by R. W. Peake
That decision prompted what would be one of the first two crises of the trip, when Titus, after demanding some privacy that kept his party waiting outside the inn, finally emerged from inside. Although it took a moment for her to discover the cause, what Iras noticed immediately was the different way that Titus carried himself. Whereas before he had tended to slump, conscious of how he towered above his friends, this morning shortly after dawn saw him walking with his shoulders thrown back and, if anything, was clearly trying to appear taller than he actually was. In that moment, Iras caught her first glimpse of her firstborn not as the child he was at that moment, but the man he would become, and the effect on her was an emotion she hadn’t ever experienced. Equal parts pride, fear, and a sense of loss at this first sign of the inevitability of adulthood washed through her, and her vision suddenly clouded as her son strode to the wagon, becoming a shimmering image that suddenly reminded her of her native country of Egypt and the mirages that were a feature of that barren land. Unknown to Titus, who was only aware that, just as he had hoped, all eyes of his family and the others were on him, he won a reprieve of a few precious heartbeats of time before his mother wiped her eyes with the hem of her cloak. This moment didn’t last long; before he reached what Titus thought of as the safety of the wagon, where he could settle in among the pieces of luggage near the back of the wagon that he had claimed as his spot, his mother spied the cause of this dramatic entrance.
“Stop. Right. There.”
Titus, like every child experienced with the tones used by parental figures and the meaning of each, knew his mother’s words, sounding as if they had been bitten off, meant instant obedience was the only safe choice. So he did as she commanded, freezing almost in mid-stride, which would have left him with a foot hovering above the ground. However, he did plant both feet on the ground, and while he didn’t remember doing so, both Gallus and Libo would hide grins at the sight of the boy bringing himself to the perfect position of intente, in an unconscious mimicry of his father and every man of the Legions.
“What is that?”
If Titus had had a moment to think, he would have determined that pretending ignorance was probably the worst tactic he could have used, but he was still a child, and like all children, their favored method of dealing with consequences was to delay them by any means.
Consequently, his reply, “What is what?” was such a bad choice that Diocles, already sitting on Thunder, winced, while Gallus suddenly had a coughing fit that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.
Titus’ siblings weren’t so circumspect; both Sextus and Valeria suddenly bursting out in giggles at their elder sibling’s expression as much as his words.
“Don’t you dare pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Iras hissed, and Titus instantly knew that this was going to be a seriously uncomfortable moment.
Nevertheless, he drew himself even more erect than he had been, and in his best attempt at sounding like the grownup man he so desperately wanted to be, he replied, “This is my sword. Tata gave it to me before we left. He had it made for me, and it’s actually a real sword. Look.” He drew the short blade, liking the hissing sound it made as it left the specially made scabbard. Swept away was any attempt to be adult about this, his enthusiasm and excitement about this fabulous possession just too overwhelming. “Isn’t it beautiful, Mama? Truly?”
If Titus had hoped that his mother would be awed by what even Diocles could see from his spot on Thunder was beautiful workmanship, it was in vain. His mother was completely unmoved by the dull sheen that even then picked up the light from the torches at the entrance to the inn. All she saw was a weapon, a dangerous object in the hands of a boy who she was convinced was much too young to have anything like that in his possession. It would have given Titus little comfort to know that her anger at that moment was more with her husband than with her son; while she couldn’t share his excitement, she did understand why a young boy would have such feelings. Unfortunately for Titus, his father wasn’t there to share in her wrath.
“I don’t care how beautiful you think it is. You’re taking that…thing off and you’re going to give it to me for the rest of the trip. When we get to Arelate, we’ll talk about it. But until then, you’re not to touch it again. Do you understand me?” Holding out her hand, she finished, “Now, give it to me.”
“No.”
From where Diocles sat, able to see both Iras and Titus, it was impossible for him to tell who seemed to be the most surprised, the boy or the mother. In fact, Titus was the more shocked of the two; this was the first time in his life that he had so openly defied his mother, and in some dim recess of his mind, he recognized this as an important moment. This was his first open act of independence, and in the length of time it took him to utter the small but powerful word, his resolve hardened into something as strong and unyielding as the black stones that paved the road on which they were traveling. Iras, on the other hand, was stunned into speechlessness, which Porcinus, if he had been there, would have wryly congratulated his son for achieving, since it was extremely rare that his wife was ever at a loss for words.
