Eagle in the Snow (14 page)

The dark boy moved forward, crying, “Grandfather.”

Instinctively he stretched out his right hand, the fingers splayed outwards, as though he would have caught the falling cup had he been in time. It was then that I noticed that his right thumb was missing. The puckered skin was pink and newly healed. It was a great shame. It was a horrible accident to have suffered. He was such a good looking boy.

He saw my look and dropped his hand sharply.

The grandfather said faintly, “It is all right. No harm has been done. Metellus can clear up the mess in a minute. I have a guest. Run along and come back when I am free.”

The boys bowed to me stiffly and turned to go. As they did so I saw the hands of the fair one quite clearly. He, too, had suffered an accident, just like his brother. I remembered the day that I had entered Treverorum and the young men I had noticed in the crowds with injured hands.

It was then that I understood.

I swung round sharply and put my hand to my mouth. I felt physically sick and the swallowed wine was sour in my throat. The skin on the backs of my hands prickled with sweat and my forehead felt cold. I knew then the shame, the horror and the degradation of it all.

I said in a whisper, “Who put them up to it? Was it you? You, the friend of my Theodosius’ son, the friend of Valentinian who laboured to rebuild this province after its years of disaster and misery.”

He did not answer. He turned his head away, but I saw from the angle of his jaw that his face trembled.

“Do you want to lie skewered in the sun like a condemned criminal while your villa roasts your servants behind your back? See your sons killed for your gold, your grandsons as slaves, serving their barbarian masters on bended knee? See your grand-daughters tremble as they are stripped naked for the pleasure of their stinking conquerors? Will you die content in the knowledge that you have brought such things about?”

He did not answer.

I said, “Your family bears a great name. You are the owner of fertile lands, rich treasures and a beautiful house. You have all that most men would welcome; nothing that they would refuse.”

“Stop it,” he cried. “How dare you?”

“Dare,” I said. “I am only a poor man. I am rich in nothing except courage and even that I must earn. Each day I have to win it afresh as a peasant sweats to earn his food. It is not easy to earn what I need that I may do what I have to do. I am only a soldier. But you—you have everything, save only one thing.” I turned my back on him and walked to the open door. “You lack only the Huns as your guests.”

I rode back to the city and all the while I shivered as though with a fever. It was as though the heat had gone out of the sun and the golden brightness of the day was but an illusion.

Outside Romulus a sweating horse stood tethered in the courtyard between the double gates, and a messenger awaited me in my room with a sealed scroll, penned two days before at Moguntiacum. Quintus’ eyebrows were raised, framing an unspoken question.

“The family of Septimus have joined the thumbless ones,” I said.

He said scornfully, “Thus avoiding military service like all the others. You should fine them as Augustus did.”

I broke the seals and read the message through twice to make certain that I understood it properly. “The Alemanni have sent an ambassador across the river. Their king, Rando, wishes a meeting to discuss certain matters.”

“On the east bank, I suppose, preceded by a feast and with girls of his tribe to entertain us,” said Quintus, sardonically.

“I wonder what he wants. It is curious that. The Alemanni must have moved north.”

“You are not going to see him, surely? It may be a trap.”

“I must. I want to know his intentions.”

“Those. I thought they were obvious enough.”

“Too obvious, perhaps. I shall arrange a meeting on one of the islands off Moguntiacum.”

“That should be interesting. My cavalry will then be of great help to you if we are attacked.”

“I am glad you said we.”

He laughed and began to unlace his riding boots. “I have never seen a king of the Germans. I am curious to know what he will be like.”

That afternoon I went down to the dockyard to see Gallus. Our converted ship was out in mid-stream and, judging by the oar splashes, was being used for training new rowers. Quintus remarked, sadly, that they were only good for frightening swans, and I was inclined to agree with him. On the hard, men were at work building the new warships. The keels of three ships had been laid and carpenters were busy fitting the stern posts onto one, the ribs onto another and the planking onto a third. The fourth ship was near completion. The air reeked as the craftsmen caulked its planks with tarred rope, while a group of half-naked men, who only a month before had been jobless, wrestled to fit the two rudders into position. One group were sawing poles into oar lengths while another planed the surface of the blades; after which they were carefully oiled by a boy and an old man and then leaned against a shed to dry in the sun.

