Lost Republic

by Paul B. Thompson

  He gave Hans and France the high sign and started through the crowd to Julie. She was with the runner, Jenny, and the quiet Linh. Leigh moved from Julie’s blind side and slipped his hand in hers.

  Julie flinched and swung hard, meaning to smack the impudent male taking her hand right across the face. Leigh caught her before she connected.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said, forming the words with his lips but barely speaking aloud. She replied by almost jerking his arm out his socket, so fast did she make for freedom.

  “Slow down,” he said anxiously. “Don’t draw attention—”

  Julie stopped short. “You’re right.” Hand in hand, smiling sweetly at everyone they passed, the Morrisons made their way out of the forum.

  Jenny saw them go. What were they up to? Julie had guts, she knew, but she wasn’t convinced her brother had much in the way of brains. Still, things happened when the Morrisons were around. Slowly, almost reluctantly, she followed them.

  Linh turned around and noticed her companions leaving. Alone in the square full of soldiers, townsfolk, and the Carleton people, they seemed to be doing something with purpose. Arms folded, Linh started after Jenny. She hadn’t gone four steps before catching the eye of Eleanor Quarrel. Eleanor had been quiet since the Big Flash, as Linh thought of it. She cocked her head when she saw Linh. Without a word, Eleanor fell in step beside her.

  Hans and France let themselves drift backward to the outer edge of the crowd. Leigh and Julie joined them. Leigh was ready to slip away right then, but France held him back. He could see Jenny coming, and behind her Linh and Eleanor. When the seven teens were together, Leigh led them toward the nearest cover, a muddy, narrow lane between two houses on the south side of the forum. They had to cover twenty yards without being noticed.

  “Where are we going?” Julie asked too loudly.

  From the side of his mouth, Leigh hissed, “Away. Out of here!”

  “But where to?” She mocked his tone and expression.

  Leigh had no idea. He hadn’t thought past the getting away part.

  “Back to the sea,” Hans murmured. “Maybe a passing ship will—”

  “We can’t get off the island.”

  They stopped, and one by one stared at Eleanor, who had made this flat announcement.

  “How do you know this is an island?” asked Jenny.

  “Must be.”

  Julie got in her face. “So why can’t we get off it?”

  Eleanor smiled in a peaceful, vacant way. She was so unchallenging, Julie stepped back, nonplussed.

  “Come on, “ Leigh urged. They still had a dozen yards to go.

  They only made it about two. A loud voice behind them proclaimed, “Hello! What are you doing?”

  Leigh tried to ignore the voice. He knew it was Emile. Gripping Julie’s hand tightly, he quickened his step.

  “Wait! Don’t go!”

  Silex heard the call, too, and spotted the teens stealing away. He shouted to his men, and a couple dozen legionnaires pushed through the crowd and surrounded the teens. For a moment Leigh resisted, shoving a hard-faced soldier away. The Latins closed in, roughly pushing Hans and France into Jenny, Linh, and Eleanor. One soldier made to collar Julie. She faced him, smiling her nastiest smile, and held up a fist. The tough legionnaire stopped dead in his tracks.

  Emile sauntered behind them, smiling like an idiot. Did he know what he had done? Cursing under his breath, Leigh stopped pushing and stared at the worn pavement.

  “What’s this?” the centurion demanded. He saw one of his soldiers still had an apple in his hand and slapped it away. “Leaving, are you?”

  “You’ve no right to keep us prisoner!” Julie shouted. “We’re free people!”

  “Every citizen of the Republic is free,” Silex said. “You are citizens now, or soon will be, once we reach the city.”

  France was puzzled. Citizens?

  Hans said, “We did not ask to be citizens of your Republic.”

  “It is your choice. Either you are citizens or you are invaders. You have seen the fate of those who enter our country uninvited.” Behind him, Emile was still smiling broadly. France noticed Eleanor was likewise sporting an unnecessary grin.

  Hans started back to the docile crowd of Carleton survivors. Jenny and Linh followed him. France pulled at Leigh’s sleeve.

  “Come,” he said. “This is not the way.”

