Ashes Under Uricon
Chapter 20. Animosity (370-81)
By Mihangel
Quid interest, qua quisque prudentia verum requirat? Uno itinere non potest perveniri ad tam grande secretum.
Does it matter what sort of insights each of us uses in our search for the truth? So great a mystery cannot be reached by a single path.
Symmachus, Motions
Life tends to progress in fits and starts. The next ten years or so were relatively calm, in the sense that no major events disturbed our local peace. The Saxons were sporadically raiding the eastern coasts but, thanks to a few painted boats which now patrolled the Deva Sea, the Irish were quiet. The town and the countryside healed their physical wounds and throve. All, on the surface, was well. That is not to say that we were idle. We tried to fulfil the substance of our dreams, the yearning for continuity and stability and love, the fight against intolerance and narrow-mindedness and corruption. We tried in our modest way to help Viroconium along a path of civic strength and mutual cooperation. We did not wholly succeed.
As soon as Bran was restored to strength we set afoot the plan to rid ourselves of day-to-day chores. The Procurator of Mines was already entitled to the part-time services of a clerk in the Town Hall, and by paying the council the difference in his salary we acquired him full-time, working for us both. From now on, for Bran, he dealt with the water rates and many practical aspects of the water supply and drains, and for me he handled the payment of the miners' wages and transport arrangements for the lead from Onna and the copper from Croucodunum. Now that the Pulcher estate was in good shape, Volusius had time, with Ulcagnus, to manage the farm accounts. Thus we were left, in the main, with only the general oversight of our duties.
The sole major and regular task I retained for myself was collecting the silver from Onna, taking it on to Corinium, and collecting cash for the miners' wage-packets. While down south I would also arrange the shipment of the lead from Abonae, which could not be done from a distance. I had two reasons for making this journey personally. One was that it kept me in touch with the outside world. Unofficial gossip was always on tap from the merchants and ship-captains in Abonae, and at Corinium there was a new Count of the Mines, a congenial civil servant named Flavianus who readily passed on the latest official news. I made a point too of meeting each of the successive governors, though none of them seemed to match the calibre of Sanctus. My second reason was that the silver and, to a lesser extent, the cash were valuable and it was unfair to expose a subordinate to the danger of being robbed. It had always struck me as risky for a solitary unarmed man to carry a small fortune in his saddlebag, and the roads were not becoming any safer. This was especially true in the direction of the mines and the mountains where bandits from the Pagenses were growing more daring.
Not long afterwards, indeed, I nearly came to a sticky end myself. I was riding through a forest on my way back from Onna when an arrow twanged past me into a nearby tree and two mounted figures crashed out of the undergrowth. Luckily they were bad shots and my horse was a good one, and I outrode them. But it shook me, and it shook Bran when I told him. On my next trip to Corinium I pointed out to the Count that it would help nobody, except the bandits, if the emperor's silver did not reach him, and Flavianus authorised me to borrow an escort from our German platoon. Henceforth, whenever I carried silver, I was accompanied by three scruffy and hairy squaddies with whom I could hardly converse. I felt -- no doubt unfairly -- that they could all too easily turn into robbers themselves, and was careful that neither they nor their commanding officer should know what they were guarding. And, with the Count's authority, we stayed at state hotels, which reduced my own expenses.
But there was one other mineral for which I was indirectly responsible. The brine springs of Salinae and Condate, way up to the north and only just in Cornovian territory, belonged to the civitas but were leased out to entrepreneurs. All I -- or my clerk -- had to do was receive the rent. But it had not been changed for years, and I was beginning to wonder about it. I had noticed on my journeys south that most of the salt on sale in the markets, as far away as Corinium and Aquae Sulis, was packed in distinctive pots which were peculiar to Condate and Salinae, despite the fact that the Dobunni had their own saltworks very much closer at hand. Our lessee was clearly producing in large quantities and marketing it well. Good for him. But was the rent he was paying a realistic one?
