The Eagle

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  “My congratulations, Marcus,” he said. “It is by no means everyone for whom my friend Claudius will sweat as he must have sweated to drag justice out of the Senate.”

  “I could lay my head on his feet,” Marcus said softly. “It is a new beginning—a new beginning, Esca.”

  “Of course, it will take a little time to work the exchange,” said Uncle Aquila, thoughtfully. “But I imagine that you should be back in Etruria by autumn.”

  “I shall not be going back to Etruria,” Marcus said. “I shall take up my land here in Britain.” He looked at Cottia. She was standing just as she had stood ever since he began to read the Legate’s letter, still and waiting as a winter-bound withy.

  “Not Rome, after all; but you did say, ‘Anywhere,’ did you not, Cottia sweet,” he said, holding out a hand to her.

  She looked at him for an instant, questioningly. Then she smiled, and making a little gesture to gather her mantle as though she were quite prepared to come now, anywhere, anywhere at all, put her hands into his.

  “And now I suppose that I shall have to arrange matters with Kaeso,” said Uncle Aquila. “Jupiter! Why did I never realize how peaceful life was before you came!”

  That evening, having written to the Legate for both of them, Marcus had wandered up to join his uncle in the watchtower, while Esca went to arrange about getting the letter sent. He was leaning at the high window, his elbows propped on the sill, his chin in his hands, while behind him Uncle Aquila sat squarely at the writing table, surrounded by his History of Siege Warfare. The high room held the fading daylight as in a cup, but below in the courtyard the shadows were gathering, and the rolling miles of forest had the softness of smoke, as Marcus looked out over them to the familiar wave-life of the Downs.

  Down country: yes, that was the country for farming. Thyme for bees, and good grazing; maybe even a southern slope that could be terraced for vines. He and Esca, and what little labour they could afford, little enough that would be at first; but they would manage. Farming with free or freed labour would be an experiment, but it had been done before, though not often. Esca had given him a distaste for owning human beings.

  “We have been talking it over, Esca and I; and if I have any choice in the matter, I am going to try for land in the Down Country,” he said suddenly, still with his chin in his hands.

  “I imagine that you should not have much difficulty in arranging that with the powers that be,” said Uncle Aquila, searching for a mislaid tablet among the orderly litter on his table.

  “Uncle Aquila, did you know about this—beforehand, I mean?”

  “I knew that Claudius intended bringing your names before the Senate, but whether any result would come of it was quite another matter.” He snorted. “Trust the Senate to pay its debts in the old style! Land and sesterces; as much land and as few sesterces as may be; it comes cheaper that way.”

  “Also one Roman citizenship,” said Marcus, quickly.

  “Which is a thing apart from price, though not costly in the giving,” agreed Uncle Aquila. “I think they need not have economized on your gratuity.”

  Marcus laughed. “We shall do well enough, Esca and I.”

  “I have no doubt about it—always supposing that you do not first starve. You will have to build and stock, remember.”

  “Most of the building we can do ourselves; wattle and daub will serve until we grow rich.”

  “And what will Cottia think of that?”

  “Cottia will be content,” Marcus said.

  “Well, you know where to come when you need help.”

  “Yes, I know.” Marcus turned from the window. “If we should need help—really need it, after three bad harvests—I will come.”

  “Not until then?”

  “Not until then. No.”

  Uncle Aquila glared. “You are impossible! You grow more and more like your father every day!”

  “Do I?” Marcus said, with a glint of laughter, and hesitated; there were some things that it was never easy to say to the older man. “Uncle Aquila, you have done so much for Esca and me already. If I had not had you to turn to—”

  “Bah!” said Uncle Aquila, still searching for his missing tablet. “No one else to turn to me. No son of my own to plague me.” He found the tablet at last, and began with delicate precision to smooth the used wax with his quill pen, evidently under the impression that it was the flat end of his stylus. Suddenly he looked up under his brows. “If you had applied for that exchange, I believe I should have been rather lonely.”

  “Did you think I would be away back to Clusium on the first tide?”

  “I did not think so, no,” said Uncle Aquila slowly, looking with surprised disgust at the wreck of his quill, and laying it down. “You have now made me ruin a perfectly good pen and destroy several extremely important notes. I hope you are satisfied…No, I did not think so, but until the time came, and the choice was between your hands, I could not be sure.”

  “Nor could I,” Marcus said. “But I am sure now.”

  All at once, and seemingly for no particular reason, he was remembering his olive-wood bird. It had seemed to him as the little flames licked through the pyre of birch-bark and dead heather on which he had laid it, that with the childhood treasure, all his old life was burning away. But a new life, a new beginning, had warmed out of the grey ash, for himself, and Esca, and Cottia; perhaps for other people too; even for an unknown downland valley that would one day be a farm.

  Somewhere a door slammed, and Esca’s step sounded below in the colonnade, accompanied by a clear and merry whistling.

