Oh, when I joined the Eagles, as it might be yesterday,
I kissed a girl at Clusium before I marched away.
A long march, a long march and 20 years in store.
When I left my girl in Clusium beside the threshing floor.
Good cub.
Ow!
Go on then, off you go. Go on!
- Wound troublesome tonight? -No, sir.
I just wondered.
- Are you quite sure? - Perfectly.
What a liar you are. This has been going on long enough.
If the physicians in Calleva don't know their craft,
I have an old friend in practice in Durinum who does.
His name is Galarius. He was one of our field surgeons.
He shall come and take a look at that leg.
Who in the name of Typhon searched this wound?
- The surgeon at Isca. - The thing is, he didn't finish his work.
You'll know no peace until that wound has been re-searched.
- You mean, it all has to been done again? - Yes.
When?
In the morning.
If it must be done, the sooner it were done the better.
Now you lie still and rest. I shall see you in the morning.
Let me pass, Stephanos! I'm warning you, let me pass!
But, my lady, I have strict instructions. He is not to be disturbed.
- Stephanos, I shan't warn you again! - But, Lady Camilla, I daren't let you see him.
- I'll bite you. - Ooh!
Ooh! Ooh-ooh! Ooh-ooh!
You little vixen, what have you done to poor Stephanos?
- She bit me, master! - He tried to keep me out.
Thank you, Stephanos.
Now, Cottia, what is it you suppose you're doing here?
- Why didn't you tell me? - What? Tell you what?
About the healer with the knife?
I didn't want you to know about it until it was all over and done with.
You had no right not to tell me. It was mine to know.
What will he do to you?
I'm to have the wound cleaned up, that's all.
You'll send Esca to tell me when it's over.
It'll be very early in the morning. You'll scarcely be awake.
I shall be awake and I'll be waiting in the garden.
And I'll wait there until Esca comes, whoever tries to stop me.
Very well then.
Esca shall come and tell you, but now you must go home.
Oh, Marcus, I wish it could be me instead.
Thank you, Cottia. I shall remember that.
I enjoyed swapping yarns with your uncle last night.
We were great hunters, he and I, you know.
But now we grow stiff in our joints and set in our ways.
Sometimes I think I'll pack up and set out on my travels again
before it's too late and I'm utterly rusted into my sockets.
Ah, but I chose the wrong branch of my calling for that.
A surgeon 's craft is none too easily picked up and carried about the world.
An oculist, that's what I should have been.
An oculist's craft is the craft for a follower of Aesculapius with an itch to wander.
And here in the north where so many have the marsh blindness,
an oculist's stamp is the talisman to carry a man safely where a Legion couldn't go.
I had an acquaintance once
who crossed the Western Ocean and plied his trade in the wilds of Hibernia.
Just about a year ago, it was. He was an oculist.
They will be more hot water when you want it.
I brought the flask of barley spirit, as you ordered.
Thank you.
It's fiercer than wine but better for cleansing a wound.
Now, if you're quite ready?
Quite.
It strikes sharp at first but it will ease presently.
Is it finished?
It's finished and in a few months you will be a sound man again.
Now you lie still and rest and this evening I shall be back again.
You can give him the draft now.
He will recover?
There were enough splinters to quill a porcupine,
but the muscles were less damaged than one might have expected.
Cottia? Cub?
I will see to them soon.
You look like a man who wishes to be sick. Was it as bad as that?
You must sleep.
Cub!
Come over here!
Come on!
Cub!
Come on!
Cub!
Come on!
Cub!
You shouldn't overtax your leg, master.
It's nearly as good as ever. Just as Galarius promised.
And after the winter's training, I feel as sound as a gladiator.
Though not sound enough for the Legions. That I shall never be again.
What will you do?
I thought of returning to Etruria...
with neither money nor prospects.
So I'll have to earn my living here.
I made up my mind to seek a position as someone's secretary.
Though the thought holds little appeal.
In fact, I decided to discuss the matter with my uncle tonight.
Fortunately, he has guests, so the decision is delayed.
From the way Stephanos has been bullying the cook all morning,
I would hazard they're important guests.
