The Poisoned Throne: Tintagel Book II Read online

  ‘I refuse to die in this pissant dung-pile at the end of the known world,’ he snarled until his words were passed onwards to every man in his force. ‘We are fucking Romans, and we’re proud to have been suckled by the She-wolf. My soldiers will not be defeated by bare-arsed savages with painted faces.’

  A weak cheer was raised from the men around him, but Constantinus simply grimaced.

  ‘We are Romans!’ he yelled again in a louder voice. ‘We don’t run from anyone, regardless of how many of these blue-faced bastards are lined up against us.’

  The responding cheer was louder this time, so Constantinus took the opportunity to scream the same words in their own tongue toward the Pictish warriors who were splashing around in the swamp, although the barbarians responded with catcalls and obscene gestures. Some of them had already been dragged down into the sucking sands after the Romans had pushed them away from their safe bastion, while a number of others had exhausted themselves when they tried to find some purchase on the firmer patches of ground. As Constantinus had hoped, the murderous swamp had killed scores of Picts before they had reached his defensive positions. Even more were to meet their deaths as they desperately tried to settle into their combat formations and join battle with the legionnaires. His fighting words were intended to antagonise the enemy rather than inspire his own men, who knew that angry men make mistakes – and sometimes reckless decisions.

  The hours seemed to lengthen as the barbarians threw themselves against the slowly contracting Tortoise formation, but the Picts had been forced to absorb up to ten times the losses inflicted on the trained legionnaires whose weapons had been designed for confrontations such as this. The Roman gladius, or short stabbing sword, had no hilt that could become caught in woven shields or in cloaks. Without exposing themselves, and while their heads were covered by the second row of shields from the defenders behind them, the Roman infantry presented iron walls to the Picts, whose shields were made of wood or even light wicker.

  ‘We have to make ourselves hard to kill until these bastards are screaming with frustration and taking insane risks to reach the points of our swords,’ Constantinus reminded the men nearest to him. The commander had explained his strategy and tactics when they had first set foot on this small, oblong patch of dry earth. The legionnaires could make their own judgement of their success as the day wore on for, although the defenders could only concentrate on the men who appeared in the press of human bodies in front of them, the increasing frustration and desperation of the Picts was unmistakeable.

  Finally the tattooed savages pulled back with the onset of dusk, but three-quarters of their number would never leave the swamp.

  Behind the defensive line, a new perimeter was constructed on another area of firm earth that would protect the Roman force during the hours of darkness. Paulus, Constantinus’s deputy, would assume command while Constantinus had a short period of rest. Here, surrounded by earth and tree-trunk walls, the wounded legionnaires could be protected and the fitter of the infantrymen could gain a little much-needed sleep.

  Meanwhile, scouts were despatched to keep track of the Pict survivors and, hopefully, gain intelligence on their intentions. Still more men were allotted the familiar and necessary task of stripping the dead of any valuables as well as any useful weaponry. By full darkness, a bivouac had been established. A number of tents and improvised shelters had also been raised for those men who needed cover from the elements. No Romans were permitted to sleep until their defensive position was prepared, regardless of the weather conditions or the surrounding terrain. Such attention to detail had long been the way of the Roman army, and lay at the very heart of their invincibility.

  A light coating of snow had fallen during the late afternoon, sufficient to lay a thin shroud of white over the flat expanse of land that included the swamps along the coast near Metaris Aest. The nearest large town was Causennae, but the walls of this unfortunate township had been breached by the Picts, so its buildings had been stripped of their valuables. After their victory, the Picts had pillaged and burned nearby farms to the ground, while dragging away many of the British peasants as captives. But they sought no refuge behind the smashed gates of Causennae. Somewhere in this wet and wintry landscape, the northern invaders had hidden themselves among the networks of rivers, tributaries, marshland and the ever-changing coastline that shifted with the region’s heavy tidal flows. Here, trees were rare and troop movements should have been obvious in the grasslands and reeds, yet the Picts were adept at vanishing into them.

