Winter Quarters, page 19
‘It is good, and I am glad to take my part in it. I am here to make the corn grow and the vines ripen. Someone must do it. If it wasn’t done all Syria would starve. The Triple Goddess, Maid-Bride-Queen, chose me from all the women of Antioch. In my dream it was quite clear.’
‘Do you think you may have been mistaken, that your dream came from drugs alone, not from the Goddess? Would you like to leave, now that you know what it is like to worship in Daphne? If you wish, you may come with me to Gaul, where no one will know what has happened. Do not fear the guards at the gate. The Raven here, and Camul’s Mare, will see you past them.’
‘Thank you,’ she answered mechanically, a little girl remembering her party manners. ‘But I am here to do what I must do. I have been specially chosen, and that is a great honour.’ Then she smiled, and someone older than Berenice seemed to be smiling through her lips. ‘Acco, come to me. Come and worship the Bride – and with you I too shall have pleasure.’
‘That is impossible, lady. I grant you your Goddess has power, but worship her in act or thought I never have and never shall. Since you are here of your own free will I shall leave you to your religious observances.’
He made a rigid right-about turn, as though on parade, and marched stiffly back by the way we had come. Nicanor and I stumbled after him.
Not a word was spoken until we were outside Daphne. The guards insisted that we leave singly, fearing that one of us was being carried off by the others against his will. Their duty is to ensure that Daphne remains an asylum; not to keep men out, but to protect those whom the magistrates wish to remove. We had no spirit to argue with them, and submitted quietly.
At the tavern across the road, while we waited for hired litters, Nicanor spoke at last. ‘Renegade Roman soldiers murdered my sister Berenice. We found her body and buried it, secretly but with all due rites. That is what I shall tell my father, and the council of Antioch. You have been my guests. You must tell the same story.’
‘We shall tell the same story,’ I answered. ‘We shall tell it once, to the city council; and then never speak the name of Berenice again. Do you agree, Acco?’
‘Eh, what’s that? I agree, of course. Anything you suggest. I am sure you know best. Could we order some breakfast while they find bearers for the litters? Do you know, I feel quite hungry.’
We returned with our thoughts, each alone in the seclusion of a one-man litter. Nicanor stopped at his father’s house, but we went on to the camp. As we entered our hut Acco said to me quietly:
‘The Goddess is a subtle enemy. She hunts more than my life, she hunts also my honour. But I remain her foe. I shall never serve her.’
As he pulled back the covers of his bed he added in a musing voice: ‘Poor Berenice.’
Then he instantly fell asleep. I stayed awake longer, for I could not rid my mind of the picture of Acco as I had seen him at that other Daphne, with the dead dove in his hand.
I never heard Acco speak of Berenice again.
6. The Desert Road
We had two days’leave remaining, and after that the whole army was given a holiday in honour of the spring festival; so poor Acco could stay in our hut to recover from his shock. He was dazed, as though from a physical blow. But on the fourth day he dressed and came out with me for a stroll in the plain by the river. I was relieved to see he was no longer in an agony of grief.
The truth is that he had never loved Berenice herself. An experienced warrior could not make a companion of a half-grown girl whose chief interest was in religion; she was gawky and ungraceful, and so desperately serious. What Acco had loved was the memory of Grane and of his own youth; he saw that youth reflected in Berenice, but any other mirror would have done as well.
Besides, he was angry, and anger allays sorrow. He thought more of his injuries inflicted by the Goddess than of the plight of her latest victim. As we walked by the river-side, feeling warm sunshine on our shoulders, he did not speak of what must be happening in the Grove of Daphne.
But once again the Goddess thrust her presence on us. We turned our backs on the great city whose gates we would not enter; but those gates stood open, and a throng of women passed the camp on their way to the river. In these parts the spring festival is named after Adonis, a handsome youth killed in the bloom of his beauty. The women mourn him with elaborate ritual, a ritual which shows him to be, in fact, the necessary but doomed consort of the Goddess; though some Greeks, in their preoccupation with male beauty, think of him only as a desirable boy. The women came down to the river to fill trays with a layer of mud; in this they would plant quick-growing seeds, which sprout and wither within a few days. As they withered the women would mourn for Adonis. There is nothing secret in this ritual, no mystery, and you may interpret it for yourselves.
