Chapter 6
Alright, this concludes the last chapter of this first installment. Hope it was worth the time for you all to read it. Disclaimer doesn't change, and as for Lucilla--don't worry...she will be back in the story. A wee-bit later though, though she does pop up once in a while in little spurts for the next book. All I have to say is FINALLY we get to Britannia in this one, and for the next one, the majority of the story is set on the island, though there is an excursion to Amorica (northern Gaul), later on, and a certain emperor will be visiting the island as well, which sets in motion a whole bunch of events....getting way ahead of myself there though. See, the ideas are there...they just have to get written.
One more note--I agree, having Lucilla and Maximus meet again would possibly be unrealisitic, however, I don't think it too far fetched if they were to rendezvous at some point over the span of 2 or three years. However, it's good to keep in mind, by that point they will both have taken different paths with their lives, and circumstances being what I want them to be in this story, I'm really not avid on having them get back together again. BUT...we still have to get there first...meanwhile, read on and to one of the reviewers who is a fan of the infamous Sarmatian cavalry...they feature as major players...well, at least a few of them...women included...in the next story. (As a side note...there's another wonderful theory that suggests the origins of the Amazons might have stemmed from the actual Sarmatian women. It was recorded by one or two classical historians that their women, before they married, were required to kill a man in battle. This really has no pertinant connection in this story at the moment, just a "for your info" sort of thing;).
Read on...oh yeah, and also...in the movie, I guess maximus did bury his wife and son...but i'm going on the assumption here that he didn't...sorry for the mistake, but by the time this was written, then i saw the movie again, um, the story was finished...forgive me in the name of creative license, please;)
***********************************************************************************
Like a fading dream one tries to cling to, the after images--especially if it was a pleasant one--disappearing with each passing moment of awakening, leaving behind only fragments of memory and a void of something precious being stolen away, although the dreamer doesn't know exactly what--the light hearted atmosphere that had sustained the small trio from Genova, over the waters to Tarraco dissipated. Not all at once, for each of them, Maximus, Nemhyn, and Maeve, tried to cling to the euphoria of joy that surrounded Theseus and his men. With each step taking them further from the rickety docks of port-side Tarraco, though, sweeping them up into the passing assortment of animals, humans, and vehicular traffic of the paved byways typical to the colonia's business and governmental districts, the mood dampened once more. Although neither of the women had mentioned it, it was as though the solemnity of their coming task--consecrating the remains of the unburied--what drove their journey westward to Trujillo rather than north, had already imprinted a sobriety over the small group.
Although, at the moment, that wasn't the first thing on Maximus' mind as he stared ahead from his vantage-point in the wagon over the passing crowd, just able to make out the contours of the marble columns gracing the entrance to Caesar Augusts' alter set upon the highest hill of the city. An eternal reminder of the glory of Rome in the days when She had been a Republic, and of the man who had made Her an Empire, his deified image of limestone modeled after the Greek god of thunder, protecting his city from ill-fate.
The blatant reminder of Imperial Rome's glory only hastened the fleeting remnants of joy that had sustained the over-sea journey, and the trio walked in an odd silence for a time, Maximus driving the donkey with absent care, mindful of passers-by, Maeve by his side, and Nemhyn walking up ahead, by Hercules.
Tarraco itself hadn't changed much since the last time he'd come to these shores. A younger man, less hardened, more eager in his unseasoned youth, he'd been transformed a newly sung hero after his second tour of duty under Verus in the east. A man, fresh to the command of other soldiers, not comfortable with their unquestioning loyalty of his leadership, for suddenly he was deciding the fates of his fellow comrades--men he'd marched with, ate with, fought beside, watched fall in battle, or lived to see another. Thus was the life of a legionnaire made. Yet, he hadn't been coming home to celebrate with his family the new promotion, taking pride from the look of love in his father's eyes, warmed by his mother's praise. He'd been coming back to these shores seeking solace from a broken heart, escaping the crushing nonchalance of Lucilla as she'd told him she was to marry Lucius Verus. That's simply the way of it Maximus. Our social rank is too different to allow us to marry. Father would never hear of it, no matter how fond he has grown of you these last few days.
That had been before he'd served under Marcus and grown to know the man as a second father to himself.
No, indeed Tarraco hadn't changed much at all since he'd last come here. Perhaps the looming granite structures, under which they passed, of the palatine district's Imperial buildings, stately in their geometrically aligned grandeur, were less jaw dropping to the man who'd seen Rome than to the boy he'd once been, gazing up at their heavy steled supports with the disbelieving wonder one would pay a giant, standing by the side of his father in stunned awe. The forum too, seemed smaller, set down in the middle southeast nucleus of the city, though it could still boast a crushing wealth of persons from every corner of the Empire: Judeans from the east, performing their daily rituals of prayer, one or two Egyptians selling their magic charms of love and ill-fortune. A peasant wife from the local countryside shoved around Nemhyn roughly, on her way to the egg vendor on the opposite side of the market square, while city magistrates, their togas marking them as men of pre-eminence, walked with a more stately pace toward the streets climbing to the consular buildings--one of them even giving Hercules a pat on the muzzle as they passed. A band of formidable looking men, their blond hair and beards, long swords at their hips marking them as northern auxilia, were gathered outside a tavern chatting up the local prostitutes, their features in striking contrast to the watchful, leopard like grace of the dark-skinned Numidian soldiers stalking the opposite side of the plaza.
And of course, like a curse from his recent past coming to haunt him, the inevitable press of the crowd took him and the two women by the circus arena, its arched entrance of the outer colossal facade gathering with a throng of eager spectators even at this hour of the morning. Seeing the lines of chained, beaten prisoners, the cart loads of gladiators waiting their turn to seek death or glory before the hoots and cat-calls of a swarming mass of onlookers, proved too immediate a reminder that it was not so long since he'd been in similar circumstances himself...what maybe three or four weeks prior.
This was when he felt the last of the jovial mood that had accompanied the trio over the waters disappear completely, replaced by that grim, dark echo of his grief that had never quite subsided, but had lessened considerably, or so he'd thought. Till now.
He hadn't known he was so obvious in his scrutiny, but Maeve, with poorly disguised disgust--the most distress he'd heard in her tone yet--said, "It seems such a waste, doesn't it? All of those lives, and most will either be fed to lions or find their end at the edge of a blade. All for the amusement of a mob."
He had learned something in the last few weeks: to value her words, if not always agreeing with them. In that sense, the flavor of his renewed mordancy was somewhat different, for he accepted her presence, and that of her daughter, almost as friends. They were all he had in a world where he was truly without allies: two rather strange, eccentric women traveling in assumed guise as peasant herbalists. The thought wasn't an entirely comforting one, but at least he wasn't completely alone to face an unknown future.
"For some," he replied to her remark softly, after a moment, "that death is not so unwelcome." His gaze was hard and empty as he studied the line of ragged Christians they passed beseeching their God for mercy.
"When they haven't a choice in the matter," Maeve countered gently, "it is a death with little meaning."
