Just when Caradoc’s horsemen moved into the mourning city of Sorbiodun, the first Roman cavalrymen heading the triumphal procession into Camulodun, their cloaks pulled up against the driving rain, clattered through the high gateway, scattering the scavenging dogs and chickens before them.
The preparations for the entry had started the day before, when a red-crested herald, escorted by a squad of German auxiliaries, had stalked through the main streets during the morning to announce, in four Celtic dialects besides Latin, from a dais in the market-place, that the Emperor himself, Claudius the God, would soon be visiting them; that all arms, including butcher’s knives and trout spears, were to be piled in the public square; and that no man of military age was to occupy a place in the front line of spectators.
When the herald and his bodyguard had marched off out of the gates again, the city went into a paroxysm of unrest. News of the Caesar’s arrival spread from house to house like fire, from the wattle farmsteads outside the walls right down to the white stone houses by the wharfside, where sky-blue trading-vessels, with their gilded vine-carved prows, still unloaded their cargoes of wine and pottery and bronzes into the bobbing coracles.
At first there was uncertainty and fear among the population; women wept, and men buried their swords and arrows. The richer farmers, unwilling to leave their granaries and cattle until the last minute, now became panic-stricken and, loading their wagons with everything they could carry, began to leave the city. Most of them did not get far: foraging squads of Romans or lurking bands of outcast marauders—escaped slaves and camp-followers—saw to that.
But, as the day wore on, the city settled down again. The population was a mixed one: Belgae, Iberians, Germans, Italians and even Greeks, and few of the city-dwellers felt that burning loyalty to the chieftain which the inland tribes did. Many of them were too close to Rome, in blood or custom, to fear Claudius as much as they hated the druids. If the city was to change its master, well, better to change to Roman government than to Silurian or Saxon. Where the Romans went, their trade followed them! Down at the docks the Latin-speaking Levantine community locked their money chests and put up their shutters until such time as the invaders needed their services.
In the great houses of the merchants the cooks were hastily lectured in the preparation of Roman dishes, the best Italian wine and Gaulish pottery were brought out, and the heads of households practised wearing their cloaks like togas, while the children went busily to their revision of the Latin tongue.
The ordinary folk shrugged their shoulders and clustered in the taverns. There was no point in working until one knew exactly who was to pay for the work. In one cabin, where the vine leaves hung before the door, the farm-labourers, dressed in their poor best, some of them Gaulish deserters from the legions years before, sang songs as they drank rough wine and fermented apple-juice from terracotta cups:
“Caesar came to Britain
With soldiers in his galleys;
Let him come and live here
If he’ll fill our bellies!
Claudius brought his camel
To mount Caradoc’s cow;
The fun begins tomorrow—
But where’s Caradoc now?”
By late afternoon they had drunk and sung themselves stupid, and lay in tumbled groups over benches and tables, and even snoring in the gutter, where they were walked over by cattle, daubed with mud by young boys, and defiled by roaming dogs. The tavern-keeper finally rolled the last one out into the street and shut his door. He was an old campaigner who had lived long among the rough coast-wise Armoricans. “Briton or Roman,” he said, “it’s all one. Give them drink and they forget themselves.” He turned to his son-in-law, the herdsman Barwch, who sat in the corner carving a staff. “What say you, son?” And Barwch laughed, showing the gaps in his mouth, for he was an incorrigible fighter. “Give dogs a bone and give men mead: then you can skin the one and rob the other with safety,” he said. He laughed and spat in the straw and tried to carve a stag’s head on his stick; but the knife slipped and spoiled his design. He swore and flung the stick onto the fire and got up to punch his father-in-law playfully in the ribs. The two wrestled and rolled each other about until they woke the baby. Then they went out guiltily by the back door and lay down in the grass until a meal was ready.
And in the pillared brothel by the waterside the girls got out their coloured finery of silk and coral, brushed and dyed their hair with henna, and painted their faces before long metal mirrors. A tall German girl plucked the eyebrows of a dark Scythian. “Now we shall have fun, Sasha,” she said. “Real soldiers to visit us and give us presents from half over the world. Precious stones from Africa and bracelets from India, not like these blue-faced monkeys! Why only yesterday I had a drover from the hills to see me. He said he had no money, but could I do with a couple of sheep instead! I soon sent him packing—the hairy barbarian!” And the Scythian laughed to cover her tears as she remembered her father’s herds and the tented village where she had once been happy. Of them all, only little Bronwen, daughter of a hostage from the Ordovices, refused to make herself ready for the Roman arrival. She lay on a couch and wept, from time to time thrusting a thin dagger into the cushions. “You bitches,” she sobbed at her companions. “You have no loyalty. You think only of money and your own miserable bodies.” The German tried to soothe her. “But, Bronwen, we must. We are outcasts, after all. Our country is the world, and our loyalty is to ourselves. You must remember that, dear.” But Bronwen kicked and stabbed more fiercely than ever. “I won’t remember it,” she wailed. “I am a Brython. If my countrymen come here, they can take me for nothing, all of them—all the tribes! But if the Caesar himself came, offering me the wealth of his Empire and a seat on his throne, I would spit in his eyes!” The other girls could do nothing with her, and in the end had to send for the old Greek lady who managed the establishment.
