The Eagle and the Dragon, a Novel of Rome and China

by Lewis F. McIntyre

  However, the soup reached its four hour time, was prepared, prepared again, and prepared yet again by the time the sky was beginning to turn gray with dawn. The crone had been periodically checking her insides with her long bony finger, feeling for something that had not yet happened. Hina could tell the mood among the women was becoming somber. Each contraction seemed to be just another futile effort to expel that which could not be expelled, and she began to contemplate the idea that the old woman might have been right, that this might be her last day alive.

  Enough! Thoughts like that had no place in battle and no place in her birthing yurt. As the next contraction took her to heights of agony, she groaned loudly, in determination and anger at the children’s intransigent refusal to emerge from her straining belly.

  Outside, Galosga had been sitting around the fire near the yurt, chatting with the men in his patois of han-yu and newly-acquired Xiongnu, drinking kumis. His presence in the yurt was bad luck, so he could not be there with her, just as he had not been with his first wife during her labors. But he had become concerned over the past several hours. No stranger to childbirth, his other three children had been born in just a few hours, and as he heard Hina’s latest agonizing groan, he began to wonder, too, if this was to be her last day. He also knew that twins were extremely difficult. What would life be like, without his beautiful, strong, brave huldaji? He could not imagine life without her, and began to pray to Selu, the Corn Goddess. She was far away, but could she not help? Were not the spirits all powerful?

  Inside the yurt, as the last contraction trailed off into uselessness, the crone fingered Hina’s inner parts, then inserted what seemed to be her whole hand, feeling around for... what? Hina had no idea, but she had lost all sense of modesty hours ago. Suddenly the old woman smiled, inserted her hand still deeper, and then looked up and said, “Hina, your womb is open, and I feel the head! You are ready and the baby is ready, so on the next contraction, push with all your strength!”

  Hina nodded, wondering what the hell the old woman thought she had been doing. The contraction came and the crone sat on the ground between her legs, while the other four women supported Hina, offered her sips of water, patted sweat from her brow, and offered her signs of encouragement. As the contraction peaked, she felt something shift, then a burning between her legs. She gasped for breath and bore down against the contraction. All four women dropped to the ground, doing something between her thighs, and she heard a high thin cry. The enormous pressure lessened considerably.

  “The head is out, keep pushing!” She pushed and she felt the rest of the baby, crying lustily, slither out into the women’s hands. “It’s a girl, Hina, it’s a beautiful girl!” said the old woman with wonder. “Now on the next contraction, push again for the next one. This will be easier, because your daughter has opened you up.”

  She pushed and the second one slithered out quickly, howling lustily. “It’s a boy, Hina. You have a boy and a girl, your gifts from Tengri, like you said.” Two of the women helped her down from the pole to a sitting position, lifted up her smock to expose her breasts, while the other two cleaned and wrapped her newborns. They put an infant against each nipple, where they proceeded to nurse noisily.

  Hina was vaguely aware that they were cleaning up the bloody mess around her bottom, and she was aware that something else slid out, almost effortlessly. The afterbirth, they told her. The old woman inspected it and declared it whole. She squeezed blood from the two umbilical cords into a bowl of kumis, swirled it around and put it to Hina’s sleepy lips to drink its coppery tang. “To put back what has been taken out of you,” the crone said with a smile, supporting her head while she nursed her babies.

  Someone had put a blanket over her, and Galosga came in, all smiles. “I knew you would do fine,” he said in Xiongnu, then adding “huldaji.”

  Hina felt the exhilaration and exhaustion that comes after a hard fought battle. She smiled at Galosga and her babies. “Meet your new son and daughter, Galosga. Antonius and Marcia.”

  CHAPTER 79: A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

  It took a little over a week to cover the two hundred and fifty miles to Bactra, traveling at a good pace and staying at well-placed military forts not more than two days apart. While not offering the palatial luxury they had enjoyed in Bagram, the facilities were clean and comfortable, and the food good. November was bringing very cold nights that made the Romans’ yurt distinctly more comfortable for the intermediate stops between forts than the two and four person tents the soldiers shared. Evenings found them a popular destination for the off-duty soldiers to sit inside by the warm fire and share stories.

