No one moved or spoke at once when the report was finished. Marcus himself sat very still, searching into the long black eyes for their verdict. The rain sharpened to a little impatient spatter against the window. Then Claudius Hieronimianus shifted, and the spell of stillness was broken. ‘You have done well, both of you,’ he said; and his gaze moved from Marcus to Esca and back again, drawing them both in. ‘Thanks to you, a weapon which might one day have been used against the Empire, will never be so used. I salute two very courageous lunatics.’
‘And—the Legion?’
‘No,’ said the Legate. ‘I am sorry.’
So Marcus had his verdict. It was ‘thumbs down’ for the Ninth Legion. He had thought that he had accepted that from the night when he had heard Guern’s story. Now he knew that he had never quite accepted it. In his heart of hearts he had clung, against all reason, to the hope that his own judgement was wrong, after all. He made one desperate appeal for his father’s Legion, knowing as he did so, that it was hopeless.
‘Sir, there were upward of three cohorts who were not with the Legion when it marched North. Many Legions have been re-formed from fewer survivors than that—if the Eagle was still in Roman hands.’
‘Those cohorts were broken up twelve years ago, and distributed among other Legions of the Empire,’ the Legate said very kindly. ‘By now more than half the men will have finished their military service, and those that have not, will have changed their allegiance to their new Eagles, long ago. On your own showing, the name and number of the Ninth Hispana is no heritage for a new Legion to carry. It is better that it be forgotten.’
‘There is no way back through the Waters of Lethe.’ Behind the Legate’s words, Marcus seemed to hear Guern the Hunter. ‘No way back through the Waters of Lethe—no way back—’
Uncle Aquila crashed up from the table. ‘And what of their last stand, that Marcus has just told us of? Is not that a heritage fit for any Legion?’
The Legate turned a little in his chair, to look up at him. ‘The conduct of a few score men cannot counter-balance the conduct of a whole Legion,’ he said. ‘You must see that, Aquila, even though one of them was your brother.’
Uncle Aquila grunted savagely, and the Legate turned back to Marcus. ‘How many people know that the Eagle has been brought back?’
‘South of the Wall, we four, your own Camp Commandant, who I gather knew of the matter from yourself, and the Commander of the garrison at Borcovicus. He was my old Second at Isca Dumnoniorum, and gained his cohort for his defence of the fort after I was wounded.We took pains that no one else in Borcovicus should know what it was all about; and he will say nothing unless I give him leave. Rumour may come down from the North, of course, but if so, I imagine that it will die out as the earlier rumour did.’
‘Well enough,’ said the Legate. ‘Naturally I shall lay the whole matter before the Senate. But I have no doubt of their verdict.’
Uncle Aquila made a small, expressive gesture, as though screwing something up and tossing it into the brazier. ‘What do you suggest becomes of this?’ he nodded to the defiant, squatting Eagle.
‘Give it honourable burial,’ said the Legate.
‘Where?’ Marcus demanded huskily, after a moment.
‘Why not here in Calleva? Five roads meet here, and the Legions are for ever passing by, while the place itself is the territory of no particular Legion.’
He leaned forward to brush the gilded feathers lightly with one finger, his face thoughtful in the lamplight. ‘So long as Rome lasts, the Eagles will pass and re-pass under the walls of Calleva. What better place for it to lie?’
Uncle Aquila said, ‘When I had this house built, there had lately been a flare-up of unrest hereabout, and I had a small hiding-place made under the floor of the shrine, to take my papers in case of further trouble. Let it lie there and be forgotten.’
• • • • •
Very much later that night, the four of them stood together in the small alcove shrine at the end of the atrium. The slaves had long since gone to their own quarters, and they had the house and the silence of the house to themselves. A bronze lamp on the altar sent up a long tongue of flame the shape of a perfect laurel leaf; and by its light the household gods in their niches in the lime-washed walls seemed to look down, as the four men were looking down, into the small square hole in the tesselated floor, just before the altar.
