# Adventure (magazine)/Volume 61/Number 1/The Last Legion

“A word from Arthur D. Howden Smith concerning his “Gray Maiden” story in this issue” ... in the Talk page
The Last Legion
~and Gray Maiden, the Sword
By Arthur D. Howden Smith
NOTE—Each story in this series is built around a group of characters, but the real hero—or heroine—is the sword, Gray Maiden, which is traced from its forging through the different hands that wielded it down to modern times. Made for the greatest of the Pharaohs, it saw the rise of Greece and the crowning of Alexander’s fortunes; it was witness to the majesty and the decay of Rome; it held back the rush of Islam; it knew the birth-pangs of the New World and the last agonies of the Old. There are wide gaps in its history: For generations it was hidden in tomb or burial mound or hung in grim quietude upon the walls of armories. Yet often when men turned to war eager hands reached out for it and swung its shining blade in the van of battle. As some medieval owner scratched in the hard gray steel:
Gray Maide men hail Mee Deathe doth Notte fail Mee.
TO THE Senator Anicius Manlius Severinus Boetius, Consular, at Rome, from G. Flavius Domitianus, Count of the Bononian Shore, these, by favor of the holy Modius:
It is a voice from the outer darkness which speaks to you by this pen, O Anicius. One encompassed by the myriads of the Barbarians, his humble talents devoted to the crude policies of a savage king, may well hesitate to address you who have sat in the cerule chair and borne the highest dignity beneath the purple. Yet I am emboldened by two facts: One is the memories, always treasured, of those early days on the slopes of the Pincian when we stole moments from the “Lives of the Saints” to sample the splendors of the Mantuan; the other, my recollection of your curiosity concerning all events applying to the philosophy of life.
You have been kind enough to express gratitude for my comments on the Christianizing of my Frankish employers—no, I will put pride aside, be honest and call them masters—and so it may be that you will discover profit in this narrative of an experience which has racked my soul to its foundations and stirred me to doubt the very basis of the faith the priests would bid us believe shall mold the world anew.
I know that you will not judge me hastily, friend of my youth, who have refused to forget our pagan forefathers simply because they were pagan. Must Cicero and Lucretius be condemned to hellfire for the crime of having lived before the revelation of Christ? No, no! Or if it be so, then I'll choose to go with them. Rather the old gods of our ancestors, my Anicius, than a Christian God of injustice. And who shall say that Rome has had justice of Christ? Calamity after calamity, until a Barbarian sits in the palace of the Cæsars and the Conscript Fathers are become the puppets of his will! We are scourged for the sins of our ancestors, say the priests. O God of any faith, what mockery! What virtues do these Barbarian converts possess that our forefathers lacked? What claim upon divine assistance have the heathen Saxons who ravage today what once was Roman—and Christian—Britain? And this brings me belatedly to the subject of my tale, a truly marvelous tale, my Anicius, stimulating to Roman pride, crying aloud for Roman pity. But be yourself the judge. I will tell it as it happened, thus:
TWO days since the optio commanding the Julius Tower by the quay summoned me by messenger, saying a ship of the Sea-Wolves was heading into port. It is seldom, indeed, that any ship puts into Bononia, which, in former times, even after it had lost the name of Gesoriacum, was thronged with traders, but is now, as it were, a castra mare on the far edge of the world. Here even the Barbarians stay their feet, for beyond is only the restless desert of the Western Ocean. But at intervals these Sea-Wolves, wildest of all the Barbarians, appear along the neighboring shores and inspire with terror the ruthless Franks, who, to say truth, are as agitated by such visitations as are your peasants of Latium or Etruria by the raids of the Lombards against whom the Goths protect them. My task, as you know, is to safeguard this coast, and to conciliate my pride the Franks permit me to retain the old title which was established when the evacuation of Britain did away with the Count of the Saxon Shore, who had been charged with the prevention of piracy. Yes, and not alone do they yield me my traditional office, but the troops under my command, in name at least, are the same bodies that Honorius stationed here, if we are to credit the Notitia of his reign, in which are inscribed the garrisons of the several frontiers.
So I ordered out the Ninth Alan Cohort, in which, I do assure you, O Anicius, there are no less than a score and a half of Alans and two Roman centurions, not to speak of one who is Roman on the mother's side, and the rank and file stout Franks, who worship God very fervently because King Clovis bade them to. And with my Alans I marched down to the quay to receive the Sea-Wolves as became them.
But imagine my amazement when these strangers, instead of showering us with arrows from a distance and saluting us with indecent cries and gestures, rowed into the port very awkwardly and in silence, quite as if their doing so was a natural thing to be expected. I was so dumbfounded that they were within javelin-throw and inside the range of the tower catapult before I took thought to my responsibility and hailed them to yield to us. I did not think it likely they would understand me, so in the same breath I shouted to my archers to bend their bows and had the catapult discharged.
Of course the stone flew over their heads, but it made a mighty splash which rocked their vessel near to swamping, whereupon arose one among them dressed like my self and replied to me in our Latin tongue! Yes, as good Latin as you shall hear any day in the Forum, albeit with something of a throaty accent and a slurring of final syllables.
“Are you Barbarians here?” he hailed. “Is this the way to receive a Roman officer in a Roman port?”
“Roman officer!” I gasped. “Who ever heard of a Roman officer in a longship of the Sea-Wolves?”
He threw back his ragged old brown cloak very haughtily and he might have been Cæsar when he answered—
“I asked a question.”
“So you did,” I agreed sarcastically. “And I will answer it. I am Domitianus, Count of the Bononian Shore. You are within my jurisdiction, and all men, save King Clovis himself, must hold obedience to me therein. Now do you answer me!”
But he shook his head, puzzled.
“King Clovis—who is he?”
I gaped at him.
“Whence do you come who can ask such a question?” I stammered. “Who are you?”
He signed to his men to pull up by the quay, and they managed it with the strong awkwardness I had observed before. As they drew alongside I saw, too, that they were a mixed lot: Some of them dressed like my own legionaries in tattered leather jerkins and rusty loricæ, others hairy and clad in skins and bright-colored woolen cloths. The armored men had the look of drilled troops; the hairy fellows were as wild a set of untamed Barbarians as you can find anywhere north of Gaul. Their leader stepped ashore without a word from me, and not until then did he answer my last questions.
“I am Quintus Arrius Mabonius, Senator of Viroconion and Legate of the Sixth Legion, Victrix.”
He said it, my Anicius, as you might say, “At what hour do we dine?” I stared at him a long time. It was one of my two Roman centurions who replied to him.
“But—but there is no Sixth Legion!”
“Why, no,” I assented. “The Sixth was struck off ages ago. It is not on the rolls. It was destroyed—that is, it disappeared nigh a century of years past.”
The stranger smiled quietly. He was a man of middle height, a true Roman in face and build, stocky, with a huge chest and broad shoulders, and a nose and chin like those on the busts of the old Cæsars in the Capitol. He was young, compared to us; but his hair was flecked with gray, and there were deep lines in his cheeks, which were decently shaven. His armor was clean and polished, but he had no sword, only a light staff in his hand. I know men, O Anicius, and this man, I perceived at once, was one to be depended on. So much, to be sure, any one must have seen from the way his crew kept their eyes on his face, and jumped to obey bis slightest gesture. Yes, a soldier.
“The Sixth may not be on your rolls,” he said, “yet I can assure you it—” a spasm wrenched his features—“it is here.”
He waved one hand toward the longship nuzzling the shattered platform of the quay—these Franks keep nothing in repair; a stone the frost works loose is always left to fall.
“For all that century of years,” he went on, “it fought honorably to maintain the repute it brought into Britain. Victorious it was called, and Victorious it died—except the few of us you see here. Viroconion was its tomb.”
“Where is this Viroconion?” I asked, striving to collect my wits.
Now, at mention of this name one of the crew of the longship leaped ashore beside his leader and burst into a torrent of words in a tongue which sounded to me like rain spitting in the chimney, strutting back and forth and waving his arms in the fashion of a third-rate actor. He was an absurd person, short in stature, bandy-legged, with a large head and a tangled red beard and long tangled red hair.
“Is this man crazed with suffering?” I appealed to Mabonius.
He smiled again.
“Oh, no, he is a poet. That is a song he has made: 'The Death-Song of the White Town in the Valley.' It is the song of the end of Viroconion, the fairest of the cities of Britain.”
“Of Britain!” I gasped.
But he had not heeded me. Turning to the bandy-legged man, he spoke to him gently, touched him on the arm, and the flow of words was stopped. The poet bowed his head and dropped back into the longship.
“Llywarch Hen mourns the death of his master, Prince Kyndylan,” continued Mabonius. “To him it is not so much the end of the White Town, but the passing of Kyndylan the Fair, which must be sung.” His lips crinkled in a satirical grimace. “But his poet's mind can not resist the overwhelming tragedy of the death of a town. A city is greater than a man, even though that man be a prince.”
