~~"Where do the strong go to be weak?" {Firelord, Parke Godwin}
~Many years ago, one of my favorite authors, GuyGavriel Kay, explained in an interview, how he felt the ending of 'Gladiator' was something of a cop-out: it's too easy (as many of us have wrenchingly experienced, having lived through the 'Red Wedding' Scene recently from GoThrones) to simply kill off a protagonist, even for dramatic effect (which, frankly, is my whole gaff regarding the RedWedding Scene...what a copout, stupid story-line waste of great protagonists). While the tragic thread of 'Gladiator' made the ending seem appropriate, GGK had a point, in that, Living, the art of Living, is much more difficult, especially the Art of Continuing past Pain, Loss, and Grief, building a new Life, by picking up pieces of the Old, or Leaving them behind...which, in essence, is a sort of Death in itself.
~This excerpt is a somewhat altered, abbreviated form of my original 'Redemption' series, which has bumbled around in my head, in various forms, through the years...unfortunately, being delayed on account of JohnAdams, Thomas Jefferson (Stephen Dillane) and a little Scotch doctress...if you're so inclined, check out the further excerpts on my Tumblr blog if you so wish (the link is under my profile-page...some parts are a little smuttly-so be warned, if you're under 16, don't view)...but Nemhyn, Maeve, Lucilla, Maximus/Lucius Artorius Castus/Batrades and the band of dashing Sarmatian HorseLords...they're all still in there. My writing, the story have altered through the years...it's very difficult to keep apace though, since my career is really chief-command of my days...And while the canon of Thomas Jefferson in PreRev France, and his (imaginary-fictonally drafted) little Scotch doctress might have been inspired by 'JohnAdams', they are my own story, not fanfiction...(I would honestly argue the same for my take on Maximus and the Sarmati, in Roman-Britain)-a story which I hope I might craft into a more detailed/researched/written thread oneday...and still do my job well for my own patients...
~Spring 182 CE
He did not speak of that memory to Maeve or her daughter. It was too personal, too much of a past he grew more distant from, everyday.
He shared other memories, though. As a boy, he would run through the hay fields with children of his father's farm hands, early summer mornings sweet with the scent of newly mown grass.
The first impression he ever had of humble majesty embodied in one man. He had been a gangling youth, son of provincial nobility, bowing before Marcus Aurelius, trying to conceal his awe, overcome his awkwardness in the presence of the Emperor's dazzling second daughter, Annia Aurelia Galeria Lucilla.
The girls from prosperous farms local to Trujillo, Emerita Augusta beyond, did not provoke such a bizarre mix of shyness and worship. They seemed vapid and tiresome, frivolous in their unpolished flirtations, more interested in who was next to be married, what baby was soon to be born, their chatter like the empty and mindless clucking of hens.
Lucilla was different.
Young as she was, still more a girl than woman, her mind was as sharp, her tongue as quick as any seasoned Senator's, surviving the intrigue of a soft and corrupt court.
Maximus described to the two Roman-British women, across the camp-fire one night, how he had choked, spewing a mouthful of wine in disbelief, on the Lucilla's stola of Indian silk. Reclining on a couch, opposite from where his father and Marcus Aurelius had been similarly situated, she was disputing some point, quoted Strabo, and with an acerbic patrician scorn, recited Rufinis, as to why a woman, if educated in a similar tradition, had as innate an aptitude for reason and ruling, as any man.
Maximus had been physically unable to control his sputtered mirth, an unfortunate coincidence he'd chosen to sip from his wine-glass at that moment.
Women in Hispania, with the exception of his grandmother, never spoke like that.
His grandmother, though, was unique.
Lacrima Decima Vorena, the name she adopted upon arriving to Hispania's northern shores, a girl of fifteen, a child pregnant and fleeing a traitorous, despised husband. Guided by the Tower of Hercules perched on the rocky headlands of Brigantium, Maximus' grandfather Decimus Vorenus, head-magistrate of the old veteran's settlement, was glamoured by a platinum-haired fairy-woman, combing her shining locks, amid the sands and white-capped breakers. Or so went the tale, imparted to the family canon, through the years.
Maximus never met his grandfather, so he was unable to decide if the seasoned soldier had truly been bewitched. So much older than the woman he'd fallen in love with, it was more likely Decimus Vorenus had been bedazzled by a gentle laugh, and the fresh face of youth evinced by his grandmother, her tragic story, brought to distant shores, escaping a tyrannical husband of rival barbarian tribes.