Marcus had brought the Eagle down from the watchtower, carrying it as he had carried it so many miles and slept with it so many nights, in the crook of his arm. And while the others watched in silence, he had knelt down and laid it in the small square cist that reached down through the hypercaust into the dark earth beneath. He had laid it—no longer bundled in tattered violet cloth—on his old military cloak, and drawn the scarlet folds closely over it with a gentle hand. He had been very proud to wear that cloak; it was fitting that his father’s Eagle should have it now.
The four men stood with bent heads; three who had served with the Eagles in their different times, one who had suffered slavery for taking up arms against them; but in that moment there was no gulf between them. The Legate stepped forward to the edge of the square hole, looking down to where the scarlet of Marcus’s cloak was all but lost in the depths beyond the reach of the lamplight. He raised one hand, and began, very simply, to speak the Valedictory, the Farewell, as he might have spoken it for a dead comrade.
Suddenly, to Marcus’s tired mind, it seemed that there were others besides themselves in the little lamplit shrine; notably two: a slight, dark man, with an eager face beneath the tall crest of a First Cohort Commander; and a shock-headed tribesman in a saffron kilt. Yet when he looked at the tribesman, he was gone, and in his place the young centurion he had once been.
‘Here lies the Eagle of the Ninth Legion, the Hispana,’ the Legate was saying. ‘Many times it found honour in the wars, against foes abroad and rebellion at home. Shame came to it; but at the end it was honourably held until the last of those who held it died beneath its wings. It has led brave men. Let it lie forgotten.’
He stepped back.
Esca looked questioningly to Uncle Aquila, then at a sign from him, stooped to the segment of solid-moulded tessera which stood upreared against the wall, and fitted it carefully back into place over the hole. It had been well contrived, this hiding-place that Uncle Aquila had had made for his papers; with the segment replaced and the pattern completed, no trace of it remained, save for one all but invisible chink just wide enough to take a knife-blade.
‘Tomorrow we will seal it up,’ said Uncle Aquila, heavily.
Faintly into the silence, down the soft wet wind, stole the long-drawn, haunting notes of the trumpets from the transit camp, sounding for the third watch of the night. To Marcus, still gazing down blindly at the place where the square hole had been, it seemed that they were sounding with unbearable sadness for the lost Eagle, and for the lost Legion that had marched into the mist and never come marching back. Then, as the distant trumpets quickened into the shining spray of notes that ended the call, suddenly his sense of failure dropped from him like a tattered cloak, and he knew again, as he had known in the ruined signal-tower while the hunt closed in below, that it had all been worth while.
He had failed to redeem his father’s Legion, since it was past redeeming, but the lost Eagle was home again, and would never now be used as a weapon against its own people.
He raised his head at the same time as Esca, and their eyes met. ‘A good hunting?’ Esca seemed to be asking.
‘It was a good hunting,’ Marcus said.
XXI
THE OLIVE-WOOD BIRD
THAT winter was not an easy one for Marcus. For months he had mercilessly overtaxed his lame leg, and when the strain was over, it quite suddenly took its revenge. He did not much mind the pain it gave him, save when it kept him awake at night, but he did most bitterly mind finding himself shackled by the old wound again, when
he had thought that all that was over. He felt ill, and he was wildly impatient; and he missed Cottia through the dark winter days as he had never missed her before.
Also there was the old nagging question of the future still to be settled. For Esca, the future was simpler—simpler as to the outward things at all events. ‘I am your armour-bearer, though I am no longer your slave,’ he said when they discussed the question. ‘I will serve you, and you shall feed me, and between whiles maybe I will turn hunter, and that will bring in a sesterce from time to time.’ Even before the year turned Marcus had spoken to his uncle about his old idea of becoming somebody’s secretary; but Uncle Aquila had disposed of his capabilities to be anybody’s secretary in a few well-chosen and blistering words, and when he proved stubborn in the plan, finished up by making him promise to wait at least until he was strong again.