I discovered my wits at last.
“These are strange words that you speak,” I said sternly. “First, it is of a legion long forgotten—which you say is newly destroyed. Then it is of the end of a city. Next, it is of a prince's death. You have much to render account for. You claim to be a Roman?”
He favored me a second time with his satirical grimace.
“All free-born men in the Empire are citizens of Rome,” he answered, “but I am descended from a family which earned the privilege under the Republic!”
“There are older families,” I retorted, no less sternly, “and the title is not so honorable as it once was.”
His hand went to where his sword-hilt should have been.
“No true Roman would say that,” he said.
“There is no such thing as a true Roman,” I replied. “Whence do you come, stranger from the sea, that you should be as ignorant of the world as though you were not of it?”
There came upon his face a smile most piteously mournful.
“Count of the Bononian Shore, I begin to believe that Britain must be a different world,” he said.
“Do you mean to claim that you are come hither from Britain?” I exclaimed.
“I do,” he declared proudly. “I am a Roman Briton, a Senator of Viroconion—or of what was Viroconion, for all is gone. Cenric the West Saxon has leveled the walls, the house-roofs gap to the sky, the churches are dens for the wolf. Yes, it is as Llywarch Hen has sung: 'Its halls are without life, without fire, without song.'”
“But man, you speak madness,” I cried. “No one has come out of Britain since my grandfather's time! It is a waste inhabited by the Northern pirates. For three generations the Saxons have desolated it.”
“Not all of it,” he corrected me. “I grant you they have ravished the fairest sections of the land, but in the West a line of cities have kept the Roman tradition, and behind them the Silurian Mountains and the rough moors of Damonia have provided shelter for many more folk of the British tribes that never took kindly to Roman ways. We are ill-assorted, we of the cities and the mountains, but we have one interest in common in the enmity of the Saxons and their allies. Until now we have kept our freedom, but the fall of Viroconion means the end of all else—unless the emperor send us aid.”
It was incredible, my Anicius, but I believed him implicitly. And around us had collected a knot of my centurions and optios who could understand Latin, and I saw on their faces the same expression of awe mingled with consternation. Even the Barbarians, Alans and Franks, comprehended the drama of the moment.
“There is no emperor,” I said.
“No emperor?” he repeated.
“Not in the West,” I amended. “In Constantinople, yes. But he has no interest in Britain. All he asks is to be able to hold his own against the Persians and the Scythians.”
“But you? You are Roman! And I see other Roman faces. Your soldiers have Roman discipline, wear Roman dress. This town—” His eye caught the broken coping of the quay and he shook his head slightly—“No, that is not Roman, not what we Romans of Britain call Roman.”
His glance roved to the cohort's standard and his features lighted eagerly.
“But you carry an eagle!” he protested.
“Yes, we carry an eagle,” I assented sadly, “and it is true, O man from another world, that certain of us—myself, a few others—may claim Roman citizenship. It is true that Rome still exists, true that the senate meets in the Capitol, true that each year consuls are elected for the Western as well as the Eastern Empire. It is true that this cohort and others, some, not many, keep up the Roman discipline. It is true that the Frankish king, Clovis, gives employment to many of us Romans who served in Gaul before he conquered it. True, also, that Christ is worshiped in the temples of Gaul as He was before the last emperor died. It is true, as I said, that Rome still exists—but Rome is dead. Theodoric the Goth is King of Italy. Clovis the Frank is King of Gaul. We Romans are their men. They rule, not we.”
“I do not understand,” he said dumbly. “Surely, the legions—”
I cut him short. This was dangerous ground. Already we had discussed openly in presence of the Barbarians subjects best kept for such intimate communications as this, my Anicius.
“There is much you do not understand,” I answered. “Yet if you will be guided by my advice all shall be made plain to you.”
He sensed a hidden meaning in my interruption and his glance shifted keenly from my face to the others surrounding us, a couple of dark, thick-browed Romans, the rest towering, bearded Barbarians.
“You are wise,” he conceded. “This place is public for discussion. If my men might have food and wine—”
“They shall have full rations,” I promised. “And if you will be my guest I will endeavor to prove that however unworthy may be our station we Romans are still capable of appreciating the honor of meeting a brave man, especially when he happens to be a Roman.”
He bowed as became a senator, draping his cloak togawise across his armor.
“I am honored, Count of the Bononian Shore. I had been cast down, but you—”
“There is no reason for you to be aught but cast down,” I interposed hastily. “Your plight is a disgrace to all Romans, and there is little enough I can do for you. But come.”
We posted sentries on the quay to keep the rabble from the longship, and after I had given orders for food to be provided the Britons and Mabonius had instructed them briefly, he rode with me up to my quarters in the Prætorium above the town. We said little on the way. My own thoughts were bitter, and my companion seemed to be occupied in studying the sights of the town. I have described it all to you before, O Anicius, and you tell me it is much like your Rome of today: grass sprouting betwixt the paving for lack of cart-wheels, two people where once were three, priests, priests, priests, monks, monks, monks, our Gauls—or your Romans—scurrying meekly about such business as fortune affords them, and the Barbarians in the background, sucking up the taxes. Somewhat of this I explained to Mabonius and he heard me, tight-lipped.
MAP
“I begin to understand,” he said as we dismounted in the court of the Prætorium. “Your Franks are in some ways the same as our Saxons. Both are Barbarians. But there is this difference—and it is a wide one: your Franks are Christians like the rest of you. They ask only the right to rule and deal gently with Gaul and Roman—”
“Oh, they are kind masters!” I admitted. “Kinder than we deserve, if the truth be known. But what irks, and must ever irk, is that they are masters, in our place.”
There was a guard of Gaulish cavalry, cataphracti, the best alæ, in my command, and they turned out for me as I rode into the Prætorium—gigantic mailed riders on tall mailed horses, a spectacle to move a soldier's heart. I glimpsed the flash in the Britain's eye and asked him if he would inspect the guard.
“Gladly,” he said, then hesitated. “But no, I have no sword.”
“You do not require a sword,” I replied. But he would not cross the courtyard with me.
“I can not inspect soldiers,” he insisted, “for I sold my sword. It is not fitting that your men should be paraded for me.”
“By all the Saints, you are a queer fellow!” I protested. “And they are paraded for me, not for you. But I am more interested in hearing your story than in arguing with you. We will dismiss the guard, if you please, and try a skin of Coan wine.”
IT WAS that you sent me, O Anicius, beautiful, vibrant stuff, vastly different from the muddy juice they call wine in Gaul. With a drink or two of it under my belt I feel myself expanding, gliding back across the years. I hear the old legions stamping by, the whine of the catapults at Jerusalem, the thundering hoofs across the Catalaunian Plain the day Attila's Huns were hammered to defeat! Mars knows, it is no Christian feeling! And much the same was the influence it exerted on this waif from another world, this chip from the rim of the whirlpool where Roman and Barbarian, Christian and heathen, struggle for God knows what.
Mabonius quaffed his goblet with an echo of my sigh of satisfaction.
“This is what Horace sang of, eh? I turn to him when my ears grow weary of the mouthings and posturings of Llywarch Hen. But I suppose all poets are the same if you must meet them in the flesh. Q. Flaccus drank beyond his due, you know.”
“What do you know of Horace?” I queried, amused.
He quoted promptly:
“What have the fatal years not brought of ill?
Our fathers' age, as their sires' not so good,
Bred us ev'n worse than they; a brood
We'll leave that's viler still.”
“Is that apt to the times? By what you say, it should be. St. Alban be my witness, it's the pith and whole of Britain's plight!”
I ignored the pathos of his last remark in my stimulated astonishment at the sonorous ease with which he had fitted in that quotation—you remember it, my Anicius? The Sixth Ode of the Third Book, “Of Rome's Degeneracy.” Five hundred years ago Horace wrote it to chide a Rome that was just embarking upon her last climb to greatness. And today it is more apposite than ever! After all, what is Time?
“But where do you learn Horace in Britain—you, who, by your own story, must battle with the heathen?”
“We are not savages,” he returned, with a hint of mockery. “At Corinium there is a good Academy—and some of the priests refuse to despise true learning. But I forgot, I doubt if Corinium lasts much longer, and in any case, there will be no pupils for the Academy. Yes, the day draws near when the Britons must subsist upon the poetry and learning of Llywarch Hen and his kind. We have shot our bolt. And if you can give me no hope of aid from Rome, why, I am a fool for my pains, and might better have used the chance I bought to escape to Deva or Isca Silurum. They will need soldiers in either place. Here you have plenty—of a sort.”
“They are not Roman soldiers, remember that,” I answered without losing my temper. “Rome is a name, nothing more. Roman citizenship is an honor so empty the Barbarians do not envy it.”
He fixed me with glowing eyes. They were not Roman eyes. Somewhere in his past there must have been a fair Barbarian mother, for they shone brightly blue against the tanned swarthiness of his skin.
