Imperial Governor Read online

  Copyright © George Shipway 1968; Geoffrey Herdman, 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical including photocopying recording or any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Shipway, George, 1908- author.

  Title: Imperial governor / George Shipway.

  Description: Santa Fe, NM : SFWP, [2018?]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017059140| ISBN 9781939650832 (paperback : alk. paper) |

  ISBN 9781939650856 (epub) | ISBN 9781939650863 (mobi kindle)

  Subjects: LCSH: Suetonius Paulinus, Gaius—Fiction. | Boadicea, Queen,-62—

  Fiction. | Romans—Great Britain—Fiction. | Britons—Fiction. |

  Queens—Fiction. | Iceni—Fiction. | Great Britain—History—Roman period,

  55 B.C.-449 A.D.—Fiction. | Great Britain—History, Military—55 B.C.-449

  A.D.—Fiction. | GSAFD: Biographical fiction. | Historical fiction.

  Classification: LCC PR6069.H5 I47 2018 | DDC 823.914—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017059140

  Published by SFWP

  369 Montezuma Ave. #350

  Santa Fe, NM 87501

  (505) 428-9045

  www.sfwp.com

  To Lorna

  Contents

  Introduction

  Prologue

  BOOK I The Sowing

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  BOOK II Harvest

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  BOOK III Aftermath

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  APPENDIX

  Introduction

  by Alan Fisk

  One day in Montreal in the late 1970s, I was looking through a shelf of historical novels (my favourite genre). I was passing over a large number of bodice-rippers, a highly popular sub-genre at the time, when my eyes and fingers were arrested by a strikingly different title on a book spine: Imperial Governor, by one George Shipway, an author entirely unknown to me.

  The book flap told me that it was about Boudicca’s revolt of 61 A.D., and displayed a photograph of the rather intimidating-looking military man who had written it.

  I went home and was soon gripped by my first reading of Imperial Governor. From then on, I bought all of Shipway’s historical novels, which in later years went in and out of print before disappearing from the market.

  Who, I wondered, was this masterly and engrossing author? A brief biographical sketch may illuminate his body of work.

  George Shipway was born in India in 1907. At the age of seven, he was sent to boarding school in England, and at 18 he entered the Sandhurst military academy, which prepared him to become an officer in the Indian Army.

  In 1928, Shipway was duly commissioned into the 13th Duke of Connaught’s Own Lancers, a cavalry regiment. He would serve in a variety of roles for nearly 20 years, including commanding a force of irregulars on the Iranian frontier, and as a staff officer in Delhi. During one of his home leaves in England, he married his wife Lorna, who, like Shipway, was a strong personality. I suspect that the forceful female characters who appear in several of Shipway’s novels, from Cartimandua in Imperial Governor onwards, owe something to Lorna.

  George Shipway’s Army career came to an end in 1947. At the Partition of India, the 13th Duke of Connaught’s Own Lancers was assigned to Pakistan. It still exists, under the name of the 13th Lancers.

  Shipway declined an offer of a transfer to the British Army. He and Lorna returned to England. They encountered an old friend who was married to another former Indian Army officer. The couple were now running Cheam School, a boys’ school in Berkshire, west of London, and invited George Shipway to become a teacher there, specialising in history and geography.

  Shipway had no formal teaching qualifications, but he was deeply educated, and he was interested in, and knowledgeable about, history. Many years later, his widow Lorna told me that she thought he might well have become a university teacher, instead of an Army officer, if his life had taken another path. Indeed, he used to joke that the only reason he had joined the Army was so that he could play polo, which he would not have been able to afford to do as a civilian!

  George Shipway turned out to be a gifted teacher. He spent 19 years at Cheam, where his pupils included Prince Charles. The boys liked and respected him, and he would occasionally astonish them by demonstrating feats of physical strength. Shipway was a true scholar-athlete.

  Meanwhile, he had begun to try his hand at writing. He had been encouraged by his friend John Masters, who was also a former Indian Army officer, and who is best known for his novels about the Savage family in India, particularly Bhowani Junction.

  Imperial Governor was Shipway’s first novel, and appeared in 1967 to immediate acclaim.

  It is narrated by the Roman general Suetonius Paulinus, who is posted to Britain by the Emperor Nero in 60 A.D. to take overall command of all the Roman military units there. It is made clear to Suetonius Paulinus that this is to be no mere passive garrison duty. Newly conquered Britannia is a drain on the Empire’s financial resources, and Nero wants to take over the still-unoccupied western and northern regions, where valuable mineral deposits are located.

  Suetonius Paulinus plans a westward offensive, but he knows of two complicating factors, one in the east, and one in the north. In the east, the Trinovantes and Iceni tribes are unfriendly to Rome, and are restrained only by the policy of the King of the Iceni, Prasutagus, of cooperation with Rome. In the north, the pro-Roman Queen of the Brigantes, Cartimandua, is unpopular with elements of the tribal leadership, who see her as a dishonourable collaborator.

