The Eternal Empire (10 page)

"I hope that you aren't angry at
being fostered onto me," Katherine said, "my brother is constantly
trying to 'involve' me with young men. He feels that a woman of my age should
be happily married and since our fathers death he has felt responsible for my
welfare."

"No, I'm not angry," replied
Cornelius, "my mother has been trying to marry me off to a childhood
friend for years, so I know how you feel."

"In that case," said
Katherine happily, "let me show you around the museum."

The original castle had been built in
1250 but had been changed and added to so much over the centuries that its
first owner would have barely recognised it now. A number of interior buildings
had been added to house the museum exhibits recently and it was to these that
Katherine led Cornelius. The first had a statue of an ancient barbarian warrior
chief with an axe in one hand and three Roman Eagle standards in the other.
They stopped before it.

"Now I can guess who this
is," said Cornelius. "Arminius, with the Eagles of the XVII, XVIII
and XIX legions, destroyed in Teutoburgerwald in 9 AD."

Katherine gave a little clap.
"Well done. I thought that the memory of that defeat would have been
erased from imperial text books a long time ago."

"Oh no," said Cornelius,
refusing to rise to her playful taunts, "we have always believed in
learning from our mistakes. That is one of the Empires greatest
strengths."

"And what did you learn from this
defeat?" asked Katherine.

Cornelius stood looking at the statue
for a moment, and then spoke solemnly.

"Arminius was an officer of
auxiliaries in the Roman Army. He actually led Quinctilius Varus and his three
Legions into an ambush whilst they were on their way to their winter quarters
on the Rhine." He paused for a few seconds in contemplation. "Out of
some 18,000 troops and 12,000 civilians only a few hundred reached the fortress
of Aliso on the Rhine, the German tribesmen sacrificed the prisoners to their
pagan gods in the forest." He then turned to Katherine and put his face
close to hers.

"Of course," he said as a
wide grin split his face, "the main lesson was never to trust a
German!"

Katherine smiled back at him. "I
suppose I deserve that," she said. "I'm afraid I like to see what a
person’s reaction is when they are provoked. Not a particularly endearing trait
I'm afraid."

"At least it shows some
spirit," replied Cornelius.

"I'm glad you think so," said
Katherine, "most Saxon men feel threatened by an assertive woman. Are
Roman women as submissive as their Saxon counter-parts?"

"Not all of them." said
Cornelius, his hand moving to his ribs in memory of Fulvia's elbow.

"Enough of Arminius," said
Katherine, "let's move on to the next exhibit."

They moved through to another hall,
this one dominated by a large map of Europe and bearing the title 'Germanic
Kingdoms. Sixth Century AD'.

"The Great German Kingdoms before
their destruction by the Eastern Empire," said Katherine with a note of
pride.

"The Western Empire on the eve of
its re-conquest from the Barbarian invaders," corrected Cornelius
mischievously.

Katherine gave Cornelius a dirty look
and poked her tongue out at him.

"The Germanic armies defended the
Western Empire from the Huns and other barbarians for over a century,"
argued Katherine, "before Constantinople decided it wanted the West
back!"

To defuse a potential argument,
Cornelius shifted the conversation.

"It was a turning point in
history," he admitted, "if the Emperor Justinians' armies had not
defeated the Germans then the Empire would probably not exist today in its
present form."

"He was lucky that he had two
generals like Belisarius and Narses," said Katherine pointing to two
statues to the right of the map. Cornelius walked over to inspect them.

"I'm surprised that you have these
here considering what they did," he said. "Between them they
destroyed the Germanic Kingdoms in the Western Empire and allowed the Rhine
frontier to be re-established."

She came over and joined him before the
two long dead Roman Generals.

"You learn from your mistakes and
we honour worthy foes." Katherine said to him.

Cornelius turned to look at her. The
lights in the hall reflected in her eyes and held him temporarily spellbound as
they had done at the Counts home. Once again he realised that he was staring at
Katherine and as before said the first thing that came into his head.

"We should all learn from history,
and show respect towards those who were our enemies," he said quickly,
tearing his eyes away from Katherine and back to the statues," then
perhaps they would not remain our enemies anymore and war would cease."

He had not meant to say that. It
sounded very philosophical and Cornelius had never been one to dwell on such
things or to engage in discussions on the meaning of life. Katherine was still
looking at him but the smile had faded to be replaced by another expression
that was thoughtful and serious.

"You're right Cornelius," she
said with a note of deep sadness, "we should learn, but I fear that
history will continue to repeat itself because nobody pays attention to the
lessons it teaches."

The smile came back as quickly as it
had disappeared. She took his arm and started to guide him to the next exhibit.

"Come! We still have thirteen
hundred years of history to get through before lunch," she stopped and
said to Cornelius. "You do realise that you're buying lunch as well I
hope?"

"Of course," answered
Cornelius, who had not realised anything of the sort but was not adverse to the
idea of either lunch or Katherine's arm in his.

She showed Cornelius each part of the
museum in chronological order covering the Viking invasions, the Turkish wars
and the Roman Colonies across the Atlantic’s War of Independence. They were
standing before a large sculpture of the 'Flame of Freedom', a gift from the
United Provinces to Saxony following their independence when a man came up to
Katherine and started talking to her in German. Cornelius had only mastered a
few words of German so far, but since Katherine was fluent in both Latin and
Greek he had not found this a shortcoming up to now.