‘Perhaps the Goddess makes the corn grow, and perhaps it would grow without her,’ said Acco, as we watched a prosperous matron direct her maids in the filling of a handsome copper dish. ‘My masters the Druids pay her no honour, yet Gaul seldom goes hungry. She demands blood, and the better she is served the stronger she becomes. I shall never serve her. You, Camul, must never serve her. Perhaps as her worship diminishes so will her strength. She is entirely evil.’
‘Is it necessary to say that out loud, while her votaries prepare their greatest festival of the year?’ I asked. ‘We have come to a land where she rules more openly than in the west, and we are about to ride on a dangerous campaign. Need we remind her that we are her foes?’
‘I am her foe, not you. She will not forget me just because I keep silent. Honour compels me to defy her openly.’
‘Then there’s no room for persuasion. Your honour must, of course, come first. All the same, if we are to fight worthily against the Parthians we must turn our thoughts to war. Let’s get away from these silly mud-pies and look over our horses.’
Acco’s obsession was never out of his mind; but he was a trained soldier who could keep his thoughts in compartments. As we walked through the horse-lines he talked of war and stable-management as though he had no other problems in the world.
It was late in April, and the army was nearly ready to set out. All seven legions were concentrated at Antioch, thirty thousand foot; and we had more cavalry than the average Roman army, about six thousand in all. But of these only a thousand were Gauls, trained long-service volunteers who had followed Publius Crassus for the last three years, men so integrated into the Roman army that we might ourselves be reckoned Roman soldiers. The rest were Arabs serving under their own leaders. They followed the Arab method of fighting, which is nearly all show. These men ride magnificently, and their charge can look very menacing; but they never push it home. They will not risk death for a soldier’s wage, though in their private quarrels they are brave enough.
Since there were no trustworthy horse to be hired locally, a great responsibility fell on us Gauls. Romans refuse to take cavalry seriously, and in action we were only supposed to line up on each wing because that had been the custom in civilised battles since as long as anyone could remember. But an army always needs mounted messengers. If our general wanted to send a despatch only Gallic horse could be trusted to deliver it, instead of selling it to the nearest enemy agent. Whatever the war, Syria is always full of enemy agents.
Our Gauls could not carry out their important duties unless they were well mounted; and Acco and I were responsible for the condition of their mounts. But in a Roman army, keeping horses fit is largely a matter of conscientious supervision. So long as we inspected the horse-lines every day, and made the men ride exercise, all went well. Forage, physic, and bandages were always forthcoming when we asked for them, and the farriers were expert in their craft.
In the Roman service, headquarters supplies the necessities of life. Cassius Longinus, our chief quartermaster, was a sardonic, bad-tempered man, unpopular with his underlings; but he understood his business, and worked hard. He himself took a commission on all goods supplied, or so it was generally believed; but he allowed no one else to steal, and his department worked smoothly.
Marcus Crassus, the Imperator, had made his name as a financier, though many years ago he had conquered an army of rebel slaves in Italy. He was proud of the great expedition now entrusted to him, and instead of making a profit out of its supplies he bought us extras with his own money. The whole force was exceptionally well-found. Even Romans remarked on it; to Gauls and Greeks, in fact to all the auxiliaries, it was a novel experience to find plentiful food, warm clothing, medical attention and dry billets all provided without anyone having to look for them. So long as we drilled and took our turn of guard duty there was no other work to waste our time.
We Gauls have no cavalry tactics, except to gallop up to the foe and hit him over the head with a sword. But the Romans follow numerous theories, in which we had been thoroughly trained during our long ride. They lay great stress on keeping all the horse in line, to guard the flanks of the foot; and they hold it a serious crime to charge before the order has been given. We were now accustomed to riding knee to knee, and to remaining halted until told to advance; when taking ground we never galloped, for fear the men should get out of hand and charge on their own. At drill we kept silence in the ranks, to hear the orders of our commander; though in my opinion it is absurd to expect Gallic nobles to remain silent when they hear the enemy’s war-cries. On the parade-ground we moved like veteran Romans, so that a stranger might have taken us for brothers of the legionaries.
