Eagle's Honour Read Online Free PDF

edge-of-spring evenings when it seems as though all the colour has drained out of theworld and left only the grey behind. I was off duty and I was bored. I’d been down at the lower end of the town to look at some new young fighting cocks that Kaeso had for sale, but I hadn’t liked the look of any that he had shown me, and taking it all in all, I was feeling thoroughly out at elbows with the world. And then I rounded the corner of the temple garden; and there, at the well that bubbled up from under the wall, a few paces further up the street, a girl was drawing water. And I knew I’d been wrong about there being no colour left in the world, because her hair lit up that grey street like a dandelion growing on a stubble pile. – No, that’s not right either, it was redder and more sparkling; a colour that you could warm your hands at. And the braids of it, hanging forward over her shoulders ‘thick as a swordsman’s wrist’ as the saying goes.
    You can guess the next bit, I dare say. Up I strolled, and stood beside her, and gave her my best smile when she turned round.
    ‘That pail is much too heavy for a little bird like you,’ said I. ‘Better let me carry it for you.’
    She stood and looked at me out of the bluest and brightest eyes I’d ever seen in any girl’s head; not smiling back, but as though somethingamused her, all the same: and I got the feeling that I was not the first of our lads who had offered to carry her bucket home for her from the well of Sulis.

    ‘It is not, really,’ she said, ‘and I am quite used to it’
    ‘“Never carry your own bucket if you can find somebody else to carry it for you”. That’s what we say in the Legions, more or less,’ I told her. And I picked up the brimming pail from where she had set it on the well curb, and stood ready to carry it wherever she wanted.
    ‘Then – that is our house, yonder at the bend of the street,’ she said. ‘The one with the workshop beside it and the big blue flower painted on the wall.’
    And the laughter was still in her, because I had hoped it was much further off than that; and she knew it.
    I should have to make the most of the little distance there was. I walked as slowly as possible, making a great show of not spilling the water, and said, ‘Why have I not seen you before? With that bonny brightness of hair I couldn’t have missed you.’
    ‘I do have a cloak with a hood to it,’ she said. And then, stopping her teasing. ‘But indeed Ihave not been long in Eburacum. My brother is making the picture-floor in the new Council Chamber, and he brought me up with him from Lindum, because he thinks that a growing town like this would be a good place for a craftsman to settle.’

    And then we had reached the door, and I put the pail down, and she thanked me. We stood for an instant looking at each other, and an odd thing happened. We both turned shy.
    ‘Do you go to the well at the same time every day?’ I managed at last.
    And she said, ‘Most days, yes,’ already picking up the bucket.
    ‘Maybe we’ll meet there again, some time—’ I began. But before I could finish, she had gone in, and the door was quietly and gently shut in my face.
    I did not even know her name.
    Well, I could probably get that from her brother if I went along to the Council Chamber and admired his floor. I had seen and spoken with him more than once already. No problem there. But the girl had not really gone deep with me, yet, and I strolled back to the fortress thinking about the Council House and the things that had led up to it.

    It was just about a year since the General Agricola had come out from Rome with orders to bring Caledonia, away north of us, within the frontiers of the Empire. He had taken the Second and Fourteenth Legions and pushed up through South Western Caledonia, and pegged down the country with a handful of forts and marching camps. – A friend of mine who was with the Second at the time told me it was pretty dull: not