Gallus said cheerfully, “I think it will be all right this time, sir. We are working to the original plans of the old Rhenus fleet. I sent a man down to Colonia and the Curator there found them for me in the naval records section.”

“What’s this?” Quintus asked, pointing at a huge block of oak that was being rubbed down by two boys.

“That’s to set the mast in, sir. It’s a good thing we were able to get plenty of seasoned timber. We’re short of decent rope though, but they’ve promised to send some up from Colonia. It should arrive by the end of the week.”

“What about armaments?” I asked.

“She’ll have one light ballista in the bows that will fire up to three hundred yards, and one small carroballista in the stem. But oarsmen are the real trouble.”

“What crew do you need? I told the Curator twelve hundred. Was that correct?”

“Nearly, sir, Two hundred and twenty, including archers, to each ship. Of those a hundred and fifty will be oarsmen, arranged for seating in twenty five banks of threes. That makes a total of thirteen hundred without reserves. We shall have to allow for sickness, injury and other things.”

“And you’ve had no more recruits?”

Gallus rubbed his nose irritably. “Those are my recruits; the crew out there, splashing away unhappily. Most of them wish they had never joined.”

“A pity we can’t use slaves, isn’t it?”

He looked shocked. “Slaves, sir. We couldn’t do that.”

“I know. I suppose not.”

Quintus said, “But why not? It’s been done before.”

“In the fleet, sir? Only free men are allowed in the imperial navy.”

Quintus picked up a lantern and began to play with it. “Yes, precisely—free men or freedmen.” He put the lantern down onto a pile of planks. “If my memory serves me, I seem to remember reading in one of these tedious books of Appian that Augustus Caesar—but he was Octavius then—enlisted twenty thousand slaves for his campaigns against Pompey’s son.”

I frowned. “Are you sure?”

“Oh, yes. He freed them first and then asked for volunteers.”

“Well, that’s the answer then.”

He smiled. “It’s a good thing someone reads your books.”

Gallus said, “But could we get enough slaves without running into trouble with their owners. The ones you see in the Treverorum market are poor quality as a rule.”

Quintus said, drily, “We shall need an edict, signed by the Praefectus, of course.”

“I doubt it,” I said to Gallus. “But we could get convicts. Yes, Quintus, the Praefectus Praetorio will have to authorise it. I’ll write to him. They’ll have to be paid though, and fed and clothed.”

“Up go the taxes, sir,” said Gallus with a grin.

“How soon will the ships be ready?”

“In thirty days, sir.”

I swore.

“You wanted them to impress the Alemanni,” said Quintus.

“It would have helped.”

“We can manage without them.” Quintus smiled at Gallus. “They can be a surprise for later. Tell me, have you tried out your liquid fire yet?”

I sent a message to the Bishop’s house but he was not there, and I learned he was on the site of a church in the temple district. I rode out to find him and I noticed that the women, fetching water from the public fountains, paused in their work and drew back as I passed by. It was quiet away from the shops, and grass grew between the cracks in the paving stones that made the road. Everything was shabby, neglected and desolate. When I arrived Mauritius was watching a group of masons at work, fitting chips of coloured glass into a corner of a vast mosaic pattern which had been outlined on the floor in the centre of the nave. As usual he was talking, giving instructions as to the way the patterns must flow one into the other. I had never heard him be so eloquent or so sensible. But then I did not attend his sermons.

He nodded to me as I walked out of the sunlight into the dust. “Have you come to be converted?” There was no sting in his voice and I wondered if he had thought it wise to declare a truce. He had his church and the emperor behind him; but I had Stilicho.

“May I speak to you here or outside?” I asked.

“Why not here? He will hear us just as well as in the open.”

“I have seen Septimus.”

“And?”

