“I would have given you the sword of Maharbal himself had I been able to find it,” said Stilicho with a smile. “You would have deserved it.”
I picked up my present in its turn. It was a short officer’s sword of a style that dated it from the great days of the legions.
“I found it by chance in Rome,” said Stilicho, quietly. “If you look on the blade below the hilt you will see from the inscription the name of its owner.”
I looked as he had told me. Very faintly I could see the marks cut by the swordsmith at the owner’s request:
He said, “I thought it fitting that one legate of the Twentieth should carry the sword of another.”
VII
THREE MONTHS LATER, on a day of alternating rain and sunshine, I rode with Quintus at the head of my bodyguard into Augusta Treverorum. It was the oldest city in the Roman world, once the capital of the Praefectus Praetorio of Gaul, the seat of the Caesars of the West, and sometime residence of the Imperial Court. Since the re-organisation of the provinces, however, it had dwindled to being only the capital of Belgica, though it was still a great centre of industry and commerce. But it was not Rome, that city I had never seen.
The journey had been a depressing one. The countryside was bare and neglected. Here and there I passed a farm on ploughed land or saw in the distance a villa surrounded by vines that were still shaped and tended. More often, though, the farm was a disintegrating huddle of broken huts, and the land round it so full of weeds that you could tell at once it had not sown a crop in years. The surfaces of the roads were pitted with holes, their once carefully built edges crumbling away, and the ditches either side so filled with dirt that, at the least shower of rain, the whole surface flooded over and made marching difficult. The towns I passed through had few people in them, and those listless and with unsmiling faces. The streets stank of refuse, and the aqueducts that should have brought water to the public baths had fallen into ruin. The peasants we passed looked gaunt and thin, their hair greasy, their clothes in tatters and their children covered in sores. At the posting houses the horses looked out of condition and the carriages stood in need of repair. It was obvious at a glance why the imperial messenger service was often bad and unreliable; some of the animals were so out of condition that they could barely make the journey between one posting station and the next at a walk, let alone a canter. I was told by a sullen ostler that the crops had failed and that hay and oats were in short supply.
The men sang as they marched and made jokes. They were pleased to be over the mountains and out of the flat plains of Italia. Gaul was next door to the island from which many of them had come, and to be in Gaul, any part of it, was to be near home. But for me it was the land I had to defend, and upon the help of whose inhabitants I must rely if I was to fulfil the orders of a grey-faced man, now in Ticinium, collecting troops for his war against Radagaisus.
Once, I stopped a man to ask him a question about the distance to the next village, for even the milestones had been allowed to collapse onto the ground; the local officials were apparently too incompetent or lazy to attend to their duties. This man had blue eyes and fair hair and spoke Latin vilely. I learned that he was a Frank whose family had been allowed to settle west of the Rhenus and who had come south seeking work. I asked him, being curious, why he had not stayed in his own land.
He shrugged his shoulders. “We are a restless people, highborn. We like to move and to see new places.”
“But why come to our lands?” I asked in exasperation.
He shrugged again. “You are Rome,” he said, simply. “We all know that the Romani are rich.” He wrinkled his nose. “That is what we thought,” he said, gutturally. “But we come and we find we must work as before. I do not see that you can be rich if you have to work.”
“You could go home,” I suggested.
“I should have to work there. It would be the same.” He looked at me expectantly. “Perhaps if I go on far enough I shall find those Romani who are so rich that they do not have to work.”
“Perhaps,” I said, and rode on.
Further on I met a great column of men marching purposefully towards us. They carried staves but no other weapons and had the look of servants, not free men. When my cavalry surrounded them they did not seem put out, but stood their ground and waited quietly till I came to them.
“And where are you going?” I asked. “You are slaves, aren’t you? Look at that man, decurion. He has the brand mark on his heel.”
One of them bowed and held out a roll of parchment. “If you please, excellency, your excellency is correct. But this order will explain.”
“Explain what, man?”
“We come from Remi, excellency. We were told by the curator of the city that the noble emperor, Honorius, has need of men for the army. If we go to Italia to take up arms we shall receive money and, when the war is over, our freedom.”
I read the paper and passed it to Quintus who did not say a word. Now I understood Stilicho’s agitation that last night in my tent. Things must be desperate indeed for Honorius to make an offer that had never been made before by any emperor of Rome in all its history, save only Marcus Aurelius.
I smiled, and my cavalry sheathed their swords as though at a command.
“And what will you do when you have gained your freedom?”
“I shall buy a small farm, excellency, and if it prospers then I shall be able to afford slaves to work it instead of my family.”
I turned to watch them pass. As I did so I wondered how many of them would survive to enjoy the freedom of which they dreamed and which they, who had never known it, believed to be so wonderful.
A fortnight later we reached our destination and, leaving my legion to make camp outside the walls, I rode through the south gate into a city that was bigger and grander than any I had ever seen. I have often wondered since how it compared with Rome. The south and north gates, known familiarly to all legionaries as Romulus and Remus, were staggering in their size; over a hundred feet high as near as I could judge; their twin arches containing gates that three men, standing on each other’s shoulders, could not have seen over. Built of massive white sandstone blocks they were monuments that would endure for ever to the patience, industry and technical skill of the military engineers who had made them. Each had three upper floors around a square with a courtyard between the gates, and could house a cohort without difficulty. But they were more than gates: they were fortresses in which garrisons could still hold out even though the city itself had fallen.
The city was crowded and we trotted down the broad street with its shops, its fountains and its red sandstone buildings, across the forum, forcing a way through the crowds, the cattle, the ox-carts and the traders’ stalls, while the people stood back to gape at us as we passed. They looked clean and well-fed and smiling and I was glad at last to be in a town whose citizens had some heart in them. But I noticed a number of young men whose right hands were covered in bloody bandages, and this struck me as curious. I wondered if there had been rioting in the city when they heard of our coming. The army was never popular when it came to a city or a town. The people bitterly resented having troops billeted on them, but we were used to that. On down the road past abandoned temples, some half pulled down; children and dogs all over the arcaded pavements; and then right, towards the Basilica where the Curator and two officials of the governor’s staff were awaiting us. With them were the members of the Counciclass="underline" the civic magistrates, the quaestors responsible for finance, one or two senators (but that was only a term now for a man of wealth and dignity) and the minor officials in charge of docks, public buildings and the granaries, the factories and the aqueducts. In a group, to one side, formidable in their appearance, stood the christian bishop and his priests.