Hostage to Fortuna Read online

  Marching With Caesar – Hostage to Fortuna

  By R.W. Peake

  Also by R.W Peake

  Marching With Caesar® – Birth of the 10th

  Marching With Caesar – Conquest of Gaul

  Marching With Caesar – Civil War

  Marching With Caesar – Antony and Cleopatra, Parts I & II

  Marching With Caesar – Rise of Augustus

  Marching With Caesar – Last Campaign

  Marching With Caesar – Rebellion

  Marching With Caesar – A New Era

  Marching With Caesar – Pax Romana

  Marching With Caesar – Fraternitas

  Marching With Caesar – Vengeance

  Marching With Caesar – Rise of Germanicus

  Marching With Caesar – Revolt of the Legions

  Marching With Caesar – Avenging Varus, Part I

  Marching With Caesar – Avenging Varus, Part II

  Caesar Triumphant

  Caesar Ascending – Invasion of Parthia

  Caesar Ascending – Conquest of Parthia

  Caesar Ascending – India

  Caesar Ascending – Pandya

  Critical praise for the Marching with Caesar series:

  Marching With Caesar-Antony and Cleopatra: Part I-Antony

  “Peake has become a master of depicting Roman military life and action, and in this latest novel he proves adept at evoking the subtleties of his characters, often with an understated humour and surprising pathos. Very highly recommended.”

  Marching With Caesar-Civil War

  "Fans of the author will be delighted that Peake’s writing has gone from strength to strength in this, the second volume...Peake manages to portray Pullus and all his fellow soldiers with a marvelous feeling of reality quite apart from the star historical name... There’s history here, and character, and action enough for three novels, and all of it can be enjoyed even if readers haven’t seen the first volume yet. Very highly recommended."

  ~The Historical Novel Society

  “The hinge of history pivoted on the career of Julius Caesar, as Rome’s Republic became an Empire, but the muscle to swing that gateway came from soldiers like Titus Pullus. What an amazing story from a student now become the master of historical fiction at its best.”

  ~Professor Frank Holt, University of Houston

  Marching With Caesar – Hostage to Fortuna by R.W. Peake

  Copyright © 2020 by R.W. Peake

  Smashwords Edition

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Artwork Copyright © 2020 R. W. Peake

  All Rights Reserved

  For Barney Chapman

  Fellow Texan, Lover of Rome

  And

  Number One Fan

  Foreword

  So, what does an author who writes about the Roman Legions making war do when there’s no war?

  That was the question I was facing at the end of Marching With Caesar® – Avenging Varus Part II, and it was with a fair amount of concern that I revisited Tacitus, looking for something to continue Gnaeus’ story…and I found it in the line “A few had been swept over to Britain, and were returned by petty kings.”

  I also recalled that Tacitus had mentioned that, the year before, when other Romans suffered a similar fate, they were actually held hostage.

  Which made me think: why not Gnaeus? How would that happen, how would it play out, and what ripple effects would it have on not just his career, but his life? Herein lies the answer to what Marching With Caesar® – Hostage to Fortuna is about, but as it is with all the stories I tell, I at least try to make it about more than what it may seem. This book is as much about the power of family, whether they be tied by blood or service, as it is anything else. Like Gnaeus, I am an only child with no siblings, and I came late to the knowledge of my father’s side of the family like he does, but unlike Gnaeus, I didn’t suffer any kind of travails that would require that side of my family to come to my aid. However, much like Gnaeus, I had to grapple with what this sudden realization of a previously unknown side to my very existence meant to me, and how it shaped the man I was to become.

  It is, frankly, something that I am still grappling with in many ways, and in that sense, I believe Gnaeus will be facing a similar challenge.

  As always, thanks to Beth Lynne, my longtime editor (although I still like the word “snuck” better than “sneaked”), and to Laura Prevost for another great cover. Recently, I began doing a series of podcasts, of which there are currently four, and they are under the title Marching With Caesar Podcast Series by R.W. Peake, and you can find them on iTunes, or directly at https://www.buzzsprout.com/670249.

  Otherwise, I don’t really want to give too much away in the Foreword, so this one will be short. All I can say in addition is that I hope you, my faithful readers, enjoy the story at least as much as I enjoy creating them.

  Semper Fidelis,

  R.W. Peake

  February, 2020

  Historical Notes

  In many ways, this was probably the most difficult book I’ve written so far, both from a pure storytelling perspective, which I mentioned in the Foreword, and because this covers areas with which I have, or had, very little experience.

