Adrian Goldsworthy - Vindolanda

‘Thank you,’ Ferox said. ‘Those men needed to be killed.’

The German shrugged, then walked his horse over and retrieved his spear. ‘The horses?’ he said. ‘They don’t need them any more.’

‘You can take three.’

Gannascus leaned down and offered his hand. ‘We go now.’

Ferox took it, and felt his hand being crushed. ‘Thank you. Send our greetings to the high king.’

The German shouted something and a couple of his men came to lead the horses away. Ferox saw them pick out Flaccus’ stallion, but did not stop them. Expensive though it was, there was no harm in letting it vanish along with its master.

Vindex had helped Crispinus to his feet and cut him free.

‘I guess we are all on the same side,’ the tribune said. He was bruised and bloodied, but his anger subsided when he saw Ferox’s expression. ‘Did you know all along that it was him?’ he asked.

‘I needed to be sure. You could not have been at the tower and out hunting with Cerialis on the day of the ambush, so that was in your favour. When he didn’t ask questions and just let me order your arrest and death I thought that he must have a lot to hide. The threat of the witness made him nervous.’

‘What if he was merely stupid?’

‘That was a risk I had to take, my lord.’

‘ You had to take!’ Crispinus rubbed his sore wrists. His tongue flicked out to touch his cut mouth. He spat and there was blood in it.

‘Well, I could have just killed you both to be sure.’ Ferox patted his sword against his trousers. ‘If you like, I still can.’

‘Thank you, centurion, that will not be necessary. And your oath to my father?’

‘Still binds me. Unless it clashes with the one to the princeps.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me your plan?’ The tribune stared at the corpses all around them. ‘I guessed something was up. That’s why I babbled all that about Trajan not lasting the year. I could have helped more if I’d known what was going on.’

‘Was not sure I could trust you, my lord. Might have been hard for you to act surprised. This way it was natural and you were very convincing.’ Ferox rubbed his knuckles and smiled. ‘You take a punch well.’

Crispinus shook his head and did not seem to know what to say.

‘Do you want to bury this lot?’ Vindex did not sound enthusiastic at the prospect.

‘Leave ’em.’ Ferox waved to Gannascus as he and his warriors trotted away. ‘Now our protection has gone we had better not hang around. Let’s take his head and go. Do you want to do it, my lord?’

Crispinus found his sword and walked over to the pale corpse of the priest. He flexed his sword arm, looked down for a while and then stopped. ‘I am not sure how to do it.’

Ferox grabbed the body by its limed hair and hauled it up so that the dead priest was sitting. The body was no longer stiff, but it felt heavy and clumsy. He knew that the fighting would have taken the best edge off his sword and wished that he had an axe. It took three cuts using all his strength to do the job, and they were all flecked with dark blood, even after all the wounds the man had received during his slow death.

‘There you are. A keen edge and a strong arm,’ Ferox said. ‘They solve a lot of life’s problems.’

‘Not all,’ Crispinus replied. ‘Not the ones that really matter.’

Vindex brought a sack and he dropped the head into it and tied it up.

‘We had better move,’ Ferox said. ‘That is, with your permission, my lord.’

‘Of course, centurion.’

They mounted, Vindex taking the reins of the three spare horses.

Crispinus turned in the saddle, looking at the tree and the bodies of the Romans surrounding the priest. ‘I am just glad that it is all over at last.’

Ferox thought about the sacrifice of a triple death, of the power that brought to the great druid who had hallowed this offering to the gods. If the Stallion was beaten and dead, the druid Acco was still at large, stronger than ever, and there was an ambitious and clever king in the north, and more traitors in the army, at least one who was senior and had given Flaccus his orders. Trajan was not yet secure, and from all Ferox heard showed no sign of leaving the frontier armies and heading to Rome.

‘Over, my lord? It’s only beginning.’

Claudia Severa to her Lepidina greetings. On 11 September, sister, for the day of the celebration of my birthday, I give you a warm invitation to make sure that you come to us, to make the day more enjoyable for me by your arrival, if you are present [?]. Give my greetings to your Cerialis. My Aelius and my little son send him [?] their greetings. [ 2nd hand ] I shall expect you, sister. Farewell, sister, my dearest soul, as I hope to prosper, and hail. [ Back, 1st hand ] To Sulpicia Lepidina, wife of Cerialis, from Severa.

This text excavated at the fort of Vindolanda was the spark that first inspired this story. It was written around the turn of the first to second centuries AD, and the second hand in the text was surely that of Claudia Severa herself, adding a personal touch to the invitation. This makes it the first surviving piece of writing by a woman in the history of Britain. The original text, written in ink on a thin wooden writing tablet, can be seen today in the British Museum.

We will talk more about Vindolanda and the texts discovered there in a moment, but it was this glimpse of something as routine as a birthday party in a frontier zone on the edge of the Roman Empire that made me want to create a story around it and bring that time and place to life. Vindolanda is a novel, and much of the story is invented because we know very little about what was really happening in northern Britain at this time. However, given that I have spent my adult life studying the Roman world and the Roman army in particular, I have done my best to place the story in as accurate a setting as possible.

Ferox and Vindex are inventions, although a later tombstone records a Brigantian soldier in the Roman army who was the son of someone named Vindex and in my imagination this is our man. Many of the other characters are also inventions, or people about whom little more is known than their names. Sulpicia Lepidina, Claudia Severa and Flavius Cerialis appear in other texts, but even so are only a little less shadowy. I have done my best to invent nothing that clashes with what we do know about them, but as characters they are essentially fictional. The same is true of the other people plucked from the texts found at Vindolanda.

Much more detail on the historical background can be found on my website – www.adriangoldsworthy.com – which also includes suggestions for further reading. In the meantime, it is worth looking at a few topics.

The story occurs at the start of the reign of Trajan, whose successor Hadrian came to Britain and ordered the construction of Hadrian’s Wall around the year AD 122. Our sources have little to say about major events in Britain under Trajan, although there is talk of major conflict, which may well have prompted the decision to build the Wall. The fort at Vindolanda (modern Chesterholm) lies a few miles south and within sight of the Wall and clearly was incorporated within the network of garrisons serving it. Much of our story takes place in what would become Wall country.