  Julie stamped her foot. “Damn it, why does this always happen? It’s like we’re under a microscope or something, watched every second!”

  “Never mind,” Leigh said. “He is right.”

  He trailed after the others, leaving Julie alone. She blinked through angry tears. She wasn’t mad at the Latins, or at Emile for blowing the whistle.

  “Why do you start things you can’t finish?” she yelled at her brother. “You always do! You were gonna manage our band, and where did that go? And the Sunwei convertible—it was mine if you could fix it. You never did! Why do you wuss out all the time?”

  Leigh didn’t answer. He glared at Emile, protected by a line of armed guards. It was his fault. If he hadn’t spoken up, they could have made it.

  Back with the Carleton group, France said to Leigh, “Don’t worry about it. There will be another time.”

  “Everyone’s so passive,” Hans remarked. He scanned the crowd. The American navy men, the Irish football team, Mr. Chen and his brothers, Trevedi, what was left of the Carleton’s crew—all stood in the forum, munching an apple or carrot. They were supremely unconcerned by their predicament. To Hans they seemed almost—

  “Brainwashed,” he said aloud. He had a hard time saying it, finding it difficult to dredge up the word to go with his clear idea. He wondered what the equivalent in Latin for “brainwash” was, but every attempt he made to think in an alternate language failed.

  Silex had the seven teens who tried to escape put in leg irons. Julie loudly protested. Linh wept. Jenny and Leigh glowered, while the rest were quieted by the sight of bared steel blades. Last to be shackled was France. Emile was not chained until Leigh made a bitter comment about his freedom. The centurion promptly ordered the Belgian teen added to the chain gang. France found himself joined to Emile by a meter of iron links. Even the Latins didn’t trust a squealer.

  The march resumed. Some of the legionnaires wanted to remain in Fumidus overnight, but Silex vetoed that. Time was pressing. They had to be in Eternus Urbs by tomorrow night. Orders.

  Chains jingling as they shuffled forward, France wondered what the hurry was.

  On they went, through the afternoon, along a wide highway busy with foot and animal-drawn traffic. Walking chained together proved as dangerous as it was humiliating. Everyone had to shuffle along in synch or risk being tripped. At one point, Hans got out of step and fell, dragging Leigh and Jenny down with him and badly bruising his knee. They all developed blisters where the shackles rubbed their ankles. With every mile, Leigh’s hatred for Emile grew. Emile kept pace, apparently unconcerned.

  They passed more military units marching away from the capital. Centurion Silex reported to a passing tribune their short fight with “Ys barbarians” on the beach where the Carleton people were found. The tribune related other border skirmishes with Ys. If this kept up, he said, the First Citizen would ask the Senate to declare war on the neighboring realm.

  France found this overheard news fascinating. The Latins did not seem to find it strange to be facing foes from a completely different period in history. There were so many things about their situation that didn’t add up. France tried to sort things out for a while, but soon gave up trying to make it make sense. There was too much he didn’t know.

  Seen from the road, the Republic was an ordered, prosperous place, primitive by twenty-first-century standards, but not without civilization. As they neared the capital, the buildings got finer and
bigger. Near dusk, Silex’s command passed a magnificent white temple on a hill overlooking the road. The style was purely Roman, with ornate columns, broad white steps, and robed priests passing in and out carrying offerings from local citizens. Jenny wondered aloud whose temple it was.

  “It’s a temple of Diana,” Emile said.

  From behind him, France said, “How do you know that?”

  “By the friezes on the pediment.”

  “The who on the what?” asked Julie.

  “The carvings under the roof,” Eleanor replied. She hadn’t said two words since being chained.

  The temple was half a mile away. Everyone could see there were figures carved into the area below the roof peak, but no one could see what they represented—no one but Emile.

  “Glad to hear they have freezers,” said Julie. “I sure could go for a cold Coke.”

  “‘Friezes,’ not ‘freezers,’” Hans said, hobbling along. “It’s the wide central section of an entablature, usually decorated with bas-reliefs.”

  “Whatever . . .”

