by Ken Parejko
Towards morning they'd asked Lucius to wake you so you could tell them what to do, he said. But instead Lucius told them that the Lord would care for them, his Lord, and anyway if you saw them you’d only scold them for being so afraid.
So they huddled in the dining room, cowering from the building’s creaks and groans, peering now and then out the window to watch the ash grow deeper and deeper. After what seemed almost an eternity night gave way to dawn. But as you can see it is an unearthly dawn, full of the smells of the underworld, and dark with an ominous light.”
I was still wiping my face of the dust that had settled on it while I slept when one of the servants ran up to us. “Sir, master,” he said. “We must go. Now!”
“Why?”
“Duilius saw all the mice running from the building. He said it means it’s about to collapse.”
It was said horses and dogs could predict earthquakes, so maybe there was something to it. Our position really did seem to have grown desperate. The servants, their wives and children huddled around them, waited for my instructions.
I noticed a pretty blue iris half-buried in ash in the peristyle. I bent over and dusted it off.
“I gave you this, didn’t I? A decade ago. More.” Now it stood in simple beauty surrounded by what seemed the wreckage of the world itself. And for a few moments, while I touched the flower and turned it this way and that, and told them of all the different kinds of irises I’d found in Cyrenaica I had them rapt, and for those few moments we all forgot our peril.
But at last I straightened myself, bones creaking and sore, breathing heavy and coughing thick sputum, and walked through ankle-deep ash to the nearest window. I pushed the shutter open and poked my head out. I could barely see twenty feet through the blizzard of swirling ash, which the winds were piling up along the building in deep drifts. “Yes,” I had to admit, “perhaps it’s time we go.”
Rocks continued to pound away on the roof. Escape wouldn’t be easy. But if we stayed the ash and rocks might pile so deep we couldn't leave, imprisoning us in the house. And if the barrage continued, or if the earth-tremors didn’t let up, the roof and walls could cave in, and that we couldn't survive. As we talked the earth shuddered, shaking the walls of the room, knocking dishes and utensils off the walls and shelves. The servants screamed. It was time to go.
We gathered pillows and tied them on our heads. Though dawn had come an hour before, it seemed now to be growing darker. Servants ran and found torches, one end soaked in pine-pitch, which they lit and passed around, and we streamed one by one out the door into the mayhem and down toward the sea.
Half-blind we plowed clumsily through knee-deep ash. Through the cloths which covered their faces the servants muttered, cried, sometimes screamed. Several women clutched infants. They insisted I lead the way, and overweight and asthmatic as I was I struggled to cut a path for them. Once or twice when I got headed off in the wrong direction Pomponianus had to turn me back towards the sea.
The rocks and ash were hot now, as though on fire.
An older man following Lucius, one of Pomponianus’ servants, fell and cried that he could go no further. Lucius, as old as he, lifted him and dragged him along. We paused a moment to pass around a jug of water, our mouths caked with dust and pumice, our eyes stinging from the sulfur and fine dust which filled the air. It seemed an eternity since we’d left the villa. The seashore, our only hope of escape, was out there somewhere. We might all collapse before we found it. But it was too late to go back.
Then when it seemed even hope had abandoned us we stumbled onto the beach, crowded with people plowing this way and that, looking for boats or any way out. Just up the beach a small cargo-ship had grounded in the sand with a score or more of men struggling to push it back into the water. Just as it seemed they’d forced it clear a great roller lifted it out of their hands and threw it back onto the shore.
The servants panicked, all except Lucius, who stood bravely with me and Pomponianus, caught between the sea and the land, unable to go in either direction but unwilling yet to give up.
“There’s a ship leaving!” Someone cried out and ran up the beach, followed by half of Pomponianus’ servants. But when they got to it they saw that it, too, was deeply grounded and going nowhere.
I stumbled in that direction, leaned against the ship’s side and closed my eyes. Someone tossed down a sail, torn and ash-covered, which Lucius rigged to provide a fragile roof, then spread a smaller canvas for me over the hot sand. After leading them this far, I could go no further.