  I’ll cover the easiest one first, and that is what Britannia was like in the very early First Century C.E., for which there isn’t much of a written record. My choice of the Parisii was based on my looking at a map and seeing how unlikely that a ship blown off course would make it all the way to the southern, and better-known part of the island the Romans called Britannia. From there, it was a matter of finding out what I could about the area of the island controlled by the Parisii, which according to ancient sources, was around the Humber River, which the Greeks called the Abis, and is how Gnaeus refers to it. As always, I relied on the superlative Barrington Atlas for more information, and those who either possess the Atlas, or are far more versed in the Britannia of the First Century C.E., may notice that I have placed the ancient city of Petuar on the southern bank, not the northern bank as it’s depicted on the map. I did this intentionally, since every source I could find places the Humber as the dividing line between Parisii and Brigantes territory. Hopefully, this is not an egregious sin. Petuar is the non-Romanized name of Petuaria, and is where the city of Brough is located. Danum, the only other habitation I mention, is the city of Doncaster, and I made it the Parisii capital because of its geographical location and not from any information that it ever served as such.

  As far as the Parisii themselves, for this I relied heavily on Caesar’s Commentaries, for the simple reason that I don’t believe that their customs, style of dress, and the way they groomed themselves would have changed all that much in the roughly 50 years between Caesar’s expedition and Gnaeus’ shipwreck. I also made some assumptions, which is the luxury an author of historical fiction has, and that is how, given the seeming connection to the Parisii along the Seine, I endowed the Briton Parisii with a Celtic/Gallic personality, although I made sure to give them chariots, unlike their mainland relatives.

  This brings us to the other part of this story where I was in uncharted waters (forgive the pun), and that was in nautical matters. While I was able to find several examples of what a trireme of the type that might have been used by Rome in general, and Germanicus in particularly might look like, when it came to the interior, I was in vain. Those few examples of interiors I could find seemed to be for ships made for war and not transport, so I was left with my imagination on what such a craft might have looked like on the inside.

  There had t
o be sleeping space for not just the crew, but the passengers; as lacking in comforts as life for the Legions of Rome may have been, I am hard pressed to believe that these men would have been expected to sit on benches. Besides that…where would those benches be aboard a ship powered by oars? As I envisioned the layout, the only way I could see it working was to have hammocks, in tiers, strung from the bulkhead to the center of the ship, which I describe as a walkway that runs down the middle of the part of the ship where the rowers were located. During this invention process that took place completely in my head, I recalled something I learned when I was in the Regional Museum of Arles, in 2010, very soon after the discovery of a shipwreck in the Rhone River that contained, among other things, what is considered to be the last, or one of the last, likenesses of Julius Caesar in the form of a bust. However, it was a more mundane cargo, and when I reviewed the video and saw the double rows of amphorae that were arranged down the middle of the wreck, I realized that it was likely the area under the walkway that provided space for the storage of cargo, or in the case of a troop transport, the gear carried by the men being transported.

  Now, as to the men who were doing the rowing, Tacitus states that some of the ships were crewed by the Legionaries themselves, but nowhere did I find any indication that they provided the crews for every single vessel. Also, while slaves were definitely used to crew ships, from everything I’ve read, it wasn’t nearly as straightforward as that, and there were ships crewed by freedmen or, in that area, free Gallic natives. What readers might notice was I don’t mention the use of chains, at least when these men are at the oars. As I researched further, it became clear to me that the practice of chaining men to the benches wasn’t a feature of the ancient world, and when one thinks of the relative scarcity of iron, that makes sense to me, along with the fact that weight would always have to be a consideration. And, especially for seagoing vessels, unless a slave crew could coordinate a mutiny, one or a handful of slaves wouldn’t be able to overcome a crew.

  And, not surprisingly, close quarters, especially during a period of time where hygiene was…less than perfect, being in a closed compartment would create an olfactory experience that tends to stick in one’s mind. This is something with which I have experience, and what becomes apparent is that fairly quickly a group of people in an enclosed space, or in a situation where they can’t bathe, become accustomed to it to the point they don’t notice…until they leave that group, or they’re informed by someone else, as I and twelve of my fellow Marines who had been in the field for three weeks were ordered to report to the clinic that served active duty and dependents on Camp Pendleton found out, when a little girl about five years old, turned to her mother and said, “Oh, Mommy, they smell horrible…” right before she threw up. This isn’t necessarily historical, but since I try to immerse myself in that age as I write as much as possible, it was definitely something that crossed my mind.

  The process of relief that I describe is completely my own, and again is based in my immersion in the story as I write it, and I think, “How would I do that?” As far as the means by which men seated on benches in three tiers would move about when they weren’t rowing, again the series of smaller walkways, really nothing more than lengths of lumber about four inches wide and at three different levels seemed the way it would work. Having two men manning one oar on the lowest level is based in my somewhat limited knowledge, and every depiction I’ve seen the lowest oars are the closest to the hull and as a result the rowers would have less leverage because of a shorter oar. Hence, my guess that it would take two men for an even distribution of power.

