100% Historically accurate?
The answer is in the genre title. Historical Fiction. I am no Prof. Barry Cunliffe or Prof Alice Roberts, both authors whose works I have poured over in the years I was editing and re-editing Brethren. I am no academic. I left the education system at 16. I’m just a well-travelled guy who, approaching mid-life, wanted to know more about his roots and found a story from ancient history he thought needed to be told.
So what is true in Brethren and what is not?
Crow Hill, Dinas Bran today, exists. It’s pretty hard to miss as it looms above the pretty little town of Llangollen. More about Crow Hill here LINK
Crow Hill / Dinas Bran as it is known today.
The Roman fort of Deva is of course Chester and amazingly the fort’s road layout still survives in the modern street layout, as well as some of the original wall that has managed to survive the long centuries. You can even walk in half of the amphitheatre where Old Drust wished there were lions. I grew up near here and days out to Chester with Mum, walking the walls, were always special. It’s still one of my favourite places in the world.
Łukasz Nurczyński, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
The history of this special city is covered in Prof Alice Roberts’ brilliant series Britain’s Most Historical Towns. Deva Victrix was built in 77 AD and the new governor Agricola, formally of the Twentieth legion, arrived there around the summer solstice of 77 AD. This is all historically accurate.
White Walls, or Caer Drewyn today, is an incredible place. On a hill overlooking the ancient Welsh town of Corwen, the stones of the massive walls that were once two metres thick are still mostly in situ, some two thousand years later. The views up the Dee valley, even to Yr Wyddfa on a clear day, are breath-taking and are well worth the hike up. I especially love that the stonework around the base of what would have been the gate tower still survives. It was close to Deceangli (Dogs) lands, so could quite possibly have been inhabited by a band of tough bastards led by a charismatic chief.
Similarly, Dinorwig hillfort is still impressively intact and even appears to preserve the name of the Ordovices after two millennia. LINK This fort is near Caernarvon and not related to the quarry near Llanberis.
The remains, especially the double-ringed earthen ramparts are spectacular, but are on private land, so please don’t just turn up expecting to walk around as you please. It’s someone’s garden.
Slightly less visible in the landscape is Caerhun, an auxiliary fort that stood on the marching route from Deva (Chester) to Mona (Angelsey). But although Tacitus recorded by that the Ordovices sacked and burned a fort somewhere in their territory, it’s not clear which one it was. There are a few, which are assumed to have existed around this time around Caersws, but no archaeological investigations of sufficient scrutiny have been undertaken to be able determine which. For the story, Caerhun was a logical location. Plus, I love the Facebook page the fort has, run by a passionate local historian who helped with some of the logistical considerations in the story of Brethren. So it was his fort I destroyed. LINK
This site is also on private land, but you can wander around the ancient churchyard that was built in the north-east corner of the fort.
Mona (Angelsea) was the centre of druidry for the whole of Britannia and in the year 60 or 61 AD the Twentieth legion were in the process of slaughtering the population of priests. Their brutal and bloody work was left unfinished though as they had to rush back to the Midlands to meet Boudica’s horde. Following this invasion, the Ordovices in their mountain strongholds would have been left largely to their own devices while Rome’s attention was focused on rebuilding the south. That peace was shattered seventeen years later when the new governor of Britannia Agricola, formally a soldier with the Twentieth, came back. This is all factual.
A slight liberty I took is with the copper mines at the Great Orme above Llandudno. These were worked extensively in the Bronze Age, but Roman remains in the immediate area are scant. Its position close to the Ordovice’s lands worked perfectly for the story though, so I took the artistic licence to include them. They are very real though and are also open to the public! LINK Not tunnels small enough that you could get stuck in, but it’s an amazing experience, as well as absolutely harrowing to imagine that thousands of years ago people, including children, toiled away down here far from the sunlight…
The boats used around this time could have been onerarias or pontos. LINK
In antiquity the river Conwy was navigable to Caerhun so supplies and slaves would have been shipped here from the docks at Deva.
The pass that Cadwal, Brei and Helig trudged up on their way to Deva is Nant Peris. I was camping here a couple of years ago while hiking the hills was caught in a raging storm complete with reversed waterfalls. It was such an experience I included it in the book.
You can go and stand in of the places Cadwal and Brei did as most still exist as archaeology sites in the landscape of North Wales and. But the ways of the ancient peoples are harder to fathom. No ones knows if they believed the torcs at their throats were like the light of the sun giving truth to their words. Or if the druids painted their faces with chalk and charcoal to make it seem as though they were halfway to the Otherworld. Or if they blew the carnyx to awake the gaze of the gods. Theirs was a culture that didn’t use the written word and was one brutally subjugated and propagandised against, so much is lost to us.
The divination in the grain pit is partially accurate. Druids were known to read omens in the spilt guts of sacrificed enemy prisoners. link. In Danbury hillfort near Andover, one of the most extensively excavated hillforts in Britain, human remains were found dumped at the bottom of a grain pit. The skeleton could have been a ritual sacrifice or a plain execution. More information here
The Deceangli collaborating with the Romans. Britannia two millennia ago was a complicated place. Simmering hatreds between rival tribes would have been exacerbated by the arrival of the Romans as many found that supplicating themselves to their foreign overloads and using the Legion against the enemies was worth the sacrifice. The Deceangli surrendered to the legate Publius Ostorius Scapula in 48 AD, a couple of generations before Brethren is set. The Ordovices remained fiercely opposed to Rome so they would have been fierce rivals. The Romans teaching the Deceangli the art of subterfuge in order to weaken the resistant Ordovicies is certainly not beyond the realms of possibility.
The Oak Throne. Early on in the writing of Brethren, I saw a Facebook photo of a huge chair carved from the stump of a large tree. I loved how the tops of the thick roots reached into the earth, grounding, connecting. It seemed a perfect throne for a man who sees himself more connected to the realm of the gods than ordinary people.
The hammer. As mentioned in an earlier post, I chose to expand on the theory that the Ordovices called themselves ‘people of the hammer’ LINK. Heralds and gold eagle standards were of vital importance to Roman armies and even today nations have important symbolic objects like the Stone of Scone or the Crown Jewels. It’s no stretch to imagine the Ordovices had a special hammer. One bigger than others, perhaps that only the strongest man could wield. Again though, there is nothing in the archaeological record to support this.
The ending. Spoiler Alert. Yes, it happened much like this. Tacitus’ text says that Agricola engaged the Ordovices on the slope of a hill and the outcome was much as depicted.
The horses. For the site of the final battle which is in roughly the right place and fits the description of being on the slope of a hill, I chose the other side of Bwlch-y-Ddeufaen above Caerhun. Walking along the Roman trackway one spring day in a wind it was hard to stand up in, I had a wonderful experience of sitting almost in reaching distance of a herd of wild ponies. Googling about them later, it seems no one knows how they came to be. Maybe Gavo knows?
