WHEN THE LEGIONS WENT

WHEN THE LEGIONS WENT, by David Barber

 

Outside, the wolf-howl and the dark. Around the fire

Old Alba tells the tale of how he got this very blade

from the last of the Rome-men in the days of his youth,

 

when the ancient foe was rumoured gone, which his father

– a man of murderous rages, stabbed in a quarrel over dogs –

would believe when he pissed in the fort at Vindolanda.

 

They laughed when the lad fretted that the silent Wall

might be a trick, but while the men heaved gates off hinges

so any soul might pass without tax or permission, it was Alba

 

spied the lone sentry skulking, and when they chased him,

whooping and shouting, he fought them like a cornered rat

until his father got behind and opened up his throat

 

like a second mouth gargling on his own blood.

To his useless son he tossed the Rome-man’s sword,

the hand-me-down armour he forbade – warriors

 

fought in their skin, he said. Girom, cousin to his father,

nursed a belly wound that oozed blood and shit. He spat

on the crow-feast for staying put when all the rest

 

had fled. They guessed the dead man had a woman here.

Or clung to what he knew, Alba thought, however bad.

His father held that men were measured by their enemies,

 

not cattle raids or squabbles over women. Had they

not fought the legions of Rome? Girom slowed them down,

loath to die alone, but no man grudged him that.

 

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David Barber lives anonymously in the UK. His ambition is to continue doing both these things.