Colleen McCullough: 5. Caesar

The roast goose looked imminent when the army reached its main camp behind that long, sandy beach. Unfortunately Cassivellaunus had other ideas. With what he had left of his own Cassi, he went the rounds of the Cantii and the Regni, the two tribes who lived south of the Tamesa, and marshaled another army. But attacking this camp was to break the Briton hand against a stone wall. The Briton horde, all on foot, bared naked chests to the defenders atop the fortifications and were picked off by javelins like so many targets lined up on a drill field. Nor had the Britons yet learned the lesson the Gauls had: when Caesar led his men out of the camp to fight hand to hand, the Britons stayed to be cut down. For they still adhered to their ancient traditions, which said that a man who left a field of defeat alive was an outcast. That tradition had cost the Belgae on the mainland fifty thousand wasted lives in one battle. Now the Belgae abandoned the field the moment defeat was imminent, and lived to fight again another day. Cassivellaunus sued for peace, submitted, and signed the treaty Caesar demanded. Then handed over hostages. It was the end of November by the calendar, the beginning of autumn by the seasons. The evacuation began, but after a personal inspection of each of some seven hundred ships, Caesar decided it would have to be in two parts. "Something over half the fleet is in good condition," he said to Hirtius, Trebonius, Sabinus, Quintus Cicero and Atrius. "We'll put all the cavalry, all the baggage animals save for the century mules, and two of the legions on board that half, and send it to Portus Itius first. Then the ships can come back empty and pick up me and the last three legions." With him he kept Trebonius and Atrius; the other legates were ordered to sail with the first fleet. "I'm pleased and flattered to be asked to stay," Trebonius said, watching those three hundred and fifty ships pushed down into the water. These were the vessels Caesar had ordered specially built along the Liger River and then sent out into the open ocean to do battle with the two hundred and twenty solid-oak sailing ships of the Veneti, who thought the Roman vessels ludicrous with their oars and their flimsy pine hulls, their low prows and poops. Toy boats for sailing on a bathtub sea, easy meat. But it hadn't worked out that way at all. While Caesar and his land army picnicked atop the towering cliffs to the north of the mouth of the Liger and watched the action like spectators in the Circus Maximus, Caesar's ships produced the fangs Decimus Brutus and his engineers had grown during that frantic winter building the fleet. The leather sails of the Veneti vessels were so heavy and stout that the main shrouds were chain rather than rope; knowing this, Decimus Brutus had equipped each of his more than three hundred ships with a long pole to which were fixed a barbed hook and a set of grapples. A Roman ship would row in close to a Veneti ship and maneuver alongside, whereupon its crew would tilt their pole, tangle it among the Veneti shrouds, then sprint away under oar power. Down came the Veneti sails and masts, leaving the vessel helpless in the water. Three Roman ships would then surround it like terriers a deer, board it, kill the crew and set fire to it. When the wind fell, Decimus Brutus's victory became complete. Only twenty Veneti ships had escaped. Now the specially low sides with which these ships had been built came in very handy. It wasn't possible to load animals as skittish as horses aboard before the ships were pushed into the water, but once they were afloat and held still in the water, long broad gangplanks connected each ship's side with the beach, and the horses were run up so quickly they had no time to take fright. "Not bad without a dock," said Caesar, satisfied. "They'll be back tomorrow, then the rest of us can leave." But tomorrow dawned in the teeth of a northwesterly gale which didn't disturb the waters off the beach very much, but did prevent the return of those three hundred and fifty sound ships. "Oh, Trebonius, this land holds no luck for me!" cried the General on the fifth day of the gale, scratching the stubble on his face fiercely. "We're the Greeks on the beach at Ilium," said Trebonius. Which remark seemed to make up the General's mind; he turned cold pale eyes upon his legate. "I am no Agamemnon," he said through his teeth, "nor will I stay here for ten years!" He turned and shouted. "Atrius!" Up ran his camp prefect, startled. "Yes, Caesar?" "Will the nails hold in what we have left here?" "Probably, in all except about forty." "Then we'll use this northwest wind. Sound the bugles, Atrius. I want everyone and everything on board all but the about forty." "They won't fit!" squeaked Atrius, aghast. "We'll pack 'em in like salt fish in a barrel. If they puke all over each other, too bad. They can all go for a swim in full armor once we reach Portus Itius. We'll sail the moment the last man and the last ballista are aboard." Atrius swallowed. "We may have to leave some of the heavy equipment behind," he said in a small voice. Caesar raised his brows. "I am not leaving my artillery or my rams behind, nor am I leaving my tools behind, nor am I leaving one soldier behind, nor am I leaving one noncombatant behind, nor am I leaving one slave behind. If you can't fit them all in, Atrius, I will." They were not hollow words, and Atrius knew it. He also knew that his career depended upon his doing something the General could and would do with complete efficiency and astonishing speed. Quintus Atrius protested no more, but went off instead to sound the bugles. Trebonius was laughing. "What's so funny?" asked Caesar coldly. No, not the time to share this joke! Trebonius sobered in an instant. "Nothing, Caesar! Nothing at all." The decision had been made about an hour after the sun came up; all day the troops and noncombatants labored, loading the stoutest ships with Caesar's precious artillery, tools, wagons and mules on the beach. The men waited until the ships were pushed into the choppy sea, doing the pushing themselves, then scrambled aboard up rope ladders. The normal load for one ship was a piece of artillery or some engineer's device, four mules, one wagon, forty soldiers and twenty oarsmen; but with eighteen thousand soldiers and noncombatants as well as four thousand assorted slaves and sailors, today's loads were much heavier. "Isn't it amazing?" asked Trebonius of Atrius as the sun went down. "What?" asked the camp prefect, knees trembling. "He's happy. Oh, whatever grief he bears is still there, but he's happy. He's got something impossible to do." "I wish he'd let them go as soon as they're loaded!" "Not he! He came as a fleet and he'll go as a fleet. When all those highborn Gauls in Portus Itius see him sail in, they'll see a man in absolute command. Let the bulk of his army limp in a few ships at a time? Not he! And he's right, Atrius. We have to show the Gauls that we're better at everything." Trebonius looked up at the pinkening sky. "We'll have three-quarters of a waning moon tonight. He'll leave when he's ready, no matter what the hour." A good prediction. At midnight Caesar's ship put out into the heaving blackness of a following sea, the lamps on its stern and mast twinkling beacons for the other ships to follow as they swung into a swelling teardrop behind him. Caesar leaned on the stern rail atop the poop between the two professionals who guided the rudder oars, and watched the myriad firefly lights spreading across the impenetrable darkness of the ocean. Vale Britannia. I will not miss you. But what lies out there in the great beyond, where no man has ever sailed? This is no little sea; this is a mighty ocean. This where the great Neptune lives, not within the bowl of Our Sea. Maybe when I am old and I have done all that my blood and power demand, I shall take one of those solid-oak Veneti ships, hoist its leather sails and go into the West to follow the path of the sun. Romulus was lost in the ignobility of the Goat Swamps on the Campus Martius, yet when he didn't come home, they thought he had been taken into the realm of the Gods. But I will sail into the mists of forever, and they will know I have been taken into the realm of the Gods. My Julia is there. The people knew. They burned her in the Forum and placed her tomb among the heroes. But first I must do all that my blood and power demand.