Eagle in the Snow (29 page)

Quintus spent a lot of time down by the docks with Gallus and Flavius. I thought at first it was a new ship they were interested in, but I went down there myself one morning and found them busy with the blacksmith and a model oar, the blade of which was tipped with iron along its edges.

Quintus said, “If the water begins to freeze it might be just possible to break the ice with oars; but they would need to be strengthened.”

“What about the boat? That would need protection also.”

“We have thought of that, too. What we need is a metal shield on the bow.” Flavius grinned. “The general and I have the ideas. Gallus sees if they can be put into practice.”

At a banquet one evening Quintus struck up a friendship over the wine with a fat man who bred horses, and whenever he disappeared after that I knew he was over at the fat man’s estates, giving them a hand in the breaking-in of the horses.

He was still urging me to make use of our bridge. “I can commandeer fifteen transports,” he said. “And we can get more from Confluentes and Borbetomagus.”

“You need sixty to carry a legion.”

“All right, sixty then. There will be no need to fear our being trapped on the wrong bank if there are boats to take us off, and the bridge is burned.” He knew my obsessive fear at having no secure line of retreat.

I said again, “They know just how weak we are.”

“They only guess, and you only guess that they guess. You cannot be sure.”

“Do you want me to lose Gaul in an afternoon?”

He took my arm. “Upon the Wall you used to spend your evenings studying the campaigns of great soldiers.”

“Yes,” I said. “Sertorius, Lucullus and Pompey, though he came to a harsh end.”

“Caesar too.” He smiled. “You used to tell me that his successes were due to speed and surprise. He exploited the weaknesses of his enemies.”

I said, wearily, “I am not Caesar.”

“He fought against odds as great.”

“The people he fought were not as well armed, nor as well equipped, nor as well led as these. And he was never reduced to only one legion.”

“We have my cavalry which makes us two, if I am any judge of soldiers.”

I hesitated.

“If Marcomir had been supported by sufficient horse he could have destroyed Respendial that day.” It was true.

“Very well,” I said. “I will try it if you wish. But we will do it my way and not yours. I need more cavalry. Get me another thousand and I will fight.”

“I shall have to call upon the auxiliary alae then,” he said cautiously. “They are not as well trained as I would like.”

I laughed. “When they are ready, Quintus, then let me know.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I will hold you to that.”

We attended the games and I shared the seats of honour with Septimus and his family. Of our previous meeting we did not speak; politeness alone made the occasion endurable. He behaved towards me, throughout, with all the dignity and good manners of a senator who has been advised by his emperor to open his veins in hot water. And yet, curious as it seemed afterwards, once, during the chariot races between the Reds and the Whites, our common enthusiasm for the sport made a bridge between us, and, for a short while, we were almost friends. This, in its way, was remarkable, for friends and families were split in their allegiance to the teams, quite as fiercely as over the Blues and Greens of Constantinopolis. The games were a great success and put the populace in a high good humour. All the seats were sold out; Artorius made a series of lucky bets and won much money; Quintus enjoyed the animal fights and thought them superior to the ones he had seen in Hispania; while the gladiatorial fights were, very properly, fought to the death. I had the rare experience, however, of giving the wooden foil to a gladiator who had gained the crowd’s approval; and his face, when I handed it to him, haunted me for days afterwards.

Only the Bishop did not share the general festivity. When I met him a day or so later, his face was pinker than usual. He had the look of a man who does not enjoy the martyrdom of unpopularity.