  Despite the film of snow, the fields of sere grasses hid the tracks of the retreating Pict warriors. Constantinus’s forward scouts found their spoor heading into the north, for wounded warriors were abandoned if they were unable to maintain the pace of their comrades. Information extracted from those who had chosen to remain alive revealed that the enemy was hastening towards its refuge at the Abus Flood.

  At dawn, Constantinus ordered his legionnaires to strike camp.

  ‘We’ll follow the Picts into the north, Paulus,’ he told his senior officer. ‘Those of us who are fit will chase them as far as the Wall, but I’ll not risk our wounded men. They can travel to Causennae where they can be cared for by our surgeons. The lightly wounded can travel with the wagons and supplies that will slow my fighting column. I want best speed, so our legionnaires will carry minimal loads.’

  When the Picts had begun their retreat, they abandoned several wagons laden down with the spoils of Causennae and several other towns further to the north. One of the wagons contained dried meat, grain and other supplies to augment those necessities that they would normally have scavenged from the pillaged countryside. The Roman infantrymen would now take some to replenish their individual food stores.

  One of the other wagons gave Constantinus cause for anger when a close inspection revealed looted spoils from churches, country villas and farmsteads. The hoard contained a large cache of women’s jewellery, and even the tiny bangles, birth gifts and bulla amulets of small children. Many of these precious objects were stained with dried blood, mute witness to the violence inflicted on innocent victims. Blood-spattered religious relics showed that priests had been cut down at their own altars. Constantinus, neither a romantic nor particularly religious, was even so a man of integrity, sickened by the deaths of innocent non-combatants. He accepted that civilians must die during times of conflict, even merchants and townspeople, but women and children should, ideally, be shown some mercy, even if indignities were inflicted on their bodies.

  Still, he had won a remarkable battle and had acquired fresh reserves of food and a tidy sum in captured treasure. As his legionnaires had come to believe, he had been favoured by the smiles of Fortuna.

  Paulus, his deputy, was one officer who accepted that his commander was a lucky man, an able leader and a courageous soldier, but in his view pursuit of the retreating Picts might be begging for trouble. These barbarians had inflicted massive losses on their enemy but, of the three hundred elite legionnaires who had woken to a bleak dawn a day ago, only one hundred and seventy remained fit for a forced march that would take them into harm’s way. However he knew better than to argue.

  At the head of the Roman column, Constantinus led his men from their temporary shelter in the swamplands in the bone-jarring march favoured by the legions. These infantrymen could move with remarkable speed, considering that each man was required to carry his personal sleeping tent, digging tool, tinder box, cooking utensil, food supplies, beer and a small axe, along with a shield and spear, in a pack on his back. This fighting kit had scarcely changed since the time of the Great Caesar and, before him, Marius the inventor-consul, whose planning had turned the Roman infantryman into the greatest foot soldier of all time. Each step was in time, for Roman armies fought as a cohesive group.

  By any yardstick, Constantinus was an unusual specimen of manhood, for his physique and colouring spoke of bar
barian ancestry. He was tall, broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped; his hair was neither black nor brown, but seemed to be the colour of rich mahogany, that exotic timber rarely seen to the west of Constantinople. Red lights, barbarian in colour, danced through his locks when the sun was reflecting light. Although he wore his hair in the clipped style of the military, a natural curl appeared when it grew to the length of a finger joint, a fact that annoyed him greatly. In contrast, he was smooth-skinned over the rest of his body, unlike many fellow officers who were forced to shave or pluck theirs.

  His face was as handsome as that of a Greek statue, with a straight nose and high cheekbones above a well-shaped chin. His eyes were greenish-brown and he was fortunate enough to possess abnormally long lashes. Only his mouth, seemingly bee-stung in its fullness, might be described as a flaw. It was as mobile as his dark, arched eyebrows. All these exceptional features were offset by golden, easily tanned skin.

