Hell Can Wait

by Theodore Judson

  “You should, chubby,” said Banewill. “Septimus was a general under you. Took your place on the throne when you became food for the stray dogs rambling along the banks of the Tiber. If I recall, you were scared to death of the little killer and his host of like-minded relatives.”

  “Severus and his kin were all frumentarii,” said Marcellus. “Secret policeman, you would call them these days. He and his clan were North Africans from what used to be Carthage land. They had started out as quartermaster men, as all frumentarii did. Severus and his thousands of cousins were also members of some strange sun cult. All of them had this little disk pin that looked like the face of the sun they used to clasp their heavy capes across their chests. That pin and their brown skins and curly black hair made them stick out up in Lugdunensis, where Commodus had made Severus the legate, the military governor. Severus and the members of his clan were a rare bunch, outstanding even among the other thieves Rome sent to torment us. They stole the grain right out of the local farmers’ mouths and sent it back to the capital to sell on the black market. They stole most of the soldiers’ payroll too, and what they didn’t steal outright they pocketed by setting up dummy companies that was supposed to supply horses and lumber and other equipment to the army, only they never made delivery on anything. The swells in Rome were scared to do anything about Severus and his relatives because the emperor and his people thought Severus’ frumentarii chums capable of assassinating anybody, including Commodus himself.

  “Maternus went beyond hating when that flock of North Africans fell upon us like a flight of locusts on a wheat field. He called us together, everybody in his century and several others, and gave us a really good speech to tell us we either had to rebel while the weather was warm or we would all starve when winter came back. We chose to mutiny, of course. We made some three score of those sun-worshiping Africans a head shorter that spring in Gaul, and took what we could from the stores. Severus and the majority of his kinsmen got away in the night; they went straight to Rome, and the next thing we knew we’ve got the whole damned army chasing after us while we’re trying to get away into Spain.”

  “I wondered what Severus needed those extra men for,” said the dead emperor.

  “Thank you for the history lesson, now let us move on,” said Banewill to Marcellus.

  “Like you know, the rest of the army caught us in front of the Pyrenees,” the weary trooper went on. “Them what overtook us outnumbered us nigh three to one. There wasn’t much of a battle. Couldn’t have been. Most of the lads gave up, let them fold ‘em back into the regular service, and only those of us close to Maternus ran away. We headed south for Rome, intent on killing the emperor if we couldn’t live as free men. But there was frumentarii everywhere, including among our little band of would-be assassins headed for Italy. Casio and me only had to take one of that number aside and give him the word to betray our friend Maternus. I didn’t stab my old comrade there in the back because I thought Maternus was wrong in what he was trying to do; I was old and tired and wanted to live out what little time I had left. I figured maybe we’d each make a little coin in the bargain. The informer I contacted — and they was everywhere, like I say, only Maternus was too intent on killing the emperor to see them — anyway, the man I got in touch with promised me a pardon, and new boots. I was to be stationed in Rome afterward, be with the Praetorians, and not have to march the long roads anymore. They were lying, of course. They killed us all, informers and mutineers both, along with Maternus.”

  “Kill them all!” shouted Commodus for no apparent reason. “That’s what I say! It’s always the safest policy. Where did you say my club was?”

  “Thank you for that insight into your conduct,” said Banewill.

  “I’m sorry to say I was so concerned about my feet. Maternus here will remember how I suffered on account of them,” said Marcellus and lifted up his right foot so everyone present could see the blood that had oozed through the triangle gaps at the top of his boot, made by the loops in which the laces fit within the upper. “I’d long had trouble with my feet. They probably have a name for it today. Back then I said I’d marched them off.”

  “Yes,” said Maternus, finding his voice again, “we carried Marcellus across the Rhine during the long retreat we made under Marcus Aurelius.”

  As was his wont to do since he emerged into his new life, Maternus suddenly found himself reliving a scene from his time in the imperial army. He and a band of familiar faces were tramping down a dusty, unpaved trail leading them between thick forests growing close to the pathway. Four troopers, one of them Centurion Maternus, were carrying Marcellus between them on a shield. The old soldier was on his back, his legs dangling in front of him, and his bare feet were as bloody as open wounds. The soldiers did not know how to respond to a human frailty in one of their comrades, so they were cracking jokes at Marcellus’s expense while in their hearts they silently grieved for him and prayed this would never happen to their feet when they got to be as old as Marcellus.

  “We’ll have to cut them off and put wooden pegs in their place,” a young soldier told the others.

  “You’d at least be lighter then, brother,” said Maternus.