The year drew on to spring, and slowly Marcus’s leg began to strengthen under him once more. March came, and the forest below the ramparts was flushed with rising sap, and the many thorn-trees which gave it its name began to feather the wooded hills with white. And quite suddenly the House of Kaeso woke up. For a few days slaves came and went, scurrying about it; hangings were shaken out of doors, and the fumes of the freshly lit hypercaust fire blew into the slaves’ quarters of Uncle Aquila’s house and created unpleasantness between the two households. Then one evening, returning from the baths, Marcus and Esca met a hired mule-carriage being driven away empty from the house of Kaeso, and glimpsed a mass of luggage being carried indoors. The family had returned.
Next morning Marcus went down to the foot of the garden, and whistled for Cottia, as he had been used to do. It was a wild day of blustering wind and thin, shining rain, and the little native daffodils in the rampart curve tossed and streamed before the gusts like points of wind-blown flame, with the shrill sunshine slanting through their petals. Cottia came with the wind behind her, up round the end of the swaying hedge, to join him under the bare fruit-trees.
‘I heard you whistle,’ she said, ‘and so I came. I have brought your bracelet back to you.’
‘Cottia!’ Marcus said. ‘Why, Cottia!’ and stood looking at her, making no move to take the bracelet that she held out to him. It was almost a year since their last meeting, but he had expected her to wait as she had been then. And Cottia had not waited. She stood before him much taller than she had been, with her head up, and returned his look, suddenly a little uncertain. Her soft golden-green mantle was swathed closely round her over the straight white folds of her tunic; one end of it, which had been drawn over her head, had fallen back, and her flaming hair that had been used to blow wild, was braided into a shining coronal so that she seemed more than ever to carry her head like a queen. Her lips were touched with red, and her eyebrows darkened, and there were tiny gold drops in her ears.
‘Why, Cottia,’ he said again, ‘you have grown up,’ and felt suddenly a little ache of loss.
‘Yes,’ said Cottia. ‘Do you like me grown up?’
‘Yes—yes, of course,’ Marcus said. ‘Thank you for looking after my bracelet for me. Uncle Aquila told me how you came to see him about it before you went away.’ He took the heavy gold bracelet from her and sprang it on to his wrist, still looking at her as he did so. He found that he did not know how to talk to her, and as the silence lengthened, he asked with desperate politeness, ‘Did you like Aquae Sulis?’
‘No!’ Cottia spat the word between little pointed teeth, and her face was suddenly bright with fury. ‘I hated every moment of Aquae Sulis! I never wanted to go there; I wanted to wait for you because you told me you might be home before the winter closed in. And all winter I have had no word of you save one little—little message in some silly letter your uncle sent mine about the new town water supply; and I have waited, and waited, and now you are not at all glad to see me! Well, neither am I at all glad to see you!’
‘You little vixen!’ Marcus caught her wrists as she turned to run, and swung her round to face him. Suddenly and softly he laughed. ‘But I am glad to see you. You do not know how glad I am to see you, Cottia.’
She was dragging away from him, wrenching at her wrists to free them, but at his words she checked, looking up into his face. ‘Yes, you are now,’ she said wonderingly. ‘Why were you not, before?’
‘I did not recognize you, just at first.’
‘Oh,’ said Cottia, a little blankly. She was silent a moment, and then asked with sudden anxiety: ‘Where is Cub?’
‘Making love to Sassticca for a bone. He is growing greedy.’
She drew a deep breath of relief. ‘All was well with him, then, when you came home?’
‘He was very thin; he would not eat after you left. But all is well with him now.’
‘I was afraid of that; that he would fret, I mean. It was one of the things that made me not want to go to Aquae Sulis; but I could not take him with me, truly I could not, Marcus. Aunt Valaria would never have allowed it.’
‘I am very sure she would not,’ Marcus said, his mouth quirking as he thought of the Lady Valaria confronted with the suggestion that she should take a young wolf to a fashionable watering-place.
By this time they were sitting side by side on Marcus’s cloak spread on the damp marble bench, and after a few moments Cottia asked: ‘Did you find the Eagle?’