One is no lesser person than the Legate in command of the Sixth Legion.
He's on his way from Eburacum to Rome on some business of the Senate.
- He's an old friend of your uncle's? - Yes.
They served together in Judea, when my uncle was First Cohort of the Fretensis.
Now I'm delaying another decision.
- You're determined to release Cub? - Yes.
You can tame a wild thing,
but never count on it being truly won over until, being free to return to its own kind,
it chooses to come back to you.
Go free, brother wolf.
Good hunting.
Marcus?
Where is the lad?
Ah, there you are!
- The Legate's here. He wants to meet you. - And I would like to meet him.
Claudius, I present to you my nephew.
Marcus, this is my very old friend the Legate of the Sixth Legion.
I am honoured to meet the Legate of the Victrix.
And I am very glad to meet a kinsman of my ancient friend.
Oh, until today he might have been hatched out of a turtle's egg
for all the kin I knew he had.
I make known to you Tribune Servius Placidus, of my staff.
You return to Rome with the Legate?
I do, praise be to Bacchus.
I'm done with Britain once and for all when I board that galley in two days' time.
You have not, I take it, found Britain much to your taste?
Oh, the girls are alright, so is the hunting, but for the rest...
Roma Dea! I think I can bear to leave it behind me.
You're not native born to this benighted province, are you?
No, I have been out less than three years.
What possessed you to come at all?
You must have found the journey rather trying.
I came out to join my Legion.
- Oh, a wound then? - Yes.
I don't think I ever met you in the Tribune's Club at home?
It would be strange if you had. I was a mere Cohort Centurion.
Really?!
Do you know, I should scarce have guessed it.
Do I salute a brother of the Victrix?
For one who considers himself somewhat of a skilled hunter,
you can be remarkably unobservant.
You'll see the Signum of the Second Legion on his left wrist.
Awarded for bravery at Isca Dumnoniorum, was it not?
Ah! I see what it is to serve under a Legate
renowned for his appreciation of his junior officers.
My dear Marcus, I do congratulate you. Roma Dea, a wolf!
- Cub! Cub, so you've come back, my brother. - It is a wolf.
It really is a wolf.
And the brute behaving like a puppy.
It seems we are witnesses to a reunion.
- Indeed. - How long have you had him?
Oh, since he was a very small cub, more than a year ago.
Then, if I'm not mistaken,
I saw him taken from the lair after his dam was killed.
Yes, the painted barbarian who fetched him out claimed to be a slave to a Marcus Aquila.
- I remember now. - And I remember now.
The painted barbarian told me that story.
Claudius, how long since you left the Fretensis?
18 years in August.
Jupiter! 18 years since we last sat in officers' mess together.
And yet you've been almost three years in Britain and made no attempt to come near me.
Nor you to come near me.
Oh, but that's the way of things when we follow the Eagles.
We make a friend here or there, in Caesarea or Eburacum,
and then our ways part again.
I drink to the renewing of old threads.
Then come and renew them at Eburacum, after I return.
It may be that I will, one day.
It's all of 25 years since I was in Eburacum.
I'd be interested to see the place again.
I took a contingent of the Second up there in one of the troubles.
It was thus I came to know the station a little.
Really?
That would be in the Hispana's time, of course.
You'd scarce recognise the station now.
It's almost habitable.
The new generally build in stone,
where the old cleared the forest and built in wood.
Sometimes at Eburacum,
it seems to me that the foundations of that old building lie uneasy beneath the new.
You mean, sir?
Well, Eburacum is still...
How shall I put it?
Still more than a little ghost-ridden by the Ninth Legion.
Oh, I don't mean the spirits have wandered back, but...
the place is haunted nonetheless.
By the altars to the Spanish gods that they set up and worshipped at.
By the names and numbers idly scratched on the walls.
By the British women whom they loved
and the children with the Spanish faces whom they fathered.
All this, lying as it were, like sediment
beneath the new wine of another Legion.
Also they linger strongly, almost terrifyingly, in the minds of the people.
Doesn't sound much when you put into words,
but it can create an atmosphere which is unpleasantly strong.
