The Silver Branch [book II] (27 page)

J
UST over a month later, on a sweltering July day, all Londinium was waiting for the coming of the Caesar Constantius. Londinium decked as for an Imperial Triumph, her crowds in their best and gayest clothes. And all up the broad paved street from the river to the Forum, and from the Forum right across the City, men of the legions were on street-lining duty; men of the Second Augustan and the other British legions who had all come in to make their submission again to Rome. A thin line of bronze and russet-red up each side of the street to hold back the holiday crowds, unbroken save in one place—a place of honour—about half way up from the River Gate to the Forum, where Flavius and Justin and Anthonius stood with the valiant, tattered handful that were left of the Lost Legion.

The three of them still wore the rough barbarian garments that they had worn so long. Flavius’s eyebrows, which had been singed off, were only just beginning to grow again; and Justin had lost most of his front hair and still showed on his right forearm the sore-looking shiny pink of new skin. And the little reckless band on either side of them, bearing also the marks of burning Calleva, were as tattered and disreputable as themselves. But in their odd way they were the proudest unit in the streets of Londinium that day.

Justin, leaning on his spear, could glimpse beyond the River Gate, the long timber bridge that carried in the road from Rutupiae and the Saxon coast, the flash and shimmer of the river in the sunlight, and the prow of a naval galley garlanded with green. But all Londinium was garlanded today. Strange to think how very easily Londinium might have been like Calleva—Calleva as he had seen it last, blackened and desolate under the summer rain.

Asklepiodotus had left a company of pioneers to help clear the town, and swept the rest of his force on at full pace toward Londinium. But Saxon fugitives from the battle were well ahead of them, and bands of Mercenaries were swarming in from the forest and the coast-wise fortresses; and the legions, despite all their forced marching, would have been too late to save the richest and greatest city of the province from fire and the sword. But Constantius’s missing transports, storm-swept clear round Tanatis into the Thamesis estuary, had forced a way up-river to reach Londinium just as the first wave of Barbarians swept to its walls. And that had been the end of Allectus’s wolves.

Yes, Rome had avenged Carausius most fully. Justin remembered the executions that there had been in the ruined Forum at Calleva. Allectus’s as it were leading the rest, Serapion’s amongst them. He was not of a vengeful disposition, but he was glad about Serapion.—But somehow, looking back on them, they did not seem real; not as the things that went before had been real. He remembered looking up from his work and feeling the heat like the blast from an open oven on his face, and seeing the roof of the basilica sinking inward like blazing canvas; the sudden hush, all the world seeming to wait, holding its breath, and then the rending, shuddering roar of the falling roof, and the basilica a black shell full of fire as a cup is full of wine; and Flavius suddenly beside him, scorched and blackened from head to foot, crying to him above the tumult, ‘See there! A fine pyre for a lost eagle!’ That had been real. He remembered the big house close by that had escaped the worst of the fire, where they had carried the wounded. He remembered Aunt Honoria with the paint patchy on her grey face, saying in that jewel-cut voice of hers, when they told her that her house had gone, ‘Ah well, I have always had a fancy to live at Aqua Sulis, and now I shall gratify it.’ He remembered men who had died that night under his hands, and men who had lived. He remembered them bringing Allectus through the City to the transit camp for safe keeping; and the way the sinking fires of Calleva had seemed to flare up again at his passing, as though they knew the man who had kindled them, and greeted him in mockery; and the glimpse of Imperial Purple rags, and a white, staring face in which the old charming smile had become a set and rigid snarl of rage and torn pride and despair.

He remembered the overset and broken rose-jars in the colonnade of the big house, and a crimson rose-spray outflung on the pavement, caught for an instant in the swinging light of a lantern, that had torn at him with the sudden understanding he had not had time for before, that Pandarus was dead. Pandarus and Evicatos, and little plump Paulinus a year ago, and so many others; but it was for those three that suddenly he had been blind with tears.

A striped wasp whining past his ear made him jerk his head, and brought him back to the present. To the garlanded street that waited for the Caesar Constantius, who, forced to put back into Gesoriacum by the failure of his transports to make contact with him, was now coming in person to take possession of the lost province that was once again part of Rome.