He smiled morosely at that, thinking of Proximo, Cicero, Lucilla's son, wondering if their deaths had any more meaning than that of the unfortunates awaiting their fate in the arena. And of himself, the price of his freedom, the cost, he was beginning to realize, of his humanity, his ideals. He hadn't been aware of that until coming back to his homeland--how different a man he was now compared to the one he had been.
But if his ideals were, perhaps, deadened in him, they weren't in Maeve's daughter, who caught both him and the older woman off-guard, for neither had known she'd been listening to them over the din of the crowd as she spoke out in a rage to tangible it made her voice shake, "This is what sickens me about Rome," her eyes on the bruised and battered lines of victims. " A world where war and death are at no shortage in their affliction, and an empire that considers itself the empitomy of enlightenment, making a mockery of these people's lives by drawing amusement from their blood spilled so pointlessly."
He saw Nemhyn's mother nod in agreement as he addressed each of them in a bleak, toneless voice, "You forget, both of you, they aren't people anymore. They are slaves, and as such, their lives are worth nothing."
Nemhyn seemed on the verge of a sharp response, her eyes sparking in negation of his statement, but when she saw his expression, she only blinked, swallowed visibly, and looked away to face forward once more. Her own countenance said enough though, a silent protestation: you may think that, but you are wrong to do so, and I will never believe you. Her unspoken conviction echoed her mother's next words.
"No, Spaniard," Maeve's voice came low, but clear over the noise of the rabble. "They are still people. That we never forget...the nature of our work will not let us forget. You simply need to remember."
He frowned at her, biting out, "You've never been a slave. You don't know what it is to lose everything that once defined your humanity."
Maeve turned to him with eyes like frozen crystal, while her daughter looked over her shoulder once more, an unexpected, troubled sympathy crossing her features before she faced forward, running her hand along the donkey's neck. It wasn't until after her mother spoke, the older woman's words hitting hard, that he was left to wonder at whom her daughter's look had been directed.
"Don't I, Spaniard," Maeve said coldly. "No matter how my tribe has allied itself with Rome, or my island with the Empire, I am still the child of a conquered people. How much, do you suppose, has been lost from my people's legacy...my people's legacy, not Rome's, as we learned to re-shape our lives in order to survive. That has been the fate of many of the peoples the Eagle has incorporated under her wings, but out of that something new has risen--manifested in my sons and daughter. A fusion of two lineages, re-defining the Dream of Rome." She forestalled the remark he was about to make with a wave of her hand, continuing, "If you chose to leave us in Londinium, at least take that as a parting lesson to yourself Lucius...who was once Maximus. The man who was a general, a slave, and now a...," She left off for him to finish.
Which he couldn't of course. He couldn't think of what to reply, staring over the top of Hercules' head toward the parallel projecting turret stones set high upon the looming walls of the city's western perimeter, not glowering as before, simply thoughtful, if a little grim, lost in his own musings as to the uncertainty of the lot he'd thrown in with these women. Then, remembering his sleepless night from a week before, outside of Genova, he pushed aside, with willful effort, anymore thoughts of Britannia, renewing his vow to himself to not think on the island until after Trujillo.
Trapped in his own quandary, he did not see the light of infinite pity that came into the older woman's eyes as she looked on the last of the sorry slaves they went by, nor from where he was seated, could he see the kindling in Nemhyn's expression as the daughter nursed her own silent outrage against the abuses heaped upon the powerless in the face of tyranny.
*******************************************
As it was turning out, thoughts of Britannia were becoming less frequent almost by default the further west they rode, for with each passing day, memory became a web entrapping him in its tendrils. The women made no mention of the future either, sensing perhaps, his preoccupation with remberence, the heat of the Spanish sun beating down upon them as they plodded their way along the outskirts of villages dotting vistas of flourishing grain fields, girdled in the distance to the north and west by gray-hued, snow-capped mountains.
Shepards passed them now and then, moving their herds of sheep or cattle along the road, shouting amidst the bleating and lowing of their beasts. Hercules sometimes brayed into the cacophony, adding his own opinion of his fellow migrating beasts, and Nemhyn would say to the faithful donkey with a scratch to his ears, nodding at the other herd animals moving by on the road, "Look, it could be worse for you. You could be headed off to someone's table, the main course at meal rather than just laboring with a wagon behind you."
Hercules never deigned to reply, unfailingly stalwart and steady.
******************************************************
Recollections assaulted him with a poignancy he never anticipated, recalling the way he'd run, as a boy, through fields like those they now passed, chasing after his dog, hearing his mother call him in for the evening meal, asking if he'd finished his chores.
And some years later, riding on this same road, only it hadn't been with two women and a donkey, but on a horse, next to his tutor, Fulvus, debating the intricacies of Plato, the histories of Strabo. Still in those awkward years just short of manhood, when he itched to see what the wider world had to offer, his youthful enthusiasm held in check by the loving patience of his father insisting he finish his education before heading to the army.
And later still, as a young soldier stepping off the boat in Tarraco, seeking to blight out the afflictions of a severed first love. It was like that with Lucilla; for her to know something as significant as the fact of her marriage to Verus, arranged years before when she'd barely been a girl of nine or ten, and only reveal it to him after they had come to share every other intimacy lovers did in the dark, dim hours of the night, in the delirious, desire filled light of day.
The picture in his mind, now, as he sat before the evening's flickering campfire, was one from years before, listening to the soft bubble of the stew Maeve had prepared with her daughter, sipping from his cup, the voices of the two women soft murmurs filling the hush of the summer night.
Lucilla, beautiful as only royalty could be, in her nakedness and youth. A deceptive youth. The things she had done to him earlier that evening--in a place on the other side of the Empire, a time long swallowed by the past--coming to each other with the unfurled passion of young lovers, moving against one another in the slowly mounting rapture of coupling until they were both sweating and gasping in each other's embrace, were not the actions of any innocent, untried girl.
Later, propped on his elbow, languoring in the lazy aftermath of sex, stroking the unbound strands of her hair, fanning out from where she lay, its honey-brown masses barely concealing the flawless ivory of her skin, nor the slender delicacy of her limbs, he mentioned something about serving under her father for his next four year campaign along the northern fronts of the Danube, possibly asking for her hand in marriage when it was concluded.
That was when she'd spoken those words: That's simply the way of it Maximus. Our social rank is too different to allow us to marry. Father would never hear of it, no matter how fond he has grown of you these last few days. And then, My marriage was arranged years ago to Verus. It needn't mean we still can't be lovers. Those words were like falling off an unseen precipice, stabbing through the joy blinding him since being in her presence again.
You have known of this, he'd asked, rising to sit at the edge of the bed, suddenly wishing for his tunic, though he'd never felt discomfited by being unclothed in her presence before.
Maximus, she'd begun scolding and playful, reaching for him, don't get so--, but he'd cut her off in his rising anger, standing to pace the room. You have known of this, and you said nothing. Is this why your father has come to Syria from the northern front? Is the wedding tomorrow, I suppose. He was gathering his garments off the floor of her room. Her guest room, in the house of the man he'd served under, on loan by the provincial governor to shelter Marcus Aurelius and his retinue. All of them under the same roof, with the man she was supposed to marry.