And so the day passed, and the following morning the city woke to find that the rains had set in. The skies were grey and the smoke blew back down the chimneys, filling the rooms with soot. But although the streets were at first deserted, as the morning drew on crowds gathered, shielding their heads with cow-hides and sheepskins, and lined the street from one end to the other, jostling and elbowing and sometimes singing. Once or twice there Were false alarms. “Here they come!” someone would shout. Then the street would be hushed and necks would crane, and those who stood on flat rooftops would begin to wave their coloured flags. Then, when the expectancy was at its highest, a tinker would clatter through the gates on a donkey, his pots and pans jangling behind him, and the crowds would rock with laughter and forget for a moment that they were a defeated people.
But at last the Romans came. First, in the distance, there was a thin scream of trumpets, then a long pause. Then a body of mounted swordsmen raced like the wind through the tall gates, slashing left and right, sending the yelling crowds back to the shelter of the buildings. And before the horsemen had disappeared in swirls of dust and mud the legionaries came marching in, each man walking head erect, like a machine, his long shield held in position on his left arm. With the infantry came spearmen, who broke ranks on passing through the gates and stationed themselves before the crowds, along the street, holding their javelins horizontally to push back the swaying spectators.
Then, between lines of legionaries, came the officers, mounted on black horses, whose manes were trimmed short, like hogs’ bristles; first Aulus Plautius in his scarlet cloak, and then his staff officers, and finally his infantry commanders. All of them looked straight in front of them, as though they were moving in a deep dream of military ascendency. Some of the young officers wore bandages, and one who had been wounded in the back by a spear thrust had to be supported in his saddle. He was very young, but his white face was proud and noble looking. When the crowds saw him they forgot themselves and cheered loudly. Some of them, the older folk, even wept. The Roman spearmen guarding the route saw this and were puzzled. They joked with each other about it and said the Britons were women, but in their minds they were troubled, for they could not understand how these islanders could fight so terribly and savagely one day and weep so easily the next. Weren’t they savages, and didn’t they burn their hostages in wicker cages? No, the Britons lacked all sense of proportion. Perhaps Claudius could understand them—but his soldiers couldn’t!
Then there was a great hush as the Emperor’s archers appeared; first the Roman contingent, tall, smiling men, followed by his eastern bowmen, grim-faced little Parthians, riding shaggy ponies and wearing high sheepskin hats. When the camels appeared, swinging awkwardly between the ponies, the street-watchers whistled through their teeth; but when the first elephant came through the gates, his black mahout almost on a level with the top of the city wall, gasps of wonder broke out the length of the main street, some of the more timid breaking from the crowd and rush-away behind the buildings, and the religiously inclined ones falling to their knees and saying that indeed the gods had arrived in Camulodun.
After the first impact of the elephants, the Emperor himself caused comparatively little stir. Was this small, huddled figure with the clown’s face and the hunched back really the ruler of the world? Carried on a great purple palanquin by four tall Nubians, he looked smaller than ever: an ineffectual puppet, a mere mouthpiece. And some in the crowds suddenly remembered Cunobelin, and how he had once stunned a horse with a blow of his fist.
Then followed a vast rabble of prisoners—Britons, Gauls, even Persians, gathered together from many campaigns for this moment. They looked tired and disspirited in the rain. A few of them, however, those leading the lions and leopards, mainly negroes, were healthy and vigorous—for they were professional slaves, men whose livelihood it was to walk in such processions, decked with trophies.
By this time the leading infantrymen had reached the end of the long street and had halted, in close order, so that the Emperor’s palanquin should now be positioned in the public square. The trumpets screamed again and the procession shuffled to a standstill. Claudius coughed and fidgeted in his robes, and finally called out in a thin, stuttering voice for his secretary. The crowds tittered that so great a man should sound such a fool. The secretary ran along the line and pushed a roll of skin into the Emperor’s hand and then began to assist him to the ground.
The Britons jostled and pushed to see what was going to happen. “He’s going to sing a song,” chuckled one fat tribesman, and all round him the watchers laughed. But the spearman keeping order in that quarter turned swiftly and smashed his lance butt into the tribesman’s face and he fell to the pavement, spitting out teeth. After that there was silence as the Emperor’s high voice began.
