“What can I tell you of Rome?” he asked, waving languidly a supercilious hand. “Isn’t it all written in Juvenal?”
A tremendous silence followed upon his question. Scapula’s dark face flushed darker still; the eagerness of his eyes became a glow of resentment; and to make the silence even more tremendous, Sempronius Proculeius laughed. Attilius did not need that laugh to realize that he had dropped the biggest, heaviest, and most unforgivable brick that he had ever dropped in the whole of his wild youth.
“Juvenal!” Scapula repeated the name in amazement. “He quotes to us — Juvenal. By Cocidius!”
And the Legate laughed again, contemplating with delight the bristling Scapula.
“Juvenal!” Calpurnius repeated. “Is he still alive?”
“So far as I know.”
“Shall I tell you what he lives on? Dog’s tongue. He eats it for his early breakfast and goes on with it all day.”
“He certainly does snarl,” Sempronius Proculeius agreed. For himself he was amused. He liked a boy to flourish a few absurdities in the faces of his elders. The man-to-be would be none the worse, and his elders might be a little the better. But Attilius had chanced upon an unfortunate theme.
“There are two very big names in Rome, Attilius, which are very small names in Britain. Seneca’s one. Juvenal’s the other.”
“He served here, Sir?” the luckless Attilius stammered. “Over at Viroconium in the west. He was the Centurion of a Cohort of Dalmatian auxiliaries. It was a long time ago, but, as you see, his name’s remembered and not with much enjoyment. He was the son of a freedman and could never get over it. As if anyone cared nowadays! But he did. He thought everyone was despising him and, as Calpurnius says, ate dog’s tongue all day. So we are not prepared to accept much of what he writes about Rome.
The little homily was rounded off by the entrance of Pithacus, who ushered in a steaming dish of wild boar garnished with roasted field-fares. All three welcomed the interruption, and Sempronius Proculeius called to his butler: “Bring a jug of the old Settinian! What! An old friend sends me a new one. We must mark the day with a white stone! Drink, Attilius!”
The butler filled their crystal glasses with wine of a lovely amber colour, and Attilius was very glad to sink into complete insignificance whilst the old veteran and the young one debated across his head the enterprise of Britain.
It appeared that the Governor wanted a new road built between London and the South Coast.
“It’s needed, of course. Lucius Hermex says the road from Rutupiae was so cluttered that he was brought to a standstill a dozen times a day. But the Governor comes to us. He wants our engineers to align the road and our rank and file to make the spades fly. And I can’t let him have them. Next year, perhaps, but now, no! The Frontier’s not quiet enough.”
He talked for a little while of the Brigantes about him, the Ordovices in the west, and the Picts beyond the Wall, and then rounded his talk with a laugh.
“Attilius, if ever you’re an Emperor, take an old soldier’s advice and watch night and day, winter and summer, your Northwest Frontier. It was the danger in Latium. It is the danger in Britain. The Gods in their wisdom,” he added, with just that queer suggestion of fatality which, upon this or that point, even the most reasonable of men may half accept and half deride— “the Gods have ordained a riddle worthy of old Oedipus which all Empires must solve or fall — the riddle of the Northwest Frontier,”
He had hardly finished speaking before the horn once more announced the hour. Calpurnius Scapula rose to his feet. He was no longer the guest, but the officer on duty.
“The Double Cohort holds its sports this afternoon—”
“I know,” interrupted the Legate, with a smile, “and if you are not there to judge it’ll be mutinous for a month. Go your ways, Calpurnius.”
Calpurnius Scapula saluted and strode towards the court where his armour and his marching boots awaited him. But he turned back before he had reached the door and clapped his hand in all friendliness on Attilius’ shoulder.
“You shall tell me of Rome-not what Juvenal writes but what you have seen. My father used to come back to Como and rail at the Seven Hills by the hour. The fatigue, the endless visits, the audiences to witless poets, each one with an epic which had just got to be heard. No more Rome for him. His wooden salt- cellar and his gardens and his books, and the informal companionship of his neighbours. That was the life. And it just lasted through the hot months and then he was back again to Rome as fast as his horses could take him. You mustn’t rebel if I harry you with questions. For, one of these days I mean to taste Rome myself.”
