Eagle in the Snow: A Novel of General Maximus and Rome's Last Stand

Yet, for all his swagger and his rudeness he seemed to know what he was about, and I could not have made a better or more thorough inspection myself. The next morning he saw the men parade and go through their drill. In the afternoon he watched a field exercise, saw the ballistae fired, saw the cohorts make an attack on a prepared position, and frowned as a signal tower was erected, a defensive ditch dug, and a light bridge thrown across a river by the legion’s engineers. He said little and I wondered what he was thinking. I was soon to know. He came into my office at sundown and leaned idly against a wall while I dictated a letter to my clerk. “Next, to the tribune of the factory at Treverorum. I am returning the armour you have delivered. I need it for use as well as smartness, and this consignment has been so highly burnished that it has lost weight and is, as a result, dangerously thin. A spear will go through it easily, as you will see from the tests we have carried out. Please keep in future to the specifications I laid down in my original orders.”

“I did not realise you were a soldier,” he said, softly. “With a sword like that in his hands a man could aspire to the purple.”

“I gather you approve,” I said.

“My father was wrong. He did not believe you could do it.”

“Neither did you.”

He flushed and rubbed his cheek. “I do not bear malice,” he said, with a flash of his teeth. “I have a good ala. And you need as much cavalry as you can get. I’ve half a mind to join you. I’m sick of Eburacum and those endless patrols along the signal forts, looking for Saxons. When they do come they arrive so half drowned that they don’t even give us a good fight.”

“You forget,” I said, “I might not take you.”

He grinned. “You would,” he said. “You would take any one who was a soldier. I know you now. Why don’t you try for the purple? The men would elect you.” He spoke as though it were a game of some kind.

“And what would you be?”

“Oh, your deputy, of course.”

“I see. Yes, of course.”

“Why not? The province is yours. You could take it like a ripe plum. With a strong army to keep out the Saxons and the rest it could become a rich land again. Yours and mine.”

“But it’s not mine. It’s a part of Rome.”

“Oh, well, if you want more you could have that too. Gaul, Hispania and then the empire. But why bother? They’re too much trouble to hold down. Magnus Maximus, your name-sake, found that out. Why not stick to this island. It would be so easy. Why bother about the rest?”

I stared at him. “I don’t want the purple,” I said. “Neither here nor in Ravenna. As for the rest, everything that this island is, is Rome. Cut yourself off and you will be nothing; a rotting carcass without a head. We can’t manage without Rome. We are Rome.”

“You’re wrong,” he said. “We need a strong man here who can establish a strong government and run things properly. Not one of them at Eburacum can do that. Not even my father, though he often thinks—” He checked and said, lightly, “Oh, well, it was worth trying. It is not often that I think of anyone except myself. A pity that. Rather a waste of good intentions.”

I did not trust him. “I shall bring the legion back when Stilicho lets me. Meanwhile you have the other legions and the auxiliaries. If you need activity, why not work on them? The Wall will not stay quiet for ever.”

He said, pettishly, “But it’s such a bore working on one’s own.”

Before he left for the return journey to the north, he said to me from the saddle, “I will make a good report, general.”

I smiled.

He leaned down towards me and said, urgently, “Don’t go, sir. Maximus went and the men he took never came back. It will be the same with you whatever your intentions may be. None of you will come back and all this will have been wasted.”

I walked back to my office in silence. He had not smiled when he spoke. He had meant every word he said.

A fortnight later we left Segontium for the south, and two months later we were in Gesoriacum. As I came in sight of the camp, the measured tread of the cohorts behind me, I gasped. The road leading to it was, for the last half mile, lined with men; rank upon rank of armoured men on horseback, each holding spear or sword, while Quintus, mounted on a black horse with two white feet, his red cloak spread behind him, the scarlet horse-tail plume of his helmet moving in the breeze, stood motionless by the gates with his hand raised in salutation.

I rode alongside him and he greeted me as though I had been an emperor.

“You found your horses?”

“Yes, I found my horses. Oh, it is good to see you, Maximus. Come and meet the general of Belgica.”

Late that night, when the camp was sleeping, we sat over a jug of wine in Quintus’ tent and he told me the news.