Next week, she'd answered falteringly. It's next week.
In seconds, he was dressed, exiting her rooms, leaving her to call out after him, careful to be discreet in the halls of the house Verus had rented, feeling as though he'd been deceived in some immense fashion bordering on treachery.
He hadn't spoken to her again. The next morning, he'd begged Lucius Verus the opportunity to sail earlier than the planned departure with his new commander, Marcus Aurelius, wishing to see his family back home before his next tour of duty was to start, promising to rendezvous with Aurelius and the legions by the early summer in Aquincum, Lower Pannonia.
The next time they were to meet, he'd served three years already along the Germanian front, a battle wary general, and battle weary. A husband, newly a father, hungry for the sight of a son he had yet to see, and Lucilla, a new mother herself.
It was strange to think how so little time, the passage of three or four years, could change a person.
****************************************************************
He did not speak of that memory to Maeve or her daughter. It was too personal as yet, too much a part of a past separate from the reality governing his current circumstances. Despite that, he had no compunctions about telling the two women of his other recollections: of his childhood on his father's farm, his service to Rome in the military. The fact that the success he'd found, climbing through the ranks of men as a gifted warrior, later, an accomplished cavalryman, and as a commander of men himself, had been largely unanticipated. The prestige and influence that came with rank, unforeseen, a hard thing to come to grips with when one had not been raised to expect such concessions.
On a different night, later in the week, he'd explained to Nemhyn and Maeve as they waited for their dinner to roast over the fire, "It was unfortunate I never had the ambition to go with the privilege. The only thing I wanted was to perform my duty as a soldier, return to my home, farm my lands, watch my son grow, make love to my wife."
Nemhyn, poking at the hare to see if it was cooked fully, said with sensitive precision, "Lack of ambition doesn't sound like such a character flaw."
Maeve, joining in the converse, stated observant, "Lack of ambition is what won you the respect of Marcus Aurelius."
He glanced at the older woman through the dancing shadows cast by the firelight, remarking sardonically, "And won me the hatred of his son."
*****************************************
Which of course, spoke for itself, the source, one could say, of his great sorrow. A sorrow that became increasingly prominent as the trio with their wagon and donkey, neared the border markers of fields that had once been his.
Fields still blackened to cinders despite the new growth of weed and scrub grass, just as the poplars lining the causeway remained bare-branched and soot coated. A testimony to the miasma of death that seemed to linger around the homestead, stagnant and putrid.
Halfway up, Hercules, ever patient and compliant Hercules, came to an abrupt halt with no tension on the reigns from Maximus. The animal would not be coaxed by either woman, braying in fear and protest, refusing to go further.
Indeed, Maximus couldn't blame the beast as he crawled down from his seat on the wagon, walking past with steady, purposeful steps to stop just before the stone arch arcing over the fore-court entrance to his old home. He felt as though they had entered the lands of the dead, in truth. The sky had taken on a reddish glow, the descending sun's rays blocked by the surrounding hills, the residual of light illuminating all it touched to the color of blood. Dust mingled ash sifted in wisps of undulating clouds, sweeping across the barren waste of what had once been a verdant field of ripening wheat and fruit orchards.
He was paralyzed into stillness, held fast by a wave of grief he'd kept at bay these last years, still overwhelming in its immensity, making him concentrate simply on breathing so as not to fall to his knees before the ruined, abandoned bodies of his wife and son, as he had the first time he'd ventured here. A desperate race against the Praetorian detachment.
The corpses were little more than ragged, rotted remains now, charred skeletons still hanging suspended from the stone overhead, the dry wind blowing from the west on sunset's whim making their limbs, the tatters of their clothing sway in a gross parody of movement.
He never even heard the women approach. The next thing he saw, however, was Nemhyn, contriving a stand out of one of the desecrated flower pots that had once held blossoms of geraniums and peonies. She stepped up onto her makeshift stool between the two bodies, never flinching from the grotesquely incinerated remains, and cut viscously through first one hempen tether, and the other with a dagger that was too finely wrought and dangerous looking to have come out of a healer's kit. He stepped back as the bodies of this wife and son landed in pitiful heaps at his feet.
She offered no explanation, jumping down from the overturned flowerpot, her eyes wide and unblinking, cold fury plain across her face, walking back to the wagon, presumably to deposit the dagger back from whence it had been hidden. Civilians were not supposed to carry weapons like that, even ceremonial ones.
"There should be enough stone scrap to gather for a pyre," Maeve said softly, from behind him. "We will help you arrange their remains appropriately." She moved off toward the ruins of the front courtyard. He followed mindlessly, not thinking, not wanting to feel. Nemhyn joined them moments later, silent as she bent to gather tinder and rock in sufficient amounts to accomplish this most somber of tasks--laying the remains of the dead to rest.
*****************************************
It was full night by the time they completed the humble mounds of stone, fueled by dry wood from the surrounding poplars, piling the bones of wife and son atop the pyres. They set each afire and a sad melancholy engulfed the two women who stood on one side of the burning flames, across from the lone figure of Maximus.
They watched the dancing light and rising smoke turn to ash what had once been the embodiment of a beloved wife and treasured son--the family of the man who now hazed emptily into the licking flames, his face masked by alternating patterns of shadow and light.
He was tired. As it hadn't for some weeks, the weight of the last two years suddenly seemed unbearably heavy upon his heart. Too many un-necessary deaths, lives lost for no reason, his wife and son being the first. Marcus, Cicero, Proximo, Lucius, and so many others simply rounding the rest of them out. He mourned them all, unable to let them go because the fist that had clenched itself around his soul, that had gradually been loosening since Genova, refused to release its hold on him completely. It strangled his grief, rather, extinguishing his anger, and rendering him numb and hollow. His eyes burned with the pressure of unshed tears, that despite his sorrow, could not seem to fall.
An unaccountable amount of time passed as the flames drew low, the scant remains of woman and child now more dust than bone. Maeve broke the spell of solemn stillness that held them with a movement of her hand as she traced an ancient blessing in the air of the pyres, murmuring in the language of the island's tribes. When she approached him around the fire, followed by her daughter, he did not move, but turned slowly to look on her with uncomprehending eyes.
There was no need to speak. Maeve's winter-pale gaze was depthless with understanding. A seeress, she could see into the hearts of men, knowing them better than they knew themselves sometimes.
It took no seeress to decipher he would maintain his solitary vigil over his wife and son for the rest of the night. She, in turn, had no more need to tell him they would leave him to his grief this one night, reconciling as best he could the memories of those he'd once held dearest.
The mother nodded once before walking back down to where the donkey had been hastily hobbled with the wagon earlier, disappearing into the darkness. The daughter followed-suit, albeit distractedly, her expression, even his noticed in his grief, strained--haunted by something she would not mention, glancing around at the impenetrable shadows of the farm's ruins.
They left him alone like that, to mourn as he would.