  My description of the crane is based on the models that I have seen, but one early mistake I made was in the assumption that it could swivel; that wouldn’t show up for several more centuries. Consequently, the question then becomes, how could one raise up a ship, either from the ground where it’s being constructed or repaired, and get it into the water, or vice versa? Again, this is based in a slightly analogous experience when I worked as an ironworker, and there was a situation where for some reason I can’t recall, the crane we were using was stuck in a single position and couldn’t swivel. Using a series of cables and ropes, while the crane operator carefully let out the slack, we were able to move a large piece of steel for the building we were constructing into another spot that wasn’t directly in front of the boom of the crane. Naturally, a ship, even an ancient one, is going to be far heavier, and far more complex, but I believe the principle is the same.

  My descriptions of Alexandria come directly from the research I did for Marching With Caesar-Civil War when Titus the Elder serves with Caesar during his seven month interlude during the civil war, and is based on the same assumption that I made with Britannia, that not much changed in the half-century since Titus the Elder was there. The Praefectus Augustalus was a real office created by Augustus, and Gaius Gallerius was the officeholder in that period of time, and the 22nd Legion had been in Egypt for decades at this point. Finally, the trip to the agora, and the tale told by the nameless merchant about kinnamon, which I kept in the Greek because I’m sure my readers would recognize it, actually came from research that I have been doing for the Caesar Ascending series, specifically from the book Through The Jade Gate-China to Rome, by John. E. Hill, which is a scholarly work about the famous Silk Routes of the 1st and 2nd Centuries C.E. I included this tale because, if anything, it should demonstrate that the concept of marketing was alive and well and living in the times of Ancient Rome.

  Long-time readers might also note that there’s not much description of terrain in this work, mainly because terrain doesn’t play much of a role on the ocean, and the area around ancient Petuar is as flat as my hometown of Houston. The only real question about it is whether it was heavily forested then. Based on what little descriptive information I could get my hands on, it seemed that there weren’t that many forests, at least with trees of the type that could be used for a mast, in the vicinity. The one error I avoided was when I researched and learned that the only form of evergreen, Scots Pine, or as we Americans call it Scotch Pine, is in…yes, Scotland, so I made the type of tree that was favored by ancient shipbuilders for generic masts.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter One

  When I boarded the transport, a trireme named the Brizo, along with the First and Second Century for our return to Ubiorum, I cannot say that it was without a fair amount of trepidation. While I had spent several days on a boat, there is quite the difference between floating down the Dubis and Rhenus, and sailing on the open sea. It was true that everyone, from the ship master down to the lowest crewman, took particular pains to let us know that we would never be out of sight of the coastline, yet that certainly did not do much to ease my mind, and I did know that my Optio Saloninus had been sacrificing almost nonstop to every maritime god he could find, both Roman and Gallic. Despite the assurances of our master and crew, I could not help noticing how the wind got much stronger as we drifted downriver on the Amisia; fortunately, I was so occupied with getting the men settled in for what was only supposed to be a voyage lasting at most a week, that it was only a passing thought. There had been some discussion about how our wounded would be transported, and whether it was better for them to take the longer overland journey or be put aboard ship. As I had learned, and the more experienced officers know as well, we inevitably lose wounded men when they are put in a wagon that is not traveling over a good Roman road; the constant jolting and bouncing causes sutures to tear or mending bones to break again. Yes, transporting the wounded by sea can be hazardou
s as well because of rough seas, but it was widely accepted that transporting them by ship would be easier on them, and frankly, the fact that it was even a discussion is more indicative of how we view traveling by sea.

  Certainly, the Pili Priores had harassed Primus Pilus Sacrovir, and I was right there with my counterparts. We were even willing to offer up part of the bounty that we had been told we were going to be paid when we returned to Ubiorum to bribe whoever in the praetorium was responsible for deciding who sailed and who marched. Finally, he had had enough, and it took an explosion of his temper with us before some of my comrades accepted that persisting in their attempts to get the 1st among the Legions who would be marching back was a bad idea. It is not that I was unsympathetic; I did not want to get on a ship any more than they, or our men, did, but I had recognized that it was not happening, as had Macer, so neither of us participated in the last delegation to the quarters of the Primus Pilus. However, there were logistical issues concerning the transport of the wounded; specifically, whether they were going to be kept with their respective Centuries or transported together along with the medici and Legion physicians distributed among them. The fact that it required nine ships for the two Legions going by ship, our 1st and the 21st, was a sobering reminder of the cost of what so far are the final battles against Arminius. And, despite what transpired, I still cannot fault the decision of Primus Pilus Sacrovir, which Germanicus approved, to put them all together, despite what happened. I suppose it was too much to expect that the respective numbers of wounded meant that all of our wounded in the 1st could be kept together, but twenty of them had to be loaded aboard the last ship of the complement belonging to the 21st.