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

Artorius said anxiously, “Is the situation really so dangerous? We have had no trouble these last few years.”

“Yes, it is,” I said. “This frontier has always given trouble. The great Constantine—your Constantine, Bishop—who built this palace in which we sit, fought a campaign to defend this city and Gaul against these tribes. And when I was a child these same tribes broke through again and there were thirteen years of bloodshed, pillage and rape before order was restored by Julian and Valentinian. When we had troops we had peace.”

Artorius said, “But I had no word of your coming from the Praetor. Is not that—unusual?”

I said, startled, “I know nothing of the governor but I wrote to the Praefectus Praetorio before I left Italia. I know that communications in Gaul can be slow, but they cannot be that bad.”

He said stubbornly, “I received no official letter of any kind. Surely if the matter were as urgent as you make out—”

The insolence in his voice died with the words, upon the look I gave him. I said in a loud voice, “The Praefectus Praetorio of Gaul is happy in that his government sits at Arelate. It would seem that those who sleep in the sun seldom worry about those who shiver in colder climates.”

A senator with a brown, narrow face, said sharply, “If I understand you aright, you propose to commandeer our ships. It is disgraceful.”

Artorius said hastily, “Of course, I and my department are at your service. But as for money—really!”

I hit the table with my clenched fist. “Enough of this. It is for you to arrange matters with the Praefectus—not I. Though I will do it over your head if you prefer it.” The Curator gasped at this. “Time is short and I cannot wrangle all night. If you cannot raise the money, and I do not advise that you tax your wretched peasants further, then sell the ornaments, the gold and the silver in your eight churches and in your fine cathedral, for a start.”

The Bishop glared at me. “That would be sacrilege. Only a pagan would suggest such a thing.”

“I am a pagan, as you term me.”

“I know.”

I said, “If I do not get what I ask I shall take over this city and rule it under martial law in the name of Honorius and Stilicho, his general.”

I picked up a silver cup that stood on the table between us. “I think it better to save lives,” I said, “than the lifeless.”

“Thief!”

I swung round on the Bishop in a rage. “I would not advise you to hold what you cannot defend.”

“It is robbery,” he spluttered.

“It is your god who approves of poverty and abhors wealth—not mine.”

I left the room with his cries of sacrilege echoing about me. I had not expected their co-operation, but their bitter, blind stubbornness and obstinacy in the face of danger made me feel sick. Their indifference and their fatalism had about it a hint of madness. I had met it in Britannia and in Italia—this blind refusal to face facts and to accept the need for change in a time of change. It was not new to me. If the empire were to die it would be because the people in it who held posts of responsibility no longer cared. They could not govern themselves and they had lost the confidence to govern others.

I found myself in the great hall that was the throne room. I called out and a servant came and lit the oil lamps. It was immense, the walls plastered and painted with faded designs which I found difficult to make out by the flicker of the yellow lamps. Galleries of wood ran round the walls, beneath windows whose outlines I could only just see in the half darkness. The floor on which my nailed sandals rasped was of marble, intricately patterned in black and white, and with glass mosaics that gave off a wonderful golden colour in the throne hall at the end.

I walked towards it, saw the raised dais and the great chair upon it that not even the Bishop had dared to take for the adornment of his faith. In this chair, in turn, they had sat, those emperors of Rome who had eaten and slept and worked in this city, and who had shouldered the burden that now lay upon my shoulders. Their ghosts came crowding in upon me out of the dark: the great Constantine who had created the new Rome; Julian, the ambitious Caesar of the West; Valentinian, the soldier-emperor who never in his life conceded a foot of Roman soil to barbarian rule; Constantius Chlorus who defeated Allectus the usurper of my island. . . . They had fought the barbarian all their lives and strengthened Rome’s frontiers, protecting always those who could build from the insensate fury of those who could only steal and destroy.