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

one finger. ‘See, we be friends, you and I.’
    She was about thirteen, Marcus imagined, watching her as she played with Cub. A tall, thin girl, with a pointed face wide at the temples and narrow at the chin; and the shape of her face and the colour of her eyes and hair gave her a little the look of a young vixen. If she were angry, he thought, she would probably look very like a vixen indeed. He had the glimmering of an idea that he had seen her before, but he could not remember where.
    ‘How did you know about Cub?’ he asked at last.
    She looked up. ‘Narcissa, my nurse, told me—oh, about a moon ago. And at first I did not believe it, because Nissa so often gets her stories wrong. But yesterday I heard a slave on this side of the hedge call to another, “Oh worthless one, thy Master’s wolf-whelp has bitten my toe!” And the other called back, “Then the gods grant that the taste of it will not make him sick!” So I knew that it was true.’
    Her imitation of Esca and Marcipor the house slave was unmistakable, and Marcus flung up his head with a crow of laughter. ‘And it did!—at all events, something did.’
    The girl laughed too, joyously, showing little pointed teeth as white and sharp as Cub’s. And as though their laughter had unlocked a door, Marcus suddenly remembered where he had seen her before. He had not been interested enough in Kaeso and Valaria to remember that they lived next door, and although he had noticed her so vividly at the time, he had not remembered the girl he had seen with them, because Esca, coming immediately afterwards, had been so much more important; but he remembered her now.
    ‘I saw you at the Saturnalia Games,’ he said. ‘But your hair was hidden under your mantle, and that was why I did not remember you.’
    ‘But I remember you!’ said the girl. Cub had wandered off after a beetle by that time, and she let him go, sitting back and folding her hands in her lap. ‘Nissa says you bought that gladiator. I wish you could have bought the bear too.’
    ‘You minded very badly about that bear, didn’t you?’ said Marcus.
    ‘It was cruel! To kill on the hunting trail, that is one thing; but they took away his freedom! They kept him in a cage, and then they killed him.’
    ‘It was the cage, then, more than the killing?’
    ‘I do not like cages,’ said the girl in a small hard voice. ‘Or nets. I am glad you bought that gladiator.’
    A little chill wind came soughing across the garden, silvering the long grass and tossing the budding sprays of the wild pear- and cherry-trees. The girl shivered, and Marcus realized that her yellow tunic was of very thin wool, and even here in the shelter of the old earthworks it was still very early spring.
    ‘You are cold,’ he said, and gathered up his old military cloak which had been flung across the bench. ‘Put this on.’
    ‘Do you not want it?’
    ‘No. I have a thicker tunic than that flimsy thing you are wearing. So. Now, come and sit here on the bench.’
    She obeyed him instantly, drawing the cloak around her. In the act of doing so, she checked, looking down at the bright folds, then up again at Marcus. ‘This is your soldier’s cloak,’ she said. ‘Like the cloaks the centurions from the transit camp wear.’
    Marcus made her a quick mocking salute. ‘You behold in me Marcus Aquila, ex-Cohort Centurion of Gaulish Auxiliaries with the Second Legion.’
    The girl looked at him in silence for a moment. Then she said, ‘I know. Does the wound hurt you still?’
    ‘Sometimes,’ Marcus said. ‘Did Nissa tell you that too?’
    She nodded.
    ‘She seems to have told you a deal of things.’
    ‘Slaves!’ She made a quick, contemptuous gesture. ‘They stand in doorways and chatter like starlings; but Nissa is the worst of them all!’
    Marcus laughed, and a small silence fell between them; but after a little while he said: ‘I have told you my name. What is yours?’
    ‘My aunt and uncle call me Camilla, but