I'm not an imaginative man,
but I can tell you there have been times,
when the mist comes down from the high moors...
when I have more than half expected to see the lost Legion come marching home.
Have you any idea, any theory, what became of the Hispana, sir?
Their fate has some importance for you?
Yes.
My father was their First Cohort.
Ah.
There is, of course, the possibility
that somewhere they were cut off and annihilated so completely
that there were no survivors left to carry back word of the disaster.
Oh, but surely, sir.
In a province the size of Caledonia even,
upwards of 4,000 men couldn't be destroyed without trace.
No, isn't it far more likely that, having had their fill of the Eagles,
they merely butchered such of their officers as wouldn't join them
and deserted to the tribe?
No, I do not think that particularly likely.
Well, I stand corrected.
I was led to believe it were the only possible explanation to the mystery
by the extremely unsavoury reputation the Hispana left behind them.
But I am happy to find I was at fault.
I'm sure you are.
But you don't find the ambush theory very likely either, sir?
There's been a rumour quite lately along the wall.
A rumour which, if it is true,
would suggest that the Hispana did indeed go down fighting.
It's only market talk, but in such there is often a core of truth.
The story runs that the Eagle has been seen
and is receiving divine honours in some tribal temple in the far north.
- Go on. - Well, that's all.
There's no more to add, there's no more to work on.
- And that is the curse of it. - I take your point.
But I am afraid I do not.
A Legion which went rogue would probably hide its Eagle or hack it to pieces.
It would be most unlikely either to have the wish or the chance
to set it up in the temple of some local godling.
But an Eagle taken in war would be a very different case.
To the outland tribes it must appear that they have captured the god of the Legion.
Now do you see?
- What do you intend to do about it, sir? -Nothing.
- There may be no shred of truth in the story. - But if there is?
There is still nothing I can do about it.
But, sir, it is the Eagle, the Hispana's lost Eagle!
Eagle lost, honour lost; honour lost, all lost. Yes, yes, I know.
And I know something else.
If trouble breaks out again in the north,
a Roman Eagle in the hands of the painted people could become a weapon against us.
It would, undoubtedly, have the power to fire the hearts and minds of the tribes.
I can't send an expeditionary force on the strength of a rumour.
It'll mean open war.
In any case, a whole Legion would scarcely win through. There are but three in Britain.
But where a Legion couldn't get through, one man might, at least to find out the truth.
I agree. If the right man came forward.
It would have to be someone who knew the northern tribes,
was acceptable to them and allowed to pass.
If I had such a man, I would give him his marching orders.
The matter seems to me to be serious enough for that.
Esca was born where the wall runs now.
The Eagle was my father's. Send us.
This is lunacy! Sheer, unmitigated lunacy!
No, I have a perfectly sane and workable plan.
A travelling oculist would be accepted by the tribes.
I have heard of one who crossed the Western Waters
and plied his trade through the wilds of Hibernia.
Surely, an oculist's stamp would see us through what was once, after all, a Roman province?
You know rather less than an addled egg about the doctoring of sore eyes.
The same could be said for three out of four of the quack-salvers on the road.
There are those who can provide me with the needful salves
and give me some idea how to use them.
How serviceable is that leg of yours?
Save that it wouldn't do for the parade ground, very nearly as good as it ever was.
Do I get my marching orders?
The gods of my forefathers forbid that I should hold back any kinsman of mine
from breaking his own neck in a just cause, if he has a mind to.
The province of Caledonian, whatever it once was,
whatever it may be again, is not worth an outworn sandal strap today.
You'll be going alone into enemy territory.
If you run into trouble, there is nothing, nothing,
that Rome can or will do to help you.
I understand that.
Go then.
I am not your Legate, but I give you your marching orders.
I almost wish there were room for a third on this insane expeditionary force.
If there were, Bacchus, I would leave Rome to fend for itself and come with you.
Are you quite sure you can trust that barbarian of yours on an adventure of this kind?
Esca? Oh, yes.
Esca's been with me a long time.
Nursed me when I was sick, did everything for me all the while I was laid by with this leg.
Well, why not, he's your slave?
Oh, that wasn't his reason and it's not the reason he comes with me now.
