBER AD 46

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER VIIII

  CHAPTER X

  PART III: ROME, JUNE AD 47

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIIII

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  PART IIII: ROME, AUTUMN AD 48

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XVIIII

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  EPILOGUE: 1 JANUARY AD 49

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PROLOGUE

  BRITANNIA, MARCH AD 45

  THE FOG THICKENED, forcing the turma of thirty-two legionary cavalry to slow their mounts to a walk. The snorts of the horses and jangle of harnesses were deadened, swallowed up by the thick atmosphere enshrouding the small detachment.

  Titus Flavius Sabinus pulled his damp cloak tighter around his shoulders, inwardly cursing the foul northern climate and his direct superior, General Aulus Plautius, commander of the Roman invasion force in Britannia, for summoning him to a briefing in such conditions.

  Sabinus had been surprised by the summons. When the messenger, a tribune on Plautius’ staff, arrived with a native guide the previous evening at the XIIII Gemina’s winter camp on the middle reaches of the Tamesis River, Sabinus had expected him to be bringing his final orders for the coming season’s campaign. Why Plautius should order him to travel almost eighty miles south to meet him at the winter quarters of the II Augusta, his brother Vespasian’s legion, seemed strange just a month after the legates of all four legions in the new province had met with their general at his headquarters at Camulodunum.

  Unsurprisingly, the tribune, a young man in his late teens whom Sabinus had known by sight for the last two years since the invasion, had been unable to enlighten him as to the reason for this unexpected extra meeting. Sabinus remembered that during his four years serving in the same rank, in Pannonia and Africa, he was very rarely favoured with any detail by his commanding officers; a thin-stripe military tribune from the equestrian class was the lowest of the officer ranks, there to learn and obey without question. However, the scroll the young man bore was sealed with Plautius’ personal seal, giving Sabinus no choice but to curse and comply; Plautius was not a man to tolerate insubordination or tardiness.

  Reluctantly leaving his newly arrived senior tribune, Gaius Petronius Arbiter, in command of the XIIII Gemina, Sabinus had ridden south that morning with an escort, the tribune and his guide, into a clear dawn that promised a chill but bright day. It had not been until they had started to climb, in the early afternoon, up onto the plain that they were now traversing that the fog had started to descend.

  Sabinus glanced at the native guide, a middle-aged, ruddy-faced man riding to his right on a stocky pony; he seemed unperturbed by the conditions. ‘Can you still find your way in this?’

  The guide nodded; his long, drooping moustache swayed beneath his chin. ‘This is Dobunni land, my tribe; I’ve hunted up here since I could first ride. The plain is reasonably flat and featureless; we only have to keep our course just west of south and we will come down into the Durotriges’ territory, behind the Roman line of advance. Then tomorrow we have a half-day’s ride to the legion’s camp on the coast.’

  Ignoring the fact that the man had not addressed him as ‘sir’ or indeed shown any respect for his rank whatsoever, Sabinus turned to the young tribune riding on his left. ‘Do you trust his ability, Alienus?’

  Alienus’ youthful face creased into a frown of respect. ‘Absolutely, sir; he got me to your camp without once changing direction. I don’t know how he does it.’

  Sabinus stared at the young man for a few moments and decided that his opinion was worthless. ‘We’ll camp here for the night.’

  The guide turned towards Sabinus in alarm. ‘We mustn’t sleep out on the plain at night.’

  ‘Why not? One damp hollow is as good as another.’

  ‘Not here; there’re spirits of the Lost Dead roaming the plain throughout the night, searching for a body to bring them back to this world.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ Sabinus’ bravado was tinged slightly by his realisation that he had neglected to make the appropriate sacrifice to his guardian god, Mithras, upon departure that morning, owing to the lack of a suitable bull in the XIIII Gemina’s camp; he had substituted a ram but had ridden through the gates feeling less than happy with his offering.

  The guide pressed his point. ‘We can be off the plain in an hour or two and then we’ll cross a river. The dead won’t follow us after that – they can’t cross water.’

  ‘Besides, General Plautius was adamant that we should be with him soon after midday tomorrow,’ Alienus reminded him. ‘We need to carry on for as long as we can, sir.’

  ‘You don’t like the sound of the Lost Dead, tribune?’

  Alienus hung his head. ‘Not overmuch, sir.’

  ‘Perhaps an encounter with them would toughen you up.’

  Alienus made
no reply.

