The Eagle of the Ninth [book I] by Rosemary Sutcliff

and terrifying.
    Maybe Centurion Drusillus guessed something of all this, though Marcus never told him. At all events he seemed to find the Commander’s quarters a good place to spend every off-duty moment, just then; and though Marcus, longing to be alone like a sick animal, often wished him at the other side of the Empire, afterwards he remembered and was grateful for his centurion’s fellowship in a bad time.
     
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    A few days later, Marcus lay listening to the distant sounds of the new Commander’s arrival. He was still in his old quarters, for when he had suggested that he should go across to the sick-block, and leave the two rooms in the Praetorium free for their rightful owner, he was told that other quarters had been made ready for the new Commander, and he was to stay where he was until he was fit to travel—until he could go to Uncle Aquila. He was lucky, he supposed rather drearily, to have Uncle Aquila to go to. At all events he would know quite soon now whether the unknown uncle was like his father.
    Now that he could sit up, he could look out into the courtyard, and see the rose-bush in its wine-jar, just outside his window. There was still one crimson rose among the dark leaves, but even as he watched, a petal fell from it like a great slow drop of blood. Soon the rest would follow. He had held his first and only command for just as long as the rose-bush had been in flower… It was certainly pot-bound, he thought; maybe his successor would do something about it.
    His successor: whoever that might be. He could not see the entrance to the courtyard, but quick footsteps sounded along the colonnade and then in the outer room, and a moment later the new Commander stood in the doorway; an elegant and very dusty young man with his crested helmet under one arm. It was the owner of the chariot team which Marcus had driven in the Saturnalia Games.
    ‘Cassius!’ Marcus greeted him. ‘I wondered if it would be anyone I knew.’
    Cassius crossed to his side. ‘My dear Marcus; how does the leg?’
    ‘It mends, in its fashion.’
    ‘So. I am glad of that, at all events.’
    ‘What have you done with your bays?’ Marcus asked quickly. ‘You are not having them brought down here, are you?’
    Cassius collapsed on to the clothes-chest and wilted elegantly. ‘Jupiter! No! I have lent them to Dexion, with my groom to keep an eye on them, and him.’
    ‘They will do well enough with Dexion. What troops have you brought down with you?’
    ‘Two Centuries of the Third: Gauls, like the rest. They are good lads, seasoned troops; been up on the wall laying stone courses and exchanging the odd arrow now and then with the Painted People.’ He cocked a languid eyebrow. ‘But if they can give as good an account of themselves in action as your raw Fourth have done, they will have no need to feel themselves disgraced.’
    ‘I think there will be no more trouble in these parts,’ Marcus said. ‘Centurion Maximus took good care of that.’
    ‘Ah, you mean the burned villages and salted fields? A punitive expedition is never pretty. But I gather from your embittered tone that you did not take warmly to Centurion Maximus?’
    ‘I did not.’
    ‘A most efficient officer,’ pronounced Cassius, with the air of a grey-headed Legate.
    ‘To say nothing of officious,’ snapped Marcus.
    ‘Maybe if you saw the report he sent in when he got back to Headquarters, you might find yourself feeling more friendlily disposed towards him.’
    ‘It was good?’ asked Marcus, surprised. Centurion Maximus had not struck him as the type who sent in enthusiastic reports.
    Cassius nodded. ‘Rather more than good. Indeed, before I marched south there was beginning to be talk of some trifle—say a gilded laurel wreath—to make the standard of the Gaulish Fourth look pretty when it goes on parade.’
    There was a short silence, and then Marcus said, ‘It is no