On our last day I went to the baths and had my hair dyed. It was silver all over now and I think the troops knew, to judge by the nickname that they had given me. But I did not care. What were their opinions to me? In the afternoon Quintus went to the deserted Temple of Epona, while I sat in the back room of a merchant’s shop and haggled over the price of a flask of perfume for Rando’s daughter. Afterwards I rode in search of my friend. I tied my horse beside his and then sat down upon a block of fallen stone. The sun shone strongly upon the red and grey of the buildings, and the entrance to the temple was shadowed in darkness. No-one came here now and I had the whole square to myself. The sky was very blue, I remember, and the trees stood silent, their once dark leaves already turned a rich brown. Once it had seemed as though they would live for ever; now they were dying after so short a life, and would soon crumble into dust. A lizard ran across the paving and concealed itself in the tufts of grass that thrust themselves upwards between the cracks, its small body heaving, as though it found the heat too much at that time of the year. I unpinned my cloak and shut my eyes, and felt the sun upon my face. I thought, for a moment or two, of the bustle in the offices of the Basilica, and of the legion in its earth and timber forts, and of all the work that awaited me when I returned. Suddenly, I felt very old and very tired. I thought of the villa at Arelate and of the pool in which I had swum as a boy. I thought of the plans we had made, my wife and I. There had been that winter when it was very cold and we had spent the evenings planning a new and proper home in the forest of Anderida. She had sat by the fire, spinning, while I drew the outlines of the new house with a stick of charcoal upon the back of a duty list. We had argued about the size of the rooms and how many we should need. Quintus had joined us, one night, and we had laughed and joked over the wine. That was the night she had washed her hair, and she sat by the fire, drying it and listening to our talk. There had to be a special room for him, I insisted, so that he would come to visit us often; and Quintus had agreed, and they had looked at each other and smiled.

I opened my eyes and stared up at the sky. There were so many questions that I had wanted to ask; so many that I had never dared to ask. I never would ask them now. I shut them from my mind. They were the bad things, about which I could do nothing. It was better, I thought, to remember the happy times instead. Perhaps, when all this was over, we would buy a villa still, and farm it, and Quintus would breed horses, and I would write that military history that had been in my mind all these years. And in the evenings we would sit before the fire and drink wine and remind ourselves of the old days. So I sat there, blinking in the sun, and I was just an old man, dreaming foolish dreams.

When I looked up again, Quintus was standing over me. He saw the flask at my side, and laughed. “It is not for yourself, I hope. I remember your remarks, once, about perfumed tribunes. You kicked the fellow out.”

“I did,” I said, amiably. We walked in the sunlight to where our horses stood, and I turned to ask him something, and then stopped. He looked back at me in silence, his face quite calm and wonderfully relaxed except for the eyes. He had that look that I remembered seeing once before, when he had been made a present of a fine foal. Perhaps Aelia had known it also. But now, he had been to the Temple.

“Yes,” he said. “It was good. Oh, Maximus, when I die I like to think that the goddess will grant my wish, especially if I die in battle in a good charge.”

“What is your wish?” I asked.

“There is another.” He looked at me steadily. “But this one is more simple: that I may be allowed to drive the golden horses of the sun.” And after that he was silent.

Back at Romulus we made our offering before the small altar that we had made to do honour to our god; we made the ritual sacrifice; we offered up the accustomed prayers; and I felt the burden of my fatherhood upon me. All the while a sentry kept watch outside to see that we were not disturbed. After it was over we sat, still in silence, and watched the sun dip behind the hills.

It was getting dark now and the shadows were running back into the room. I struck a flint and lit the tiny lamp that stood on the wine table. Over the yellow, flickering flame we looked at each other. I said, “There is still hope, you know.”

“Yes,” he said. “I know that.” But he had the look of a man who did not care any more.

I heard the sentry stamp his feet outside the door. There was a murmur of voices, and then the door opened and the Bishop came in.

“You leave tomorrow,” he said. “I came to say goodbye.” We talked for a while in a polite and stilted manner, and all the time he kept on looking at the brand on my forehead, which always showed when my hair had been cut.

He said, suddenly, “You have no priests.”

I raised my head. “No,” I said, “Not in your sense of the word. Yet some of us are granted the privilege of acting as guides upon the way. We mediate on behalf of our brothers.”

His intellectual curiosity overcame his natural repugnance to discuss a matter of which he disapproved. “Tell me,” he said, “why it is that your temples are made below the ground and why your beliefs are kept so secret?”

I looked at Quintus and then at the Bishop. I said, “We believe that power is lost through idle talk. We draw strength from our worship as a community, as you do, and yet—” I hesitated. I said, “The best prayers are made in silence.”

He nodded. “I understand,” he said. He put his cup down on the table and talked of other things then.

“It has been a hard year,” said Quintus, in reply to some remark.

“It will be harder yet,” said the Bishop calmly, his big hands folded across his lap, the cross upon his throat glinting in the light.

“What do you mean?”

“The berries on the bushes have been taken already, and each night at dusk you can see the geese flying inland from the north.” He smiled. “A colony of field mice live just outside the wall at the back of my house, on the north side. You can see their holes, a dozen of them quite clearly. Now they are blocked up and they have made fresh holes on the other side of the wall. They know, too. All the farmers say the same thing. It is going to be a hard and bitter winter.”

