The Eagles' Brood

XXIX

'The Senior Surgeon, Commander."

I followed Donuil's pointing finger with my eyes, to where Lucanus was climbing the hill towards us. He rode bent forward uncomfortably, his downcast eyes watching his horse's hooves as the beast picked its way cautiously among the stones and boulders littering the sloping hillside. He was still no more than half-way up, making hard going of it, and I smiled at the picture he made, recalling a comment written by Publius Varrus many years before describing his own discomfort on a horse's back. I turned back to Donuil.

"The good Lucanus is a brilliant surgeon and a fine physician, Donuil, but he's no cavalryman. He and you together must be the worst example of our military strength an enemy could see."

Donuil grinned at me, completely unabashed. "Ah, but then, Commander, we are not your military strength. The Surgeon will never have to execute his surgery from the back of a horse, so his skills won't suffer from his lack of comfort when perched on an animal's rump. I, on the other hand, being the naturally spirited creature that I am, am improving daily in spite of—and you yourself will admit this—the direst of circumstances. My very race dictates I have a natural law to overcome. If the gods had meant us Ersemen to ride horses, they would have filled Eire with the things."

I did not answer him. I was too busy scanning the meadow that lay below us. We were about to make our first road camp, and I had climbed this hill to survey the site I had selected, hoping to find it as ideal as it seemed from below.

I was more than satisfied. "It's perfect," I said. "Now, I want the camp laid out down there as though we were on the plain in front of Camulod. Four equal areas oriented north and south, one for each squadron, the commissary and supply wagons in the middle, and the extra mounts there in the front, closest to the road. You follow me?" He nodded, and I raised my eyebrow, my only response. He flushed and nodded again, saluting me with his clenched fist.

"Your pardon. Aye, Commander. Four separate areas, as in Camulod, one to each squadron, the commissariat in the middle and the extra horses in front, at the south, between the camp and the road for safety."

"That's better. Please inform the squadron commanders."

He saluted again and rode off cautiously down the hill, although not quite so awkwardly as Lucanus, whom he passed on his way with a quick, distracted nod. I smiled as I watched him go, pleased with the way he was learning. It was against all his Hibernian training and background to submit to the kind of discipline I was exerting on him, but he was coping and coming to terms with it willingly.

Lucanus came up alongside me and reined in his animal, a placid beast specially chosen for him. He loosened his helmet, pulled it off and wiped the sweat from his brow with his bent elbow.

"On my oath, Britannicus, I will never understand why you people insist on wearing armour in weather like this. It's hot enough to melt flesh!"

I smiled, but didn't even bother to answer him. As Senior Surgeon, he, above all others, understood the military requirement for preparedness at all times. He watched me closely, waiting in vain for me to rise to his bait, and then swung his horse around to look down into the valley.

"They look good, don't they?"

"Aye, Lucanus, they do. And so they should. They are good. They're the best. Camulod's best, and that means the world's best, for my money."

On the road below us, our entire contingent was now in view, and they presented a pleasing picture of military correctness. The First Squadron, made up of our most experienced veterans, bore my great black and silver bear standard at their head—where the Roman Eagle would have been in bygone days—along with their own regalia: a crimson standard featuring a white stag and surmounted by a spread of antlers. They rode in a tight-formation column, with their squadron and troop commanders in the lead, followed immediately by the two standard-bearers, and then the remainder of the squadron, four ranks abreast in files of ten. Fifty paces behind their rear rank came the Second Squadron, in similar formation, followed in turn by the water wagon—a large, pitch-sealed, cylindrical oaken tank, laid on its side and mounted on a wheeled platform, drawn by two horses. After that came the six great commissary wagons—huge, double-axled things with enormous, spoked wheels of hand-carved oak, rimmed with iron tires—each drawn by a team of six massive draft horses. Behind the wagons came the extra mounts, tight-herded by the young men whose only work was with the horses, until the time they earned promotion and began training as troopers. Behind the extra horses, far back from their dust, and protecting them from attack from the rear, came the Third and Fourth Squadrons, equal in size to the First and Second, but made up of less seasoned troops and leavened by older, well-hardened men. One hundred and seventy-five fighting men in all, including officers, and exclusive of the commissary staff and herd boys, who brought the total number to just over two hundred.

