5: A CENTURION OF THE
THIRTIETH
Cities and Thrones and Powers
Stand in Time’s eye, Almost as long as flowers, Which daily die.
But, as new buds put forth To glad new men, Out of the spent and
unconsidered Earth, The Cities rise again.
This season’s Daffodil, She never
hears, What change, what chance, what chill, Cut down last year’s:
But with bold countenance, And knowledge small, Esteems her seven
days’ continuance To be perpetual.
So Time that is o’er–kind, To all
that be, Ordains us e’en as blind, As bold as she: That in our very
death, And burial sure, Shadow to shadow, well persuaded, saith,
‘See how our works endure!’
A Centurion of the
Thirtieth
Dan had come to grief over his
Latin, and was kept in; so Una went alone to Far Wood. Dan’s big
catapult and the lead bullets that Hobden had made for him were
hidden in an old hollow beech–stub on the west of the wood. They
had named the place out of the verse in Lays of Ancient Rome:
From lordly Volaterrae,
Where scowls the far–famed hold
Piled by the hands of giants
For Godlike Kings of old.
They were the ‘Godlike Kings’,
and when old Hobden piled some comfortable brushwood between the
big wooden knees of Volaterrae, they called him ‘Hands of
Giants’.
Una slipped through their private
gap in the fence, and sat still awhile, scowling as scowlily and
lordlily as she knew how; for Volaterrae is an important
watch–tower that juts out of Far Wood just as Far Wood juts out of
the hillside. Pook’s Hill lay below her and all the turns of the
brook as it wanders out of the Willingford Woods, between hop–
gardens, to old Hobden’s cottage at the Forge. The Sou’–West wind
(there is always a wind by Volaterrae) blew from the bare ridge
where Cherry Clack Windmill stands.
Now wind prowling through woods
sounds like exciting things going to happen, and that is why on
blowy days you stand up in Volaterrae and shout bits of the Lays to
suit its noises.
Una took Dan’s catapult from its
secret place, and made ready to meet Lars Porsena’s army stealing
through the wind–whitened aspens by the brook. A gust boomed up the
valley, and Una chanted sorrowfully:
‘Verbenna down to Ostia Hath
wasted all the plain:
Astur hath stormed Janiculum, And
the stout guards are slain.’
But the wind, not charging fair
to the wood, started aside and shook a single oak in Gleason’s
pasture. Here it made itself all small and crouched among the
grasses, waving the tips of them as a cat waves the tip of her tail
before she springs.
‘Now welcome—welcome, Sextus,’
sang Una, loading the catapult—
‘Now welcome to thy home! Why
dost thou stay, and turn away? Here lies the road to Rome.’
She fired into the face of the
lull, to wake up the cowardly wind, and heard a grunt from behind a
thorn in the pasture.
‘Oh, my Winkie!’ she said aloud,
and that was something she had picked up from Dan. ‘I b’lieve I’ve
tickled up a Gleason cow.’
‘You little painted beast!’ a
voice cried. ‘I’ll teach you to sling your masters!’
She looked down most cautiously,
and saw a young man covered with hoopy bronze armour all glowing
among the late broom. But what Una admired beyond all was his great
bronze helmet with a red horse–tail that flicked in the wind. She
could hear the long hairs rasp on his shimmery
shoulder–plates.
‘What does the Faun mean,’ he
said, half aloud to himself, ‘by telling me that the Painted People
have changed?’ He caught sight of Una’s yellow head. ‘Have you seen
a painted lead–slinger?’ he called.
‘No–o,’ said Una. ‘But if you’ve
seen a bullet―’
‘Seen?’ cried the man. ‘It passed
within a hair’s breadth of my ear.’ ‘Well, that was me. I’m most
awfully sorry.’
‘Didn’t the Faun tell you I was
coming?’ He smiled.
‘Not if you mean Puck. I thought
you were a Gleason cow. I—I didn’t know you were a— a―What are
you?’
He laughed outright, showing a
set of splendid teeth. His face and eyes were dark, and his
eyebrows met above his big nose in one bushy black bar.
‘They call me Parnesius. I have
been a Centurion of the Seventh Cohort of the Thirtieth Legion—the
Ulpia Victrix. Did you sling that bullet?’
‘I did. I was using Dan’s
catapult,’ said Una.
‘Catapults!’ said he. ‘I ought to
know something about them. Show me!’
He leaped the rough fence with a
rattle of spear, shield, and armour, and hoisted himself into
Volaterrae as quickly as a shadow.
‘A sling on a forked stick. I
understand!’ he cried, and pulled at the elastic. ‘But what
wonderful beast yields this stretching leather?’
‘It’s laccy—elastic. You put the
bullet into that loop, and then you pull hard.’ The man pulled, and
hit himself square on his thumb–nail.
‘Each to his own weapon,’ he said
gravely, handing it back. ‘I am better with the bigger
machine, little maiden. But it’s
a pretty toy. A wolf would laugh at it. Aren’t you afraid of
wolves?’
‘There aren’t any,’ said
Una.
‘Never believe it! A wolf’s like
a Winged Hat. He comes when he isn’t expected. Don’t they hunt
wolves here?’
‘We don’t hunt,’ said Una,
remembering what she had heard from grown–ups. ‘We
preserve—pheasants. Do you know them?’
‘I ought to,’ said the young man,
smiling again, and he imitated the cry of the cock– pheasant so
perfectly that a bird answered out of the wood.
‘What a big painted clucking fool
is a pheasant!’ he said. ‘Just like some Romans.’ ‘But you’re a
Roman yourself, aren’t you?’ said Una.
‘Ye–es and no. I’m one of a good
few thousands who have never seen Rome except in a picture. My
people have lived at Vectis for generations. Vectis—that island
West yonder that you can see from so far in clear weather.’
