Living grief replaces the life of love. Agron learns this the moment his brother's eyes go blank and the life in him vanishes. In that next, stunned and hazy moment, grief is born inside of him, taking up the space between his throat and his kidneys, latching on like a parasite, chewing his own life away. It is autonomous and controlling, leading his thoughts, movements, feelings and his choices. Where his brother was once a single, autonomous living being, yet connected to and informing Agron's own life, this living grief now takes that space. And it is heavy, with teeth and claws.
Beginnings part one
He'd felt love for few people in his life. Da was killed at Aquae Sextiae before memory of him had taken firm hold in his childish mind and Duro was still suckling at their mother's breast. Mam took another husband soon after and died brining a still child into the world after less than a year. Their new father took no interest in raising another man's boys so they were sent to live with Da's brother and his family. Uncle Lothar was a strong, and honorable man and a good provider, but he would have boys wield swords without hearts. He was not gentle. His wife seemed to care little for her own children, and less so for the new nephews in her charge. She met her responsibilities as wife and mother as was her duty, but there was an emptiness in her that was one of the few things Agron ever feared. He stayed far from Ita and kept Duro yet farther from her.
The boys became close with their cousins. Huguo was between Agron and Duro in years and in temperament. Quick with a smile and a joke, but fierce and deadly in a fight. Agron appreciated his company, particularly on those occasions in which he needed a moment, just a moment of peace from Duro and his constant chattering. Duro was very fond of Huguo, but his older brother was his world—mother, father, protector and dearest friend. There were times it became more than Agron could bear, and Huguo would lead the ceaselessly nattering Duro away with distraction of pranks to be played or girls to be chased. Many years later, Agron would despise himself for those moments, and become irrationally consumed with guilt and shame.
The boys were fond of their cousins Ernust and Hida, barely a year younger than Duro, but the twins often lived in their own world, preferring their own company. The eldest, a girl named Behrta was seventeen and long since married, with children of her own. Freya was of Agron's own age and a wild little thing. She earned frequent beatings from her mother for her lack of discipline and curious looks from her father, who felt as though she might be touched. Freya often spoke of the desire to speak Latin, learn letters, and how she would one day rule over all of Germania and Rome. Agron did like the girl, but he didn't understand her.
Time moved forward and Agron became the favorite of Lothar. Huguo accepted this as Agron's right as the eldest and fiercest of the boys, and Duro could not have cared less. Agron, in turn, accepted his position with a sense of honor and duty; duty to the uncle that had taken them in and provided for them. He would help raise the younger children and do what he could to relieve the burden of turning his brother into a man from his uncle. He thought of Duro as more his responsibility than Lothar's and was glad to take such responsibility. And as the eldest, he would set the example for both Duro and Huguo; from him, they would learn how to grow into men. Agron's respect for his uncle grew as he grew, and he began to understand that the sense of honor and justice in his uncle ran deeper than the code of a warrior. It wasn't however, until the winter of Agron's fifteenth year that he saw the face of that, and began to know what it truly meant to be a man.
It was a freezing night, during the festivities of the winter solstice, and Agron limped back to their cottage alone. He'd been wounded during the games earlier and wished to rest his swollen knee and aching body so that he may fight again in the morning. The rest of the villagers caroused raucously in the tavern, the square and in the back roads. The noise filtered through every home and muffled the sound of his entrance. He stopped immediately, surprised and confused by what he saw. Ita was nude, before the fire, oblivious to his presence as she writhed and whimpered. Another form lay before her, just as nude, face buried between Ita's legs. Agron didn't recognize the other woman's form, which mattered not. As quietly as he could, Agron turned and left the house. He went to the barn, freezing, aching and out of sorts. Laying himself next to a sleeping cow for warmth, he covered himself in hay and tried to make sense out of what he had seen until he fell to sleep.
The following morning Lothar found him there and laughed uproariously at his tall, strong nephew cuddling a curious bovine. Lothar was rarely one for whimsy, but he looked forward to sharing the image with Huguo and Donar and the merciless mocking that would ensue.
