Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [133]
“Let me know if I can do anything for you,” Marcus said as he left.
For the rest of the day Porteus prepared to leave. Several times he wondered whether to appeal to Suetonius, but common sense told him that this was a waste of time. Instead he put his affairs in order and wrote a long letter to Lydia, asking her to wait for him while he tried to rescue his career. It was a brave letter:
I still hope to recover and to return from this province with honour. Marcus will give you news of me.
This he gave to Marcus, with a request that he would take it to the house of Graccus when he reached Rome.
“Hand this to Lydia,” he begged. “Give her a good report of me, and tell her father that I have conducted myself with honour. I have no one else I can trust but you.”
Marcus took the letter with a trace of embarrassment.
“I shall do what I can,” he promised, “but don’t hope for too much, Porteus.” And with that the two men parted.
That evening Porteus made one attempt to take leave of the governor, but Suetonius would not see him, and so as dusk fell, there was nothing for him to do but to ride slowly and sadly down the long road to Londinium.
At the port of Londinium his last hopes were dashed. Perhaps, he had thought, I can at least make a good impression on the procurator and he will speak for me in Rome. But at the procurator’s headquarters he found that Classicianus was absent in the north and would not return for weeks.
“You’re to go to Sorviodunum at once,” the secretary told him bleakly. “Governor’s request. The procurator’s never heard of you and you probably won’t see him at all until next year.”
It was only then that Porteus realised the complete effectiveness of Suetonius’s action against him.
“And what am I to do in Sorviodunum?” he asked slowly.
The secretary shrugged. He was a short, bald man with many things on his mind, and he had only taken on this gloomy-looking young man, about whom he knew nothing, at the urgent request of the governor.
“There are some imperial estates there and you’re to supervise them. It’s a routine job,” he added. “Hurry up, will you – you’re expected there tomorrow.” And before Porteus could argue, the bald secretary’s attention was engaged elsewhere.
Sorviodunum: a place that scarcely existed. Porteus: a young Roman whom the administration had decided to forget. That night he faced the fact that his career was in ruins, and even though he did not yet understand the cause of his disgrace, there could be no mistaking its results. For the moment there was nothing he could do except go to the lonely outpost.
He wondered what he would find there.
Life had not dealt very kindly with Tosutigus since the conquest, and as he looked back, some of the memories were painful.
In the days after Vespasian left, the young chief had waited anxiously for developments. News soon arrived from the south west: every few days word came through the valleys of the fall of another of the many-walled hill forts.
“So much for the proud Durotriges,” Tosutigus would mutter with grim satisfaction; and it was not long before he had convinced himself that his surrender of the dune and the signing away of his lands had been a masterstroke of diplomacy.
The fortresses continued to fall and he waited expectantly for news from Vespasian or the governor; but no message came.
By the end of the summer, Vespasian’s campaign was over. The Durotrigan chiefs had fought hard, but the siege engines of the II had been too much for them; and the hard-faced tribune had cut a swathe through their entire territory from east to the far west, where he set up camp for the winter. All over the island the news travelled: “The proud Durotriges have been humbled.”
But if they were humbled, they had still fought; and they had not forgotten the betrayal of the young chief at Sarum.
It was one early autumn morning that a small party of prisoners arrived from