The Silver Branch [book II] (22 page)

But before he himself sat down to eat with the rest of the band, Flavius fetched a new white-ash spear-shaft from the store; and after the meal was over he went and routed out old Tuan the shoesmith and bade him blow up the forge fire and make him a cross-bar of iron with a socket to fit on to the head of the spear-shaft, and four bronze pegs. And later that night, when all the rest of the band had lain down to sleep in the byres and barns and the wing-rooms of the houseplace, he took all these things into the Atrium. And there, crouching over the low fire, with Little Cullen, who had refused to be parted from them, curled hound-wise in a corner, his Silver Branch, freed now of its muffling sheep’s wool, shining in his hand, Flavius and Justin mounted the battered bronze Eagle on its spear-shaft, driving home the bronze pegs through the peg-holes in the gripping talons to make all secure.

Justin had had complete faith from the first that the Eagle was what Flavius had guessed it to be, but if he had had doubts, they would have left him that night as he worked in the sinking firelight with the soft sou’wester filling the night outside. The thing was strangely potent under his hands. What things it must have seen—bitter and dark and glorious things—this maimed bird of gilded bronze that was the life and the honour of a lost Legion. And now, he thought, it must feel that the old days were back. Again there came to him as he worked that sense of kinship with the young soldier who had made a home in this downland valley, the young soldier who surely had brought the lost Eagle of a lost Legion home to its own people, so that Eagle and farm were linked, and it was fitting that the ancient standard should go out from here to its last fight. The feeling of kinship was so strong that when, just as they had finished their task, someone loomed into the open doorway, he looked up almost expecting to see the other Marcus standing there with the windy dark behind him.

But it was Anthonius who came in, shaking the rain from his rough, dark hair.

‘There’s a light—a fire of some kind, burning up on the Chalk,’ Anthonius said. ‘Come and have a look.’

The night was clearer than it had been, and from the corner of the sheep-fold above the steading, when they reached it, they could see a red petal of fire on the crest of the Chalk far over toward the South-East.

‘Yes,’ Flavius said. ‘Chance fire, or signal beacon? that’s the question.’ He put up his hand and thrust the hair back from his eyes. ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do to find out; that blaze is upward of a day’s march away.’

Justin, straining his eyes eastward, caught another spark, away beyond the first, infinitely small and faint, but surely there. ‘Signal beacon,’ he said. ‘There’s another. It’s a chain of beacons.’

The fire had sunk to red embers and the Atrium was almost in darkness when they returned, but the faint glow from the hearth was enough to show the Eagle on its spear shaft, as Flavius took it up and held it for Anthonius to see.

Anthonius looked closely and in silence. Then he said: ‘A standard for tomorrow?’

‘A standard for tomorrow.’ Flavius was smiling a little.

The other looked from him to the thing he held, and back again. ‘And one, I think, that comes out of yesterday—out of a long-ago yesterday,’ he said at last. ‘Nay, then, I will ask no questions, and nor shall the others, though I think—some of us may guess … We have a standard to follow, and that is good. That is always good.’

Turning to go, he flung up a hand in salute, as a soldier in the presence of his Eagle.

In the grey of the dawn, Justin woke with a crash to hear the flying hoof-beats of a horse coming at full gallop down from the Chalk towards the farm. He tossed off the rug and scrambled to his feet. Flavius was before him at the door, and others were already at their heels as they plunged out into the mizzle rain. A moment later a rider on a lathered pony swung into the farmyard and, reining his mount back on its haunches, dropped to the ground.

The pony stood where it had slithered to a stop, with hanging head and heaving flanks; and Phaedrus of the
Berenice
was calling out to them almost before his feet touched the ground. ‘It’s come, lads! It’s come at last!’

Men were starting out of the half-light in all directions, to throng around him. He turned to Flavius and Justin, breathing hard. ‘Constantius and his legionaries are here! They must have slipped in past the Vectis Fleet in last night’s murk. I watched them run the transports aground at the head of Regnum Harbour about midnight, with a screen of galleys to cover them!’

Justin remembered the beacons in the night. Signal beacons they had been, all right. Sails off Tanatis, and now a landing in Regnum Harbour. What did that mean? An attack from two points? Maybe from many points? Well, they would know soon.