The man was in his fifties and the left
side of his face was badly scared. He spoke harshly to Katherine, pointing and
gesticulating towards Cornelius. Katherine was obviously unsettled by this and Cornelius
moved to intervene, but Katherine motioned him back. She spoke firmly to the
man. Cornelius could not follow but did catch her brothers’ name. At that the
man became silent, but the look of anger was still in his eyes. He bowed curtly
to Katherine and walked away.

"What was that all about?"
asked Cornelius. Katherine was visibly upset. She took a couple of deep breaths
to calm herself down before replying.

"He wanted to know what a Saxon
woman was doing with a Roman, although he put it rather more crudely than
that!"

"There are many Saxons who haven't
forgotten the last war," she continued, "and regard any contact with
Romans as a betrayal of those who died."

Cornelius thought about this for a
moment.

"Would you like me to go?" he
asked gently, "I don't want to cause you any problems with your
people."

"No!" Katherine said
emphatically. "The problem is his, not mine and certainly not yours!"
She forced a smile back to her face and took his arm again. "Let's move
on."

The incident muted the atmosphere but
they carried on. The last part of the tour was outside in the castle courtyard
where there was a large memorial to those who had died in the last war.
Katherine was about to lead Cornelius off to have lunch when he asked her to
wait for a few moments. The rain had stopped and he walked over to the large
grey obelisk. In front of it where there was an inscription written in German,
Cornelius came to attention and bowed his head. He could not read the
inscription. He did not need to. Every military post in the Empire had a
memorial and they all said the same thing, even if the language and the words
were different.

After a few silent prayers to the
memory of the men represented by the stone before him, he turned to rejoin
Katherine when he saw him. A few yards away was the man who had accosted
Katherine earlier. He was staring at him, but without the belligerence he had
before. He saw beyond the Roman that he hated to the soldier who had also seen
friends die beside him in battle. He looked at the memorial, then nodded his
head towards Cornelius and turned away.

Katherine had been watching from the
edge of the courtyard. As he rejoined her she took his hand and spoke quietly
to him. "Why did you do that?"

Cornelius did not look at her, but stared
back at the grey obelisk he had just left.

"No matter who wins a war, the
ones who die lose - whatever uniform they wear."

"You've lost friends?"
Katherine asked. Cornelius turned towards her.

"I lost nearly half of the men in
my unit in 10 minutes. They weren't friends in the normal sense but they were
men I commanded and I was responsible for them."

"I'm sorry," she said and
squeezed his hand gently. There did not seem to be anything else that she could
say and Cornelius appeared to be withdrawn in his thoughts. Katherine decided
to change the subject. "I'm hungry, let's go and eat."

Cornelius smiled back at her and
nodded. She took his arm and they moved off towards the restaurant in the
castle.

2nd
February 1920

Isca,
Britannia

Titus Petronius watched the legionaries
being drilled by the training centurions. One group in full combat equipment
was tackling the obstacle course whilst another was practising parade ground
drill whilst in the distance he could hear shots from the firing range. Despite
all the activity, the field of Mars looked empty. The training grounds used by
the imperial army were called the field of Mars after the original exercise
area in Rome. The name had been brought back into use about forty years ago when
Emperor Philip had re-organised the army.

As part of his policy to reconcile the
Eastern and Western halves of the Empire, Philip had taken advantage of the
renewed interest and reverence for the early centuries to bring back many of
the traditions of the early Empire. Because many of these were Western or Latin
in origin it had helped to placate those who felt that the Eastern Greeks had
had too much influence following Philips triumph in the civil war. The renaming
of the army training grounds was a minor change compared with the others that
Philip had introduced. The legions had regained their old titles, the 2nd
legion becoming the legio II Augusta and entitled to bear the battle honours
won by that unit since the time of Julius Caesar. But it was the return of the
Eagles that received the most publicity.

The Eagle standard of the legions had
been withdrawn during the religious wars of the 17th century. During those
bloody and vicious conflicts that had split Christendom a cult had grown up in
the military that had married the old pagan gods to Christian theology with the
Eagle as its symbol. The authorities and the church had ruthlessly suppressed
the cult and the Eagles had been withdrawn and melted down, their gold being
used to make ornaments for St Sophia in Constantinople. Now the battle flags of
the legions were topped by their traditional emblem and the soldiers of the
Empire once more followed the Eagle into battle, although they were gilded
steel and not solid gold anymore.

The legion was the backbone of the
regular forces, and each one was a small self contained army with its own
aircraft, artillery and landships in addition to the legionary infantry.
Supporting the legions were regiments of 'auxilia palatina', small mobile
forces of infantry and armoured motor carriages named after the elite field
formations of the fourth century and the 'cataphract' armoured regiments of
tracked landships named after the heavy cavalry of the early Empire.

Backing up the regular army were the
provincial auxiliaries, cohorts of infantry, cavalry and artillery used for
garrison and para-military duties and to support the Legions in time of war.
Recruited from the local population and paid for by the province, about half of
the auxiliaries were part time reservists.

"Enjoying the wide open
spaces?"

Titus turned and saw that Virius
Primus, another junior tribune had joined him while he had been watching the
centurions put the men through their paces.

"It does look empty doesn't
it," agreed Titus.

"With the moratorium on
recruitment and the reduction in the training schedule it's not going to get
any better." Virius said angrily. "This is the last group of recruits
that we have. When they finish their basic training at the end of the month,
Mars will get even less use."