Eagle in the Snow: The Classic Bestseller

  The flames from the oil lamps stood upright and still and the darkness lifted a little and I could see a young man with a helmet upon his head and a sword in his hand. And behind was the black shadow of a bull. The man’s face I could not see for it was in the shadows but we looked at each other for a long time and I knew then that I was in the presence of my mystery.

  “In the name of the Great Bull give me strength,” I cried, and my voice crashed in echoes round the walls and the high vault of the roof until it died.

  In spite of the hypocaust it was very cold now, and the oil lamps spluttered as draughts of air played about the walls. The hall no longer seemed as light and down the far end I could see two figures, standing motionless among the shadows. They moved forward and I saw then that they were the Bishop and Quintus.

  The Bishop said, “Do you aspire to the throne also, like Victorinus?”

  I walked down the hall and passed him in silence. To him I would not speak. Quintus turned and followed me in puzzled silence.

  Out in the street, on our return to Romulus, with the torches flaring in the summer night and the reassuring tramp of my guard about me, we looked at each other.

  He said, “You went into that room of ghosts to ask a question. I see from your face that something happened. What, I will not ask. But this I do ask—did you receive an answer?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It was not the answer I wanted, but that in itself is of no importance.”

  “What will you do?” he said.

  “I shall do what Stilicho asked. Afterwards, if the spirits are kind, I shall take over the province in the name of Honorius, not for myself, but for Rome.”

  “Which province” he asked.

  “I will tell you that when the time comes.”

  The duty centurion showed the Curator into my office, and he sat down cautiously upon a stool facing the table at which I sat.

  “Will you drink with me?” I said. He nodded and I poured him a cup. He watched curiously while I poured the libation. He said, “I have never seen a man do that before.” He looked at me steadily. “You know it is against the law?”

  “Yes. Of course, this is a great centre of your religion. Do I offend you? I hope not.”

  “It is wrong.”

  “Is it? That is a matter we might debate all night. Come, if I can tolerate your faith I am sure that you can learn to tolerate mine.”

  He did not smile. He said, “Do you really mean to close the frontier?”

  “I do.”

  “There is a silver mine at Aquae Mattiacae opposite Moguntiacum. It used to be worked by the government. But that was before I was born. Now the Alemanni use it. They set a high value on silver and they exchange it for goods that we are willing to sell them. Many of our merchants do a considerable trade across the river in pottery and glass and clothes and—other things.” He paused and then said pleadingly, “Many people will be upset if this trade is stopped.”

  “I cannot help that.”

  “You will not change your mind?”

  “No.”

  He said enviously, “You must be a very wealthy man.”

  “I am not. But what has that to do with it?”

  “Forgive me, but—if you are not—then I do not understand.”. . . He trailed off awkwardly into silence.

  “I am sorry, I do not follow you.”

  He said hesitantly, “Few imperial posts pay well. It has always been accepted custom that—well, there are ways in which one can add to one’s salary. There are certain perquisites, of course. This matter of closing the frontier is, surely, properly a matter for disputation before an appointed commission. You, as governor, have judicial powers. Those with vested interests would appear before you to plead their case. Such a matter would—would provide suitable—opportunities—for—for a settlement of some kind.”

  I remained silent.

  He said, “I—I thought that, perhaps, was what you had in mind.” He looked at me hopefully.

  I said, “I understand quite clearly what you are saying. I would not presume to suggest that you are dropping hints on behalf of others. That would be ungenerous.” I paused. I said, “It is kind of you to take such a close interest in my welfare but it is quite unnecessary.”

  “Then you really meant what you said?”

  I nodded. “In administrative circles, I believe, there is a saying that good governors die poor. I shall do my best, I promise you, to live up to it.”

  He said coldly, “Then if you really intend to close the frontier I shall have to report the matter to the Praefectus. It is my duty.”

  “I shall not stop you. Tell me, Artorius, is that why the council was upset when we had that meeting? They have interests themselves, perhaps.”

  He said stiffly, “A civic council is naturally concerned about trade. It is a part of their responsibility.”

  “Naturally.”

  He drank his wine and made a face as he did so.

  I smiled. I said, “I am sorry if the wine is not up to your standard. As for myself—I have drunk tavern wine all my life.”

  He said, “What did you wish to see me about then, if not the frontier?”

  “A number of matters. I shall need a great deal in the way of supplies from the government factories here. My quartermaster will give your department the details. I shall need them quickly. The work must be speeded up. Five years ago when I needed helmets for my men I was told that each worker could only make four in a month. I want six.”

  “It is too many.”

  “In Antiochia they can make six each in thirty days, and decorate them too. We must do the same.”

  He made a note on a wax tablet. “I will see what I can do.”

  “Then there is the matter of recruits. A good number of my men are due to retire shortly. I need more troops. I must have them. I want an order out conscripting all sons of soldiers and veterans who are fit. They are to report to the garrison commander here who will train them.” He looked startled at this. He said, “I will write to the Praefectus Praetorio for authority. Is that all?”