**********************************
The wheel of the stars turned, the hours passing in a deep silence with only the occasional stirring breeze whistling lonely and echoing over the now cold pyres and deserted devastation of a place once brimming with light and love. At some point in that long night, he sat, crossing his feet underneath himself, his gaze never leaving the funeral mound.
He couldn't have said when, but eventually, as with the night outside of Genova, he slept. Except that, unlike Genova, he began to dream again. Nightmares once more.
He stood by helplessly, watching Cicero meet his death, not by hanging this time, but by the slow torture of crucifixion, the vultures already picking his flesh before life fully left him.
The image shifted, and he saw Lucilla in the Imperial palace, crying out his name in appeal as two iron-armored Praetorians held her forcibly, a third dragging Lucius, struggling from her desperate grasp, cleaving the boy's head with a vicious blow to the skull.
Again the scene changed, to the arena now, and Commodus stood over him. He must have fallen, and he made to roll to his knees in the sand, reaching for his gladius, not moving quick enough as Commodus kicked it out of his grasp, subsequently using the same booted foot to step on his chest, keeping him down. There was contempt in the eyes of the mad Caesar, a sick glee upon his face as he stood over Maximus pointing his own short-sword at Maximus' throat.
"I was right, brother. You don't die, do you? That's something I find terribly vexing, but easily remedied."
So saying, he began to press the sharp point of the blade deeper into Maximus' throat. With effort, Maximus made to struggle out from whence he was pinned, but the wounds he'd already sustained weakened him dangerously. He grunted in pain as the blade bit his skin, forcing him to resist more violently, thrashing with the attempt to throw the man's foot off this chest that sat like a lead weight.
He was immobilized and hadn't the strength to struggle more. The blade bit deeper still, just above his collar-bone, moving at a downward angle with agonizing slowness.
He screamed then, in wretched misery while Commodus laughed with sadistic pleasure, plunging the blade deeper, but refusing to drive it home, his beautiful features warped to a vile semblance of humanity.
It went on and on like that, and he was powerless to plug his ears against the maniacal laughter, or escape into welcome oblivion of death as he writhed in an eternal limbo of searing torment.
He was going out of his mind, and in a last attempt to escape from the torture, he grasped the blade, its razor edges cutting his palms as he drew it the rest of the way to his heart...
Causing his eyes to pop open as he surged up to a sitting position, his hands moving to where he'd felt his life about to give way. His ragged breathing calmed s he reassured himself he was whole and living still.
Disoriented only for a moment, he regained his bearings, taking in the blackened pyres, the desolation of his lands, the hush of the night.
Suddenly catching his breath.
He must still have been dreaming, for there, sitting on a large, cut-stone fallen from the wall of the outer courtyard, she sat, her smile slow, playfully sensuous, the charcoal depths of her eyes teeming with the love they had once shared.
Surely he was still dreaming.
"Sort of," she said in her wonderfully low, throaty voice. "We meet halfway between our worlds. This is a place where I can talk to you, and you can hear me."
And hearing her voice again, seeing her as she had been in life...gods, Selene...beautiful, consummate Selene. Not beautiful perhaps, in the classical sense of Lucilla's frailty. Beautiful with the ripe, earthy voluptuousness embodying the long, lazy days of high summer in Hispania. Hearing her, seeing her, the last part of that tight fist imprisoning his bitter, empty spirit began to loosen...gradually.
"I have missed you," he rasped, his voice catching on the words.
She walked over to him, her eyes full of warmth and tenderness. "I know," and she knelt beside him, enfolding him in her arms. He marveled at her substance, embracing her, so life-like and vital.
This. He had only wanted to this, had begged the gods to be able to do this since the day he had been falsely condemned as a traitor to a man who had killed his family out of spite.
"I am sorry." It came out as a sob, choked and breathless. Only the beginning of a great torrent that shook his entire body, the well of sorrow he had held within him for so long unlocking at last. The cascade of tears soaked the material of her dress while she cradled his head against her breast like a child.
"You have nothing to be sorry for, Maximus." Her voice was smooth, soothing. "There is nothing to be sorry for because there is nothing for which you are at fault. No matter what they did, I never doubted you love, nor did your son."
The words did not calm him, for he continued to weep in harsh, wracking breaths. "I tried--," he said roughly through his tears, "--tried to reach you before they did. I failed, and because of that I ask your forgiveness."
She stroked his hair back gently, lifting his face to hers, shaking her head in mild scolding, her voice still low, tranquil. Not unlike Maeve's. "And what would you have done, Maximus, had you reached us before the Guard. You would have died too, and I would have watched you suffer before they killed me. That would have pained me more than anything else in this world or beyond, just as your grief pains me now."
Her words seem not to be heard initially as he continued to cry, holding her for how long he knew not. She said nothing else, simply absorbing his grief as it came.
And just as the cascade of waters unleashed from winter's deep freeze high in the mountains eventually weakens to a trickle from a great flood, so too did his outpouring, regaining his composure by small degrees.
When he looked up finally, he saw she was peering at him expectantly, drying the tracks of his tears with the edge of her sleeve. "I wanted to die, you know," he said, more steady than not, "when I saw what they had done to you...to our son."
"And you almost did," she replied with gentle reproach. "Twice." With her hand, she motioned around them. "You are needed here, though. Now more than ever."
He shook his head in tired resignment, moving out of her embrace slightly. "You are now going to hound me too. Telling me the dream of Rome still exists, waiting to be served."
She grasped his hand, a motion that punctuated her response, was of such fond familiarity to almost send him over the emotional brink again. "Those of us in the afterlife do not take much interest in the affairs of the living, but there are some matters, once uttered, that cannot be ignored."
She read his puzzlement, continuing with uncommon urgency. "When you fell in the arena, and everyone, Lucilla included, thought you were dead, she challenged more than the ruling parties of the Empire, but the gods as well, asking if Rome was worth one good man's life." Squeezing his hand, she concluded, "It was your life, Maximus, she meant, and her words echoed throughout eternity."
The familiar agitation was beginning to come over him once more, dissipating, and replacing the last of his grief, not soothed even by the peace of his wife's embrace. "I am beginning t feel like a man who listens' to one herald bearing the same message, and I will answer with the same words. I served Rome once and I failed in my duty to Her. Whether She is worth my life, or many lives, I will not serve Her again."
He couldn't remember ever speaking so sharply to his wife when she had been living, but as was her wont, she merely laughed in gentle amusement. "You have always been adamant in your refusal to acknowledge your talents, Maximus--whether as a leader or as a protector. Not only in this life, but your others as well."
Her quiet mirth did the trick of diffusing his irritability as he lay back down in her arms, saying with a small laugh of his own, "You knew me best to say so."
And then, the meaning of her last words sank in. He frowned, moving away slightly as before, asking, "What did you just say?"
She looked at him, holding his gaze with her own. A moment that did not last long, for what he saw looking out at him through the eyes of his wife--not his wife--made him shrink back.
He scrambled away from where She remained, seated comfortably on the ground. The outward semblance hadn't changed. She still looked like the woman who had been his wife, unruly black hair, sun-burnished skin and all. But the light over Her features, a brilliance not even the dead wore, made Her eyes reflect secrets to mysteries of a universe he could only begin to fathom.