I went north to look at his works. They were very extensive. Beside each spring where the brine welled up from the ground was a battery of shallow lead tanks into which the brine was ladled. The tanks sat on a series of parallel brick walls which formed flues to carry the heat from a wood fire. When the water had evaporated, the salt remaining in the tanks was scraped off and put into pots. Nothing could be simpler and the profit, even allowing for transport, must surely be huge. If the lessee's accounts showed that was the case, the rent ought to be bumped up considerably. The difficulty was that the lessee was Viventius, Bishop of Viroconium.
"That's no reason why he shouldn't pay a realistic rent," I said to Bran. "But things are so polarised between Christians and pagans, and Viventius hates us more than he hates most pagans. Putting his rent up will only worsen relations all round."
"I'm afraid it will. But haven't you got to? As Procurator you've a duty to the civitas. So has he, come to that, as a citizen."
Accordingly I armed myself with authority from the Town Hall and went to his house. He must have been forewarned by his stooge on the council and, while he could not dispute my right to inspect his books, he prevaricated. He knew nothing about it himself. The saltworks were managed by Cunitus, who was one of his deacons. At the moment, unfortunately, Cunitus was not available. Of course he wasn't, I thought sourly. He was busy fiddling the accounts. I had the council auditor go through them, when they finally reached us, with a fine-toothed comb. He was a better accountant than Cunitus, and easily spotted where figures had been changed. Cunitus, summonsed for attempted fraud, was fined heavily, and the bishop's rent was tripled. His profit was badly dented for years; and so were our relations with the church.
To us and our pagan friends, Viventius was an enigma. He was an extremely capable man, of high ambition -- no harm in that, as such -- and charming when he so wished. But he was a fanatic, and fanaticism did not commend itself to pagan opinion. Our philosophy was to live and let live, and we felt privately that he would have won many more converts had he not preached so stridently against us. The church as a whole seemed to regard paganism and heresy as its principal enemies. It never campaigned against the injustices of society, the excessive wealth in the hands of the few, the inequitable taxes, the corruption in civil service and law courts, the harsh lot of the common man, the very institution of slavery. It blandly accepted the social system as it found it.
Yet the Christians did much good work in the town. The government gave no help whatever to the orphans or widows, to the poor, the sick, the aged or the out-of-work. The pagan gentry, I am sorry to say, gave little help either, except perhaps to their own household or workforce. They tended to regard the expense of their civic duties as contribution enough to the wellbeing of the civitas. But the church was wealthy, funded by income from its land and by gifts from its members; and especially by that least painful form of gift, bequests in wills. The church in Viroconium was richer by now than any individual, and it gave generously to the needy. But it gave only to those who belonged to its own flock.
"Docco," said Bran one day. "Why don't we set up a charity for pagans who are in need? To complement the Christian charity?"
We touted the idea around our friends, and it took off. To organise it, we found two stalwarts. Alauna was a redoubtable lady, the widow of a tanner and much respected among the tradespeople. And Amminus, rather to our surprise, offered to act as go-between with the gentry. Having been active first in the defence against the Irish and subsequently in the informal militia, he had been left at a loose end by the arrival of our so-called garrison. His wild-oat days over, he was now in a stable relationship with a young man. He and Alauna between them persuaded the pagans to part with substantial sums of money and oversaw its distribution to the needy. Equally important, they persuaded the pagans to continue to give. There was an element of rivalry here, a touch of 'we can do as well as the Christians.' But, admirable though this may have been, it did nothing to reduce the polarisation. Bran and I, in our hope for unity rather than discord, took advice.
Flavius Antigonus Papias had also found a new lease of life. When he lost the the young Pulcher girls as pupils, he had despaired of alternative employment in Viroconium. Nonius was too well entrenched and too well loved for a rival school to make any headway. But the unforeseen influx of Roman families from eastern Britain had filled Papias' need. In the past, the few sons of the town who aimed at the legal profession had gone for training to Corinium or further afield, but now there was a significant local demand for education in rhetoric and the law, and Papias and his new academy throve. Because he was, alongside Nonius, the most cultured person in the town, we saw a lot of him, whether in our dining room or his. He was an ungainly man much of Tad's age, unfashionably bearded, but refreshingly unpompous. Still not a Christian but still deeply intrigued by Christianity, he had a foot of a kind in both camps.
