54 pages • 1 hour read
Rosemary SutcliffThe Eagle of the Ninth
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1954A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 13-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary: “The Lost Legion”
Extending hospitality to Marcus and Esca, the whistler, called Guern, invites the two to his home, indicating that they are welcome as long as they choose to stay. wife, Murna, is clearly a Briton by her appearance, and though they appear to live humbly, she is adorned with attractive accessories rare to the area, and she cooks from a valuable bronze pot. Their residence is also set some distance apart from the homes of other Britons, a rarity in a region in which protection is to be found in proximity and numbers. Marcus’s suspicions are confirmed when Guern begins to shave and Marcus observes a permanent indent in his chin: It has been left by the chin strap of a Roman helmet, etched into his skin over the course of years and years of wear. Marcus carefully raises the question of how a former eagle came to live with the Britons. Guern is concerned that his identity has been found out—that somehow Marcus has heard rumors about him—but Marcus explains how he deduced Guern’s former identity. Marcus then reveals who he is, suggesting, “Maybe it is my father’s face that you remember. He was your Cohort Commander” (118), and Guern immediately accepts this fact as Marcus bears a strong resemblance to his father. Guern is at first afraid that Marcus will turn him in to the Romans as a deserter, but Marcus explains that he wants only to know what happened to his father’s legion and to the eagle.
Guern confirms many of the rumors Marcus has heard, explaining that the Ninth Legion was deeply troubled by the time Marcus’s father became a part of it. Sixty years before, Boudicca, warrior queen of the Iceni, placed a curse on the Ninth, taking of her own life and compounding her malediction’s menace. Ever after, suspicions and superstition surrounded the Ninth, and the legion seemed to meet with bad luck. Its reputation floundering, the caliber of recruits seeking to join steadily declined, and the Hispania was forced to accept recruits whose character was less than desirable. This led to a denigration of the standards of the unit. Worse, under the poor leadership of an incompetent legate, only 4,000 soldiers were left to attempt to quell the rising in the North.
Disoriented by the persistent, heavy mists in the North and slowly whittled away in number by smaller attacks by the tribes, many members of the legion attempted to persuade the legate to make peace with the tribes if only they would allow the legion to return to Roman territory unharmed. When the legate berated them for their insubordination, more than half of the soldiers mutinied. Though the Legate managed to persuade them to lay down their arms, the mutineers knew the Senate would execute a percentage for staging the uprising. The soldiers killed their own legate, and in the chaos of the mutiny, the tribes attacked and killed most of the remaining legionnaires. Others fled and took up residence with the tribes.
Esca’s father rallied the remining loyal men together, determined to at least bring the eagle back to Rome after the dissolution of the Ninth. The tribesmen gave chase and, concealed by the mists, picked off members of the small party as they continued southward. Wounded in one such skirmish, Guern himself finally deserted the legion and cast aside the trappings of his uniform. From Gaul, he was able to pass through the countryside without attracting attention. Murna accepted his past as a Roman soldier, and he has lived with her, largely apart from the other tribes, ever since. Marcus’s father was with the eagle when Guern left the legion, but when last Guern saw the eagle, captured by the Epidaii tribe and in the course of being brought North, there were no prisoners with the tribesmen. As Esca and Marcus prepare to depart, Guern directs Marcus and Esca in the direction of the Epidaii’s territory in the western mountains near the river Cluta. Guern expresses some guilt, feeling that he should be accompanying Marcus and Esca to help recapture the eagle, but Marcus reassures him that his current circumstances present too great a risk and that he has done them service enough.
Chapter 14 Summary: “The Feast of New Spears”
Marcus and Esca have been traveling for a month since meeting Guern and have found no further clues to inform their quest. In the territory of the Epidaii, they meet travelers on the road, one of whom is a chieftain, asking if they know of anyone with eye sickness. Chieftain Dergdian’s son needs the services that Marcus can provide, and he brings them to his home. Dergdian’s father, an arrogant, decrepit old man named Tradui, has been treating the boy himself without any success. He declares that he has known all along that the boy will be blind, though he has used toad’s fat on the child’s eyes nevertheless. Tensions between the old man and his daughter-in-law are clear; it is evident that the old man’s stubbornness and arrogance are oppressive.