  “No, there is the question of pay for my troops.”

  He said, “It is customary for field troops to be paid in kind. They get bounty payments from time to time but, normally, they rely on their rations.”

  “Thank you for telling me. But my men are not part of the field army now. They are frontier troops and these are paid only in money. They are owed half a year’s pay as it is. I imagine the provincial treasury can arrange matters.”

  He frowned. “I shall need a warrant from the Praefectus.”

  “Of course.” I paused and then raised my voice. “I need the money urgently.”

  “But, surely, your men will have little to spend their money on in a frontier fort?”

  “That is not the point. It is a matter of morale and confidence.”

  “I will inform the Praefectus.”

  “There is a treasury here.”

  “Yes, but it is not mine to touch. It belongs to the provincial government and even the governor would need—”

  “I know—permission from the Praefectus.” I looked at him and sighed. He was the kind of man who would always do his duty by the book. He had no initiative, no imagination, no understanding. It was hard to blame him. He was, after all, only a civil servant.

  VIII

  THE RISING SUN was just touching the twin towers of Romulus when the legion left the city and marched towards Moguntiacum at the regulation pace that would carry us twenty miles in five hours in good weather. On our second day, thirty miles out, in the midst of a plain of thick grass, with the men sweating under the hot sun, we reached the point where the road forked into two. The left hand led to Confluentes, the furthest fort down river that I intended to hold. To this I assigned a cohort and an ala. This road also led to Salisio and Boudobrigo, higher up river, and to these I had ordered a mixed garrison of two centuries of infantry and a squadron of cavalry. Then, with the column of the legion
shrunk in length we pushed on to Bingium, which we reached on the third day. Here we halted for twenty-four hours while I inspected the camp and made a short reconnaissance down the road that led to Boudobrigo. At Bingium the river Nava joined the Rhenus, and the fort was protected on two sides by water with hills to the back of it. From the camp as you looked down-river great cliffs of rock towered high on the left bank, making an impregnable barrier against those who might wish to cross from the east. The cliffs continued along the south bank of the stream and it was at the foot of these that the road ran till it joined the bridge leading to the camp. If Bingium were captured, those at Moguntiacum would find their retreat cut off, it being an easy matter then for the enemy to break the bridge while, at the same time, commanding the road to Augusta Treverorum. From there the way into Gaul would lie open. Here I left another mixed cohort under the charge of a senior tribune while the diminished legion continued its march to its headquarters at Moguntiacum, which was reached on the fifth day.

  Moguntiacum had once been the capital of Germania Superior but that was in the great days of our power when the province had possessed a civil as well as a military administration, and the legions held the east bank in strength. On the rising ground behind the town was the old camp. It had been built to hold two legions, but that was in the time of Domitian. It was abandoned later when the town was fortified, and the garrison now lived in huts on the city side of the river wall. The town had grown up along the river and had once been a place of some splendour. It boasted a number of wide streets, still lined with open-fronted shops, and there was a forum, a christian church, a ruined theatre, innumerable abandoned temples, and a carved column to Jupiter, now covered with grime. Outside the town walls, along the river bank, there was a string of wooden huts, some of which hung over the water on stilts and which were occupied by the very poor. A market fair was held occasionally but trade was lethargic, for the town had so often been sacked by raiders from the east that it was no longer a place in which the energetic and the ambitious wished to stay if they could move elsewhere. Those who remained were a mixed population of Franks, Burgundians and Alemanni whose blood was inextricably mixed by the confusion of marriage with the descendants of legionary veterans who had come from Hispania, Pannonia, Illyricum and all the parts of the empire. The harbour lay a little way down-river outside the protection of the town walls, and around it was a small settlement, occupied mainly by veterans and their families.

  The Twentieth had been stationed at Novaesium in the time of Claudius. It was from there that they had been sent to Britannia, so their return to the Rhenus was, in a sense, a home-coming; though the only part of the legion that had ever before seen this river was the bronze Eagle that had been given us by the first emperor of Rome.

  I ordered Aquila to pitch camp in the ruins of the old fort for the night and rode, with a handful of officers on an inspection of the town. Barbatio, the praefectus of the auxiliaries, was expecting me. He was a heavy young man of about thirty, already running to fat and as obviously out of condition mentally as he was physically. He looked frightened when he spoke to me; and he had cause. His cohort was a rabble of unshaven, scruffy looking individuals who appeared never to have done any drill in their lives. Their quarters were crammed with their wives, their children and their cattle, and the remaining contents of their huts seemed to suggest that the majority spent the greater portion of their time in mercantile activities.

  In answer to my questions he told me, hesitantly, that there was little traffic across the river in boats because the current was difficult (this at least was true) and the Alemanni hostile, but traders on their way to Borbetomagus, the last and highest of the forts to which I was to send a cohort, would pass through the town from time to time.

  It all reminded me strongly of Corstopitum as I had last seen it. It was very depressing.