  Bactra was an unusual layout. Whereas most of the Greek cities of Bactria were laid out on carefully aligned north-south and east-west grids, Bactra was laid out as an octagon, with eight broad avenues radiating from the center and connecting to gates at each point of the outermost ring, thence to highways that ran straight as an arrow shot in each cardinal direction. Inside, the interior streets formed concentric octagons.

  The convoy entered Bactra by the southeastern gate, and proceeded through a park at the center of the town filled with evergreen pines. They passed through the north gate, ending up at a fort overlooking the city from an elevated mound several hundred feet high. From the fort’s walls, looking down into the city, it looked like an archer’s target, the green park they had crossed the bull’s eye.

  The group got accommodations there, individual rooms adjacent to the commander’s quarters, similar to a praetorium in a Roman camp. The quartermaster assigned them each a single room on the second floor, well-lit by windows protected by translucent oiled leather admitting light, but keeping the heat in and the wind out. Large hanging lamps hung from the center of each ceiling, and a small fireplace along the back wall provided heat. The rooms were above the officers’ mess on the first floor and the officers’ bath, a large hot pool inside with an outdoor frigidarium cold pool for those so inclined.

  With everyone settled in, refreshed and with some of the baggage unpacked, the group settled in for a light lunch. Demosthenes, in between bites, announced his eagerness to go out in town to locate the family he had not seen for a decade.

  Ibrahim offered to accompany him. “I’ll go with you, Dim. I’ll be happy to meet your family. Have you heard from them? Do you know where they live?” Alone in a strange town is a bad idea anywhere, he knew, but alone in one’s hometown after a long absence can put one in particular danger, tripping down the streets of childhood memories, instead of paying attention to one’s surroundings. After all, what can happen in one’s hometown?

  “Thanks, Ibrahim, and no, I know where they lived, but I don’t even know if they are still alive. I left for Tibet ten years ago, and we haven’t been able to communicate.”

  “Can you find your old neighborhood?”

  “Blindfolded! Let’s go. It’s on the eastern side, close to the wall.”

  Perhaps blindfolded, he could have found it more quickly. After an hour and a half fruitlessly searching for his old neighborhood, Demosthenes announced in frustration, “It has to be one of these streets!”

  The problem was that the houses were nearly identical, working class structures of mud brick, wood frame windows shuttered against the November chill. And besides the big octagonal roads that formed the city’s bull’s eye, there were innumerable unpaved roads concentric with them, and hundreds of little alleys, each lined with its own cluster of look-alike houses. Racking his brain for landmarks, Demosthenes remembered there was a market, with a butcher shop next to a blacksmith and cutlery shop. If he could find that cutlery shop, the owner’s name was Warazan, then he could find his old home. After a few minutes of questioning passersby, he located it, and there was the blacksmithery with a display of fine knives hung under an awning. Old Warazan was sitting around the smithy’s fire, huddled in a dark winter cloak with a cloth around his head, continuing on to wrap around his neck. His thin face sported a bristling grey beard.
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  “Warazan? Remember me? Demosthenes Kaneoios. I used to live here, many years ago, and come to your shop all the time.”

  Warazan looked at him with unlinking rheumy blue eyes, then he smiled and exposed his few remaining teeth, dark stained. “Demosthenes! Yes, I remember you! You used to want to be a blacksmith like me when you were a lad, but your family wanted you to get an education. You went off to become a monk?”

  “Yes, and I did, I went to Kashmir and Tibet, then to China.”

  “But you’re not a monk now?”

  “It is a hard life. Many things I could sacrifice for perfection, but not my friends. It’s a long story …but right now, my family? Do they still live… let’s see, down that street and around the corner? I am ashamed to say, I almost couldn’t find my own home!”

  “They do, young Demosthenes, but… your mother passed away two years ago.”

  “Oh.” Odd the thought did not stun him. “And my father?”