  Sabinus glanced over his shoulder; he could, again, just see the end of their short column, as the fog seemed to be thinning somewhat. ‘Very well, we’ll press on, but not because of any fear of the dead but rather so as not to be late for the general.’ The truth was that the superstitious part of Sabinus’ mind feared the supernatural as much as the practical part feared the wrath of Plautius should he be kept waiting too long, so he was relieved that he had been able to retract his order in a face-saving manner. It would not do to have people think that he gave any credence to the many stories of the spirits and ghosts that were said to inhabit this strange island; but he did not like the sound of the Lost Dead and, even less, the thought of spending the night in their dominion. During his time on this northern isle he had heard many such stories, enough to believe there to be a grain of truth in at least some of them.

  Since the fall of Camulodunum and the surrender of the tribes in the southeast of Britannia, eighteen months previously, Sabinus had led the XIIII Gemina and its auxiliary cohorts steadily east and north. Plautius had ordered him to secure the central lowlands of the island whilst the VIIII Hispana headed up the east coast and Vespasian’s II Augusta fought its way west between the Tamesis and the sea. The XX Legion had been kept in reserve to consolidate the ground already won and ready to support any legion that found itself in trouble.

  It had been slow work as the tribes had learnt from the mistakes of Caratacus and his brother, Togodumnus, who had tried to take the legions head-on, soon after the initial invasion, and throw them back using their superior numbers; this tactic had failed disastrously. In two days, as they tried to halt the Roman advance at a river, the Afon Cantiacii, they had lost over forty thousand warriors including Togodumnus. This had crushed the Britons’ resolve in the southeastern corner of the island and most had capitulated soon after. Caratacus, however, had not. He had fled west with over twenty thousand warriors and had become a rallying point for all those who refused to accept Roman domination.

  A light breeze picked up, gusting east to west across their line of travel, swirling the mist and clearing a swathe off to Sabinus’ right. He pulled himself up in his saddle, feeling a relief that visibility had cleared, if only by a few score paces in one direction. He began to mutter a prayer to Mithras to shine his light through the gloom of this fog-bound island and help him to … he caught a fleeting glimpse out of the corner of his eye, he turned to look but it was gone, the wind sucked the mist back in and doubt clouded his mind as to whether it was a movement he had seen or it was just his imagination feeding off the tales of horror that were hard to banish from his head. The stories could never be unheard.

  During the two months that Plautius had been forced, for political reasons, to pause north of the Tamesis, waiting for the Emperor Claudius to arrive and take the credit and glory for the fall of Camulodunum, the XIIII Gemina had probed west along the river. It was at this time that Sabinus first began to hear reports from his officers of strange apparitions and unnatural occurrences: a legionary had been found, barely alive, flayed and yet still in uniform; his dying words had been of daemons that sucked the flesh from his limbs. Another had been found dead, drained of blood, and yet with no wound on his body or trace of the life-giving fluid seeping into the ground close by. Spectral figures in long, luminous robes that glowed with an unnatural fluorescence were sighted regularly, especially near to the mounds covering the tombs of the ancients and the many henges of both stone and wood that seemed to be, along with the sacred groves, centres for the Britons’ barbarous religion.

  At first Sabinus had put this down to the overactive imaginations of superstitious soldiers but, after Claudius’ departure, he led his legion further inland for the final month of the campaigning season and had felt something that he had never been aware of anywhere else. He could only describe it as an ancient presence. That – and the disembodied howls and cries that plagued their nights – had convinced him that there was a power here that he did not understand; a power that was linked to the land where, no matter how strongly he was protected by the light of his lord Mithras, he was an interloper.

  The following year they had carried on moving slowly inland, investing hill-forts one by one and fighting off raids on their supply lines and ambushes on their columns by Caratacus’ warriors. The further they went the greater grew his feeling of unease and it was almost with relief that he withdrew his legion back south to their winter quarters on the Tamesis at the end of that season. He had brought up the subject with Vespasian last month, when the legates had met with Plautius at Camulodunum to discuss the next season’s campaign, but his brother had dismissed his fears as soldiers’ yarns; and yet there had been a look in his eyes that had led Sabinus to believe that he too felt a similar unease.

  Sabinus tried to put his worries to one side as the column rode on slowly across the plain studded with tufts of rough grass. The breeze strengthened, shifting the fog, tugging it this way and that in wispy tendrils so that occasionally visibility improved enough to see the way ahead until, a few moments later, another gust would cause their view to be clouded again.