Finally, Iras managed a strangled whisper. “What did you say?”
“No,” Titus replied, but he didn’t say it defiantly, just as a simple statement of intent.
Whatever had caused Iras’ momentary uncertainty vanished, and as resolute as Titus was, he felt his knees shake at the expression that now took over her face. I’ve never seen her this angry, he thought, but somehow, that only made him more determined to prevail. He had no way of knowing, but this was a trait with which Porcinus and Diocles, even more so, were very familiar.
It was a single-minded, almost mulish stubbornness and a refusal to submit that had been a hallmark and defining trait of young Titus’ adoptive grandfather and, watching the scene before him, Diocles felt as if a giant but invisible hand had suddenly seized his heart, squeezing it hard. Oh, Master Titus, if only you could see your namesake right now, he thought, what would you say? Would you counsel the boy to listen to his mother? Or would you be proud that he’s refusing to submit, something that you would have done at his age?
Oblivious to the Greek’s thoughts, Iras suddenly found herself on the ground, leaping off the wagon seat with a lithe grace that hadn’t been diminished by the years or childbirth. The baby, in a basket on the seat, who had been asleep, was apparently disturbed by the sudden movement and slight rocking of the wagon caused by her mother’s dismounting, and began to cry. Libo, seated on the other side of the basket, was torn between what looked to be an interesting moment and trying to soothe the baby. Meanwhile, Iras, now on the ground, crossed the distance between the wagon and her son, who hadn’t moved from his original spot a half-dozen paces away from the wagon, roughly equidistant between it and the inn.
Watching his mother approach, Titus fought an almost overwhelming urge to flee, knowing that by giving in to it, he would not only shame himself, he would draw the laughter and mockery of the small crowd of travelers who had been drawn to this small drama being played out. Do not run, he told himself, and although he had no way of knowing it, while this was the first time he would be guided by this inner voice, it was far from the last. Regardless of his inner turmoil, by the time he made the decision to stand his ground, the choice was gone because his mother was standing in front of him, her breathing harsh, blasting against his face as she placed herself almost nose to nose with Titus. Both mother and son had a moment where their thoughts were completely in unison as they both realized with a sudden surprise that they hadn’t been this close in some time, and that Iras was now shorter than her son. Not by much, but he was still only ten. Unfortunately for Iras’ cause, this boosted Titus’ confidence, bolstered by having the high ground, in a manner of speaking.
“I’m not going to tell you again, Titus,” Iras said softly, but with an odd detachment, he saw how her nostrils were flared and her eyes dilated, both of them signs that she was on the edge of doing some
thing drastic. “Give me the sword.”
“No, Mama,” he said again, but before he could stop himself, he hurried on with a pleading tone. “You heard the talk last night. It’s dangerous right now because of the rebellion. We’re going to need every sword…”
“That’s what Gallus and Libo are here for,” his mother cut him off.
“I know, but it can only help to have me armed as well. You do see that, don’t you?”
“What I see is that you’re too young to have a dangerous weapon. What your father was thinking…”
Now it was Titus’ turn to cut his mother off in mid-sentence.
“What he was thinking was that I’m ready to have this.” He gestured to the sword, understanding that drawing it again wasn’t a good idea.
“Well, he was wrong,” Iras snapped. “And I’ll talk to your father about it later.”
“He’s the paterfamilias, Mama,” Titus tried to reason with her, thinking that perhaps a legal argument would help his case. “What he decides is law. You know that.”
The look that Iras gave her son was one he would have cause to remember over the course of his life; a half-scornful, half-amused expression that would become one with which he was all too familiar, always coming from the women that would be in his life.
“You’re just a boy,” Iras retorted. “You don’t know anything about things like that.”
As soon as she said it, Iras recognized that she had made a horrible mistake, probably the worst thing she could have uttered under the circumstances. Before she even finished, she saw her son’s expression change, his lower jaw suddenly jutting forward in a look she knew all too well. Oh no, she thought, why did you have to say that, Iras?