Maximus' own traumatic birth had taken his mother's life. In his father's frequent absences, Decima Vorena, his strange, foreign grandmother, was the only female influence, and primary adult, present in his early years.
By the time Maximus was approaching manhood, his father had earned retirement from legionary service. A tour which must have been quite fruitful in terms of powerful connections, Marcus Aurelius conversed that night, in his father's dining hall, familiar as a brother or close friend.
Beautiful, even in her seventh decade, Maximus recalled how Decima Vorena sat upright through the entire course of dinner, exemplifying the matrons of the Old Republic, snow white hair pinned exquisitely, her gown of fine-spun wool, draped on a body, still spry and supple. She had never been one to follow transient fashions, the daring, younger ladies of the Roman court, arrayed about his father's formal reception room, enjoying the temptation of subverting outmoded convention, reclining next to the men as they ate.
Decima Vorena's laugh broke the taut silence which had stilled the dinner-converse following Lucilla's bold statement. The delicate lines around her eyes deepened in amusement, gaze a lucid steel-gray, like the colorless sun upon winter fog, weighted upon the Emperor, pensive and humoring at once.
If only she had been born a man, Eminence, what a Caesar she would make.
Lucilla, reclined next to Maximus, suddenly tensed. Her lovely young features drew into a frown, seeming to struggle, keep her poise. Marcus Aurelius' young daughter, so sophisticated, so intimidating moments before, valiantly hiding her nervousness behind that mask of arrogance only royalty could contrive; yet, Maximus was made aware how new she truly was, to this setting of powerful men.
A company in which women were welcome, so long as they kept their opinions private, dulled any display of intelligence, and silenced objections, even when grounded in learning or study.
Maeve, her daughter Nemhyn, each snickered, listening to Maximus' story over the popping of the logs, the sizzle of fat from their lamb on the spit.
Disguised, provincial nobility heralding from the most savage, remote outpost of the Empire, they practiced a profession of men. Their trade sent them journeying across a continent and a half, over three years, to lands even Alexander the Great had scarcely breached.
These two irregular, eccentric British women, sitting around that small, cozy fire, flames warming the cool night air of a Spanish spring. These two women—a tribal-queen and her daughter—knew precisely what had provoked his grandmother into laughter.
It was sympathy, not scorn, for young Lucilla's rebellious statement. A rare ally, Lacrima Decima Vorena was not Roman. She came from an island far to the north, cast beyond legend, ocean winds, and the far reach of crashing waves—the Ninth wave beyond the Ninth Wave, bordering on the Western lands of the Dead.
Hibernia, the Roman forces from a century before named that distant shore.
They knew what sovereignty meant in those far, unsettled places. Kingship was privilege earned. The blessing bestowing such choice ran in a woman's veins, guarded by goddess-right.
As Romanized as the two British women were, listening to that episode from his youth, they recognized tribal custom, their own Island still governed by similar traditions.
In that other life, as Maximus Decimus Meridius, General of the Legions of the North, Supreme Commander under Marcus Aurelius, it had often been speculated Antius Crescens Calpurnianus, Legate of the Sixth, stationed in distant Eboracum, had been bewitched by a native seeress. Nothing else could account for his declining the multiple promotions offered through the years, displaying exemplary service, particularly assimilating the five-thousand Sarmatian cavalry into the ranks of the British auxiliaries.
It was only now, sharing that supposed sorceress' company, Maximus realized what a formidable ally the General of Sixth Victoria Victrix possessed by way of his wife, Maeve. In the chaotic aftermath of Commodus' demise, the Spaniard, a bruised, battered refugee, found himself unwillingly coerced, bullied, and ultimately persuaded into remaining with these two women, as he slowly recuperated under their care, since the months escaping Rome.
Indeed, Maeve, her daughter Nemhyn, embodied Brigantine nobility aligned to Roman martial prowess. In the vast scale of the Empire, such connections mattered little, but on their Island, these women were the North, essentially gave Antius the authority to hold the North, that dark region beyond the Wall.
Rome, as always, disdained a woman's intervention, scorning Maeve's success in having weeded-out subversive rebels within federated clans south of the Hadrian Divide, in those decades Marcus Aurelius' predecessor, Antoninus Pius, saw fit to leave his own mark of Imperial domination through the Caledonian waste. Her own ancestor, Cartimandua, had been no less infamous, preserving the peace of native territory from decimation, if not occupation. Theirs was authority of queen and Druidess not formally recognized by the Legions, though the Eagle still benefited.
For Maeve's people, those who had no other voice—simple peasant farmers, freedmen-artisans, and crude village-folk of the rural countryside—she represented a powerful figurehead, invoked by Brigantia's ancient custom.
