The Eagle of the Ninth Read online

  ‘You alone of all your kin?’ Marcus asked after a moment.

  ‘My father and two brothers died,’ Esca said. ‘My mother also. My father killed her before the Legionaries broke through. She wished it so.’

  There was a long silence, and then Marcus said softly: ‘Mithras! What a story!’

  ‘It is a common enough story, still. Was it so very different at Isca Dumnoniorum, do you suppose?’ But before Marcus could answer, he added quickly, ‘None the less, it is not good to remember too closely. The time before—all the time before—that is the good time to remember.’

  And sitting there in the thin March sunshine that slanted down through the high window, without either of them quite knowing how it happened, he began to tell Marcus about the time before. He told of a warrior’s training; of river-bathing on hot summer days when the midges danced in the shimmering air; of his father’s great white bull garlanded with poppies and moon flowers for a festival; of his first hunt, and the tame otter he had shared with his elder brother… One thing led to another, and presently he told how, ten years before, when the whole country was in revolt, he had lain behind a boulder to watch a Legion marching north, that never came marching back.

  ‘I had never seen such a sight before,’ he said. ‘Like a shining serpent of men winding across the hills; a grey serpent, hackled with the scarlet cloaks and crests of the officers. There were queer tales about that Legion; men said that it was accursed, but it looked stronger than any curse, stronger and more deadly. And I remember how the Eagle flashed in the sun as it came by—a great golden Eagle with its wings arched back as I have seen them often stoop on a screaming hare among the heather. But the mist was creeping down from the high moors, and the Legion marched into it, straight into it, and it licked them up and flowed together behind them, and they were gone as though they had marched from one world into—another.’ Esca made a quick gesture with his right hand, the first two fingers spread like horns. ‘Queer tales there were, about that Legion.’

  ‘Yes, I have heard those tales,’ Marcus said. ‘Esca, that was my father’s Legion. His crest will have been the scarlet hackle next after the Eagle.’

  VII

  TWO WORLDS MEETING

  FROM the open end of Uncle Aquila’s courtyard, two shallow steps flanked by a bush of rosemary and a slender bay-tree led down into the garden. It was a rather wild garden, for Uncle Aquila did not keep a fulltime garden slave, but a very pleasant one, running down to the crumbling earthworks of British Calleva. In some places the fine stone-faced city walls were already rising. One day they would rise here too, but as yet there was only the curved wave-break of old quiet turf, glimpsed between the branches of wild fruit-trees; and where the bank dipped, stray glimpses over mile upon mile of forest country rolling away into the smoke-blue distance where the Forest of Spinaii became the Forest of Anderida, and the Forest of Anderida dropped to the marshes and the sea.

  To Marcus, after being cooped within doors all winter long, it seemed a wonderfully wide and shining place when he reached it for the first time some days later; and when Esca had left him to go off on some errand, he stretched himself out on the bench of grey Purbeck marble, under the wild fruit-trees, his arms behind his head, gazing upwards with eyes narrowed against the brightness, into the blown blue heights of heaven, which seemed so incredibly tall after roof-beams. Somewhere in the forest below him, birds were singing, with that note of clear-washed surprise that belongs to the early spring; and for a while Marcus simply lay letting it all soak into him, the wideness and the shine and the bird-song.

  Close beside him, Cub lay curled into a compact ball. Looking at him now, it was hard to believe what a small fury he could be, crouched over his food-bowl with laidback ears and bared milk-teeth, Marcus thought. Then he took up the task that he had brought out with him. He was one of those people who need something to do with their hands at all times, even if it is only a stick to whittle; and something of the craftsman in him demanded always to have an outlet. If he had not been wounded, he would have turned that craftsmanship to the making of a happy and efficient cohort; things being as they were, he had turned it this spring to overhauling and renovating the Celtic weapons which were the only ornament Uncle Aquila allowed on his walls. Today he had brought out the gem of the small collection, a light cavalry buckler of bull’s hide faced with bronze, the central boss exquisitely worked with red enamel; but the straps must have been in a poor state when Uncle Aquila came by it, and now they were ready to tear like papyrus. Laying out his tools and the leather for the fresh straps beside him on the broad seat, he set to work to cut away the old ones. It was a delicate task, needing all his attention, and he did not look up again until he had finished it, and turned to lay the outworn straps aside.