  To force his mind away from the superstitious depths that the eerie conditions had taken it to, Sabinus glanced sidelong at Alienus and studied him. He noticed a ruddiness to his cheeks and a certain stubbiness to his nose and, although his face was quite slender, he thought that his family must have some Celtic blood. That would explain his cognomen, Alienus: foreigner. But then, he reflected, what family from northern or, for that matter, central Italia did not? His own roundish face and bulbous nose could hardly be described as classically Latin. ‘Are your people from the north of Italia, Alienus?’

  ‘Hmm?’ The young tribune blinked his eyes as if emerging from a private reverie. ‘I’m sorry, sir, what did you say?’

  Sabinus repeated the question.

  ‘No, sir; I’m from the south coast of Britannia. I’m the grandson of Verica, King of the confederated tribes of the Atrebates and the Regni. My Britannic name is also Verica after my grandfather.’

  Sabinus was surprised. ‘Your Latin is excellent.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. My grandfather fled to Rome five years ago, after Caratacus had dispossessed him of his kingdom, and he took me with him. Like all Britannic princes in the south, I’d already had a good education in Latin and so I soon became fluent.’

  ‘And Claudius granted you citizenship?’

  ‘Yes, and equestrian rank. I took the name Tiberius Claudius and then added the cognomen Alienus because it amused me and so I became Roman as my grandfather wanted. General Plautius took me onto his staff as a favour to him so that I could begin to make my way up the various offices and perhaps even become a senator. I’d be the first Briton to do so.’

  Sabinus nodded his approval at this thoroughly Roman ambition. ‘I was sorry to hear of Verica’s death. Just last month, wasn’t it?’

  ‘He was old and expected to die; he had no regrets. He’d reclaimed his kingdom, been made a formal client-king of Rome and had ensured a strong heir in his nephew, Cogidubnus.’

  ‘Why not his grandson?’

  Alienus smiled. ‘He said I was too young, the people wouldn’t accept me and I understand that: how could a nineteen-year-old who hasn’t been seen by his people in five years rule? Cogidubnus is also seen as a man who stood up to Rome before he was subdued by her; I on the other hand am seen as a man who voluntarily joined Rome’s legions.’

  ‘So you’ll go to Rome after you’ve …’ A freshening gust cleared the fog around them, momentarily unveiling a burial mound not ten paces away to the left; the words died in Sabinus’ throat as the breeze blew the vapour back, shrouding the tomb once again but leaving its image burnt in his mind.

  Dark murmurs and muttering came from the column behind – clearly he had not been the only one to witness the ill-omened sight. When he glanced back he saw more than a few of the troopers had their thumbs clutched in their right hands and were spitting o
n the ground to avert the evil-eye. A barked order from decurion Atilius brought his men back to order but the damage to their already fragile morale was done and they cast nervous looks to either side as the thinning fog billowed around them, fearful as to what it might reveal next. Amongst the Romans only Alienus seemed unruffled by travelling so close to the mound, which struck Sabinus as odd seeing as he had shown a natural disinclination to remain too long in the vicinity of the Lost Dead.

  Another swirl in the fog, up ahead, drove that thought from Sabinus’ mind; his heart skipped a beat. A giant’s leg, solid and broad, appeared in their path as if the monster had taken a great step towards them and planted it there that instant – yet there had been no trembling of the earth and no booming report of the footstep. Then the second leg materialised through the miasma, equally silent. Shocked troopers hauled on their mounts’ reins, causing many to rear and whinny, shattering the silence. Sabinus looked up in alarm; the lower torso was becoming visible but above the waist was still lost in the fog. Another leg on either side emerged; there were at least three of the monstrosities lined against them.

  Sabinus drew his sword and glanced over his shoulder. ‘Atilius, form two lines. Stay together!’ he bellowed at his escort as panic mounted. Turning back to face the threat, he gasped; the breeze stiffened; more legs appeared to either side and they were all connected by one long lower abdomen that was not flesh and bone but stone – cut and shaped stone slabs of great magnitude. Sabinus realised that he was gazing at a henge, a stone henge; the biggest that he had seen.

  Calming his horse he turned to the guide to find him missing. ‘Shit! Alienus?’ He could see no sign of the young tribune either. Behind him the decurion was managing to restore some order amongst the troopers. Then, to his left, Sabinus glimpsed two horses galloping away through the mist; as they disappeared, spectral figures materialised, moving towards them, now visible, now not. He felt cold dread rise in his belly; that glimpse of movement had not been a figment of a wild imagination. He looked the other way; scores more of the ethereal shapes, indistinct in the eddying mist, seeming to glide over the veiled ground, were heading their way.