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

IT GREW STEADILY colder, and each day I walked down to the river edge and looked at the swirling currents, the drifting logs, the pattern of colour that shifted with the light on the great mass of water that moved endlessly past. Somewhere in the high, snow-capped mountains to my right, so far away that I could not see them, this river crossed a great lake on the start of its long journey to the Saxon Sea. Here, it was just over seven hundred and fifty yards across, from bank to bank, but it was nine hundred yards wide at the mouth; so that, at times and places it seemed like an inland sea.

I did not like water really. I was no seaman as Gallus was, whose father had been a river pilot on the Danubius, but the Rhenus was my friend and I loved it in all its moods, as I had once loved the worn grey stones of that Northern Wall where I had passed my youth. It was a defence, this river, against the unknown, and it marked the limit of my Roman world. Beyond it lay only chaos.

The water was very cold and the level had dropped considerably. A great tree trunk that had been ripped out of a collapsing bank, perhaps as high as Borbetomagus, came floating by as I stood there, and on it, whimpering and wet but still alive, huddled a small animal that looked like a cat. Cats had been sacred to the peoples of Aegyptus, I remembered, and I had a sudden absurd desire that it should be saved. Perhaps if I propitiated enough gods they would help me in my turn when I needed assistance. I sent a horseman cantering down-river and later heard that a boat, sent out from Bingium, had rescued the cat and that it was living in the commandant’s office. It was recovering on warm milk, and Scudilio had been heard to remark, with a smile, that he thought the general was becoming senile. The soldiers in the fort, however, called the cat Maximus, and I was pleased.

Then the Bishop arrived, a black figure on a black horse, with an escort of my cavalry and a retinue of churchmen who looked blue with cold. If saintliness was next to coldness then they would have been close to heaven at that moment. To my surprise the Curator was with him and, when he got off his horse, he walked stiffly like a man unaccustomed to taking exercise.

I offered them what hospitality I could and asked the Bishop bluntly why he had come. He smiled for a moment. “I have brought a gift of oysters for you and your friend. I remember your saying that army food was monotonous.”

“You have not come all the way just for that.”

He smiled. “It will be a bad winter, as I told you. Many of your men are christians and I feel it right that I should come here to bless them and to pray. You do not object, I trust?”

“Barbatio, order a detail to prepare huts. No, I do not object.”

He looked at me steadily. He said, “It is very lonely to be the man in charge, to whom all else must turn for help, advice and instruction. You can confide in no-one. It is a great strain.” He paused, waiting for me to speak.

I said, “I am waiting for the wind to change. If it does, if it shifts to the east, it will snow, and if it snows then that river will freeze and they will cross the water on a bridge of ice. When that happens I and my men will all die.”

He looked shocked. “You spoke more confidently to the city elders when you last visited Treverorum.”

“Yes. I did not wish to alarm them.”

“Why tell me now?”

“You knew before. Besides, I do not tell lies; not to priests of any faith. I know—here.” I touched my chest.

He put his hands to the cross at his breast. “It is not too late, my son. . . .”

I said, “No. I will not betray my emperor, nor my general, nor my men. I will not betray the people of Augusta Treverorum. When then should I abandon my god?”

He was silent. He was too clever, too wise, perhaps, to say, ‘it is not the same thing.’ To him, no: to me, yes.

He said at length, “You will let us know what happens if you can. We shall be anxious for news.”

“I will do my best.”

“You have a young girl here, a hostage of some kind. May I see her?”

“Yes, if you wish. One of my men will show you where her hut is.”

He stayed two days, and then a third, and during that time Artorius walked around the camp, looking at everything with curious eyes and chatting genially with my younger officers.

One evening I found him standing on the river bank looking across the dark water, while a swan paddled hopefully a few feet away, waiting for food. I went up to him and said, “I hope you approve of the way the tax money has been spent?”

He said stiffly, “I have my duty to do, just as you have. But at least I try not to be so unpleasant in its execution.”

I was stung by his remark. “Soldiering is not a soft trade,” I said. “You must forgive us if its practitioners are a trifle brutal now and again. It is because we are brutal that you can afford to be gentle.”

He said calmly, “Do you imagine that one gets taxes out of people by being gentle?”

“What do you mean?”