  And then he saw that he was no longer alone with Cub. A girl was standing among the wild fruit-trees where the hedge ran up into the slope of the old earthwork, and looking down at him. A British girl, in a pale saffron tunic, straight and shining as a candle-flame; one hand raised to thrust back heavy masses of hair the colour of red baltic amber, which the light wind had blown across her face.

  They looked at each other in silence for a moment. Then the girl said in clear, very careful Latin, ‘I have waited a long time for you to look up.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ Marcus said stiffly. ‘I was busy on this shield.’

  She came a step nearer. ‘May I see the wolf-cub? I have not seen a tame wolf-cub before.’

  And Marcus smiled suddenly, and laid aside his defences with the shield he had been working on. ‘Surely. Here he is.’ And swinging his feet to the ground, he reached down and grabbed the sleeping cub by the scruff of his neck, just as the girl joined him. The wolfling was not fiercer than most hound puppies, save when annoyed, but being bigger and stronger for his age, he could be very rough, and Marcus was taking no chances. He set Cub on his feet, keeping a restraining hand under his small chest. ‘Be careful; he is not used to strangers.’

  The girl gave him a smile, and sat down on her heels, holding out her hands slowly to Cub. ‘I will not startle him,’ she said. And Cub, who at first had crouched back against Marcus, ears flattened and hairs bristling, seemed very slowly to change his mind. Warily, ready to flinch back or snap at any sign of danger, he began to smell at her fingers; and she held her hands quite still, to let him. ‘What is his name?’ she asked.

  ‘Just Cub.’

  ‘Cub,’ she said crooningly. ‘Cub.’ And as he whimpered and made a little darting thrust towards her, against Marcus’s guarding hand, she began to caress the warm hollow under his chin with one finger. ‘See, we be friends, you and I.’

  She was about thirteen, Marcus imagined, watching her as she played with Cub. A tall, thin girl, with a pointed face wide at the temples and narrow at the chin; and the shape of her face and the colour of her eyes and hair gave her a little the look of a young vixen. If she were angry, he thought, she would probably look very like a vixen indeed. He had the glimmering of an idea that he had seen her before, but he could not remember where.

  ‘How did you know about Cub?’ he asked at last.

  She looked up. ‘Narcissa, my nurse, told me—oh, about a moon ago. And at first I did not believe it, because Nissa so often gets her stories wrong. But yesterday I heard a slave on this side of the hedge call to another, “Oh worthless one, thy Master’s wolf-whelp has bitten my toe!” And the other called back, “Then the gods grant that the taste of it will not make him sick!” So I knew that it was true.’

  Her imitation of Esca and Marcipor the house slave was unmistakable, and Marcus flung up his head with a crow of laughter. ‘And it did!—at all events, something did.’

  The girl laughed too, joyously, showing little pointed teeth as white and sharp as Cub’s. And as though their laughter had unlocked a door, Marcus suddenly remembered where he had seen her before. He had not been interested enough in Kaeso and Valaria to remember that they lived next door, and although he
had noticed her so vividly at the time, he had not remembered the girl he had seen with them, because Esca, coming immediately afterwards, had been so much more important; but he remembered her now.

  ‘I saw you at the Saturnalia Games,’ he said. ‘But your hair was hidden under your mantle, and that was why I did not remember you.’

  ‘But I remember you!’ said the girl. Cub had wandered off after a beetle by that time, and she let him go, sitting back and folding her hands in her lap. ‘Nissa says you bought that gladiator. I wish you could have bought the bear too.’

  ‘You minded very badly about that bear, didn’t you?’ said Marcus.

  ‘It was cruel! To kill on the hunting trail, that is one thing; but they took away his freedom! They kept him in a cage, and then they killed him.’

  ‘It was the cage, then, more than the killing?’

  ‘I do not like cages,’ said the girl in a small hard voice. ‘Or nets. I am glad you bought that gladiator.’