‘Do you mean the Isle of Wight?
It lifts up just before rain, and you see it from the Downs.’
‘Very likely. Our villa’s on the
South edge of the Island, by the Broken Cliffs. Most of it is three
hundred years old, but the cow–stables, where our first ancestor
lived, must be a hundred years older. Oh, quite that, because the
founder of our family had his land given him by Agricola at the
Settlement. It’s not a bad little place for its size. In
spring–time violets grow down to the very beach. I’ve gathered
sea–weeds for myself and violets for my Mother many a time with our
old nurse.’
‘Was your nurse a—a Romaness
too?’
‘No, a Numidian. Gods be good to
her! A dear, fat, brown thing with a tongue like a cowbell. She was
a free woman. By the way, are you free, maiden?’
‘Oh, quite,’ said Una. ‘At least,
till tea–time; and in summer our governess doesn’t say much if
we’re late.’
The young man laughed again—a
proper understanding laugh.
‘I see,’ said he. ‘That accounts
for your being in the wood. We hid among the cliffs.’ ‘Did you have
a governess, then?’
‘Did we not? A Greek, too. She
had a way of clutching her dress when she hunted us among the
gorse–bushes that made us laugh. Then she’d say she’d get us
whipped. She never did, though, bless her! Aglaia was a thorough
sportswoman, for all her learning.’
‘But what lessons did you
do—when—when you were little?’
‘Ancient history, the Classics,
arithmetic and so on,’ he answered. ‘My sister and I were
thick–heads, but my two brothers (I’m the middle one) liked those
things, and, of course, Mother was clever enough for any six. She
was nearly as tall as I am, and she looked like the new statue on
the Western Road—the Demeter of the Baskets, you know. And
funny!
Roma Dea! How Mother could make
us laugh!’ ‘What at?’
‘Little jokes and sayings that
every family has. Don’t you know?’
‘I know we have, but I didn’t
know other people had them too,’ said Una. ‘Tell me about all your
family, please.’
‘Good families are very much
alike. Mother would sit spinning of evenings while Aglaia read in
her corner, and Father did accounts, and we four romped about the
passages. When our noise grew too loud the Pater would say, “Less
tumult! Less tumult! Have you never heard of a Father’s right over
his children? He can slay them, my loves—slay them dead, and the
Gods highly approve of the action!” Then Mother would prim up her
dear mouth over the wheel and answer: “H’m! I’m afraid there can’t
be much of the Roman Father about you!” Then the Pater would roll
up his accounts, and say, “I’ll show you!” and then
—then, he’d be worse than any of
us!’
‘Fathers can—if they like,’ said
Una, her eyes dancing. ‘Didn’t I say all good families are very
much the same?’ ‘What did you do in summer?’ said Una. ‘Play about,
like us?’
‘Yes, and we visited our friends.
There are no wolves in Vectis. We had many friends, and as many
ponies as we wished.’
‘It must have been lovely,’ said
Una. ‘I hope it lasted for ever.’
‘Not quite, little maid. When I
was about sixteen or seventeen, the Father felt gouty, and we all
went to the Waters.’
‘What waters?’
‘At Aquae Solis. Every one goes
there. You ought to get your Father to take you some day.’
‘But where? I don’t know,’ said
Una.
The young man looked astonished
for a moment. ‘Aquae Solis,’ he repeated. ‘The best baths in
Britain. just as good, I’m told, as Rome. All the old gluttons sit
in hot water, and talk scandal and politics. And the Generals come
through the streets with their guards behind them; and the
magistrates come in their chairs with their stiff guards behind
them; and you meet fortune–tellers, and goldsmiths, and merchants,
and philosophers, and feather–sellers, and ultra–Roman Britons, and
ultra–British Romans, and tame tribesmen pretending to be
civilised, and Jew lecturers, and—oh, everybody interesting. We
young people, of course, took no interest in politics. We had not
the gout: there were many of our age like us. We did not find life
sad.
‘But while we were enjoying
ourselves without thinking, my sister met the son of a magistrate
in the West—and a year afterwards she was married to him. My young
brother, who was always interested in plants and roots, met the
First Doctor of a Legion from the City of the Legions, and he
decided that he would be an Army doctor. I do not think it is a
profession for a well–born man, but then—I’m not my brother. He
went to Rome to study medicine, and now he’s First Doctor of a
Legion in Egypt—at Antinoe, I think, but I have
not heard from him for some
time.
‘My eldest brother came across a
Greek philosopher, and told my Father that he intended to settle
down on the estate as a farmer and a philosopher. You see,’—the
young man’s eyes twinkled—‘his philosopher was a long–haired
one!’
‘I thought philosophers were
bald,’ said Una.
‘Not all. She was very pretty. I
don’t blame him. Nothing could have suited me better than my eldest
brother’s doing this, for I was only too keen to join the Army. I
had always feared I should have to stay at home and look after the
estate while my brother took this.’
He rapped on his great glistening
shield that never seemed to be in his way.
‘So we were well contented—we
young people—and we rode back to Clausentum along the Wood Road
very quietly. But when we reached home, Aglaia, our governess, saw
what had come to us. I remember her at the door, the torch over her
head, watching us climb the cliff–path from the boat. “Aie! Aie!”
she said. “Children you went away. Men and a woman you return!”
Then she kissed Mother, and Mother wept. Thus our visit to the
Waters settled our fates for each of us, Maiden.’
He rose to his feet and listened,
leaning on the shield–rim. ‘I think that’s Dan—my brother,’ said
Una.
‘Yes; and the Faun is with him,’
he replied, as Dan with Puck stumbled through the copse.