When Marcus takes the child into his arms and the infant reacts to the light of the fire, Marcus knows that there is hope for his sight yet. So begins his treatment of the child’s eyes, and Marcus and Esca remain with Dergdian’s family longer than they have in any other place. The Feast of New Spears is approaching. This is a sacred rite-of-passage ceremony during which the young men of the tribe have the status of warriors conferred upon them. Esca experienced a similar indoctrination, but each tribe’s ceremonies are distinctive and unique to their cultural customs. Dergdian reveals that his clan, known as the Seal People, is distinctive among the Epidaii because of the sacred role they fulfill: “We are the keepers of the holy place […] We are the guardians of the life of the tribe” (131). It occurs to Marcus that such a group of people might be considered important enough to retain possession of the Roman eagle.
A gathering of all the smaller clans of the Epidaii commences, consisting of a considerable number of native Britons converging around Dergdian’s location. On the night it begins, Marcus and Esca proceed through all aspects of the ritual open to them. They follow the tribesmen across the landscape, gathering at a turf structure, an obviously holy place surrounded by stones and monoliths and protected as a sacred domain by the Druids in charge of its care. Mysticism and pageantry mark the gravity of the rite, the Druid leaders outfitted in sacred headdresses and regalia indicative of their power and influence. The young men enter the chamber with the priests and emerge having changed status from boy to warrior. Marcus and Esca and those men not participating in the ceremony remain outside as protocol dictates. The last man to emerge from the chamber is a Druid priest, carrying the ruined remnants of a Roman eagle.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Venture into the Dark”
Marcus is astonished and transfixed by the appearance of the very object he has sought for so long. At the conclusion of the ritualistic portion of the ceremony, the men of the tribe proceed back to the dun to join the women and children in feasting and celebration. Reeling from the revelation that the eagle is in possession of the very people with whom he has been residing, Marcus is determined to gather as much information as he can about the circumstances surrounding the Seal People’s acquisition of the eagle, without arousing suspicion. Finding himself in Tradui’s company, Marcus appeals to the elderly man’s vanity, feigning interest in his stories, asking about the significance and meaning of the ceremony.
Encouraged by so receptive an audience member, Tradui reveals his own experience of the events of the Ninth’s downfall, the foil of those recounted by Guern. Tradui was among the party of warriors to follow the men remaining loyal to the Ninth, and when at last they cornered them, the remnants of the Ninth Legion mounted a valiant stand. In the fighting, the aquilifer, or official eagle bearer, was brought down, and Marcus’s father stepped in, rescuing the eagle and carrying on. Marcus’s father was brought down by another, but his body was washed downstream, the eagle in tow, and it took some time for the Epidaii to find them. Marcus is astonished when Tradui produces the ring with the dolphin insignia of the Aquila family, so familiar to Marcus from the vivid memories of it on his father’s hand. Tradui explains that the Epidaii left the soldiers with their weapons and armor but that he took that ring from the one who saved the eagle, whom Marcus now knows to have been his father. In telling the story, Tradui remarks on Marcus’s resemblance to that man of status, and Marcus attempts to dismiss suspicion by claiming that Greeks and Romans share many similar features.
Marcus and Esca devise a plan to retrieve the eagle from the sacred place. In the darkness, in a window of time during which Marcus knows that the Druid priests will be absent, Marcus and Esca sneak into the earthen mound. Since they have not been inside, it is a tense and terrifying undertaking as they attempt to locate the eagle in the relative darkness, their only light a lamp that threatens to sputter out. Marcus and Esca pray together, allied in their appeals for their mutual safety: “Marcus made his sunset prayers to Mithras, Esca made them to Lugh of the Shining Spear; but both these were Sun Gods, Light Gods, and their followers knew the same weapons against the dark” (143). To transport the eagle effectively, they must detach it from its mounting, and as they scramble and fumble to wrest it free, Marcus is besieged by anxiety. They eventually manage to abscond with it into the night and conceal it in their predetermined hiding place at the edge of the loch. After Esca has tucked the eagle away up and under the bank, beneath a log and some debris, the two sneak back into Dergdian’s home and return to their sleeping pallets.