We watched in silence as they halted to await Donuil's approach, the commanders of the rearward squadrons riding to the head of die column to meet him. A series of shouted commands rose through the late afternoon air, and the First Squadron wheeled to the left and made their way from the road into the wooded meadow I had chosen as a campsite, crossing directly to the area designated for them. It took some time for the entire train to regroup in their allotted places, but then, at a shouted command, they all dismounted as one, and the open meadow was transformed as they set about making camp on this, the first night of the journey to Verulamium.

"Quite a difference from the old, walled infantry camp, isn't it?" Lucanus murmured. »

"No, not really, not when you think about it, Luke," I responded, using the name he had asked me to call him once we became friends. "It's still the same basic design they used in ancient times—four divisions and two cross streets. The only real difference is that walls are unnecessary, and unwanted. The horses are the walls, all by themselves. We simply split the horses up into four or more groups and have their riders stay close by them. And we increase the areas between the squadrons to leave enough room to manoeuvre in the event of an attack. It merely looks different. The new format works the same way as the old one did, and for exactly the same old reason—the one that's seldom recognized, but always honoured."

Lucanus looked at me sidewise, sensing a trap. "Oh really? And what reason is that?"

"Mess call, Luke." I was smiling, but serious nonetheless. "Think about it. It's more than simply Roman discipline. Digging the ditch and building the walls each day on the march was originally a very real precaution against attack, but the routine continued centuries after peace had been established throughout the Empire. There came a time—and it lasted for centuries—when the odds against a Roman camp being attacked must have exceeded ten thousand to one, and yet the discipline persisted."

"Fine," he grunted eventually, when he realized I was waiting for him to ask. "I'll risk it. Why did it persist?"

"Because it had another purpose, rooted in certainty." I could see that he was bracing himself to be the butt of some joke of mine, eyeing me warily and prepared to come up with some quick and witty rejoinder. "No, I'm serious. Bear in mind that the only time a legionary had to himself was at the end of the day. A very large part of the punctilious tradition of Roman camps came from the simple fact that, after a hard day's march, the commissary people needed time to prepare dinner without being harassed by hungry men with nothing to do. So to get around that, the Army made it a rule that the soldiers had to dig a ditch and build a rampart every day, then pitch their tents, before they were released to eat and relax. Gave the cooks time to get dinner ready. Now our troopers have to unsaddle, groom, feed and water their mounts, clean and tend to their harness, pitch their own tents and build their own fires before they can eat. Still gives the cooks time to make dinner. And dinner on the march is the most important part of a soldier's life— infantry or cavalry."

"I suppose it is." Lucanus looked impressed. "It's certainly the most time-honoured. You can't buy that kind of security. And that reminds me," he went on, "speaking of buying, did you bring money?"

I turned to smile at him. "Aye, I brought money. Gold. It's in the quartermaster's wagon. Why?"

"Why not? The rest of the world still uses it, presumably, and we are going to pass through Londinium."

That sobered me. "We are indeed, Lucanus. We are indeed. I wonder what it will be like?"

He looked at me in puzzlement. "What? Londinium? Why should you wonder that? You've been there before, haven't you?"

I shook my head. "No, never. You have, I suppose?"

"Of course I have. I was there with your father, when Publius Varrus was brought there in chains by your grandfather."

"When they met Stilicho, you mean?"

"Yes."

"Luke, that was years before I was born! It has been thirty years since Stilicho went back to Rome."

"So? What does that have to do with anything, other than the compound fact that you're little more than a babe in arms and I'm not as young as I used to be?"

I shrugged. "It seems to me a lot might happen to a city in thirty years, without the Army there to keep order."

