Eagle's Honour

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  ‘Odd to think of our Elders sitting here solemnly in their Roman tunics and on carved Roman chairs, to settle the affairs of the city. Not so long ago, when there was any settling to be done, the chiefs gathered to the council fire, and sat on their spread bulls’-hides with their weapons left outside.’

  ‘Ever so civilised it’s getting in these parts,’ I said.

  He shrugged. ‘So the noble General Agricola would have us believe. If we are busy enough being Roman and civilised, we shall not notice that we are only strengthening our own bondage.’

  There was a sudden harsh silence, and then I heard my own voice saying, ‘You mind, don’t you? I did not think that you minded.’

  ‘Because I make a picture-pavement for the Romans and the British-Romans?’ he said; and then, carefully fitting another cube into its place, ‘How should I not mind that Rome rules me and my people, who have been free?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I floundered a bit. ‘I suppose I thought – well, artists and poets and such don’t seem to mind so much about who actually holds the rule, so long as they can get on with making their statues or their songs as they like.’

  Vedrix set another little cube in place, settling it down with his round-nosed mallet. ‘We of the Tribes,’ he said, ‘we don’t divide people up, as you Romans do, into neat bundles – soldiers or tent-makers or wine merchants or poets. I’d have been out with the fighting men in the Troubles three years since, but for this short leg of mine. – I can handle a spear as well as most, but I’m slow on the hills, and that makes a man dangerous to his comrades.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said awkwardly.

  He turned a cube of blue shale over in his fingers, and bent to settle it in place. ‘You have no need to be,’ he said, very carefully.

  ‘No,’ I stumbled, ‘not about that. – I’m sorry I got it wrong about tent-makers and poets.’ I felt the whole conversation getting away from me, and certainly getting further every moment from what I had come to talk to him about. I took a deep breath, and swallowed, ‘Vedrix,’ I said, ‘I want to talk to you seriously about something, and you’re making it all more and more difficult.’

  ‘So? I am listening. Speak then, as seriously as you please.’

  Somehow, almost without knowing it, I slipped into the British tongue, the Celtic tongue. I had grown used to speaking it, after a fashion, with Cordaella, for the Celtic is better than the Latin, for making love-talk to a British girl, and easier for explaining to her brother in, too.

  I said, ‘The love is upon me, for Cordaella.’

  He abandoned the pavement and looked up at me, and answered in his own tongue also. ‘And is the love upon Cordaella for you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘You sound very sure, my fine young Roman Standard-bearer.’

  ‘I am,’ I said. ‘She told me.’

  ‘And did she tell you that I have already found for her a man of her own people before we left Lindum?’

  ‘Yes, with thirty head of cattle.’

  ‘You, I am thinking, do not have thirty head of cattle. And yet you would be marrying with the girl in his stead.’

  ‘I would!’ I said. ‘But I cannot – not yet anyway.’

  ‘And why would that be?’ said he, with his red brows quirking up towards the roots of his hair.

  ‘In the Legions, no one below the rank of Centurion—’

  ‘Is allowed to take a wife, ah yes. And so you will be needing promotion before she grows weary of waiting. Well – good luck to you, noble Standard-bearer.’

  Suddenly I began to feel a flicker of hope.

  ‘You mean – you’ll not force her to go to this other man?’

  ‘Force Cordaella?’ he said. ‘In all the years since our father died, I have never found the way to make Cordaella do anything she was set against. If ever you do marry her, it may be that you will find the way, but I very much doubt it. Far more likely it will be the other way round!’

  ‘I’ll risk it,’ I said; and all at once it was as though the sun came out.

  And then the trumpet sounded from the fort, and I knew that I must be getting back.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Campaign in the North

  Later the same day I was standing before the piled writing-table in the Headquarters Office, where Dexius Valens the Senior Centurion had sent for me, waiting for him to notice that I was there. After a while he looked up from the scatter of tablets and papyrus rolls before him, and said, ‘Ah, Standard-bearer. – Yes, the General Agricola is at Corstopitum overseeing the arrangements for this summer’s Caledonian Campaign. The order has just come through. – We march to join him in three days.’