“I’m more than halfway to being a man.” Despite his best effort, Titus couldn’t hide the hurt from his voice. “And I’m already as big as some men, Mama. I’m bigger than you.” Horrified, he felt the tears welling up in his eyes, and only he would ever know the willpower it took to keep them from filling his eyes. “So I’m not giving you the sword.”
He didn’t see it, but he certainly felt the shock of pain as her hand snaked out to slap him, hard, across the face. It was like a sudden fire erupted across the whole left side of his face, and he let out a gasp of pain, but it was his mother’s eyes that suddenly filled with tears. Without thinking, he reached up to touch the side of his face, yet somehow, the tears that threatened to burst forth a moment ago had suddenly dried up. It was with equal parts surprise and unease that Titus recognized why; as much as his face and his feelings hurt, more than anything, he was angry. And it was a kind of anger towards his mother that he had never experienced before, not the kind of anger a child has when they think they’re being treated harshly or unfairly by a parent. It was an anger that Iras saw in her son’s eyes and, despite her own rage, gave her pause. A sudden feeling of almost overwhelming sadness came over her as she recognized that not only had she lost this battle over a sword, she had lost a part of her son as well. When she looked back later, nothing ever seemed the same between mother and son after that.
The next crisis actually came later that day, after a tense two watches of a silence that enveloped everyone. Titus spent the entire time riding Libo’s horse, but instead of passing the time next to Diocles or Gallus, he chose to ride by himself a short distance away from the wagon. However, when the party reached the point where the road split, and without any discussion Diocles, who had joined Gallus ahead of the wagon, turned in the direction that would take them to Tergeste, Iras ordered a halt.
“Why are we going that direction?” she asked Diocles, although she knew the answer.
Diocles sighed; he had been warned by Porcinus the probability of this happening.
“We’re going to Tergeste to catch a ship,” he told Iras. “It will be faster than taking the overland route through Aquileia.”
“By ship?” Iras shook her head. “No. Absolutely not. I won’t take my family by sea. We’re going overland.”
“Iras, it’s going to take longer if we go overland,” Diocles replied patiently.
“I don’t care,” Iras shot back. “I’m not in any hurry. Are you?”
Since the wagon had come to a halt, Titus had drawn closer, but to this point, he remained silent. He was about to open his mouth when Gallus beat him to it.
“Mistress Iras,” the bodyguard was always respectful, something Iras appreciated, “I’m with you about not wanting to go by sea.”
Iras looked over at Diocles triumphantly, but it was short-lived.
“But, while I don’t want to, I also think it will be safer to go by sea than to continue overland,” Gallus said quietly.
Staring at him in disbelief, Iras exclaimed, “Not you too? Surely you’re not scared by all the talk at the inn last night! I expect it from Titus; he’s just…young.” She caught herself from using the dreaded “boy” that had caused the original problem. “But that rebellion is more than a hundred miles north of here!”
Gallus’ face flushed, but his tone remained calm.
“No, I’m not worried about the Rhaeti,” he replied. “At least, not right now. But we’re going to be passing through countryside that’s even rougher than this, and the fact is that there are bandits along the Via Postumia.”
“He’s right, Iras,” Diocles put in. “It’s just safer in the long run if we take the ship. And the voyage is short, barely more than a day. We’ve been on a lot longer voyages than that.”
“Only if a storm doesn’t come up,” Iras said stubbornly, but Titus could see that she was weakening.
Nothing more was said for several moments, but when the silence was broken, it was by Titus.
“If you want to take the overland route, Mama, then I agree.”
Iras looked over at Titus in surprise, then she quickly recognized his words for what they were: a peace offering. In a flash of insight, she also understood what at least part of his motive was and, her anger still outweighing any desire to make peace with her son, that made up her mind.
“Fine,” she sighed. “We’ll go by ship.”
Don’t think I don’t know you, Titus, Iras thought with grim amusement. You wanted to go to the overland route because you think there might be trouble. She again looked over at her son, and favored him with a smile that communicated that knowledge.
