YOU THINK I am lucky because I am old, because I knew a world that was not turned upside down. Perhaps you are right. As you, too, might have been lucky if the ice had only cracked. You don’t really know what I am talking about, do you? Well then, listen to me and I, Paulinus Gaius Maximus, will tell you.
I was born and brought up in Gaul, though my ancestors came from Rome herself. As a young child I lived on the outskirts of military camps and, from the very first, my life was regulated by the trumpets that roused the soldiers in the morning and told them when to sleep at night. Then, when I was six, my father was asked to give up command of the Second Flavia at Moguntiacum, and retired to his villa near Arelate.
We were a large household as I remember it. I had a cousin, Julian, who was brought up with me. His father, Martinus, had been head of a province, but later he became Vicarius of his native Britannia. He was a just man, and was liked by everyone; but he fell foul of a usurping emperor and found himself proscribed. My aunt was with Martinus when he heard the news that he was to be arrested. She took the knife and stabbed herself first. And then she held it out to him, all bloody in her hands. “See,” she said. “It does not hurt, Martinus.” My father told Julian this when he was old enough to understand. He wanted Julian to be proud of his parents and to know what fine people they had been. But it was a mistake; it did not make Julian proud; it only taught him to hate. But that came later. At lessons or at play we were inseparable, and like all children we planned to do great things to help Rome when we were grown men. We were like brothers.
When I was thirteen my father was appointed Legate of the Twentieth Valeria, stationed in Brittania. He owed this to the young Caesar, Julian, who, like us, worshipped the old gods.
The day we left Gaul there was an eclipse of the sun. It was uncanny the way the brightness vanished and the day turned into night. It was like the end of the world. Julian shivered, I remember, and said that to sail on such a day would bring bad luck. But my father sacrificed a cock and decided the omens were good. So we went on with our journey.
When old enough, we went into my father’s legion as equestrian tribunes. We were initiated into the mysteries of our faith in the same temple and on the same day. Together we took the sacred oath: ‘In the name of the God who has divided the earth from the heavens, the light from the darkness, the day from the night, the world from chaos, and life from death….’ And together we came out into the sunlight, carrying the words of our God upon our shoulders. Those were the good times, for we did everything together. We learned to be soldiers at Deva and I learned, too, something that was fast dying out, to take a pride in the legion of which I was a member. In my great-grandfather’s day the legions had been the shock troops of Rome; the best disciplined and the best fighters. But under Diocletian things had changed. A new field army began to grow up, consisting of auxiliary regiments made up from provincials and even barbarians willing to accept Rome’s service. Cavalry became all the fashion and the legions dwindled into becoming mere frontier troops. But here in Britannia the three legions still mattered, and I was glad. I was sorry when the time came for me to leave because it meant parting with Julian who was to remain on my father’s staff. It was three years before I saw him again.
I did a tour of duty with the Second Augusta at Isca Silurium and then was sent to our army headquarters at Eburacum. There I spent my time doing administrative work, worrying over accounts, pensions, and burial funds. It was dull work.
One day Fullofaudes sent for me. He was the new Dux Britanniarum; an Aleman from the banks of the Rhenus.
“A part of the Legion at Deva has tried to mutiny,” he said. “The rebellion has been put down and the ring-leaders arrested. You will go to Deva at once with reinforcements and take charge until I have appointed a new commander.”
I looked at him in astonishment.
“The Legate is dead,” he said, harshly. “I am sorry.”
He picked up a roll of documents from the table. “Three days ago we caught a slave carrying these. They contain details about this plot—and others as well. It is full of names. Much too full of names.”
“Dead,” I said. I could scarcely hear him.
“The disaffection is widespread. Too many are involved. Too many think that the province should break with Rome.”
“They can be arrested and executed.”
“No. To go further into this affair would do no good. I should have few officers and no men left.” He looked at me hard. “No-one will be executed,” he said. “Do you understand?”
He gave me a roll of sealed script. “Here are your orders and your authority. As for these—” He bent to the table, picked up the documents and flung them into the fire. “I do not believe that this province should separate from Rome. I want no martyrs whose memories can inflame the dissatisfied. But I do need time to build up loyalty. Do you understand now?”
“Yes,” I said. But I didn’t really. I only understood that my father was dead.
I reached Deva a week later. I paraded the legion and they stood for two hours in the rain before I came to them. Decimation was the punishment they expected and they were grey-faced and full of fear. Only at the end when they were wet with suspense did I say that there would be no executions. In their relief they cheered me and I dismissed them. I was hoarse with speaking. I went into the Legate’s quarters—my father’s quarters—and there the eight ringleaders were brought to me in chains. Five were tribunes and three were centurions. The anger of the parade ground had gone. I felt nothing now except a great coldness.
“You will not be executed,” I said. “But you are convicted of treason and deprived of Roman citizenship by order of the Vicarius. Your status is now that of slaves and as slaves you will be treated. Those of centurion rank will go to the lead mines at Isca Silurium where you will work for Rome till you die. As for the rest—since you have a taste for fighting your own kind, you will have a chance to gratify it further. You will go to the gladiatorial school at Calleva and afterwards be matched against each other in the ring. You may, if you are lucky, survive five years.”
Before they were taken away I spoke to their leader.
“Why did you do it, Julian?” I said. “In the name of Mithras, why?”
“Your emperor killed my father,” he said, in an empty voice.
“But you—? A Roman officer.”
“I was,” he said, and he tried to smile.
“But why? Why?”
“If you do not understand,” he said, “then I cannot tell you.”
They took him away and I was left alone in that empty room with its memories of my father and my boyhood memories of Julian. I remembered the quarrels we had had and the fights; I remembered the things that we had enjoyed together; days in the hot sun, learning to drive a chariot; other days spent in hunting and fishing, and the long evenings in Gaul spent in talking and playing draughts, and the fine plans we had made and the dreams that we had dreamed together. I remembered it all with a pain that was indescribable, and a sense of anguish that could not be extinguished. And I wept.
I went back to Eburacum and I returned to my accounts. I worked hard so that I never had time to think except in the long, lonely nights when I could not sleep. But I never went to the Games and those who did never spoke about them in my presence.
Three months later I was sent on leave and went to Corinium, which I did not know. I went to the officers’ club, and I drank, and I hunted a little, for they were much troubled by wolves that autumn. Then I met a girl with dark hair, whose name was Aelia, and I married her. For a wedding gift I gave her some gold ear-drops that had belonged to my mother, and she gave me a signet ring with the likeness of Mercury stamped on it. She was a christian, though more tolerant than most.
It was there I received news that I had been posted to the Wall, to a place called Borcovicum of which I had never heard. It was at the end of the world, or so it seemed to us. A harsh country of heather and rock; bleak and terrible in winter, yet austerely beautiful in summer; a vast lonely land that was pitiless in its climate to both men and animals. Step out of earshot of the camp and you would hear nothing save the forlorn cry of the curlew and feel nothing but the bite of the everlasting wind.
My fort had some importance. It stood at the junction of several roads and guarded the track that led north into tribal territory. My auxiliaries were the First Cohort of Tungrians, originally from north-east Gaul; a mixed crowd of Iberians, Parthians, Brigantes and Goths, divided by centuries into tribal classes. Only a single century were Tungrians now, but I found their inscriptions all over the camp. There was one, I remember, on the wall of my quarters. It said, “May I do the right thing”, and I used to look at it every day and wonder what that first commandant had been like and what particular need had driven him to carve just those particular words in that particular place.
My adjutant, Vitalius, was a man of about thirty, anxious faced and solemn. Gaius, my second-in-command, was older. He was a Sarmatian from beyond the Danubius, and from his bitter manner, I think, had hoped for the command for himself. My chief centurion, Saturninus, formerly of the Second Augusta, was a man of great calm, few words, and immense experience. It was a long while before I gained his respect.
The mile castles and signal towers along the frontier were manned by militia—the Arcani we called them—who were recruited from local tribesmen from either side of the Wall. The frontier then was very quiet; and there was little to do except work; but I was happy enough. Aelia did not like the place for there were few women and she was lonely, but she never complained. She saw little of me during the day except at meals, but at night we were happy, and we would lie awake and listen to the drunks singing in the wine shop in the settlement outside, and smell the goats that grazed under the walls by the west gate if the wind was in the wrong direction.
Sometimes I used to ride over to a neighbouring fort, Vindolanda, and play draughts with Quintus Veronius, its praefectus, though he got angry when I called him that. “I am a tribune,” he would say haughtily, “even though I do command a rabble of auxiliaries.” He was my own age, always rode a black horse with white feet and was the best cavalry officer I ever met. He had been posted here from the Tenth Gemina in Pannonia following a scandal over some girl, and when he was drunk he would talk excitedly of a troop of Dacian horse he had once commanded and who, he would swear, were the best cavalry in the world. But he never spoke of the girl. His family came from Hispania and he missed the sun and was always hoping for a transfer there. But though he wrote numerous letters to influential relatives nothing ever came of it; and I was selfishly glad.