“Yet you say there is an emperor in Constantinople? And the senate still meets—and each year you have a new consul?”
“For the emperor in Constantinople,” I replied, shrugging my shoulders, “take my advice and forget him. He pretends, and Theodoric in Rome, and Clovis here in Gaul, permit him to pretend—yes, pretend with him—that he is Roman Emperor of the world. There is naught said of it, no homage asked or given. It is simply that some of the old forms are kept up, because the Barbarians like them. Rome dies, but there is a majesty in the name. It is like a great man's statue, cold to the touch, warm to the imagination. Some day the Barbarians will weary of Roman forms and ceremonies or perhaps other Barbarians will come in and conquer the Goths and the Franks as they conquered us and then the last vestige of Rome will vanish. It may be the Capitol will be torn stone from stone, and Rome become like that city—what was it you called it?—the White City—”
“Viroconion!”
The name was music on his lips.
“Ah, no! God in heaven, no! You do not realize what you say. You have not seen all that your fathers had labored for for four hundred years hacked and battered into shapeless ruin by Barbarians beside whom these Franks of yours are cultured philosophers. What have you here in Gaul suffered compared to us? Nothing! With us it is freedom or slavery, victory or extirpation. With you it is no more than new masters—rude, perhaps, but kindly—and Christians who reverence the Blessed Jesus. I tell you there is no comparison. You may bemoan a loss in trade—hurt pride that the Roman name has only the echo of its former potence. But we—we have seen two-thirds of our land, our finest cities, harried and wrecked, so that where a hundred families might find food the Saxons themselves can not live without stealing from our settlements or harrying the mainland.”
I could not gainsay the man, my Anicius. Indeed, he inspired me with a humbleness I am unaccustomed to.
“Tell me,” I asked, “how it is that Britain is so shut off from intercourse? It has been a common saying for two men's lives that it was become no more than the haunt of the Saxon pirates.”
“You have answered your own question, Count of the Bononian Shore,” he said, with his wry smile. “We have been driven off the sea and our harbors sealed by the swarms of pirate craft. Hemmed in ashore by the waves of Barbarians that have pushed us farther and farther into the West, we have had no opportunity to pass oversea. Twice in my day it was tried, but each time the men who attempted it were captured by the pirates who blockade the coasts.”
“And this side of the water there has been no fleet to check them in so long a time that I doubt if there are shipwrights living who could contrive the framework of a trireme!” I growled.
“The Barbarians!” exclaimed Mabonius. “The world goes to pieces because of them. I was taught in school that they poured out of some unknown reservoir of men in the dim recesses of the East, one tribe jostling the other, fighting and brawling their way toward a more comfortable homeland.”
“You were taught correctly,” I assented sourly. “It is so. I think it will always be so. In the long run, no doubt, they will possess the earth. But here is no occasion to discuss philosophy, my friend—if I may call you so? Thanks, you are a man I can talk frankly to. No, I must hear from you some explanation of the extraordinary claim you make. You are Legate, you said, of the Sixth Legion, and—”
“And that is the truth,” he cut me off stiffly.
“But think, man! The Sixth, Victrix!”
I reached over and snapped open the chest in which I keep my scrolls of records and accounts, among others a fair copy of that Notitia, which some emperor—I fancy Honorius—had prepared in imitation of the Antonines to show the distribution of the Empire's defenses. And I unrolled it to the sheet which noted the defenses of Britain.
“See,” I urged him. “This list is a century old. It concerns the last days of the Empire, as an Empire. And here you have the Sixth, Victrix—at Eburacum and on the Wall.”
“Precisely,” replied Mabonius smoothly. “At Eburacum and on the Wall. Mostly, it was on the Wall. The Sixth and a few cohorts of auxiliaries held the Wall long enough to give our people in the south a chance to stand off the Saxons before the Picts broke through from the north, and made things worse. That was in my great-grandfather's time.”
“But to get back to the Sixth,” I reminded him. “You will note, it is shown here. And that is its last showing in the records. It disappears.”
“What of the other legions that were then in Britain?” he asked.
“The Second (Augusta) was brought back to Gaul, and I think it broke up in one of the civil wars, oh, a generation past. The Twentieth (Valeria Victrix) was brought over by Stilicho more than a hundred years ago to help against Alaric. Old men have told me it was cut to pieces in some battle in Pannonia. Most of the old legions are gone. You'll find one here and there, generally in the east, but it's not usual. Most of the old numeri and auxiliary cohorts and alæ have disappeared, too. Everything is different. The world is different—so why should soldiers expect that there should be no change in an army, which really is no longer an army but a band of Barbarian mercenaries?”
He let me rant to a finish.
“You are bitter,” he said quietly. “It will be easier, then, for you to appreciate my bitterness. The Sixth was not destroyed. It was used up over and over again, its ranks filled, first, with our North Britains, afterward with men of every tribe and city of those that professed to follow Roman ways. My grandfather became a tribune in it; my father was legate, appointed by the senates of the Border Cities, which bore the brunt of its upkeep; I was appointed to succeed him after he died.”
His armor clashed as he straightened involuntarily.
“It was not such a legion as it was when it came to Britain. The year the storm broke, I have been told it numbered scarce a thousand men—”
“All the legions were under-strength in those days,” I struck in. “It was one of Constantine's cursed policies.”
“That I do not know,” replied Mabonius, “but I do know that we filled its ranks in the beginning to five thousand men, and in my time of command it could muster three thousand with the Eagles. Men, mind you! Soldiers! As good heavy infantry as ever stepped. Not mountaineers like Llywarch Hen and his friends. They are good light troops, unsteady under pressure, but savage fighters, stout bowmen and fleet of foot But when it came to the shock, to meeting the heathens' Shield-Wall, my legionaries and the cataphracti of the Icenian Horse always bore the brunt. To the very last! The very last! They—they are under the stones of Viroconion. Cenric won no slaves of us. He admitted it to me. Not a bad man, that heathen, a fighter. He offered to adopt me, but I—I preferred to buy my liberty after I learned his ambition, thinking that I might gain succor for our folk from Rome.”
I poured more wine. A man always talks better with a wet tongue.
“Tell me,” I invited him. “I am interested in your position, Briton. I have told you, and I tell you again, that I doubt if I can serve you at all—or any other man! But tell me, and if I can see my way to further your mission be sure I will. Only—tell all, as one soldier tells another. Otherwise, I can not judge fairly of the matter.”
“You mean: tell the truth,” he retorted in his quiet way, almost jeering. “But what is truth to one man is a lie to another. If you find cause to doubt anything I say, ask me more of it. I will explain. For I am honest with you in that I must win help for our people in Britain. I must! Else the end is in view. And I can not believe that Rome will let us come to that. When the Emperor Anthemius was beset by the Barbarians, long after Honorius had bidden us shift for ourselves, we sent twelve thousand men to help him, two strong legions, although we could ill spare them. Give us those twelve thousand back, and we will fling the Barbarians into the sea!”
He drained his replenished cup.
“Well, that is boasting, and pushes me nowhere. I will tell my story.”
“WAIT,” I said. “Before you begin your story instruct me further how matters stand in Britain. What is the division betwixt you and the Barbarians?”
“A soldier's question,” he approved, and dipped a finger in the wine-lees. “Here is the island's shape. It is much longer than it is wide, you see, and broadest in the south. The eastern and southern parts, where were our richest cities, facing toward Gaul and the Saxon Shore, are low-lying and fertile. Here it is that the Saxons, and other Barbarians, who sometimes fight against them and sometimes assist them, have settled. The midlands are forests and fens. Today they are debatable ground, the best barrier we have against the Barbarians, who must travel their wastes to reach our borders.
“We who hold true to Rome are forced back into this block of mountainous country, which is thrust out into the sea betwixt Britain and Ireland—”
“And what of Ireland?” I asked. “A monk I met lately told me it was the richest land in the world.”
Mabonius laughed shortly.
“He was Irish? He would. It is a land of strong men and lovely dark women and the best breed of horses I know; but except for piety it has no riches—nor ever did. It is so poor that the heathen avoid it, for all it affords them is hard blows. Yet I would not seem to decry it unduly, for the Irish send us many fine soldiers and horses which are better mounts for the cataphracti than the ponies of our hill country, although in recent years the fleets of the Barbarians have interfered to curtail the traffic to and fro.
“They are akin, the Irish, to Llywarch Hen's folk, the true Britons, and much like them, quarrelsome and forever falling apart. That is the reason why the Barbarians have had the better of us. If it were not for the cities all Britain would have been conquered long ago. It is we Romans—” his shoulders squared, his chin lifted aggressively—“who make resistance possible, for we keep up the Roman walls and Roman discipline.
