From his bench in the rear of the landing craft, Narcissus was able to see the first wave of boats driving onto the beach. Under the stars, there was nothing to be seen of the darkened land beyond, nothing but the swell of a dune or two – that, and what might have been the embers of a solitary fire on the beach.
Around Narcissus the legionaries, stinking of sweat, leather and horses, worked their oars under a centurion’s softly spoken commands. The rowers held the boat in its place against the tide, for Vespasian’s order had been that the Emperor’s secretary was not to be allowed to land until the general judged the beachhead had been made reasonably secure.
The delay was perhaps half an hour – or so it seemed to Narcissus, sitting in the dark and silence. The length of an hour was dependent on the length of a day, twelve hours slicing up the interval from sunrise to sunset. He had read from the memoirs of long-dead Carthaginian explorers that in these northern places the length of the day could be quite different from Rome’s, the days longer in summer, shorter in winter. That even time was slippery here added to Narcissus’s sense of unreality on this swelling sea, in the dark, surrounded by the grunts of irritably frightened soldiers. He had come a long way from home, he admitted to himself.
Not that he was about to show weakness in front of these men. A lot of them, no more than half-civilised barbarians from Germany and Gaul themselves, were predictably more superstitiously terrified of the Ocean than of anything their half-cousins on the British shore could throw at them. And judging from the retching sounds and the stink of vomit, many of them were having a harder time coping with the sea’s gentle swell than Narcissus, who could at least pride himself on a strong stomach.
Narcissus was comforted, too, by a deep sense of being present at a pivotal moment in history. He was sorry, in fact, to be making his own landing in the dark like this, though it had been necessary for him to be present at the very spearpoint of the invasion. Somewhere out there were the flagships, the big triremes. By day these grand forms, looming on the horizon with their oars glittering, would be a marvellous sight, enough to strike fear into the heart of any transoceanic barbarian; he wished he could see them now.
At last a light showed on the shore: a lantern, swung back and forth. The centurion growled, ‘That’s it, lads. You’ll be treading on good dry land before you know it. Work those oars now. One, two. One, two…’
His rhythmic voice brought unpleasant memories of the ship Narcissus had sailed along the coast of Gaul, with the relentless booming of a timekeeper’s drum keeping the banks of enslaved oarsmen in step. Narcissus was a freedman, a former slave. In his position he had had to get used to handling slaves. But to be so close to such extreme servitude, where hundreds of men were used as bits of machinery, had been unsettling.
The shallow-draught landing boat grounded on the sand, and the centurion hopped out into ankle-deep water. With a couple of the lads holding the boat steady the centurion offered the secretary his arm. Thus Narcissus strode onto the British shore, barely wetting his feet.
The general himself was here to greet him. Narcissus expected nothing less than a personal welcome from Titus Flavius Vespasianus, legate of the Second Legion Augusta and commander tonight of the beachhead operations – nothing less, for even if Narcissus’s formal title was no more than the Emperor’s correspondence secretary, he had the ear of Claudius.
‘Secretary. Welcome to Britain. I apologise for keeping you waiting.’ Vespasian was a stocky, dark man in his mid-thirties. The son of a tax farmer in Asia, he had a gruff personal manner and an unfortunate provincial accent, but he looked as if he had been born in his armour. Vespasian led Narcissus a little way up the beach, away from the damp littoral. They were trailed by two of Vespasian’s staff officers.
Narcissus said, ‘I take it the landing was unopposed.’
‘Virtually. It seems our bluffs worked.’ As the Roman forces had been drawn up in Gesoriacum in Gaul, rude armies had gathered on the British shore to meet them – but when the Romans hadn’t crossed quickly, those farmer-warriors had gone back to their lands. The eventual crossing was being made so late in the campaigning season that the British had evidently given up waiting for them altogether.
But Narcissus asked, ‘“Virtually” unopposed, legate?’
‘A boy came running down the beach to meet the very first landing craft.’
‘A boy?’
‘Alone, we think. My decurion Marcus Allius dealt with him.’
Narcissus winced. ‘Was it necessary to spill an innocent’s blood as soon as a Roman boot touched British soil?’
Vespasian said neutrally, ‘We found the remains of a fire, a crude leather tent, a few trails. But we believe we are still undetected. Just a boy, camping on the beach – wrong place, wrong time.’
‘Wrong for him, indeed.’ As he walked, Narcissus drew himself up to his full height and sniffed the salty, night-cool air. ‘And did we make a good choice of landing site?’
‘It’s as good as we expected from the traders’ maps,’ Vespasian said. ‘In the future this place, Rutupiae, will no doubt become a significant entry point.’ He pointed into the dark. ‘I imagine a sea wall over there, perhaps a fort there – ah, but all of it will lie in the shade of the triumphal arch dedicated to Claudius.’ Vespasian spoke respectfully enough, but Narcissus knew him well enough to detect a little gentle mockery. Vespasian went on, ‘Our purpose tonight is to prepare the beachhead so that the main body of the force can be landed tomorrow—’
Narcissus held up his hand. ‘I don’t need all the details.’
‘Let me summarise, then. During the night we will throw a fortification across this semi-island from coast to coast, multiple ditches and a palisade, and within we will set up a tent camp to process the rest of the landings.
‘Then, tomorrow, when the legions are mustered, we will move out. We have landed at the eastern tip of a peninsula. From here we will proceed west, following the south bank of an estuary, the outflow of a tidal river which we call the Tamesis. Once over the river we will proceed north to Camulodunum, which is the centre of the Catuvellaunians.’
‘Ah yes, those troublesome princes. This “centre” – is it a city, fortified?’
Vespasian smiled. ‘Camulodunum is no Troy, secretary. But the Catuvellaunians are the key power in this corner of the island, and Camulodunum is their capital. Their defeat will go a long way to achieving the Emperor’s ambitions.’
‘And the timetable for this grand scheme?’
‘We are confident of taking Camulodunum in this first campaigning season, truncated though it is.’
‘The Emperor himself must take the capital.’
Vespasian inclined his head. ‘It is understood.’
‘It all seems rather simple, legate.’
Vespasian shrugged. ‘Simple schemes are best, Plautius says, and I agree. War has a habit of throwing up complications.’
That word briefly puzzled Narcissus. ‘Complications? – ah, you mean the British.’ In the mesh of personal, economic and political motivation that had brought them all here, it was easy to forget that this land was not an empty arena for Roman ambition but was actually full of people already.
They reached the line of dunes above the beach itself. Narcissus climbed a shallow bank and looked inland, but he could see nothing of the land he had come to claim for Rome, nothing but more dunes.
He breathed deeply. ‘It smells different, doesn’t it? Britain smells of salt and wind. Now I’m standing here I can see Julius didn’t entirely exaggerate the strangeness of the crossing in his memoirs. Are your superstitious soldiers right, Vespasian? Have we really gone beyond the end of the world, have we come to conquer the moon?’
Vespasian grunted. ‘If we have, let’s hope the moon men pay their taxes on time.’ He touched the secretary’s shoulder. ‘Now I must insist you come down from there and let us get you under cover.’
Narcissus smiled. ‘Please do your job, legate.’ And he clambered down from the sand dune, awkwardly, in the dark.