Our equipment by this time was mostly Roman. Acco and I had kept our Gallic weapons, as we had kept the horses we brought to the army. But the Romans, who like uniformity in the appearance of their troops, were generous in replacing damaged swords or worn-out clothing. When our men discovered that they could get regulation cloaks and issue swords for the asking, many of them sold their handsome Gallic outfits or gave them to their sweethearts. On our last parade before the march, at the end of April, our ranks looked like Romans on horseback. Nearly all had plain Roman steel caps, Roman cuirasses, and short two-edged Roman swords. Only the officers kept to the weapons and dress of their ancestors, gay feathered helmets, bronze-hilted longswords, fluttering cloaks and bright enamelled shields; but all were distinguished from Romans by their thick trousers. Or we would have been distinguished, if some mounted Roman officers had not adopted our dress. Apparently their ancestral custom was to ride in the linen drawers they wear for fighting on foot. No wonder the Romans have never taken kindly to mounted warfare.
Acco and I took pride in our exotic appearance. We still dressed completely as Gallic nobles of high rank, though our trousers and shoes had, of course, been made locally as copies of worn-out originals. We attracted attention, which is the object of Gallic war-dress; though Roman veterans hold that on the battlefield a man should look like all his neighbours unless he wants to receive more than his share of arrows. Because we caught the eye, and because we also held responsible rank, we were assigned to the ceremonial escort of young Publius; and occasionally to the escort of the Imperator himself, if he wished to make an unusually splendid show.
It was while acting as escort that we saw our first Parthian warriors. When the army was concentrating in Antioch an embassy from the King of the Parthians appeared before the camp.
There was really nothing to be discussed. Even if the Parthian king offered to live in peace with the Roman People, we would still advance into their land; we were determined to plunder Seleucia. The Imperator therefore decided to receive the envoys in public audience, where the Syrians could see and hear all that passed and be suitably impressed by the power and majesty of Rome. High words were bound to come from such an encounter, and the war would move more briskly.
Outside the main gate of the camp a platform was set up, and on it a throne for the Imperator: the sacred chair inlaid with ivory that was an emblem of his rank. The platform was shaded by a purple awning, supported on slender gilt poles terminating in spearheads. A sanded path led to it; and gleaming white railings, decked with purple streamers, kept the crowd at a respectful distance. All this was run up in a few hours by carpenters from the theatre of Antioch, who are skilled in the construction of such gimcrack settings. I heard some legionaries mutter that all this splendour was meretricious and un-Roman; but we were far from Rome.
At the back of the platform were massed the Eagles of seven legions. Before the Eagles stood a group of senior officers, both staff and bodyguard to the Imperator. They wore cuirasses made of many thicknesses of glued linen, moulded to form flat stomachs and brawny chests which hardly fitted the wrinkled wary faces above. All the same, these were warriors of the Roman breed; many were too grand or too cunning to fight sword in hand in the front rank, but all had braved the axe of the executioner or the dagger of the assassin during long years of a successful political career.
The centre and focus of this array of polished steel, winking gold, and nodding horsehair, was the sacred curule chair, where a figure at once flabby and scrawny sat with uneasy dignity. Marcus Crassus, our Imperator, was not looking his best. As a fashionable Roman he had felt obliged to sample all the curious delights of Syria, and at the same time he had been very busy with administration and diplomacy. His face bore the strained expression of the deaf, and his wrinkled neck sagged with age; his belly protruded, and the sunburned thighs above the chased and gilded greaves seemed unhealthily fat. Besides its main crest of purple horsehair his helmet bore two auxiliary crests jutting out over his ears; its peak was formed of dolphins in high relief, and the cheek-guards bore naked winged boys. Between the herculean breasts of his cuirass a jewelled gorgon-mask fended off the Evil Eye, and the hilt of his sword was so encrusted with pearls that no hand could hold it firmly in battle. The general effect was at once revolting and pitiful; you felt that an unhappy old man, who could yet do good service as a councillor, had been persuaded against his better judgement to hide himself behind this parody of warlike vigour.