But at this moment Barwch, who was watching the proceedings from the tavern roof, thrust his fingers into his mouth and went spluttering down the stairs. His father-in-law, anxious not to offend his new masters, bobbed down out of sight and then followed his son-in-law. But when he got down below, Barwch was nowhere to be seen. He had out run at the back of the tavern, chuckling, and was lost among the outbuildings.
Under the city walls, well away from the main street, he halted, breathing hard and still laughing. “Romans!” he said. “Camels! I’ll show them!” Then, half-drunk, he ran on to the great circular enclosure where the King’s bulls were kept. As royal herdsman, he knew every nook and cranny of the place, and, choosing a long fork from a barn as he passed, he leapt onto the stone wall of the corral and looked down on the animals below him. They were all shaggy long-horns, a breed left by earlier inhabitants, and they were wild. In the turmoil of the last few days no one had thought to feed them, and they pushed and gored each other, almost mad with hunger, rolling their red eyes up at him as he watched them, slavering and trying to get their horns down to wound each other.
Barwch, safe on the wall, began to talk to them, quietly at first, and then louder until his thick voice rose almost to a frenzy. “Little bulls! Little brothers! Look who’s come to see you! It’s Barwch! Yes, Barwch! You remember me, don’t you? I used to feed you in the King’s time, little bulls. But he’s gone now. Didn’t they tell you? He’s gone to seek his fortune among the rocks. He’s gone to make friends with the badgers and the eagles! He’s gone and left you. Yes, and Claudius has come to take his place! But you won’t get far with Claudius, little red brothers! No, he’s brought his own bulls—bull-elephants! They wear their horns lower down, not like you, little barbarians! They carry no ugly hair like you, little beggars! Oh no, he won’t like you, anybody can see that! You’ve lost your master now; no one wants you! No one wants you!” Barwch began to leap about on the wall, smacking his pole down heavily on haunch and horn, beating time to his words and sending the cattle almost crazy. Then, when they had begun to rear up and bellow, half-mad with hunger and fear, he stopped beating them. “I’m going to open the door and let you out!” he shouted. “Then you can go and see for yourselves what sort of man this Claudius is! Go and tell him what you think of him and his camels! Go now, go swiftly, little beasts, and tell him I sent you!”
Then he leaned down and quickly pulled away the long wooden bar that kept the bull-pen closed. The gates swung open and the terrified animals pushed through it, crushing each other against the posts in their frantic haste to be free. They swung into the lane behind their leader, and then galloped madly between the houses, coming to the main street just as Claudius was ending his peroration. The crowds, hearing hooves thundering behind them, turned in fear to see a tight-packed mass of bulls, their horns tossing madly, and scattered to left and right, some even breaking past the astonished spearmen and into the road. An adjutant, annoyed at this sudden turmoil, spurred up to give the soldiers a piece of his mind. He intended to have a dozen of them thrashed for not keeping better order when the Emperor spoke. But even as he opened his mouth to restore peace the first bull was upon him like a whirlwind. Man and pony were sent crashing down, to be trampled on by the following beasts.
Foot-soldiers, who had raised their shields against more deadly opponents in all parts of the world, ran in all directions, dropping swords and shields as they went. Cavalry horses reared and screamed, breaking through the infantry ranks and trampling the guard. . . . Then the bulls were amongst the elephants and camels, and the crowds now clustering on roofs and walls saw the bloody thrust of horn and tusk, heard trumpeting and the camel’s terrified scream. The last they saw of the Emperor was his heels as he tumbled into the palanquin, too hastily raised by the frightened negroes. Then the Imperial Guard had formed round Claudius, shields close-locked and swords out.
Somewhere a whistle sounded, and the javelin men were seen marching in a single broad line, their lances out, relentlessly stabbing at the now exhausted cattle. In half an hour the last bull had been encircled and hacked to death. But the Emperor’s entry was ruined. In the square, wherever one looked, lay bulls and horses, some of them still twitching. Five of the camels had been killed outright and three of the elephants so badly injured that the archers had to destroy them. Only one man, the unfortunate adjutant, had been gored to death, but many were quite seriously wounded.
As for Claudius, his nerves were in such a state that the Syrian physician had to administer a sedative before he could be carried back by his grinning black men to the royal pavilion.
Barwch, on the other hand, had never felt better. During the first tumult he had slipped into the crowd and had been fortunate enough to save a Roman officer from being gored to death. The grateful soldier had put his name on record as one of the Emperor’s friends and had promised him a position in the royal stables.
And so the Romans took Camulodun. A public holiday lasting for three days was later announced by the herald, and before the sun had properly set over the western uplands the whole city was drunk either with elation of with the free issue of Roman wine dispensed from huge skins at every street corner in the centre of the city.