by R. W. Peake
The gods answered my prayers in an unlikely way, by arranging the death of Celer’s father, who was summoned home to arrange his affairs. This meant that I could leave the Cohort in the hands of Priscus, and despite it taking a bribe to the Legate that made me wince, I was given leave to go home with Vibius, for a period of 60 days. Now all that was left was to tell Gisela, and once again I stood outside my house with a pounding heart, except this time I did not stand outside for any extended time, knowing that it was no use postponing any longer. I entered, and despite trying to act like it was a normal day, I made it no more than two or three paces past the front door when I was confronted by Gisela.
“What’s wrong?”
I froze; for a moment, I thought about bluffing and insisting that nothing was wrong, yet as I stood there trying to decide what to do, I actually saw her for the first time in a long time, and if it were possible, I fell in love with her even more. She was wearing a simple gown cut to accommodate her growing figure, a rich green in color that accentuated the green in her eyes. Her red hair was unbound, in the Gallic fashion, which I liked more than our Roman style, and her cheeks were flushed, something I noticed seemed to happen more often now that she was pregnant. Her head was up, her chin tilted outward in a defiant manner, but behind the mask I saw the worry in her eyes and I felt about as low as I could remember at the idea of causing her such concern.
“Nothing,” I began, but she cut me off with an oath in her native tongue that she was fond of using.
“Why do you think I’m a fool Titus Pullus? I know you better than you think. And I know what is bothering you.”
For a moment I thought she had presented me with a good way to introduce what I wanted to talk about. I could not have been more wrong. Before I could answer, she spat, “You have found another woman, and you’re about to put me out and move her in here.”
I was struck speechless, which unfortunately she took as a sign that she guessed correctly. We had just moved into the dining area, where the table was set for our supper. From it she picked up a plate and in a blur of motion hurled it at me, and it was only the reflex gained over years of battle that allowed me to twist my body out of the way just as the plate went whizzing by my head to smash against the wall.
“You bastard! You son of a whore! I knew you would do this!”
I was still rooted to the spot, completely shocked into immobility and speechlessness as she raged, her hands grabbing at another plate to throw. That finally spurred me into action and I crossed the room in two quick strides, catching her arm as it came forward. She struggled like a wildcat caught in a bag, yet I was careful not to grab her arms too strongly, being worried about the baby. She had no such concerns, so I did not see the foot come up to strike me violently in the groin, sending a lightning bolt of pain through my body, the breath leaving me in a great whoosh. For the first time since I could remember, I was knocked to the ground; the fact that it was at the hands of a pregnant woman did not even register, so great was my agony. I lay gasping for breath, and I was looking at her feet as she stood over me.
“At least you won’t be able to use that for a while,” she said with satisfaction as I cupped the part of my body she was referring to, groaning in pain.
“I……I’m not throwing you out for another woman, Gisela. I haven’t been with another woman since we’ve been together,” I gasped. I heard her snort in disbelief.
“It’s true,” I insisted, “I was going to ask you to accompany me back home to meet my family. I’ve been given leave, and I wanted you to come.”
Now, this is not exactly the truth, though at that point I did not see any reason why she needed to know that. I barely finished my sentence when she dropped to the ground to grab my head, smothering it with kisses and asking forgiveness. There are some times, I reflected as I lay there, where the truth is not necessarily the best idea.
Leaving for home the next week, we set out in a hired wagon so Gisela could be comfortable, and to bring Juno and her belongings back. I still had not told Gisela the complete truth, swearing to do Vibius great bodily harm if he let it slip out before I was ready to tell her the rest of the story. All I knew at the time was that she was happy, and if she was happy, I was happy, so that meant I was content to let it stay that way for as long as I could manage it, no matter how much it pained Vibius. When I told Vibius that Gisela was coming, at first he was not thrilled, saying it would slow us down. Then he realized that the plan to have Juno live with Gisela would most likely go more smoothly if both were given the chance to get used to the idea, and a journey together would be the best way to accomplish that. Since we could not do a return journey with the two of them without bringing Gisela along on the first leg, he quickly got used to the idea. I was not quite so quick to agree with his conclusion, for a couple of reasons. First was the inconvenient fact that I still had not told Gisela, and every passing mile heightened my anxiety, my imagination running wild thinking of her possible reaction. Would she demand that we turn around and go back? And if I refused, would she get out of the wagon and start walking back? If so, what would I do then? The second part of all this that bothered me was my worry about the baby; I did not know much at all about women and pregnancy, yet I was fairly sure that sitting in a bouncing wagon was not a good thing for it. However, when I brought this up to Gisela, she scoffed at the notion.