Maeve's daughter, Nemhyn, seemed altogether indifferent of that legacy imbued by her mother and father. High spirited if she wished, particularly impatient with Maximus' own embittered glowering, his scathing thankless rage at how these women had interfered in his welcome death, Maeve's daughter had little but the most academic sympathy for the ex-gladiator, now traveling under the guise of an exiled mercenary, guarding these two unconventional women.
Why they insisted on returning to his old home, before journeying straight on to Britannia, was a mystery he had no motivation to contemplate.
Nemhyn viewed him, rightly so, as a dangerous commodity sharing their presence.
Not long after leaving the urban-security of Tarraco, a ragged band of thieves set upon the travelers.
Skirting the main roads, the small group, with their cart and mule, headed out on the rural-wagon paths west, into the Spanish midlands toward Trujillo.
Night falling, the women chose a lowland knoll, off the beaten path, for their camp. It was a sheltered area, small bluff mounted by a deserted shepherd's hollow cresting a pond, fed by an underground aquifer.
Maximus returned hours later to find their small campsite occupied by ruffians of the lowest sort. Off scouring for game, he heard the vagrants before he saw them, a loud, drunken and dangerous lot. They were likely slave-scavengers, preying on poorly guarded pilgrim-caravans.
Thieves, perhaps, hoping to steal away with the mysterious supplies brought from the East—mostly a chest of scrolls and papyri-texts detailing obscure medical phenomena—the band of mercantile-criminals would find such paraphernalia worthless.
The women were a different story.
The crazed hag, mumbling in witless dementia—a ploy Maeve long ago conceived when dealing with just these situations—would still fetch something of a price, if only to supply the arenas with cheap fodder for their wild animals.
The younger woman was of much more value.
Wild, russet colored waves, thick, poorly concealed by her veil, fair-freckled skin; she was comely—inviting and flirtatious, in the way of country-girls. A saucy giggle erupted every time one of them groped her buttocks, or ogled at a flash of slim ankle when she passed, serving the intruders seated about their fire, food from a simple repast.
The unmixed wine, in bladder-flasks, flowed freely between the gang-members.
Maximus, concealed in the brush and shadows beyond the fire, could see the way they leered openly at Nemhyn's swaying hips. She was so uncharacteristically mindless, leaning forward, letting the neckline of her long tunic fall away, a peak of white breasts beneath.
Her smile did nothing to dissuade the thieves.
Maeve continued to babble, slack incoherence, gnawing on her fingers like a crazed beggar.
He waited, a predator timing his attack, stealthy as the giant felines of southern lands, where Juba once hunted such creatures.
He heard Nemhyn's careless laugh, playful as a wanton, pointing out the stringed instruments and pipes, in the bandits' possession.
They played of course.
She danced, of course. With winsome gaiety, she said, with a shy smile, a quick, merry glance about the circle of ruffians, she may not be equal to the women of Gades, but she would do, that night, anyway, for their entertainment. She might even offer them something more, in the privacy of the bushes, away from the nattering bag of bones that was her mother.
The comment had been spoken with just the correct amount of annoyance and long-suffering patience, exactly right for a simple-minded country-girl, entirely unaware of her circumstances.
The sport she would offer was sweet inducement to such vultures, sampling their produce before they would sell her to the slavers in the next market town.
The music struck through the silence of the night, the season early enough to not be filled with the chirp of insects from the tall grass. A slight breeze wafted a soft perfume of spring blossoms.
Drums—criminal gangs always seemed to have drums—echoed out from the light cast by the burning logs.
Nemhyn's silhouette was a flying, twirling shade, her hands gracing the golden flames, quick as fluttering birds against the fire, undulation of hips, a leap and spin, she was a filly tempting the stallions of grassland herds.
Maximus, gazing hard from the darkness, patient as a cold-killer, found himself stirred unexpectedly by the titillating indecency of white limbs, unbound hair, thick long waves, red-gold highlights, which, even in the darkness, caught the firelight like honey and amber-sun.
She stopped, freezing all at once, seeming to focus on one of the younger members of the villainous group. The boy was enthralled, mouth gaping in dumb-awe, as she came to kneel in a slow, serpent-like reverie, the flute weaving a low seductive pitch, mesmerizing and quavering with Nemhyn's sinuous hypnosis.
There was a rabid, covetous greed in the stares of the other men, wolves ready to pounce on their meal.
It was then, Maximus attacked. A mere hunting dagger his weapon, it didn't matter. He had been a soldier, skilled as any Roman legionary was expected, later, a gladiator, unmatched in hand-to-hand combat.