Quintus took a great interest in our catapults, which surprised me, for cavalrymen usually thought of little but swords and charges.
“I was on the Saxon Shore under my countryman, Nectaridus,” he explained. “He is a great fighter.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
He shrugged. “It was so cold standing there on those great flat-roofed towers at Lemanis. The wind howled in your face and your eyes ached as you stared out into the darkness. The Saxons used to slip in quietly if they could, sails lowered, on the midnight tide. If you spotted them you hit them with the ballistae until their ships broke up. Then you killed the survivors with arrows while they struggled in the surf.”
“Good shooting,” I said. I was impressed.
“That was Nectaridus. He insisted that we must never fight dry Saxons: we must always kill them while they are still wet.”
“Why did you leave?”
He said, casually, “I wanted command of the Ala Petriana, but I was turned down. Then, oh—I got drunk and did something stupid.” He looked at me with a smile. “So I was sent here.”
I said, “It is a good place if you like fighting.”
“It is also a good place in which to be forgotten. I was always cold on the Saxon Shore, but I would return to-morrow if they would let me.”
I said, “We must go hunting together some time.”
He cheered up then and said, “That would be good. It is lonely here, and I am somewhat tired of the company of slave girls who speak bad Latin.”
I laughed. “Come to Borcovicum and meet Aelia. She is a great talker.”
He said, “I met her once when I was out riding, I think. You—you are very lucky.”
“Yes, I think I am.”
He said, suddenly, “Maximus, why are you here?”
For a moment I did not answer. Then I said, quietly, “One posting is much like another. I hope I shall not be here always.”
It was then that he changed the subject.
When Aelia came back from the birth of Saturninus’ firstborn she was very quiet, after the initial joy women show on these occasions. I took her hand and said, gently, “You are not to worry. There is plenty of time yet. We shall have a son. You pray to your God and I will pray to mine. That way we shall have two chances of favour instead of one.”
She laughed, momentarily, and then her face changed. “Perhaps it is a punishment for my sins.” She was very serious now, and I was worried.
I said, lightly, “There is not much opportunity for committing wrongs at Borcovicum.”
She said, in a low voice, “With us they can be in thoughts as well as deeds.”
I returned to my letter. Presently she looked up from the fire. She said, “Do you remember the time that sentry slept at his watch and Saturninus asked you to overlook his offence?”
“I remember.”
“I came in when you were discussing what to do with him. And he said—do you remember?—he said, ‘You never had pity, sir, on the other one either.’ What did he mean?”
My hand shook. I said, “He thought I was being too strict.”
She said, “You are a good soldier. Even I can see that. But I think Saturninus is right. You can be very hard.”
“I try to be just.”
“It is sometimes better to be kind.”
She was silent then and went on staring into the fire. I stopped writing and looked at her. I loved her so much, but I did not know what she was thinking.
We had been there two winters when, on a warm spring day, I rode out to the second mile castle east of the camp, where some of our men were repairing the road. After my inspection was over I sat on a boulder, not far from the gate, and chatted with the post commander. As I did so I could see a man walking up the track towards us. I finished my conversation and mounted my horse. There was something in his walk that disturbed me, so I sat still and waited till he came up. I knew that kind of walk well, and when he stopped ten paces away and stared at me with that terrible tight look they always have, and the eyes that watch every flicker of a shadow and yet have no feel in them, no warmth of any kind, I knew who it was.
“Julian,” I said. “It is Julian.” And I waited.
“The noble commander knows everything,” he replied.
“What are you doing here?”
“I am a free man.” The words were spoken tonelessly. He fumbled inside his cloak and produced a square of parchment. “If the commander does not believe me I have this for proof.”
“So they gave you your wooden foil.”
“Yes. They gave me my wooden foil. We killed each other as you predicted, though some died more quickly than others. They were the lucky ones.”
I watched him in silence. Then I said, quietly, “But you lived.”
“Yes. I lived, if you can call it living?”
“And so?”
“In the end there were two of us left, myself and—but you would have forgotten his name, no doubt.”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I would not have forgotten his name. I remember them all to this day.”
“As I remember yours, noble commander. They matched us to fight at Eburacum. We were the spectacle for which everyone waited, and the commander of the Sixth Legion sat in the seat of honour. It was a holiday, and his daughter newly married, and he wished to celebrate by showing his—mercy. He gave me my freedom while the blood of my companion dried on my sword.”
“I see. Where do you go now?”
“Beyond the Wall to where Rome does not rule.”
I leaned forward then. “Are you mad? What will you do up there, even supposing they don’t kill you first? What kind of a life will you live?”
“That is my concern.”
I said, harshly, “Julian, I have a villa and land in Gaul which I have never seen since we—since I was a boy. You can go to it; you can live on it; you can own it if you wish. I offer that much for the sake of a dead friendship. But don’t, I beg of you, go north of the Wall.”
He looked at me then, and there was still nothing in the eyes of any warmth or human feeling. “I go north,” he said. “And no-one shall stop me.” The spear, that I had thought at first to be a staff, was balanced lightly in his hand, but he was standing carefully on the balls of his feet, and I knew then that he would kill me if I moved. Any other man I could have run down with a fair chance of success. But he was different. He had been a gladiator. They were trained to move with a speed that no soldier could emulate. They could pick flies off the wall with their bare hands. I knew. I had watched them do it.
I turned my horse to let him pass. “You are a freed man under the law, as you said, and you may go where you will.”
“I shall indeed.”
“A word of warning, Julian.”
He turned at that, and for a moment I thought I detected something in his eyes that was almost human. “Well?”
“Go north by all means. But, if you do, then never come south again within spear range of my wall.”
He said, tonelessly, “I will remember that. When I do come you may be certain I shall not come alone.”
I watched him go up the track, saw him show his papers to the sentry and disappear from sight into the heather beyond. He had changed out of all recognition and perhaps I had too. I wondered what the Picts would make of him—a man with no hair.
SOMETIME in the middle of winter, on a stormy night, two men and a woman, mounted on ponies and riding for their lives, came in out of the heather and clamoured for shelter. They were allowed through and in the morning I interviewed them. By their dress and by the way they did their hair Saturninus thought they might be Vacomagi from the great mountains in central Caledonia—a tribe untouched by Rome since the days of Agricola. But we did not ask them. All were young. The woman was dark, with long black hair and skin the colour of warm milk. She was very beautiful. The two men were her brothers. I heard a confused tale of a tyrannical uncle, of the young lover slain in jealousy by this man, of the brothers killing him in his turn, and of a blood feud that had split the tribe.
“There was a meeting of the elders, excellency,” said the younger brother in a tired voice. “We were proscribed and fled to avoid our deaths.”
“Very well,” I said. “You may stay under the protection of Rome, provided that you are obedient to our laws. But what will you do now?”
The elder brother said, nervously, “We can shift for ourselves. But our sister is another matter. Does your excellency, perhaps, need a woman to manage his house? She is a good cook and obedient and would give no trouble.”
It did not seem to me an accurate description of her at all, but I understood what he was trying to say. “Thank you, no,” I said. “I have a wife and my household is full. I have no need of any servants.” The woman stiffened at that and put up her chin. There was, for a moment, an expression in her eyes that I could not read, and then she dropped her head and stared sullenly at the floor.
They stayed in the civilian settlement for a while, and then the woman was taken up by my second-in-command and he asked my permission to marry her. The brothers were agreeable and the woman too, and I said yes without hesitation. She was a woman to turn men’s heads and already there had been fights in the settlement over her. Married she would cause less trouble.
I could not have been more wrong.
Quintus became a regular visitor to our fort, and did much to cheer up Aelia during the cold months of rain and snow. Spring came early that year, and then summer burst upon us in a blaze of heat. Aelia was very pale at this time and a little unhappy, I think, but I put it down to her remorse at having lost one of the ear-drops I had given her, though I had told her a dozen times that it did not matter. To give her a change I arranged for her to spend some months in Eburacum and, after much argument, she agreed to go. At the last moment she changed her mind and wanted to stay, but Quintus, who had ridden over to try our new wine and who was lounging on the steps, agreed with me, so she gave in to our persuasion. I missed her badly but I was soon to be glad that she had gone.
The trouble began in July on the night of the full moon. I was in the office, working late, when my adjutant, Vitalius, came in. There were beads of sweat on his face and he had the look of a man who has talked with demons.