  They saw things not so beautiful, too. At a crossroads, they passed a dead man hanging from a gibbet. He’d been there awhile. His clothes were in tatters. So was the rest of him. A wooden sign tied to his feet read Thief-Murderer-Atheist in crudely daubed letters.

  Everyone stared. Silex let the Carleton people slow almost to a stop. The lesson of the hanged man was clear.

  “They hang people? That’s not like the Romans,” Hans observed.

  France swallowed. It was hard to do.

  “Maybe they are out of crosses,” he muttered.

  “I understand the thief and killer part, but why do they call him an atheist?” asked Julie. Looking at the decaying dead man, her face was pale but her voice did not waver.

  “‘Unbeliever’ is a better way to read the word,” Emile said. He scuffed his feet a little faster, trying to get the others to move along. “He must have denied the gods. That’s a crime. Remember what happened to Socrates?”

  Jenny didn’t know anything about Socrates, whoever he was, but seeing the executed man convinced her she had to escape. Linh wondered how long it would be before someone she knew ended up like that poor man.

  Silex barked at the column of Carleton people to get moving. The sun was going down. At his urging, the legionnaires began prodding their prisoners along, hurrying them. The pace got to many, particularly the men carrying Mrs. Ellis’s litter. Near dusk, one of them tripped on a high cobblestone and sprawled on the road. The front end of the litter hit the pavement, spilling Mrs. Ellis out.

  Leigh, last in line of the chained teens, was horrified. He planted his feet to stop his comrades. Shouting for help, he tried to double back to help the old lady. By the time he got enough slack in the chain to reach her, she was up and standing by her fallen helper. The man’s ankle was badly twisted. She was fine.

  “My God, you’re standing!” Leigh gasped.

  “What?” Mrs. Ellis looked down at her thin legs. “So I am!”

  The others crowded around. Someone asked how long it had been since Mrs. Ellis had stood on her own.

  She took a few experimental steps. “Seven years.” She took a couple more. “And I haven’t walked unaided in ten!”

  “Get moving!” the centurion boomed. The injured man—one of the Irishmen—got a lift from his teammates. Supported on either side, he was able to stand and move.

  “Forward!” Silex said. “We sleep in Eternus tonight! The rest of you may sleep with Pluto if you don’t get moving!” Julie wondered why he threatened them with a cartoon dog.

  The stars were out when they first sighted the walls of the city. They stretched away as far as anyone could see in the growing darkness, gray and indistinct but definitely there. Directly ahead, the road led to a massive fortified gate, which was standing wide open. Torches atop the wall and a bonfire off the road highlighted the scene. Soldiers stood on guard at the gate, stopping everyone entering or leaving.

  “My feet hurt,” Julie declared.

  “Everything hurts,” said Hans. His knee had swollen after his spill and ached. It painfully disproved a theory he’d been toying with since Mrs. Ellis’s amazing recovery. The injuries France and Julie got fighting off their attackers healed almost instantly. Since coming ashore, Mrs. Ellis legs had recovered. So why did his knee hurt so much? Whatever healing agent worked on France, Julie, and the old lady wasn’t working on him, or on Mr. Shanahan, the man who wrenched his ankle when he fell.

  Silex ordered the column to halt. His men separated themselves and stood to one side while a troop of soldiers from the gatehouse trotted out to take their place. In the interval between, it would have been easy for anyone from the Carleton to bolt for freedom. The soldiers were away, and the fires fractured the night, making it easier to hide in. No one moved—the eight teens chained could not, and the rest did not. The Carleton people stood quietly gazing at the monumental gate with curiosity, not fear.

  With the new guard in place, a Latin officer, younger than Silex, rode out of the gate on a beautiful gray stallion. He gave his name as Antoninus Valerius. To Linh he looked like a statue of some Greek god, with curly golden hair and a smooth, unemotional face.

  “Newcomers?” he said to the centurion.

  “Yes, optimus.”

  “A promising lot?”

  “Promising, noble sir.”

  Valerius stretched in his stirrups to survey the crowd.

  “Why are some chained? Did they give you trouble?”

  Silex shrugged. “They gave sign of wanting to run. The irons were a precaution.”

  “Take them off.” Silex started to protest, but the noble Valerius silenced him with an upraised finger.