He couldn't have known the wine served to the ruffian-gang had been drugged with enough opium and jimson-weed to down a wagon-team of oxen. The bandits were rendered slow and stupid, by lust, by their inebriation and herbal intoxicants.
Blood splattered across Nemhyn's face and neck. She screamed, a short-sound, shock or fear, scuttling back on her hands and feet.
He drove the dagger in deeper, between the shoulder blades of that unfortunate boy, its deadly point, protruding from the cracked breast-bone, yanked out viscously, leaving the youth gagging on scarlet fluid, gasping, slumping forward clutching at his penetrated heart.
There was no time, no mercy. The Spaniard, acting out of instinct, became a deadly tempest, stabbing, thrusting—the screams of dying men filled the air. Then…
Quiet.
All six of them, in moments, were slain almost precisely where they had been sitting, cross-legged or sprawled around the fire. Their blood was seeping into the ground from severed throats, disemboweled, one beheaded.
That body, skull separated from its neck, was still in the midst of collapsing, muscles of the headless corpse slower than the brain, to acknowledge the abrupt ending of life.
Maximus came back to himself, fingers clutched, wrapped around the dagger's handle. Blood, other men's blood, slick and fresh, stained his hands, tunic, his legs and arms. He numbly registered Nemhyn with her own hands clamped over the boy's chest, desperately trying to staunch the pulsing geyser of viscous red liquid seeping between her fingers.
The dagger had hit its mark, slicing through nerves, muscle, into the chest cavity, and the vital chamber of that pumping organ.
Maximus knew how to kill with expert effect.
The boy's death would not be quick.
"Are you mad?" Maeve's incensed daughter gazed up at him in her fury.
The gurgling moan distracted her, before she could castigate him further.
It was futile, even with these women's skill, to do anything other than end the boy's suffering.
She still kept her hands folded, pressed against the wound shredding the boy's rib-cage, clearing the welling blood away from his mouth so he might draw a failing breath.
Maximus was beginning to feel an unfamiliar queasiness, nauseous disgust flooding his gut, horror in his mind. He would never have revealed this sudden revulsion to these women.
He absorbed the scene of death around him, without evident reaction.
"They were hardly going to exercise the virtue of moderation, Nemhyn," he said with grim menace.
It was a struggle to keep his hands from shaking. He hadn't killed, hadn't even touched a weapon since his confrontation with Commodus, nearly two months before. That capacity to numb feeling, shield himself against the pain and guilt later evoked, reflecting on the indignity of what he performed for the gross excesses of the Arena's pleasures—where had that ability gone?
He wouldn't throw-up, summoning hate and anger, smothering this sudden sick tide of sentiment.
"No, they certainly weren't intending gentleness," Maeve agreed from behind, the guise of elderly insanity disturbingly vanished.
No longer a stooped, tottering crone, she was tall, standing straight, a woman in her late middle-age, proud-shouldered, retaining the evidence of what was once great beauty, still handsome and unsettling, with penetrating ice-colored eyes, and chiseled features. Sleek black brows, untouched by gray, were raised, expectant. She studied the scene about as though it were a stage, and they the actors, playing out their parts.
"However," the older woman continued, eyes, keen and pale in the firelight, stilled on her kneeling daughter, crouched next to the boy's supine, weakly writhing form, "it might have helped had we elucidated, we've not been abroad, across half the Empire, traveling in this humble state, Spaniard, without being prepared to deal with just these circumstances when…they arise."
Maeve noticed the scowl hiding his puzzlement. He resented when this unflappable British woman, in her serene composure, alluded to hidden details upon which he was not privy.
"Imbecile," Nemhyn muttered. "The wine was drugged, or did you think we somehow survived these last three years on blind-luck alone? Fortuna only extends her blessings so far, of which—," she reached over, pushing against the boy's chest with one hand, firmer when he exuding a wet rattle. Supporting his head with her other arm, she lifted him slightly, so his laboring lungs could fill with air, even as blood distended their collapsed tissue.
"—Of which, Spaniard," she spat the word like a curse, green-flecked hazel irises boring into his, "you are not such a gift."
"Oh, I think that might be debated, Daughter," Maeve amended softly, even-toned as always. The younger woman's exasperated glance, directed at her mother, reflected the abounding, abrasive relationship.
Maximus had witnessed more than a few volatile exchanges between the two women over these last months of their acquaintance. Volatile on Nemhyn's part anyway; Maeve, he had yet to ever see lose her temper.