“You have a saying, I believe, my lord Bishop, which is of great comfort to those who wish to avoid trouble.”

His eyes narrowed. “To what do you refer?”

I said, “‘If they persecute you in one city, then flee to another.’”

He said, “It is easy to twist words, to distort meanings.”

“It is,” I said. “But, more important than that, is that what you believe?”

“It would depend on the circumstances,” he said cautiously.

“You know very well the circumstances. This city is in no small danger. I need men for the army to avert that danger. If I do not get volunteers then I must use the law to conscript them. Even so, I need some volunteers.”

“And you expect me to help you in this task?”

“Why not? Or do you prefer that those who believe in a heresy should rule your land and celebrate their heresy in your church?”

“I do not say that. You are trying to trap me,” he said in anger.

“If you refuse to help then I may trap you. The bishops in council might not see your refusal to assist as true zeal for the defence of your faith.”

He flushed. He said, “You would pit your influence against mine. How dare you suggest that I do not know my duty.”

I said, “It is not I who will do the suggesting, my lord Bishop. Honorius is a true son of your faith: would he wish to see such heresy spread further? He is also an emperor: would he wish to lose a whole province?”

“Your problems are not mine.” He spoke coldly but there was a note of anxiety in his voice.

“You are quite wrong. In this matter, my lord Bishop, whether we like it or not, we stand or fall together.”

He blinked.

I said, “I need your help and if I do not get it then I shall write to Ravenna and I shall say, in short sentences, exactly what I think.”

“You would not dare.”

“Honorius is a ruler first and a christian second. I think you will find that he prefers a pagan who does his duty to a christian who fails in his.”

He said icily, “You know the laws concerning conscription. Apply those laws if you must. Do not expect me to help. It is not my province.”

“I do not want all conscripts, as I said before.”

“Of course not. You want a willing sacrifice, is that it?”

I nodded. “Yes. Is not that what you want also?”

We measured glances for a moment.

“Are they then so afraid of me?”

“Yes,” he said. “They are; and of what you stand for.”

I said in exasperation, “In the name of—any god you choose, use your influence—tell them not to—it is all too horrible.”

“Horrible—of course. Fear is always horrible.”

“It is also contemptible.”

“To a soldier, perhaps.”

I said, stung by the tone of his voice, “I have enough to bear without that also.”

“Why should you care?” He looked at me keenly and—it was absurd, of course—for a moment it was as though he were reaching into my mind, trying to take hold of the thing I had discussed with no one in all the years that I had lived with it—that fox under my tunic.

I said, “Some of them had done this thing before ever I arrived.” I added harshly, “Not all the wounds were new.”

“No, not all.”

While we were talking we had walked slowly, almost without realising it, to the open space where the doors of the church would be. I looked across the litter of building material to a roofless temple beyond. No one would dare to enter it now, except alone and by night.

I said, “It was people who worshipped in temples like that who made the Rome of which you are now so proud.”

“It was a godless state, profane and barbarous and cruel. Not until the coming of the blessed Constantine—”

“Do not go on,” I said. “I am in no mood for a sermon.”

“Then it is your loss, not mine.”

I swung round on him angrily. “You are so certain that you are right. That, I do not mind. But I do mind that you insist on forcing your certainty upon others; forcing it upon them whether they wish it or not.”

“The truth must prevail,” he said placidly. “You do not care to be persecuted, as you term it, but it was we who suffered once, the threats of fire, of torture and of death.”

“But you were not persecuted for your faith; only for putting yourselves above the state.”

“There is a higher power.”

“Do I deny it?”

“Your so-called worship is a blasphemy in the eyes of my church. You imitate, and by imitating make a mockery of our sacred rituals.”

“My lord Bishop, the certainty of the christian is only equalled by the certainty of the Jewish people. You teach humility, I believe. You would do well to remember that to the Jews—those I have met anyway—your faith is equally—unusual.”

He smiled suddenly. “That is a point of view. Tell me, in how many gods do you believe?”

“In fewer than yourself. My god is not divided into three.”

He said, “Your wife was a christian, I think.”