Oh, isn't it? Oh, my dear Marcus!
What an innocent you are.
Slaves are all...
slaves.
You give him his freedom, see what happens.
The horses are here, master.
Two ex -cavalry mounts that have seen better days but they were cheap.
And they won't attract attention.
I'd like you to tell the Lady Cottia we're leaving, but first...
You'd better take this.
Capitals are one thing, but I can make nothing of this script.
- What is it? - Your manumission.
Your freedom, witnessed by my uncle and the Legate.
I ought to have given it to you a long time ago. I'm sorry, Esca.
I'm free? Free to go?
Yes. Free to go, Esca.
Is it that you're sending me away?
No.
You are free to go or stay as you wish.
Well then, I stay.
It's perhaps not only I who think foolish thoughts because of the Tribune Plasidus.
Perhaps.
Esca, I should never have asked you to go with me
into this hazard while you weren't free to refuse.
It's like to prove a wild hunt and whether or not we come back lies in the hands of the gods.
No one should ask a slave to go with them on such a hunting trail.
They might ask a friend.
I've not served the Centurion because I was his slave.
I've served Marcus and it's not been slave service.
My stomach will be glad when we start on this hunting trail.
I will go to the Lady Cottia.
If they want this Eagle back, if they fear it may harm them where it is,
why can't they send somebody else for it? Why need you go?
Because it was my father's Eagle.
Cottia, you see, with us, the Eagle is the very life of the Legion.
While it's in Roman hands, even if not six men of the Legion are still alive,
the Legion itself is still in being.
- But you say there is no Legion. - Only because the Eagle has been lost.
If I were to find it, the Ninth could be reformed.
There must be at least a quarter of the Hispana
who never marched north that last time.
Men who were serving on other frontiers, men who were sick or on garrison duty.
They could be brought back together to form the core of a new Ninth.
Cottia, the Hispana was my father's first and last Legion.
It was the one he cared for most.
It is to keep faith with your father, then?
Amongst other things, though it is good to hear the trumpets again, Cottia.
I don't understand,
but I see you must go.
When will you come back?
I don't know.
Perhaps, if all goes well, before winter.
Esca goes with you? Cub?
Esca, not Cub. Cub I leave in your charge.
You must come and see him every day.
Talk to him about me
and that way neither of you will forget about me before I can come back.
He shan't forget about you.
We have good memories, Cub and I.
But I will come every day.
- All is ready. - Good.
Cottia, don't mention the Eagle to anyone.
I'm supposed to be going on business for my uncle, only I wanted you to know the truth.
Yes.
I can't stay any longer.
Before I go there's one... one more thing I want you to do for me.
I can't wear this where I'm going.
Will you keep it for me and keep it safe till I come back?
Yes, Marcus.
The light of the sun be with you, Cottia.
And with you, Marcus.
And with you.
I shall be listening for you to come back when the leaves are falling.
Whoa!
Never bring a stolen cavalry nag into a cavalry barracks.
Now that's good advice, that is.
Do you suggest that I, Demetrius of Alexandria,
the Demetrius of Alexandria, am in the habit of stealing cavalry horses?
Or that if I were, I should not have the wisdom to steal a better one than this?
You can see the brand on her shoulder plain as a pilum shaft.
If you cannot also see as plain as a pilum shaft that the brand has been cancelled,
you are in dire need of my invincible Anodyne for all kinds of defective eyesight.
I can let you have a small pot for three sesterces. Three sesterces only!
Better have two pots, Sextus.
Remember the time you didn't see that Pict's leg sticking out from under a furze bush.
Maybe so, maybe so!
Are there not enough sore eyes for your salving in the Empire
that you must needs go jaunting beyond the wall to look for more?
Perhaps I'm like Alexander, in search of fresh worlds to conquer.
Every man to his own taste.
The old world's good enough for me, with a whole hide to enjoy it in!
Lack of enterprise, yes, that's your problem.
Now if I'd been so lacking in enterprise, would I now be the Demetrius of Alexandria,
inventor of the invincible Anodyne, the most celebrated oculist...
As you say. Open the gates. Let them pass through.
Esca...
the hunt has begun!