"What in the name of Odin led you to such a state?" he laughed. "When you disappeared last evening you were hardly so in your cups as to find comfort with such desperation!" Lothar chuckled as Agron rubbed sleep and grit from his eyes and spit at the hay stuck to his mouth. As he sat up and blearily faced his uncle's twinkling eyes, he remembered the sight that greeted him the night before. The reason for his own circumstances that caused uncle such amusement. Lothar immediately saw the boy's face awaken completely, then shutter as his eyes fell, unable to meet his uncle's. Agron was not one to hide his thoughts, his face was always a clear tribune of what lay behind it; Lothar knew this. After a moment's thought, his mirth sobered, and he understood.
"You found home and hearth to be an unwelcome place." It was a statement, not a question and Agron could only look ashamed, although he had no understanding of why. "Tell me then boy. What did you see?" Lothar's massive arms crossed his massive chest and the glint of amusement in his eye was replaced with one of coldness. Yet there was something else there, something vaguely reminiscent of sympathy.
Agron didn't dare lie to his uncle. He hadn't the skill or the courage to do so. But in his shame and embarrassment, he was at a loss for words.
"Find your tongue child!" Lothar spoke harshly, deliberately infantilizing the young man that would be greater than him within the year.
"I…" Agron's voice cracked with exhaustion and discomfort. "I saw…my aunt." He mumbled. Lothar said nothing. He just stared hard and waited. "She was…" He glanced at his uncle pleadingly, but Lothar remained silent, towering above Agron, still sitting in a pile of hay next to that ridiculous cow. He would give the boy nothing. He had to come to this on his own.
Agron glanced a look up at his uncle and felt his face flame as he quickly looked back down at his hands. He concentrated on the pain in his throbbing knee and the hurt that came in his ribs when he breathed. "She was not alone. There was…there was a woman. A woman I…did…could not see her face." He stuttered and mumbled. He had no love at all for Ita, but did not want to be the cause of what was sure to be an unspeakable brawl in the house. Uncle might well kill her for her shame and disloyalty and it would be his own fault. He understood that; he could make sense of his feeling of guilt and it was right in the world. He could not understand the shame he felt.
"What were they doing?" Lothar asked simply. Agron closed his eyes and he felt the space behind his eyes and nose swell as he swallowed hard, and fought tears.
"They…were…unclothed…and intimate."
"They were fucking." His uncle corrected him.
"Y-yes." Agron barely whispered into his own chest, his head hanging so low.
"Stand up boy." Lothar commanded. Agron obeyed has quickly as his sore body would allow, unsure what to expect, but suspecting a blow.
"Raise your head you ridiculous pup! Look at me as a man would!" Again, Agron obeyed, feeling a sick apprehension twisting his stomach. His throat tightened as he met his uncle's eyes and silently begged the gods to keep him from being sick on the man.
"I thought you the more clever of my boys. Free of absurd romantic notions. I thought you to be practical. Sensible. And here I find you hiding your eyes lest you reveal to me that my wife holds no love for me? Hiding in shame and unwanted knowledge that your aunt seeks to pleasure herself away from my bed? You are foolish and small Agron. What is it you think marriage is?" Agron wasn't sure if he was expected to answer and Lothar's words had already wounded and shamed him further. He could not speak. "I asked you a question child!"
The boy stuttered through his thoughts, trying to create a picture in his mind. His own mother, his step-father, the other families in the villages he'd lived in. "I…I don't know. It is a duty. A…man must have a wife. To keep his home, and raise his children. A woman must have a husband to provide for her. And protect her."
"And would you have that? Will you take a wife?" Lothar asked him, his voice almost imperceptibly softer.
"I will do my duty as you see fit uncle. When you tell me I must marry, I will obey." As the words came out, Agron could feel himself growing ill again. The thought of that day, which must come soon, making him feel hollow and choked.
