Sample Chapter: Chapter One: Child of Rome

GERMANIA- AD14

The infant was dead. His limp form was wrapped in what little cloth his mother had been able to scavenge. His tiny lips and half-closed eyes were clouded blue and dusted with dirty grey snowflakes. The mother held him protectively in the crook of her arm.

    There were others, pitifully few, huddled in clumps and clusters, shivering in fear, shock or cold. Those who had been spared the slaughter, the red-cloaked death the Legion had brought with them but none invaded the space she held in the centre of the yard. None except a girl-child, solemn-eyed, perhaps five winters old and cloaked in her mother’s heavy woollen shawl, arms bare and goose-pricked, clinging to her unresponsive mother, the woman holding the dead infant. 

    They were women mostly, a few young, many old. Those aged between had fought alongside their fathers, brothers and husbands against the invaders and fallen as they did. The only male among them, a youth of perhaps thirteen, was bleeding out slowly from the gaping wound in his side while a girl no more than ten years old held his head in her lap, keeping it from the mud that threatened to envelop him. Aside from the girl’s gentle attention, he was ignored. He was shamed and shunned for living when so many of their men, women too, had been slain, though it had hardly been his fault that the soldiers had dragged him there and slung him unceremoniously into the muck. 

    The woman stood with her back turned on the youth, her posture radiated fury, not the grief one might have expected and though none came near all seemed to draw upon her strength.

    Of weeping there was none. For the most part, the women stared glaze-eyed at the mud or into the smoke of the burning village or the haphazard wooden fence that had once constrained the village pigs, now roasting on the soldier's orderly campfires, taunting them with their aroma. They stared anywhere but at their captors, some of whom hovered outside the fence jostling and laughing as they pointed out first one woman then another and arguing about their relative merits. How bedable would that old crone be? Would that young one be a virgin? No, there’s no such thing as a barbarian virgin, when they’re not fucking the pigs they’re fucking their daughters. Perhaps you’d rather the lad though? How hard do you think he’d fight? Not hard, he’s bleeding out. They spoke without particular malice, just the callous disregard of conquerors, in Latin that they expected none could understand. 

    She did, she just failed to care. 

    A capricious gust of frigid air blew through the yard flinging ash and snow that stung the eye. The child buried her face further into her mother’s side. The woman herself didn’t move, not even to blink the grit from her eyes. Her eyes were not on the mud, the smoke, the walls, not on the pigs sizzling crisply and dripping their winter fat over Roman cookfires. Not even the face of the dead infant shifted her gaze from glaring defiantly at the head. 

    Clouded, sightless and surrounded by gore, mouth open in a snarled grimace, her father’s head stared down from the height of a Roman spear upon the penned women, at his daughter, granddaughter and lifeless grandson. Beside their chieftain, interspersed amongst the standards of the Legions were the heads of his war leaders. Ten heads. Ten golden eagles. Eight for the Legions the Romans had brought with them and two, burnished and gleaming, lovingly polished. These were two of the three that had gone missing in Teutoburg forest when the chieftain’s nephew and son-in-law had led the Cherusci in rebellion and laid waste to three Roman legions in an unprecedented slaughter seven years earlier. 

    A scuffle at the gate of the pen drew her eye from the head. The child too lifted her face from her mother’s skirts. A flurry of movement behind suggested that the women once spaced had flocked together, sheeplike, for comfort and protection. Helpful hands grabbed the woman and her children and drew them into the flock, moving back as far as they could from the six red-cloaked soldiers, spears at the ready, prepared to enter the compound. 

    ‘Cowards!’ the woman cursed under her breath. It was unclear if she meant the flock around her or the six men poised to step reluctantly into the shit and mud, armed with the short Roman spears they called pilam against a press of freezing and defeated women and children. 

    The curse turned into a hiss as she spotted a man wearing a red-trimmed tunic, gleaming bronze breastplate, leather balteus skirting even caligae, the standard army issue sandals. The blood-coloured cloak of a Roman Tribune hanging over his shoulder, he stepped through the flimsy wooden gate and into the morass. Though he wore the clothing of a Roman officer he stood a head taller than the six legionaries who followed and unlike the bronze-helmed soldiers his head was bare. His hair, though short, was longer than any Roman and he boasted the russet moustache that would be the pride of any Cherusci warrior but looked out of place, ridiculous even, beside the clean shaved soldiers. He paused beside the bleeding boy before drawing his dagger and, whistling tunelessly, slit his throat. He straightened, wiping the blade on the lad’s ragged cloak before he resumed his search. The man seemed not to notice the filth that coated his feet and began to soak into the trailing end of his cloak, so intently did his blue eyes search the huddled mess of humanity that remained, searching until his eyes caught sight of and lingered on the woman. He stroked his moustache in a two-fingered gesture, doing little to hide the smile. 

