Douglas Jackson: Claudius

Narcissus put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Aemilia still believes we had a hand in her brother’s death, although we both know the blame, if blame there be, lies closer to home.’

Suddenly, the air lost its warmth. Rufus glanced up and noticed that the sun had slipped behind a silver-grey mountain of cloud. At first it was still bright beyond the fragile curtain, but he watched its power dim as it neared the centre of the huge mass. It reminded him of the light fading in Cupido’s eyes as he died in Aemilia’s arms.

Bersheba sensed the change in his mood and reached out to run the tip of her trunk over his face. The familiar touch of warm, wet flesh restored his humour and he absently patted her wrinkled cheek. ‘Why are we here?’

Narcissus didn’t answer directly. ‘Did you know it is less than a week until the Festival of Fortuna? In Rome, the gardeners will be preparing the flowers for the ceremonies, and the year’s new vintage will be almost ready to drink.’

Rufus shook his head. On the march one day merged into the next, one step into the next. But the question carried his mind back to his home, among the palaces and temples on the Palatine. The festival to the goddess of Fortune was the only one, apart, of course, from Saturnalia, he’d ever taken part in. His head had ached for three days afterwards.

‘Verica has been very useful to me,’ Narcissus continued, obliquely returning to the subject. ‘He has introduced me to his cousins, and his cousins’ cousins, his friends and their friends. Important men and utter nobodies. Clever men and fools. From them all, high or low, I have learned something of value; each, willing or otherwise, wishes to contribute to our cause. Do not mistake me: they hate Romans. But they hate their own countrymen more. In our presence they see opportunity; the chance for the restoration of the fortunes Caratacus and his Catuvellauni lords took from them when Verica was deposed. They will support us. But first they want to see if we can fight.’

Rufus stared at him. ‘The soldiers say the barbarians are great warriors who believe they cannot be killed.’

‘There is only one certainty, Rufus — war is coming and it will be hard and it will be bloody, for that is the nature of war. But I will tell you something you must divulge to no other. When we meet the enemy you will have an important task to fulfil. You and Bersheba will stand in the front rank of the army facing the countless host of our enemy and it is you who will know no fear. That is what I came here to tell you. There is a great service you can do for your Emperor. Can he trust you?’

Early the next evening the column camped on the edge of a forest, with the flank of the earthen fort protected by the sweeping bend of a wide, slow-moving river. When the ditch was dug and the guards were set, Rufus unshackled Bersheba and led her to an area of shallows a hundred yards downstream from the legion’s watering point. His body was chafed where his clothing had rubbed against skin caked in the salt sweat of an interminable, stifling hot day. When Bersheba waddled out into the stream with a trumpet of pleasure, he pulled his tunic off and followed her, settling languorously into the clear water until it reached his haunches.

He watched as Bersheba filled her trunk and curled the delicate tip to her mouth, gulping down gallons of water at a time. When she had drunk her fill she bent at the knees and flopped down, creating a wave that almost swept Rufus away, then rolled, scrubbing her back on the big pebbles of the river bottom. Her obvious delight made him laugh, and when she rose to her feet with all the grace of a queen finishing her morning bath, he called out to her. ‘Thank you, great Bersheba, monarch of all elephants, for as you frolic you save me work. You were so heavy with dust I feared I would have to wash you down with a bucket.’

Bersheba replied with a playful jet of water from her trunk that took him full in the chest with so much force that he lost his balance and ended submerged. He came up spluttering and it was a few moments before he noticed a vague figure through the damp curtain of his hair.

‘Narcissus assured me there would be fifty elephants. War elephants.’

Rufus swept the hair from his eyes and splashed to the bank where Verica stood. Bersheba remained in midstream spraying her wide back with river water over each shoulder in turn. Sometimes, when the fine droplets caught in the sun, she gave the illusion of blowing smoke from her trunk.

‘Narcissus often exaggerates,’ he said, as he carefully dried himself with his tunic. ‘Rome doesn’t fight with elephants, it fights with men; well-trained, well-armed and well-disciplined men. Legions.’ He and Narcissus had once discussed Bersheba’s potential as a weapon, a role which, fortunately, she had never been called on to carry out, and now he quoted the Greek’s words. ‘Elephants have never been part of the Roman order of battle. They are too ill-disciplined. They can be as dangerous to their friends as to their enemies.’

Verica eyed Bersheba doubtfully. Rufus guessed that he and the Briton were around the same age, in their early twenties, but where he was athletically slim, the Atrebate prince had a stocky warrior’s physique, and the ends of his long blond moustache flopped below the level of his chin.

‘I have heard stories of great victories. There was a general, Scipio, who fought with elephants?’

‘Borrowed elephants.’

Verica blinked. ‘Borrowed elephants?’

‘Yes. He borrowed them from a prince of the Indus, where they thrive, who loaned him little brown men to drive them and archers trained to fire from their backs.’ He didn’t know if it was true, but it sounded plausible. He had discovered that if he spoke confidently on the subject of elephants, however unlikely the claim, he was accepted as an expert. He had a vague memory of Narcissus spinning him a similar tale.

Verica looked at Bersheba wistfully. ‘I wish we had more elephants. It will take more than men to defeat Caratacus.’

‘You haven’t seen the legions fight,’ Rufus assured him, with more confidence than he felt. ‘Anyway, where is Narcissus? Shouldn’t you be with him?’

‘He is with the general,’ Verica said. ‘They are discussing the timetable for the return of my kingdom.’

Rufus thought this was unlikely, but decided it wasn’t worth arguing about. ‘I saw you once, in Rome. The first time you set eyes on Bersheba, you fell over.’

Verica gave him a look of irritation. ‘I wouldn’t have noticed you, a mere slave. I was a guest of the Emperor.’

The words ‘mere slave’ were meant to wound, but Rufus ignored the insult. It was true. He had been sold into slavery when he was six years old, by his father, a Spanish colonist who couldn’t feed a family of five from a few square yards of parched Mauritanian earth that produced more rocks than grain. He had been brought to Italy in the belly of a packed galley and counted himself fortunate that he had been bought by the family of Cerialis, a baker, and more fortunate still when he had passed into the ownership of the animal trainer Cornelius Aurius Fronto. The old man had sensed a talent in him he wasn’t aware he had: a talent to train animals for the arena. It had given him fame, of a kind, and it had led him inexorably into the clutches of Caligula. So, yes, he was a ‘mere slave’, but that didn’t make him any less of a man.

Verica mistook Rufus’s silence for disbelief. ‘It is true. I was in exile in Gaul when Narcissus heard of my plight. He summoned me to Rome to put my case to the Emperor. When I convinced them of the justice of my cause, Emperor Claudius vowed to create a mighty army to help me regain what was mine.’ The Briton’s voice held a faint hint of doubt, as if he didn’t quite believe the outcome himself, and Rufus decided this new, charitable Narcissus must be some kind of benign twin to the ruthless schemer he knew so well.