  Oh when I joined the Eagles,

  (As it might be yesterday)

  I kissed a girl at Clusium

  Before I marched away.

  And it came to Marcus suddenly that slaves very seldom whistled. They might sing, if they felt like it or if the rhythm helped their work, but whistling was in some way different; it took a free man to make the sort of noise Esca was making.

  Uncle Aquila looked up again from mending the broken pen. “Oh, by the way. I have a piece of news that may interest you, if you have not heard it already. They are rebuilding Isca Dumnoniorum.”

  List of Place Names

  ROMAN BRITAIN

  Anderida

  Pevensey

  Aquae Sulis

  Bath

  Are-Cluta

  Dumbarton (Cluta is Celtic for the Clyde)

  Borcovicus

  The next station on the Wall to the modern Housesteads

  Calleva Atrebatum

  Silchester

  Chilurnium

  On the Wall just north of Corbridge

  Deva

  Chester

  Dubris

  Dover

  Durinum

  Dorchester

  Eburacum

  York

  Glevum

  Gloucester

  Isca Dumnoniorum

  Exeter

  Isca Silurium

  Caerleon

  Luguvallium

  Carlisle

  Regnum

  Chichester

  Segedunum

  Wallsend

  Spinaii, Forest of

  Forest that covered a large part of southern England

  Caledonia

  Highland Scotland; the Celtic name is Albu

  Hibernia

  Ireland; the Celtic name is Erin

  Valentia

  The Roman province between the Northern and Southern Walls (broadly speaking, lowland Scotland)

  SCOTTISH TRIBAL TERRITORIES

  The Dumnonii

  (the same tribe as in Devon)

  Ayr, Lanark, Renfrew, Dumbarton, and Stirling

  The Epidaii

  Kintyre and Lorne, and the country around Loch Awe

  The Novantae

  Kirkcudbrightshire and Wigtown

  The Selgovae

  Dumfries and Ayrshire

  Rosemary Sutcliff was born in Surrey, the daughter of a nav
al officer. At the age of two she contracted the progressively wasting Still’s disease and spent most of her life in a wheelchair. During her early years she had to lie on her back and was read to by her mother: such authors as Dickens, Thackeray, and Trollope, as well as Greek and Roman legends. Apart from reading, she made little progress at school and left at fourteen to attend art school, specializing in miniature painting. In the 1940s she exhibited her first miniature at the Royal Academy and was elected a member of the Royal Society of Miniature Painters just after the war.

  In 1950 her first book, The Queen’s Story, was published and from then on she devoted her time to writing the novels which have made her such an esteemed and highly respected name in the field of historical fiction.

  She received an OBE in the 1975 Birthday Honours List and a CBE in 1992.

  Rosemary Sutcliff died at the age of 72 in 1992.

  Discussion Questions

  What is the difference between loyalty and duty? Marcus Flavius Aquila embarks on a quest to reclaim the lost eagle standard of the Ninth. How is his need to accept this opportunity connected to his personal loyalty to his missing father? Why does he feel it is his duty to restore his family’s honor?

  Why does Hilarion warn Marcus about the wandering Druids? Though Marcus attempts to dismiss the warning, there are times in battle and on his journey to reclaim the eagle standard of the Ninth that the warning haunts him. What is it about the girl Guinhumara that makes Marcus heed Hilarion’s warning? Are there other times when Marcus feels threatened by the Druids?

  Explain the occurrences of dark magic in the story. How do these occurrences help define the time and place of the novel?

  Why is the Capricorn bracelet so important to Marcus? What is the significance of the emerald signet ring?

  After Marcus is wounded, he goes to Uncle Aquila’s house on the extreme edge of Calleva, where he is given a sleeping cell and allowed time to heal. How might Marcus describe his uncle upon meeting him for the first time? Why is Marcus so surprised when Uncle Aquila talks of the woman he once loved? What is Uncle Aquila’s reaction when he learns that Marcus plans a quest in search of the lost eagle?

  Discuss the relationship that develops between Marcus and Cottia. The chapter where they first meet is titled “Two Worlds Meeting.” Compare and contrast Marcus’s and Cottia’s worlds. At what point do their worlds become one?

  Esca, a slave, accompanies Marcus on his journey. Why does Marcus grant Esca his freedom? Marcus says to Esca, “You don’t like being a freed-man, do you? Well, I don’t like being lame. That makes two of us, and the only thing we can do about it, you and I, is to learn to carry the scars lightly.” At what point does Esca begin to be comfortable with his freedom? How does Marcus finally come to terms with being lame?

  Marcus and Esca return to Uncle Aquila’s house with the eagle. Why does the Legate want to bury the eagle? Cottia wants Marcus to tell her the story of the Ninth Legion. Why isn’t he ready to share the story? Tell the story as he might relate it to Cottia.

  For more information about Square Fish books, authors, and illustrators visit www.squarefishbooks.com

  I

  The Saxon Shore

  On a blustery autumn day a galley was nosing up the wide loop of a British river that widened into the harbour of Rutupiae.