Justin shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and shifting, felt again the thin papyrus roll that he had slipped inside the breast of his tattered tunic. His first letter from home in almost two years. The very first letter he had ever had from his father that had not made him feel a disappointment. ‘It is with relief that I receive word of you,’ his father had written. ‘On the occasion of your last letter, you assured me that you had done nothing of which to be ashamed, and I am rejoiced to find that most fully borne out by a certain report I have had of you from my old friend and your one-time commanding officer, Fulvius Licinius. Believe me, however, that I was never in the least danger of being ashamed of you. There was a time when I was disappointed at your failure to carry on the family tradition, but I have always been perfectly assured that you would not under any circumstances give me cause for shame … ’ And then further on, ‘I trust that when we next meet we may learn to know each other rather better than we have done in the past.’

And Justin, turning the stiff and formal phrases over in his mind, knew that he had quite ceased to be a disappointment to his father; and was glad with a warmth that laughed a little at both of them, but principally at himself, as he could not have done two years ago.

And now there was a stirring, far away across the river; a sound rhythmic as a pulse, that grew and strengthened moment by moment into the ringing tramp of legions on the march. Excitement was running through the crowded streets, where tribesmen in plaid breeks and townsmen in Roman tunics jostled cheerfully for a better view. Now there was a flicker of movement on the bridge—white and bright and many-coloured movement—and the street-lining legionaries linked their arms into a stronger barrier. The head of the advancing column was past the gigantic statue of Hadrian at the near end of the bridge; now it was coming beneath the arch of the garlanded River Gate, and a roar of acclamation burst up from the crowd, as the leading ranks, headed by the chief Magistrates who had met the advancing army a mile outside the City, swung into the broad, paved street.

On they came, the Magistrates in the dignity of their purple-bordered togas, the tramp-tramp-tramp of the Legions’ feet swelling into a pulsing crash of sound that could not be drowned even by the roaring of the crowd. The people were throwing green branches in the roadway, surging forward. Justin, leaning back against the thrust that threatened to jerk him into the middle of the road, his arms linked with Flavius on one side and Anthonius on the other, was thumped violently between the shoulders by one excited citizen, while another bellowed blessings upon the Saviour of Britain into his left ear. The Magistrates were past now, and behind them marched the trumpeters, four abreast, the sun glinting on the enormous ram’s-horn coils of the Roman trumpets. And then, mounted on a tall black stallion, with his staff and senior officers about him, the Caesar Constantius himself.

Looking up past the black, arched mane, Justin caught a rather startling glimpse of a face under the Eagle-crested Imperial helmet, that was almost as pale as Allectus’s had been, and remembered that the troops had bestowed on this man the surname of Chlorus, Green, because of his pallor. Then the Caesar Constantius also was past, and they heard the wave of cheering run before him on toward the Forum. Justin caught sight of Asklepiodotus looking half asleep as usual; and lean, brown Licinius. And then behind them the great silver-winged Eagle of the Seventh Claudian Legion went by, steady as a rock with all its weight of gilded battle honours, upborne with rigid pride by its lion-skinned Eagle-bearer pacing between his escort. And the spread wings bright against the summer sky sent Justin’s mind back in a moment of vivid memory to the mutilated stump of a once-proud ensign, beneath which Evicatos had died, the battered Eagle that lay lost for ever under the blackened ruins of Calleva’s basilica. And then the memory was swallowed up in the thunderous tramp of the Legions swinging by.

The summer day passed with its drawn-out celebrations. Londinium had been eager to show her gratitude and joy in a great banquet, but the Caesar Constantius had let it be known in advance that he had no mind for a banquet at this time. ‘There is over-much work waiting for us in the North, and we march not our fastest on full stomachs,’ ran his message. ‘Feast us when we return.’ And so, when the Magistrates had made their speeches in the basilica and the sacrificial bull had died before Jove’s altar, he retired at the day’s end to the fort at the north-west angle of the City walls, with his staff and Senior Officers.