And moving once more noiselessly, he was gone. Attilius rose in his turn and took his leave. Sempronius Proculeius had a word for him before he went.
“For you now, Attilius Scaurus, the Camp. I appoint you to the Tenth Cohort. Calpurnius will help you. A year of it. Then we will talk again. But take this to heart! To do today the dull, commonplace duty which you did twice yesterday, as though Rome lived by it, is the root of all good soldiering. Fare you well! One of these days I shall lose Calpurnius Scapula, my best Eagle. Who shall recover him for me? Attilius Scaurus? Well, why not?”
And with that laugh of his, half of it mockery, half of it encouragement, he dismissed his new subaltern. But he did not answer the letter of Aemilius.
VII. THE HARD CHOICE
Though good things answer many good intents;
Crosses doe still bring forth the best events.
— Herrick
For Attilius followed days of drill and manoeuvres, exercises and route marches, the whole routine of barrack life. They were varied by hours of passionate revolt, sleepless nights when the yearnings for the Sacred City and all that it meant of comeliness and grace became a torture. Calpurnius Scapula stood by him, grave and friendly and discerning, and, though the longing for Rome did not diminish, Attilius gradually began to recognize it would not be with the same eyes nor in the same spirit that he would ever revisit it. It could never be again the perfect toy, fashioned solely for his enjoyment. There would be a little less colour, a slower step, a lower note. And then, imperceptibly, the weeks slid, repeating each other with a sameness so smooth that Attilius was astounded when once more an orderly summoned him to the Legate’s house and he became aware that a year had passed.
There were again but the three of them at the table. Only now Calpurnius Scapula reclined on the consular couch.
“I must lose him,” cried Sempronius Proculeius. “Alas, he goes when the year ends! The Governor must have his new road through Anderida to Regnum. I can hold him off no longer. And when the road’s built, there’s a Legion somewhere wanting a Legate. Pithacus, the snails!”
It was a magnificent meal. The snails and the oysters were followed by haddocks, the haddocks by a roasted peacock, and the peacock by a hare fattened upon chestnuts and garnished with brain-sausages. Brown cabbage and lettuce bore it company.
“The shoulder blade for Calpurnius!” said Sempronius. “Let him remember in his great days that once a humble Legate fed him nobly at York.”
It might have been a farewell party, but clearly it was not. Attilius was intrigued. Calpurnius Scapula had, on the Legate’s own word, still six months to serve at York. Why then the feast? Surely there was something more afoot. Attilius kept his eyes open and his mind alert. Pastry and dried fruit with some old Alban wine rounded off the meal, and then the reason of it all popped out.
“And now what of Attilius?” Sempronius asked.
He spoke lightly, perhaps a trifle too lightly, and it broke suddenly in upon Attilius that it was, after all, a farewell party. But the farewell was for him.
“Heu! Yes, what of Attilius?” Scapula repeated with a smile. He looked at Attilius, and there was anxiety in his eyes. More than anxiety, Attilius asked of himself? Was there not also — fear? Attilius braced himself to meet a blow. He was to be put to a test. The over-emphasized indifference of the Legate warn
ed him of his ordeal as clearly as did the apprehension of Calpurnius.
“I send two Cohorts with Calpurnius at the end of the year to build the new road through Anderida to the Sea,” said Sempronius Proculeius. “And I send two Cohorts in seven days to the Wall.”
“The Wall!” cried Attilius.
It was a word of terror — the word of terror. A time was to come when, from Wallsend to Bowness, one vast and straggling city should stand safe beneath its shelter. But that time was not yet. It was a region of coldness and gloom, desolation and death. Attilius no doubt exaggerated, but the Wall struck fear into war- tired men. His heart quailed a little as he heard the word.
“The Wall,” he said again.
Was there a slight tremor in his voice? Was it that which caused Calpurnius to avert his eyes? But neither he nor the Legate spoke.
“If you gave me an order, Sir,” Attilius suggested.
“But I do not,” returned the Legate.
“No?”