“You see here in this map I have made how a river—it is called Sabrina—runs across more than half of the eastern face of our mountainous country. But south of it, across its estuary, is the land of Damnonia, not so mountainous, but very rugged, and the dwellers therein are little squat men, who fight cleverly from ambush. When they are not fighting they are mining tin. There are no cities worth mention in Damnonia, only the bare moors and the little miners who never strike a foe, except from cover. But alone with us of the Border Cities and the Britons of the Silurian mountains they have kept free of the Barbarian yoke.”
“What of these Border Cities?” I asked.
“I was coming to them. First, below Sabrina, is Aquæ Sulis, which once was famous through the Empire for its baths. Ah, I see you have heard of it! Great woods interpose betwixt it and the south coasts, where the Saxons are established. These, its walls and the valor of our legionaries have maintained it, but it must fall very soon, for it is isolated from the other cities of the border and is not sufficiently close to Damnonia to draw strength from the little Folk of the Tin. Beyond it, and west of Sabrina, lies Isca Silurum, which in the beginning was called Castra Legionum, be cause it was the fortress of the Second Legion in the old days when the mountain Brit ons were as untamed as the Saxons who now oppress them. It is the mightiest for tress in Britain. When it falls, Rome has fallen.”
“Rome has fallen,” I gibed.
His head snapped back.
“Not in Britain,” he retorted. “So long as a Roman city is free the Roman spirit shall endure.”
“I am well rebuked,” I acknowledged. “Proceed—last of the Romans!”
He signed himself with the Cross.
“The Blessed Virgin avert so dire a consequence! Let me but have twelve thousand men, trained troops, heavy infantry and cataphracti, and we will clear Britain of the Barbarians—and make a new Rome.”
“Constantine made a new Rome—in the East,” I returned. “When he did that he threw the West away.”
“It is in the West that we hold out,” exclaimed Mabonius. “In the westernmost corner of the westernmost Roman land. Perhaps that is a symbol, Count of the Bononian Shore.”
“We talk of military matters, not of symbols,” I reminded him.
For, indeed, my Anicius, he made me ashamed, with his steadfastness of belief. What is life without faith? Yet how regain a faith which has fled? Tell me, have I put my finger on the canker-worm which rotted the fiber of Rome's greatness? I wonder!
“True,” he agreed. “But the symbols Rome left us are the backbone of our defense, for they remind us daily of the heritage of our fathers.”
“We talk a different language here,” I said roughly. “Get on with your cities. Isca Silurum was the last. And the next?”
He sighed.
“Yes, yes, Rome is not the same,” he admitted sadly. “A broken coping to the quay, and a Roman officer who no longer believes in Roman destiny!”
MAP
“Now you talk sense,” I growled. “Rome is no more.”
For a while he said nothing, dabbling his finger in the wine spilt on the table.
“When I found the sword I thought it was a sign from God,” he muttered finally. “My men all said it would bring a happy turn to our fortune. And but for it I should not be here.”
“What sword is this?” I asked him. “Of what do you speak?”
Mabonius roused himself.
“The sword? The sword is my story. But let me finish what I began. I told you of Isca Silurum. Well, we cross Sabrina again and come to Corinium, and north a ways, also on the east bank, lies Glevum They are stately cities, as Roman as Rome, our fathers claimed. After Glevum the country northward becomes marshy along Sabrina's course, and there are no more cities on the Border until you reach Viroconion. But I forget—” his face clouded—“Viroconion is a ruin. But while it stood it was the middle bulwark of the Border, like the handle of a door. Southward, Isca Silurum was one hinge; northward, Deva was the other.”
“And those are all your cities?”
“All those on the Border. And they are the fairest we have left. Deva, like Isca Silurum, was a legionary fortress. The Fourteenth, Gemina Martia, built it. Only Isca is stronger today. As for those beyond the Border, from Regnum on the south coast to Eburacum under the shadow of the Wall, they are heaps of stone.”
“This Wall,” I said. “Is it—”
He shuddered.
“I saw it once. We had driven a foray far north to teach the Barbarians a lesson; if you strike at them vigorously they respect you the more. And one day at sunset we rode out of a forest on to a bare hillside, and across a valley was a line of towers that rose and dipped, lifted and sank, with a gray thread of wall between, from horizon's end to horizon's end. And nowhere a sign of fife, not so much as a plume of smoke! Blessed Saints, what desolation! We camped by one of the mile-castles that night and I poked this out of a heap of rubbish in the guard-room.” He pointed to his belt-buckle of tarnished silver, with the worn inscription: “Leg VI.”
“My own legion, you see. The castle was in astonishingly good condition. Oh, the ramp was overgrown with lichen, and bushes and even small trees sprouted in the para pets; but it was defensible as it stood. So was most of the wall. My men found a shal low breach a mile or two east, but we could have repaired it in a day. On one tower was the wreckage of a catapult, the long casting-arm propped above the battlements. All the Wall lacked, all it ever lacked, was men to hold it. It—it made us very sad, discouraged. We lost interest in our foray, after that. The work seemed futile. Do you understand? Here was the wall which Hadrian had built for all time, and it had endured for all time; but as Horace said in that verse I quoted you, our fathers had bred a vile brood of sons. Yes, Rome's sons had faded her—not the brick and stone she had shaped for her purpose.”
“I understand,” I assured him. “You are not the first to nourish that thought.”
He stared at me, half-disapproving.
“But it does not stir you to resentment!”
“Resentment!” I jeered. “What could I accomplish by it? What have you accomplished by it?”
“I don't, know,” he acknowledged. “It is in God's providence. When I had the sword—”
“God's providence! Briton, you talk like a priest. And what properties had this sword, which, as I remember, you said you sold? Why did you sell it, if it was so valuable?”
He smiled gently, seeming to penetrate the pettiness of my spleen.
“I sold it to come hither,” he answered. “If my coming secures help for my people the sword will have saved Britain. Also, it bought—albeit without pledge—a truce for the balance of the year, seeing that Viroconion cost Cenric so many lives that he can not afford to resume the war until he has received reinforcements of Barbarians from oversea.”
“A good price,” I admitted. “If there was an emperor to turn the advantage to account for you. But we are stumbling in the dark. Go on with your story.”
His smile became melancholy.
“You give me scant encouragement. Well, for that you are not to blame. And perhaps the sword has achieved all it can for us. Surely, if it fights for Cenric as it fought for me— But I talk at random. We will go back to the beginning of things.
“IN THE spring word came to us from the Fen Folk, who dwell in the wood lands betwixt us and the Saxons, that Cenric would launch a great stroke against the Border Cities. I was at Isca Silurum with the Sixth and several alæ of horse, and we had detachments of light troops out on the roads by which the Barbarians might advance. Usually they come by one of two ways: the old Middle Road up from what was Londinium, direct toward Viro- conion, or the South Road which skirts the vast Wood of Anderida and strikes the Bor der at Glevum, with byways toward Aquæ Sulis and the Damnonian Marches. The Middle Road is the most direct, but they have more chance of surprizing us when they come from the south, so I was not surprized by a message from Aquæ that the Barbarians were reported landing under Vectis.
“There was a Council of Notables, one of of the curses of Britain, legates from the cities and the different kings and princes of the free tribes. The cities were for making me consul, with absolute powers; the kings and princes, as always, were jealous of the cities and one another. The compromise reached was the one employed on every similar occasion: I was named to command the cities' troops and Kyndylan, Prince of the Cornovians, was put forward by the free tribes to command their contingents.
“'There are more of our men than of yours,' they said.
“And that is true.— But all their men are not worth two cohorts of legionaries when the Saxon Shield-Wall must be broken.
“Again, I was for waiting before we went out to meet the Barbarians, so that we might find them on our own ground. But Kyndylan and his friends cried that it would be cowardly to permit the invaders to wreak more harm to the Border. It was strong talk, and they won over with it the legates of Aquæ and Corinium, who were most exposed to attack from the south. And the consequence was that I was directed to march south at once, seek the enemy and pursue them to the sea. I had the Sixth, an ala of the Icenian cataphracti, a few troops of light-horse, Damnonians and Silurians, and Kyndylan's Britons, javelin-men and archers, a valiant, disorderly mob.
“We marched by way of Aquæ Sulis, and took the road east over the hills to Cunetio, and then southeast through very rough country to what used to be Calleva Atrebatum. The walls were standing; most of the houses were intact. A city of ghosts. Just beyond it we encountered our first Barbarians, a shipload or two, perhaps tenscore men, plundering tombs along the wayside. I thought for a while they must be the bait for an ambush, and I sent my mounted men after them to spring whatever trap might have been laid for us. But they were unsupported. We harried them unmercifully and then retired at evening to a ruined villa on the Calleva road, where we might rest behind walls. You can never be too wary of these Barbarians; they are always cunning and resourceful—as I was soon to discover.