    ‘That one.’ He issued the command and gesture and the rest of the women scattered like marsh birds before the hunt as four of the reluctant legionaries tramped through the mud to surround the woman. She didn’t move. Her gaze was unwavering now as she regarded the moustached tribune. 

    Two of the soldiers, both shorter in stature than the woman, placed grasping hands upon her arms. As though their touch were lightning she came alive, jerking from their grip to pull the child to her side, one arm still cradling the infant. Another hand, a soldier’s, reached out to snatch the child in a grip that would have been bruising but for the wide bronze armband that encircled the girl's upper arm. The child clung, wordless, to her mother’s girdle as the man dragged at her. The woman, still struggling against the two men that sought to coral her, released her grip on the girl for long enough to grasp the eating knife that hung from her waist and drove it forcefully through the soldier's wrist. He roared, dropping the child. With his uninjured arm, he drew his gladius and would have swung but for a sharp command that was issued. 

    ‘Cease! She is of no use to us in pieces. Bring the child, then see to your arm.’ The command was issued in Latin but from a voice with a strong local inflection. 

    Snarling, the wounded soldier sheathed his sword and grabbed her roughly, this time by her heavy braid. 

    ‘Bitch!’ he snapped pulling her head to his level. ‘He may want you first, but when he’s done my whole cohort will fuck you bloody.’ 

    His breath reeked of rotten teeth and spittle landed on her face but she neither looked at him nor flinched. He dragged her then, unresisting, out of the yard as the others, pilam leveled at her, circled behind. Unimpeded, the child followed in her footsteps. 

    As she left the gated sty she wrenched herself free for a moment, leaving the soldier holding a handful of hair, to lean forward and spit at the foot of the spear from which the head had gazed impassively on her. Her father, the man who had offered her sanctuary but had in fact held her captive, away from her husband. The man who had been slain despite his two-faced shuffling between his position as Roman ally and his natural state as Rome’s enemy. The russet-haired warrior in tribune’s clothing flinched but ignored the gesture and kept walking. 

    Surrounded by Romans they were forced at pace, back through the burnt-out village, twice having to clamber over the bodies of slain warriors. Each time the woman raised her chin and pretended not to notice the dead. Black feathers flew as their movement disturbed the frenzied feeding of flocking crows. Once, the child let out a cry at the sight of the ravaged body of another child, being dragged off by a half-wild village cur. The mother pulled her child close then and placed a hand over her eyes until they had passed by. Soon they were amid the tidy orderly rows of Roman tents that had already sprung up, a Roman military city around her father’s village, each one identical to the next. The woman gripped the child, one-handed, afraid to lose her in the ocean of canvas, rope, flickering cookfires and bloodied weaponry. 

    At last, their pace slowed and the tall tribune and his escort came to a halt before a tent significantly larger than the rest. Two men in praetorian purple barred the entrance. 

    ‘A gift from Segimundus of the Cherusci for the general’s wife.’ 

    For the first time, the child looked up at the Tribune, eyes widening in recognition. The praetorians stepped back, allowing the group to enter the pungent darkness within. The heavy canvas walls let in very little light, though lamps lent insipid pools of light in spaces about the tent. It was warm within. There was a smell of blood in the air and the slightest of fecal odours but heavily overladen with incense that clouded the room and burnt the eyes. The pungent scent made the small girl cough, a sound which resulted in the wailing of a newborn child. The woman froze. The child looked at her and the bundle she held in confusion. 

    As their eyes adjusted to the darkness a number of forms blurred into view. Many coalesced into marble plinths with Roman busts which looked regally or benignly upon the room. But some were living, breathing people. On an ornately woven mat on the floor was a boy slightly smaller than the girl. He was dressed as a legionary in miniature, complete with hobnailed sandals, like those worn by soldiers. He looked up solemnly from behind chestnut ringlets before dismissing the arrivals as uninteresting and returning his attention to the carved wooden soldiers arrayed before him. 