“How bitter?” I said sharply.

“I do not know, my son, but there will be snow and ice.” He looked from us to the altar in the niche in the wall. “Are you afraid of death?” he asked gently. “If you followed my faith there would be no need.”

“I am a soldier,” I said. “Death is something I have given and it is something that I must receive. I am only afraid of dying; not of being dead.”

He was silent for a while. Then he rose to his feet. At the door he paused. He said steadily, “It is easier to be blinded by the sun than by the darkness of the night.”

I said, “The sun has died but it will renew itself in the morning.”

“You are very sure.”

I smiled. “Yes. That is why we have something in common, all three of us.”

He did not take up the challenge. Instead he said, “Am I right in understanding that you intend to do battle with the Vandals?”

I nodded, surprised. “How do you know that? I have told no-one. Unless Quintus—” I turned to look at him but he shook his head.

The Bishop said, “It was in your face when you came to the Basilica yesterday morning. Before that you had the look of a man trying to make up his mind. Yesterday you looked peaceful. The decision had been made. There is only one thing that worries a general—the decision to engage the enemy; the when, the how and the where.”

I said, “You know a lot about soldiers.”

He smiled. “Why not? Did you know that one of my predecessors in office was once a centurion in a legion at Moguntiacum? We live in the world more than you think.”

I was silent. Quintus said roughly, “Yes, we are going to fight. We have waited long enough for help that has never come.”

I glanced at him sharply. The Bishop said, “It is a fine thing that you are such good friends.” He regarded us keenly. He said, “I am glad that this city has two such men as you to protect it. I did not always think so. This city and this province have great need of men like yourselves; men who have confidence and authority and right judgement; men who are sure; men who know themselves.”

I shut my eyes suddenly. I said, “You are very kind.” I thought of Julian, and of my wife. I thought of the girl in the camp at Moguntiacum and of the times I had wiped the blood off my sword after a battle or a fight. I said, “But you are so very wrong. Do not have too much confidence in us, my lord Bishop.”

He said, “Do not misunderstand me. As I said, I have been in the world. I can tell a good sword from a bad one. And I know just how a sword is made. If you ever need me I shall be here. You need never feel alone.”

I stared out over the window ledges, saw the helmets of my soldiers in the courtyard below, smelt the smell of food cooking in the kitchens and heard a girl laugh as she strolled through the arcade behind my back, holding hands with a young man, no doubt. In the distance a skein of geese passed silently across the face of the rising moon.

With the auxiliaries manning all the forts from Confluentes to Borbetomagus, the cohorts marched out by night, carrying full equipment, twenty days’ rations and the hopes and fears of their commanders. To muffle undue noise the cooking pots, spades and entrenching tools had been wrapped in rags and the only sound was the quiet jingling of a horse’s bit and the steady tramp of nailed sandals. The men had been forbidden to sing, as they normally did, but they marched cheerfully and in good spirits at the thought of the coming battle. After an hour, riding at the rear of the column I could smell again the familiar smell of horses, sweat and leather and began to feel more cheerful.

Eight days later the legion crossed the river, again by night, and before dawn marched ten miles into the heart of the territory, formerly Marcomir’s, now held by Goar. We camped near his berg while the men rested during the hours of daylight and troops of cavalry rode forward to make contact with Goar’s scouts who were guarding the foothills north of the plain where the enemy lay. That night we marched again and the second dawn found us drawn up for battle, six hundred yards from the enemy camp. The centre, under the command of Fabianus, consisted of the three heavy cohorts, with their ballistae and carroballistae, grouped in the gaps between the massed units. Guarding their flanks were two light cohorts, extended slightly forward at an angle to suggest that they were the wings of my formation. Slightly to the rear of these wings, but outflanking them, and hidden on the one hand by a copse and on the other by thick scrub, were two alae of horse, their men dismounted for additional concealment. As a reserve, under my own hand, I had a third ala, the third cohort of light infantry, and my bodyguard. To left and right of the legion were Goar’s Alans, mixed with a stiffening of auxiliaries. Behind us, as an additional reserve were Marcomir’s Frank’s—what was left of them. Each cohort was divided into ten sixty-man waves and the men sat upon the ground and rested while scouts rode up and down the line, checking that all was as it should be.