“What is it?” I said. “What’s the matter, man?”
“We have been betrayed, sir.”
“Sit down. You look ill. Tell me about it.”
He licked his lips. “It’s that woman, the wife of Gaius. She knew I was married. She’s been on at me for weeks, pestering me, asking me—she wouldn’t leave me alone.”
“And so?”
“I love my wife.” He stared at me defiantly. “I do. But—but she is very beautiful and—and in the end I forgot myself.” He buried his face in his hands and his shoulders shook at the memory of the betrayal.
“Is that all? Does Gaius know?”
“No. At least I don’t think so. Afterwards, she threatened to tell him unless I helped her. She said I could have her always if I helped her.”
“What help does she want?”
“There is a great conspiracy. The tribes of the far north have promised to join with the men between the walls. She is a spy. She came with her brothers for that purpose. Their story was false.”
“What else?”
“They have been bribing and suborning the auxiliaries. All the Brigantes among the garrison will mutiny when the time comes. The province is to be freed for ever from Roman rule.”
“Boudicca had the same idea.”
“It is true. I swear it. The tribes have taken the blood oath. And they have allied themselves with the Scotti.”
“How many men in this garrison will stand by us?”
“Less than half.”
Now I, too, was afraid.
“When is the rising timed for?”
“Tomorrow night.”
“We have twenty-four hours then in which to save something from the wreckage.” I spoke lightly and he said, incredulously, “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“I believe you—though not about the Scotti. When have the Picts and they ever been friends?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Never mind. On whose side is Gaius? Don’t tell me. I can make a good guess.”
“What shall we do?”
“Get your sword,” I said, as I buckled on my own. “I am going down to the house of Gaius and you are coming with me.”
We went out silently, through the gate and across the hard packed turf to the settlement. Most of the huts were in darkness, but through the open door of a wineshop I glimpsed a girl with lank hair, dejectedly sweeping up oyster shells that lay scattered on the floor. Moving quietly, we went round the back of a timber framed house, along the colonnade and up the stairs to a room where a torch burned in a bracket high on the wall. They were both there, sitting together on a couch, and they had the look of people who have just been making love. Gaius rose as I entered and his face went white as he saw my sword. But the woman beside him did not move.
“Gaius,” I said. “I have proof that your wife is a spy and a traitor. She is also a liar and an adulteress. Now prove to me that you are not a traitor also.”
He stared at me, licking his dry lips. “How?” he said at length, and the one word told me that Vitalius had not lied.
I held out a knife to him. “Kill her,” I said. “Now. With this.” He took the knife, stared at it blindly for a moment and then let it drop to the floor. “I cannot,” he said. “If you kill me for it, I cannot.”
He looked at me, anger and despair on his face. “I should have had your command,” he said. “It was my right. I had looked forward to it all those years. And you took it from me—a man half my age.”
“Kill her,” I said. “And I will forget the rest.”
He shook his head. In his own way he was a brave man.
“I love her too much,” he said.
I nodded to Vitalius and he moved and struck awkwardly so that the point went in against the breast bone, slid off with a terrible grating noise, and then broke. Gaius screamed and went down onto his knees like a praying christian, the blade clutched in his hands. Vitalius pushed the sword home then and Gaius fell sideways to the floor.
I turned to the woman. “He sent you,” I said. “I might have known it. He knew I cared for women like you; women with dark hair and a white skin. And if I had not already been married it would have been me and not Gaius you would have worked upon. Is it not so?”
She stood up and smiled. “Yes,” she said. “He came to my people, and I took him into my house, and we planned it together. He is a warrior among warriors. He has the power. It is a great gift to make others see what you wish them to see, to make others believe what you wish them to believe. I know, I can feel his power flowing into me when I touch his hands. My people know that he is descended from the Old Ones. That is why they believe him to be a god.”
I stared at her. I did not understand.
“He is only a man,” I said.
“You are wrong. He is not like other men. Who but he could have done what he has done? He has united the three peoples and together they will destroy this Rome of yours. He will become the God-King and I, who have served him with my body, shall be his Queen.”
“What three peoples?”
“The Picts and the Scotti and the Saxons are at one in this thing. Though you know all now, it is still too late to stop him. You of the Roman kind are all doomed. The Eagles will die. He has said so.”
I hesitated. She was so very beautiful. She had spirit and courage and she had great intelligence. I hesitated again and she saw me hesitate, and laughed. “I shall wait for him,” she said. “If need be I shall wait for him until he joins me. We are of the same web, he and I.”
I remembered Julian. He had loved this woman and had hated Rome. I did not hate Rome. I was a soldier and I loved Rome—that city I had never seen. So I killed her.
Though it was against the law we buried them secretly beneath the house and told no-one. I hoped that the mystery of their disappearance would puzzle the disaffected and perhaps make them hesitate. Whether I succeeded or not, I do not know. It made no difference in the end.
Just before sunrise I issued my orders to those I could trust. Quintus, who had ridden over at my request, was in attendance.
“They won’t attack the Wall itself,” I said. “The north face is too steep, too rocky. They’ll infiltrate by the Burn Gate and the two flanking mile castles. The Arcani will let them through.”
Saturninus said, “The settlement is the danger. Its buildings provide cover up the southern slope and all the way to the fort.”
“Evacuate it at dusk and then burn it.”
He said, “We are very short of missiles. The mule train is late as usual.”
“The drivers are probably sleeping it off in a ditch,” said Quintus, drily.
“Use the stones we quarried to build that new granary. They only need breaking up a little. Quintus, I must leave it to you to warn Eburacum. Say a prayer to Epona that your horsemen get through.”
Saturninus said, “I have a married sister at Aesica. We must warn the other forts, sir.”
“Not until dark. We cannot spare the men.”
He nodded in silence. “And the pay chests, sir?”
“Oh, block up the strong room, of course. If anything goes wrong the money will still be there for our successors. They won’t want to use their own burial fund on us.”
Quintus looked at the sky. “It will be a fine day. We shall not have to shiver for long.”
Later that morning I altered the dispositions of my troops and sent the suspected ones out of camp upon patrols. In the afternoon I began to block up the south portal of the east gate; and all the while the air was thick with a great rasping buzz as the centuries sharpened their swords on the iron rim of the stone tank by the north gate. Then, as night fell, I paraded my few men and we stood to arms along the Wall. I lit the signal fires and they flared up into the night, but no answering flare came from the mile castles to our right and left. Then a glow-worm shone faintly in the west, and I knew that Vindolanda had caught our message; but from the east came no answering signal. The Arcani, faithful in their treachery, waited in silence for their friends.
“At ease,” I said softly, and the men leaned against the parapet and rubbed their hands gently against the hafts of their spears. We had done all that we could. There was nothing left to do now except wait, and the waiting was not for long.
They came at dawn, and the scarlet disc of the rising sun was an omen that foretold the deaths of those who stood against them. The savage violence of their first silent rush carried the defences at many points. Mile castle after mile castle opened its gates and they streamed through to burn huts, destroy the young and old, and make slaves of the women who did not die beneath the violence of their lust. Then they moved on to crush the few forts and towers that dared to stand against them. Their ships came in from the sea like hungry wolves, Scotti on the east coast and Saxons on the west. They outflanked the forts who resisted and their men poured ashore like a spring tide and overwhelmed them. The wounded and the dying, the living and the dead; all were flung contemptuouly from the walls. Their bodies choked every ditch and every well, and there was blood and smoke and fire through the whole land.
We held our fort for two long days of continual fighting, till we were cut off and surrounded by the very men who had once called themselves my soldiers; men whom I had liked and trusted and helped; men whose griefs I had shared and whose happiness had meant the world to me. The fort was a shambles, and somewhere beneath the floor of a gutted hut in the settlement outside lay a woman who had smiled even as I killed her.
Twice I heard his voice outside the walls, crying hoarsely to his men, though I never saw him—this man who had become a god. He cried for our destruction but I was too exhausted to feel hate, too angry to feel pity. Vitalius was gone and Saturninus wounded. The tribesmen were even now burning brushwood against the oak doors of the fort, the granaries had been set on fire and the north wall had been abandoned to the enemy and our crumpled dead. Suddenly I could stand it no longer. I had no stomach to fight for a lost cause, a general who was dead (they showed us his head upon a pole) and a wall that had been betrayed. With the remnants of my men, Saturninus and I cut our way out through the smoke and set off for Eburacum.
The road to the south told its own story. It was lined with bodies, little groups of men who had held on, as we had, and then retreated stubbornly, still fighting until they were overwhelmed. At Bravoniacum we found the supply fort gutted and the remnants of the Ala Petriana, our finest cavalry, among the blackened bodies. It was there that Quintus joined us, riding a tired horse. He was quite alone. At Maglona we made contact with the Second Ala of Astures. They had suffered few casualties and so we marched the rest of the way to Eburacum under their protection.
