Eagle in the Snow: The Classic Bestseller

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then she had help.” I stared at him and frowned. “One of our men? Is that what you are thinking?”

  “It looks like it, sir.”

  We hurried out. The camp flared with torches and the men were parading outside their huts under the direction of their section commanders. Aquila came up, unshaved, and rubbing his eyes. “Take a roll call,” I said. “Find out who is missing.”

  He saluted and a few minutes later I heard the trumpets sound. Then came a shout from the south-east gate tower. I ran towards it, followed by Fabianus and another tribune. “Up here,” shouted a voice. I climbed the steps to the firing platform. The sentry pointed and I saw a boat drifting downstream; a small boat such as fishermen used. It appeared to be empty. Caught in one current and then another, it nosed first one way and then the next. It passed close to the broken bridge, at which the sentry there cried out and flung three javelins in quick succession. Two went into the boat. A third hit the water behind. Then the boat moved outwards suddenly, caught in a cross eddy, and passed slowly along the west shore of the south island. The sentry ran back and came panting up to the wall. “There are men on board,” he cried. “They are lying on the bottom.”

  “Use the catapults,” I said. “I will give a week’s extra pay to all who have a hand in sinking her.”

  “Shall I sound the alarm?”

  “No, you fool. I don’t want too much importance attached to it. They know our trumpet calls. The parade call is one thing; the alarm another.”

  “Number Four and Five ready, sir.”

  “Fire.”

  They fired. The boat, guided crudely by a man lying upon the boards, holding an oar over the stern, was moving more rapidly now. It was clear of the island and heading towards the further bank. Fireball after fireball went hissing up into the dawn sky. They landed, with tremendous splashes and great hisses of steam, all round the boat; it was end on now and a difficult target. The seventh shot struck the boat; there came back across the water a hoarse scream and then silence.

  “Well, that’s that,” said the duty optio in a satisfied voice.

  Fabianus said, white-faced, “Do you think she was in the boat?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, angrily. “If she was, then she was lucky.” He stared at me.

  “How many in the boat?” I asked the sentry.

  “Three, sir.”

  “Are you certain?’

  “I am positive, sir.”

  “Let us hope you are right.” I smiled at the centurion. “Good work. The sentry and yourself are to be included. Send me the names and I will pass them to the accounts office.”

  The centurion said, anxiously, “I hope they all drowned, sir.”

  “Yes, I hope so to. I expect they did.”

  Two hours later a report came in from the duty centurion on the south island. A man, who appeared to be badly injured, had been seen climbing out of the water onto the east bank. He had then vanished into the scrub. It was impossible to say whether he was likely to die or not. The centurion did not think so; and I was inclined to believe him. He was a man of some experience. He had seen many wounded men in his time. He knew how a man moved when he was dying.

  It was day now, too late to go back to sleep. I went to the headquarters building and broke my fast on a biscuit dipped in wine. Aquila came in. He looked tired. He said, “Everyone is accounted for, sir, except the prisoner and—” He hesitated.

  “Tell me.”

  “The tribune, Severus, sir.”

  “Was he on duty yesterday?”

  “Yes, sir.” He added, awkwardly, “He had no leave of absence from the camp. I have checked that with the camp praefectus.”

  “I understand.” I looked out of the window. I said, “Send the tribune Fabianus to me.”

  He came. He looked ill, and, as he stood to attention before me, his hands trembled by his side.

  I said, “Who else, besides you, was in the habit of talking to the prisoner?”

  He said, miserably, “A number of us used to.”

  “Anyone in particular? The tribune Severus, for instance?”

  There was a long silence and then he said, in a low voice, “Yes, sir.”

  I rose from my stool and stood over him. “Did you know about this?” He did not say anything. He dropped his eyes to the floor.

  “Answer me,” I said.

  “No, sir. I didn’t. But—”

  “Go on.”

  He licked his lips. “A month ago she asked me if I—if I would help her to escape. I refused, of course. I never thought she might try to persuade anyone else.’

  “Why didn’t you report this?”

  “I didn’t think—”

  “No, you wouldn’t. I will deal with you later. You realise this is an offence, punishable by death?”

  He swayed on his feet. “Not you, you young fool; the man who helped her.”

  “But they’re dead,” he muttered.

  “We found the marks where the boat had been drawn up on the mud; there were three sets of foot marks round it; but no tracks leading from the fort to the river. There should have been. It rained yesterday evening and the ground was soft. I think they lost their way; the people who supplied the boat lost their nerve because of the trumpets in the camp and didn’t wait. They pushed off and we caught them.”

  He stared at me in horror.

  “Yes,” I said. “I think the girl and the tribune are hiding in the town.”

  “What will you do, sir?”

  I said, “They had better have died in that boat.”

  They were found four days later, hidden in a wine cellar, only fifty yards from the east gate. Freedom—of a kind—had been so near, but my sentries they could not pass without discovery. They were brought back under guard; Severus, unshaven, hollow eyed, desperate and dirty; the girl, equally bedraggled, but still defiant. They were locked in the guardhouse in separate cells, and I sent for Quintus.

