Kuno, who was the oldest man on the farm, could remember when there had been vine terraces on the south slope you could see the traces of them still, just below the woods here, like the traces of the old fields and the old sheep-runs that had had to be let go back to the wild. It was not what it had been in the good old days, of course. And really, the place didn't look so bad.
Below him he could see the farmstead under the great, bare swell of the downs the russet-roofed huddle of buildings, the orchard behind, making a darker pattern on the paleness of the open turf, the barley just beginning to show its first tinge of harvest gold, the stream that rose under the orchard wall and wandered down the valley to turn the creaking wheel of the water-mill that ground their corn.Īlmost a year had gone by since the last time that he had stood here and looked down, for it was only last night that he had come home on leave from Rutupiae, where he commanded a troop of Rhenus Horse-Auxiliary Cavalry there had been no regular Legions in Britain for forty years now-and every detail of the scene gave him a sharp-edged pleasure.
Aquila halted on the edge of the hanging woods, looking down.
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