Chapter 20

Devnum

“So what do you think?” Lucilla asked Valdar, the young shipmaster, as they walked away from the docks crowded with workmen.

It was drizzling and the streets were all mush, but Lucilla had insisted they still go out. The rain had started days ago and had been off and on, which meant she needed to take what chances she could to get outside and observe some of the projects. Today, it was a tour of the new ships under construction followed by a visit with some of the Scandi families living outside the walls of the city.

“I think I have never seen a ship built like that before. We always build from the keel up, but you’ve started with the frame of the ship, which is massive, by the way. You also aren’t overlapping the boards, but are fitting them together, which I have never seen. While it’s amazing how precise your boards are, cut to exactly the right length, I can’t figure out how you will keep them watertight. We seal our ships, but the seal doesn’t hold well enough to keep planks pressed edge to edge from leaking.”

“I don’t know much about shipbuilding, but the man who designed these said that this is using something called a carvel construction as opposed to something he called clinker construction, which I think is the one you use, with the overlapping boards. He said that the ship would be less flexible with the carvel construction, allowing for multiple masts with large sails, also allowing it to be more stable in the rougher waters of the ocean, and that is why the ships can be longer and broader.”

“I get that they draft deeper than our ships and have larger holds, but I’m having trouble seeing it hold the volumes you were suggesting.”

“These won’t. These are smaller ships called caravels...”

“From the type of construction you mentioned?” he asked, interrupting her.

“I think so. Again, I’m just telling you what I was told about them. Like your Scandi friends said, my people aren’t generally good on the water, so I never spent a lot of time learning about seafaring. Anyway, after we finish these, the next set will be something called a carrack, which will be similar in construction, but larger with higher sides. Beyond carrying capacity, the caravels will have a much more shallow draft than the larger carrack, although not as shallow as some of your current ships, they’ll be able to sail into the wind more, and will need smaller crews. Beyond their speed, the main reason these were chosen to be built first is the need for a smaller crew, since manpower is our biggest concern at the moment.”

She was getting this from Sophus only a little faster than she could repeat it, and didn’t understand everything she was explaining. Valdar, on the other hand, seemed to follow along well and apparently found the explanations exciting.

“That all sounds impressive, although I still have trouble seeing how ships like this would move well in the water. We have to be careful of overloading our ships, because our sail won’t give enough push for them to move well even on windy days. The weight of these ships alone would be the same as one of our smaller vessels half-loaded, before a single piece of cargo is put aboard.”

“It will make more sense when you see how we have changed the sails. There is also something called a rudder at the back of the ship, which is very different than the steering oar you currently use.”

“Seeing how different these ship hulls look, even half completed, I’ll have to assume you know what you’re talking about and all of these changes are with a purpose.”

“I appreciate your trust,” she said.

They were headed into one of the camps set up for the Scandi near the docks, but outside of town. Beyond not having housing for all of the sailors currently staying in Devnum, because they had decided to not become citizens, there was a concern about having this many foreigners walking around the city. She thought it short-sighted, since they were relying on the Scandi for nearly all of their trade, and would continue to be reliant until they built up their own fleet of ships.

Several members of the Roman Senate had been stirring up trouble of late, making noises about infiltrators and saboteurs coming mixed in with the other foreigners, which had been driving up tensions. The Germanics had managed to escape the brunt of the distrust. Although that might have been partly due to their swearing loyalty to the Empire, Lucilla was pretty sure the main reason none of the allegations stuck to them is how widely they’d started integrating with everyday Romans.

Most of the Germans had chosen not to join the legions, which was expected. Men of the age to join the military would have already been conscripted by the Carthaginians, so what was left were men too old, too young, or too infirm to fight. The variety of work in the factories, from working the nitrate pits to weaving and textiles, to farming and foundries, made for a wide range of jobs that needed different levels of physical ability. Several businesses actually preferred the older workers who had more experience and needed less training over the younger, stronger workers, especially in the more technical fields.

This had caused the immigrants to disperse widely among the farms, mines, and factories, putting more Britannians in contact with their new neighbors. Regular contact with immigrants seemed to go a long way toward breeding familiarity and keeping people from being afraid of them.

