When I looked up again, Quintus was standing over me. He saw the flask at my side, and laughed. “It is not for yourself, I hope. I remember your remarks, once, about perfumed tribunes. You kicked the fellow out.”
“I did,” I said, amiably. We walked in the sunlight to where our horses stood, and I turned to ask him something, and then stopped. He looked back at me in silence, his face quite calm and wonderfully relaxed except for the eyes. He had that look that I remembered seeing once before, when he had been made a present of a fine foal. Perhaps Aelia had known it also. But now, he had been to the Temple.
“Yes,” he said. “It was good. Oh, Maximus, when I die I like to think that the goddess will grant my wish, especially if I die in battle in a good charge.”
“What is your wish?” I asked.
“There is another.” He looked at me steadily. “But this one is more simple: that I may be allowed to drive the golden horses of the sun.” And after that he was silent.
Back at Romulus we made our offering before the small altar that we had made to do honour to our god; we made the ritual sacrifice; we offered up the accustomed prayers; and I felt the burden of my fatherhood upon me. All the while a sentry kept watch outside to see that we were not disturbed. After it was over we sat, still in silence, and watched the sun dip behind the hills.
It was getting dark now and the shadows were running back into the room. I struck a flint and lit the tiny lamp that stood on the wine table. Over the yellow, flickering flame we looked at each other. I said, “There is still hope, you know.”
“Yes,” he said. “I know that.” But he had the look of a man who did not care any more.
I heard the sentry stamp his feet outside the door. There was a murmur of voices, and then the door opened and the Bishop came in.
“You leave tomorrow,” he said. “I came to say goodbye.” We talked for a while in a polite and stilted manner, and all the time he kept on looking at the brand on my forehead, which always showed when my hair had been cut.
He said, suddenly, “You have no priests.”
I raised my head. “No,” I said, “Not in your sense of the word. Yet some of us are granted the privilege of acting as guides upon the way. We mediate on behalf of our brothers.”
His intellectual curiosity overcame his natural repugnance to discuss a matter of which he disapproved. “Tell me,” he said, “why it is that your temples are made below the ground and why your beliefs are kept so secret?”
I looked at Quintus and then at the Bishop. I said, “We believe that power is lost through idle talk. We draw strength from our worship as a community, as you do, and yet—” I hesitated. I said, “The best prayers are made in silence.”
He nodded. “I understand,” he said. He put his cup down on the table and talked of other things then.
“It has been a hard year,” said Quintus, in reply to some remark.
“It will be harder yet,” said the Bishop calmly, his big hands folded across his lap, the cross upon his throat glinting in the light.
“What do you mean?”
“The berries on the bushes have been taken already, and each night at dusk you can see the geese flying inland from the north.” He smiled. “A colony of field mice live just outside the wall at the back of my house, on the north side. You can see their holes, a dozen of them quite clearly. Now they are blocked up and they have made fresh holes on the other side of the wall. They know, too. All the farmers say the same thing. It is going to be a hard and bitter winter.”
“How bitter?” I said sharply.
“I do not know, my son, but there will be snow and ice.” He looked from us to the altar in the niche in the wall. “Are you afraid of death?” he asked gently. “If you followed my faith there would be no need.”
“I am a soldier,” I said. “Death is something I have given and it is something that I must receive. I am only afraid of dying; not of being dead.”
He was silent for a while. Then he rose to his feet. At the door he paused. He said steadily, “It is easier to be blinded by the sun than by the darkness of the night.”
I said, “The sun has died but it will renew itself in the morning.”
“You are very sure.”
I smiled. “Yes. That is why we have something in common, all three of us.”
He did not take up the challenge. Instead he said, “Am I right in understanding that you intend to do battle with the Vandals?”
I nodded, surprised. “How do you know that? I have told no-one. Unless Quintus—” I turned to look at him but he shook his head.
The Bishop said, “It was in your face when you came to the Basilica yesterday morning. Before that you had the look of a man trying to make up his mind. Yesterday you looked peaceful. The decision had been made. There is only one thing that worries a general—the decision to engage the enemy; the when, the how and the where.”
I said, “You know a lot about soldiers.”
He smiled. “Why not? Did you know that one of my predecessors in office was once a centurion in a legion at Moguntiacum? We live in the world more than you think.”
I was silent. Quintus said roughly, “Yes, we are going to fight. We have waited long enough for help that has never come.”
I glanced at him sharply. The Bishop said, “It is a fine thing that you are such good friends.” He regarded us keenly. He said, “I am glad that this city has two such men as you to protect it. I did not always think so. This city and this province have great need of men like yourselves; men who have confidence and authority and right judgement; men who are sure; men who know themselves.”
I shut my eyes suddenly. I said, “You are very kind.” I thought of Julian, and of my wife. I thought of the girl in the camp at Moguntiacum and of the times I had wiped the blood off my sword after a battle or a fight. I said, “But you are so very wrong. Do not have too much confidence in us, my lord Bishop.”
He said, “Do not misunderstand me. As I said, I have been in the world. I can tell a good sword from a bad one. And I know just how a sword is made. If you ever need me I shall be here. You need never feel alone.”
I stared out over the window ledges, saw the helmets of my soldiers in the courtyard below, smelt the smell of food cooking in the kitchens and heard a girl laugh as she strolled through the arcade behind my back, holding hands with a young man, no doubt. In the distance a skein of geese passed silently across the face of the rising moon.
With the auxiliaries manning all the forts from Confluentes to Borbetomagus, the cohorts marched out by night, carrying full equipment, twenty days’ rations and the hopes and fears of their commanders. To muffle undue noise the cooking pots, spades and entrenching tools had been wrapped in rags and the only sound was the quiet jingling of a horse’s bit and the steady tramp of nailed sandals. The men had been forbidden to sing, as they normally did, but they marched cheerfully and in good spirits at the thought of the coming battle. After an hour, riding at the rear of the column I could smell again the familiar smell of horses, sweat and leather and began to feel more cheerful.
Eight days later the legion crossed the river, again by night, and before dawn marched ten miles into the heart of the territory, formerly Marcomir’s, now held by Goar. We camped near his berg while the men rested during the hours of daylight and troops of cavalry rode forward to make contact with Goar’s scouts who were guarding the foothills north of the plain where the enemy lay. That night we marched again and the second dawn found us drawn up for battle, six hundred yards from the enemy camp. The centre, under the command of Fabianus, consisted of the three heavy cohorts, with their ballistae and carroballistae, grouped in the gaps between the massed units. Guarding their flanks were two light cohorts, extended slightly forward at an angle to suggest that they were the wings of my formation. Slightly to the rear of these wings, but outflanking them, and hidden on the one hand by a copse and on the other by thick scrub, were two alae of horse, their men dismounted for additional concealment. As a reserve, under my own hand, I had a third ala, the third cohort of light infantry, and my bodyguard. To left and right of the legion were Goar’s Alans, mixed with a stiffening of auxiliaries. Behind us, as an additional reserve were Marcomir’s Frank’s—what was left of them. Each cohort was divided into ten sixty-man waves and the men sat upon the ground and rested while scouts rode up and down the line, checking that all was as it should be.
For an hour nothing happened. The enemy lined the palisade and watched us; but they would not move. To