There was a moment’s silence; men looked at each other almost uncertainly. The years of waiting were over. Not merely drawing to a close, but
over
, finished. And just for the first few moments they could not quite take it in.

Then they went wild. They were all round Phaedrus, round Flavius, giving tongue like a hound-pack. ‘The Caesar Constantius! Caesar is come! What are we waiting for? Lead us out to join him, Flavius Aquila!’ Bucklers were shaken, spears were tossed in the grey dawn-light. Suddenly Justin turned and shouldered out of the throng, back to the houseplace. He caught up the Wingless Eagle from its corner among the store-chests and stacked farm implements, laughing, almost weeping, and strode out again, holding it high above his head. ‘See now, my hearts! M-march we shall, and here’s a standard for our following!’

He stood above them on the edge of the terrace steps, holding high the battered Eagle on its spear-shaft. He was aware of Flavius and Anthonius suddenly beside him, of faces looking up; a wild sea of faces. Men who had marched too long with the Eagles not to recognize the standard for what it was, to whom it meant lost honour and old habits of service; men to whom, without understanding, it was a thing to rally round and shout for. A reckless, tatterdemalion throng, of legionaries gone wilful-missing, farmers and hunters with wrongs to right; a sneak thief, a ship-master, a gladiator, an Emperor’s Fool … The roar of voices beat up to him in a solid wave of sound, crashing about him so that he seemed engulfed in it.

But Flavius had flung up his arm and was shouting down the uproar. ‘
Sa, sa, sa!
The waiting is over, and we go to join the Caesar Constantius; but first we will eat. I want to eat, if you don’t! Softly! Softly, lads! We march in an hour.’

Gradually the tumult sank, and men began to break away, making for the food-store. Pandarus the gladiator checked to break a small yellow rose from the bush below the terrace, grinning up at them. ‘When I was a sword-fighter before my wooden foil, I ever liked to have a rose for the Arena!’ and stuck it in the shoulder-pin of his cloak as he swaggered after the rest.

Flavius watched them go with suspiciously bright eyes. ‘Ye gods, what a rabble!’ he said. ‘A lost Legion, sure enough! A legion of broken men. It is fitting that we should follow a wingless Eagle!’ And his laughter cracked a little.

Anthonius said very gently, ‘Would you change them for the finest Cohort of the Praetorian Guard, if you could?’

‘No,’ Flavius said. ‘No, by the gods I wouldn’t. But that does not explain why I should want to cry like a girl-child.’ He flung a heavy arm across Justin’s shoulder. ‘That was nobly done, old lad. You brought the Eagle out at the one perfect moment, and they’ll follow it through Tophet fires now, if need be … Come on, let’s get some food.’

T
HE mizzle rain had finally cleared, and the wind fallen; and the skies were breaking up as the tatterdemalion war-band crossed the coast road and set their faces to the last low wooded ridge between them and the sea. At the crest of the ridge the wind-shaped oaks and thorn-trees ceased abruptly, and before them the land fell gently away to the seaward marshes; and far to the westward, where the ground rose a little clear of the saltings, uncompromisingly square among the blurred and flowing lines of the marsh, the outline of a Roman Camp, with beyond it, like a school of stranded sea-beasts along the tide-line, the dark shapes of the transports, and beyond again, anchored well out into the harbour, the screening galleys. Justin, scanning the oily sea that still heaved uneasily off-shore, could just make out, away, beyond the harbour mouth, the dark flecks of two patrol galleys on guard, he supposed, against the fleet of Allectus.

‘There they are,’ Flavius said. ‘There—they—are!’ And a deep murmur ran through the tattered band behind him.

About a hundred paces from the Dexter Gate of the camp they were halted by pickets with levelled pilums. ‘Who comes?’

‘Friends, in Caesar’s name,’ Flavius shouted back.

‘Two of you may advance.’

‘Wait here,’ Flavius said to the rest of the band, and he and Justin went forward together.

By the turf horseshoe of the picket post the Optio met them, demanding their business.

‘We are reinforcements,’ Flavius said, with superb assurance. ‘And must speak with the Caesar Constantius.’

The Optio looked past him and goggled slightly. ‘Reinforcements, are you? Then we’re sure of victory.’ He brought his gaze back to Flavius’s face. ‘But as to the Caesar Constantius—you’ve got the wrong army. We’re the Western Force.’