Lucius stayed with me, and the old man he'd half-carried. They helped me find a spot to collapse onto under the canvas roof. Pomponianus knelt beside me. We’d been friends for many years. “Are you okay?” he asked, holding my hand.
“Yes, I’m all right,” I said, though my voice was thin and barely audible. “Just tired.”
Lucius sat under the canvas, leaning against the ship, and took my head into his lap.
“Should I stay with you?” Pomponianus asked.
“No, no, go look for help,” I waved him off. My eyes closed, my body wracked with cough.
“All right. I’ll head up the beach. If I find help, I’ll be back.”
All I could do was nod.
No more had he left when a bitter, biting sulfurous cloud settled over the beach, wrapping us in its evil arms as we huddled under the sail. We coughed and gagged, barely able to breathe the foul, acid air. I peered around. Never before had I felt such deep confusion. Only I remembered that when Vespasian lay dying he’d asked those around him to stand him up. “A man should die standing,” my old friend had said.
I managed through wheezing breaths to ask Lucius to help me.
It was a struggle but good old Lucius finally got me up. It was like standing on a swaying deck. I could barely keep my balance. He held me as best he could. I looked around, and couldn't believe that the earth I so loved was taking from me all the many treasures it had so readily yielded me over the years. I felt alone, more alone than I’d ever felt, as though even my own mind was abandoning me and fleeing who knew where. I tried to speak, but could offer Lucius no more than a short smile of gratitude.
Then I felt my legs give way and I watched, perplexed, as the sand rushed up to meet me.
Chapter 3
Near Mogontiacum (Mainz), Germany
June 23, 47 C.E.
In the Roman calendar, jubilee year 800
Even scientific physicians tell us that one
should pay attention to dreams.
Aristotle Prophesying By Dreams
The voice came from a quiet glade.
“Pliny!” the voice said.
Me. My name.
Cutting through the glade a small impetuous stream; above and all around, the fiery flash of gold scintillae, light dancing butterflies. One swept higher, crossed the stream and into the woods where its glinting golden wings suddenly flashed into a shining gladius’ arc. As the sword swung a man’s voice, solid as a boulder in the stream of light, flushed all the golden standards into a sudden final flurry, and they were gone.
“Pliny!” the voice repeated.
Me...?
“Yes, you,” the voice said.
Suddenly an officer striding confidently down the stream, short swings of his sword blithely parting the weeds.
I ask myself: who? But then I knew. Drusus.
We’d never met, of course. Thirty years was Drusus dead before I even was. But across the empire Drusus’ image, more than any other, on bronze busts and silver coins, in temples and in markets, marched and marked the pax romana.
Drusus, surely: this the strong face, imperturbable, this the exalted hero. Yes, Drusus.
While underneath, another knowing, a deep dream-knowing.
“Drusus!” my own voice said, a voice which frightened me, a hollow sound, as though shouted up from a deep well.
The great general splashed up the shallow stream, creaking bronze greaves, lamellae of his
cuirass flashing. He smiled, stopped beside a boulder, re-sheathed his sword, and sat.
“I’ve come to haunt you, my friend,” Drusus said, settled himself onto the rock. His eyes were his mother Livia’s, intelligent, full of deep faith in himself, child-like, intuitive. “I need you," Drusus’ voice said, or was it the call of that crow there, staring, smirking?
A legend before me, perched on stone. Drusus. Then my father’s voice from across the years, in quiet evenings I thought forever past, the careful cadence of homespun Latin, working and reworking like the cud of a sheep Drusus’ fated story. I’d lain mesmerized then, as a child, the same rich reverent voice father used in prayer. In life Rome's finest, in death Drusus became the ever-victorious hero: in death, a legend. A god, almost. Daily from temples smoke rose in Drusus’ memory; and with it, rose all Rome.
Behind him and farther still a wall of trees and beyond that a steep rocky cliff rising craggy with vine and shrub. The sudden, sharp cry of a bird. Silence again, deeper. Only the sound of the water. Did he say something? From his rock Drusus smiled, silently mouthed the words, gestured with his sword. Ita, tu!