“Near this villa was a group of tombs in a little glade, with a battered altar to the genius loci. The Barbarians had tumbled the capstone off one tomb, and I ordered a squad of my legionaries to lift it back into place. After all, it was a Roman grave. An optio called to me that within the stone casing was a leaden coffin, and I walked across the glade to examine it. One of the Barbarians had sunk his ax into the metal, and through the gash there was a gray gleam, almost as if an eye winked up at us in the twilight. I was curious. 'Who lies here?' I inquired. A centurion pointed his vitis at the inscription on the capstone: 'Decius Maximus, Prefect of Britannia Prinia, and the Sword of his Destiny.' 'Ha,' said I, 'let us have a look at this sword of Decius!'
“The legionaries pried off the leaden lid with their broadswords, and there before us lay the dried fabric of a man in extreme old age, white-haired, his armor scrolled and enameled, his helmet the work of a gold smith. In his skeleton-fingers was clutched a long gray sword of a steel I have never seen in any other weapon. I suppose the coffin was sealed against dampness, which would account for the blade's being rustless; but that was not the only peculiar characteristic it had. Its surface was marked with a multitude of convoluted lines and whorls, and graven in the metal were a series of letters and symbols. There was a writing made of little pictures; I do not know what that could be.”
“Egyptian, very likely,” I said.
“Very likely,” he agreed. “I made out also several inscriptions in Greek. One was 'The Gray Maid,' meaning the sword, I think. Others were men's names or initials. There was a Latin inscription: 'The Tribune Valentius Martius won me from the Carthaginian.' And there were still more writings strange to me. Many men had owned this sword. It had personal identity like a man—or a woman. You could feel it, potent, sinister, a disturbing aliveness. 'Take me,' it seemed to say. I reached down and detached it from the dead hand of Decius Maximus and it swung up with a lithe, balanced grace, feather-light, as much a part of me as the arm that wielded it.
“'Blessed Saints, what a sword!' I exclaimed.
“'It is a sign from God,' cried the centurion who had showed me the inscription.
“'Yes, yes,' shouted the soldiers. 'The legate has a sign from God! St. Alban sends him a sword of destiny!'
“It is not my custom to rob the dead, Count Domitianus; but a voice outside myself bade me put to use what Decius Maximus had long since ceased to need. A good sword is a good sword—and it is never well to lose an opportunity to encourage your men. There was a hard campaign in front of us. The sword was a favorable omen.”
“What did your priests say to it?”
He grinned.
“The holy Bishop Rufinus cleansed the steel of any heathen taint after we came to— But I am running too fast. I told the soldiers I would take the sword, and they were closing up the tomb again when there was a thudding of hoofs in the road, and a vexillation of the Batavians galloped up, escorting a centurion from the prefect of the garrison of Aquaæ. He was a stout, puffy fellow and commenced shouting to me while he was dismounting.
“'Cenric is on the Middle Road—Uaxacona has fallen—at the gates of Viroconion—the Border is in flames!'
“He and his Batavians—of course, there wasn't a Batavian in the lot! I told him to be quiet, but the mischief was done. My legionaries went straight to their posts in the ranks, but Kyndylan and his Britons were swirling around us like wild men, yes, like the cattle the Barbarians drive with torches.
“'We are betrayed!'
“'Oh, our wives and children!'
“'Back to the Border!'
“And more nonsense of the same kind.
“Kyndylan struggled through the press to where I stood beside the tomb with the gray sword in my hand. He was a handsome man, with wavy hair, ruddy gold, and eyes as blue as the summer sea, big of his body, too. He wore armor like any legionary, and because of that imagined he had done all that was necessary in order to fight as we did. I could never make him understand that without discipline and training his men were helpless before the Saxon Shield-Wall. They were brave, they had weapons! What more could they want? Armor? It was all right for some, perhaps, but his mountaineers would lose their fleetness of foot if they must carry heavy loricæ and helmets and the legionary's big shield.
“'What are you going to do?' he shouted.
“'Send on some light-horse to make certain the rascals we just cut up do not tarry hereabouts, and with the remainder of the column march back to Glevum.'
“The coolness of my voice disconcerted him, but he pointed to a group of legionaries kindling a fire.
“'Have we time for that?'
“'To eat?' I said. 'The men have marched for five days and some of them have fought hard this afternoon. They will be fitter for food and rest.'
“'You will not march at once?' he shrieked.
“'I will march in the morning.'
“'But the Saxons are on the Border! While we wait the villages will fall to the torch.'
“'Viroconion will hold Cenric from the back-country. We could not stop the Barbarians from burning and slaying in every place if we were camped tonight in the Middle Road. In any case, tired troops must sleep.'
“He threw up his hands in anger.
“'It is easily seen you have no folk outside the walls! You men of the Cities are all alike. You think only of yourselves.'
“'I think only of Britain,' I answered him. 'We shall gain nothing by wearing ourselves out. Let us take what rest we require and march as hard as we can. That way we will make better time than if we fling ourselves at the road.'
“'My people are not under your orders,' he fumed. 'They will march with me tonight.'
“I did not argue with him. It is never worth while to argue with an angry Briton. But I was not so sure as I had been that my new sword was a sign from God or a beneficent omen as I watched Kyndylan's yelping pack huddle off on the back-track, ponies slipping their loads, chiefs shouting and gesticulating, Llywarch Hen and his brother poets chanting in the dust, and the common men eating whatever they could lay their hands on.
“In the morning we followed them, and by noon their stragglers were cumbering our column. We turned northwest by the road which leads to Corinium and Glevum, and so crosses Sabrina for Magna and the other cities in the mountains. At Corinium Kyndylan was awaiting us, blustery and self-confident. He had marched the feet off most of his men, but refused to admit he was wrong. With three thousand of the stoutest he set forth again that night by the river-path, boasting he would be in position to strike the first band of Barbarians he encountered. The local senate begged him to wait for me and the reinforcements I had sent for, but he answered them as he had me. 'You have your walls. My folk must rely upon our bodies to protect them.'
And it was true that every unwalled house on the east bank of Sabrina was given to the torch. The forum of Corinium was surrendered to the refugees. They slept in the churches and the Basilica; and the same conditions prevailed in Glevum and Aquæ Sulis. A stream of fugitives poured west by every road and foot-path. The old men said it was the worst visitation of the heathen since Ratae and Lactodarum and Bannaventa</ref>Norton.</ref> and the other cities of the Midlands were destroyed.
“But I was very hopeful that Cenric had played into our hands. Instead of having to fight him on ground of his choosing, out of touch with our bases, as the Council of Notables had decided we should, his successful ruse to throw our strength to the south actually had placed us in position to give him battle on terms favorable to us. We had only to select the proper moment and then hurl him back into the wilderness he had traversed, with the certainty that victory would enable us to slay or capture three-fourths of his men.
“I had no doubt of the ability of my disciplined men to withstand the Saxon Shield-Wall and to destroy it if they had any assistance from the Britons. The way to meet these Barbarians when they are fighting in a large host is to involve them first with masses of light troops, and after they are completely engaged attack them with heavy infantry, and finally, send a substantial column of cataphracti against them. By such tactics they can be shaken apart, and they are like any troops after that happens: chopping-blocks for an intelligent enemy.
“So I turned hopeful once more. The sword helped me. The slim weight of the blade, its worn hilt so easy in the hand, its balance so deft on the wrist, inspired me with confidence. When I drew it from the sheath a current of energy surged up my arm. The gray steel glinted with a soft fire that seemed to murmur for the coolness of the blood-bath. Even the soldiers noticed it. They called it 'Mabonius's Gray Maiden,' and made up rude barrack sayings about it. And afterward they never hesitated to take the bloodiest path it carved for them. It was as if it had a heart in it, almost, a cruel and lustful heart, but yet a heart. Yes, and a keen brain. Oh, very keen!”
“Did you follow after Kyndylan?” I queried as he paused for a draught of wine.
“That was what the senators in Corinium wanted me to do.
“'If Kyndylan runs into trouble you can support him,' they said, 'and moreover, you will be a shield between the Barbarians and the river villages.'
“'Quite true,' I assented. 'And also, the Barbarians will be sure to hear of my coming. No, Kyndylan must shift for himself a while. Unless he is a very great fool he can not come to serious harm. I intend to attack Cenric at my pleasure, not his.'”
“You ran a certain risk in suffering your forces to be divided,” I pointed out.
“Ah, but they were not my forces! That was the difficulty. And I was determined to come down on the Barbarians before they had any knowledge of my presence so far north. You see, Cenric would naturally expect me to have gone south in response to the lure he had set for that very purpose. Of course, he would likewise expect me to return as soon as I discovered the size of the band that had landed under Vectis; but he could not be sure when that would be.
“I had tidings at Corinium that already he had invested Viroconion, wasting all the land east and north of it toward Deva. His attention would be diverted south by the approach of Kyndylan's Britons, and my plan was to cross Sabrina and march to Viroconion by the mountain road which connects Isca Silurum with Deva. On this road I would be wholly out of reach of the invaders; they could not possibly hear of me, and when I came within striking distance I would send word to Kyndylan, arrange to have him launch his attack upon Cenric and throw in my troops the moment the Barbarians were completely involved with the Britons. As I have said, such tactics are the best to employ against the Saxons.”