Whatever it was he did to draw the inadvertent attention of Immortals, he needed to stop.
"Lady," he managed, not willing to grovel in obeisance, even before the likes of Her, although his heart hammered within his ribs.
He was careful though, to focus only on Her feet, the hem of the simple tan linen his wife donned around the farm. The ageless serenity of Her features was too disconcerting to look upon. He could feel Her gaze penetrate to the core of his soul.
She laughed then, startling him with its lightness, coming to stand opposite him. "Don't be so awed, Maximus. " He could hear the difference in Her voice. Deep, like his wife's, but fuller, sounding at once like the wind chasing across snow covered passes, the distant rolling thunder of a far off storm, with the delicacy of a nightingale's cry.
"This is not the first time we have met, nor will it be the last. I have watched your spirit over the centuries as you led your people across a wasteland of ice and glacier, and as you fought off invaders who threatened to destroy your precious crops in a time when hunting was still more common than harvesting.
"I have seen you as you braved vast waters to find a new land for the scattered remnants of what was once a great kingdom, destroyed by an explosion of earth and fire, buried under the sea.
"I am older than the mountains and the oceans, older even, than the stars. Yet, I am yours, as I am of all people's, and as you are mine forever. In my eyes, your spirit shines like a beacon across the eternal darkness of the underworld, for in every age have you met adversity, and in spite of loss, you have ever put the well-being of others before your own. Your selflessness has intrigued me always."
He'd been frozen into astonishment at what she was saying. Until those last words. He bared his teeth in a humorless smile. "My selflessness. Was it worth the lives of my wife and son. Did the other men who you say I've been ever lose those they loved the most? The price of duty and the illusion of dream." His cutting rage lent him courage to look on Her then, a challenge to Her boundless wisdom.
Unlike the god whom he'd confronted and defied in the eyes of Marcus Aurelius, she took no affront at his words. She was, after all, a woman--or rather all women and all living beings--and knew how to disperse even the most exacerbated of Her children's tempers.
"Almost always," she answered, "and sometimes more. Like I said, Maximus, you once lost an entire kingdom. The difference now," she said incisively, "is that you hoard you grief as a serpent her eggs, not letting it go so that you may move forward with your life." Adding as an afterthought, "And don't presume you were always a man in your other lives either."
Ignoring Her last remark, he stated with a better twist of his lips, "Are you saying my wife and son, Marcus Aurelius, Lucius, the countless others who have died for the empty cause of Rome are not worthy to be remembered and mourned."
Her response, when it came, took the rage that had briefly ignited his anger at Her, and dimmed it to a gradual shame. "Do you truly believe, Maximus," She began, coming nearer to cup his chin in Her hand, so like his wife's, so at odds with the eternal wells of Her eyes, "that you best serve their memory in this way. That I have not suffered at each death my children face, nor grieve when one causes another's life to end in violence and pain."
Such was the limitless compassion of Her tone, Her eyes, that He could only swallow helplessly, begging for a response adequate to the feeling of Her words. He found he could do nothing else, but drop slowly to his knees in self-defeat, her words breaking through the last remaining resistance of his soul.
"You humans are a strange lot, thinking it a great triumph to seek another's death, when in truth, the challenge has ever been to help others in living.
"You will do this thing, " She commanded. "Go to Britannia. Find a reason to not simply survive, but to live again. Help the few others who struggle to preserve the security of Rome along Her borders even while she decays from within."
He tried, once, as he had with the god possessing Marcus Aurelius in his first dream, to shake off Her hands. It was nigh impossible though, to break Her grip upon his chin, to deny the power of Her touch, pulsing with the heat of life, chilled by a trace of death.
"You deny Rome, and you deny yourself, Maximus. Her dream has ever existed amongst the nations She has brought together under one name; not a perfect dream, but one with great possibility. Some rulers, like your beloved Marcus Aurelius, realized this and worked toward re-awakening the dream amidst Her people. Honor his life, and that dream, with the life given back to you. You have had your vengeance, endured your sorrow for those you have lost. Do not waste your gifts abetting scars that will only embitter you more as the years go by."
He was shaken. What could he say, decry Her words in futility, denounce their mistaken notion of a belief he insisted was as dead to him as his wife and son.
But he had looked into Her eyes, seen what he had been, the lives he'd led before, the feats accomplished. In exhausted submission, he said, "I will, then. I will do as you say. I don't know how, but I will try."
Gods, he was tired. One learned as a slave to build a shell around that deepest feeling part of the soul. It was necessity if one wished to survive. Anger had been so much easier, vengeance a much clearer path.
But Lucilla had come to him that last time in Rome, cracking that cocoon, making him believe again, in the idea of a Republic she said she shared with her father.
Cicero's death, his failed escape, evidence of her betrayal, smothered his remaining hope of serving a higher cause than revenge. His noble, re-inspired duty had suddenly came down to simply seeing Commodus die, trying to protect Lucius.
Discovering the boy, too, had died, withered any last caring part of him--a final hope he'd salvaged something for the burgeoning Empire.
Until now. Hope may not have been re-awakened, but She had drained the festering bitterness, removed the last brick from the wall encasing his disillusionment. Perhaps, ideals, may in time, be re-born.
He was still tired though.
The hand that cupped his chin moved over his eyes. "Sleep then, Maximus." Her voice was temptingly hypnotic. "You have laid your wife and son to rest. You are done here. The road before you still lies undetermined, but when you awaken, you will at least have accepted new direction. Do not fail me in this. You never have before."
Whatever, Whoever She was, his wife, or something more, lay back with him on the dusty, rock strewn ground. He felt cradled in the arms of the earth, blanketed by the stars over-head, a faint humming beat echoing the rhythm of his heart, lulling him into the deep, dreamless peace of oblivion.
***********************************************
The morning dawned, glaring to his eyes, and he blinked them open in response to the brightness of the world around him. Still desolate, there was no familiar sound of birdsong t greet the sun's rise, only the faint breeze moaning like lost, lonely souls, scattering the remaining ashes off the funeral mounds. He rose, gazing hard at the cremation pyres for some moments, rubbing eyes that felt like they too had been burned to tinder--gritty and dry.
The images of the night came back in muddled form--Commodus' laughter, his wife's raven-black hair, Lucilla's scream of terror as the Guard snatched away her son.
The fact he'd supposedly lived other lives, that he'd seen each one pass in the keen clarity of Her eyes as She enjoined him to salvage a dying Empire, the remnants of a far greater Dream, on the distant shores of the northern isles.
Absurdly, the realization he'd supposedly not always been a man in those other lives.
That last made him grin briefly. He'd have been the brunt of many a joke from his fellow gladiators had they heard it.
He turned to walk back down the causeway, stepping over the remains of shattered pottery and tipped flower pots, shaking his head in befuddlement. He hadn't known people even led more than one life.
Or that goddesses had a sense of humor. He was sure that was shy she said it, to ease his grief, lighten his unsettled heart.
