“These Celts are mad,” the Romans said. “They eat like senators, they sing, they weep, and then they fight each other for pleasure.”
“They are all poets: drunk with poetry,” a merchant once explained.
“They are drunk with drink,” came the cynical Roman reply. “And their Druid priests are disgusting.”
All these statements were true. The fact was that the Romans could make nothing of the Celts. A good Roman loved systematic government, hierarchy, bureaucracy: the Celts had innumerable petty chiefs and kings, tied to each other by generations of blood vows and clientships so tangled that no logical Roman could ever make sense of them. Even their gods, like the great Dagda, the protector of the tribe, seemed to take pleasure in changing into unlikely shapes and playing tricks on mankind: not to satisfy their lusts and desires – this the Romans could have understood – but for no reason at all.
“We shall teach them to love order,” the Romans said. But it was not easy.
It was Julius Caesar who first tried to tame the Celts, in Gaul. That brilliant opportunist saw the nature of the problem at once:
“We’ll break up the petty kings and their clientships, replace them by magistrates,” he decided. “The bigger ones we must either subdue or win over to our side by flattering them and making them rich. Then we’ll educate their sons – turn them into Roman gentlemen. That always does the trick.”
It was a wise policy, and to an extent it worked. But there were some who refused all blandishments. The group of tribes known as the Belgae, part Celtic, part Germanic, took to Roman culture, but refused Roman rule, and were driven across the sea. But as the years passed, the calculated Roman wooing converted many to the benefits of civilisation, both in the province of Gaul, and in the still unconquered island across the Channel. Though many Celtic tribes scorned Roman domination, their chiefs often knew the Roman merchants of Gaul who brought them the huge amphorae of wine, the gems and other luxuries they enjoyed. Ambitious rulers had heard – even if they could not quite imagine them – of the stupendous palaces of the imperial city; and they were envious. They had seen, too, the convenient written records the Roman merchants kept of their transactions, and though the Celts had no writing of their own, some of the more educated tribal chiefs could speak and even write a little Latin.
“The islanders will fight; but they’ll come over to us,” Claudius remarked. This was the belief of those planning the invasion. “Sooner or later these barbarians always do.”
It was spring in the year A.D. 44, and the people of Sarum had been expecting the Romans for a month. The weather had been capricious: one day brilliant sunshine would make the chalk ridges shimmer and steam; the next, heavy grey clouds would scud over the entrance to the valley bringing an unexpected flurry of late snow or a sudden shower of hail. But today it was fine, with a warm damp wind blowing up from the south-west in a clear blue sky.
They were well prepared: for the entire population had taken refuge in the dune.
In the two thousand years since the sarsens had been dragged to Stonehenge, the landscape around Sarum had not changed much. Woods of oak and ash, elm and hazel still graced the broad bowl of land where the five rivers met. To the north, the bare chalk ridges extended to the horizon and on the slopes above the valleys, fields of corn rustled in the breeze. But there were changes: sheep now grazed on the sacred precincts where the mellow grey stones of the henge, still standing in their magic circle, were seldom visited and showed many signs of disrepair. The barrows were overgrown with turf, and no new ones had been built for generations. And on the broad slopes where the farmers had sown their wheat, flax and barley for four thousand years, the land had now been more carefully divided than before, into a patchwork of small, neat rectangular fields, clearly demarcated by hedges, lynchets and earth banks. The fields were seldom bigger than two hundred feet long, and they were cross-ploughed.
Only one feature of the landscape had changed completely. The small wooded hill which stood guardian at the entrance to the valley had been completely transformed. It had been a promontory really, a natural hump jutting out from the high ground; but several centuries ago, the old promontory had been scraped bare and round the entire summit of some thirty acres, two massive banks of earth and chalk had been thrown up, with a deep ditch between them. The lightly wooded hill had been transformed into a bold, bare mound, rather unsightly, with a steep slope on every side. For the first, but not the last time in its history, Sarum hill had been turned into a regular fortress. It was a forbidding place to look at now, glaring white in the sun and dominating the landscape for miles around. The people of Sarum, using a Celtic term, called this fortress the dune.
The dune already had a chequered history. It had served as a fortress, a hill settlement, a cattle pound, a market – sometimes all at once; but in recent years it had been allowed to fall into disuse. When news came of the Roman landing, its ramparts were hastily repaired and resurfaced so that their sides, steeply packed with fresh chalk and clay, stared out bravely at the world. A new pair of gates, made of oak, were erected at the main entrance and buttressed by heavy wooden props in order to withstand any battering ram. Inside the dune, now partially restored to its former glory, a motley collection of buildings had appeared: round thatched houses, grainstores, sheep and cattle pens. Near the middle stood a well. The central focus of the dune, however, was a single pole standing near the well, twenty feet high, on the top of which was the carved head of Modron, the Celtic goddess of war, with her three ravens. Her angry face stared out blankly into space, defying all invaders. This was the community’s battle standard and, according to the Druids, it made Sarum invincible.
The young man stood alone on the high wall of the dune and stared intently southwards.
“No news from Taradoc,” he muttered. “But I know the Romans are near: I can feel it.”