There we learned that a Saxon fleet had landed in the southeast; the great sea forts that Quintus knew so well had been silenced; betrayed by treachery from within, overcome by violence from without. And somewhere among the broken catapults, Nectaridus, Count of the Saxon Shore, lay silent in the company of his men. In answer to Fullofaudes’ summons the Second Augusta, at Isca, was already marching across Britannia but, harassed by raids and ambushes, their progress was slow. A grey-faced decurion who had pushed on ahead alone told us bluntly that they would never reach us in time. His worst news he kept to the last. The Attacotti, a confederacy of tribes from Hibernia, had landed at Mona, and they were even now pouring through the mountain passes into the undefended centre of the island. The Twentieth, cut to pieces, had fallen back on Viroconium, and behind them Deva, unguarded save for a handful of veterans, was already a wrecked and smoking ruin.
Fullofaudes said, “If they destroy us, then they will destroy the Second also. We stand or fall alone. Go back to your legate and tell him to hold Ratae and to keep contact with the Twentieth until he hears my news. If it is good I will send fresh instructions. If it is bad he must make his own.”
We went out against them the next day, and the enemy so out-numbered us that we could not count the odds. All day we fought and twice I saw a painted man on a white pony whom I knew, but I never had the chance to find out if indeed he had become a god. By nightfall we were beaten, Fullofaudes was dead with all his staff and the barbarians were in the streets of Eburacum. Our officers were dead too, so I took command and withdrew the Sixth down the road to Londinium, while Quintus screened us with the remnants of the cavalry. There we stayed, penned in like sheep behind the walls, and hoped that Rome would remember us.
All that autumn they ravaged the land. The Second fell back and held fast to Corinium, while the villas were sacked and the harvest rotted in the fields for lack of men to gather it. They took the grain from the barns and all the food that people had stored against the bad days. They took the cattle and the ponies as plunder and drove them north. Houses were stripped of their valuables and they killed all who protested at the theft. The roads were empty of traffic; there was no trade; and the towns, shut in upon themselves, began quietly to starve. And as always it was the women who suffered most. In the spring we had news that the barbarians were splitting up, that the war-bands were getting smaller and that many were beginning to move north again. The Picts began to quarrel with the Scotti and both, in turn, began to quarrel with the Saxons. When I heard that news I began, as out of a long darkness, to see a faint pin-prick of light that was the dawn of hope. They had made him a god but he had failed after all in his great purpose. The barbarian conspiracy was near its end.
And then, on a cold wet day when our food was nearly gone, we heard the news. The Count Theodosius had arrived. He had sailed with a fleet and an army all the way from Augusta Treverorum in Gaul. All the way down the Rhenus and across that cold sea they had rowed upon an emperor’s orders and made landfall at Rutupiae. We knew then that we were saved.
I HAD THOUGHT Aelia dead, but I wished to make certain. In the end I found her in a mean village outside Eburacum. She was very ill and they told me that she had been so for months. Her hair was streaked with grey and she looked thin and wasted. Her eyes reminded me of another’s. They were without hope. She would not speak to me; she turned her face to the wall and she cried. For three days it was like that, and then they told me what had been done to her, and I—I understood at last. When I came to her next and She turned away, I pulled her to me and I said those things that a man says to a woman whom he loves.
She wept. “I am ashamed,” she said. “I am so ashamed.” And then she added, wildly, “It is a punishment for all my sins.”
I did not feel like laughing. I said, “You are my wife, Aelia, and there is only shame if you do not live to keep me company.”
From that moment she began to get better. Later, because I was so thankful to have her back I made an offering to my God, and I sent for a vase of coloured glass from Colonia where they specialised in such things. It cost me a great deal of money, but she liked pretty things and was pleased with it when it came.
After Theodosius had settled the north and made terms with the Picts I went back to Borcovicum. Now there were great changes made. The administration was impoverished and our auxiliaries could not be paid. So Theodosius gave them land instead. Each man had his own patch and became a farmer, and lived with his family inside the camp; and the civilian settlements along the Vallum were abandoned. The Arcani were disbanded, and the long work of restoring our broken defences began. Quintus Veronius was made Praefectus of the Ala Petriana. He deserved the command (it had once been the post for the senior officer on the Wall) and it was his ambition to have a regiment of cavalry. But we both missed him for there were few enough people to talk to in our small world. Yet we had peace in the heather, and so the years went by.
One evening a lone horseman from Corstopitum rode up the track. It was Quintus Veronius. I was glad to see him but Aelia, whose face had shone like a candle when I cried his name, stopped smiling when she saw his face. He looked tired, strained and angry. “I have come from Eburacum,” he said. I am no longer in cimmand of the Ala Petriana. I dared to complain to Magnus Maximus, our beloved chief of staff, about the corruption of quartermasters and illegal profiteering in high places. So here I am, back at Vindolanda in disgrace.”
“And what else?” I asked.
He said, bleakly, “Our iron soldiers are made of iron no longer.”
When he had finished talking everyone was silent, for there was nothing to say. There had been a great battle between the Army of the East and those of the Goths who had settled on the west bank of the Danubius. It had been fought at a place called Adrianopolis, of which I had never heard, and the whole of the Roman army had been engaged—and beaten. The barbarian hordes on their ponies had cut the legions into pieces, and the most disciplined and best equipped army in the world had been destroyed by a rabble of horsemen from the Steppes. The Emperor Valens, his generals, Trajan and Sebastianus, together with thirty-five tribunes, the prefects of a dozen regiments, the Master of Horse, the High Steward, and the entire staff—all lay dead on the field of battle; and with them two-thirds of the entire army.
Forty thousand men had been killed in an afternoon.
I could not believe it. It was so horrible, so unimaginable that for days I could not take it in. I accepted the facts; but I dared not interpret them; for to do so would have meant acknowledging what would be unbearable—that the civilised world could be destroyed.
I stayed on the Wall in my overcrowded fort, an ageing tribune in charge of a rabble of men who scarcely deserved the name of regiment now. They were quiet years disturbed only by the news that Magnus Maximus had got himself proclaimed emperor. This made little difference to us, but when the troops in Gaul denounced the emperor Gratianus, Magnus Maximus saw that his chance had come—to try for two provinces instead of one. He raised troops wherever he could lay hands on them and stripped the Wall of its best men. In a week he undid the work of ten years and we were left naked to defend the frontier with our bare hands. When I, in my turn, received orders to send half my men, I would not do it. Together with Quintus I rode down to Eburacum, where I knew Maximus was, and asked to see him.
“I have heard of you,” he said. “You bear my name. You served Fullofaudes and Theodosius well, but you do not wish to serve me. Give me a reason why I do not have you executed or broken?”
“Because you cannot afford it,” I said. “Not one man can you afford to waste. I serve Rome as well as this island, and the safety of both depends on her frontiers.”
“I am the Emperor.”
“That is disputed by one emperor in Rome and by another in the east. I will believe it when they are dead.”
“I shall not fail.”
“Of course not. To you, Caesar, the throne; to us the war.”
He tried hard to smile. “In my service you could have had a regiment, or perhaps a legion. You could have gone far.”
“To my death in a Gaulish mist?”
“You may do that yet when I return.”
“When you return, Caesar, I shall be with my cohort on the Wall. Or dead under it.”
He looked anxious then. “The Wall must be held,” he said.
“It has never yet been taken by direct assault.” I looked at him and added, slowly, “Only by betrayal.”
We returned to our forts. We had kept our men, but we were lucky to be alive.
He failed, of course. He destroyed Gratianus, but the son of the man who had helped him to power proved another matter. And so Theodosius I became the last sole emperor of the Roman world, while we shivered in the rain and prayed that the Picts might leave us alone.
Then one day a strange tribesman came to the north gate and said he wished to see me.
“Well?” I asked. I was curious, for he wore the marks of the Epidoni of whom I had heard much but seen nothing.
“I bear a message for the tribune of the Tungri.”
“You may give it to me then,” I said.
“I have a friend who wishes to see you.”
“Who is this friend without a name?”
“I was to say that you would know him when you saw him.”
“So.”
“He is two days march to the north and waits upon the coast.”
“And is that all you have to say?”
“It is all I was told to say.”
“It is a clumsy trap,” said Quintus. “Do not go.”
I turned back to the dark man before me. “And if I do not go?”
He looked disconcerted. “My friend told me to say—come for the sake of an old friendship.”
I felt very cold. “I will come,” I said. “But not alone.”