“Yes, you!”
He leaned, picked a small shard of yellow, as though a spark fallen from the fluttering papiliones, turned it lazily in his hand. The yellow took familiar form: an umbel of skirret. Why how silly, it’s only skirret: Tiberius’ favorite, fried with vinegar and silphium. Then I knew. Germania. Of course, right here, in Germania.
“How long since I died?” Drusus asked.
An odd question to be asking, I thought.
“Fifty-five years.”
Drusus, half a century dead, smelled the flower. “I fell from my horse...” He struggled to remember. The forest darkened for a moment.
“Yes, you fell. You bled.”
“Yes, I remember.” The sun broke free. “On Papilione. We were two wings, Papilione and I, and flew like the wind.” A driving breeze came up and through us, and for an instant a dizzying giddiness. “But, then...Yes, now I remember. I died, here at Mogontiacum."
“Rome's sweetheart.”
“Yes, I was,” with twinkling eyes.
"You civilized the tribes."
Drusus smiled ironically, spat. “Ah yes...the pax romana! We make a desert, you know, then call it peace.”
“Like a great wind you swept them before you, the Chatti, Usipete, Raetians. While the Senate, huddled in the Comitium, awaited couriers from the north with word of your victory. Then all Germany would be ours, and Augustus' nightmare at last redeemed."
“Ah, the Senate! The Senate, the Senate.” Drusus’ head swung from side to side. “Swilling bunch of swine stuffing their guts pausing now and again to sniff the air, thick with the smell of death... Mine, that is, and my men.” He smiled a sardonic smile, spat into the stream. “Still, it’s true. I almost did. Germany might have been ours.”
“It would have, if you’d lived.”
“Do you think so?” He settled into the stone, glanced skyward toward the cascade of light falling unabated upon us. “Perhaps. I chased them into lands never touched by Roman foot.”
He paused a moment, ran his hand over his leg, torn with a deep wound. “I was surprised, you know, the emptiness of a triumph. But by then, part bear, part boar, part wily crow, I was more at home here. I despised the capitol and her petty triumphs, looked inside myself and found the heart of a barbarian. Does that shock you?”
“Not really. So you escaped here, into the wilderness, and death.”
“Yes...”
“Choosing to court death over victory.”
“Choosing?” Drusus thought a moment. “Have you been here, in winter?"
“No. Only since spring.”
“And your native land?”
“Novum Comum, on Lake Larius.”
“Ah, yes. It’s lovely. Went for a moonlight swim there, long ago...How long ago it seems! Does the water get hard there, in the winter?”
“Yes. Sometimes…Not often.”
“Have you ever walked on it?”
A child, a cold December morning. I run to the lake’s edge, cloak flapping like wings. The water is smooth, at the shore covered with clear, sparkling ice. I stoop, with two hands lift a stone and drop it onto the ice. The stone leaves a scar, skids sideways.
Gingerly one foot onto the ice, then the other. The lake moans but pushes back. I stand looking into another world. A minnow swims under me. I see myself through the fishes’ eyes, an Olympian towering high above. I take a step, nearly fall. Now another, more carefully, and suddenly I am running, wooden boots clacking across the ice. I laugh, shout. “I am the wind!”
It was incredible, this running on water. I’d never forgotten it.
“That hard water, dear Pliny, that is Fortuna. You run like the wind across its surface, your life a graceful swoop and climb, but at any moment there you are, suddenly, under water.”
Now the ice was gone, the lake a shimmering mirror. A boat, a tiny box, falls out of the sky, settles onto the lake. Aulus’ boat. Little Aulus, under the sea, Aulus under the earth.
“What's it like, in your world?" I asked, Aulus’ world?