A few days ago he had sent the riverman down to the harbour with strict orders to return to Sarum and report as soon as the Romans got there. It was known that the Second Legion was moving swiftly along the south coast with instructions to destroy the hill forts of the west. They must have reached the river mouth by now, he thought, and once they did so, he was sure they would strike up river to Sarum. But Taradoc had not appeared.
“Where is the wretch?” the young man said irritably.
His eyes which scanned the country so anxiously, were blue; his figure was slight but well made, with a wispy light brown beard, a moustache, equally wispy, that he was encouraging to droop and curl up at the ends – for this was the fashion for a Celtic warrior – and a mouth that was a little too sensitive for the warrior’s role he felt obliged to assume. He wore a linen tunic that reached to his knees and was gathered in at the waist by a broad leather belt from which hung a heavy iron sword. Over the tunic was a large, four cornered woollen cloak – the brat – dyed a brilliant blue and held in place at the front by a large bronze brooch. On his feet he had strong leather shoes. He had a certain air of authority, but he was young and he carried his authority somewhat anxiously; even so, if he was still uncertain of himself, something in his eyes suggested that he had a mind of his own.
The most striking part of his dress however, was not the bright cloak, nor the brooch, but a huge, heavy strip of gold he wore round his neck: it had been shaped into a ring and the free ends, which met at the front, were each fitted with a magnificent golden boss, carved in the shape of a boar’s head. This was the torc, the most important ornament worn by any Celtic warrior: it was a badge of office and its huge size proclaimed that, despite his youth, this young man was the chief.
His name was Tosutigus. He was brave, but he was obstinate and he was ignorant; the fate of the dune, of Sarum, and of his family, now lay in his hands, and the plan that for many months he had carefully and secretly formed was about to cause the downfall of all three.
Tosutigus let his eyes travel along the parapet. The forces at his disposal consisted of a hundred men, s
ix horses, an ancient chariot – for the war chariots were considered out of date nowadays – and a Druid. Since there was no question of this little garrison giving open battle to the Romans, the chariot would certainly remain unused. His men were armed with spears and arrows, both tipped with iron points, and he could rely on them to fight to the last man. But, like many of the Celts at that time, the defenders of Sarum had a still more effective weapon – which lay in the huge piles of smooth round pebbles that had been stacked every few yards along the parapet. These were the stones that the men, and some of the women, would fit into the long slings that they knew how to use so well. Swung round the head and released with the additional leverage of a fully stretched arm, the slings could hurl one of the pebbles with such force that it could drop a man stone dead at a hundred yards. In this type of fighting, the slingsmen worked so fast that their pebbles fell like a freak hailstorm, mowing their enemies down like grass.
As the people of Sarum waited to fight, and perhaps to die, they knew nothing about the plan that their young chief had pondered secretly for so long. But it was this plan which occupied all his thoughts now as he scanned the horizon for signs of the Romans, and which caused him to murmur:
“I’ll make Sarum greater than it has ever been before; and my family shall be powerful kings again, as they were in ancient times.”
His dynastic pride was well founded: no family on the island had an older claim to their territory. Five hundred years ago, had not his Celtic ancestor, Coolin the warrior, come riding down the great ridgeway from the north with his huge iron sword and his six faithful companions? Had they not halted at the entrance to the sacred temple of Stonehenge and there found Alana, last daughter of the house of Krona, whose noble ancestry stretched back into the mists of time? Heroic as the legend sounded, it was perfectly true; and the descendants of the union between the Celtic warlord and the last heiress of Sarum had continued to rule over a mixed population of Celtic and ancient island stock as the centuries passed. A further legend had also grown up, and had been encouraged by his family, that the first ancestors of Alana were giants who had carried the huge sarsens to the henge on their backs and built the temple in a single night. For the stones were known to be magic and the rulers of Sarum liked to remind their people that their ancestors were something more than ordinary men. Although the temple was seldom used now – for the Druid priests preferred to worship in smaller shrines or in clearings in the woods – the family still styled themselves in the ancient manner of the pre-Celtic house of Krona: lords of Sarum and guardians of the sacred henge.
But powerful they were not. Sarum had suffered many vicissitudes in the intervening centuries and by the time of Tosutigus’s father it was little more than a backwater, a small settlement which the chance of history had left stranded, maintaining a precarious independence between the territories of several powerful tribes.
A century before, things had gone well. The great Belgic tribe of the Atrebates, who even had impressive sounding treaties of friendship and trade with the Roman Empire, had their stronghold to the north-east of Sarum; and the great-grandfather of Tosutigus had wisely married a princess of their royal house and secured their protection. Those had been splendid days at Sarum, when the dune was a small town, and the chief, secure in the patronage of the king of the Atrebates, held court there and hunted magnificently in the forests like his predecessors in ancient times. It was thanks to the princess of the Atrebates, also, that the ruling family at Sarum had learned to speak Latin. Even now, young Tosutigus spoke it haltingly, and was proud of his sophisticated accomplishment. But in later times, events had not turned out so well: the power of the Atrebates had waned; they were driven out of their lands; they could no longer protect Sarum, and in their place came other proud tribes, who knew nothing of the family at Sarum.