“Pullus, I marched with Caesar’s army every day, up until a week before I gave birth. This is more luxury than I know what to do with.” I was smart enough to know that pointing out that she lost that baby was not a good idea, so I simply kept my mouth shut. The way matters turned out, I finally broke the news to Gisela on the third day of our journey, over breakfast as we sat at an outdoor table at an inn along the way. She was munching on a piece of bread to go with the boiled bacon we had purchased to supplement our rations, a wisp of hair straying down across her forehead, which she distractedly kept trying to put back in place as she watched the people around us. She was always fascinated by everything going on around her, and it was this curiosity about the world that I found so appealing, probably because it matched my own.
Clearing my throat, I began, “Gisela, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”
Her head whipped around, eyes narrowed suspiciously as she waited for me to blurt out whatever it was I had to say, and I felt an icy finger trip up my back. I can laugh about it now, the fact that I felt as much or more fear facing my woman than I did facing another man in battle, but back then it was no laughing matter. There was a healthy dose of fear of Gisela’s anger, although to be fair it is not as if I had not been warned; Calienus regaled us with stories of her rages and tantrums, yet they were much more amusing if you were not the subject of one of them. Vibius immediately got up from the table, mumbling something about answering a call of nature, and inwardly I cursed him for his cowardice.
“What? Well, come on, out with it. Don’t stammer about.”
This of course was a guarantee that I was going to do the exact thing she told me not to, so I stumbled and fumbled, trying to phrase things in such a way that there was less likelihood of the cup she had snatched off the table as I was talking being hurled at me.
“Well, Vibius asked me something, and I wanted to talk to you about it before I give him my, I mean our, decision.”
There, I thought, I might as well drop Vibius in the cac if I were going to be swimming in it too. She did not reply, just lifting that damn eyebrow that told me to press on.
“He’s decided that he's going to ask Juno to come back with us.”
Before I could finish, her face split into a smile, her rosy cheeks lifting as she clapped her hands together.
“Oh Titus, that’s wonderful! I’ve been hoping that he would finally get up the nerve to do the right thing instead of mooning about.” This was a good sign, so I decided to just get the real nut of the matter out and done with, yet before I could, she said something that is just further proof tha
t I will never understand women.
“Of course, she will stay with us,” she announced, and I felt my jaw drop.
Seeing my expression, she completely misread it, saying crossly, “Now, you do NOT think that she is going to live by herself, away from home for the first time and never having been around the army? Don’t you even think about arguing about this, Pullus. I will not stand for it. Besides,” her face took on that practical expression that I knew so well, “she will be a help when my time approaches and I can barely waddle about.”
She looked me directly in the eye and said with a sweet smile that was as much a direct order as any that came from Caesar, “You agree of course, don’t you my love?”
I gulped, and nodded.
It took a week and a day for us to reach Hispania, thanks to the roads that Caesar had the Legions build during our winter years in Gaul; without them it would have taken more than two to get there and leave us barely a month at home. I sent word ahead as soon as I knew that both Vibius and I would be coming, and I am ashamed to say that the letter was the first in several months. More accurately it was a couple months short of a year since I last wrote, but I told myself that it was only because I was so busy as Pilus Prior, which had the benefit of being partially true. The bigger reason was that I had changed, and no longer really had anything in common with my family. I felt that I left them behind, becoming something they could never understand, especially since their world consisted of the ground they could cover in a day’s walk, whereas I had seen so much of the world the idea of going back to that way of life was unthinkable. And being brutally honest, I had long outgrown my homesickness and stopped missing my sisters, as well as Phocas and Gaia, some time ago. I still planned on fulfilling my promise, and in fact carried with me a large amount of money, more than twice what I thought I would need to free Gaia and Phocas from my father. Despite my ambivalence about going home initially, I will say that the closer we got the more excited I became, as Vibius and I bored Gisela to tears regaling her with stories of our childhood, not that she showed it. My worries about the trials of a long journey and the toll it would take on her proved to be unfounded; if anything she seemed to flourish being out in the open air. Vibius and I did not completely dominate the conversation, however; I learned more about Gisela, her childhood and her people than I did in the previous years I knew her. She had seven brothers and sisters; that I knew, but I did not know that she was especially close to one sister who died when Gisela was twelve and her sister fourteen. Her eyes filled with tears as she spoke of her, and it was the first and last time she ever spoke of it. As she talked I thought of Livia and Valeria, and resolved to let them know how much I did care about them, even if I had not done a good job of showing it. But as I was about to find out, I was too late for one of my sisters.