“Your numbers were limited, then?” I asked. “You could not procure additional troops?”
“Legionaries? No. There were a few cohorts in garrison in the Border Cities, but the Barbarians move with celerity, and there was always the chance that they might withdraw from before Viroconion. All I could do was to call for another ala of cataphracti from Isca; there were two more at Deva, but Deva covers an immense stretch of the Border, and its garrison requires a considerable force of horse to make it good. Suppose the Barbarians from the North had descended upon us when we were engaged with Cenric? That is always our nightmare, to be attacked upon two fronts. No, no, I dared not take a man from any point except Isca, and there they could spare but the one ala—and that meant stripping the South to the danger-point. I had to rely on what men were with me.”
His face worked.
“If only Kyndylan had acted a man's part, instead of a fretful boy's!”
“Ah, he failed you?”
“I am coming to that. I marched west by way of Glevum, crossed Sabrina, headed on west to Magna, and there turned into the North Road to Deva. At Bravonium, half-way to Viroconion, fugitives from east of the river told us of a victory Kyndylan had won in the swampy lands on that bank. He had trapped a large raiding party and killed them to a man. The Britons were mad with joy.
“'King Arthur is come again!' they shouted. 'Kyndylan is Arthur reborn!'
“One poet in the Forum was singing a genealogical song to prove that Arthur's blood ran in Kyndylan's veins. I daresay it was true.”
“Who is this king?” I inquired curiously.
“The only king the Britons ever had whom you would call a soldier. While he lived he held the heathen at bay. But he did it by our—by Roman—methods. He was more Roman than Briton, at that. My father told me he won his battles with our legionaries and cataphracti. Anyway, the Britons in Bravonium were howling themselves hoarse in the delusion that Kyndylan was Arthur—or Arthur was Kyndylan—whichever you please. And frankly, I was worried. I knew what a hot-head Kyndylan was. Give him a taste of victory and there might be no stopping him. So I did what otherwise I should not have done. I left word for the ala from Isca to push after me, and marched my men on from Bravonium as fast as they could travel. They never complained, and in twelve days of foot-pounding the physicians treated three—for bellyaches!”
“A good record,” I approved.
“I was proud of them. They—they— But you are a soldier. You know. I shall never command such men again. Humph! This wine is good, but it stings the throat Humph! Well, my worst forebodings were realized. We made a night-march, but I called a halt after midnight, for the leader who enters battle with tired men is beaten before the first pilum is cast. We took the road again at dawn, and I sent forward the light-horse to feel the country and establish communication with Kyndylan. At the second military southwest of Viroconion a patrol intercepted us with news that Kyndylan had attacked Cenric and was stiffly engaged on the east bank of Sabrina.
“MY HEART sank, but I ordered the legionaries to accelerate their pace and galloped on myself with the cataphracti. As we rode out of the hills above the ford the spectacle of the battle was unfolded beneath us, the valley slopes green with trees and crops, the city a white oval in the midst of its belt of gardens, and just across the brown stream an immense swirl of men creeping closer and closer toward the South Gate. It was plain the Barbarians had the upper hand. I could trace the great wedge of Saxon shields, the tall figures of thanes and churls looming above the squat Britons. Kyndylan's folk were fighting in the disarray they seemed unable to forget, and a fringe of wounded and poltroons extended as far as the city gate, which stood open.
“A centurion of the Damnonians joined me at the ford. He said that Kyndylan had crossed the river earlier in the morning, intending to fight his way into town. That fox, Cenric, had thrust out a small body to oppose the crossing. The Saxons had been driven back, and with that their entire host had feigned panic. Of course, it was too much for Kyndylan's Britons. They had broken their ranks, and poured after the fleeing invaders, who had promptly re-formed a Shield-Wall and faced around to annihilate the pursuit. A trick older than my sword! While I watched, the defense of the Britons disintegrated, and they fled like so many sheep for the open gate.
“St. Alban assail me if there was ever such foolishness! In the gateway a few of the garrison strove to pull the leaves together and raise the drawbridge over the moat, but the first of Kyndylan's folk to arrive chased them away. And the boiling throng eddied nearer with every slash of the Saxon swords. The Britons were so demoralized that the Saxons abandoned their formation, and the Shield-Wall split up into innumerable companies, each fighting on its own account, but all driving headlong for that open gate beyond which lay the loot of Viroconion.
“Blessed Saviour, it was disaster! Disaster such as I had anticipated for Cenric. Here were my Briton allies destroyed, and Viroconion all but taken. And if Viroconion fell like this, how should we be able to maintain the Border? Which city would fall next? I surveyed the thousands of Barbarians, looked at the few hundred horse I had available and calculated the effectives of the Sixth, tramping through the dust a mile or more in the rear. I might not even wait for the legionaries. If the city was to be saved, it must be saved immediately. Its one hope was the flexible might of my mailed horsemen.
“We trotted down to the river, and were in the ford before we were spied by a handful of loitering Saxon churls who bad been plundering Kyndyan's dead. They screamed a warning, but those open gates were so close now that the main attack of the Barbarians plunged ahead until the blasts of our trumpets gave warning of the charge. Then the rearmost Saxons turned and framed a ragged Shield Wall, while midway of their mass men milled in sudden confusion, some addressing themselves toward the routed Britons, others disposed to confront us. Clean through them we drove, and the troopers of the light horse supported us with a hail of arrows that staggered them further.
“But they were warriors, those Barbarians. Cenric cried on a band to continue for the gate, and hastily rallied the rest to face us when we returned to the charge. It was not so easy the second time. They were ready for us, their dense ranks heedless of the blinding drift of arrows from our bowmen. We struck them as powerfully as before, but the head of our column crumpled up and the Saxons swarmed around us as they had around the Britons, flinging themselves at the cataphracti from every side, hacking with their axes, hewing with their swords, hauling troopers from the saddles with their bare hands. It was my sword put us through. Its gray blade was like a lightning-flash in the summer sky. It seemed to fight of its own accord. I swung it, guarded with it; but its sureness was uncanny, yes, more than human! Thane after thane clashed to earth under its strokes. Cenric, himself, I cut through his shoulder-plates. And so we reeled out of the enemy's ranks, leaving a tenth of our number behind us, and spurred after the Barbarians who as sailed the gate.
“These fellows saw us coming, and decided to go elsewhere. Nor did I seek to stay them. I was content with our achievement and reined in my horse at the edge of the moat.
“'Lift drawbridge, fools!' I hailed the warders. 'Close your gates! Heaven will not always be so kindly to you.'
“'Do you come in, Legate,' they babbled. 'We are weakly-garrisoned. We—'
“'What of Kyndylan?' I called back.
“A howl of rage answered me, and Llywarch Hen—the poet who sought to entertain you on the quay, Count Domitianus—stepped into the gateway.
“'The shapeliest sapling of Powys has been lopped by Saxon axes,' he wailed. 'Eagles of the North have drunk the heart's-blood of him who was the pride of poets, the delight of maidens, the joy of his people, the-'
“'Is he dead?'
“'The choir of Saints stooped to catch his head, and the trees of the mountains soughed in unison when he—'
“'Who commands there?' I demanded.
“A lean, hard-faced officer stepped on the battlements of the gate-tower. I knew him for a tribune of the Third Cohort of Brigantes; his name was Marcus, a capable man.
“'Are you coming with us, Legate?' he asked. 'If not—'
“'Bar your gates,' I returned. 'And stand prepared to unbar them if I decide to come in. All my troops are not up yet. Also, I am not clear in my mind how best to safeguard the city.'
“'You can safeguard it best by joining its garrison,' he replied coolly. 'I haven't five hundred trained men to hold three miles of walls. As for these—' he waved a hand down at the Britons still clustered in the gateway—'they'll do for archers, but I can't put them in a breach.'
“It was a good argument. But I couldn't commit myself while the Sixth was out of touch.
“'Do what you can,' I told him. 'When the legion has come up I will decide. You can manage until then, can't you?'
“'I can manage as long as I can hold the walls,' he growled.
“I had observed a cloud of dust billowing over the road across the ford, and I knew that this must be my legionaries. The Saxons had drawn off east a couple of bow-shots, carrying most of their wounded with them, and were standing in a sullen ring, with shields dressed to meet an attack from any direction. Apparently they were not eager to push matters at the moment. Kyndylan's Britons had taken some toll, and my charges had been expensive. But east among the trees I saw the glimmer of steel, and south and north bodies of armed men were moving toward the slopes above the ford. There were more of the Saxons than I had expected. It was the largest host they had ever mustered against us. We were outnumbered two or three to one—and my men were weary and my horses' heads drooped.
