Read Online The Eagle of the Ninth [book I] by Rosemary Sutcliff - Free Book Online Page A

else, ‘I wonder what possessed you to settle here in Britain, Uncle Aquila, when you could have gone home?’
    Uncle Aquila moved his piece with meticulous care before he answered with another question. ‘It seems very odd to you, that anyone free to go home should choose to strike his roots in this barbarous country?’
    ‘On a night like this,’ said Marcus, ‘it seems odd almost past believing.’
    ‘I had nothing to take me back,’ said the other, simply. ‘Most of my service years were spent here, though it was in Judaea that my time fell due for parting with the Eagles. What have I to do with the South? A few memories, very few. I was a young man when first I saw the white cliffs of Dubris above the transport galley’s prow. Far more memories in the North. Your move…’
    Marcus moved an ivory man to the next square, and his uncle shifted his own piece. ‘If I settled in the South, I should miss the skies. Ever noticed how changeful British skies are? I have made friends here—a few. The only woman I ever cared a denarius for lies buried at Glevum.’
    Marcus looked up quickly. ‘I never knew—’
    ‘Why should you? But I was not always old Uncle Aquila with a bald head.’
    ‘No, of course not. What was—she like?’
    ‘Very pretty. She was the daughter of my old Camp Commandant, who had a face like a camel, but she was very pretty, with a lot of soft brown hair. Eighteen when she died. I was twenty-two.’
    Marcus said nothing. There seemed nothing to say. But Uncle Aquila, seeing the look on his face, gave a deep chuckle. ‘No, you have it all quite wrong. I am a very selfish old man, perfectly well content with things as they are.’ And then, after a pause, he harked back to an earlier point in their discussion. ‘I killed my first boar in Silurian territory; I have sworn the blood brotherhood with a painted tribesman up beyond where Hadrian’s Wall stands now; I’ve a dog buried at Luguvallium—her name was Margarita; I have loved a girl at Glevum; I have marched the Eagles from end to end of Britain in worse weather than this. Those are the things apt to strike a man’s roots for him.’
    Marcus said after a moment, ‘I think I begin to understand.’
    ‘Good. Your move.’
    But after they had played a few more moves in silence, Uncle Aquila looked up again, the fine wrinkles deepening at the corners of his eyes. ‘What an autumnal mood we have wandered into! We need livening up, you and I.’
    ‘What do you suggest?’ Marcus returned the smile.
    ‘I suggest the Saturnalia Games tomorrow. We may not be able to compete quite on equal terms with the Colosseum, here at Calleva; but a wild-beast show, a sham fight with perhaps a little blood-letting—we will certainly go.’
    And they went, Marcus travelling in a litter, for all the world, as he remarked disgustedly, like a Magistrate or a fine lady. They arrived early, but by the time they were settled on one of the cushioned benches reserved for the Magistrates and their families (Uncle Aquila was a Magistrate, though he had not come in a litter), the amphitheatre just outside the East Gate was already filling up with eager spectators. The wind had died down, but the air struck cold, with a clear, chill tang to it that Marcus sniffed eagerly while he pulled the folds of his old military cloak more closely round him. After being so long within four walls, the sanded space of the arena seemed very wide; a great emptiness within the encircling banks up which the crowded benches rose tier on tier.
    Whatever else of Rome the British had not taken to, they seemed to have taken to the Games with a vengeance, Marcus thought, looking about him at the crowded benches where townsfolk and tribesmen with their womenfolk and children jostled and shoved and shouted after the best places. There was a fair sprinkling of Legionaries from the transit camp, and Marcus’s quick glance picked out a bored young tribune sitting with several British lads all