  The men in the ranks often joked about their commander’s effect on women in every stratum of society. The camp followers fell over their own feet in their efforts to gain his attention, while the wives and women of his fellow officers were quick to invite him to any entertainment that was proposed within the garrison. Similarly, women of the British aristocracy clustered around him like moths to an incandescent flame. He also drove the effeminates within the Roman bureaucracy half-demented with desire. Oblivious to the blandishments of the lovesick and the lustful, he managed to pass politely through their ranks and caused no humiliation or pain to darken his reputation.

  If only he had been born of patrician blood, his advancement would have been certain.

  As far as Paulus was aware, his commander had no romantic entanglements and he never frequented the whores who flocked to the garrisons.

  ‘The man isn’t human,’ one of the young British auxiliaries stated pugnaciously when the subject of Constantinus’s love life was discussed during a campfire gossip. ‘Maybe he’s got no balls, although he’s like no castrato I ever met. In any event, I’ve heard he has a brat!’

  ‘I’d keep a civil tongue in your head when you speak of our master if I were you. If he’s choosy, it’s just a sign that he’s a better man than both of us,’ his Roman companion replied. He gave his friend a light cuff around the ears, despite being a foot shorter than the younger man.

  Now, with his armour dented and dull, the commander was still cutting a handsome figure in his helmet with its scarlet horsehair ruff, although he was grimy, unshaven and footsore from the many miles travelled each day in their pursuit of the elusive Pict raiders. The unlined skin under his eyes was blue and bruised with weariness, but his eyes were as clear and as sharp as ever; in them his men detected a fury, for this particular Roman hated to lose and the Picts were successfully eluding him.

  The second day of their fruitless pursuit began to try Constantinus’s patience.

  ‘Send out the scouts again, Paulus. The Picts can’t have been swallowed up by the earth when they had so little start on us.’ He grinned then, with a sudden flash of wry humour. ‘I’d match our legionnaires against the barbarians every day and twice on Sunday, so the blue bastards must be trying to link up with the larger group of invaders near the Abus Flood. We’ll find them first. We’ll winkle them out, even if I have to wear my feet off at the knees.’

  I know you will, Paulus thought sourly. As well as mine, so it’s best that we get on with it. ‘Should we continue to march into the night?’

  ‘No! Even the best of our soldiers have to sleep sometime. Exhausted men can’t produce sudden bursts of speed. Until such time as I decide otherwise, my men will rest, eat and sleep during the hours of darkness.’

  During this long explanation, Constantinus scarcely looked at his decurion, but Paulus wasn’t insulted. Such occasional consultations were unusual within the Roman hierarchy and Paulus was always flattered by such intimate moments.

  Constantinus was unique in one other quality. The Roman knew that destiny had promised him a future, one that could elevate him above ordinary humans for the rest of time.

  Few educated men believed the maundering of prophets or crazed soothsayers, but many Roman legionnaires were superstitious, so Constantinus had achieved some fame within the ranks after a wise man had prophesied that he would rise far above the rank to which a soldier could normally aspire.

  A year earlier, he had been part of a patrol that had ranged far from their home garrison at Venta Silurum. The legionnaires had marched north across Hadrian’s Wall and entered the dangerous territory ruled by the northern Celtic tribes. There, in a small, unnamed village beyond Castra Exploratorium, Constantinus’s troop had been halted by a capering travesty of a man, a Wilde Man from the Woods who foamed at the mouth as if he had the dreaded disease carried by crazed forest beasts. Normally, this lunatic would have begged for coin or food and would have threatened bad luck to his audience if his pleas were ignored. The pragmatic Romans would have given this strange creature a wide berth.

  The Wilde Man had walked unerringly towards Constantinus, his scowl and his blank, unfocused eyes suggesting that he meant to cause some harm to the Roman commander. Two guardsmen stepped forward to restrain the madman, but the centurion stayed them with a raised hand when the hermit addressed him by name.