But, although he took our point entirely, he was pessimistic.
"The problem doesn't lie with you," he said. "It lies with Viventius. You want to live with him, but he doesn't want to live with you. He has a lot in common, you know, with traditional Romans like the late-lamented Pulcher. Both have an enormous arrogance and rigidity. The church is the ally of the state. They fight together against what they see as the hordes of darkness, whether the darkness is pagan or barbarian. The overall good of the community cuts little ice. Viroconium is dominated by pagans, and therefore Viventius cocks a snook at it. He deliberately refuses to act as a responsible citizen. One day -- and may it be far off -- this town will be dominated by Christians. If he's still around, his tune will change -- he'll then be the cock crowing on the dunghill -- but there'll still be no unity. If he turns up his toes before then, we might get a human being as his successor. But as long as Viventius is bishop I doubt you'll get anywhere. Yet there's no harm in trying."
We tried. We were well aware that, whereas our temples were open to anyone at any time, the Christians were an exclusive sect who worshipped together with a set ritual at specified times and forbade the uninitiated to witness their inner mysteries. We therefore went to the bishop and humbly asked him if we might attend a service, the better to understand what Christianity stood for. Viventius' eyes glinted. Yes, of course, he said. Come next Sunday morning.
We noticed, as we left his house, that the spout in his courtyard was in full flow, even though it had a tap fitted and nobody was using the water.
"There've been a few cases like that," Bran sighed when we were in the street. "If we charge consumers lower rates because they've got a tap, we have to trust them to use it. There's no real alternative. If we did spot-checks we'd be accused of spying, of secret service tactics. I'd be justified in putting the bishop's water rates up to the standard level. But let's leave it and see how Sunday goes. If it leads to better relations it'll be worth the difference in revenue."
Accordingly, next Sunday morning, we presented ourselves at the church. The guardian at the entrance stopped us.
"Wrong door," he said. "Women and children only."
Not a good start. Our gods recognised no segregation whatever. The guardian at the other door knew us, and knew perfectly well that we were not of his flock, but he asked if we were believers. No, we replied, we had come to see for ourselves, with the bishop's permission. Very well, he said grudgingly, we might stand at the back provided we left when told to, after the litanies. The church was a fine building inside, with an apse at one end and an airy aisled nave, not wholly unlike the Town Hall but smaller, not wholly unlike Nodens' temple but larger, and less ornate than either. The bishop was enthroned in the apse, his clergy around him. In the body of the church the men were all on one side, while the older women, the young women, and the children were segregated like sheep and goats into separate groups on the other.
The ritual began. It made no concession to those who spoke only British, for every word was in Latin. We knew the Christians had two sets of holy books, old ones borrowed wholesale from the Jews, new ones containing the teachings of their Christ and his followers. First there were two readings from the old books, which gave the impression of a god of wrath and vengeance. Then there was a song, in parts of which the people joined. Then came two long readings from the new books which gave the impression of a rule of rigid law. During these, officials were officious, waking up someone who was nodding, reprimanding children for whispering. Then everyone stood up for yet another reading, this time from the words of Christ. 'He that is not with me,' it ended, 'is against me.' Bran and I exchanged glances. That did not accord with our philosophy. While we were not with him, we were not against him. But if that was how he wanted it to be . . .
Then there were short addresses from the clergy. One concerned the role of wives, who should be subject to their husbands because women were fundamentally flawed. That seemed as obnoxious to us as the traditional Roman outlook, and we exchanged another glance. The next priest spoke about slavery. God, he declared, is just, his punishments are just, and slavery is a punishment for sin. We did not even bother to look at each other.