Rolling into Astigi, both Vibius and I were struck by how small the town was compared to our memories. Neither of us had made it to Rome at this point, yet we had seen places like Narbo and even Vesontio that made our town look positively shabby. The scene in the forum was much the same, with the same people doing the same business. Although people recognized and seemed to be happy to see us, I could tell there was a certain apprehension in their attitude towards us, reminding me of our last homecoming. Vibius noticed it as well, turning to me as we rode through the street towards his house.
“Try not to kill anyone this time, will you Titus?”
Needless to say this got Gisela’s attention, but I ignored her questions to retort, “Try not to get yourself into trouble you can’t get out of, and I won’t have to.”
We laughed as Vibius climbed down from the wagon and grabbed his gear. Making arrangements that we would return in a few days so that Gisela and Juno could meet, I headed the wagon towards my farm, telling Gisela what happened the last time we came home.
Topping the low rise and seeing the farm, I felt my stomach lurch as I wondered if there would ever be a time in my life where the sight of my boyhood home would not make me feel like I was ten years old, coming home without a bag of nails because I lost them. Gisela sensed my mood; without saying anything she reached over to put her hand on my arm, and I felt my face flush as I slapped the reins, turning the wagon off the road and bumping up the path to the farm. Despite it looking much the same as I remembered I saw some slight changes, things that had fallen into disrepair, like the holes in the path that normally would have been filled. I did not see Phocas at first, but the rattling of our wagon caused the door to open, then I saw his familiar figure emerge, peering at us from the gloom of the house. Having experienced the sensation of how he aged the last time I was home, I prepared myself for the change an even longer interval of time had wrought on him, or at least I thought I did. Nevertheless, I was shocked, because Phocas had become an old man, this time for real. The slight stoop I noticed the last time I visited was much more pronounced, and what was left of his hair had gone completely gray. The wrinkles around his eyes had deepened and moved down the length of his face, leaving crevices around his cheeks. With some people this is a sign that they have spent a lot of their time laughing, but I could see that was not the case with Phocas. Waiting for him to recognize us, I finally realized that his squinting at us was not due to just the bright light; his vision was obviously degraded as well, so it was not until we were no more than a dozen paces away that his face dawned with recognition. Staggering a step, his hands went out towards me as if I were some sort of apparition that he was trying to ward off.
“Titus, is that truly you?” it was his voice that caused the tears to flood my eyes.
Gone was the soothing, mellifluous deep voice that still carried the accent of his native land, replaced instead by the quavering croak of an old man. I tried to speak, yet could not, and I was ashamed of myself, but as I glanced over I saw Gisela’s eyes filled with tears as well. Instead of saying anything, I jumped down from the wagon and strode over to him, engulfing him in an embrace, my shock deepening at the feel of his fragility. Still, his grip around my neck was just as strong as I remembered it, and we both stood there weeping for I do not know how long before, wiping our eyes and sniffling, we broke our embrace, both laughing embarrassedly.
Finally, I spoke, “Yes, it’s me Phocas. I’ve come home to visit. And to fulfill a promise I made to you.”
I am not sure what reaction I was expecting, but it was not what I got. Phocas' face took on an expression of extreme sadness, with a fresh spate of tears immediately flowing down his cheeks, bewildering me, and I was about to press him on the cause of his grief when he stepped around me, peering up at Gisela in the wagon.
“And who is this then? And what are you doing dragging a pregnant woman all about the country?”
Embarrassed that I had completely forgotten her, I mumbled the introductions, but Gisela did not seem to take offense. Without waiting for either of us to help, she climbed down from the wagon by herself. Walking over to Phocas, to his surprise, and some discomfort I suspect, she swept him into her embrace.
“I am Gisela, Phocas. I'm Titus’ woman, and I'm carrying his child. He has told me so much about you, and I'm happy to finally have the chance to meet you.”