He came upon the women rolling their sleeping mats, arranging their miscellaneous objects in the back of the wagon for the journey north.
Maeve, standing by Hercules' head, handed him a chunk of bread and the canteen of barely-water. "You look about as well rested as my daughter, Spaniard."
He glanced over at Nemyhn, noting the shadows beneath her drawn features, harsh against the pallor of her skin. She was busy buckling the last of the fastenings of the donkey's harness.
"Strange," he commented. "I feel better rested than I must look."
Which won him a wilting glance from Nemhyn. Maeve smiled faintly, asking, "More tranquil this morning, are we?"
"More...accepting," he amended.
The younger woman, giving them each a dark look, stated sharply, "Wonderful. Do you suppose we could, perhaps, get on the road. Hercules and I, both, have had our share of this...place," looking about their surroundings with that same haunted expression from the night before.
He was puzzled when she climbed into the back of the wagon, rolling out a pallet, while her mother took the reigns up front. "Are you getting on, Spaniard," asked the older woman.
He nodded absently, arranging himself as comfortably as the wooden bench seat at the wagon's front afforded. "What's she doing back there?"
"Sleeping," was the succinct answer. Maeve twitched the reigns, and Hercules picked up with a trot that reflected the beast's own alacrity to be away from the deserted ruins. "Nemhyn had a rather restless night," she continued in a casual fashion. "Some of us are given the gift to peer, once a while into the future. Others of us," she finished, looking side-long at her recumbent daughter, "are sensitive to images from the past--especially those that linger in a place like this. Neither is an easy gift to live with."
And I talk to the dead in my dreams, attracting the attention of Immortals. Ought I have expected an answer more commonplace, he wondered sarcastically.
But he only nodded in silence. Maeve's explanation disturbed him, though it explained her daughter's abstracted mannerisms from the evening before, along with the beast's odd behavior. Hercules, unflappable Hercules, halting halfway up the entrance-path, refusing to go further.
Some people believed that spirits dwelt in the places of their death, and that animals seemed hyper-aware of such atmospheres.
He wondered if this might not be the reason why, after two years, his own lands still remained unoccupied. Normally, they would have passed into the ownership of the Emperor after his supposed execution, to be allotted to another aspiring commander or civil administrator who had accomplished a task worth of property ownership.
No one, at least no human presence from what he could tell, examining the charred desolation of the surrounding acreage, the crumbling ruins of the buildings as they moved out onto the larger main road east, had cultivated the lands since their destruction.
Some morbid impulse made him want to ask Nemyhn what she had seen in the shadow-obscured veils of the night.
"Don't," Maeve advised curtly, sensing his urge. "It's better for you not to know, and for her not to tell it. At least not right now."
His only response was to incline his head once, looking back quickly where her daughter lay, her shawl pulled across the upper half of her form, her head pillowed in one arm. "Maybe someday," Nemyhn spoke in a sleep-heavy voice. "When it's not quite so recent."
Maximus didn't know if she meant more recent for her sake, or his own, in regards to the odd night just past. He decided, wisely, to leave it at that, allowing himself, instead, to be lulled by the incessant motion of the wagon, as Maeve turned the donkey north at a crossroads.
Like watching the unfolding of a rose, dawn's light inviting it petals to drink the taste of the sun, the sparse, desolate fields transformed, perceptibly, to crops of swaying, ripened wheat, vast expanses of vineyards. They'd moved into a hillier region, the slightly inclining slopes awash with olive trees, their pungent odor mingling with the sweeter scent emanating from the orchards of orange groves now in full fruit, scattered across the rolling hills in clusters.
Harvesters were emerging from their humble cottages to greet the morning, taking to the road in preparation for the coming day's labor. Some waved or called out in the good natured halloo of farm-folk, eliciting an answering wave from Maeve. He was calmed by the pastoral setting, found himself waving back to the field workers as well.
"We go to Britannia, then," he asked after a time.
The older woman nodded, her eyes on the road. "We go home." There was evident relief in her voice.
Silence ensued again. A peaceful contentment which permeated as he and Maeve swayed to the motion of the wagon. Welcome after last night, but temporary he feared. All the more to be cherished while it lasted--this peace.
The world had taken on a golden cast, dawn turning to later morning. They rode under a stretch of maples, the umbrella of shade their leaves provided offering some barrier from the already rising heat.
"I think," Maeve began cautiously, as though reluctant to broach the subject, disturb this new-found contentment, "we will need to come up with some explanation when we arrive in Britannia for how we came across you."
Unsurprised, he asked obliquely, "The servant story won't work?"
She glanced at him, a quick turn of her head, irony in her eye. "Only if you intend to remain silent while you're on the isle, Maximus...Lucius."
He cocked an eyebrow her way.
"When you speak, you do not sound like a servant." It wasn't quite an admonishment.
The wagon made its way over a small footbridge spanning a trickling brook, disrupting two ganders from their forging. The birds took to flight with noisy quacks, their neck feathers catching the sunlight with emerald luster.
"Oh for blood's sake," came the angry outburst from the back of the wagon, causing Maeve to jump slightly, and Maximus to look back around at Nemhyn, each of them thinking she'd been long asleep.
Figuring it was the ducks that had disturbed her, their figures but dots upon the horizon by now as the fowl flew south, he offered in a parody of helpfulness, "You know, it's unfortunate you don't carry a bow and arrows with you. Think how easy it would be to silence any creature daring to bother your napping."
At her best, Nemhyn, in the morning, was irritable until she woke up more. On little sleep, fatigued and worn looking, she was downright volatile, making the teasing in his voice too much for her to tolerate good-naturedly.
She sat up on her elbow, glaring at him furiously. "I could just shoot you. You're a whole lot closer and much more antagonizing."
Taking in her appearance, the smirk she was trying to keep off her countenance, Maximus found it too difficult to react to her threat with any other than stifled laughter. Her hair, usually plaited and coiled neatly at her nape, was doing its best to come undone, the unfettered curls falling about her face, lines across her cheek where the fabric of her shawl had imprinted her skin while she'd been lying down. A beguiling picture actually, despite the angry glint in her eye when she noticed the way he was looking at the disorderly state of her hair.
Rather explosively, she said, "Oh for the love of Brigid, just laugh and get it over with Spaniard," rolling her eyes, laying back down with a thump. "Your going to give yourself apoplexy if you don't. I'm used to it, my brothers used to call me Medusa locks in the morning."
He needed no more urging, taking Maeve's lead as the younger woman's mother burst out with a guffaw of her own, saying between hiccoughs, "It's true. Of course, her brothers also had to wait until their teen-years to replace the teeth they lost when calling her so. Be warned, she still suffers from such harsh child hood memories." The affectionate ribbing toward her daughter was not lost to Maximus, although the only response from the back of the wagon was a sigh of frustration.
The levity of the moment passed into a peaceful quiet as the trio and their wagon were moving up the deepening gradations of the foothills, entering the mountainous passes of central Hispania. The air would hold more of a chill tonight than in the past weeks.