“There are many lives; one at the surface, the one you live, but many others. Always be ready for that other journey. Death finds us many times while we’re still alive, a thousand tiny deaths we’re too busy to notice. But there is one death from which there is no return,” and here he sighed, “and that is, after the last, great dying, then to be forgotten. The household manes, the ancestral shrines, the daily prayers; it’s what keeps us alive. That is the genius of our people. It’s not our heroes or generals or the legions that make us strong, you know, but the knowing that we need each other, you and I, the living and the dead.”
He paused a moment. “It’s what brought me here, out of this wilderness my spirit calls home, and believe it or not, it’s what brought you here too, beside this stream we call Copia. I've come to ask your help, my friend, to keep this my insubstantial shade from fading to oblivion. There’s little else left of me, only a few ashes and those god-awful unlikenesses, in silver and stone, soon to make way for another crowned hero.”
For a moment, it seemed as though the spirit of Drusus did fade, and almost flicker away. Then it came afire again, full of strength and glory and straightforwardness. “So it falls upon you, my dear friend, to save me.”
“Me? But...”
Our eyes merged, and deep inside each other, we found ourselves. “I’ve come from over the years to ask you a favor, to ask you to write a history, of the part I played in the German wars."
“The German wars? But...”
Drusus stood, for an instant tall as a tree, and with a sweep of his hand gestured me quiet. “Hush! Only listen. You’re right here in Germany, as I was. Fortune has blessed you with the keenest of eyes, a quick mind, a miraculous memory and a fluid pen. At your age, why who’s ever heard of it, your manual for throwing the javelin is already standard issue across the empire. You have a great life ahead of you, my friend. You’ll travel the known world, witness battles that make these German skirmishes child’s play. You’ll know things, and record things no one else has known or recorded. You will, in time, become the mentor and conscience of the emperor. Only,” and here he looked me straight in the eye, “only, when you run across the hymns to Orpheus, as you surely will, remember me, and this dream.”
The winds of the future swirled my head. And what was this about the Orphic Hymns?
“It must be you, dear Pliny, there’s no one else can do it, or do it so well.” Drusus’ eyes moved first across the sky, then down to his feet. “Fortune denied me the gift of longer life, or I’d been emperor. Once emperor my place in history, the solace of my soul, would have been settled. Then I would not need you. But that was not to be...” He paused, took a deep breath. “You’re my best chance at eternity. You'll do it?”
“Do what?”
“Write the German wars.”
“Do
I have a choice?”
“Pretend you do, if it helps.”
Drusus stood, stretched, scratched the edge of his ugly leg-wound with his sword. “Well, I’m off then. Who knows to where. You’re my new Papilione now, dear Pliny, I’ll ride you into the future. Thanks to you, two thousand years from now, in unimaginable times and places, someone will sit beside a fire with a glass of wine and remember me. And thanks to you, and thanks to them, I will still live.”
For a moment the great general’s image brightened, like oven-coals in a draft. Then he hefted his sword to his shoulder, winked conspiratorially and headed off upstream, splashing casually across the stream and singing a common battle-song. Then he was gone, and all was silence.
I tried to speak, to call him back, but could not find my voice.
I stared a moment where he’d been. The woods there seemed to have lost their color, as they do when the sun leaves the day. Now, without the general, the flashing butterflies or noisy birds, the glade was full of a new and heavy emptiness. Suddenly I felt lonely, and the silence of the forest felt thick and deep. I struggled against it, felt myself smothering, as though I’d fallen through the stream of silence, and was drowning in an unseen liquid.
Now I could hear myself breathing, my own wheezing and gasping.
“Pliny!” A voice called out. The forest grew darker. I could not recognize the voice. I struggled to find it.
“Pliny!” The voice called again, closer this time.
I opened my eyes. From out of the darkness Lucius leaned over me, the candle he held flashing yellow and gold, like the wings of a dream. I rubbed my eyes, tried to blink them awake.
“Almost dawn,” Lucius said, setting the light beside me. “You were gasping.”
“Yes,” I had to admit, drawing long, deep raspy breaths. I looked around, found myself in my field-tent. “I could hardly breath.”
“Sometimes you sleep like a dying man.”