The boy sounded like he was drowning. Maximus wished, terribly, the youth would just stop breathing.
"It would have been far easier for these men to awaken in a day, or so, brain-fuddled perhaps, but none the worse except for our absence," the younger woman bit out in a heated remonstrance. "Now we'll need to devise a way to dispose of the bodies."
"Surely in your combined ingenuity," he sketched a mocking deference to the younger woman, quick glance to Maeve, back down to her daughter, "you can think up some method between physic and nature. I wouldn't suggest a pyre. The terrain here is quite flat, and the smoke trail will show for days."
Nemhyn gritted her teeth, hearing the contempt and sarcasm. Attention drawn to the gargling sound from the boy's throat, she had forgone another attempt at stopping the blood loss. She knew the wound was mortal, posed alert, listening, with her hands spaced apart, lightly on his scarce rising chest.
He still, somehow managed to draw in another gut-churning gurgle, bubbling red fluid from the hole which had torn his heart.
Nemhyn laid the boy's head back, gently on the ground. Frank, wide lips thinned in pity, disappointment at the waste. The youth's eyes were dulled, half-closed, but some stubborn part of mortality clung to the ruined flesh.
Maeve said nothing, watching with a veiled gaze as her daughter stood, approaching Maximus, paying no heed to the other grisly, massacred forms littered about the campsite.
"Maximus the Merciful," she taunted, gaze like stone, dropping to the bloodied blade in his grip, visage set in chilled contempt. "The least you can do is finish your work, here; show this poor child some clemency, mayhap, and spare him further suffering."
He remained unmoving, despite the cutting remark, fixing her with a look of equal derision, jaw clenched, feeling the heavy weight of conscience fall, a pressure crushing into his own chest.
She stepped past him, glancing once to her mother, and strode off toward their wagon.
He thought, perhaps, she meant to stay away for a time, but the sounds from the cart told him she was seeking a clean tunic, a cloth, the soap they kept, to wash off the stains of death.
He had no pity for the youth, his expression dispassionate as he tread the small distance to the boy's dying form.
The world was a place of brutality, forcing one to do what one must, to survive. These women, in their false assurance, might believe the Universe was a play of dumb-luck mixed with random acts of compassion. That was certainly not his own experience in the years since he had stupidly denounced Commodus. In the space of a breath, he had condemned his wife and son to violent murders wrought by his own Stoic, moral honor.
Thoughts roared loud, warring in his mind, as he gazed down on the boy's stretched form, twitching limbs, occasional guttered breath.
The youth had been a sacrifice to greater gods and chance.
Maximus believed in gods no longer, despite the Old Man coming in dreams, disturbing his sleep, with confused scenes, panoramas of other lives.
He hated these women, Lucilla included.
He had wanted to die, wished for it, extending his hand, palming open the door to his Elysium. Why, why would the gods have allowed him that glimpse of vibrant golden vistas, wheat sheaves rustling in a gentle, warm breeze, the road to his Home, his wife and son, Selene and Marcus, forms small to his vision, so far off In the distance.
Why would they have offered that, only to take it back, one more devastating, wrenching time?
They had waited. Juba said they would wait.
And suddenly, it had all vanished, shattered, stolen from him on the crux of an agonized breath, his cry, a plea of wrath, thrust back into this world of enduring pain.
Empty of thought or feeling, he flung the hunting blade away, dropping to his knees at the boy's head. It was a quick succession, gripping the youth's skull at the temples and chin, large, powerful hands, a rapid wrench, a twist to one side, beyond the natural angle of the neck, a sickening, moist snap.
And it was done.
He felt the spirit flee from the broken shell of flesh and bone, before he completed the act.
Rising, he saw without comprehending, really, Nemhyn watching at the periphery of the fire. She was balanced, hidden on that edge of shadow and light. Color bled from her face, her skin was like chalk against the night, stark features molded into an austere beauty, painted not with gratification, but with something more disturbing.
Remorse.
She didn't join him, or Maeve, as they weighted the bodies down with rocks, sunk into the pond.
Hours later, many hours later, closer to dawn than midnight, he had been gazing at the same pool of water, now a placid grave. The darkness his only companion, all was quiet but for the stirring of brush and leaves in the small, sparse grove sheltering their clearing.
He had wept at the feet of his wife's charred corpse. Those had been the last tears ever shed, in the seasons which had passed, as a slave, a gladiator, a freedman liberated without ever having sought such a gift.
He figured the women had unrolled their pallets, sleeping with the few hours remaining before they were to be up and away from this scene of unintended violence.