Despite Iras’ fears, the voyage went smoothly, the weather cooperating and allowing the crossing to take the expected amount of time. Landing at Ariminum (Rimini), the party resumed their journey, this time in relative safety as they traversed the Via Flaminia to the northwest. After the novelty of the sea voyage, as short as it was, barely two full days from the time they left the port at Tergeste to when they tied up at the dock in Ariminum, the monotony of daily travel resumed its hold on Titus. Traveling through the peaceful countryside of Aemilia, as active as Titus’ imagination was, he was hard-pressed to see danger anywhere as he and his family rolled past miles of ordered farmland and large estates. More out of boredom, the boy began spending time with Diocles, who he had known his entire life, but only as his grandfather’s servant. The fact that the Greek wasn’t in the Legions had caused Titus to dismiss him as someone worth talking to, a fact that Diocles viewed with quiet amusement. Very quickly, Titus learned that while Diocles hadn’t wielded a sword, he had been involved in almost every exploit of his adoptive grandfather from the first civil war onward, and had seen things and been witness to events that were spoken of with great awe and even greater respect. Their first day spent together, Titus learned that Diocles had been at Pharsalus; while the boy only had a very rudimentary knowledge of this battle that shook Rome down to its foundations, he did know that adults like his father considered it to be a very important event. Somewhat to Titus’ surprise, however, what he found he enjoyed the most was the Greek’s stories about his grandfather that didn’t have to do with battle. Young Titus Porcinianus Pullus had no way of knowing that this trip would turn out to be one of the most for
mative periods of his young life, over and above the tangible effects of what was an unusual amount of travel for a boy his age.
For Iras, it was a mixed blessing; while the stories distracted Titus from his preoccupation with the idea that they were under threat of attack at any moment, she feared that her former fellow slave and friend was planting ideas and thoughts in the boy’s head that would be incredibly difficult to root out and destroy. She had known from the moment her firstborn came that her former master would cast a giant shadow over the boy’s life, but she had pinned her hopes for the future of her family on the very thing that she knew would be so alluring to her boy: the prowess and achievements of Titus Pullus.
When Iras had been sent by Cleopatra VII, who was actually her half-sister, the result of a quick union between their father Ptolemy and one of the palace slaves, to assassinate not just Titus Pullus, the Primus Pilus of the 10th Legion, but his de facto wife, Miriam, she had accepted that this was her fate, to be used as a weapon of revenge by her queen. She ultimately failed in her mission; the only casualty was Pullus’ slave Eumenis, who had tasted the grain that Iras had poisoned when she worked for Deukalos, who had been convinced by the stack of gold coins offered to him to take Iras on and allow her to perform her mission. Deukalos was given strict instructions by the emissary sent by Cleopatra, that once she performed her job, Iras was to be disposed of and never seen again. But Deukalos was a weak man, in every sense of the word. Enormously fat, his appetite ran to matters of the flesh as well, and when he saw Iras, who was a true beauty that even now caused men to stop and stare, his resolve had failed. Instead, he had sent his wife to visit relatives while he took Iras to his bed, which was where she had been found by an understandably angry Titus Pullus. He hadn’t been alone; in fact, even as she thought about it these years later she felt a flush as she thought of how it was Pullus’ nephew who had first determined her identity, and actually had seen her naked for the first time when he yanked the sheet that she was hiding under off the bed. While Porcinus had been shot by Eros at that moment, if she were being honest, Iras’ first thoughts about the young Roman hadn’t been tinged with love, or lust. No, her first concern was practical, and that was in winning another few moments of life, stopping the vengeance that Pullus thought was his due because of not just the death of one of his slaves, but by virtue of the fact that Iras’ ultimate target was him and Miriam. To this day, Iras still wasn’t sure how it had happened, but while she wasn’t a normally religious person, she had always felt that it was somehow ordained by the gods that she would be spared. The vehicle of her salvation had come with what she had overheard between her mistress Cleopatra and one of her counselors, where the queen had ordered that in the event that Iras was unsuccessful, the job be finished by a group of hired mercenaries. Fortunately for Iras, they had believed her, and after dispatching the merchant in his home, she was thrown in a sack and carried along with Pullus and his party of men, consisting of two of his Centurions and best friends, Scribonius and Balbus, and Gregarii who the giant Roman trusted with his life.