"Would you have that?" Lothar repeated. "Would you make the choice to take a wife? To make children with her? Provide for and protect this woman?" For the first time that morning, Agron willingly looked his uncle in the eyes, a slow and hazy sense of understanding coming over him. The shaky sense that his uncle understood him and that the thing he understood might matter. Agron never felt the need to hide his feelings or desires, nor did he display them. They were irrelevant. He would be expected to take a wife by his sixteenth year and become a man in his own right. After caring for him for so many years, Lothar was entitled to the dowry of a fine girl, and Agron's duty would be met with honor. What he wanted, who he might want, made no difference to the propagation of his people.
Agron spoke slowly, afraid of offending the man that took he and Duro in out of duty; afraid of trapping himself in a dishonorable answer. He gave the only answer he could summon that was both honest and honorable. "I should like to have sons uncle. And I would always provide for and protect those that I am sworn to."
"A man must have a woman to make sons Agron. If given choice, would you swear yourself to a woman. Or, would you sacrifice sons?"
Agron was confused. All of his life he'd heard how men and women married at the arraignment of their parents, made families, and either learned to care for one another or simply didn't. He assumed such would be the case with him as well. And if he found no love with his wife, perhaps at least he would find a friend; a trusted companion. He tried to be a good man and would treat his wife well, as Lothar did with Ita. But Ita…Ita was not a friend; there was no companionship between the two. Agron swallowed as further understanding began to darken his thoughts.
"But I am sworn to you, uncle. You should have a dowry from my wife, and grandchildren by me. Huguo is your son but I am eldest and must set the example. My duty is to you before all."
"And my duty is to see that you do not suffer a wretched fate." Lothar sighed as his arms uncrossed and he walked around the boy to lean on the wall. "You were ashamed by what you saw last night. Afraid that it would anger me and dishonor Aunt, and ashamed of your own desire for choice."
Agron turned as his uncle circled him and was as surprised by the sadness on Lothar's face as he was by his words. "I do not desire my own choice uncle, I swear this! I am an honorable man!" He puffed his still forming chest a bit, determined to persuade Lothar that he need not question his sense of duty.
"You are an honorable boy Agron. And you will soon grow into an honorable man. You would do nothing to shame our family, or the memory of my brother. But I ask you this boy: is there honor in my marriage? Might I call my wife companion? I would ask you one final time, and I would have clear answer: if given choice, would you sacrifice a future of sons? Or would you sacrifice all hope of a companion that you could care for?"
"You would choose wisely for me. Could I not learn tenderness for the woman you choose for me? I am no fool uncle. Love is the nonsense that Duro dreams of; it's foolishness that has no place in our world. A man and a woman must marry for the sake of the families and accept their fate. I do not fear that you would make my fate wretched as you say. No. I would not sacrifice sons. I hold no childish hope in my heart that I may find a companion to love. I will be a good husband and a good provider, just as you are to Ita and all of us. There is honor in your marriage. If Ita can be no companion to you, then that is her failing and her dishonor!" Agron had grown heated and angry as he spoke. He couldn't understand why his uncle was pressing this; insisting that Agron provide a different answer. Honor and duty were all that could matter in this world. It kept families together, tribes together and his people alive. Duro spoke of love with stars in his eyes, even Huguo joked of having a wife that would worship at his very feet and, he bawdily joked, he would worship between her legs. It was the stuff of children; not suitable for the eldest.
"Ita can be no companion to me because our marriage stole even the faintest possibility of love from her. She feels no comfort in my presence and no pleasure in my arms. There is no dishonor in this Agron, for she is not made for a man of any kind. Just as you are not made for a woman, no matter how carefully I might choose." Lothar pushed himself off of the wall, and crossed his arms again, staring thoughtfully at the floor. Agron's eyes and head followed as his uncle began to pace slowly, calmly. "Ita, as all girls, was bargained for and sold by her father to your grandfather; given to me to take as wife so that the family line may pass on. She was never asked if I was suitable to her. I was never asked if I found her suitable." He stopped and looked at the boy. "I am like you in thoughts of love; it is a childish notion," he stated with a soft snort. "I held no such fantasies in regards to my future wife, but like you, I pledged my honor, and my protection. Imagining that over time, we could grow to be friends. Affection and tenderness would perhaps bloom with the coming of children and kindnesses shared." He began to pace again. "But Ita never looked at me with anything but coldness. She shied from my touch and her revulsion was clear every time I lay with her. I am not a man to force a woman against her will, Agron. There is no honor in such a thing. I shame myself in learning that so late."