‘So? Who commands here, then?’

‘Asklepiodotus, his Praetorian Prefect.’

‘Then we must speak with Asklepiodotus.’

‘Must you?’ said the Optio. ‘Well, I don’t know so much about that,’ and then, after studying them both again, and taking another long stare at the men behind them, ‘Well, you can take that robber band of yours up to the Gate, anyway. I’ll send one of my men with you.’

At the Gate they were confronted by the Optio of the Gate guard, who goggled in his turn, and sent for his Centurion, who sent for one of the Tribunes; and at last they were passed through under the raised locust heads of the catapult battery covering the gateway.

Within the strongly manned stockade—clearly the camp was prepared to withstand an attack at any moment—was an ordered activity that seemed actually to throb. Bands of men working under their Optios were stacking rations and war supplies; field armourers were at work, and horses still groggy from the voyage were being got up from the stranded galleys and picketed within the seaward gate, and the smoke of many cooking-fires rose into the morning air; while here, there, and everywhere came and went the crimson crests of the Centurions overseeing all. But amidst all this, the Via Principia was almost empty as they marched up it. A broad, straight street of trampled turf, along which, supported in stands of lashed spears, stood the Cohort and Century standards, blue and violet, green and crimson, stirring a little in the light wind that still sighed across the marshes. And close beside the tent of the Commander himself, as they halted before it, the spread-winged Eagle of the Legion.

The Tribune spoke to the staring sentry at the tent-opening, and passed within; and they were left to wait. Justin looked up at the great gilded Eagle, reading the number and titles of the Legion. The Thirtieth, Ulpia Victrix; a Lower Rhenus Legion that had come under Carausius’s influence at one time, and closely flanking it—this was evidently a mixed force, drawn from more legions than one—a Vexhilation standard bearing the number and Centaur badge of a Gaulish legion that had followed the little Emperor in the early days. Somehow that seemed fitting.

The Tribune had returned now. ‘The two leaders may enter.’

Flavius glanced quickly at Anthonius, saying very much in earnest beneath the laughter, ‘Keep them in good order for the gods’ sakes!’ And to Justin, ‘Now for it!’

They advanced together, past the sentry into the brown-shadowed interior of the tent, and halted with drilled precision, head up and heels together, just within the entrance. A large pink-and-gold man seated at a camp table, with a papyrus list in one hand and a half-eaten radish in the other, looked up as they did so, and said in a tone of mild inquiry that reminded Justin a little of Paulinus, ‘You wish to speak with me?’

The two young men came to attention and saluted; and Flavius, the spokesman as usual, said, ‘Sir, in the first place we would bring you word, if you have it not already, that the Caesar Constantius’s sails were sighted several days since, off Tanatis; and that last night beacon-fires were burning along the Chalk.’

‘As signalling the news of our landing, you mean?’ said the large man, with gentle interest.

‘I think so, yes.’

The large man nodded once, deeply. ‘The first of these things we have heard; the second we have not heard. What else is there that you would say to me?’

‘We have brought in a band of ’—Flavius hesitated for a flicker of time over the word—‘of allies, sir, to serve with you in this campaign.’

‘So?’ Asklepiodotus considered them quietly. He was a very large man, tall and stooping and beginning to be fat, with an air of gentle sloth about him which they learned later was deceptive. ‘Supposing—just as a start to negotiations—that you tell me who and what in Typhon’s name you are—beginning with you.’

‘Marcelus Flavius Aquila,’ Flavius said. ‘A year and a half ago I was Cohort Centurion of the Eighth Cohort of the Second Augustan, stationed at Magnis on the Wall.’

‘H’mm,’ said the Commander, and his heavy-lidded eyes moved to Justin.

‘Tiberius Lucius Justinianus, Surgeon to the same C-Cohort at the same time, sir.’

Asklepiodotus raised his brows. ‘So? This is all very surprising. And this past year and a half?’

Briefly and levelly, with the air of one making a formal report, Flavius accounted for the past year and a half, while the Praetorian Prefect sat and gazed at him as one lost in a gentle reverie, the radish still in his hand.

‘So the occasional intelligence and—reinforcements—that have reached us from time to time from this province were of your providing?’

‘Some of them, anyway, sir.’