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

They were found four days later, hidden in a wine cellar, only fifty yards from the east gate. Freedom—of a kind—had been so near, but my sentries they could not pass without discovery. They were brought back under guard; Severus, unshaven, hollow eyed, desperate and dirty; the girl, equally bedraggled, but still defiant. They were locked in the guardhouse in separate cells, and I sent for Quintus.

He saluted me formally and I asked him to take a seat. The old ease of manner between us had never returned. There were no jokes and no gossip between us still. We did not talk; we only communicated. Our relationship was so twisted that I did not know how to put it right. I did not know if I even wanted to.

I said, “There must be a trial.”

“Yes,” he said.

“It is only a formality. The evidence is clear enough. I want you to take charge of it. Find out who the three men in the boat were. I must know that, at all costs.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Not at all costs,” he said, gently. “But I will do my best.”

The trial lasted an hour and when it was over Quintus came to me, a bitter smile on his face. “He talked,” he said. “He bribed some Franks living outside the town to help him. They bought the boat off a fisherman.”

“You are sure of that?”

“Oh, quite sure. He told me everything, the moment I warned him what would happen if he did not.”

“Why did he do it?”

Quintus looked at me. “Do you really want to know?”

“That is why I asked.”

“He knows, as we all do, what the odds are against us. He is very young, a little stupid, perhaps, a little too sensitive to make a good Roman soldier.” He glanced at me ironically. “The girl worked on him. She is—very pretty. Besides all that, he is an Arian christian. I did not know that. Did you? His sympathies are a trifle mixed. He thought, too, that your treatment of the girl was barbarous. He is, as I said, a christian.” He paused. He said with a frown, “He thinks that they should be allowed to cross the river, and that it is we who are the barbarians in keeping them out. He is rather like our good bishop.”

“So he betrayed us.”

“Yes. But I do not think he realised he was doing just that.”

“What was he going to do when he crossed the river?”

“He had some wild idea, I think, of marrying the girl, obtaining the good wishes of the Alemanni, and acting as a kind of mediator between both sides.” He said, sadly, “It would be very funny if it were not so tragic.”

“For him, yes.”

“And for all of us.”

I said, “He joined us in our second year in Italia. Do you remember his father? I promised I would look after the boy.”

“Yes, I remember. Do you want to see him?”

I shook my head. “No. There would be no point. If I offered to see him now he would think I was going to pardon him. It would be needless cruelty on both of us.”

“He could be banished,” he said, in a hopeless kind of voice.

“No.”

He sighed. “I did not think you would agree. To-morrow morning then?”

“Yes, at daybreak. I will see the girl though. Have her sent to me, please. You will arrange everything else.”

“Of course.”

Rando’s daughter, still stinking of the wine cellar and of all the other places in which she had hidden during the past days, was brought to me, in chains. This time the sentry stood inside the room, holding the cord attached to the collar about her neck. She was like a wild animal, trapped but defiant.

I said, “Why didn’t you get to the boat? You had time.”

She said, hoarsely, “We met a night watchman in the street. He called to us and we ran from him and lost our way in the alleys. We were frightened.”

“I thought you were braver than that. You could have bribed him with a coin. That is what most people do. It always works.”

“We only thought of that afterwards.”

I said, “You made a mistake. You should have kept faith with Fabianus. He would not have betrayed me; but he would not have let you down either.”

“Fabianus.” Her voice was scornful. “He was too frightened to help me.”

“Yet he loves you,” I said. “Which is more than Severus does.”

“What are you going to do with him? And with me?” she added in a whisper.

“You can watch that to-morrow morning. That will be your punishment. You are responsible, you know. I hope you will remember that when you see him in the morning.”

She said in a shaking voice, “One of them got away. I am glad. Now they will know how many men you really have.”

“Don’t be too pleased, my girl. The sooner they come the sooner you, too, will die.”