  A little chill wind came soughing across the garden, silvering the long grass and tossing the budding sprays of the wild pear- and cherry-trees. The girl shivered, and Marcus realized that her yellow tunic was of very thin wool, and even here in the shelter of the old earthworks it was still very early spring.

  ‘You are cold,’ he said, and gathered up his old military cloak which had been flung across the bench. ‘Put this on.’

  ‘Do you not want it?’

  ‘No. I have a thicker tunic than that flimsy thing you are wearing. So. Now, come and sit here on the bench.’

  She obeyed him instantly, drawing the cloak around her. In the act of doing so, she checked, looking down at the bright folds, then up again at Marcus. ‘This is your soldier’s cloak,’ she said. ‘Like the cloaks the centurions from the transit camp wear.’

  Marcus made her a quick mocking salute. ‘You behold in me Marcus Aquila, ex-Cohort Centurion of Gaulish Auxiliaries with the Second Legion.’

  The girl looked at him in silence for a moment. Then she said, ‘I know. Does the wound hurt you still?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Marcus said. ‘Did Nissa tell you that too?’

  She nodded.

  ‘She seems to have told you a deal of things.’

  ‘Slaves!’ She made a quick, contemptuous gesture. ‘They stand in doorways and chatter like starlings; but Nissa is the worst of them all!’

  Marcus laughed, and a small silence fell between them; but after a little while he said: ‘I have told you my name. What is yours?’

  ‘My aunt and uncle call me Camilla, but my real name is Cottia,’ said the girl. ‘They like everything to be very Roman, you see.’

  So he had been right in thinking she was not Kaeso’s daughter. ‘And you do not?’ he said.

  ‘I? I am of the Iceni! So is my Aunt Valaria, though she likes to forget it.’

  ‘I once knew a black chariot team who were descended out of the Royal Stables of the Iceni,’ Marcus said, feeling that perhaps Aunt Valaria was not a very safe subject.

  ‘Did you? Were they yours? Which strain?’ Her face was alight with interest.

  Marcus shook his head. ‘They were not mine, and I only had the joy of driving them once; it was a joy too. And I never knew their strain.’

  ‘My father’s big stallion was descended from Prydfirth, the beloved of King Prasutogus,’ said Cottia. ‘We are all horse-breeders, we of the Iceni, from the King downward—when we had a king.’ She hesitated, and her voice lost its eager ring. ‘My father was killed, breaking a young horse, and that is why I live with my Aunt Valaria now.’

  ‘I am sorry. And your mother?’

  ‘I expect that all is well with my mother,’ Cottia said, matter-of-factly. ‘There was a hunter who had wanted her always, but her parents gave her to my father. And when my father went West of the Sunset, she went to the hunter, and there was no room in his house for me. It was different with my brother, of course. It is always different with boys. So my mother gave me to Aunt Valaria, who has no children of her own.’

  ‘Poor Cottia,’ Marcus said softly.

  ‘Oh no. I did not wish to live in that hunter’s house; he was not my father. Only …’ Her voice trailed into silence.

  ‘Only?’

  Cottia’s changeable face was suddenly as vixenish as he had guessed it could be. ‘Only I hate living with my Aunt; I hate living in a town full of straight lines, and being shut up inside brick walls, and being called Camilla; and I hate—hate—hate it when they try to make me pretend to be a Roman maiden and forget my own tribe and my own father!’

  Marcus was quickly coming to the conclusion that he did not like Aunt Valaria. ‘If it is any consolation to you, they seem to have succeeded very ill so far,’ he said.

  ‘No! I will not let them! I pretend, outside my tunic. I answer when they call me Camilla, and I speak to them in Latin: but underneath my tunic I am of the Iceni, and when I take off my tunic at night, I say, “There! That rids me of Rome until the morning!” And I lie on my bed and think—and think—about my home, and the marsh birds flighting down from the north in the Fall of the Leaf, and the brood mares with their foals in my father’s runs. I remember all the things that I am not supposed to remember, and talk to myself inside my head in my own tongue—’ She broke off, looking at him in quick surprise. ‘We are talking in my tongue now! How long have we been doing that?’