Below the lofty platform a score of picked Gauls sat on well-trained motionless chargers. Of course I was one of them, since my armour and horse-furniture were second only to Acco’s in the whole army. I was placed rather to one side, where I could see the Imperator out of the corner of my eye while still keeping my head to the front; and I could hear everything. We well-mounted, well-dressed, well-armed Gauls saved the dignity of the scene. I have often noticed that Romans, who look well in plain woollens or plain armour, cannot wear gold or gems without appearing hopelessly vulgar; I suppose because they have usually stolen their wealth. But we wore the adornments of our hereditary rank, heirlooms which denoted the splendour of our ancestry, because it had been designed for men like us, and because we wore it proudly knowing that it was ours by right, our costume made us noble where the Romans seemed ostentatious.
Outside the painted wooden railings were massed the citizens of Antioch and a crowd of soldiers off duty. There were no large formed bodies of Roman foot, for it had been decided that anything like a show of force would be unfitting for the reception of an envoy. Besides, no foreigner needs to be shown the Roman army, the fame of its deeds is spread all over the world.
The proceedings began with the entry of a Greek herald, bearing his staff of office. After commanding silence he delivered an oration in the Greek tongue, which I could not understand. I gathered that he was introducing the Parthian envoy, and describing his rank; the word Surenas cropped up more than once, and a stir travelled through the stiff ranks of the Roman guard as we realised that we were about to meet the most famous warrior in Parthia.
Then I felt Starlight twitch and quiver with excitement; he broke out into a sweat, and I could sense fear in the other Gallic horses. But not one broke rank, after more than two years of Roman training. Towards us, along the sanded path, came the footsteps of a great beast. Without turning my head I swivelled my eyes to the left.
No wonder my horse was astonished and frightened! When the envoy advanced fully into my field of vision I in my turn shuddered in amazement.
The horse he rode seemed more like some heroic statue from a Greek temple than an ordinary beast of flesh and blood. He was a full eighteen hands high, probably more; yet his legs were on the whole short for that mighty body. Much of his barrel was hidden by a fringed and tasselled saddlecloth, but behind it his huge quarters heaved with a steady motion suggestive of great power in reserve. His neck also was veiled by a silken housing, under which it loomed thicker than a bull’s. He had been trained to raise his forelegs and bring them down firmly; indeed his vast weight made such action natural. If that was a horse, then what I rode was some different animal.
When I could tear my gaze from this astonishing beast I looked at the rider. He seemed a young, slight figure; though he wore so much armour that it was hard to make out his body. A long leather coat, covered with overlapping metal scales, rose from his shoulders to form a hood under the helmet. This coat divided at the waist, and then fell to his calves; I could see that below it his thighs were naked, though his feet and ankles were protected by high mailed boots. That was a point to be remembered; Parthian warriors wore a great deal of armour, and the place to strike at was the thigh.
The mail hood was laced close round the rider’s neck, and his brow was covered by a lofty helmet. Little of his face could be seen, but what appeared was beardless and youthful. A broad baldric on his shoulder supported a massive double-edged sword in a leather scabbard, and on his left arm was a round leather shield. In his right hand, guarded by a mail gauntlet, he bore a heavy lance, as big as a young tree; from it fluttered a yellow silk pennon, ending in a fork like the tongue of a snake. This young man must be one of the chiefs of the Parthians; for his equipment, and that stupendous horse, were worth a fortune.
Behind him rode three lesser men, in short tunics and padded trousers. Their horses were of the ordinary size, and they themselves were armed with light sabres; at their saddles hung on one side a large quiver, on the other a curved bow in a case. These were the horse-bowmen whose tactics we had been trained to meet. With their bows cased they looked like any other light horse, and I returned my attention to their leader.