He brought the conversation back to where Maeve had left off before Nemhyn's outburst. "What did you have in mind exactly, regarding my re-invented past?"
"Well," Maeve started, the winter-ice eyes warming to an almost girlish-eagerness. "I was thinking..."
She simply gleaned far too much enjoyment from concocting these stories, a point he became increasingly convinced of as she went on. Listening without comment, he let her fill in the details as they rode higher into the mountains, biting back the occasional protest rising to his lips.
When she finished, she was looking at him with expectancy, her disconcerting eyes pale against the dark sheen of her hair. She was careful to keep Hercules at a slower gait the narrower the ridge they traversed became.
He was silent for a long time, considering. He knew his cooperation was needed in this, and he remembered, with sudden explicit lucidity, his words binding him to the Spirit inhabiting the shade of his wife, but--
"Fine. If I agree to this, what then. What is in store for me when we arrive to Londinium?"
"I don't know," was Maeve's casual, unconcerned response. "Even She wasn't able to reveal that. We'll have to see when we get there."
He looked at her sharply, berating himself for still being caught off-guard by her revelations. "How did you--," he cut off, disgruntled. She was a seeress, he should have expected she would know, if not all that had transpired in his dream--if that was a dream--then at least the fact he'd been visited by another of the Shining Ones.
She handed him the reigns for a moment, pulling her mantle closer around head and shoulders to fend off the coolness of the mountain air. Her summer dress, long, but thin and sleeveless, was little protection form the elements. It made him wonder if they had an extra cloak to spare for the evening. A trivial thought, quickly lost in light of their discourse.
"Maximus, how can I help but not know. I have spent my life, the better part of it anyway, serving Her in one form or another. It is Her healing aspect I give the most credence to, a path my daughter has chosen as well, but Her other gifts, my Sight, are blessings cultivated not through practice and art, but intuition and instinct. Believe me, I know when the shadow of Her hand has touched another."
He shifted further back into the seat, the physical movement an indication of his dissatisfaction with her answer. "I might be thought dead by the world, Maeve, but whether or not I've attracted the notice of some deity I'm not even sure I believe in, on a more practical level, if my identity were to be discovered, say tomorrow, my status would revert back to that of a slave quicker than I'd like to think. That gives you a hold over me, one I'm not entirely comfortable with."
She replied evenly, "No less than the one you have over myself and my daughter...or Lucilla for that matter." Acknowledging his puzzlement, she explained, "We have essentially stolen Imperial property--you being the item in question--right from underneath the grand arch of the Empire's Roman nose. I find it hard to believe you hadn't realized that before now."
The thought had actually crossed his mind once on the way to Genova, though it had been less eloquently put, and drowned by the remorse he wasn't sure, even now, had been entirely reconciled, despite the newfound serenity of his heart.
A serenity that didn't mitigate the disquiet he was beginning to feel. "You're depending a lot on empty faith, aren't you?"
Something kindled in her usually untouchable gaze, only for a second, before it was suppressed. "No empty faith. My Sight may not always reveal the most obvious path, but it tells me when I am headed in a right direction."
"Am I a right direction, then?" That thought was no more comforting than any of their prior discussion was turning out to be.
His words brought a quick half-smile to her face. "Rest assured, Spaniard. Whatever happens when we reach Londinuim, I'm not about to let you fall back into the shackles of slavery. Too much has been expended in this endeavor for me to let that happen."
He studied her profile intently before nodding, turning to face forward. He hadn't really been asking for the re-assurance, but her speaking it laid to rest some of his rising anxiety.
The sun was reaching its zenith, glinting off the distant heights of the snow-caps towering above them, turning the world into a luminescence of crystalline radiance. Spruce and pine grew in disseminated patches along the rocky slopes, their needles lending the air a tangy redolence.
"My life is my own," he stated after a time, watching a hawk circle the currents at its leisure, high above the rising, jagged summits piercing the vibrant blue sky. It sounded like he was asking her permission, and that annoyed him.
"In so far as your conscious lets it be, yes."
He sniffed at that sardonically, looking out at the road which had become more a terrace, its edge dropping away abruptly the higher into the moutons they climbed. From where he was seated, he couldn't see how far down it went to the bottom, or how steep the side. Much like my future. Unknowing of what he was stepping into, he couldn't discern what the next few months might bring his way.
He'd been a slave too long, living a life from one day to the next, one match to the next, existing in the present because that had been all he'd possessed. A slave had no future unless he was freed, had no past for it was too painful to think of what one had lost when the bolt locking the chains was hammered into place each night. It was difficult to conceive of imminent prospects when all one had lived for was the here and now. It brought a certain anticipation.
An anticipation not helped along by a comment arising from the he back of the wagon, said in the dulcently mocking intonation of Nemhyn's voice, "You can always muck stalls, Spaniard. If you're still in quandary as to your uncertain future by the time we reach Britannia, I mean."
"Now there's a thought," he responded in kind, still looking ahead. "Engendered by a goddess to salvage the remnants of a Republic, and I end up mucking stalls instead. Aren't you supposed to be sleeping," he asked, turning around finally to look down at her.
She gazed up at hi with an impudent expression. "Between the wagon rolling over every possible crack and stone in the road, and you and mother jabbering away like old women--no offense mother--at the baths, I could rival the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus for the peace I've had."
"You're right," he said, side-wise to her mother, "she is a little touchy with no sleep, isn't she."
"I told you," Maeve replied, a smile breaking over her features.
Nemhyn, gazing up at the sky, shading her eyes with one hand, the other pillowing her head, carried on with her original thought, as though talking to herself, "Of course, that means you would actually have to clean the stalls this time."
"I cleaned up after Hercules," he responded in feigned insult.
"Right," she grunted, squinting up at him. "Stabbing once at a turd with the pitchfork like a timid Vestal, then letting me clean the rest of the piles doesn't count, Spaniard."
"It's not my fault you were never satisfied with my attempts."
"Never satisfied," she chided, sitting up, unkinking the knots in her back and combing back disheveled curls with her fingers. "The donkey would have been up to its knees in shit by the time we reached Tarraco, and Theseus would have catapulted us each overboard for slopping his lower deck if I hadn't finished your work." Her eyes were dancing with mirth, adding, "You know, for a man who was a soldier and a gladiator, you have a suprisingly delicate sensibility when it comes to animal feces."
"Right," he rejoined, "that's because I've always preferred the front ends of animals, not the back."
She caught the way he was looking at the loosened strands of her hair again, and she drew her shawl over her head with a glowering expression, the red-gilt locks poorly covered by the square of woolen cloth. "Shut-up. I know what you're about to say," she warned, although she was trying as desperately as he was to not laugh.
About to deny that he was going to call her anything resembling a snake-headed woman from classical legend, his reply was superseded by Maeve, sighing like a heroine out of Greek tragedy. "If this is what I have to listen to while we cross to Rutupiae, I might indeed go mad."
"You could always be the simple country girl, Mother," Nemhyn offered.
"Or the servant," Maximus added in innocent jest.