The bishop spoke last. Let me remind you, he said, his eyes roaming balefully around, of those sinners whom the church can accept. Those who follow pagan customs or Jewish fables, provided they recant. Theatre actors, charioteers, gladiators, Olympic athletes, musicians at the games, dancing-masters and hucksters, so long as they reform their ways. Soldiers who promise to do no injustice, to accuse no man falsely, and to be content with their wages. Magicians, astrologers, jugglers, amulet-makers, soothsayers and fortune-tellers may be accepted; and yes, even sodomites and effeminate persons, provided they be tested over a long period of time, for the stain of this sort of wickedness is hard to be washed away. The difference between the sexes, he thundered, looking so fixedly at us that people turned round to stare, is made by God. It is made for procreation. Any other intercourse, such as that involved in the sin of Sodom, is contrary to nature and hateful -- he spat the word out -- to God.
There followed long strings of chanted prayers to which the people answered "hear our prayer" or "lord have mercy." They prayed for novices under instruction, for those about to be baptised, for penitents, for the faithful, for everyone under the sun. Towards the end they even prayed "for our enemies and those that hate us," at which Viventius glared at us again. We did not hate them, but he very clearly hated us. He signed to the doorkeepers. The mysteries were about to begin, and we were hustled out. We would have left anyway. But with us there also left a sizeable handful from the body of the church.
"Those of the faithful," we heard the bishop bellow angrily, "who enter the holy church of God and hear the sacred scriptures, but do not stay for the holy communion, cause disorder and are to be suspended."
"Then I'm happy to be suspended," remarked one of them whom we knew. "I'm sorry Viventius got at you. He has no sense of proportion at all. If he can be as rude and intolerant as that, I won't be going back to his church."
We reported sadly to Papias. He was not surprised.
"Don't worry too much. You live by your principles. They're just as good as his -- or better -- and there ought to be no conflict between them. It's Viventius who creates the conflict."
"You think there's no room, then, for tolerant co-existence?"
"Not on his part. There ought to be, of course. Nobody has a monopoly on the truth. There are many paths towards it. Faith is universal, even if it flowers in a hundred different ways." He chuckled sombrely. "There are a hundred different ways in Christianity alone. Some of them are weird but do no harm. If that's what people want, why should I object, or anyone else? Did you know there's a sect called the Ophites who keep a snake in a box on the altar and release it during mass? And another called the Adamites who worship stark naked? In Africa, mind you, not here. Here they'd need a very well-heated building. And there's already another splinter group in Viroconium -- they call themselves Priscillianists -- who've set up their own little church. I haven't yet heard what they stand for. But they're a sign -- and so are the people who walked out with you -- that Viventius isn't having it all his own way. When he finally goes, there may be less animosity. But until then I'm afraid we have to put up with it."
"Ah well. Non omnia possumus omnes," Bran sighed. "We can't all do everything. But after that exhibition I've really got no option. I'll have to charge him full water rates."
So the religious divide remained, and worsened. It was a pity, because Valentinian, our emperor in the west, though an orthodox Christian, was remarkably tolerant of pagans. He proved a good administrator, actually reducing taxation for the first time in forty years and even allowing civitates to keep up to a third of the total collected. More and more taxes, too, could be collected in cash rather than in kind, which eased our problems of transporting grain and animals. None the less Valentinian was not exactly popular, for he had a fierce temper and ruled through a bunch of Pannonian bullies. On the military front he was kept fully occupied by various German tribes -- notably the Alamanni and Franks who were still infiltrating into Gaul -- and conscription was stepped up.
There was an obligation on civitates to supply the army with raw material to be turned into soldiers. It was a system highly unpopular with both the conscripts and the landowners, who naturally foisted off their worst workers or paid down-and-outs to serve as substitutes. At Viroconium we were lucky. The First (and only) Cornovian Cohort, even though serving at Pons Aelius on the Wall, was still recruited locally and still attracted a voluntary intake sufficient to meet our quota. And now Amminus, who was cut out by nature for a military life, enrolled in it as an officer, along with his boyfriend. His elder brother Marotamus, who had now inherited the council seat from their father, stepped into his shoes as fundraiser for our charity. Amminus kept in touch with occasional letters, reporting that the Cohort was still hoping to come home to defend its own civitas; and in the fullness of time he was promoted to command it.
