The Eagle of the Ninth was a favourite book of mine when I was younger. It was fascinating to re-visit it. Published in 1956, it was aimed at young people, but the only way in which it is a children’s book is that the violence and sex are toned down. The style of writing is enjoyably straightforward, for adults or children, and there is a strong sense of the British landscape. There is no feeling that the author is condescending to a youthful readership.
Set in Roman Britain, or at least the Britain that Rome is trying to subdue, “a place where two worlds met without mingling”, the story concerns the search for the missing standard of the ninth legion, the eagle of the title. The legion marched north of Hadrian’s wall and was never heard of again. Were they defeated in battle by the British and all killed, or did they revolt against their officers?
The young hero, Marcus, invalided out of the Roman army, volunteers to go north with his British companion, Esca, to find out what happened to the legion, and its commander, his father. It is both a personal quest and an official mission.
This book is a very good example of the way in which imaginative writing can bring the past to life in a way that factual history books cannot. There is a powerful sense of what a less-populated Britain was like: “On they went, following the road that now ran out on a causeway between sodden marsh and empty sky, now plunged into deep boar-hunted forest, or lifted over bleak uplands where nothing grew save furze and thorn-scrub.”
When Marcus and his uncle Aquila play a game of draughts by the light of an oil lamp, in what is modern-day Silchester, the reader has a clear impression of the room in the villa as an island of warmth and peace in the darkness of this wild country where “the wind moaned through the desolate woods, the skies wept. . .”
There is a touch of something supernatural about the fate of the legion. Esca saw them marching, and recalls: “But the mist was creeping down from the high moors, and the legion marched into it , straight into it, and it licked them up and flowed together behind them, and they were gone as though they had marched from one world into another.” There is also what we might now call folk horror, with the missing Roman eagle finally being discovered as an object in a pagan ritual.
Marcus has a dream, in which he sees the Roman column marching northwards. In a chilling moment, he realises there are no faces under the metal helmets. Reading now, this sent a tingle up my spine, and at the same time I remembered how exactly the same thing had happened the first time I read it long ago.
Books stay the same but we change and that is part of the fascination of re-reading. Marcus’ shattered leg destroys his hopes of a military career. In the end he is partially cured. He can get around, but with a limp, and is not fit enough to go back to the army. He has to settle for what he has got. As a teenager bursting with health, I did not notice the disability theme here, but I do now.
I am not usually keen on biographical interpretations of fiction, but in this case, it is fascinating to know that Rosemary Sutcliff suffered grave ill-health, spending much of her life in a wheelchair. The vivid action scenes were created purely from her imagination. I don’t think she had ever actually been able to ride a horse, for example.
I have seen it suggested that she is one of the only authors to have been directly influenced by Rudyard Kipling. I think that’s unfair on Kipling, because his influence was so all-pervasive that it can hardly be seen now. For example, where would the modern spy story be without Kim?
Nevertheless, The Eagle of the Ninth does partly derive from three particular stories of his. These are “On the Great Wall” and “A Centurion of the Thirtieth” from Puck of Pook’s Hill and the Indian army story “The Lost Legion”.
There are also several “lost legion” stories from the first world war, about units that seemingly disappeared on the battlefield, that may be an influence. The anecdote about the ghostly legion seen in York to this day is in there somewhere, too.
Perhaps we should see The Eagle of the Ninth as belonging to the post-war period when it was first published, with its disabled young officer hero, missing father, and missing soldiers.
In the end, despite the weather, Marcus decides to stay on and make his life in Britain. It’s clear that we are meant to see him as our common ancestor. This glimpse into the past sees us as the modern descendants of the Romans, but also as the inheritors of something older and stranger.
The Good Reader 