Below the fort a vast marching camp had been made ready for the Legions outside the City walls; and in the still summer twilight, by and by, the camp-fires sprang up, and the soldiers made merry on the extra wine that had been issued to them for the occasion. Round one such fire, down toward the horse-lines, the handful that were left of the Lost Legion were taking their ease; all save Justin and Flavius. And those two, summoned from their comrades, were standing in the lamplit Praetorium of the Fort, before a very weary man wearing the Imperial Purple.

The Caesar Constantius had laid aside his gilded breast-plate and the great Eagle-crested helmet that had left a crimson weal across his forehead. He was sitting half turned on the cushioned bench, to speak to Licinius almost behind him, but he looked round as they snapped to attention in front of him, showing a face that, for all its whiteness, had none of that look of a thing bred in the dark that had marred Allectus’s features, and acknowledged their salute with a swift gesture of the hand. ‘These are the two, Centurion Licinius?’

‘These are the two, sir,’ said Licinius by the window.

‘I greet you. Which of you is Centurion Aquila?’

Flavius advanced the regulation pace. ‘Hail Caesar.’

Constantius turned his gaze to Justin. ‘And you are Tiberius Justinianus of the Army Medical Corps?’

‘As Caesar says.’

‘I sent for you because I have been hearing things concerning a certain band of irregular troops, and wished to meet its Captains, and to thank them for the intelligence and—reinforcements that have reached me from time to time over the past year and a half from this province.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Flavius and Justin in one breath. And Flavius added quickly, ‘But it was a one-time secretary of Carausius’s who began the work, and—died for it. We took over from him, no more.’

Constantius bent his head gravely, but Justin had a feeling that there was a flicker of amusement behind the gravity. ‘Have no fear that I shall give you the credit that belongs to another man … Nevertheless, you took over, and to good purpose, and for that the thanks of the Empire are due to you. At a later date I shall demand of you a full account of these past years; it should make a tale worth the hearing. But that can wait.’ He leaned forward on his crossed arms, and studied them, first one, and then the other, with a long, quiet scrutiny that made Justin at least feel uncomfortably as though the outer layers of himself were being peeled off like the skins of an onion, that this man with the white, fine-drawn face might see exactly what lay at his core and judge of its worth.

‘Yes,’ said the Caesar Constantius at last as having seen what he wanted, and made his judgement, and rose, with a hand on the table beside him. ‘You have earned a long spell of leave, and I make no doubt that you need it. But the North is bursting into flames again; the very Wall itself is in danger. Doubtless you know all that. It was inevitable, with half the troops withdrawn to fight Allectus’s battles. In two days we march North to put out the fires, and—we need men.’

He stood looking quietly from one to the other as though waiting for the answer to a question. And Justin saw suddenly that on the writing-table by his hand lay two sealed tablets on which were written their own names.

It was very quiet in the lamplit room, high above the fort. They heard the challenge of a sentry on the ramparts, and the soft rise and fall of sound that was the voice of the City, like a sea below them, far, far below. Then Flavius, glancing also at those tablets and up again, said, ‘Our marching orders, Caesar?’

‘Not necessarily. I do not order in this case; I leave the choice to you. You have earned the right to refuse.’

‘What happens if we do refuse?’ Flavius asked after a moment. ‘If we say that we served the Emperor Carausius with our whole hearts, and have not the same service to give again?’

The Caesar Constantius took up one of the tablets. ‘Then I open this and soften the wax at the lamp here, and smooth out what is written within. That is all. And you shall be free to retire from the Eagles with all honour. But I hope that you will not say that. I hope it for the sake of this province of Britain, and a little, I find, for my own.’

There was the faintest shadow of a smile in his eyes as he spoke; and looking at him, Justin knew that here was a man worth following.

Flavius took another pace forward, and picked up the tablet with his name on it. ‘For myself, I am ready to march North in two days’ time,’ he said.

But Justin was still silent. It often took him longer to be sure about things than it did Flavius; and he had to be sure, quite sure, about this. And then he was sure. ‘For m-myself also,’ he said, and took the pace forward, and picked up the little tablet that had his fate on it.