He dismissed that out of hand. "Nonsense, Caius. And anyway, the Army was there for at least a decade after Stilicho left. God, man, you're talking about the administrative centre of the Province, not some small hamlet filled with ignorant peasants. The civil authorities would have taken over immediately, when the Armies left. The curiales and the local magistracies and the Regional Councils. They were more than capable of maintaining order."

I ducked my head, conceding ignorance. "Well, you may be right, and I hope you are. But I remember what my father said about trying to enforce the law without the strength of the Army to back you up. Anyway, we'll find out in a matter of days. Three days, four at the most, if we can keep up this pace."

We had ridden forty miles that day, heading north from the Colony towards Aquae Sulis, but striking eastward at the intersection of the two main roads some thirty miles south of the town. We would spend the night here, in open meadowland beside a low-walled site that had been a march camp for centuries, and we would reach Sorviodunum, the first town on our route, by mid-afternoon. Our outward journey would take us north-east via Sorviodunum, the town the Celts called Sarum, to Silchester, then to Pontes, and on to Londinium. From there we would head straight north to Verulamium along the oldest road in all of Britain. We would return along a westerly route, by way of Alchester, Corinium and Aquae Sulis, completing a rough circle and showing our presence across the entire interior of South Britain while keeping well clear of the coastal areas where there were rumoured to be heavy concentrations of entrenched Saxons.

Lucanus put his helmet back on his head. "The lads are keen," he said, nodding down to the meadow. "They're in good spirits."

He was right. The camp was already taking shape below us, as the troopers finished stringing their harnessing lines and tethered their horses in rows, leaving enough room between animals for each rider to work unhampered by his neighbours on either side as he unsaddled his mount and looked to the animal's needs.

Some of the herd boys had begun to move among them, carrying bins of oats from one of the commissary wagons, while others were replenishing the water wagon's tank from the nearby brook and preparing to distribute the animals' drinking water. The remainder were attending to the tethering of the spare mounts, in the protected area directly to the south of the central crossway, closest to the road. Each horse carried its own nose-bag and leather water bucket in its saddlebags. The commissariat had been set up in the central space, equidistant from each of the four squadron encampments, with enough space surrounding it for the men to spread out and eat on the grass in comfort, if the weather was fine, or to deploy into formation around it rapidly, in the event of an emergency, without undue confusion.

I remembered the night my father had designed the layout, emphasising the need for both disciplined formality and adaptable elasticity. His original design had been for a camp of four squadrons of forty men and horses. Lesser numbers could be accommodated at individual commanders' discretion, but any force greater than three squadrons in strength could begin to present problems in disposition, dispersal and discipline.

My father's new camp formation permitted expansion to accommodate any number of squadrons, and was based on a checkerboard scheme, with the commanders quartered between the First and Second Squadrons, and the commissary staff between the Third and Fourth. I could see it clearly taking shape in the space beneath our perch on the hilltop, and I can still visualize it today. It was a shape that was famed in this land, but that has not been seen in decades and may never be seen again.

Later that night I lay awake in my cot, listening to the voices of my men, still grouped around their fires, and to the infinitely varied noises of the camp. I was pleasantly tired, but far from sleepy, and as I lay there, enjoying the comfort and the peace, my thoughts drifted through a review of everything that had happened in the past few months since the night my aunt had convinced me that Camulod should attend the Verulamian Debate in grand style.

Once convinced her advice was valid, I had not procrastinated. I thought carefully about what I had to say, and brought the results of my deliberations to the first full meeting of the Council that followed. I had argued my case eloquently, I thought at the time, and had convinced everyone of the merit of Aunt Luceiia's contentions. The vote in favour of my recommendations was unanimous, and we began making preparations immediately.

It was natural, I suppose, that everyone who heard about it, from Councillors to trainee troopers, wanted to join the excursion, but the criteria governing the expedition and its personnel were decreed absolute from the outset: this was to be a military delegation, in all of its aspects. The main objective of the exercise, apart from the obvious one of representing the concerned but cohesive and self-sufficient Christian community in the far west, was to demonstrate our military capabilities to everyone with eyes to see it. For that reason, no civilian supernumeraries would accompany the expedition. I alone would represent Camulod as Commander and spokesman. For exactly the same reason, reinforced by the solid, enlightened thinking of the Legate Titus, every trooper and every officer in the train had to earn his place.