    Two older boys, both with the same chestnut hair sat on a padded wooden chest near the wall. Unlike the younger boy, their hair was short, though waves of curls could still be seen. The elder, not yet in his toga virilis, thus under twelve years, looked at the muddy pair of captives disdainfully before returning to throw the dice before him. The younger grinned then winked owl-like at the girl child before a punch from his brother set his mind back on the game. On a bed thick with furs and sectioned off from the rest of the dwelling lay a woman, she looked exhausted and an old woman fussed over her, while another knelt laying out a cloth on the ground. She opened it to reveal a naked, bloodied infant, still white with vernix. As the cloth was unwrapped around her the infant gave a short wailing complaint before shaking a protesting fist at the world in general. A few feet closer to the tent entrance, with his back to the new arrivals stood an imposing figure in bloodied battle regalia. 

    ‘Is this really necessary, my love? Is there any question of whether I would accept our child?’ 

    A tired laugh. ‘Germanicus. Really. You of all people know how important tradition is. Now check your daughter before she freezes.’ 

    He bent down and collected the wriggling infant with a sure and steady hand and held it out in front of himself. One hand checked the number of fingers and toes before rewrapping the infant gently and pressing a kiss to her gore smudged forehead. 

    ‘Julia Agrippina, acknowledged daughter of Germanicus Julius Caesar,’ he intoned formally, ‘meet your beautiful mother, but do not expect to receive too much of her time, for she is all mine.’ 

    He knelt beside the bed and deposited the child in waiting arms before kissing the woman tenderly. 

    The praetorian who had escorted them cleared his throat. 

    ‘My Lord General, a man to see you, he says he brings gifts.’ 

    Two pairs of grey-blue eyes flickered outwards. It was not clear from which parent the three boys inherited their colouring for their parents were alike enough to pass for siblings. 

    The General squeezed his wife’s hand before pulling himself to full height, a move which set him on equal footing with the Cherusci and a hand’s breadth taller than his captive. 

    ‘Segimundus.’ 

    ‘General.’ 

    The man stalked forward to block the view of his wife as the old women dropped a curtain to obscure her further. ‘Why are you here?’ The voice was polite but a veiled hint of disdain remained. 

    ‘I was told that you were in need of a wet nurse. So I brought one.’ He gestured at the woman. 

    The General clasped his hands behind his back and circled the trio, as though judging a cavalry mount. Checking her stature, the width of her hips, the breadth of her chest. Pausing before her she half expected him to pick up her feet or check her teeth. She remained still until he tilted his head slightly and raised a hand to grip her chin. When he reached for her, she threw back her head and bared her teeth. The General let his hand fall back, one side of his lips twisted in amusement fading as swiftly as it appeared. His gaze left hers and turned back to the Cherusci man in Tribune’s clothing. 

    ‘I warn you not to discount her General. She stabbed one of your men with her eating knife.’ 

    The General snorted faintly and flicked her a half-glance. 

    ‘You steal a she-wolf from my prisoners and give her to me as a gift?’

    The Cherusci flushed but stood his ground. 

    ‘How old is the infant?’ 

    The woman pulled the child closer, hiding it against her chest. 

    ‘A day or two perhaps, a week at most.’ 

    ‘Is she clean, disease-free, well-formed?’ 

    ‘Of course, General,’ he smirked at her. ‘She is a princess of our people. My half-sister in fact. The wife of the rebel leader, Erminaz.’ 

    Germanicus took a step back, his eyes narrowed in critical appraisal, lingering on the lift of her chin, the ornate pins in her cornsilk hair, the detail of the broaches on her shoulders, the quality of the muddy cloth, the bronze armbands and the embossed girdle. His eyes narrowed. 

    ‘Arminius’ wife,’ he mused using the Latin pronunciation. ‘I will need to be sure.’    

    The woman inhaled but did not move. The Cherusci frowned. 

    ‘General?’ 

    ‘You say she is blemish-free?’ 

    Segimundus hesitated, wavering before reaching out a hand towards his sister. She cursed him in guttural Cherusci and stepped out of reach. The waiting praetorian set one hand to his gladius and slid behind her child but the gesture was unnecessary. 