  When Suetonius Paulinus does launch his operation in the west, his experience of mountain fighting in North Africa helps him to success, but he knows very well that sound tactics cannot overcome an unsound strategy. The weakness of that strategy is that the bulk of his forces are deployed in the west, while to his rear the east of Britain is dangerously sullen and unstable. That is not his fault, because he had been ordered to strike west regardless of current circumstances. Suetonius Paulinus knows that he will be holding the parcel if the music stops, and it will be he who will have to deal with what happens.

  Suetonius Paulinus tells his story with plenty of military detail, and vivid pictures of the characters, both Roman and British, who figure in the narrative. This was the first demonstration of Shipway’s style: dense, detailed, and full of violent incidents. Suetonius Paulinus prides himself upon being a strong commander, who can be ruthless towards both his enemies and his allies.

  If Suetonius Paulinus has a dangerous fault, it is that he is impatient of any dissent from his own view of a situation. His strong will makes him an effective general, but he has a tendency to see anyone who questions his plans as being either a weakling or a coward or both. He sometimes realises that not all his officers and men admire him, and is puzzled by glimpses of their hostility.

  The story drives on at a fast, but never confusing, pace, and Shipway’s narrative style makes readers feel that they really are being taken into the confidences of Suetonius Paulin
us.

  Imperial Governor and its successors gained Shipway faithful readers and brought him admiration from other writers, who happily admitted his influence upon them. One such admirer is Bernard Cornwell, who has described Shipway’s novels as “utterly brilliant and compelling,” and adds, “I’m sure they served as a template for the sort of book I hoped to write.”

  George Shipway died in 1982. He had written nine novels over 11 years, and one can only wish that he had begun being published earlier than at the age of 60. As Bernard Cornwell says, “the only problem with Shipway was that he didn’t write enough.”

  Read on and enjoy Imperial Governor.

  Alan Fisk has written several historical novels, including Forty Testoons and Cupid and the Silent Goddess.

  Prologue

  A.D.

  June 68

  Nero is dead.

  He had been stark mad for years and was hated by every member of the Senatorial order, but I must remember him as my friend. He let me live when he could so easily have killed me.

  Now, from beneath the floor-tiles in my library, I can collect the papers I have written during the last six years and, after amending a sentence here and there and polishing a phrase or two, send them to the copying-offices to be published. I risked my life to write this book while Nero still lived: had he known of its existence I would not be alive today.

  He was the last of the Julian line. Now I can tell the truth—the truth which yesterday was treason.

  Who am I?

  Eight years ago the name of Gaius Suetonius Paulinus was known to Romans from the Rhine to the Nile, from Euphrates to Severn, as one of the greatest generals in the world. A year later, after leading his army to the most resounding victory of modern times, he was recalled from his command and quietly relegated to private life.

  I am that man.

  Nero never gave any reason; he seldom bothered with explanations. Rumour and speculation abounded; then the matter was forgotten and the world at large saw only a man become famous and, perhaps, too powerful, plucked from his eminence and discarded. Such men in these times do not usually live very long. Yet Nero still showed me his favour and was content merely to have me watched lest my reaction to public humiliation drove me into conspiracy.

  I am neither a hero nor overmuch afraid of death, yet I did not want to die. There were spies about me in those years, watching and reporting, listening for the incautious word that could be con­strued as treachery, looking for associations with disaffected men. I was very careful indeed. I stayed nearly all the time in Rome but lived in retirement, attending the Senate’s meetings only as often as was necessary, voting exactly as Nero wished. It was a brave man who did otherwise. I entertained a little, inviting only those whose characters were exemplary in Nero’s eyes. It was hard work for a man of my rank and family. My associates were financiers, swindlers, panders, harlots male and female, eunuchs, freedmen and a few patricians who, like myself, were determined to survive. I saw Nero frequently; he was always affable; in his presence I often forgot how mad and dangerous he had become.

  Degradation had its reward. Soon after the Fire the spies were called off; but caution had become a habit and I took pains not to alter my behaviour. The following year Nero gave me the Consul­ship for the second time as a prize for good conduct and in recog­nition of the fact that he had finally decided I was harmless. At the end of my term I went to him and begged leave to retire to my country estates, pleading the weight of my fifty-four years as an obstacle to a proper performance of public duties. He assented cheer­fully.

  Now there is no need to hide anything any more. I can sit here in peace, looking over my vineyards and olive-groves to the green hills beyond, and tell fully and frankly of those hectic months in Britain which crowned and finished my career as a soldier. Most of this book concerns war or preparations for war. I am a soldier first and last, soaked in military habit and tradition during all the long years since my first, far-away campaign as a young tribune in the Mauretanian mountains. To politics, which undid me in the end, I gave less attention than I ought. I was ambitious, they said, watching me climb the Senatorial ladder. True enough; yet my ambition lay only in the field and camp, in the pursuit of military glory. Others of my Order, running the same race, turned their energies to law or politics, doing the minimum military service required, seeking, in the end, the same reward. They wanted a Province, preferably a peaceful one. What kind of man is it that wants to govern a peaceful Province?