The choice was left to him. Anderida where there was always peace. The Wall where there was always war. The pleasant southlands or the snowy north. Choose the one, he would have his friend at his side. But would he remain his friend? Choose the other, he would be alone. But thus would his friend have chosen. He was eighteen years old — not a long life! Just for a second the Rome he knew recaptured him. He saw himself in the little Temple of Rhetoric behind the Forum, dealing eloquently with this fine dilemma, drawing tears by the simple pathos of his theme, the admired of all. Then he thrust the foolish dream aside. Anderida and contempt? The Wall with all the Wall’s perils? “Life is long” — what was the phrase? Old Seneca had written it, that old Seneca whose name must not be mentioned in Britain — and Daemonides had quoted it in the frowsy inn at Lyons— “Life is long if it is fulfilled.”
“I go to the Wall,” he said, and the tension broke. If Sempronius Proculeius had not been Legate of the Sixth Legion, Victrix, Pia, Fidelis, one might have said he prattled.
“The Wall! You’ll open your eyes, I can tell you, Attilius. By Hercules, yes! You’ll find every race under the sun manning the Wall — except Britons, of course. We don’t teach them to throw the long javelin and fight in open order and then send them to the Wall to desert to their friends. No, they go to the Danube or Scythia. But the rest! Germans and Parthians, Indians and Gauls, Spaniards and Blackamoors from Thebes — and all their Gods, Thincsus and Astarte, and Mithra and Isis, Dolichenus and Coventina — a vast heavenful of them. Eighteen months on the Wall, Attilius. You’ll still find Calpurnius tamping down his road to Regnum and the work unfinished.”
“I shall welcome you,” said Calpurnius.
“Indeed he will,” said the Legate. “For he must make his friends amongst Britons who are more Roman than Romans, and for such people I have no liking.”
He dismissed his guests upon their duties, and that night when all his work was ended, he bade his secretary fetch from his library the letter which, more than a year ago, Aemilius Scaurus had written to him. He answered it now.
“From Sempronius Proculeius, Legate of the Sixth Legion, Victrix, Pia, Fidelis, to his friend” — he was in a mood to write: “To his friend and his old blockhead” — but he came of a homely, provincial family of Rimini to which the Scauri had, through generations, shown good will. “To his friend, Aemilius Scaurus, my duty and greeting. I thank you for your nephew Attilius. What was wrong in him was right in him. Like most boys of spirit he must have a hero to worship. Rome gave him Clodius Laeta. I have done better than Rome. I have given him Calpurnius Scapula. He stands upon his own feet, now. Have no fear that Attilius will disgrace you! You may trust me who am not and, please Belatucader, never will be, a Glorious General, but who have learnt, in my fifty odd years of life, some small knowledge of men.
VIII. SERGIA
Flower of the broom,
Take away love and our earth is a tomb!
Flower of the clove,
All the Latin I construe, is “amo” I love!
— Robert Browning
“Here, Sir.” The Procurator of Britain sat in the library of his great palace at Camulodunum. A map was spread out upon the table in front of him. At his shoulder the Tribune of the Double Cohort of the Sixth Legion, Victrix, Pia, Fidelis, bent forward with his pointed stylus in his hand. Under their new titles both men are known to us. The Procurator was Sempronius Proculeius and the Tribune of the Double Cohort that Attilius Scaurus who, eight years ago, had made his difficult choice between the Road and the Wall.
“Here, Sir!”
The point of his pencil touched the fork in the Thames where Day’s Lock now stands.
“A road runs from Calleva in the south to the river bank. There’s a ford and on the north bank a tumbledown guardhouse. It dates from the days when there was a village on the Sinodun hills and the ford needed watching. From the ford the road runs on northwards through a small village, here” — his stylus touched the point where, centuries afterwards, the great Abbey of Dorchester was to rise— “and then through the forest to Ratae.”
“I follow that,” said the Procurator.