Agron's eyes were riveted to his uncle as he spoke. He followed the man's movements with his entire body, keenly aware of the pain in his wrenched knee and somehow, for some reason, welcoming it.
"Agron." His uncle stopped in front of his nephew, looking at him with an uncomfortable intensity. "My wife's heart and body belong to her own kind. Just as you. What you saw last night—I allow…I welcome it. Her woman brings her peace; tenderness and affection that I cannot provide. I am not made of the things her heart and body desire. And I find my own desires sated elsewhere. It is an arrangement we have lived with since I returned from Aquae Sextiae without your father, and the only thing that keeps a mother for my children. Ita you see, is in love with her woman; to us this is nonsense, but if I did not allow this thing between them…she would have vanished years ago."
"But would that not be better?" Agron exclaimed, the brief comment regarding his own father forgotten in his immediate outrage. "Then you could take a proper wife, one that could at least show you kindness!" He had not meant to speak so plainly, so disrespectfully of his aunt, but he was angry and unreasonably insulted. He was better than her. He was not like her, and would not disregard or disrespect his future wife, out of misplaced anger and resentment over the loss of his own insignificant desires. He knew it would be difficult for him perform the deeds necessary to make sons, and he found relief in this knowledge that his uncle understood that, but a good wife, a kind wife would deserve his own kindness and affection in return. That he could not love a woman in the way of childish fancy held no importance to him. He had thought his aunt heartless before, now he thought her merely a romantic fool.
"It would be better for my children to have their own mother. It would have been better if her father had given her a choice."
"But he didn't. We cannot change the past, uncle, and as you yourself just said, you have given her as much as you can, yet she still shows you no kindness, no gratitude for your concessions!"
"Should she be grateful for scraps? For stolen moments of time?" Lothar looked at him intently. Trying desperately to make the boy understand. He was so young and took so much upon himself in the creating of men from the younger boys. He knew nothing of how bleak and alone he would one day feel. "Love is foolish and fanciful, but if one is blessed enough to find it where so little exists, should it be sacrificed for a duty that was never a choice? Do you see, son? Do you understand, the life I give her is not her own."
"We must all make sacrifices uncle. She makes hers." Agron stated stubbornly.
"But you will not." Lothar put his hands on his nephew's shoulders, again, surprised at how wide they'd grown, how near his own they stood. "You have answered my questions and I accept your answers as from the heart. Now you will accept what is my duty and my obligation to you." Agron stood a bit straighter, his chin set, despite his pain. Prepared for whatever his uncle would say next.
"You will not take a wife Agron." Agron blinked and squinted at him. "I will accept no dowry, I will accept no woman for you."
"But…"
"I will not see you to a life of grief and an empty heart. I will not see you to the empty life that has been forced upon the mother of my children and those like her-and you. I was wrong to accuse you of being impractical, but you are still nonsensical. Love is very much a childish and impractical notion Agron. But you are not my child. You are your father's son. " Lothar turned and began to walk away.
"But Uncle! What of my choice! You spoke of my choice! Am I not allowed to choose duty to my family?" Lothar stopped. He slowly turned and there was grief in his eyes. Something Agron had never seen before, a human and vulnerable look that made his stomach turn and made his skin feel tight.
"And that dear boy," his voice nearly cracked, "was the very same reasoning your father presented to me the night before he wed your mother." At first the words made no sense to Agron, but slowly, as his uncle stared at him long and hard, he thought he might understand. "And when he died in my arms, a Roman sword pulled from his chest, he died only ever having known the love of a brother, and sons who would soon forget him. My brother deserved better. My brother deserved to be allowed to be the man that he was."
With that Lothar turned and left the barn, leaving the door open and the cold winter air rushing in to chill Agron's skin as tears once again formed in his eyes. He let them fall.