  “The old camp is too far back,” I said to Quintus. “I want another built, here on the bank to the left of the bridge. My men are going to have to kill wet barbarians, not dry ones.”

  He said cautiously, “That will mean taking over a part of the town. We shall be popular.”

  “They will get used to it. I want the ground cleared north of the road between the present camp and the river. We shall need, approximately, six acres. The cavalry—the majority of them anyway—will have to be housed on the old camp site.

  The river at this point was about seven hundred and fifty yards across and it flowed more swiftly than any river I had ever seen. In the middle there were two long narrow islands, as flat as sword blades, and the lower end of the northern one was submerged in summer. They were thickly wooded and uninhabited, providing only a refuge for occasional outlaws from the communities on both banks. A third island, also long and thin, passed close to the west bank and sheltered the harbour from the force of the main channel. From the town walls we could see the broken bridge that jutted out forlornly over the water as far as the third pile. “What about that?” said Quintus. “Do we get it mended?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  Across the river lay the ruins of the bridge-head camp that had once protected the settlement and the villas that had sprung up round the baths at Aquae Mattiacae. My father, I remembered, had always sworn that it was the hot springs there that had cured the injury done to his leg by an Aleman spear when he was a young man. And even in his later years he always insisted that its waters would have been better for his rheumatism than the baths at Aquae Sulis. The camp had been abandoned, finally, when the Alemanni sacked Moguntiacum in the year that my Theodosius came to our aid. It was unlikely that anything was left of the baths or the settlement now.

  Quintus said stubbornly, “We could repair it. A useful thing, I would suggest, to have a toe-hold on the east side.”

  I screwed up my eyes against the glare. “I’ll think about that one,” I said. “The important thing is to get ourselves established here first.”

  That first evening I walked out through the river gate and down the bank to where the bridge stood. I walked out on to the broken planks and stared at the remaining piles, stretched out to the further shore, stepping stones for some giant in a child’s story. Patches of mist drifted above the swirling water. I threw a stick into the current and was amazed at the speed with which it was taken away. Barbatio explained to me that a little way upstream from the bridge the river Moenus flowed into the Rhenus. “That’s the division, sir, between the Alemanni and the Burgundians. The Burgundians’ western frontier lies between here and Confluentes where the Franks take over.”

  “Are their frontiers firm ones?”

  “No, not really, sir. It depends who is on top at the moment.”

  “Well, what’s the position now?”

  “You see those escarpments, sir, down-river on the east bank. Well, all the country behind that, extending from this town to Bingium, is disputed. At the moment it’s held by a Frankish clan who guard the right bank for us in return for subsidies.”

  “You mean Roman silver; and they stay loyal just so long as the bribe is sufficiently heavy?”

  He looked startled. “Yes, sir.”

  It was getting cold now and I shivered, staring hard at the east bank. That bank there—on that my father had once walked in civilian dress and bearing no arms. But I, if I walked on it, would risk death as an enemy. In my father’s time we had owned it with as much certainty and as little doubt as we had the crumbling city of which I was now governor.

  Quintus twisted the bracelet on his wrist and said, “This place is like the end of the world.” It was as though he were thinking my thoughts.

  “Yes,” I said. “It is—the end of our world.”

  He said, moodily, “I still think it would be a good thing to repair this bridge and take back that camp on the further bank. It would give us a fine start if we should need to take the offensive.”

  Barbatio said diffidently, “The Alemanni, sir, would see that as an act of war. General Stilicho, by his t
erms, gave them absolute rights over the east bank.”

  “In that case there’s no point in provoking them without cause.”

  Quintus turned to the praefectus. “Have you seen the old camp? Can it be repaired easily?”

  Barbatio said hastily, “Yes, sir, though half the walls have been pulled down and the huts destroyed. They did the same to the villas.”

  “Who burned the bridge?”

  “That was done many years ago, sir, after Rando sacked the town. It was he who destroyed the cathedral.”

  “Who is Rando?”

  “He was a prince of the Alemanni then. He is now their king.” There was a note of enthusiasm in his voice that had been lacking before. I turned to him and said, “Have you had dealings with him?”

  He licked his lips and the sweat rolled down the sides of the leather cheek-pieces of his helmet. “Come on, man, tell me.”

  “Yes, sir,” he muttered.

  “Slaves, I suppose.”

  He nodded.

  I said to Quintus, “There isn’t a tribune of frontier troops anywhere in the empire who doesn’t trade in slaves. They’re more interested in that than in their military duties.”

  Barbatio flushed. He said, defensively, “We get paid so little. They give it to us in food and supplies instead, but half the time the rations are short. We get cheated by everyone.”

  “You should receive money,” I said sharply.

  “That’s what I mean, sir.”

  “I know all about that. I have been on a frontier too. Tell me, have you heard of the new law which allows you seven days rations a year from your men which you can commute for silver?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And have taken advantage of it, no doubt.”

  He nodded again, his eyes shifting from face to face.