“I thought hard. Should I risk battle in in the open? No, it was too dangerous. Should I withdraw to the west bank of the river and remain in observation? There was much to be said for this. I could menace Cenric's position at will, interfere with his plundering parties. But in the meantime what would happen in Viroconion? The Tribune Marcus had told me all he dared in so public a manner, and that was enough to warn me the people were faint-hearted. For which there was a reason. It had been accepted along the Border that when the Barbarians attacked again their blow would be directed at Aquæ Sulis, which was most exposed. The citizens of Viroconion were doubly dismayed to find that Cenric's rage struck first at them. The defeat of Kyndylan must have shaken their confidence further.
“The city's fall meant the devastation of the Border. My mission was to save it from capture. And whether rightly or wrongly, I decided I might protect it most effectively from within its walls. Perhaps I— But what do you think, Count of the Bononian Shore?”
“I do not know what to think,” I admitted. “I am very glad the decision was not for me to make. Did Cenric oppose your entry?”
“Not he! And it is recollection of his willingness to permit me to reinforce the garrison that prompts my doubts. You can see how his mind worked? Outside the walls he could never be sure what I was doing. Inside, he knew where to account for me every day and all day.”
“A shrewd strategy,” I agreed. “It amounts to this: He was playing for all or nothing, even as you were.”
“You are right,” answered Mabonius. “I have thought that myself. But is it easier to look backward than forward. If only Kyndylan had— But the man is dead, and he could never have been other than he was. It was God's providence, as Bishop Rufinius said when he blessed my sword, lest there be some deviltry connected with it—that was after it had become famous through the city. Yes, God's providence. God's providence that the heathen should possess Britain. But why?”
“I have never found priest to answer me similar questions, my friend,” I said.
“There are some things beyond priestly wisdom,” he remarked shrewdly. “The Bishop said it was a blessing on the city when the Sixth marched in through the South Gate, baggage and gear, undercover of my cataphracti and some tormentæ Marcus erected on the neighboring curtains. But I can not see the blessing for any one of us concerned therein.”
I refilled the wine-cups.
“You strain my curiosity unbearably, man from another world,” I urged. “What happened to your city after you entered?”
“NOTHING for several days,” he replied. “I had sent away the alæ of light horse with instructions to join the cataphracti from Isca, and finally, a week after I entered Viroconion I concerted an enterprise with these troops across the river by means of which we introduced a small train of provisions. And it was good that we did. In another week Cenric had secured additional men, determined his own plans and sealed us effectively wi thin the walls. The days were not far off when we should have to kill the horses of the cataphracti for food.”
“But this magic sword?”
“Ah, but was it magic? That is another question I have never had answered. Sometimes I thought it was. And Cenric did. Surely, it was the most potent defense we had. You see, toward the end of that second week the Barbarians began to attack the walls, not blindly and stupidly, so that we could shoot them down with arrows or crush them by ranks with the catapults, but quick, hard-thrust surprize assaults, two or three at once at widely separated spots. They had no siege-engines, but they rigged rams and worked them very ably, with hurdles protected by green hides to shelter their men. And after another week or so they began night-attacks, which were the most trying of all. We could never tell at which point in a circuit of three miles their ladders would be heard scraping under the battlements, and in consequence we were obliged to keep our men on the walls in full shifts at night as well as by day.
“In the third week, too, they found a weak place in the east wall and set to pounding a breach. The wall was old, and once the rubble core crumbled we were helpless to stay their ravages. All I could do was to build an inner rampart of leveled houses. They made their first assault on the fourth night after the breach was started, and we lost five hundred men between midnight and dawn. Once they were over the inner rampart. And the following afternoon they opened an attack at the South Gate. By dusk they had bridged the moat and burst in the gate and again we stayed them by erection of a makeshift parapet of earth and building-stones.
“From that night on we never knew an hour's peace. Cenric sent to all the Barbarians in Britain, the Jutes and the Angles, who hold the East Coast north of the Saxon territories, and the remnants of the Picts in the far North.
“'This is the time to bury our own quarrels,' he said. 'Help me to take Viroconion, and the Britons' lands will be bare to us. Here is more loot than we have won since our fathers' time.'
“They flocked to him, all save the Picts, who helped him by a diversion such as I had dreaded when I forbore to call for the cataphracti at Deva, drenching the Northern Border in a whirlwind of blood and fire. The Angles and Jutes, however, marched to Viroconion, and in the fourth week of the siege they battered a second breach in the west wall next the river.
“There was rivalry betwixt them and the Saxons as there was betwixt my men and the Britons, yes, and betwixt the citizens and the garrison. Several senators wanted to ask Cenric for terms. All they thought of was saving their fat necks. One I hanged in his toga, and that shut the mouths of the rest. We also had a number of frays, in which men were slain. And I could never depend on the Britons. Oh, they were brave enough, but unstable! One day they would fight like legionaries; and then they would become as frightened as children who have seen a spirit in the dark.
“But my real trouble was with the citizens. You would think that because of their families they would fight more desperately than any of us. But not at all. The town life had softened them, and they were too accustomed to leaving all military duty to the soldiers. With the Barbarians, on the other hand, whatever their differences might be, they all forgot their animosities the instant the war-horns blew. Among them, as you doubtless know, every man is a soldier; his first wealth goes into his arms and armor. It is their pride to be well equipped, as it is their pleasure to fight, and he among them who dies in battle is assured of salvation.
“When our provisions ran short and we had to eat horse-meat there were loud protests because I favored the fighting-men in distributing the rations. I said the strength of the fighting-men must come first, it was all that stood between the women and children and slavery or death. But the citizens charged me with cruelty and a policy of starvation. It was Bishop Rufinius who quelled them. He was a fussy old man I had never had much use for, but he developed new qualities in the siege. The night toward the end of the fifth week when the Barbarians burst simultaneously through the South Gate and the west breach, Rufinius marched in the midst of my cataphracti to stem the assault, miter on head and crozier in hand.
“'Christ with us, my sons,' he said.
“He died in the breach, a Saxon arrow in his eye.
“The Tribune Marcus led the reserves we dispatched to regain the South Gate, and he succeeded after very severe fighting—we had to pay a life for every two we took. I had expelled the Jutes and Angles from the west wall and stood leaning on Gray Maiden, listening to a report by one of his officers when a tumult broke out behind us and Llywarch Hen ran from an alley to say the Saxons had forced the east breach. I mustered my dismounted cataphracti and a cohort of legionaries, and we tramped wearily across the city. St. Alban, how tired we were! In the Via Triumphalis, which runs from the South Gate to the forum, Marcus encountered me.
“'You know the Britons have yielded the east breach?' he asked. 'By St. Paul, Legate, we are at the end of our tether. There is a fresh attack forming against the South Gate.'
“As he spoke, the howling of the Jutes and Angles rose again at the foot of the west breach, and I heard our trumpets calling up the legionaries, whom I had left prostrate among the dead snatching the sleep that was as welcome to them as wine.
“Once more I knew the worst. We could no longer maintain the circuit of the walls.
“'Henceforth we fight from house to house,' I said. 'Pass the word to all your officers. The forum shall be our citadel.'
“'And the citizens?'
“What could I answer him?
“'We have done all we can for them. Now they must care for themselves. Our task is to hold the city so long as we can lift our swords.'
“He nodded grimly.
“'That is common 'sense, Legate,' he agreed. 'If all must die, does it matter that some shall die sooner than others?'
“He sped off, and for a breath I would have recalled him. Who was I to pass sentence on the feeble thousands whose wan faces showed in every door and window? But then I chanced to look down at my sword, its gray glint burning hungrily through the red drops that trickled from hilt to point. It seemed to flash a message back to me: 'Fight! Fight on!' And I remembered that I was not a man, but the custodian of a cause. Yet the shrieks of the women appal my ears as I sit here.
“Heavenly Father, those were bloody days! Have you ever defended a city from house to house, from street to street? Ha, you do not know war! The ruddy sweep of the flames, the hoarse barking of the death-grapple, the sobs of the wounded, the thunder of falling walls, smoke of fire and dust of combat clouding the sun, so that at noon the streets are shadowed.
“Both sides were obsessed by the passion of conflict. For us it was the last stand to keep the Border inviolate. Viroconion became more than a city, more than the scene of our agony. It was Britain—Rome! All that Rome ever meant in that outermost province of the Empire. To the Barbarians the struggle was the final test of their prowess. They ceased to reckon the slaughter in overcoming our defense. Valorous always, they were now spendthrift of life. Any little spot that we clung to was essential to them, no matter what it cost. What if as many died as lived? The plundered countryside provided meat and wine for the living. They had hordes of women which we plucked from the ruins and sold day by day at the highest price we could wring from ready spenders.
“Back, we were driven, back, back. We fought hungry; we fought thirsty; we fought in our sleep. We slew until our arms hung limp, but however exhausted I was, the sword Gray Maiden never failed me. I should have died a score of times but for the strange power which seemed to render it invincible. Again and again I was beaten down, isolated, trapped in a circle of heathen, my helmet knocked off, my shield in splinters—and the sword would find me a path of escape.