  ‘Since you told me about your real name being Cottia.’

  Cottia nodded. It did not seem to strike her that the hearer to whom she was pouring out all this was himself a Roman: and it did not strike Marcus either. For the moment all he knew was that Cottia also was in exile, and his fellowship reached out to her, delicately, rather shyly. And as though feeling the touch of it, she drew a little nearer, huddling the scarlet folds more closely round her.

  ‘I like being inside your cloak,’ she said contentedly. ‘It feels warm and safe, as a bird must feel inside its own feathers.’

  From beyond the hedge at that moment there arose a voice, shrill as a peahen before rain. ‘Camilla! Ladybird! Oh, my Lady Camilla!’

  Cottia sighed in exasperation. ‘That is Nissa,’ she said. ‘I must go.’ But she did not move.

  ‘Camilla!’ called the voice, nearer this time.

  ‘That is Nissa again,’ said Marcus.

  ‘Yes, I—must go.’ She got up reluctantly, and slipped off the heavy cloak. But still she lingered, while the screeching voice drew nearer. Then with a rush, ‘Let me come again! Please let me! You need not talk to me, nor even notice that I am here.’

  ‘Oh, my Lady! Where are you, child of Typhon?’ wailed the voice, very near now.

  ‘Come when it pleases you—and I shall be glad of your coming,’ Marcus said quickly.

  ‘I will come tomorrow,’ Cottia told him, and turned to the old rampart slope, carrying herself like a queen. Most British women seemed to carry themselves like that, Marcus thought, watching her drop out of sight round the hedge; and he remembered Guinhumara in the hut doorway at Isca Dumnoniorum. What had happened to her and the brown baby, after Cradoc lay dead and the huts were burned and the fields salted? He would never know.

  The shrill voice was raised in fond scolding on the far side of the hedge; and footsteps came across the grass, and Marcus turned his head to see Esca coming towards him.

  ‘My Master has had company,’ Esca said, laying spearblade to forehead in salute, as he halted beside him.

  ‘Yes, and it sounds as though she is getting a sharp scolding from her nurse on my account,’ Marcus said a little anxiously, as he listened to the shrill voice fading.

  ‘If all I hear be true, scolding will not touch that one,’ Esca said. ‘As well scold a flung spear.’

  Marcus leaned back, his hands behind his neck, and looked up at his slave. The thought of Guinhumara and her baby was still with him, standing behind the thought of Cottia. ‘Esca, why do all the Frontier tribes resent our coming so bitterly?’ he asked on a sudden impulse. ‘The tribes
of the south have taken to our ways easily enough.’

  ‘We have ways of our own,’ said Esca. He squatted on one heel beside the bench. ‘The tribes of the south had lost their birthright before ever the Eagles came in war. They sold it for the things that Rome could give. They were fat with Roman merchandise and their souls had grown lazy within them.’

  ‘But these things that Rome had to give, are they not good things?’ Marcus demanded. ‘Justice, and order, and good roads; worth having, surely?’

  ‘These be all good things,’ Esca agreed. ‘But the price is too high.’

  ‘The price? Freedom?’

  ‘Yes—and other things than freedom.’

  ‘What other things? Tell me, Esca; I want to know. I want to understand.’

  Esca thought for a while, staring straight before him. ‘Look at the pattern embossed here on your daggersheath,’ he said at last. ‘See, here is a tight curve, and here is another facing the other way to balance it, and here between them is a little round stiff flower; and then it is all repeated here, and here, and here again. It is beautiful, yes, but to me it is as meaningless as an unlit lamp.’

  Marcus nodded as the other glanced up at him. ‘Go on.’

  Esca took up the shield which had been laid aside at Cottia’s coming. ‘Look now at this shield-boss. See the bulging curves that flow from each other as water flows from water and wind from wind, as the stars turn in the heaven and blown sand drifts into dunes. These are the curves of life; and the man who traced them had in him knowledge of things that your people have lost the key to—if they ever had it.’ He looked up at Marcus again very earnestly. ‘You cannot expect the man who made this shield to live easily under the rule of the man who worked the sheath of this dagger.’