Four brand-new, elite cavalry squadrons would be formed from the mass of Camulod's forces, and only the best in their own categories would qualify. That, we decided, was fair, since it provided the opportunity for every man, from the rawest recruit to the most seasoned veteran, to vie for a place of honour in an appropriate squadron.

Since competition among officers for the same type of honours would have been infra dignitatem, the squadron and troop commanders were selected by lot in Council and announced with much fanfare. Titus, Flavius and I myself saw to it that only the names of the very finest of our commanders were submitted, so we were sure that the chosen officers would be well received.

The competition that began immediately for inclusion in the ranks of the four squadrons did wonders for the flagging morale that had threatened us after Lot's near-capture of the fortress. Old rivalries were revived and new ones came into being overnight. The dust clouds over the great plain below the hill never settled, as squadrons and mounted troopers in twos and threes drilled, wheeled and manoeuvred at all hours until, eventually, the ranks of the new squadrons were filled and the squadron colours decided on and distributed.

I had far less trouble deciding on the composition of our squadrons than I had on the matter of whether or not Cassandra should accompany us to Verulamium. I wanted passionately to take her with me, but the current composition of our party—all men and all soldiers—had presented unforeseen complications to that, and I had not yet made up my mind on the day when, at her own insistence, I led my aunt slowly down die path into our hidden valley, holding her aged but still strong hand all the way, lest she slip and fall.

As on most occasions, Cassandra surprised me by running to meet me, her face a portrait of delight. She stopped short, however, when she saw my companion, blushing in confusion and embarrassment. Aunt Luceiia, on the other hand, was well prepared for this encounter. She had evidently given much thought to how she would behave in order to put Cassandra at her ease, and she went straight ahead and embraced the girl, motioning me to come and join them and share the embrace.

Later, while Cassandra was cooking, my aunt said to me, "So, Nephew, you have impressed me, in spite of myself. I had suspected that this young woman might be more than simply special, in the sense that young lovers use the word, but she is utterly delightful, far ahead of what I had anticipated. And as for your stated opinion on her breeding, you are completely wrong. This child is no peasant, nor were her people. We may never know her true background, but there is a nobility in the girl. She is far too good for you, libertine that you are. You still intend to take her with you to Verulamium?"

Luxuriating in her approval of my love, I was surprised by her question. "Of course, Auntie. I wouldn't dream of going without her." My decision was that swift and that simple.

"Hmm. And when will you leave?"

"Late in July—early August at the latest. But you know that."

"Yes, Nephew, I do."

"Then why did you ask?"

She looked me straight in the eye and shook her head in wonderment. "I asked because I cannot believe the obtuseness of men."

"Obtuseness?" My face must have been a picture of bewilderment. "What did I say? How am I being obtuse?"

She shook her head again, but her voice was gentler when she said, "Your obtuseness, Nephew, lies in your failure to see that by August, your Cassandra will be within two months of having your child."

I was thunderstruck! I gaped and spluttered and floundered, cursing my own blind stupidity. Of course she was pregnant! How could I not have seen it before this? And through all of these revelations, Cassandra worked away at preparing our meal, unaware of the consternation behind her back, until I calmed myself eventually and swung her around to kiss her gently, placing my hand on her belly. Then she knew I knew, and her eyes filled with tears of happiness.

Of course, from that point on, there was no question of her accompanying me to Verulamium. There would have been no question of my going either, had Aunt Luceiia not immediately set about convincing me that it was my duty to go. Cassandra would be safe, she promised me, while I was gone. She herself would persuade Cassandra to return with us to Camulod, to marry me legally and to await the birth of our child. By the time I returned from my Verulamium pilgrimage, my wife and child would both be awaiting me, healthy and happy. I believed her, and I returned to Camulod alone.