Valentinian died suddenly of apoplexy, his death foretold, so the superstitious claimed, by the appearance of a blazing comet. He left the empire in the joint hands of an incompetent middle-aged sadist, a delightful boy now aged sixteen, and a child barely out of the cradle. The child was his younger son, another Valentinian. The boy was his older son Gratian, a highly cultured youth, a magnificent athlete, and an avidly orthodox Christian who was firmly under the thumb of Bishop Ambrose of Mediolanum. Ambrose was much the most powerful churchman of the day, and at his prompting Gratian took a step guaranteed to raise the fury of the arch-conservative aristocracy of Rome. He removed once again the altar of Victory which Julian had restored to the Senate House.
The incompetent middle-aged sadist was Valens, still ruler of the east and as unlike his late brother as could be. He was a rabid Arian, which did not endear him to the west. He had spent the first part of his reign defending the Danube frontier against the Goths beyond, who formed a united and prosperous and relatively civilised kingdom. Then there swept out of the depths of Asia the nomadic horde of the Huns. In a knock-on effect which was to become increasingly familiar, the Huns pushed the Alans, another nomadic tribe, westwards, and the Alans pushed the Goths southwards. Within a year of Valentinian's death, Goths were massing on the north bank of the Danube and pleading to be allowed to cross into the empire.
Valens granted their request and Goths poured in, by tens if not hundreds of thousands, to settle as federates inside the frontier. But lessons had not been learned. The locals and even the local authorities exploited them, robbed them, and reduced them to starvation. Profiteers, it was said, sold them dog flesh to eat, and as payment demanded their children as slaves. Within two years the Goths had risen in rebellion and, in the worst military disaster suffered by Rome for six centuries, slaughtered the army of the east. Two thirds of its sixty thousand men perished, the Emperor Valens among them.
Everything depended on Gratian, now nineteen and based at Treveri. Count Theodosius, the man who had cleared Britain of barbarians ten years before, had been executed in a bout of court intrigue. But now Gratian recalled his son, another Theodosius, and made him emperor in the east. His job of restoring order and confidence among the Goths was unenviable. But he succeeded, at a cost. He granted them complete autonomy within the empire, freedom from taxes, and exceptionally high pay for military service. He recruited vast numbers of them to rebuild the legions, with the new task of keeping the Huns at bay. But this settlement caused widespread resentment.
In the west, the departure of Valentinian and his bullies had a more subtle effect. Christianity had hitherto found limited appeal among the landowning classes of Gaul, but the rise of Gratian and his cultured court made it more and more acceptable. The repercussions, as usual, spread to Britain, and even in Viroconium the religion grew fast. This was the point at which Bran and I became joint chairmen of the council, a one-year job which we tried to carry out constructively, in contrast to most chairmen to whom it was a tiresome chore. At the same time, ex officio, we served as the two magistrates for the year, presiding over all the minor civil cases in the local court and doing our utmost to administer speedy and impartial justice to all. But the day came, a few years later, when through death and conversion there was for the first time a Christian majority on the council. Local politics, ever since the first Christian member had been appointed, had become more and more partisan, 'them' against 'us'. Now it was wholly so. It was very divisive. And favouritism and corruption increased.
Maglocunus, meanwhile, was growing up. His childhood was much as any other boy's. He led a full life among a crowd of friends, nearly all from pagan families, and, as boys do, he got into scrapes. He had a narrow escape from a bull on the farm. He fell out of a hazel tree he was climbing after nuts and broke both arms. He and his chums borrowed (to use their word) the town's little fire engine and squirted water into the upstairs windows of the bishop's house, which earned him proper chastisement. But overall we were immensely proud of him, and with good reason. In appearance he was very like his father. He was bright and enquiring. He picked up Irish, which we often spoke at home these days, without conscious effort. We taught him to read and write Latin long before he went to elementary school at seven. He was devouring our Vergil long before he progressed to Nonius' school at eleven. He was trusting and open and, generally, considerate. He brought his problems to us, he helped Roveta and Tigernac in the house, he worked with relish on the farm. And eventually, as boys do, he discovered his body.
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