The older woman gave each of them a cautioning look, saying, "Don't mock an old lady's age. Besides," she said, pulling back on the reigns as they began to wind down a gradual decline, "you two still have yet to decide who cleans up after Hercules for this trip."
Maximus looked at Nemhyn. Nemhyn looked at Maximus.
They hit upon the same thought at the same time, the unspoken agreement making Nemhyn's lips quirk in an unabashed smile, the green glints of her hazel eyes dancing with humor while he began to chuckle, turning to the her mother, suggesting, "Actually, we were thinking you could--"
"Don't even imply it," Maeve cut him off, in exaggerated menace, setting them all to laughter, the sounds of the trio's shared jocularity rising up over the mountain peaks, echoing off the rock-bound, tree-covered slopes as they continued towards the northern coast.
*****************************************************
They came to port in Ruputiae during the second month of Pertinax's reign, high summer along the pebble strewn beaches of the Mediterranean, where Helios cast his gold-imbued rays upon aqua waters while merchants, fisher-folk, and the like took advantage of the calm seas to forward their business ventures, haul in the ample catch.
Elsewhere, particularly across the northern channel, its waters never having mimicked the glass-like calm of its more southerly cousin, even in summer, men still went about their business, tilling fields, attending assembly, drilling or campaigning, intent on making ends meet for family or friend, whether peasant farmer, artisan, soldier or magistrate. But, just as the settlers along the Danube and the Rhine had learned to do, so too did the inhabitants of the isle, Roman and Briton alike, turn wary eyes ever northward toward the lands across the Wall. The lands ruled by the Caledonii, never conquered by Roman might.
Little peace would have been afforded had any of the island's populace, or the wider expanse of the Empire's citizenry known what those who controlled Her fate did: that the Empire was a much less stable place than it had been, even five years ago. War reverberated on the winds, a whisper, like the ardent promise of a lover, inaudible as yet, but growing in pitch from the deserts of the east, across the barren dunes of the African provinces, whirling across to Italia, sweeping over the spine of the country, the verdant pasturage and meadows of Gaul, through the dense forests of Germania, to the moors and highland plateaus of Britannia.
Mist encloaked cliffs, moisture imbued shale rock, and a green of fen and heathland so verdant that the flush of emerald could only have been rivaled by a jewel, and perhaps not even that. Thick, billowing clouds, a soft drizzle, and cold, damp air. These were the sights, the sensations greeting Maximus as he stepped off the passenger vessel onto the southern coast of Britannia, leading Hercules, Maeve walking on the other side of the donkey, her daughter following behind, by the wagon. A port-side city, more a military fort, though a permanent one, Ruputiae may not have been as sprawling as Genova, or as grand as Tarraco, but she still boasted a harbor abounding with ships, cargo vessels, military supply crafts, along with the potpourri of businesses, and civilian establishments that accompanied such a settlement. She even had her own pharos some miles down the coast.
The small group was swept into the dockside crowd, passing under a four-way arch, marbled pillars and bronze carvings telling of Claudius and his triumphant military conquest of Britannia. Though there was little possibility of recognition, Maximus was careful to keep a distance between himself and the company of Dacian conscripts walking ahead.
He moved with an odd feeling of unreality, still not quite believing he was here--the mood lending him a detached interest that had come to characterize his countenance more often than the dour glum of the recent months. Not since Tarraco had he felt like that actually.
Maeve, from across the donkey's back, said, "Remember, things are different now, Spaniard. I'm not about to abandon you to the whims of fate after bringing you all this way."
He looked over at her calmly, then back at her daughter. "So long as the whims of fate don't leave me mucking stalls, I'm fine."
Maeve chuckled at that, and her daughter even smiled briefly, tiredly. The lift and roll of the waves during their crossing had not been kind to the contents of Nemhyn's stomach, and she looked pinched, skin drawn tight over cheek bones. Her mother seemed unconcerned as usual, as long familiar with her daughter's physical aberrations as she was with her short-strung temperament.
The relief of both women to be back to their homeland was almost palpable though, for a tension had gone out of Maeve's bearing that he hadn't even been aware of until now, a relaxation over Nemhyn's visage. The look of ones familiar to a place filled with fond memories, at ease, sure in their reception as to the path available to them. This was their home, their country. He envied them, their growing assuredness the further from the ports they walked with the press of the crowd. It made him feel displaced and out of sorts.
He had to grasp the lead tighter as Hercules jerked his head up in starlment, two boys breaking through the crowd, street-urchins from the looks of their ragged clothing, darting around the wagon and donkey, dodging between other passers-by in their haste to escape an on old woman coming after them with a broom, her face caked with mud, calling out in anger, "You little rats, I'll skin your hides next time you try to cheat old Hulda!"
Maeve watched the scene transpire, shaking her head in vague amusement as they passed a row of retailers in the small market square, a tanner's stall, a wool-treaters shop. When she looked at him, the intensity of her gaze backed the sincerity of her words, discerning his irresolute thoughts. "You will find a place for yourself as well, Spaniard. You won't always feel like an outsider amongst strangers here," she reassured, ever the seeress.
"No mucking stalls," he attempted lightheartedly. He heard Nemhyn's giggle from behind.
"No mucking stalls," Maeve answered back with mock-solemnity.
With no frivolity this time, he said, "No arms for Rome. I didn't say I wouldn't serve Her, but no arms."
The older woman's answer was not half-so satisfying this time. "That we'll have to leave to fate, Spaniard."
He scowled briefly, saying nothing, shrugging. He was studying the posterior gates they were coming to, dividing the fort's access from the surrounding countryside, contemplating the road that passed under the stone cupola supported between the two watch towers of the fortified granite bulwarks. Contemplating too, the symbolism of that road which headed out, one could have said, into the unknown. Unknown countryside, unknown future.
"All roads lead to Rome," he voiced in spontaneous irony.
Maeve gave him a significant glance, leaving it for her daughter to correct him.
"Not here," Nemhyn said. He looked back at the younger woman quizzically. "Here," she clarified, "all roads lead to Londinium." She spoke in all seriousness, her own expression weighted with an irony that rivaled perfectly, the feeling of his words.
Until she graced him with a smile that brightened her chiseled features to a refulgent comeliness, so often disguised by the prickly temper, the simple appearance of her garb. "Welcome to Britannia, Spaniard."
To which he could only respond as was appropriate for a lady, bowing his head in acknowledgment of her salutation with a slight smile of his own, before turning back to face the stretch of dirt-packed road before him, donkey and wagon entow, women on either side.
On their way to the closest river outlet where they would catch barge to Londinium, the trio was passed by a large cohort of cavalry troops, bearing a standard specific to the detachment, along with the emblems of the XI Augusta, galloping en route, presumably to the provincial capital as well. Their helmets flashed with silvery-iron sheen in the small amount of sunlight trying to creep from behind an over-cast sky, their crimson capes, sweeping out behind them in the uprush of wind resulting from their rapid pace, brilliant crimson against yellow-green fields of the lowlands. The urgency with which the mounted troops rode signaled something was in the air, a dire possibility of coming conflict, and peace, a transient gift to be valued while it lasted.