  The tide was low, and the mud-banks at either hand that would be covered at high tide were alive with curlew and sandpiper. And out of the waste of sandbank and sour salting, higher and nearer as the time went by, rose Rutupiae: the long, whale-backed hump of the island and the grey ramparts of the fortress, with the sheds of the dockyard massed below it.

  The young man standing on the fore-deck of the galley watched the fortress drawing nearer with a sense of expectancy; his thoughts reaching alternately forward to the future that waited for him there, and back to a certain interview that he had had with Licinius, his Cohort Commander, three months ago, at the other end of the Empire. That had been the night his posting came through.

  “You do not know Britain, do you?” Licinius had said. Justin—Tiberius Lucius Justinianus, to give him his full name as it was inscribed on the record tablets of the Army Medical Corps at Rome—had shaken his head, saying with the small stutter that he could never quite master, “N-no, sir. My grandfather was born and bred there, but he settled in Nicaea when he left the Eagles.”

  “And so you will be eager to see the province for yourself.”

  “Yes, sir, only—I scarcely expected to be sent there with the Eagles.” He could remember the scene so vividly. He could see Licinius watching him across the crocus flame of the lamp on his table, and the pattern that the wooden scroll-ends made on their shelves, and the fine-blown sand-wreaths in the corners of the mud-walled office; he could hear distant laughter in the camp, and, far away, the jackals crying; and Licinius’s dry voice:

  “Only you did not know we were so friendly with Britain, or rather, with the man who has made himself Emperor of Britain?”

  “Well, sir, it does seem strange. It is only this spring that Maximian sent the Caesar C-Constantius to drive him out of his Gaulish territory.”

  “I agree. But there are possible explanations to these postings from other parts of the Empire to the British Legions. It may be that Rome seeks, as it were, to keep open the lines of communication. It may be that she does not choose that Marcus Aurelius Carausius should have at his command Legions that are completely cut away from the rest of the Empire. That way comes a fighting force that follows none but its own leader and owns no ties whatsoever with Imperial Rome.” Licinius had leaned forward and shut down the lid of the bronze ink-stand with a small deliberate click. “Quite honestly, I wish your posting had been to any other province of the Empire.”

  Justin had stared at him in bewilderment. “Why so, sir?”

  “Because I knew your father, and therefore take a certain interest in your welfare…How much do you in fact understand about the situation in Britain? About the Emperor Carausius, who is the same thing in all that matters?”

  “Very little, I am afraid, sir.”

  “Well then, listen, and maybe you will understand a little more. In the first place, you can rid your mind of any idea that Carausius is framed of the same stuff as most of the six-month sword-made Emperors we have had in the years before Diocletian and Maximian split the Purple between them. He is the son of a German father and a Hibernian mother, and that is a mixture to set the sparks flying; born and bred in one of the trading-stations that the Manopeans of the German sea set up long since in Hibernia, and only came back to his father’s people when he reached manhood. He was a Scaldis river-pilot when I knew him first. Afterward he broke into the Legions—the gods know how. He served in Gaul and Illyria, and under the Emperor Carus in the Persian War, rising all the time. He was one of Maximian’s right-hand men in suppressing the revolts in eastern Gaul, and made such a name for himself that Maximian, remembering his naval training, gave him command of the fleet based on Gesoriacum, and the task of clearing the Northern Seas of the Saxons swarming in them.”

  Licinius had broken off there, seeming lost in his own thoughts, and in a little, Justin had prompted respectfully, “Was not there a t-tale that he let the Sea Wolves through on their raids and then fell on them when they were heavy with spoil on their h-homeward way?”

  “Aye—and sent none of the spoil to Rome. It was that, I imagine, that roused Maximian’s ire. We shall never know the rights of that tale; but at all events Maximian ordered his execution, and Carausius got wind of it in time and made for Britain, followed by the whole Fleet. He was ever such a one as men follow gladly. By the time the official order for his execution was at Gesoriacum, Carausius had dealt with the Governor of Britain, and proclaimed himself Emperor with three British Legions and a large force from Gaul and Lower Germany to back his claim, and the sea swept by his galleys between him and the executioner. Aye, better galleys and better seamen than ever Maximian could lay his hands to. An
d in the end Maximian had no choice but to make peace and own him for a brother Emperor.”

  “But we have not k-kept the peace,” Justin had said bluntly after a moment.

  “No. And to my mind Constantius’s victories in North Gaul this spring are more shame to us than defeat could have been. No blame to the young Caesar; he is a man under authority like the rest of us, though he will sit in Maximian’s place one day…Well, the peace abides—after a fashion. But it is a situation that may burst into a blaze at any hour, and if it does, the gods help anyone caught in the flames.” The Commander had pushed back his chair and risen, turning to the window. “And yet, in an odd way, I think I envy you, Justin.”