  “He is well. You need to go to him.”

  “I do. Thank you, and I will be back.”

  Demosthenes retraced the familiar steps back to his boyhood home, Ibrahim tagging along behind, his black robe rustling. He stepped onto the stoop and knocked at the door.

  His father, a wizened thin old man with a grey bristling chin, one eye gone milky white and unseeing, opened the door. He squeezed the bad eye shut, trying to focus the working eye. “Demosthenes!” His mouth flew open in joy and surprise, revealing just a few stumps of teeth. “Demosthenes, you’ve come home! Come in!” He opened the door wide. “And your friend?”

  “His name is Ibrahim, father,” said Demosthenes, stepping into the dim room. If his father’s eyes were failing, he thought, there might not be much need for candles. “We have had quite a trip! And Ibrahim, my father Kaneias.”

  “Sit, and tell me of your adventures!” His father beckoned them to some cushions in the room, and the two seated themselves. He poured some hot tea into cups for them, then he, too, sat down. “You’re no longer a monk?”

  “No, I am not. I hope you are not disappointed. There were things I could not accept.”

  “Well, I am no longer Buddhist. We … I am sorry, did I say that your mother passed away two years ago?” asked Kaneias.

  “No, but Warazan told me. I saw him on the way… what happened?”

  “A fever took her, but it was swift. I miss her, but old age was very painful for her. She is, I hope, in heaven now with Lord Jesus.”

  “And who is he?” asked Demosthenes.

  “Your mother and I became Christians, followers of Jesus the Nazarene, a few years ago. So we are no longer Buddhists, as you are no longer a monk. What caused you to change your mind? You were very enthusiastic ten years ago.”

  “I was. But I learned that inaction is a form of action as well, with a karma of its own. My inaction would have let my friends die, which I could not accept. And I found myself further and further from the Way, until I realized that I could not follow it anymore. Perhaps in a later life, when I am more ready.”

  “Or perhaps that is not the Way for you. We met a group of Christians here, and found a better Way to salvation and perfection. Your mother, bless her, was baptized right before she fell ill, and I with her.”

  “I am traveling with some Romans, and I have heard them talk of Christians, but I have no idea who or what they… you… are.”

  “We will be meeting tonight to talk about the blessed Paul, and his trip to Rome, his shipwreck…”

  Ibrahim’s intake of breath was audible, interrupting Kaneias in mid-sentence. “Paul? Of Tarsus? Perhaps forty years ago?” asked Ibrahim.

  “That would be right. You have heard of him?”

  “I sailed with him briefly right before his shipwreck. If is the same person. We sailed from Caesarea to Myra, and he was wrecked on Malta. I am sorry, those names mean nothing to you.”

  “But they do! It is all written down, though as you say, to us they are faraway names. Did you meet him?”

  “Yes, he sought me out, we talked, though I was but an ignorant deckhand. He wanted me to come with him, but it was too much to ask. He changed ships in Myra and was shipwrecked later in a storm. I never learned what became of him, if he survived.”

  Kaneias crossed himself. “I see the hand of God moving through you, Ibrahim. He has brought you along this strange route for the past forty years for a purpose. What is your faith?”

  “I put my faith in skill and cunning, Kaneias, rather than any belief. I hope there is no afterlife, because if there is, I merit nothing more than punishment, which I hope at least won’t be eternal as some believe,” Ibrahim chuckled, stroking his beard.

  “You have done evil, as all of us have, but you have also done good.” He paused to sip his tea. “Listen, some friends will come by tonight to discuss some of our scriptures, and the topic tonight – here again, the hand of God at work! They will be bringing the scrolls to read of Paul’s journey to Rome. Will you stay? Everyone will want to hear your story, and you can find out what finally happened to your friend Paul.” Kaneias’ one good eye scrutinized him intently, hoping to pry out an affirmative answer.

  “I would be honored. Demosthenes, I did not mean to turn the conversation away from you toward me,” Ibrahim smiled, sipping his tea and gesturing to Demosthenes to take over the conversation.