  So that was that. All town leave was stopped, of course, and I never even got to see Cordaella to say farewell to her. Couldn’t write her a note, either, because of course she couldn’t read anyway. The best I could do was to scratch a few lines to Vedrix and ask him to read them to her – I thought I could trust him – and get one of the mule-drivers to take the letter down into the town the next day.

  And three days later, leaving the usual holding-garrison behind us, we marched out for Corstopitum.

  A Legion on the march – that’s something worth the seeing; the long winding column, cohort after cohort, the cavalry wings spread on either side and the baggage train following after. A great serpent of mailed men, red-hackled with the crests of the officers’ helmets, and whisding whatever tune best pleases them at the moment – ‘Payday’ perhaps, or ‘The Emperor’s Wineskins’, or ‘The Girl I kissed at Clusium’, to keep the marching time. Four miles to the hour, never slower, never faster, uphill and down, twenty miles a day. … And me, marching up at the head, right behind the Legate on his white horse, carrying the great Eagle of the Legion, with the sunlight splintering on its spread wings; and its talons clutched on the lighting-jags of Jupiter, and the gilded laurel wreaths of its victories….

  Aye, I was the proud one, that day! For I’d seen Cordaella among the crowd that gathered to see us off, and she had seen me and waved to me. And I was through with garrison duty and going to join the fighting, and win my promotion and maybe make a name for myself and come back with the honours shining on my breast; and all for my girl Cordaella. And my breast swelled as though the honours were already there. – What a bairn I was, what a boy with my head chock-full of dreams of glory, for all the great lion-skin that I wore over my armour, and the size of my hands on the Eagle shaft, and my long legs eating up the Northward miles!

  But it was three years and more before we came marching back; and there were times when I came near to forgetting Cordaella for a while, though never quite.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Eagle’s Egg

  We joined Agricola with the Twentieth Legion at Corstopitum, and marched on North across the great Lowland hills until we were joined by the main part of the Second and the Fourteenth that had come up through the western country of last summer’s campaigning. Then we headed on for the broad Firth that all but cuts Caledonia in half. The Fleet met us there, and we spent the rest of the summer making a naval base. You need something of that sort for supplies, and support, when you can’t be sure of your land lines of communication behind you. We saw a bit of fighting from time to time, but seemingly the Lowland chiefs were still too busy fighting with each other, to make a strong show against us, so mostly it was just building; first the supply base, and then with the winter scarce past, a string of turf and timber forts right across the low-lying narrows of the land.

  Sick and tired we got of it, too, and there began to be a good deal of grumbling. I mind Lucius, a mate of mine growling into his supper bannock that he might as well have stayed at home and been a builder’s labourer – and me trying to give him the wink that the Cohort Commander was standing right behind him. It’s odd, the small daft things not worth remembering, that one remembers across half a lifetime….

  But in the next spring, when we started the big push on into the Highlands, we fou
nd a difference.

  Somehow, sometime in that second winter, the Caledonians had found the leader they needed to hammer them into one people. Calgacus, his name was, I never saw him, not until the last battle; but I got so that the bare mention of his name would have me looking over my shoulder and reaching for my sword. It was the same with all of us, especially when the mists came down from the high tops or rain blotted out the bleak country as far as a man could see. Oh yes, we saw plenty enough fighting that summer, to make up for any breathing space we’d had in the two before.

  Agricola was too cunning a fox to go thrusting his muzzle up into the mountains, with every turf of bog-cotton seemingly a war-painted warrior in disguise, waiting to close the glens like a trap on his tail. Instead, he closed them himself, with great forts in the mouths of each one where it came down to the eastern plain. That way, there was no risk of the tribes swarming down unchecked to take us in the rear or cut our supply lines after we had passed by.