  He saluted me formally and I asked him to take a seat. The old ease of manner between us had never returned. There were no jokes and no gossip between us still. We did not talk; we only communicated. Our relationship was so twisted that I did not know how to put it right. I did not know if I even wanted to.

  I said, “There must be a trial.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “It is only a formality. The evidence is clear enough. I want you to take charge of it. Find out who the three men in the boat were. I must know that, at all costs.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Not at all costs,” he said, gently. “But I will do my best.”

  The trial lasted an hour and when it was over Quintus came to me, a bitter smile on his face. “He talked,” he said. “He bribed some Franks living outside the town to help him. They bought the boat off a fisherman.”

  “You are sure of that?”

  “Oh, quite sure. He told me everything, the moment I warned him what would happen if he did not.”

  “Why did he do it?”

  Quintus looked at me. “Do you really want to know?”

  “That is why I asked.”

  “He knows, as we all do, what the odds are against us. He is very young, a little stupid, perhaps, a little too sensitive to make a good Roman soldier.” He glanced at me ironically. “The girl worked on him. She is—very pretty. Besides all that, he is an Arian christian. I did not know that. Did you? His sympathies are a trifle mixed. He thought, too, that your treatment of the girl was barbarous. He is, as I said, a christian.” He paused. He said with a frown, “He thinks that they should be allowed to cross the river, and that it is we who are the barbarians in keeping them out. He is rather like our good bishop.”

  “So he betrayed us.”

  “Yes. But I do not think he realised he was doing just that.”

  “What was he going to do when he crossed the river?”

  “He had some wild idea, I think, of marrying the girl, obtaining the good wishes of the Aleman
ni, and acting as a kind of mediator between both sides.” He said, sadly, “It would be very funny if it were not so tragic.”

  “For him, yes.”

  “And for all of us.”

  I said, “He joined us in our second year in Italia. Do you remember his father? I promised I would look after the boy.”

  “Yes, I remember. Do you want to see him?”

  I shook my head. “No. There would be no point. If I offered to see him now he would think I was going to pardon him. It would be needless cruelty on both of us.”

  “He could be banished,” he said, in a hopeless kind of voice.

  “No.”

  He sighed. “I did not think you would agree. To-morrow morning then?”

  “Yes, at daybreak. I will see the girl though. Have her sent to me, please. You will arrange everything else.”

  “Of course.”

  Rando’s daughter, still stinking of the wine cellar and of all the other places in which she had hidden during the past days, was brought to me, in chains. This time the sentry stood inside the room, holding the cord attached to the collar about her neck. She was like a wild animal, trapped but defiant.

  I said, “Why didn’t you get to the boat? You had time.”

  She said, hoarsely, “We met a night watchman in the street. He called to us and we ran from him and lost our way in the alleys. We were frightened.”

  “I thought you were braver than that. You could have bribed him with a coin. That is what most people do. It always works.”

  “We only thought of that afterwards.”

  I said, “You made a mistake. You should have kept faith with Fabianus. He would not have betrayed me; but he would not have let you down either.”

  “Fabianus.” Her voice was scornful. “He was too frightened to help me.”

  “Yet he loves you,” I said. “Which is more than Severus does.”

  “What are you going to do with him? And with me?” she added in a whisper.

  “You can watch that to-morrow morning. That will be your punishment. You are responsible, you know. I hope you will remember that when you see him in the morning.”

  She said in a shaking voice, “One of them got away. I am glad. Now they will know how many men you really have.”

  “Don’t be too pleased, my girl. The sooner they come the sooner you, too, will die.”

  Thirty minutes after dawn, two cohorts were drawn up in a hollow square on the parade ground. All the centurions and all the officers were present, and the sentries on the walls faced inwards. The girl was brought out under escort and tied to a stake driven into the ground. The stake faced a low platform, upon which stood the legion’s farrier and a number of military police. The officers wore plumes upon their helmets, and the aquilifer wore a black panther skin and held the Eagle, which was hooded to conceal the shame that we felt. When I came out in my full uniform, which I only wore on special occasions, it was bitterly cold and I could see the lances held upright, quivering as though with fear. It was very cold and very quiet and you could hear the jingle of the bit as Quintus’s horse tossed its head.

  Then we heard the sound of nailed sandals, and they brought him into the square, walking quickly as a man does who is late for an appointment; and he wore nothing but a tunic and a kilt. His uniform stood in a pile upon the platform, together with his sword and his helmet. It was customary for the sword to be broken, but we were short of such weapons and, at the quartermaster’s request, had substituted an old sword with a flawed blade which had been marked for disposal. He mounted the platform, and he looked like a ghost. He kept on wetting his lips with his tongue—or trying to, and his eyes seemed to be bulged with fear. We could all see that he was terrified of dying and he kept on making small whimpering noises, though he did not actually try to speak. The camp praefectus read the punishment and sentence in a high voice that cracked with nervousness. The flawed sword was then broken, ceremonially, across the duty centurion’s knees.