He looked round at her, his arms resting across his knees. ‘Yes,’ he said at last.
‘Oh, Marcus, I am so glad! So very glad! And now?’
‘Nothing now.’
‘But the Legion?’ She searched his face, and the sparkle died in her own. ‘Will there not be a new Ninth Legion, after all?’
‘No, there will never be a Ninth Legion again.’
‘But Marcus—’ she began, and then checked. ‘No, I will not ask questions.’
He smiled. ‘One day, maybe, I will tell you the whole story.’
‘I will wait,’ said Cottia.
For a while they sat there, talking by fits and starts, but silent for the most part, glancing at each other from time to time with a quick smile, and then away again, for they were unexpectedly shy of each other. Presently Marcus told her about Esca, that he was no longer a slave. He had expected her to be surprised, but she only said, ‘Yes, Nissa told me, just after you went away, and I was glad—for you both.’ And then they were silent again.
Behind them, in the bare swaying branches of the wild pear-tree, a blackbird with a crocus-coloured bill burst into song, and the wind caught and tossed the shining notes down to them in a shower. They turned together to look up at the singer, swaying against the cold blown blue of the sky. Marcus narrowed his eyes into the thin dazzle of sunlight and whistled back, and the blackbird, bowing and swaying on the wind-blown branch, its throat swelling with an ecstasy of song, seemed to be answering him. Then a cloud came sailing across the sun, and the bright world was quenched in shadow.
At the same moment they heard a horse coming down the street, its hoof-beats ringing on the wet roadway. It stopped before the house, or before the next one; Marcus could not be sure which.
The blackbird was still singing, but when he turned to look at Cottia, a shadow that was not merely the passing cloud seemed to have touched her. ‘Marcus, what is it that you will do now?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Now?’
‘Now that you are strong again. You are strong again, aren’t you?’ Then swiftly: ‘No, I do not believe you are, you were limping more, just now, than you were when I saw you last.’
Marcus laughed. ‘I have been lying up like a sick badger all winter, but I am mending fast now.’
‘That is the truth?’
‘That is the truth.’
‘Then—what will you do? Will you go back to the Legions?’
‘No. I should do well enough in a skirmish, maybe, but I could not march my cohort down from Portus Itius to Rome at twenty miles a day, and I should certainly be no use on the parade ground.’
‘The parade ground!’ Cottia sai
d indignantly. ‘I have seen them on the parade ground through the gates of the transit camp. They march about in straight lines with all their legs working together, and make silly patterns of themselves while a man with a voice like a bull shouts at them. What has that to do with the fighting of wars?’
Marcus hastily gathered his wits together to make Cottia understand what it had to do with the fighting of wars, but he did not have to struggle with the explanations, for she hurried on without waiting for an answer. ‘Then if you cannot go back to the Legions, what will you do?’
‘I am not—quite sure.’
‘Perhaps you will go home,’ she said; and then seemed suddenly to realize her own words, and her eyes grew frightened. ‘You will go back to Rome, and take Cub and Esca with you!’
‘I do not know, Cottia, truly I do not know. But I do not suppose for a moment that I shall ever go home.’
But Cottia did not seem to hear him. ‘Take me too.’ Suddenly her voice broke almost into a wail. ‘They will build the city wall round here soon, and you could not leave me in a cage! You could not! Oh, Marcus, take me too!’
‘Even if it were to Rome?’ Marcus said, remembering her old wild hatred of all things Roman.
Cottia slipped from the bench, and turned to him as he got up also. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Anywhere at all, if only it was with you.’
Two distinct waves of feeling swept over Marcus, so close upon each other that they were almost one. The first was the joyful surprise of finding, and the second the desolation of losing again … How was he to explain to Cottia that possessing nothing in the world, without even a trade to his hands, he could not take her with him?
‘Cottia,’ he began wretchedly. ‘Cottia, my heart—it is no use—’
But before he could get any farther, he heard Esca calling, with a note of excitement in his voice. ‘Marcus! Where are you, Marcus?’