“'Follow the Gray Maid!' the legionaries would cry. 'Up, Victrix! The legate's Maid is lustful again!'
“By the tenth day after the Barbarians passed the walls we were hemmed in the block of buildings surrounding the forum, a scant cohort of the legionaries, a troop or so of the cataphracti and a handful of Britons and townsfolk. We barricaded the street entrances with stones and pillars from the arcades, uniting the senate house, the Ba silica, the Church of St. Alban and the Baths into one massive fortress. But we lacked the men to make our resistance effective. Cenric battered a way through the rear wall of St. Alban's, and we retired into the Baths and the Basilica. Marcus and a score or so of the citizens maintained themselves in the senate house for two days more.
“We in the Baths and the Basilica were almost impregnable. The two structures were built in Trajan's time, as solidly as this Prætorium, forming a right angle around two sides of the Forum. Water we had in plenty, but food was limited to a small quantity of grain in the cellars of the Basilica, all that remained of the public stores. Our principal defect was that every time we were attacked, despite our strong walls, we must lose men. And men we could not afford to lose.
“The Barbarians refused to be discouraged. They tried every device that ingenuity could suggest. Day after day they hurled themselves at us, three times forcing an entrance into the double doorway of the Basilica which led to the Law Courts, as eager the third time as the second, although every man who crossed the threshold perished. They brought up a catapult from the walls and endeavored to work it against the Baths, thinking to make a breach; but they had no experience with tormentæ and did us little harm. They tried to burn or smoke us out, heaping our walls with fagots, and under cover of the smoke Cenric headed a fourth attempt on the Basilica. I slashed him in the thigh and should have slain him when he fell if two of his thanes had not offered their bodies to protect him while others drew him clear of the ruck. They lowered men to the roof of the Baths from the porch of St. Alban's, thinking to fight their way down to the street floor; but we accounted for every one who attempted the venture.
“IT WAS the next day that Cenric limped into the midst of the Forum, a thane bearing a peace-shield in front of him.
“'I will speak with the Briton who wields the gray sword,' he called.
“These Barbarians have no cognizance of Rome, Count Domitianus. To them all who dwell in Britain are Britons. So I set him right.
“'I am the Legate Mabonius,' I answered, climbing on to the barricade in the doorway of the Basilica. 'I command the Romans in Viroconion. Who are you who assault the Roman power?'
“'I am Cenric, King of the West Saxons,' he said, grinning. 'And Roman or Briton, you will not be able to withstand me much longer.'
“'You have not succeeded very well against us this far,' I said.
“'Why, that is true,' he admitted candidly. 'We have taken the city, and I suppose we shall kill you if we can not come to terms; but I would never have climbed the walls had I known how many of my people should pass to Woden's halls. You are a good servant of your gods. It is a rich sacrifice you have offered them.'
“'I do not sacrifice to my God, but to my country.'
“It is all one,' he returned impatiently. 'Will you talk terms?'
“'What terms?' I parried.
“'Join me, and fight for me, and I will adopt you for my son,' he proffered.
“'Do I look like a man who would sell himself to his people's enemies?' I demanded.
“He looked abashed.
“'I am a plain-spoken man,' he apologized, 'and I say what is in my mind. I have thought often in the last month that I would be proud to call you son, though my blood is not your blood. You are the only man who can say that he has struck down Cenric twice—and lived.'
“'There are a few more of us who still live,' I answered.
“'You have made a brave fight,' he said, 'but I am willing to offer Woden another tenscore warriors, if I must.'
“'We do not sell cheap,' I taunted him.
“'You do not. You are the best man I have ever crossed blades with. I have not taken one of you alive.'
“'And you shall not!'
“'I am content,' he retorted, 'if you will pay me a price, to let you go free.'
“Now, this was an idea which had never occurred to me. I wondered whether he would require some act of treachery from me.
“'That must depend upon what price you ask,' I replied.
“'I will give you, and all who still live with you, your freedom if you will give me your gray sword,' he said.
“'It is a Roman's sword,' I objected. 'It has been blessed by our priests. What service could it render you?'
“'A good sword will always serve a master who does not stint its thirst,' he answered. 'And I will chance the blessings of your priests. If the old one who died in the west breach had any part in it, Woden could ask no fitter sponsor for a blade.'
“'But what do you mean by freedom?' I asked, bewildered.
“'I mean what I say.' He tugged savagely at his long yellow mustaches. 'You may be my enemy, but say—did you ever know a man of any race who could prove that Cenric the West Saxon had flouted his own word?'
“That was the truth, Count of the Bononian Shore. This Cenric was a man of his word. And his suggestion inspired me with the plan which brought me hither.
“'Will you supply me and my men with a ship and grant us safe conduct oversea to Gaul?' I challenged him.
“He was plainly puzzled.
“'So you will not join your brethren—over there?'
“He waved a hand westward.
“'I will give you the gray sword only on the terms I have named,' I said curtly. 'A sizable ship and safe-conduct to Gaul.'
“'You are not quite the man I deemed you to be,' he growled. 'I expected to meet you some day again—when I carried the gray sword. But you shall have your way. I, myself, will go with you to the sea, and give you one of my own longships. It is a steep price to pay for a sword, but I pay it gladly, for I have seen what the sword can do. And if it can do so much in the hands of a Briton or Roman or whatever you choose to call yourself, what will it do when a Saxon stirs the red broth with it?'”
Mabonius fell silent a moment, my Anicius, and I— But it is needless for me to describe my feelings.
“That is my story,” he added presently, and sighed. “If it has wearied you, I apologize. Has it suggested aught that we can do for Britain's plight?”
I stood up before him.
“There is only one thing I can do for Britain,” I said, “and that is to fight for her.”
“Yourself?” he questioned eagerly. “Do you think many—”
“O, man from another world,” I exclaimed, “how shall I make you comprehend that the world you expected to find here is no more, is dead? Here nobody cares for Britain. Frank and Goth are concerned with their own conquests. The Romans left are degenerates and fractious as your British princes.”
“But you—”
“Yes, I will fight for Britain, because I should like to sample the air of the island that could breed a Roman like you, Mabonius.”
He was silent again for a while. Then he also rose.
“The dusk approaches,” he said. “I must put forth.”
“But whither? So soon? Tarry and—”
He smiled the wry smile I had noticed when he first landed.
“I must not disappoint Cenric,” he replied. “And I must make belated report to the Council of Notables who sent me to fight the Saxons. They will wonder what has become of me. I had thought to return at the head of a Roman army. Well, at least, I shall be able to tell them how the Sixth was shattered in Viroconion.”
“I can not go with you at such short notice,” I protested. “I have responsibilities to fulfil.”
“You must not leave them,” he returned. “It warmed my heart when you offered to go with me, Count Domitianus. It proved to me, despite what you say, that the Roman spirit still smolders outside of Britain's tiny Roman corner. But I would have you remember that we who labor to carry on the tradition of Rome must each bend his back to the particular task God's providence has entrusted to him. You, I doubt not, implant some measure of discipline and courtesy in the administration of the Barbarians in Gaul. I, perhaps, accomplish an inscrutable purpose in striving to preserve our British heritage.”
“We labor in vain!” I cried, my voice ringing with anger.
His face twisted in that smile without mirth.
“Who shall say what is vain?” he asked softly. “Often I have known discouragement. Many times it has seemed impossible to reconcile the evils of life with an All wise Divinity. You have heard me chafe at the failures of my own people and their allies. But as I look back now, as I adjust myself to the disappointment of all my hopes, I know that there is a reason for what we do and suffer. If Rome must die shall she leave no legacy behind her to enrich the earth?”
“She is dead!” I insisted.
“Then let us spread her legacy as broadcast as we may.” His armor rattled in the movements of the salute. “Ave, Cæsar Morituri te salutamus!”
And so he went. An hour later from the quay I saw his galley dwindling in the west.
OH, MY Anicius, tell me, you who are so much wiser, so much better in word and thought and deed than I, tell me: In very truth, have all our Roman centuries been in vain? Must the gathering night of barbarism obscure forever the learning and culture of the ages? What has Christianity done for us that the old gods did not do? Would Christ, if He were here, approve what Clovis and Theodoric do in His name?
Does the world drift or is it spinning toward a definite goal? Is this Rome's end—or is there an hereafter?
Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!
* ↑ Boulogne.
* ↑ Wroxeter.
* ↑ Welsh—really South Welsh.
* ↑ Cornwall.
* ↑ Cirencester.
* ↑ Chester.
* ↑ Caerleon-on-Usk.
* ↑ York.
* ↑ The Severn.
* ↑ Bath.
* ↑ Gloucester.
* ↑ Chichester.
* ↑ London.
* ↑ Isle of Wight.
* ↑ Folly Farm, near Marlborough.
* ↑ Silchester.
* ↑ Oaken Gates.
* ↑ Kenchester.
* ↑ Leicester
* ↑ Towcester.
* ↑ Leintwardine.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1945, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 78 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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