Maeve, of course, slumbered like a babe as she did every night, somehow unfazed, as usual, by the distressing current of events in the preceding hours.
He later realized, Maeve's uncanny ability, curse perhaps, of Sight, tormenting her since girlhood, made her experience of reality and time, different than other persons. Reconciled against an upbringing of Roman and Greek learning, intuition and clairvoyance clashed with reason and science. To the Brigantine tribal queen, all futures were equally probable, sifted through limited human sentience. Her present wasn't troubled as most other people's; it was the future, unknown, but known, awash in war and devastation, that unsettled her deepest calm.
Nemhyn hadn't inherited that cursed blessing of Sight. She had other…preoccupations. A vision washed by merging pasts, where shades and ghosts sometimes wandered freely with mortals, suffering time to replay the tragedy of their existence, lives long lost to the memory of all but stone, sea, and wind.
She found him in the night, those hours he had been gazing, empty and hollow, upon the watery grave.
Her step was agile, light across the dirt-strewn ground. She paused where he sat, back against a bare sapling, arms wrapped around legs folded against his chest.
A curious glance up, a moonless night, it was difficult to peer through the dark, make out her expression.
Her voice told him enough.
"I'm sorry, Maximus," she said softly, coming to settle next to him, arranging herself more comfortably upon the hard ground. "I shouldn't have provoked you like that. It…it was cruel thing to do."
She too, was gazing out across the dark waters, dark waters on a dark night—this dark night of the soul.
This was another awareness he would learn about her, later, as the months advanced, coming ashore, eventually, to start a new life upon Britannia. This rare grace, quick to anger, at times, too rash in her judgments, impatient with those less capable, less strong in conviction.
Yet, it would be moments like this, in approaching months, where Nemhyn's brash integrity gentled into this intrepid compassion. It fed her work, following in the footsteps of her mother's impassioned devotion to healing, practiced along that distant outpost of forts and garrisons, strung out and beyond the Hadrian divide.
Her mother, who had begun this first process, insisted on learning the classics of the Masters—Eratosthenes, Hippocrates, Sushrata, Soranus, and absurdly, even the women, few as they were, but existing regardless.
And Maeve's daughter, child of queens and generals, Nemhyn refused to let that heritage of Roman, and native British aristocracy, define her fate.
Doctor, physician, woman…not queen.
He hadn't known, at that time Nemhyn, too, was once married. She had born a son—lost her husband and child, both within a season of one another, a harsh winter, famine and disease striking down, levelers of king and peasant alike.
She recovered eventually, emerging from her great sorrow, finding something of love, a first brush with passion, surcease, in the arms of an exiled Prince, a leader of an exiled people, disgraced Horse Lord from the great Sea of Grass.
A forbidden love, one never destined to last. The Sarmatian-Prince's incarnation of Divinity, Saranyu, the Great Mare, came to that Isle of Mists, in the progression of years following the second Macromanni campaign. Modron—Matrona—in the Latin, Horse Queen, she invoked the Sarmatian Prince's old loyalties, guarding a sword of star-steel, awaiting the Chalybee-blade's rightful heir.
In those months following Commodus' death, the world had occupied a bizarre stasis.
The Praetorians, under Senator Falco's contingent, were unaware Perennius would not prove to be the biddable puppet they had hoped.
"You should start addressing me as Lucius Castus, Nemhyn," he replied, softly, hollow, drained of his anger. "Maximus Decimus Meridius no longer lives. He died many years ago, before ever he stepped foot, onto the sands of the Arena."
He started suddenly, a slender-fingered hand upon his forearm, light touch, commiserating.
He wasn't used to human contact, a casual affection, so natural a thing, had disappeared from his world.
She didn't flinch when he jumped. Instead, the brush of her fingers tightened, a brief, comforting squeeze upon his forearm, before she took her hand back.
A quiet sigh, Nemhyn rose, leaving him to his conflicted thoughts. A man, at that time, without a path or a purpose, except to inexplicably return to a ruined villa, scourged land, the disgraced bodies of his wife and son.
Some nights later, over a different fire, that much nearer to the waste of his old farm, he explained to Nemhyn and Maeve, as they waited for their dinner to cook, "Of course I was raised in privilege. It was ambition I lacked, at least for power. Too much responsibility, that—deciding men's lives, and living with the consequences. At the end of the day, all I wanted was to perform my duty as a soldier; return to my home, farm my lands, watch my son grow."
"Is that a character-flaw?" Nemhyn asked, poking at the hare to see if it was done roasting. "Lacking ambition, I mean."
