Eagle's Honour by Rosemary Sutcliff Page A

march out, more than three years ago; but I could see no sign of Cordaella among them. Not that you can look about you overmuch when you’re on the march. I told myself that was why I had missed her, and there was no need to be anxious. But of course I was anxious all the same; and the first instant that I could get town leave, I was off to look for her.
    But passing the Camp Commandant’s house on the way to the Main Gate, I was pulled up short by a familiar sound; the small sharp ‘Tip-tip-tap’ of a light hammer and chisel cutting the tiny squares for a picture-floor. I knew that sound too well to be mistaken in it. At any rate Vedrix had not gone back to Lindum.
    I doubled round a corner and through a sidedoor, following my ears, as you might say, and across a small courtyard beyond, and finally ran Vedrix himself to ground, squatting amid his little cubes of chalk and sandstone and brick and shale, in what looked like a new bath-house sticking out from the Camp Commandant’s quarters.
    He looked up, grinning that foxy grin of his, when I appeared.
    ‘Good morning to you, Centurion.’
    ‘You know then,’ I said, stopping in my tracks.
    ‘One hears these things.’
    I sketched him a kind of mock salute. ‘Centurion, Sixth Century, Ninth Cohort. That’s about the lowest form of life in the Centurions’ Mess.’ And then my anxiety caught up with me, and I burst out in a rush, ‘But it does mean that I can marry now, if – if – ’ and I couldn’t bring out the last bit at all.
    ‘If Cordaella hasn’t changed her mind?’ said Vedrix.
    ‘How is it with Cordaella? Three years is a long time.’
    ‘It was all well with her less than an hour ago. But three years is a long time, even as you say; and maybe you had best go and ask her herself, before it gets any longer.’

    ‘I’ll be doing that!’ I said, and departed without waiting to take my leave.
    I had to pass quite close to the well where I had first spoken to her, to reach her house; but I think I would have gone that way even if it had been a round about journey. I had a feeling….
    And there she was, her red hair lighting up the grey little street, just as I remembered. She had filled the pail and set it on the well curb beside her. And she was just sitting there, half-turned to gaze down into the water. She looked somehow as though she had been sitting there quite a while.
    But she did not look up when I came along the street; not till I was standing right beside her.
    ‘That pail is much too heavy for a little bird like you,’ I said. ‘Let me carry it home for you.’
    She looked up then, as I reached for the pail; and next instant it wasn’t the pail that I had hold of, it was Cordaella, and she had her arms round my neck and was half laughing and half crying and clinging on to me as though she never wanted to let go. And I – well I won’t say I wasn’t doing my share of the hugging, too.
    ‘I didn’t see you when we marched inyesterday,’ I said. ‘Why did you not come out with everybody else to see us marching back?’

    ‘I was so afraid,’ she said.
    ‘Afraid?’
    She nodded against my shoulder. ‘That when the Eagle came up the street, I would not see you there.’
    ‘Well I’d not have been carrying the Eagle, but you would have seen me at the head of my Cohort,’ I said. ‘Cordaella, I have my vine staff now.’
    ‘I know,’ she said. ‘We heard later. Quintus, I am so proud of you!’
    I wanted to boast a bit, seem big in her eyes; but I’ve never been a very good liar. ‘I didn’t get it for being a hero,’ I told her. ‘I got it for making a bad joke at the right moment.’
    ‘We heard about that, too,’ she said, soft with laughter. And then she suddenly turned grave, and held me off at arms’ length, and stood looking at me. ‘I do not believe that your great strong Roman Legions that march about in straight lines and build square forts would ever choose their Centurions just for making jokes at