“My friend expected that. But you must carry a green branch or not come at all.”
“It is agreed.”
I took Quintus and twenty men from the fort. Quintus was quietly curious but he asked no questions. For two days we rode north along the old military road, built by Agricola, and then, with the wind in our faces we made towards the sea. It was very cold, but we came at last to a long beach of silver sand. The wind blew in the sharp grass and the sea birds walked among the wet flats, for it was low tide and the sea was calm. On the beach, among the tufted dunes, stood a small tent, and a wood fire burned smokily in front of it. Away to the right with its prow over the sand, lay a long narrow boat with a dragon head, the sails furled below the single mast. I left Quintus, and rode down to the sand with the guide trotting beside me. He had heard us coming for he came out of the tent and stood motionless, waiting for me as I rode forward, the green branch in my sword hand. I dismounted and walked towards him, and he to me. Both of us stopped when we were ten paces apart. Neither of us smiled or raised a hand in greeting. But I knew him still and I had a pain inside me for all that was past.
“I have come as I promised.”
“I knew you would.”
He had not changed all that much. He wore the clothes of his adopted people, but there were no tattoo marks on his body that I could see. He was very thin and he was nervous, I think, because he could not keep his hands still, and his fingers played ceaselessly with the hilt of his dagger. There were lines upon his face and on his forehead, and there was a scar across his neck that had not been there before. But his eyes were no longer dead. He had the appearance of a man who was at the end of his strength.
“What do you want of me?”
He flinched at my tone. “I want only to ask you a question.”
“You could have come to the Wall.”
He half smiled. “I did that—once before. But you were not in a receiving mood on that occasion.”
“Nor you in a forgiving one.”
“That is in the past. If we talk of the past we shall only quarrel.”
“I have no wish to quarrel. I would have killed you at Eburacum once, but there is peace here now.” I looked at him steadily. “The past is dead.”
“You are well and happy?” he asked.
“I am content. Few who serve Rome in these times can be happy.”
“You are fortunate.”
“If I am, then I work hard for my fortune.”
“Yet you risked all when you spoke to Magnus Maximus thus.”
I said, “How did you know that?”
“If a rat squeaks on your Wall we hear it in those mountains.” He glanced behind him as he spoke. “For example, I can give you news from Mediolanum that you will find hard to bear. Your fanatical emperor has passed laws against those who do not worship his god. Sacrifices are not permitted and the temples are to be closed. Not even in the privacy of your home may you pray to the Immortal One.”
I stared at him, speechless with shock.
“It is true,” he said. “I would not joke on such a matter—not to any man. For those who do not profess his faith the road to high office in the empire is now barred for ever.” He paused. He said, coldly, “Were I still a Roman I swear I would not serve a man who passes such unjust laws.”
I remained silent.
He looked at my face, half stretched out his hand and then let it fall to his side. “Oh, Maximus, do not look like that. Though you walk through the seven gates of our faith, still you will not know which way the wind may blow you.”
I said nothing and he stared at the ground with blank eyes. Then he looked up and tried to smile. “Will you drink with me? Just once, for the sake of forgotten things.”
“Of course. Willingly and with all my heart.”
He went into the tent and came out with an amphora and two drinking cups. “This came from a wrecked ship,” he said. “I kept it until now, thinking to drink it on some great occasion. I have not tasted your wine in years.”
I poured the libation and said alone the words that we had been used to saying together in another life, while he watched without comment. It was like a dream, this meeting, and I wondered how it would end. I raised my cup and said to him, “May you be happy.”
He half smiled. He said, “You have a wife and a home and a people: all the things you wanted except one. Is the dream good now that it has become reality?”
“I like to think so.”
“I had a dream, too, but it was conceived in hate.”
“I know that.”
“Is that why it failed, do you think?”
“Perhaps. Yet it nearly succeeded. How did you do it?”
He poured the dregs from his cup onto the sand and shaded his eyes. “By hard work.”
I thought of all that it must have taken. The endless talks by smoky fires in rock-bound valleys that we had never seen; the ruthless patience required to smooth over jealousies and blood feuds that were old when Agricola built his forts; the sheer, hard, grinding work of welding tribes, clans and sects into an organised whole, equipped, prepared and willing to follow a single plan, to obey a single order and to strike the aimed blow in the right place at the right time.
“No Roman could have done it.” I did not realise that I had spoken aloud.
“But I share their blood.”
“I had forgotten.”
“Even that was not enough. Village after village would not have me. I was a stranger, an outcast, a man with no shadow. But one night I came to a secret place where the priests of the tribe celebrated their mystery. It was a night of storm and lightning; a night of great violence that would make even a Roman believe that the gods he had forsaken were angry with him. They saw the brand that you know upon my forehead, they saw my head with no hair, and they saw that I had the look of a man who has gazed into a great darkness. Their priests gave me food and shelter without a word, and in the morning they sent me the High-Priest’s daughter to be my servant. From her I learned that they believed I was a god.”
He paused and looked up. “After that the work began that I had made my purpose.”
I shivered.
He said, “It is I who shiver now. I knew that we had failed even before we began. In that night of waiting, while I lay in the heather and looked at the walls of your fort, I had a great feeling of coldness inside me. For the first time since I had met the High-Priest’s daughter the warmth left me and I was cold again. I felt colder still when I stood triumphant inside your shattered walls. She was so far away. I knew then that I did not care whether I lived or died, whether I won or lost. I went on with my purpose but it had no meaning now, and when the tribes broke up to plunder and to quarrel I no longer cared.”
He threw his cup onto the ground and tried to smile.
I said, “And what do you do now?”
“I have been waiting for that ship,” he said. “For five days I have been waiting.” He smiled with his teeth. “A man who fails is not popular. After it was over I crossed to Hibernia and lived there. But it was always damp and I was always so cold—here.” He touched his belt briefly. “In the end I returned to Caledonia. But I could not bear to go back to those mountains again and live alone, inside myself. So, I set sail in a Saxon ship for a Saxon land. They are still my friends.” He spoke with a defiant pride. “Perhaps I shall find another purpose somewhere, some day, that will not break in my hands.”
Above us a gull wheeled in the sky and cried shrilly; the guide sat motionless, cross-legged by the tent; and the sea rolled upon the beach. He put his hand to the mark on his forehead and said, “We both carry a burden upon our backs, but mine is heavy with things undone.”
I could have cried out to him then and repeated the old offer of the villa in Gaul; but I knew that he would refuse. He had too much pride, too much bitterness, too much hate. There was so much between us that lay in a golden past and that we could not remember without intolerable pain. So I kept silent.
He spoke to my guide, who answered him and nodded, pointing briefly at the tent. Then he turned to me, his face suddenly like stone.
“When the tide turns I shall sail. But you must go now.”
“You have not asked your question.”
“I kept it till the last, hoping that I would not need to ask it.”
“Do you need to?”
“No. But I must ask it all the same.”
I waited.
He said, “What happened to her. What happened to my High-Priest’s daughter?”
“She died.”
“You killed her.”
“Yes.”
He said, “And for that I could kill you, even now, though you hold a green branch in your hand. But I will not. Instead I will give you a warning. Stay here where it is safe. Stay in this island which is now your home.”
“Why?”
“I cannot answer that, Maximus. But on the day that you become the father of your brother, and the sun stands in the sign of Capricorn, you will wish that you had stayed upon the Wall.”
I shivered, not understanding what lay beneath the words I knew so well—I who had been present at his pain and his re-birth, as he had been at mine.
“Shall I see you again, Julian?”
“Do you want to?”
I was silent.
He said, “That is a question I should not have asked. Yes, I think we shall meet again.”
He raised his hand in a salute of farewell and I acknowledged it before turning away.
My men were sitting huddled round a fire when I came to them and Quintus, wrapped in his white cloak, was walking his horse up and down.
“Well,” he said. “What did he want?”
“I was just saying goodbye to an old friend.”
AELIA COUGHED AND said, huskily, “Shall we ever leave Borcovicum, do you think?”
Quintus rattled the dice again and smiled bitterly. “The Wall is a place only for forgotten and disgraced men. But at least the frontier is quiet and we may live in peace.”
I said nothing. My unfulfilled dreams hurt no longer; the seasons passed, one like another; and I was content that it should be so.
Then an imperial courier rode up from the south with the news that Theodosius had died at last. I paraded my men, as in the old style, and with the snow falling upon our battered armour and our dulled swords I told them that the child, Honorius, was now emperor and bade them take the oath of allegiance. They did so, four or five hundred shabby men in worn cloaks, whose hands, toughened only by farming now, had not held a sword in years; while the bored sentries on the guard-walk turned their backs upon the white dumbness of the heather and leaned upon their shields to watch a ceremony that once—performed by the legions—might have made or broken an emperor.