  The camp praefectus turned to me and I nodded to him to get on with the whole ghastly, stupid, futile ritual. Even Quintus did not guess how I hated it all. The prisoner was asked if he had anything to say. He shook his head, desperately. We could hear his teeth chattering, but this might have been due to the cold as much as to fear. At such a time, it is kinder to give any man the benefit of the doubt. A trumpet sounded, the farrier stepped forward and the boy was pushed down onto his knees. The trumpet sounded again, and sentence of death by decapitation was performed upon Marcus Severus, former tribune of the legion, for desertion, treason and cowardice. The girl, soaked with his blood, was left tied to the post, alone with the body of the man whom she had enticed to his death. After an hour, she was cut down and taken back to her hut. The body was buried on the road outside the town; the platform was dismantled, and life in the camp returned to normal. That night, Quintus went out fishing with some of the tribunes and then got horribly drunk, later, in his hut. I went down to the town and attended a cock-fight. I won a lot of money. My luck was in, and the day ended better than it had begun.

  XIV

  AS A PUNISHMENT I sent Fabianus back across the river. He hated it there; he was a man who liked comfortable living. A week later he sent me a signal to say that the movement of waggons out of the enemy camp had stopped. Instead, waggons and families were coming in; and it looked as if those who had left were returning. Of food convoys from the Burgundians, however, there was no sign.

  I said to Quintus, “That means the man did not die. They know how many we are; they will stay and wait.”

  “But they will surely starve if they wait till the spring?”

  “Perhaps. These people can smell the weather like an animal. They will wait till midwinter. If the winter is a bad one, the Rhenus will freeze and give them their opportunity. If it does not, they will break camp and head for their own lands.”

  He said urgently, “What about the bridge? Will you take the legion over now?”

  I shook my head. “Not now. They know our strength. Besides, Marcomir is dead and his men scattered. The risk is too great.”

  He took a deep breath. He said, “We should have made the bridge when he was alive; when it was suggested first.”

  I held up my hands, palms outwards in a gesture of surrender. “Yes,” I said. “I missed the opportunity.”

  “Don’t look like that, Maximus.”

  “Quintus, it is true.”

  “So. What do we do then?”

  I looked at him and, for the first time in weeks, I smiled as I did so. “You and I will go to Treverorum. We could do with a change of scene and I need a rest as much as you. It will be the last chance we shall get this year. Aquila can command.”

  On a cool October day, when there was a mist like milk over the river, we left Moguntiacum and set out on the long ride back to the city. It was a road I knew well now. As the miles passed under our horses’ feet our spirits rose. The weather held; it was clear and fine. We talked together of the old days on the Northern Wall, of wolves we had hunted, of deer we had killed and of a boar that we had pursued without success, all through one long wet day. We talked of Saturninus and of his friends who had shared our mystery, and who were now dead. But we never talked of my wife.

  The few patches of bracken that I saw were a golden brown and the leaves were brittle on the trees as they changed from green to a brown the colour of dark honey. One morning we saw a flight of swans, skimming low in arrowhead formation above the trees towards the Mosella. Sometimes we rode in silence and I would think of Julian in that patch-work camp of strange tongues across the river. What would he do now that Rando was dead? Would he wait to cross with the others or would he turn away and find somewhere else to settle? I did not hate him now and the memory of the past had blurred a little. It was all such a long time ago. He was, after all, still Julian whom I had once loved as a friend. He was a part of my life, a part of me, and the realisation of this made me jerk suddenly at my horse so that he flung up
his head. Quintus glanced at me without speaking.

  “One half of my life has destroyed the other half,” I said aloud, and Quintus flushed and bit his lip. He was too proud to make excuses, too honest to apologise for things he had done, about which he could not be sorry.

  At Treverorum we took up our old quarters in Romulus and I could relax inside those massive, cool stone walls, watch the afternoon sun make shifting patterns on the mosaic, listen to the sounds and cries of the city as it went about its business, and make plans for amusing myself in the coming evening. There was, of course, a certain amount of business that I could not neglect. I inspected the cohort on garrison duty, dined with Flavius, watched the training of the city auxiliaries, and made arrangements for improving the defences of the town. On the surface of the bridge over the Mosella bundles of brushwood were piled against the rails and lashed to the transoms. If necessary, they could be soaked with pitch and fired in a few minutes. I did not expect that an attack, pushed inland, would be made along the northern road but it was well to be prepared. Though, as Quintus said sardonically, when I told him what I had done, “If things get as bad as that who will be left alive to bother about such matters.”

  Then I called a meeting of the senators and senior officials, told them what precautions I had taken and warned them that the next three months would be crucial. I had deliberately selected the great hall of the Basilica for this occasion, and though there were thirty of us present, we were dwarfed by the size of the place and our voices echoed strangely in that vast room.

  “I am taking over the city,” I said. No-one moved but I heard Artorius say, “Ah,” very softly, and his eyes never left my face the whole time I was speaking. “I have informed the Praefectus Praetorio. The Magister Equitum per Gallias can spare me no troops; because he has none. The Dux Belgicae cannot help either. The Saxons are raiding his coast and he needs all the few men he possesses. The tribune, Flavius, as garrison commander, will be my deputy, with full powers. I am issuing an edict to conscript all men of military age, regardless of whether they are exempt by normal laws or not. I would not do this if the situation was not so grave. But it is.”