"It is, when sensed by those men who would covet power," Maeve joining in the converse. "Ambition, for them, is a canker. It overgrows in their hearts, and is never satisfied. More than those who would compete with them, they distrust and despise the men able to resist such temptations."
He glanced oddly, at the older woman through the dancing shadows cast by the firelight.
"Was that my downfall; the apparent oversight winning me Commodus' hatred?" sardonic and reflective at once.
Maeve's eyes, always disconcerting, shone on him, ice pale as crystals, winter-blue to white.
"No, Maximus—," she slipped on the name, her small smile, apologetic, warmed her features, "—Lucius, forgive me. It was his father's love that won you Commodus' wrath. Even that, though, Marcus Aurelius' son might have overcome in time, but his sister's love, bestowed upon you, he could never have abided."
Maximus looked away, disconcerted. What he and Lucilla shared, so many years past—a youth gone to the decades between, he thought, was concealed even from this woman's probing clairvoyance.
He had been a boy really, for all his head was full of his early success as a legionary-recruit. Mind consumed with his first experience of coupling, the young man from distant Hispania had never forgotten the dazzling girl-woman, enticing in her willowy loveliness, an Emperor's daughter.
There, at the edge of Pannonia, they met again, both taken by the mad desire of youth and lust. It was more than her soft skin, though, the way she looked, head thrown back, flawless patrician features molded into ecstasy, long line of her neck, arched above him, biting her lip to keep from crying out in climax.
Those stolen moments, that spring and summer, on the other side of the Empire, she accompanied her father often on his tours. Those months before the first Macromanni wars, before her marriage to Lucius Verus, were some of the most blurred and rampant Maximus would ever recall. They were both so young, so ideal, he and Lucilla, sharing everything about each other, with each other. Their lives, their hopes and dreams; an Empire under siege, the pressures of expanding territory; the impotency of the Senate, and her fondness for Senator Gracchus encouraging her toward cultivated pursuits of ancient histories and philosophy.
Have you read Titus Livius, she had asked one night, amid tangled sheets, and sweat-coated limbs.
Indeed, he had.
He was intrigued by her mind, the potent allure of her sparkling eyes, a changeable mirage of green-blue, muddied brown, like the waters of the Middle Sea on a summer's day. The way she would laugh in silken-voiced teasing, even when they disagreed.
He thought they had shared everything—naïve as he was, a young man, untried in love and the ways of women. Sophisticated, worldly court-women, like this daughter of an Emperor, raised since birth to scent out, steer through the deceptions always threatening her father's reign.
She had neglected to enlighten him on the fact of her betrothal.
That was his first experience with a broken heart.
He said nothing in response to Maeve's observation.
However close the British seeress' unintended revelation came to the truth, there were secrets in his heart he would not share. They were his memories, sorrows and joys both, belonging to him, not meant for others' common knowledge.
Maeve's enigmatic gaze suddenly flit over, locked on his eyes, her look, too complicated to decipher in the moments before she focused back on the snapping flames.
A considering, quick smile crossed her features, deepened the lines around her mouth. She didn't prod, leaving the discussion to die into the warm spring night.
Maximus—Lucius—had the distinct impression, this peculiar woman knew exactly the line of his private meditations.
Contemplations which became increasingly morose, a sorrow never fully confronted after vengeance had been satiated. That bitter grief stewed, resurrected as each day passed, and the trio with their wagon and donkey, neared the border markers of fields that had once been his.
Pastures and fallow-land were still blackened, despite the new growth of weed and scrub, the poplars lining the causeway to his home remained bare-branched and soot-coated.
The scene was a testimony to the miasma of death lingering around the homestead, stagnant and putrid, meant to ward away errant voyeurs.
Halfway up the graveled road, Hercules, eternally patient, compliant Hercules, halted abruptly, of his own volition, the reigns slack in Maximus' hands.
The mule resisted coaxing by either woman, braying in terror, frozen where it stood, refusing to near the scorched remnants of the villa.
Maximus crawled down from his perch on the wagon.
He couldn't blame the beast, really. It was as though they had entered the lands of the dead, the sky taking on a reddish glow with the descending sun, rays shooting up from behind the surrounding hills. The residual light touched, tinting everything with the color of blood. Dust mingled ash sifted in shapeless clouds, sweeping across the barren waste of what had once been a verdant field of ripening wheat and olive orchards.
His feet fell upon the desiccated ground, stirring motes in his wake. He stopped just before the stone arch above the courtyard entrance.