We had other news later. A horse trader on his way to Petriana told me that a Vandal general in the service of the empire had been named guardian to Honorius, and that this general—Stilicho—was looked upon as the one man who might yet be the saving of Rome. He had driven the Franks and the Alemanni back into Germania and had secured the Rhenus frontier once more.
That winter it was bitterly cold and we had difficulty over fuel. By the shortest day the stock of black stones that we kept in the old guard-room by the blocked-up eastern gate had run low, and it was hard to chip out a fresh supply from the ice-bound outcrop we had worked for years. Aelia developed a bad cough that grew worse instead of better. Even when packed in blankets by the meagre fire in our quarters she did not cease shivering, and the sight of her face, with its sunken eyes, made us all afraid. I would have sent her south but the roads were impassable and in any case, as Saturninus said afterwards, she would not have left us. Quintus was a good friend at that time. He would ride over and sit beside her on those occasions when my duties took me from the fort; and he did much to cheer her up. I kept on saying to myself that when the spring comes she will be well again. Each night and each morning I prayed to Mithras, and I prayed to her god as well. He at least should have heard me. Her god cared for the weak and the sick, she used to say, but he did not help her now, and when the spring came at last, she died.
That summer I went down to Eburacum and asked for a transfer. Constantinus was chief of staff now; an ambitious middle-aged man who had shared a hut with me in my legionary days with the Twentieth. He had a son, Constans, in command of an ala. Him, I did not like. He was contemptuous, cruel and conceited, and had too much of a following among the younger officers.
I spent my time either waiting in the empty ante-rooms of the repaired headquarters of the Sixth, or walking through the neglected streets. Sometimes I would sit in the empty amphitheatre and try not to think of my wife…. He had come out of that gate there, leading the rear of the procession, while the legate of the Sixth had smiled at his daughter and the sun beat down on the sweating crowds. Down there in that smooth circle of sand the two tiny figures had swayed and darted, until one was dead and the other stood motionless, while the packed seats roared, awaiting the hollow gift of a freedom he could do nothing with. The legate could make him free, but he was a prisoner of his thoughts for ever.
Then in a wine-shop one evening, I heard through the smoke, the chatter and the click of dice, the bored voice of the young Constans. “Someone should tell the old fool he’s wasting his time. It’s more than my father’s job is worth to give promotion to a pagan.” I got to my feet and crossed to the counter where a girl was taking dirty wine cups off a tray. “Give me that,” I said. I picked up the tray, rubbed it with my sleeve and held it up to the light. In the reflection I could just see my face. I looked at the polished bronze in silence; then I turned and went out. The next morning I collected my horse from the cavalry stables and returned to Borcovicum. I had accomplished nothing.
Later we heard that the Guardian of Rome had landed at Dubris. He was paying a visit, so it was said, to re-organise our defences. When we heard that he was coming north to Eburacum Quintus, whom I had not seen for weeks, rode in to tell me that he was going down to see Stilicho.
“You are wasting your time.” I looked at his tired face impatiently. “He needs young men, not their ghosts.”
“Perhaps. But he may need soldiers of experience who did their training in a proper legion. Maximus, we have rotted here long enough.” His voice sounded desperate.
“Enjoy yourself,” I said. “And bring back some wine. Try his staff for Mosella. I am sick of drinking vinegar.”
A week later he returned, but he was not alone. A cavalry detachment was behind him and in front a group of horsemen surrounding a scarlet cloak, gilded armour and a great horse-hair plume that over-topped them all.
I ordered the trumpeter to sound the “alert” and my men fell in outside the south wall. Stilicho, the military master of the Western Empire, was a big man, with broad shoulders, blond hair and restless blue eyes. He inspected everything. He saw the record room that had become an armoury, the adjutant’s office, now used for making arrow heads, and the accounts room in which the paymaster slept as well as worked. He visited the quarry where we dug the stones to repair the walls, and always he asked questions. He never stopped asking questions.
“How old are you? And how long have you been on the Wall?” he asked. I told him and he paused a moment and then said, abruptly, “I have heard how you defied your name-sake and lived. I have heard also how you commanded the Sixth Legion in retreat. What would you say if I told you I may have to withdraw a legion to help me in Italia?”
“If the general needs the legion then that legion is indeed needed,” I replied, carefully.
He said, “We cannot any longer fight the barbarians in the old way. In the days of the legion it was possible. Your armoured soldier was the finest in the world. But not after Adrianopolis. Valens died, but if he had lived he would never have known why he was beaten. But I know.” He smiled. “I am a barbarian myself. Can you tell me why they were beaten?”
I was silent.
“Come. It was not a question of numbers or bad leadership, though both played their part.”
“The legionaries had beaten cavalry before,” I said slowly. I was thinking of what I had read about Maharbal, Hannibal’s great cavalry commander.
“Yes,” he said. “But they had never fought cavalry who used stirrups.”
I thought for a moment. “You mean the stirrups gave them some kind of extra stability to make better use of their weapons,” I said, hesitantly.
“That’s right,” he said. “Your friend, Veronius, said you could still think like a soldier and he was right.”
“But the Sarmatians used stirrups too,” I said.
“They did, but they used their horses for skirmishes, raids and ambushes. They never charged, shoulder to shoulder, in a mass. No man on foot can stand up against that.”
I was silent. I was interested but I could not see where this was leading.
He said, “The Sixth must stay at Eburacum as a mobile force in case your heather catches fire again. The Second must stay at Rutupiae to guard the Saxon Shore. That leaves the Twentieth. They are below strength, badly led and under-paid. They have little discipline and no fighting skill. You will take over as their general. Call yourself legate in the old style if you wish. Keep the name of legion and keep the Eagle too, if it is of help. Organise them how you will. Appoint your own officers. But forget the battle drill they taught you in the old legion. You will need bows not javelins now. What I want is a field force of six thousand men, part horse, part infantry, trained and disciplined to fight masses of cavalry in the open, one moment, or build and man a line of forts the next.”
His eyes were on me and I could not look away. “How long will you give me?” I asked. I could hardly take in what he was saying.
“Be ready in a year and expect my summons after that.” He handed me a parchment. “Here is a commission, signed by the Emperor. The name has not been filled in, but I will do that before we eat.”
I said, “Does the Emperor know that I am not a christian?”
“Oh, yes. Why else do you think a man of your ability has stayed up here all these years?”
“But did he not mind, sir?”
Stilicho smiled. “I persuaded him to bend his own laws a little.”
He stayed for the midday meal, talking all the while, and then left. His last words were typical. “I will order two cloaks for you in Eburacum. It is well to assume the dignity with the power. The one always helps the other.”
I stood outside the gate and watched him go. He was the last Roman general ever to see the Wall under arms.
“We must drink to the occasion,” said Quintus. “The world is at your feet. From legate to emperor is only a step.” He gave a mock salute, but there was an anxious look in his eyes.
“Don’t be a fool,” I said, irritably, for I was nervous with excitement. “What lies did you tell him to make him do such a thing?”
“I told him the truth: that we were the only two honest men upon the Wall. He believed me. You do not lie to a man like that.”
“No,” I said.
“When will you leave?” His face was beaded with sweat.
“In two or three days.” I turned and walked slowly towards my house.
He followed, even more slowly. “I see.” His voice was expressionless.
“I want you to come with me to command the cavalry.”
I could hear his footsteps quicken. “Good,” he said, and there was joy and relief in his voice. “I always knew I could be a second Maharbal if I had the opportunity.”
Saturninus, when I told him the news, stood very still. “Will you take troops from the Wall, sir?” he said. I shook my head. “No, you are Praefectus here now. But I will take your youngest son, Fabianus, if you will let me.”
We said our farewells inside my residence and then, alone, I stood and looked at the shrine that had meant so much to Aelia and wondered, for a moment, if what she had said had been true, and that I would see her again, and that this long, intolerable ache was, indeed, only the symptom of a temporary parting. Then I went out into the sun and inspected my men for the last time.
Outside the south gate Quintus was waiting with a group of horsemen. He and Saturninus gave each other a long look. They had never been friends. There had been a curious constraint between them for years that I had never attempted to probe or understand. We, who spent our lives in small communities, had long ago learned that it was wise not to ask too many questions.
Saturninus said, calmly, “You keep your promise then, Praefectus?”
Quintus nodded. “I do,” he said, and I wondered to what god or person he had made a promise and what it was. But I noticed that neither wished the other good fortune.
