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.
RHENUS
VI
OUR FIFTH WINTER in Italia was a wet one, the wettest they had known in ten years. But it was also our last. In the spring of 405 Stilicho, whom I had not seen for eighteen months, came to our camp in the valley of the river Padus. It was a day of high wind and rain. The wind came from the east and it was very cold, and the wind blew in our faces and shook the tents so that even their poles seemed to vibrate like the skin of a beaten drum. He inspected my troops, drank wine with my officers and then, late that night, held a conference with Quintus and myself inside the large leather tent that was my home.
He carried two flat parcels, wrapped in goatskin, which he put upon a spare stool very gently. He said nothing about them, however, and I did not like to ask. His beard was now quite white and there were shadows under his eyes. He moved restlessly up and down and I realised then that the frictions and jealousies of that insane court at Ravenna were bearing upon him hard. I had been there once. Honorius, I had not seen, but I had met his chancellor, and the court reeked of a eunuch’s rule. I had met his sister, too. Galla Placidia was young and beautiful and she behaved like the cats that she kept in her private apartments. She purred one moment and spat the next. The gods alone knew what secret ambitions she concealed behind a wanton’s smile. I did not like her.
Stilicho spoke. “I need you on the Rhenus,” he said.
I was startled. I looked first at Quintus and then at him. The wind had risen and the oil lamps spluttered as their flames were touched by the icy fingers of air that streamed in through the string-holes of the tent.
“The men that Magnus Maximus took into Gaul never went back. It damaged the defences of our island for years,” I said desperately. “We have been away five years.”
“And have done good work. Without your aid we should not have held Alaric and forced him to withdraw to Illyricum.”
“Our return was promised.”
“Matters have changed.”
I said to him, “I have never questioned your orders before—”
“So?”
“I must do so now.”
He said, in a tired voice, “The pressure is growing along the Rhenus. I knew it would. I have had reports. The treaties I had made were only a temporary expedient. I didn’t expect them to hold for ever.”
“But you stripped the Rhenus of its troops to defend Italia.”
“It was necessary.”
“And now?”
“Alaric, for the moment, is quiet. I have been making preparations to move into Illyricum and deal with him properly. I hope to move this year. But now—” He clenched and unclenched his hands. “Now
, I have news that the Ostrogoths, the Vandals and the Quadi have formed an alliance under Radagaisus and are preparing to invade Italia on their own account.”
“You will need us here then.”
“No. Someone with a trained force must hold the Rhenus and keep the peace, while I deal first with Radagaisus and then with Alaric.”
“The peace?”
“Yes. The Alemanni are restless. I have had reports—how true, I don’t know—that they are planning to migrate.”
“I see. But why the Twentieth?”
“Because it is the Twentieth—your legion—and you command it.”
Quintus said, curtly, “It took eighty thousand men to hold the Rhenus in the old days. Do you expect us to hold it now with only six?”
There was silence, and the wind drummed on the tent walls so that they curved inwards as though pushed by a giant’s hand. It was very cold and I put on my cloak. I felt chilled inside.
Stilicho said, patiently, “They held it on the east bank along the defences they called the Limes. These were abandoned long ago. Later, it was a matter of raids and skirmishes; war bands and looting. It was easy for them to cross the river in boats and make night raids upon a bored garrison. But now it is not a question simply of war; it is a question of a migration. You cannot move a whole people across that river unless there are bridges.”
“But—”
“Listen to me, please. In summer the Lower Rhenus floods its banks for miles and the whole countryside is water-logged. That provides a natural barrier. The high Rhenus is in the mountains and the passes are few and easily defended. That only leaves the middle Rhenus, in Germania Superior, to be guarded: a distance of fifty miles or so, and there are only a handful of places along that fifty miles where a crossing can be made. A tribe migrating needs a road, and roads are few. I do not say that one legion is enough, but skilfully handled it could be.”