The wheat tribute was his special charge. If Rome’s myriad mouths went hungry, assassination stalked in that great palace on the Palatine; and for two years Britain’s quota had been short. Enquiry had set the leakage at some point between London and the rich plough lands of the upper river. Somewhere along the channel of the Thames barge after barge piled high with grain disappeared. To this problem of secret service Sempronius Proculeius, whose very Governorship was in the hazard, had summoned Attilius. Attilius was now making his report.
“I had hidden the galley under bushes and the men in the ruined guardhouse — we travelled, of course, always by night. East of the ford the river sweeps in a great elbow round a triangle of open ground. On the eastern edge of the triangle a stream joins the river.”
The pencil moved and stopped at the point where Thame flows into Thames.
“That was where the system leaked. We entered the stream after dark, rowing with muffled oars through a black tunnel of trees. I had not a doubt, for the stream should have been choked with undergrowth and fallen trunks, but it was clear — kept clear.”
Sempronius nodded his head.
“In the early morning we reached an open pool and a hidden village in a clearing. There were granaries by the waterside. The search was ended. I left a strong guard under the Centurion.” He laid some emphasis upon the non-commissioned officer. “Yes, I left the Centurion in command. I should have been helpless without the Centurion.”
“Say it again, Attilius,” said the Procurator, with half a smile. “The Centurion! Clearly the word appeals to you. The Centurion, Attilius, the Centurion!”
There had been a great tussle over the Centurion. Attilius, when receiving his orders, had insisted upon a Centurion. But no Legate would lend him one. Even the Procurator, still swayed by the traditions of the Legion, had looked upon the request as little less than a sacrilege.
“A Centurion!” he had cried, refusing to believe his ears. “What next will this young man demand? Tribunes, to be sure, Attilius! They are my maids of all work. Take your choice! As many as you wish. Tribunes are worth just twopence the big bunch. But a real live Centurion! Listen to him, Lucetius!”
The young man, however, politely and respectfully repeated his request and was, indeed, so sunk in shamelessness that he named the particular Centurion he needed, his own primus pilus from the Double Cohort. Sempronius threw up his hands.
“He asks for a donkey on the tiles, this incredible young man!” — and much more to the same effect. But Attilius had got his Centurion in the end, and, as he was now careful to point out, success was the result.
“It is well,” said the Procurator. “I will give orders about that wheat. I owe you my thanks. I pay some trifle of my debt with good news.” He rose and sat upon a couch. Old Aemihus Scaurus is, I think, dead?
“Yes. He’ll bellow no
more in the big house on the Quirinal,” said Attilius with a smile.
“And the nine years in Britain have restored your fortune?”
“Yes.”
“That is good. For the Sixth and Eighth legions are ordered home.”
At once Sempronius was surprised. He had expected at least a flash of joy in the young man’s eyes, perhaps some startled exclamation of delight. All that he saw, however, was a look of doubt. Attilius was troubled.
“You regret your return?” Sempronius asked.
“No,” Attilius answered quickly, a little too quickly. The blood mounted over his neck and face to his forehead. Sempronius Proculeius was a trifle annoyed. He had always prided himself upon knowing the secret affairs of his officers and found an impish enjoyment in startling them with his knowledge. Here he was baffled. Attilius should have been radiant; whereas he was shifting uncomfortably from one foot to another like a schoolboy who hadn’t learnt his lesson. Sempronius began to angle.
“I wonder what you will do when you are home!”
“I too,” said Attilius.
“Calpurnius Scapula commands a Legion at Lambaesis.
“He was born for authority.” Attilius raised his eyes from the ground. “You hear more news of Rome than I.”
“No doubt,” the Procurator answered.
“Have you ever had word of my friend, Clodius Laeta?”
Sempronius shook his head. “Never, Attilius,” he answered gently. “There can have been no news of Clodius Laeta these many years. You are so troubled on his account?”
“No.” Attilius did not deny that he was troubled. But Clodius Laeta was not to blame for it. So much he made clear. “I should dearly have liked to find him again. That is all.”
“You’ll find many changes, Attilius.”
Hadrian, “the Imperial Tramp,” had tramped off to the Gods. A philosopher ruled in his place. There was less magnificence, a sedater atmosphere. People were not afraid. On the other hand they were dissatisfied.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 617