  We got sullen-sick of fort building, all over again, yes; especially with our shoulder-blades always on the twitch for an arrow between them. The Ninth wintered at Inchtuthil, the biggest of the forts. The place was not finished, but we sat in the middle and went on building it round us, which is never a very comfortable state of things, in enemy country. We lost a lot of men in one way and another; and the old ugly talk of the Ninth being an unlucky Legion woke up and began to drift round again. It might have been better if the Legate had not had a convenient bout of stomach trouble and gone south to winter in Corstopitum. I didn’t envy Senior Centurion Dexius left in command. It was our third winter in the wilds, and we were sick of snow and hill mists, and the painted devils sniping at us from behind every gorse-bush; and we wanted to be able to drink with our friends in a wine shop, and walk twenty paces without wondering what was coming up behind us. And we cursed the Legate for being comfortable in Corstopitum, and grew to hate the sight of each other’s faces.

  I began to smell trouble coming, sure as acorns grow on oak trees.

  And then one day when we had almost won through to spring, some of the men broke into the wine store and were found drunk on watch. They were put under guard, ready to be brought up before the Senior Centurion next day. And everyone knew what that meant – He’d have been within his rights to order the death penalty; but being Daddy Dexius, who could be relied on to be soft in such matters, they would probably get off with a flogging. Even so, it would be the kind of flogging that spreads a man flat on his face in the sick block for three days afterwards.

  All the rest of that day you could feel the trouble like nearing thunder prickling the back of your neck. And in the middle of supper, it came. Being the Eagle Bearer, I ate in the Centurions’ mess-hall, though in the lowest place there, next to the door; and I hadn’t long sat down when the noise began.

  It wasn’t particularly loud, but there was an ugly note to it; a snarling note; ‘Come on, lads, let’s get the prisoners out!’ and other voices taking up the cry.

  I remember Dexius’s face as he got up and strode past me to the door; and suddenly knowing that we had all been quite wrong about him; that he wasn’t soft at all. – More the kind of man who gets a reputation for being good-tempered and fair-game, because he knows that if he once lets his temper go and hits somebody he probably won’t leave off till he’s killed them.

  I had only just started my supper, so I snatched a hard-boiled duck’s egg from a bowl on the table and shoved it down the front of my uniform, and dashed out with the rest.

  Outside on the parade-ground a crowd was gathering. Some of them had makeshift torches. The flare of them was teased by the thin wind that was blowing, and their light fell ragged on faces that were sullen and dangerous. Vipsanius the duty centurion was trying to deal with the situation, but he didn’t seem to be having much success, and the crowd was getting bigger every moment.

  Daddy Dexius said coolly, ‘What goes on here, Centurion?’

  ‘They’re refusing to go on watch, Sir,’ said Vipsanius. I mind he was sweating up a bit, despite the edge to the wind.

  ‘We’ve had enough of going on watch in this dog-hole, night after filthy night!’ someone shouted.

  And his mates backed him up. ‘How much longer are we going to squat here, making a free target of ourselves for the blue painted barbarians?’

  ‘If Agricola wants to fight them, why doesn’t he come up and get things going?’

  ‘Otherwise why don’t we get out of here and go back where we came from?’

  Men began shouting from all over the crowd, bringing up all the old soldiers’ grievances about pay and leave and living conditions. ‘We’ve had enough!’ they shouted. ‘We’ve had enough!’

  ‘You’ll have had more than enough, and the Painted People down on us, if you don’t break up and get back on duty!’ Vipsanius yelled back at them.

  But the sullen crowd showed no sign of breaking up or getting back, on duty. And suddenly, only half-believing, I understood just how ugly things might be going to turn. Not much harm done up to now, but if something, anything, tipped matters even a little in the wrong direction, the whole crowd could flare up into revolt, and a revolt has a way of spreading that puts a heath-fire to shame.

  Centurion Dexius said, Thank you, Centurion, I will take over now.’ And then he glanced round for me. ‘Standard-bearer.’

  ‘Here, Sir,’ says I, advancing smartly.

  ‘Go and fetch out the Eagle, and we’ll see if that will bring them to their senses.’

  I left him standing there, not trying to shout them down or anything, just standing there, and went to fetch the Eagle.