  “We must trust the gods to open their eyes,” he said loftily. At that, the centurion clenched his jaw and said nothing.

  With hammers and chisels the chains were struck off. Julie swore at the blisters around her ankle. Leigh glanced to both sides of the road, judging how fast he could sprint into the safety of darkness.

  Jenny caught his arm. At her glance, he saw archers atop the wall, watching them. He wouldn’t get five steps without being riddled with arrows.

  “Where do you come from?” Antoninus Valerius asked the Carleton people.

  Chief Steward Bernardi, looking a bit puzzled, said, “We come from—from—many places. We arrived—by sea.”

  “It matters little now. You will soon become citizens of the Republic. Obey and prosper.”

  Valerius turned his horse around to lead them into the city. France thought of the hanged man at the crossroads.

  Obey and prosper. The unspoken counterpart of that advice: Disobey and die.

  Slowly, with exhausted limbs and sore feet, the survivors of the S.S. Sir Guy Carleton entered the Eternal City.

  Chapter 13

  France’s first impression of the capital of the Republic of Latium was how dark it was. Only a few torches lit the streets. After passing through the fortified gatehouse, they crossed a wide avenue running inside the city wall. Dogs darted out of the shadows and barked at them, only to be driven off by shouting soldiers. Beyond the street were many more or less identical buildings, rising up three or four stories. As they tramped past, France had fleeting glimpses of timber and brick facades, shuttered windows and shop doors. This made sense. In many parts of Europe, the ancient pattern still existed: ground floors were for shops, upper floors were homes.

  Jenny saw windows on the upper floors open. Dull orange light shone out, the glow of oil lamps or candles. People were silhouetted by the light while looking down at the strange parade in the street. Some of them called down comments:

  “Soldier! Soldier, save one for me!”

  “Ha, is the army taking old folks and babies now?”

  “More barbarians! Aren’t there e
nough barbarians in Eternus already?”

  “I like them when they’re new! Limbs of iron and heads of mush!”

  And more like that. The leering made her skin crawl. What did they mean, heads of mush?

  But oh! It felt good to have those chains off! Jenny longed to run. She hadn’t run since the day before the ship ran aground, which was, what, six days ago? Seven? It was hard to remember. It felt like they’d been marooned in this weird place forever.

  A young male voice yelled something crude at Julie. She replied in the same vein. At that, a clay pot full of waste hurtled down, smashing a few feet away from her. Some of it got on the legionnaires, who complained loudly to Valerius.

  He pointed to a door on his right. “Third floor, that house.”

  Yelling battle cries, five soldiers broke down the door and swarmed inside. There was a lot of shouting and a few screams. The column of soldiers and Carleton survivors were past the building when they heard a scream louder than the others. A young man with a mop of dark hair, wearing some sort of robe, catapulted out the same window as the chamber pot. He was soon in the same condition as the pot when it hit the pavement. Cheering their victory, the soldiers emerged from the house and ran to rejoin their company. All had bruised and battered faces. One of them spat a few bloody teeth onto the street. But they had won. The fool who threw a chamber pot at them got what was coming to him.

  “Why can’t you stay out of trouble?” Leigh hissed at his sister’s elbow.

  “What did I do?” Julie protested.

  Was there any point telling her? Leigh sighed and moved on.

  They went this way and that through the dark streets, following Antoninus Valerius on his horse. So far the city looked much the same—meandering streets, house blocks, a few market squares. They also saw an occasional temple. Most of these were modest buildings, columned and roofed like little Parthenons, set in their own small squares.

  The first few temples they saw were marked by stands of burning torches blazing by the front steps. One sanctuary stood out. It was much larger, more like the temple of Diana they saw in the country, and it stood in a wide plaza, surrounded by a hectare of open ground. The strangest thing about it was it glowed. A soft bluish light surrounded the building. It cast no shadows, but it was bright enough to read a PDD by. There were statues at the corners of the roof and at the peak. After being in the dark so long, seeing a well-lit building was unsettling. It made Linh yearn for the lights of Paris. She slowed then stopped, staring at the distant marble building. Other followed suit.