  Marcellus did not let on he was hurt by their cruel jests and played along with the other soldiers by telling some jokes of his own.

  “When we get to the river, you can throw me in, and I’ll swim back to Rome before you can walk there,” he said. “This is the gods’ way of telling me I’d do better as a fish than as a man.”

  “Would you were a fish,” Maternus told him. “We’d then have something worth eating in this wilderness.”

  Maternus heard the laughter that followed, yet his mind was occupied by images of his former friend hobbling along on the countless marches following the day he was carried. Whenever he was unaware others were watching, Marcellus would grimace in agony with every step he took, and every day in the field must have brought unremitting pain to the old veteran. When he sensed Maternus or some other comrade-in-arms looking at him, he would force his feet to keep a regular cadence with the other men. The old man would smile at his observers and sometimes say something funny, though he had no wit, and what he said was usually something that made only himself laugh. After many years of such torture, a full decade after he should have been given a dispensation to leave the legion, Marcellus had leapt at the opportunity to end his pain. Had he been in a similar situation, Maternus realized he would have done the same, and once he had recognized that, he could no longer blame the old soldier for his actions.

  “You need not apologize, brother,” said Maternus aloud. “You did only as you felt you had to.”

  “Whoa! That’s enough! Stop there!” interrupted Banewill, vainly making a ‘T’ shape with his hands, as if he were calling ‘time out’ in a ball game.

  “I forgive you,” said Maternus.

  The demon let forth a scream of anguish that would have roused the dead, had not four of them already been awake in Maternus’s apartment. (Since he was spirit, the living, sleeping soundly in the adjoining flats, could not hear him.) The angel meanwhile gave Maternus a triumphant smile such as the Roman had not seen since their previous meeting.

  “I blame you for this,” Banewill told Worthy after he had recovered his equilibrium. “You had everything worked out, like you always do. You knew he would beat up those yahoos in the sports bar and you knew I’d bring Moe, Curly, and Larry here into the fray and you knew ape boy would get teary eyed and use the f-word the second Marcellus showed him his damned feet. What’s next? Is he going to do the same to these other two morons?”

  “Why don’t you keep going, and we’ll see,” said the elated Mr. Worthy who, for one pure of heart, sometimes enjoyed winning a little too much.

  “Can’t we just fill out the paperwork and get on to another case?” said the crestfallen Banewill. “By the time the sun comes up, you’re going to turn ape boy as saintly and saccharin as a character in a holiday special. Put
him in a cardigan and call him Bing Crosby. Again, for what must be the ten gabillionth occasion, you are wasting my time. You already know what the results are going to be.”

  “The game is yet afoot,” said the angel, masking his delight with a calm demeanor. “I admit we have swiftly fallen into the fourth quarter, and you are down a goal, but there remains that chance, that sweet distant chance, you might this one time get the better of me. You’re not one to pass that up, Banewill.”

  “Can we move on to the second fool? Or can we declare you victorious right now?” asked the demon, checking a wristwatch that had materialized above his left hand. Try as he might, he could not hide how tempted he was. “I have a thing in Darfur at two twenty-five,” he said.

  “You’re in charge, chief,” said Worthy. “Please go on.”

  Banewill took a few seconds to get himself into character. He stretched his arms and craned his neck about, and then he reverted to his announcer’s persona.

  “On pillar number two,” he proclaimed, “born of a German whore and a Brundesian peasant and turned over to the army at the age of nineteen when he became too large to feed, baby-faced Casio, late of the Augustus Legion and late principal betrayer of the ape boy’s conspiracy. By modern measurements, standing five feet, four inches and weighing a wiry one hundred and thirty-seven pounds — when he’s been fed — he was the first to decide to run to the frumentarii; old Marcellus there was a late comer brought into the deal at the last minute when one of the emperor’s men fussed Maternus might get away. Casio here didn’t do it because he had ill feet on his legs or ill feelings for his rebel leader. He did it for the reason the active but unimaginative inevitably have: he did it to please a woman.”

  “My wife,” said Casio from his elevated position, “not just any woman.”

  “I did not know you had a wife, brother,” said Maternus.

  “An unofficial one,” said the still youthful Casio. “She followed us from camp to camp, lived outside the walls. Julia was her name. Not her real name, you know. Her real name was something Celtic I couldn’t pronounce. Julia wasn’t pretty. Not that I’m handsome, mind you, but I say so because her looks were her only fault. She had the pox when she was young, you see — disfigured her face. The rest of her was good, far better than I deserved. We had six children, four of them may have lived long enough to have children of their own. I never saw my grandchildren. The frumentarii promised me I would be discharged from the Augustus and given enough money to buy Julia a regular home. Instead, they killed me on the spot like they did the other conspirators. We didn’t live two hours more than Maternus.”