The new tribes in the east were of Belgic origin, like the Atrebates, but they were uncomfortable neighbours. As usual, the grandfather of Tosutigus, being pragmatic, had tried to secure the friendship of the nearest important tribe by offering one of their leading chiefs his only daughter in marriage. The Belgic chief had thanked him, forgotten to pay for her, and forgotten, it seemed, that Sarum existed. This at least was something to be thankful for, and for another generation the place where the five rivers met had known peace. But it was the peace of neglect and while other tribal centres grew more powerful, Sarum slowly declined.
Another generation passed, and now Tosutigus and his father were faced with another and still more dangerous problem to solve; this lay on the other side of their little stronghold, to the south west.
For in that direction lay one of the fiercest people that the Romans would ever encounter: the huge and mighty tribe of the Durotriges.
“The Durotriges in the south west will fight. They are proud and used to getting their own way,” his spies warned Claudius. “They have never seen Roman arms,” they explained, “and they think they cannot be defeated.”
It was their hill forts that the proud Durotriges relied on: by comparison with many of these, the dune at Sarum, with its single set of walls, was puny. The great earthworks of Maiden Castle, Badbury Rings, Hod Hill and many others which are all standing to this day, covered dozens of acres; they had five, six or seven huge sets of ramparts and complex defended entrances where attackers could be trapped. The Durotriges held an enormous area in the south-west of the island, including the shallow harbour, where they had fortified the hill.
The family at Sarum solved the problem in their usual way – by calculated submission.
“You must always be a loyal friend to the Durotriges,” his father told him. “They hold the port, and that controls the river. If they choose, they can swallow you up like a bird swallowing a worm.” And his father, following the custom of the Celtic tribes, swore an oath on his sword to fight for the king of the Durotriges whatever his cause. In so doing, he became his client, and gained some measure of protection for his petty dynasty. Sarum was left alone, to be held for the Durotrigan king as the most northerly outpost of his great chain of hill forts, and the family preserved their independence and some semblance of their dignity.
But then, a year ago, his father had died, leaving his untried young son with a proud name, but a precarious inheritance. There had been no choice, but to follow his father’s policy, and only two months ago in Maiden Castle, he had knelt before the huge old man sitting on a deerskin, who was the king of the Durotriges, gazed into his fierce black eyes and sworn:
“When the Romans come, my lord, I will hold the dune at Sarum for you, to the last man.”
Had the king any idea of the youth’s real ambitions, he would either have laughed, or struck him dead on the spot. Instead he had turned to his council after the young man had departed and remarked cynically:
“The main Roman force will come south: they’ll not trouble much with Sarum and if they take it, we can afford the loss. Let the legions come to Maiden Castle and Hod Hill – that’s where we’ll break their backs!”
And taking one of the bright gold coins that he had minted for himself he threw it high into the air.
“If my head is up, Sarum will stand; if down, it will fall,” the huge man laughed. The coin tumbled on the grass and his counsellors gathered round to see which way it had fallen.
As Tosutigus gazed towards the south that spring morning, and considered his own plans, his thoughts were interrupted by the approach of three men whom he turned to greet politely.
The two brothers Numex and Balba were not twins, but they were close in age and so alike that it was laughable. Both were short and bow-legged, with round heads, red faces and pointed noses and though both were still in their thirties, they carried themselves with a quiet gravity that made them seem older. For numberless generations their family had always produced children with short thumbs and thick, stubby fingers who invariably became wonderful workmen. It was Numex who had made the new oak gates and carved the figure of the war goddess which
stood at the centre of the dune; and it was Balba, a dyer of cloth, who had, by using a dye derived from the roots of the common buttercup, produced the brilliant blue of the young chief’s cloak. Because of the dyes, which were dissolved in urine, Balba could usually be smelt even before he was seen, but his skill earned him such respect that men forgave him his pungent aroma. Both men wore tunics similar to Tosutigus’s, but made of coarser cloth and they did not wear cloaks or gold ornaments. He had put these two reliable brothers in charge of the day to day running of the little camp and they had come to receive their orders.
The third figure was in stark contrast. Aflek the Druid was tall, impressive when seen at a distance, but ragged and somewhat disreputable when observed from close quarters. His brow was deeply furrowed, the lines seeming more deeply etched because they were full of dirt. Half his teeth were gone; his grey hair and long beard were filthy, as was the long brown robe that reached to his ankles. His feet were protected by open sandals with heavy leather thongs between the toes. Tosutigus had watched the Druid go down from the dune to the river at dawn that day. Taking off his sandals he had walked barefoot to a small wood where he had cut mistletoe, using a bronze knife. He had also collected herbs, moving carefully along the north side of the bushes as he did so – for the ritual of the Druids forbade the collection of herbs from any but the north side. After watching the river intently for some time, Aflek had then thrown gold dust on to the swollen waters and made his devotions to the gods before returning up the hill. The young chief eyed him cautiously.
“Well?”
“The goddess Modron has given me a sign. We shall be victorious,” the old man said. “The gods protect Sarum.”