Paralyzed into stillness, Maximus was held fast by a wave of sadness he had kept at bay these last years, jaw tightening, biting the inside of his cheeks. He concentrated on simple breathing, struggling to not be overcome, fall to his knees, once more, before the tattered, abandoned remnants of his wife and son.
The corpses were little more than ragged, rotted twigs, charred skeletons—or what was left of their skeletons— hanging, swinging from the keystones. The dry wind blowing from the west on sunset's whim made the naked bones dance, fragments of dried tissue, possibly clothing, perform in a gross parody of movement.
He was so lost in reminiscence he never heard the women approach.
Nemhyn was there, suddenly, contriving a stand out of a cracked, desecrated flower pot. Clamoring onto the makeshift footstool, she unflinchingly cut through one hempen tether, severed the second rope with equal viciousness, wielding the same dagger he had used upon the bandits a handful of days before.
He stepped back when the scant, incinerated remains of his wife and son landed in a pitiful heap at this feet, turning away once, to master himself.
Nemhyn offered no word of comfort, no shared sorrow, merely jumping down from the upturned flowerpot. A cold fury across her face, her eyes were wide, fastened on nothing in particular, staring straight ahead as she walked back to the wagon—presumably to deposit the dagger in their storage trunk.
"We can help you gather stones for their pyre," Maeve murmured from behind.
He heard her move off toward the ruins of the front courtyard, where crumbled piles of rock littered the overgrown footpaths.
Maximus followed mindlessly, a moment later, feeling nothing but the old sadness turn into a bitter, rising sweep of grief.
Nemhyn joined them, silent as she bent to gather tinder and stone in sufficient amounts to accomplish this most somber of tasks.
He would always remember the haunted look upon her face, glancing every now and then, into the encroaching shadows, as night fell. The strain upon her brow was evident, but he was too lost in his own hollow despair to register anything strange in the way she would flinch, cower almost, eyes wincing about the devastation of scarred, blasted fields, the blackened carcass of the villa's empty, caving walls.
If there were odd noises coming from the scorched frame of the ruined villa, a child's faint laugh just below the cool night breeze, whispers lost, floating into the engulfing dark, they could be excused as the rustlings of wild vermin in dens or burrows, perhaps the fancy of disturbed imaginations.
Unknowingly, the visitation of the living to this cursed place, summoned, drew the dead like an invisible thread.
Shades were attracted to those rare persons able to feel phantasm energies.
Nemhyn had learned early in her girlhood, how to confront the unseen, accept what others remained impervious toward, and move through her days, even her nights with a modicum of normalcy. As an adult, she was rarely rattled by the sorry, mournful impressions of lost, wandering spirits, meant to be pitied, more often than not, they could manifest as angered, terrifying souls.
She addressed them with a humorous pragmatism, frank as she was toward her patients. It was a regard which confounded even the dead. Disgruntled, they would float off, fading, confused or comforted, thoughtful, occasionally even grateful.
That night, though, after the pyre had been prepared, Nemhyn would not speak of what she saw in the shadows, holding her peace for many years after.
In the gloom and impenetrable dark, Nemhyn's mettle had been tested, leaving her pale and trembling, huddled, a fully grown woman in her mother's arms, as she hadn't sought since she was a girl. Her eyes clamped shut against Maeve's breast, her mother crooned the bard-melodies of Alba into her ear, trying to comfort her daughter's unsettled mind. A dulcet voice invoked images of crystal cities, green valleys, purple, misty mountains and bridges of rainbow and cloud, blue rivers abounding with golden sea-creatures, Beings of impossible beauty, the Shining Ones.
The words were recited in the Old Tongue, a language known only by those trained in the most arcane of Druid-lore. A preserved poetry, a magic, imbued of wind, rain, ocean depth and sunlight upon leaf, the Hidden Ones called it the Language of the Trees. It was the only language used by the Little People, those few dark, nimble sprites, vestigial descendents of the First Ones who had crossed, millenia ago, to the Isle of the Mighty, before pewter waters cut the island from the mainland, in that era of ice sheets and glacial wastes.
The sheer splendor of that ancient tongue held the restless spirits at bay, crowding the night against a boundary of mortal love and mother's affection.
They were drawn, as well, to a memory of a man's suffering grief, until he could let go of his own dead.
On the edge of living they remained, wanting to taste of matter, color, flesh, blood, breath and bone, laughter, love and sorrow together, but the song hovered upon shadows, soothing even the most tormented of specters.
All but one, venturing away from the featureless, murky plains of gloom—swamped with a hoard of numberless souls—to seek that man's harrowing grief in the night.