  Now I can explain what really happened, and show the world how it was that the great Suetonius Paulinus, Senator, Consul and Governor of Britain, descended to Suetonius Paulinus, Senator, twice Consul, lackey of a decadent Caesar, companion to his obscene companions; and further yet to Suetonius Paulinus, an old, broken soldier writing memoirs of old, dim campaigns.

  Here it is, then: a tale of failure simply told, without embellish­ment or tricks of rhetoric. Try, in your kindness, to understand my difficulties and judge me leniently.

  BOOK I

  The Sowing

  A.D.

  October 59 – February 61

  1

  ‘Assume the honours which are justly due to your worth.’

  HORACE

  1

  I was not in Rome when the Senate received the news that Veranius Nepos, Governor of Britain, was dead. The usual rumours of disaster followed the bald announcement, until an irritable message from the Secretariat revealed that he had died in his bed, in London, of congestion of the lungs and not, as had been surmised, under the chariots of a victorious Silurian army.

  Soon afterwards a courier arrived at my headquarters in Lower Germany, where I had just assumed command, to recall me instantly to Rome. An immediate summons of this kind, even in those early days of Nero’s rule, naturally caused a certain amount of nervous­ness in the recipient. My conscience was clear; my relations with the Prince were excellent and my speculations were not unduly gloomy during the journey home. There I heard from friends of Veranius’s death and gathered some sidelong and exciting hints con­cerning my own future. I hastened to seek an audience at the Palace—the old Palace, not the Golden House.

  The Prince received me. He was seated at the head of a long marble table, with Sextus Afranius Burrus, Prefect of the Praetorian Guard, on his right, Lucius Annaeus Seneca on his left and Claudius of Smyrna, Financial Secretary, standing beside him. Tribunes of the Guard flanked his seat; a soldier watched every doorway, and various Secretariat clerks, laden with reference-scrolls, crowded the background. These people were, in effect, the Government of Rome and her dominions; we Senators were the mouthpiece for decisions made in this unofficial but all-powerful Council.

  Nero greeted me with all the charm of the Julian family, inquired shortly about affairs in Lower Germany and even apologized for my abrupt recall. Then he waved me to a chair and came to the point.

  ‘You have doubtless heard,’ he said, ‘that Veranius has died in Britain?’

  ‘Yes, Caesar,’ I answered. ‘I am sorry. He was a good officer and a loyal servant of Rome. I knew him when he was Governor of Lycia.’

  ‘A sound man. More of a theoretical than a practical soldier, though. A great writer on military matters. He didn’t accomplish much in Britain, though his intentions certainly had a wide enough scope. We have just seen his will: it arrived in the last batch of dispatches.’

  I waited. This meant nothing to me. Nero tugged thoughtfully at his lower lip.

  ‘Veranius thought he could conquer Britain—the whole of Britain—in two years. He spent his only year there fighting the—what are they called?—the Silures, as Gallus and Scapula did before him, and with just as much result. He never got anywhere.’

  ‘What were his instructions, Caesar?’ I asked quietly.

  Nero frowned. ‘His instructions were to subdue Britain as far north as the country of the—’ He pa
used, stuttering, and Burrus murmured a word. ‘These barbaric names! The Brigantes. As far north as the Brigantes and westwards to the sea. That was all I re­quired. I still require it.’

  Nero’s protuberant blue eyes glared at my face without amity, remorselessly searching through flesh and bone for the quality beneath. I sat very still. He was very much a ruler during the golden years.

  ‘Do you know anything of Britain?’ he snapped.

  ‘Nothing, Caesar, beyond what is known by any educated man in Rome.’

  ‘So. Then Burrus here, and Claudius, can tell you later about the muddle and mess going on in that Province. You will need to know, because I am sending you there as Governor to put matters straight.’

  I rose, stood at attention and thanked him formally for the honour. Nero grinned.

  ‘I hope you will still thank me when you hear what you’re going to. Listen carefully. Burrus, send everyone out. This is confidential.’

  The clerks vanished from the room without further bidding. The guards remained. The Prince waved a document at me.

  ‘This,’ he said, ‘is the latest financial return from Britain. We won’t go into the details now: Claudius can do that with you some other time. These totals are the crux. Look.’

  He tossed the papyrus over. I scanned the columns, rather at a loss. Claudius came to my side and ran a lean finger along a row of figures.

  ‘You see?’ Nero said. ‘For the last financial year the costs of administration, occupation forces, navy, loans and everything else exceeded the income from the Province by a thousand million sesterces. A thousand million! The year before it was five hundred million, and the same before that.’

  He beat the marble with his fist.

  ‘This cannot go on. The Province is bleeding Rome dry. We have other expensive provinces; none costs so much as Britain.’ He slouched, elbows on table, hands clasped before him. ‘I had intended to withdraw our army and administration from the country, to abandon it entirely. Seneca dissuaded me.’