  ‘Constantine! Emperor that will soon be! Prepare yourself for a time when your soldiers elevate you to the purple! Take care whom you wed, master, for your son is in need of a true mother.’

  The old man’s voice was cracked from disuse during his years as a hermit in the wild forests, so the words were dragged over his rarely used vocal cords as if a corpse was speaking from deep inside a grave. Constantinus was startled by the hermit’s reference to Constans, the lad of twelve years who lived in the centurion’s quarters at the garrison in Cymru. The boy’s mother had died during childbirth many years earlier.

  ‘I have no aspirations towards such a future, old man. Such ambitions are mere hubris and fire the blood with treasonous thoughts. Begone, unless you have something to tell me that might be useful.’

  The Wilde Man grinned maliciously and Constantinus’s hair rose on the back of his neck. ‘You are marked for greatness, Centurion. The wife of your destiny will be one who is prized for her bloodline, for she is the child of Macsen Wledig, Emperor of Rome. Will you dare to take her to your heart? She is a briar rose, and only the bravest of men would dare to grip her thorns and the poison in them that sours the blood. But, if your heart remains free of greed and jealousy, then you will rule Britannia lifelong. If you should be poisoned by avarice, then you will have glory beyond your imagining, but your sons and their sons will be the greater men. You will lose the child you love best. Be careful, Constantine. For every step you take will be dangerous and every move you make will be measured against the judgement of the Lord of Order. Will you dare to stand in the clear light of His all-seeing eyes?’

  ‘I fear nothing that I can see, or hear, touch or taste, old man. If I can feel the hilt of my gladius in my palm, or smell the scent of battle on the wind, then I will believe I go to war. All else is nothing but idle talk.’

  Constantinus lifted his handsome head proudly. The Wilde Man could see no fear in the dark eyes of the centurion, but he sensed a pulse in the throat of the Roman, an indication that he wanted to make his mark and ensure that his name would be remembered in the wash of time.

  The old hermit laughed cynically, so the rattle in his throat sounded like the judder of dry bones in an earthenware mug. ‘You are fated to find glory, Constantine. But you must always consider the child of Macsen Wledig, for it is she who holds the key to your destiny.

  ‘I’ll leave you now, Centurion. I am done here, for the scent of human flesh sickens me.’

  The Wilde Man turned away and took a single step off the edge of the Roman road, then with his next his figure blurred quickly into the background of trees
and underbrush. Despite the many pairs of sharp eyes that followed his movements, he vanished into nothingness.

  The impenetrable woodland swallowed the hermit into its dark substance as if he was made of earth and tree roots rather than flesh. The superstitious infantrymen crossed themselves surreptitiously and mumbled prayers to ward off evil, but the centurion laughed with genuine amusement.

  Constantinus was left to wonder at the meaning of the Wilde Man’s prophecy. Nor was he alone in being struck by the strange promise of future greatness. Even when the incident seemed forgotten, the hermit’s words still lingered in the soldiers’ memories as the men waited for that time when Constantinus would claim his own.

  CHAPTER I

  A Very Proper Wife

  The legions comprised a strength of six thousand men each and were divided into ten equal tactical units, known as cohorts. The cohorts, in their turn, were divided into six centuries.

  Carl Roebuck

  The trees shivered with the first of the autumn chills and, in Corinium, Endellion looked up from her pile of homely mending to see the first yellow leaf fall from the atrium tree and float to earth. She bent to retrieve the large, still-pliant leaf. Now, adrift, its perfect shape had already begun to curl.

  Autumn was always a time of introspection for the Dumnonii-born queen of the Dobunni tribe. This still-warm season remained busy with the harvest and the bounty of growing things, yet it always reminded her that death was waiting for the last leaves to fall. Insidious and patient, winter took everything it wanted without pity. Still, there could be no change without the slow march of the seasons.