Adrian Goldsworthy - Vindolanda

‘The barbarians have gone.’

‘And we were assured that there was no great risk on the road,’ the prefect’s wife told him. Ferox wondered at the relationship between them. He guessed that Cerialis was a few years younger than his wife and perhaps that explained his willingness to defer to her. She was right to be cautious. He would expect raiders to flee once soldiers began to chase them, but this band had already done things that surprised him. On the other hand, he hoped that they would stop her from going too close. She may have seen some of the fighting, but that was not the same thing as looking in the cold light at the aftermath of a skirmish. The dead were rarely pretty.

By the time they reached the place they had met with more Batavian troopers, as well as a detachment of forty riders from the ala at Coria. Another party of legionaries with a mule convoy were at the ambush site, clearing up, so that there was little to see save rows of bodies neatly arranged, the dead Batavians covered with blankets.

‘Our poor raedula ,’ Cerialis said, shaking his head at the sight of the carriage, one door hanging off and the wood scarred by arrows and from the fall. The legionaries had lifted it upright again. Two of the mules were dead and the other pair taken, but the soldiers unloaded some of their own beasts to provide a new team. Ferox found it odd to hear a grown man using a diminutive. The coach was a bit smaller than a normal four-wheeled raeda , but it was the sort of expression he expected from a woman trying to be charming.

One of the Batavians had escaped after charging the British horsemen. He was cut across the face, his helmet dented and cheek piece broken off, but he had ridden through them, so was able to tell his prefect what had happened. To Ferox’s surprise, the man said that another of the troopers had survived. ‘Longinus was thrown and knocked out cold. His horse rolled on top of him and he’s badly bruised, but nothing seems to be broken, and he should be all right.’

The one-eyed, grey-bearded cavalryman was sitting up, drinking from a wineskin. Half the army was called Longinus, and it made Ferox wonder whether Batavian parents gave their sons military names because so many were destined to serve.

The man reporting to Cerialis seemed very relieved, even though two survivors from twelve was not many. Six of the bodies had been beheaded and another hacked about the head, arms and body so badly that it had not been worth taking a trophy. One of the corpses had its trousers pulled down and a dark patch of dried blood showed where the man had been castrated. Swords, armour, helmets and other weapons had all been taken, but nothing else, which suggested that the attackers had not had much time. A patrol from Coria, with the mule convoy close behind, had arrived less than half an hour after the attack, making the raiders leave in a hurry. They left behind five of their own, including the two Ferox had killed in the gully and another man also with a stallion tattooed on his forehead. Each of the three men’s left hands was marked with a raven, wings folded. Ferox and Vindex exchanged glances, but said nothing. Claudius Super had already scoffed when Ferox suggested that the heavily tattooed leader of the ambush was some sort of priest or druid. According to the senior centurion, Ferox was starting at shadows, just trying to cover up his own failure.

‘If only you had given the alarm earlier, none of this might have happened,’ Claudius Super told Ferox.

‘If my wife had not left later than planned,’ Cerialis cut in, ‘then it would have been a damned sight worse. There is no blame, and much praise for the centurion’s quick thinking and brave actions.’

Claudius Super did not look convinced. Crispinus said nothing and just watched. As the son of a senator, and someone who would within a few years be enrolled in the Senate, he was a far more important man than anyone here and could speak or be silent as he wished. Ferox had the sense that he was watching and thinking. At the moment the centurion was too busy to worry, and too tired to work out where he had encountered the man’s father, for it seemed an unlikely claim for the young man to have invented. Claudius Super was right about one thing – the alarm had been late, and men had died because of that. Women might have died too, or been raped and carried off. The fear about what had so nearly happened gnawed at him.

Ferox blamed himself for not listening to Vindex sooner, but even after that something was wrong. He had sent Victor to the tower, knowing him to be reliable and well mounted. The man should have reached the watchtower and the beacon been lit a good half-hour before the signal had gone up. Something was very wrong – yet another thing to add to the others that he did not understand.

‘Fire and sword!’ Claudius Super shouted the words angrily when someone told him about the castrated cavalryman. ‘That’s all these animals understand and it’s all we should ever give them!’

Ferox let him rant, for he was busy searching for arrows and had only managed to find one, hidden in the grass and broken off six inches from the head. He felt the tip. It was not iron, or even bronze, but bone of some sort, narrow and carefully sharpened. The archers must have picked up the missiles they had used, even the damaged ones, and taken them away to repair. A legionary, seeing him looking, produced a second stump.

‘Thank you.’ This one was iron, similar in shape, so that all the power was behind the narrow pointed head. Ferox had never seen ones like this, and remembered the great force behind them as they had gone past or struck the carriage.

One turma from Coria had already gone north after the raiders. Cerialis decided to take thirty of his men to join the chase, while Crispinus and the rest escorted his wife back to Vindolanda. The prefect took Claudius Super with him, ‘to make use of his experience’, and Ferox doubted that it was concern for their fatigue that prevented either of them from asking or ordering Vindex to go as well. Well, let them chase. He doubted that they would catch anyone and was more concerned to ride to the watchtower and find out what why it had taken them so long to fire the beacon.

They rode west, the sun low in the sky, turning the clouds pink and gold ahead of them. Vindex had kept his hat through all the day and Ferox was glad to have it back and shade his eyes from the dazzling light. A dozen big Batavians went ahead of the carriage, with another twenty bringing up the rear. The lady rode bareback, having given the coach to the two wounded troopers and her maid – the latter briefly reluctant to be confined in the car with two soldiers, however enfeebled by injury. The legionaries had taken the loose door off rather than let it hang, so her mistress had persuaded her that it was safe. Whenever Sulpicia Lepidina passed one of the Batavians he raised hand to forehead and then touched it over his heart. Ferox could see that they were devoted to her, no doubt helped by her kindness to their comrades, especially the one-eyed veteran Longinus.

For a while she rode alongside the carriage, talking to her maid and the injured men. Crispinus kept two lengths behind, still saying nothing to Ferox and Vindex as they followed. After a while the lady laughed, throwing her head back so that her long hair shook. Most of the soldiers grinned even though they had no idea of the source of her mirth. Soon afterwards she wheeled her horse around and came back, acknowledging Crispinus with a nod but passing him. Much to Ferox’s amazement she turned the mare again to fall in alongside him.

‘My lady,’ he said, dipping his head and trying to avoid her gaze. He felt shabby and brutish alongside this golden woman, and deeply uncomfortable as she rode in silence next to him.