  Ibrahim and Demosthenes returned to the fort to let their friends know they would not be returning in the evening but would remain overnight at Demosthenes’ family home, then hustled back. Ibrahim stopped by a little sidewalk seller of meat pastries to buy a dozen or so hot sandwiches of thin nan around a spicy center of lamb, and a good-sized jug of wine. He expected the guests tonight might wish something to eat, and Kaneias did not look up to preparing much in the way of a meal. When they arrived, they found the small house crowded.

  Warazan was among the people present. Demosthenes wondered just how popular this Christian cult had become in Bactra.

  Kaneias accepted the meat pastries and wine and distributed it among his guests. He then introduced Ibrahim. “We are honored tonight to have among us someone who knew the Blessed Paul and conversed with him, before an angry wind blew him onto Malta.” The crowd of about fifteen huddled about him, waiting to hear him speak.

  Ibrahim began his story. “I was a deckhand on the Astarte, clad in rags and barely able to speak Aramaic, when a man came aboard in Caesarea, under escort by a Roman officer and some soldiers, with two friends. I took little note of him. He was of some high position, and we were forbidden to socialize with passengers.”

  Ibrahim’s relating of the story brought those few days him back to him vividly, as though yesterday.

  I leaned against the rail, letting the warm ocean breeze dry the sweat from my fatigued body. It was late afternoon, and I had been on duty since well before midnight, getting the ship ready to sail on the morning tide, then rigging her for open sea. The Astarte was an ill-cared-for tramp freighter, whose owners put as little money into the ship and crew as possible. And that included not hiring enough hands, and working those they had impossibly hard. The boatswains drove the crew to exhaustion, allowing the ones no longer capable of working the opportunity to sleep for a few hours, then rousting them out again for more work. The captain was an ill-tempered alcoholic Greek, a pig by nature, and he had disappeared below to sleep off the flagon of wine he had consumed in the afternoon. I wanted desperately to sleep, but the opportunity to do nothing for a just a few minutes was rare. I took the moment to watch a school of green and gold flying fish burst out of the crest of a blue Mediterranean wave, their wing-fins buzzing like locusts as they hummed through the air a foot or so off the water, straight as arrows in flight, to reenter the water after half a ship length with barely a ripple.

  I became aware of a man next to me. It was the passenger, well-off by his carriage and dress, wearing a well-cut, multi-colored robe and a turban, their colors still bright and the weave good. Unchained for now, a
nd behind him the centurion guarding him lay down on a pile of rope with a sigh, hands behind his head, preparing to doze in the sunlight. Whatever the man had done, the centurion did not seem overly concerned with guarding him.

  “Beautiful day,” the man said in Greek, a language which I had not yet mastered.

  “Sorry... no speak... well,” I replied.

  “Oh, I’m sorry...” said the man, switching to Aramaic. “Is this better?”

  “I thank thee. I know only a few words of Greek.”

  “Thou lookest tired. My name is Paul. Paul of Tarsus. Thy name?”

  “Ibrahim. Of Arabia. And what didst thou do to earn thy escort?”

  “It’s a long story that began before thou wert born. We are all prisoners of something or someone. I am a prisoner of the good Julius there,” Paul said, cocking his head toward the soldier, who had begun to snore loudly. “And thou... what imprisoneth thee?”

  I felt uneasy talking to him. Fraternizing with the passengers was strictly forbidden, since real or fictitious claims of stolen money or valuables invariably resulted. I cast a glance furtively to the quarterdeck, but the cybernetes on duty at the tiller did not appear to pay any attention to them.

  “This ship! This cursed ship! The owners don’t know how to run a ship. With decent repairs and a good crew, she could turn twice the trips she does. But they pay little or nothing for either. This was supposed to be our last stop at Myra, and us to be paid off tomorrow and done for the season. But the captain decided to pick up just one more load. Thou feelest how warm it is for October? Mindest thou, there will be a gale from hell itself in a few days when the weather changes! And he knoweth that. This barge cannot take much pounding.”