    She stepped aside from her brother and bent to gently place the wrapped infant into the girl’s careful hands, covering the babe’s face in the process. Her stance was regal as she reached behind herself to unlace her girdle, allowing it to drop to the ground, before unlatching the two pins at her shoulder. Pushing the fabric down past her waist, the stained cloth dropped to the ground, like a pool of muddy water around her feet. She made no move to cover herself, instead raising her arms slowly before revolving in a circle. Her breasts achingly full and veined, pale nipples leaked fluid prompted by the earlier cry of the infant. Her skin; pale, and though dirty, clearly without blemish. Her belly still pouched from recent childbirth, the hair on her mound a darker shade of gold than that on her head, a smear of blood marred her inner thighs. 

    To his credit, Germanicus’ eyes never left her face and when she had completed the turn she glared directly at his face. When he drew his gaze away it was to address two girls, previously unnoted in the darkness. Both blond, Chatti probably, their plain but fine garb marked them as slaves of a wealthy and important household. 

    ‘Bring hot water to bathe her and the child. And garb befitting a princess of the Cherusci and her offspring…’ He paused. ‘And something to bury the babe in… or do you burn your dead?’ 

    He addressed her directly, and in Latin, how he knew the infant was dead or that she spoke his language seemed a mystery. 

    The woman, once proud, folded in on herself, covering her breasts and pubic region with a hand. ‘Buried,’ she replied in hushed Latin. 

    The General stepped closer. ‘Your husband. The traitor responsible for the slaughter of three Roman legions in Teutoburg forest. He lives?’ 

    ‘To my knowledge.’ 

    ‘And my missing eagle?’ 

    A shrug. ‘With him.’    

    ‘You understand you have been captured during war and are thus a slave of the Roman Empire?’ 

    ‘By Roman law.’ 

    ‘Germania is a part of the great Roman Empire.’ 

    Her eyes flashed, cold sapphires. ‘Some believe this is so.’ 

    ‘But not your husband, even though he was raised in Rome, given the benefit of a Roman education.’ 

    She nodded. 

    ‘I will make an accord with you.’ 

    She raised her gaze to his, listening warily. 

    ‘You know the fate of conquered peoples.’ He waited for her to acknowledge it. ‘I could have you sent to Rome to scrub chamber pots or I could have you sold to a brothel, I feel certain a Germanic princess would be a welcome and popular addition.’ For the first time, he let his eyes drift over her curves and her cheeks flooded with unwelcome warmth. ‘Or I could have you serve my soldiers here in camp, they too would welcome the distraction and relief.’ Again he paused, ever the consummate orator he was patient and would wait until the message resonated. Until he saw fear in her cold wild eyes. ‘And you have a pretty daughter…’ 

    He saw the crack appear as her eyes darted to the small blonde girl gripping the infant in her arms. He sensed the victory but would not flaunt it. To win against an already vanquished enemy, no matter how proud, was still without honour. 

    ‘Put your clothes on.’ 

    She wouldn’t show gratitude though her body language spoke it for her and as she pulled the gore stained tunic over her naked form he turned to watch his children, the younger two oblivious to the undercurrents in the room. Not Nero though, the eldest boy watched quietly and listened just as intently, a fact taken advantage of by his brother who had smuggled two game pieces off the board and under his tunic. 

    He turned back to her. ‘You have lost your son. My daughter needs a wet nurse. Mother my child until she is five years and in that time I will protect you from all harm. After that, I will free you to return to Germania and your husband. Unless I have dealt with him beforehand.’ 

    Her gaze travelled to the girl child, cradling the unmoving infant. In the rear of the tent, the infant howled again. Fresh streams of cloudy fluid wound their way down her ribs, soaking into the tunic. She ignored them, drawing herself up to full height, almost reaching his eyes. 

    ‘And my daughter?’ 

    ‘Remains with you until then.’ 

    She nodded.    

    ‘And I have your word you will not attempt to escape or try to communicate with your husband?’ 

    He met her eyes until she spoke the words. 

    He turned and was already striding back towards his wife when he paused. 

    ‘As a captive, however, I would warn you that any action you take against any Roman, be it eating knives or poisoned mushrooms, will be reciprocated… on the child.’ 

    He let the curtain fall behind him, shutting them out. 

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