further side were the fragmentary remains of the palisade. Much of the timber had been pulled out to be used for other purposes, but here and there, a section still stood in its entirety, mute evidence of the slackened power of that empire—my empire—which now fought only on the defensive.
The entrance to the tower was ten feet above the ground, and in the old days the garrison had used a ladder which they then pulled up after them. One of the legionaries made a rough climbing pole out of a loose piece of timber and said, with a grin, “Will that do, sir?” I nodded. I took off my helmet and climbed, entering the gap where the door had once been. Inside was dust and darkness. I found the original ladder that led from one level to the next and mounted it cautiously till I came out onto the balcony at the top. It was raining slightly and there was a cold wind blowing from the north. Scratched on the walls I saw names—the names of men, now dead, and long forgotten; men whose names told me clearly that they had come from Moesia, from Apulia, from Pannonia, and from such far distant provinces as Mauretania and Aegyptus, the southern rim of the empire. Carved with greater care I read the name of the legions from which the men came who had once guarded this section of the frontier. I screwed up my eyes. “Legio IV Macedonica,” I said, peering at the faint scratches on the stone.
“What, in the name of the gods, happened to them, I wonder?” said Quintus softly. “I never heard their number in my life.”
“Perhaps someone will say the same of us,” I said grimly. “They were raised by Caesar and fought with Marcus Antoninus in Macedonia, but deserted to Octavius before Philippi.” I peered again. “Here are some more. Leg. XXII Prim. They were here at the death of Nero. But both they and the Fourth were annihilated in one of the Aleman wars of the last century. Now this looks like Leg. XIV Gemina. They were posted to Moguntiacum by Augustus. Asprenas brought them back to Vetera after the Varian disaster. They came back again, after going into Britannia with Aulius Plautius. They’re in Pannonia now.”
Quintus scrabbled at the stone work. “Can you read this? It’s the Thirtieth, I think. Only the last ten is missing.”
“Yes, look at the emblem. They were raised by Domitian and were still here in the time of Hadrian. A detachment fought alongside us in Italia. Do you remember? By the gods, that seems a long time ago.”
Marcomir said, “It is a place of ghosts.”
“It was not defended to the end,” I said. “It was just abandoned.”
“That was in the time of Gallienus,” said Quintus. “My father told me about it. The cohorts were in forts, seven miles apart, with these posts every half mile in between.”
“And now—nothing.”
We descended the ladders and walked back to where our horses cropped the grass. I looked at the clearing and at the mound of earth, stretching away into the distance. I said, “Once, you could walk along that under the protection of Roman spears. And if you walked far enough you would travel through eight provinces until you reached Scythia and a great sea.”
Quintus said, “I should like to have done that. It would have been a fine thing to walk across the roof of the empire.”
We looked at each other and there was the same thought in both our minds.
Marcomir said, “Then, you were the lords of the world. But now….” He did not end the sentence. He did not need to.
At the edge of the clearing I turned to look back but the square tower was almost hidden now by the driving rain. It was as though even the gods had pity enough to weep for our fallen greatness.
A mile from Moguntiacum we reached the furthest of the out-posts that I had stationed on the east bank. When I had finished inspecting the men and their weapons I spoke privately to the optio in charge. “What is the matter?” I said. “You look as though you had seen a ghost.”
He said, his face tense beneath its leathery tan, “I will show you, general. I have already sent a message across the river.”
We walked as he directed. Two hundred yards from the post I could see an object standing above the ground. As we came closer I could see what it was: the decapitated head of a horse, fixed upon a pole. I looked at the dried blood upon the nostrils, the human hand held between the yellowed teeth and the glazed eyes that crawled with flies. “What does it mean?”
Marcomir said, “It is the common way to insult an enemy in these parts. You may expect trouble from now on. I will warn my people.”
Two nights later I was woken by a disturbance and the camp guard commander was at my door, reporting that a small boat had been seen close to the shore, north of the town. The two men in it had been killed with javelins but the guards’ efforts to catch the boat had failed. It had drifted downstream in the darkness.
“I do not know what they were trying to do, sir, unless making contact with a spy in the town,” he said. I nodded and went back to bed. Long ago I had learned not to worry about small problems that I could not solve. It was as well, for in the morning the puzzle solved itself. I looked at the dead man lying on the bank, close to the point where the guard had intercepted the boat—and I recognised him. “They brought him back to show that they had caught him,” I said. “He was a Frank I sent to spy out the camp of Rando some weeks ago. They were not kind to him, were they, Quintus? Pity. Now we shall never know what he learned.”
The work of preparation and its problems continued. Complaints from quartermasters about a shortage of boots and rations; queries from armourers concerning war heads for arrows and suitable canisters in which to hold the preparation for liquid fire; difficulties over the stabling of spare horses; requests from cohort commanders whom I visited to advise on tactics to meet this eventuality or that; discussions to simplify our signal system; auxiliaries to be commended for their efficiency; and everyone to be encouraged; everyone to be made to believe that with their aid I could achieve the impossible. The days were never long enough, and though I worked my officers hard and delegated my authority as much as possible, both Quintus and I began to feel the strain. We woke tired in the mornings and we went to bed at night to sleep as though we were already dead.
Often I had dreams and I stood again on that beach with Julian, knowing every line on that tired, bitter face, creased with the lines of middle-age; and hearing again the tired, bitter words that he had spoken. It is I who shiver now… what happened to my high-priest’s daughter?…. they believed I was a god….
Did he know or did he guess that exile was the punishment that Fullofaudes had intended for him? I often wondered.
XI
JULIUS OPTATUS SAID patiently, “I am sorry to trouble you again, sir, but the supplies for this month are overdue. We are short of fodder for the horses; the remounts we were promised haven’t arrived, and General Veronius keeps pressing me to do something.”
I looked at the documents in his hand. “What else?”
“There’s quite a lot, sir.”
“Go on.”
“The breast-plates for the auxiliaries at Confluentes still haven’t arrived; the spear shafts came on that last mule-train, but without their heads, and some of the weapons aren’t up to standard. The bows from Mantua are too light, and the last consignment of swords are badly balanced; much too heavy in the hilt. Shall I send them back?”
“Can our armourers do anything?”
“They can try, sir, but the master fletcher just got into a rage when I showed him the bows.” Optatus grinned. “You know what a temper he has, sir. He snapped the one he was testing and threw it at me.”
“I’ll write to the Curator,” I said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
I was always writing letters these days: letters to the governor of Belgica, asking for his support for this or that; letters to the Curator, full of detailed requests and complaints, all of which he answered meticulously but about which little seemed actually to be done; and letters to Chariobaudes, general of the field army in Gaul, asking for the loan of trained centurions and officers whom he always found an excuse not to send. Then there was the difficulty of supplies. These were delivered by the slow waggon post and I relied on this for all food-stuffs, uniforms and arms, timber and stone-work. The trouble here was administrative. It was an imperial service which was