The Scandi, on the other hand, didn’t integrate with the population and had refused to swear allegiance to the Empire, making them automatically suspect. The growing distrust among the populace caused the citizens to be upset and put the Scandi in more danger, which had ultimately led her father to ‘suggest’ the merchants set up outside the city, near the river, where they could live, coming into the city docks each day for work. In an effort to keep the merchants, who were really the lifeline the Empire was relying on to supply it funds for the ongoing war effort, the Emperor had created several public projects to build up a semi-permanent area that would be set aside for the Scandi’s use just outside the city wall, and have the praetorians post guards to the entry into this area for their protection.

Although Lucilla generally agreed with this idea, Sophus said that the same thing had been tried other times, with mixed results, and warned caution at keeping them isolated for too long. Apparently, other places that had set up these separate compounds for groups considered outsiders to the city sometimes ended up a scapegoat for anything the people inside the city feared, which had led to massacres and violence.

Lucilla hoped that wouldn’t happen here. Unlike the places that Sophus described, the Scandi were still adamant that their presence was temporary and that they had no plans to become permanent residents.

In spite of the growing mistrust, she found the Scandi she stopped to speak with friendly, especially the families who were living in the makeshift camp, waiting for the foreign sector to finish being built.

Finishing up her conversation with the group of families she had stopped to talk to, she walked on to the next tents. People were excited, although mostly because of all the people following after her as she visited with each group, since it was unlikely that most of these people actually knew who Lucilla was.

She stopped at the tents as older men, women, and small children, along with a handful of men, gathered around to see what all the fuss was about. If they were anything like the other groups she’d stopped to talk to, the men were mostly sailors visiting with family members while their ship was in port loading up for its next journey.

She’d just started asking an old woman, who looked to be the matriarch of this clan, which was how the Scandi family groups were organized, trying to get a better sense of what these people were looking for or needed while they were in Britannia or their thoughts on staying here in general, when one of the few men in the group pushed forward.

He didn’t have the look of one of the sailors visiting family while their ship was in port, but was younger than the rest of the old men she’d seen, most of whom continued on the ships until the harsh conditions killed them.

She’d just finished her question when he screamed ‘death to traitors’ and lunged forward with a knife that suddenly appeared in his hand. Her guards reacted quickly, but she’d ordered them to stay back while she interviewed the families, not wanting the women and children to be frightened, which put all of them several steps away from the threat that suddenly materialized in front of her.

She saw Modius’s sword plunge into the man even as she fell, a burning pain in her side where the blade had pierced her.

“Ky,” she managed to say, hoping Sophus could hear her, before she dropped to the ground, overwhelming exhaustion overtaking her.

Londinium

“We need to figure out another source,” Ky said to Auspex as the two watched a ship unloading at the docks. “I know the Carthaginians let their stockpiles run low, but our supplies are already low until the harvests come in. I know they were keeping supplies away from the people, but the governor and his cronies seemed to be doing alright. What happened to their food supplies?”

“Nearly depleted. Had the siege gone on a few more weeks, they would have had to go on rationing as well.”

“They had half the island under control for almost a hundred years and we know they brought in tenant farmers to work the land. What happened to the food stores? It’s not like they were overpopulated before, and once they started conscripting the populace into their armies for the final push against us, they had even fewer mouths to feed.”

“We’ve been hearing rumors from the handful of ship captains that stayed behind that, at least until they lost at the Battle of Venonis, they were shipping out every bit of food and fodder they could get their hands on to Insula Manavia, probably to feed the army they sent over to Hibernia. All of the soldiers they sent here leading up to Venonis ate a lot of what was left. Their shipments had already started to cause some famine before we pushed the rest of them behind these walls. As word has started to spread about our relief efforts here, people from the surrounding countryside have started coming into the city to get food for their families. That’s why we’re having such a problem meeting the demand.”

“What about the fishing boats? The Carthaginians had been supplying their soldiers almost entirely off of what those boats brought in.”

“Most are gone. As soon as Carus launched the attack, those that could get to the docks did so, sailing with whatever crew they could get their hands on. Most never came back and we can only assume they went to Manavia, Hibernia, or the continent, since none of those boats could have made the ocean crossing to get back to Africa. Regardless, if they were coming back here, they would have. As of now, we only have two ships able to go out each day, and that isn’t enough to put a dent in the demand.”