Saturninus had dug a hole in the earth by the gate, and inside it I put carefully the surviving ear-drop that I had given Aelia, together with the signet ring she had given me. Saturninus produced a coin from his belt. “I found this years ago beneath the floor in number two granary; a sestertius of Commodus. I kept it for good luck. May I add it as my gift, sir?”
I nodded and he put it in. I had thought Quintus might join us, but he did not do so. When the earth had been stamped hard and the libation poured, I held out my hand.
“It has been a long time,” I said.
“Over thirty years,” he replied.
“Hold the fort.”
“As long as I can.”
I mounted my horse and rode off down the road to Corstopitum. I did not look at the deserted bath-house, the crumbling vallum or the abandoned mile castles. I looked only to my front the whole way.
The first thing I did when I reached Eburacum was to visit the baths where I sweated off the dirt of weeks and had a massage, a shave and a hair-cut. Then I looked in the mirror. I was grey now and troops did not care over-much for grey-haired commanders, so I had my hair dyed, leaving a little grey tactfully at the sides. I told Quintus to do the same. Then we collected our new scarlet cloaks and went to headquarters.
Constantinus smiled as we entered. “I have heard of your good fortune,” he said. “And I congratulate you, of course. How may I help you? Not with men, I fear.”
I said, “I want the treasure chest that Stilicho left me to pay my men with. I shall recruit my own men; but I do need equipment and supplies.”
He smiled. “I am sorry but I cannot help you there. You will have to make returns in the usual way to the government factories in Gaul and Italia.”
“That will take months,” I said.
Constantinus shrugged. “You know the regulations,” he said.
Quintus said, icily, “You have supplies. You have more equipment than men. I know how these things are arranged.”
“You have been misinformed.” Constantinus’ smile vanished. “It will be an ill service to this island if you take more troops out of it.”
“You are lying,” said Quintus, coldly.
Looking up suddenly I saw that the door had opened and the young Constans was there, leaning against the wall. He was wearing the over-burnished armour that he always affected, and smelling strongly of perfume. “I have heard of the miracle,” he said, languidly. “I came to offer my felicitations.”
Constantinus said, softly, “And what if I don’t let you take the Twentieth out of Britannia? We are short of everything, I tell you. What point in helping Rome if we cannot help ourselves?”
“Oh, if he cares for the barbarians so much, let him go to them,” said Constans with a yawn.
“We are Rome,” I said. “We are all Rome whether we wish it or not. The barbarians are pressing in along the Rhenus frontier. If that frontier goes we shall be cut off from Rome. What help will the central government give us then if we don’t help them now?”
Constantinus said, in exasperation, “How can we help?” He spread his hands wide in the gesture of a money-lender. “There is no money. How can there be when the tax returns are so negligible. Our administration is at its wit’s end to meet the demands of the central government.”
Quintus said, “Is the province to be endangered by the corrupt indolence of a few fat, idle old men? When the Saxons come again perfume will be a poor substitute for a leather shield.”
Constans laughed. “You are not suggesting corruption, surely?”
I turned on him. “I only suggest. You, of course, know.” To his father, I said, “All that I need now, since I can get no help, is the gold that was left me.”
Constantinus smiled blandly. “But we need that gold for our own defence.”
“No,” I said.
He rose to his feet. “I beg your pardon,” he said, softly. “Did I hear you aright?”
“Yes. I am not under your orders.”
“Perhaps he aspires to be another Magnus Maximus,” said Constans, viciously.
I crossed the room and slapped him hard across the face. “No. If you were a man you would understand.”
Constantinus, white with anger, said, “It is not you who gives the orders here.” He smiled with an effort. “You can have half the money or none at all.”
“And if I refuse and take it all?” I touched my sword hilt lightly.
“My legions may be below strength, but—by the Gods—you will find it easier to defy an emperor than two thousand of my men.”
I said, “I have the orders of Stilicho to obey. Not yours.”
“Then obey them,” said Constantinus.
“He might come back,” said Quintus softly.
“Our barbarian general has married his daughter to the Emperor. He has considerable power,” I added gently.
Constans said, “Oh, he might come back, but he is a busy man. And if he has need of troops out of this island then it might seem that he would be hard put to it to send them in again.”
I looked at the pair of them, and I hated them. On the Wall I had commanded loyalty, but here I commanded nothing. Without men I was helpless, and they knew it.
“Very well,” I said. “Half then. But if I do not get my half, then I swear by the Great Bull that I will come back here and I will take the whole on the point of my sword.”
We went out into the bright sunlight and neither of us spoke for some time.
“It is a conspiracy,” I said. “With half the money he can re-equip his own men at the same rate as I equip mine. If I had it all I should have the strongest single command in the island. What is he afraid of? That I aspire to be Dux Britanniarum?”
“Of course.” Quintus grinned. “But he, at least, aspires to wear the purple.”
“Will he give us even half?”
“He must. He is a greedy man, but practical too. To keep all he must murder you first. But that would mean a break with Honorius. That he cannot afford, so he gets rid of you best by letting you go. He expects us to die in a forest in Germania.” He added slowly, “And we probably shall. Oh, Maximus, my friend, we probably shall.”
Two days later I rode south-west in the spring sunshine. Behind me I left my youth, my middle age, my wife and my happiness. I was a general now and I had only defeat or victory to look forward to. There was no middle way any longer, and I did not care.
I RODE THROUGH Deva, a ghost town of crumbling walls, burnt out houses and empty streets whose few inhabitants, their memories scarred by the raids of the Attacotti, and their ghastly customs, hid from me as I passed by. At length, after endless, twisting miles through the mountains, I felt the wind blow fresh and clean in my face and I could smell the sea. Segontium reminded me of Eburacum; and the Twentieth, when I had seen its sentries and met its officers, reminded me of the Sixth. There was the same slow smell of decay and indolence that made me long for my farmer-soldiers of far-away Borcovicum. Within an hour of my arrival I held a meeting of the senior officers and centurions. At the end I said, “There are going to be many changes, I warn you. I want no officer who is not prepared to do everything that his men have to do. Not only that—he must be able to do it better.”
I dismissed them and the next day we got down to work. I needed two key men for the corner-stones of my command, and after a week of careful watching I sent for Aquila and Julius Optatus, two of the younger officers who seemed to have something that the other century commanders lacked.
Aquila was a native of the region, a man of medium height, with a hooked nose and a quiet expression. Julius Optatus was short, square and stocky, and he had a craftsman’s hands and a voice like a bull. But he had a good memory and a talent for organisation.
“You two,” I said, “are going to be promoted. You, Aquila, to be Chief Centurion. You have only had five years’ service and you will go over the heads of men your senior. This is an unusual step to take, but then this is an unusual legion. You will have jealousy and envy to contend with. You won’t be able to beat that with a vine staff, so don’t try. Remember three things: you have got to be more efficient than anyone else except myself; never give an order that cannot reasonably be carried out; and never hesitate over making a decision. Lastly, if the legion is inefficient, remember, I shall blame you and not the men.”
He smiled. He said, quietly, “I will do my best, general.”
To Julius Optatus, I said, “You are now the quartermaster. You will get more money and seven times as much work. In addition, you are going to be a most unusual quartermaster: one who does not take bribes or sell stores for personal profit. If you do then I will break you. Is that clear?”
He nodded, speechless.
At the end of the week Quintus arrived with the bullock waggons and the men were paid. Selected centurions were sent out on recruiting campaigns and, while we waited for the young unmarried men to come in to us, our hard core of two thousand began to learn, for the first time in their lives, what it meant to be soldiers. But stores were also a problem. We needed so much equipment and it took so long to obtain through official channels that I despaired of our ever being ready in time for Stilicho’s summons. I had to send my requirements through the Chief of Staff to the Praefectus Praetorio in Gaul who, in turn, would forward them to the appropriate factories, all of which were widely scattered. Those for woollen clothing, for ballistae, shield works and officers’ armour were at Treverorum; but—and this was typical of our administration—breastplates for the men were made in Mantua, while cavalry armour had to be requisitioned from Augustodunum. I could order arrows from Concordia, but the bows to fire them were made in Mantua; and the swords, of course, came from Remi. In addition, craftsmen had to be found or trained who could repair what we received, or make what we could not afford to buy. A special area of the camp, under the supervision of Julius Optatus, was set aside for these men to work in. It was a noisy, smoky area and the sound of iron beating upon iron went on all day long.
By the end of three months the legion had doubled its original size and the men were getting fit. At the end of a twenty mile march in the pouring rain, their clothes sodden and their feet sore, they could erect a camp complete with defences in the space of forty minutes and then fight a sixty minute action afterwards. “It is no good,” I would tell them, “learning to march fifteen miles if you are so out of breath at the end of it that you cannot kill a man first try when he is stabbing at you. He will kill you first instead, and your long walk will have been a waste of time.”