  In the Saccellum, part office and part treasury and part shrine, the lamp was burning on the table where the duty centurion would sit all night with his drawn sword before him – when not doing Rounds or out trying to quell a riot – and the Eagle on its tall shaft stood against the wall, with the Cohort standards ranged on either side of it.

  I took it down; and as I did so its upward shadow, cast by the lamp on the table engulfed half the chamber behind it, as though some vast dark bird had spread wing and come swooping forward out of the gloom among the rafters. Used though I was to the Eagle standard, that great swoop of dark wings made me jump half out of my skin. But it was not the moment to be having fancies. I hitched up the Eagle into Parade Position, and out I went with it.

  The Senior Centurion had quieted them down a bit; well, the look on his face would have quieted all Rome on a feast day; and when they saw the Eagle, their growling and muttering died away till I could hear a fox barking, way up the glen, and the vixen’s scream in answer. But they still stood their ground, and I knew the quiet wouldn’t last. And there was I, standing up with the Eagle, not knowing quite what to do next; and truth to tell, beginning to feel a bit of a fool. And then suddenly it came to me; what I had to do next; and I pulled out the duck’s egg from inside my tunic and held it up.

  And, ‘Now look what you’ve done, you lot!’ said I. ‘Behaving like this you’ve upset the Eagle so much its laid an egg!’

  I have noticed more than once in the years since then, that it is sometimes easier to swing the mood of a whole crowd than it is to swing the mood of one man on his own. Aye, a dicey thing is a crowd.

  There was a moment of stunned silence, and then someone laughed, and someone else took up the laugh, and then more and more, a roar of laughter and a surge of stamping and back-slapping that swept away all that had gone before.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Last Battle

  And so we were still in Inchtuthil, and more or less in one piece, when the Legate came back to us, fat and prosperous as a moneylender after his winter in Corstopitum. And then Agricola came up from the Naval Base with the rest of the army, and as soon as the grass stood high enough to feed the cavalry horses, the advance was on again.

  It was not easy going. No set-piece battles, but we had to fight for every hill pass and river ford; arrows came at us from
every thicket, and once, the Painted Men fired the forest ahead of us when the wind was blowing our way. But at last, a weary long while it seemed since we marched from Inchtuthil, we came up towards the first dark wave-lift of the Grampians. – They call the place Mons Graupius, now; it hadn’t got a name then; at least it hadn’t got a name in our tongue, it just seemed like the world’s end. – And we had word back from the scouts that we had sent way up ahead, that Calgacus was waiting for us among the wooded gullies of the lower slopes, the whole Caledonian war-host with him.

  Agricola halted the Legions, and gave orders for the usual war camp to be pitched.

  The great square was measured out, and the banks and stockades thrown up; the General’s pavilion set up in the midst of all, with the tents of the Legates on either side, and the Eagles of the four Legions ranged in front. The camp fires, one to each fifty men, were built in long straight rows, and the horse-lines and baggage park pegged out in position; the guards were posted and a meal of hard bannock and sour wine issued to all of us, and we settled in for the night.

  But the nights are short in the north at that time of year, and it was morning soon enough, and Caledonians and Romans alike stirring for battle.

  Tacitus, Agricola’s son-in-law, who wrote a history of that campaign later, sets down a fine fiery dawn-of-battle speech for Calgacus. I learned it almost by heart, in after years, for it’s a good speech though not over polite to us Romans.

  Something like this, it went: ‘My brothers, – this I bid you to remember when the war horns sound: there is nothing beyond us but the sea; and even on the sea the galleys of the Red Crests prowl like wolf packs. Therefore there can be no retreat for us, we conquer or we die. And we shall conquer! The Roman victories came not by their strength but by our weakness, and our weakness was that we were many Tribes divided among ourselves. Now we stand together as one People, and we are strong! They are fewer in number than we, they are strangers under strange skies; the mountains and the forests are enemies to them and friends to us…. My brothers, we have this choice: victory at whatever cost, and freedom, or the Roman yoke upon our necks, our women enslaved, our young men carried off to serve the Romans at the other end of the world! We have heard of the Roman Peace, but in truth, they make a desolation and call it Peace! Keep that in your hearts as you rush into battle!’