Chapter 16 Summary: “The Ring-Brooch”
Marcus and Esca depart the community of the Seal People in the morning, aware that the eagle’s absence will be promptly discovered and prepared for the inevitability that they will be pursued by the tribe as the most likely suspects in its disappearance. Marcus and Esca ride without haste; it is counterintuitive for them to cover any significant distance when they must return for the eagle. Among the horsemen who catch up with them, Dergdian and Liathan demand that Esca and Marcus return the eagle. As planned, Marcus feigns ignorance of the eagle’s disappearance, and in a tense exchange, their belongings are searched at Marcus’s behest so that the brothers might satisfy themselves that Marcus and Esca do not have the eagle. When their thorough search turns up nothing, Dergdian and Liathan, ashamed of their behavior, invite Marcus and Esca to return home with them to soothe the friction between them, but they decline.
Marcus and Esca proceed to a nearby village to execute the next phase of their plan. Under the guise of healer, Marcus explains to the residents of the town that Esca suffers from an ongoing affliction of possession by spirits. Marcus requests a quiet, secluded place where he might perform the treatments on Esca that have succeeded for him in the past. Marcus and Esca have determined that they must establish their presence, together, in one place, to defray any further suspicion from the Seal People. The natural suspicion and fear of spirit possession on the part of the villagers will guarantee them privacy and as little interference as possible, allowing Esca to slip away to retrieve the eagle while Marcus carries out the requisite gestures necessary to creating a convincing alibi. Marcus is yet again terribly frustrated that his injury prevents him from fully participating in the execution of their plans, especially because the rescue of the eagle is primarily his own quest. Esca returns successful, and the two head for Hadrian’s Wall.
When they stop to situate the eagle more securely, they unwrap it from the cloak in which they are transporting it. Esca is horrified to realize that the ring brooch used to fasten the cloak is gone; he recalls feeling a snagging sensation when he dove to bring the eagle out of its hiding place, and he is now certain that the brooch was torn from the fabric and must be laying by the banks of the loch. Esca’s fear is amplified because in the search of their property and person, Dergdian, Liathan, and their men would certainly have laid eyes on it, and it is unique enough to be memorable as belonging to Marcus and Esca when it is inevitably discovered. To give Marcus the best chance of returning to Roman territory with the eagle, Esca proposes that Marcus continue, while he stays back to handle the inevitable confrontation with the Epidaii. He means to tell them that the eagle was lost in a nearby lake when the two quarreled over his possession. When Esca confirms for Marcus that the tribesmen will kill him for his participation in the theft, Marcus flatly refuses. They have begun the endeavor together, and they will continue it through together, whatever the outcome might be.
Chapters 13-16 Analysis
Marcus is crushed to learn that so much of what others have long believed about the legion has been confirmed by Gruen’s recollections. Marcus once believed that there might be something of the legion left to be saved, but Gruen’s revelation of the devastating betrayal of the Ninth’s soldiers is evidence to the contrary. Having now served as a commander himself, Marcus empathizes with how his father might have felt, and how deeply the gravity of the situation must have weighed upon him. Marcus’s pride in his father has never faltered and has been further legitimized in the knowledge that he remained with the eagle until his end, but Marcus can appreciate the anguish that the dissolution of the Ninth must have caused his father. It is with anguish that Marcus listens to Tradui’s account of the Epidaii’s tracking, hunting, and dispatching of the remaining members of the Ninth, especially given the coldness with which Tradui relates the tale, but even in the retelling by his father’s enemy, Marcus’s father’s honor is retained. Tradui confirms Marcus’s father’s allegiance to the eagle, which Marcus believed in but which Gruen was not present to witness, attesting to the fervor with which Marcus’s father protected the sacred symbol of his legion. Tradui’s sense of recognition of the similarities in Marcus’s appearance to that of his father startles and frightens Marcus because he does not wish to be found out, but throughout the novel the comparisons made between Marcus and his father continue to mount, and he cannot help but feel complimented by the ever more frequently emerging similarities that others are witnessing in not only his appearance but also his character.
Although he and Esca have developed a rapport with Dergdian and his family in the time that they have lived with them, Marcus does not feel conflicted about his decision to reclaim the eagle. The eagle is, after all, Roman property, and Marcus feels that the hospitality and camaraderie he has received from Dergdian and his family has been repaid in the restoration of Dergdian’s son’s eyesight. Neither Esca nor Marcus set out to betray Dergdian’s family, but, like Cradoc demonstrated in the opening chapters of the novel, the rapport and camaraderie that Marcus develops with Dergdian’s family do not outweigh the more lofty and significant loyalties Marcus holds to his family and culture.
Related Titles
By Rosemary Sutcliff