In the evenings, in camp and out of it, I gave special training to my officers and my centurions. “There are four things you must learn if you wish to be a good officer,” I would say to them. “You must learn self-discipline, initiative, patience and independence.”
“What about loyalty?” asked a centurion whose men had been grumbling at his too-frequent use of the stick.
“You cannot buy loyalty,” I said. “You can only earn it.”
There was difficulty over horses. We needed close on two thousand, and Quintus had the utmost difficulty in getting even four hundred. By the end of five months I had my full complement of men but still not enough horses. It was agreed between us that Quintus should cross to Gaul, base himself on Gesoriacum and look for the remainder of the animals there.
“It will be a big job transporting the animals I have got,” he said. “We shall need a lot of equipment.”
I looked at Julius Optatus. “Well?” I asked.
He grinned. “It will be an expensive business, sir.”
“I will give you the money. Just get on with it.”
To Quintus, I said, “A good deal of the stores we need have been sent to Gesoriacum to await our coming. I will write to the Dux Belgicae to see that he gives you every assistance.”
He laughed. “You mean you don’t want him taking our supplies. I will see that he accounts for them all.”
The cavalry left on a wet morning at the beginning of the new year and the camp seemed empty without them—empty, certainly, without Quintus.
When summer came I had a surprise visit from the young Constans, who rode in one day with some brother officers. “I came to learn when you would be ready to leave,” he said carelessly.
I was not surprised. They were growing anxious at Eburacum, wondering, perhaps, what my intentions might be now that my legion was raised and partly trained.
“You may see how ready we are,” I said. “You can watch my men to-morrow at exercise. Perhaps now you would care for refreshment and then look over the camp.”
“Of course,” he said insolently. “It is my duty, on behalf of the Dux Britanniarum, to see that the funds of Rome have not been wasted.”
I was tempted to slap him again but restrained myself with an effort. What was Constans to me?
Yet, for all his swagger and his rudeness he seemed to know what he was about, and I could not have made a better or more thorough inspection myself. The next morning he saw the men parade and go through their drill. In the afternoon he watched a field exercise, saw the ballistae fired, saw the cohorts make an attack on a prepared position, and frowned as a signal tower was erected, a defensive ditch dug, and a light bridge thrown across a river by the legion’s engineers. He said little and I wondered what he was thinking. I was soon to know. He came into my office at sundown and leaned idly against a wall while I dictated a letter to my clerk. “Next, to the tribune of the factory at Treverorum. I am returning the armour you have delivered. I need it for use as well as smartness, and this consignment has been so highly burnished that it has lost weight and is, as a result, dangerously thin. A spear will go through it easily, as you will see from the tests we have carried out. Please keep in future to the specifications I laid down in my original orders.”
“I did not realise you were a soldier,” he said, softly. “With a sword like that in his hands a man could aspire to the purple.”
“I gather you approve,” I said.
“My father was wrong. He did not believe you could do it.”
“Neither did you.”
He flushed and rubbed his cheek. “I do not bear malice,” he said, with a flash of his teeth. “I have a good ala. And you need as much cavalry as you can get. I’ve half a mind to join you. I’m sick of Eburacum and those endless patrols along the signal forts, looking for Saxons. When they do come they arrive so half drowned that they don’t even give us a good fight.”
“You forget,” I said, “I might not take you.”
He grinned. “You would,” he said. “You would take any one who was a soldier. I know you now. Why don’t you try for the purple? The men would elect you.” He spoke as though it were a game of some kind.
“And what would you be?”
“Oh, your deputy, of course.”
“I see. Yes, of course.”
“Why not? The province is yours. You could take it like a ripe plum. With a strong army to keep out the Saxons and the rest it could become a rich land again. Yours and mine.”
“But it’s not mine. It’s a part of Rome.”
“Oh, well, if you want more you could have that too. Gaul, Hispania and then the empire. But why bother? They’re too much trouble to hold down. Magnus Maximus, your name-sake, found that out. Why not stick to this island. It would be so easy. Why bother about the rest?”
I stared at him. “I don’t want the purple,” I said. “Neither here nor in Ravenna. As for the rest, everything that this island is, is Rome. Cut yourself off and you will be nothing; a rotting carcass without a head. We can’t manage without Rome. We are Rome.”
“You’re wrong,” he said. “We need a strong man here who can establish a strong government and run things properly. Not one of them at Eburacum can do that. Not even my father, though he often thinks—” He checked and said, lightly, “Oh, well, it was worth trying. It is not often that I think of anyone except myself. A pity that. Rather a waste of good intentions.”
I did not trust him. “I shall bring the legion back when Stilicho lets me. Meanwhile you have the other legions and the auxiliaries. If you need activity, why not work on them? The Wall will not stay quiet for ever.”
He said, pettishly, “But it’s such a bore working on one’s own.”
Before he left for the return journey to the north, he said to me from the saddle, “I will make a good report, general.”
I smiled.
He leaned down towards me and said, urgently, “Don’t go, sir. Maximus went and the men he took never came back. It will be the same with you whatever your intentions may be. None of you will come back and all this will have been wasted.”
I walked back to my office in silence. He had not smiled when he spoke. He had meant every word he said.
A fortnight later we left Segontium for the south, and two months later we were in Gesoriacum. As I came in sight of the camp, the measured tread of the cohorts behind me, I gasped. The road leading to it was, for the last half mile, lined with men; rank upon rank of armoured men on horseback, each holding spear or sword, while Quintus, mounted on a black horse with two white feet, his red cloak spread behind him, the scarlet horse-tail plume of his helmet moving in the breeze, stood motionless by the gates with his hand raised in salutation.
I rode alongside him and he greeted me as though I had been an emperor.
“You found your horses?”
“Yes, I found my horses. Oh, it is good to see you, Maximus. Come and meet the general of Belgica.”
Late that night, when the camp was sleeping, we sat over a jug of wine in Quintus’ tent and he told me the news.
“Stilicho arrives to-morrow,” he said. “He is collecting all the troops he can lay his hands on. Apparently Italia is about to be invaded and our beloved emperor, Honorius, has retired discreetly to Ravenna. Rumour has it that he spends his time worrying about the health of his pet chickens and wondering if the marsh air will kill them off. So much for the Emperor. Now, what of our friends at Eburacum?”
I told him and when I came to the visit of Constans he looked puzzled. “I don’t understand,” he said at length. “Something must be going to happen that the young man doesn’t like or he would never have applied to you.”
“Yes,” I said. “I think we are both well out of the island. It is not likely to be a safe place for a general.”
He said, sombrely, “Nowhere is safe when you are a general.”
We sat in the sun outside my tent and, while Stilicho gave his orders, I watched him closely. This was the man who had helped Theodosius to defeat Maximus, my name-sake, and who had married a niece of his emperor afterwards. This was the man who had warred against the Goths of the Eastern Empire, who had checked Alaric once already at Larissa and who had destroyed the power of the Moorish prince, Gildo. This was Stilicho, the last General of the West; this man who sat so still in his chair and who gave his orders with such confidence and rapidity.
“I am stripping the frontier of its troops,” he said. “I am pulling out the Thirtieth Ulpia and the First Minerva from Germania Superior, as well as the Eighth Augusta from the lower province. It’s a gamble, but one I must take. I need every trained man who can bear arms if I am to win against Alaric— thirty regiments at least.”
“Will the frontier hold?” I asked, thinking of Maximus who had not cared.
“Long enough, perhaps.” He smiled. “The Teutons beyond the Rhenus are feeling the pressure of the Huns from the east upon their backs, and they are moving west. In time they will crowd out those already settled along the banks of the river your father once guarded. But things will hold for a while. I have made treaties of peace with the more influential chiefs along the Rhenus. Gold is a good cement for a temporary friendship.”
“What of the east?” asked Quintus quietly.
Stilicho frowned. “The Vandals this side of the Danubius—my people—are restless. They wish to migrate also. I have been forced to grant them fresh lands. They are, in theory, under our rule.” He shrugged. “You see, I live from one expedient to the next. I have to.”
“And Alaric?” I asked.
His face darkened. “Alaric is a prince of the Visigoths, a member of the family of the Balti. He failed to win a kingdom for himself in Graecia and now marches in search of another.”
“What are our orders, sir?”
“You will march to Divodurum where you will find the Army of Gaul. I will join you there.”
“We are going into Italia?”
“Yes.” He smiled. “I understand that it has been an ambition of yours to see Rome. Well, pray that we don’t see it. Because if you do it will only be in defeat.”
A week later, on a hot July day, the Twentieth Legion, six thousand strong, set out on its long march south, towards that country in the sun, whose capital I had never seen.