  “You betrayed me to get a house for your wife?” asked Maternus. He was never a good actor and could not conceal the wrath he had for this young man he had tried to save only days before they both were slain.

  “Ooh, this is a little better,” commented Banewill. “Ape boy is angry again. Yes, you were battling for justice and honor and whatever you call the rest of that overrated stuff overthrowing the crazy emperor here represented to you, and little downy-cheeked Casio gave you up for the sake of a roof over his whore’s head. Lanky old Marcellus was only along for the ride. Makes a man want to puke or hit somebody, doesn’t it?”

  Before he could say anything, Maternus found himself standing in the garden he had dreamed about for the past eighteen hundred years. He could see the low wall beyond the peristyle and the empty trellises attached to it. The long hedges dividing the courtyard from the columns were alive, their yellow flowers recently opening to the early spring. Maria was before him, as were three of his former comrades; Maternus could see their motions, hear faint stirrings of their conversations. He was removed from them and could not make out the sounds the others heard. Maria did not appear to know he was present.

  “Why are you showing me this?” Maternus asked the sky.

  He knew Mr. Worthy was showing him this for a reason, but the angel did not answer him.

  “She has nothing to do with Casio,” he said. “Maria could never have known him. Is there some reason you won’t let me hear her?”

  He waited for an answer that did not come.

  “Could I at least say something to her?” he asked. “I don’t believe I have seen her place this time of year… It was summer when I met her. The flowers are not in full blossom here. These men couldn’t have been there either. I recognize them as men in my legion we lost against the Parthians. Are they dead and in Heaven with her? Or am I imagining them?”

  The three soldiers walked away, leaving Maria to work at the black soil with a short spade. She turned the ground over, one small clump at a time. Maternus was nonetheless fascinated by her careful, repeated motions and by faint traces of the song she was humming while she worked.

  “Are you showing me this because this Julia woman was Casio’s Maria?” he asked the vacant space above his head.

  Immediately the scene before him vanished and was replaced by the image of a city street Maternus somehow knew was in the densely populated Aventine, one of Rome’s worst slums. He had never personally been there. He saw for a moment on his left the lofty palaces of nearby Palatine Hill, the same majestic structures he had glimpsed before he and his confederates entered the Circus Maximus. Then he was moving headfirst down a crowded passageway. People and dogs and clothes hanging to dry in the smoky sun overhead made the narrow path between the plastered walls seem even smaller than it was. He attempted to push several men out of his way, then realized he was not able to touch them. For a reason he did not at first grasp, many he passed were shouting words he could not fully hear and others were fleeing down the street ahead of him. The mystic power that had told him where he was now informed him he was watching events that occurred only minutes after the assassination of Commodus had failed. The Praetorians and the city cohorts had been unleashed upon the citizens, and they were hacking down anyone they suspected of participating in the conspiracy. The people were fleeing them. Maternus beheld before him a woman with a face scarred by an old disease running before him, and at the same time attempting to keep the four small children at her feet moving along with her. Maternus at once knew she was Julia and these were her and Casio’s children, fleeing the chaos that had recently consumed several thousand others back at the Circus. He saw the care this Julia took to pick up her small daughter when the child fell; she was resolute in her purpose, though despite her actions the terror in her eyes was plain to see. They rushed around a sharp corner that brought them smack into a cluster of Praetorians dressed in their distinctive silver inlaid breastplates and scarlet capes; the soldiers had their bloody swords drawn and were standing over the bodies of two civilians. The troopers were grinning, a little embarrassed but tremendously thrilled; theirs was the look of blood lust, a look Maternus had seen on the faces of many soldiers when the battle had been won and the only action left was to run the enemy into the ground.

  “Well hello, ugly,” the centurion leading the detachment leered at Julia and her children. “You and your brats look like traitors to me.”

  “Let us stop this here,” said Maternus to the air. “I don’t need to see this.”

  He attempted to close his eyes. The images still overwhelmed his vision. He put his hands over his ears, but still he could hear the children’s screams.

  “Why am I made to see this?!” Maternus called out.

  He did manage to close his eyes after he had witnessed too much; when he moved from the darkness, he was again inside his bedroom, looking up at the three pillars from his bed.

  “What was that?” Banewill demanded of Mr. Worthy, racing across the floor to present his question to the unruffled angel. “What did you make ape boy see? You’re cheating again, aren’t you? This time I’m making a formal complaint. You see if I don’t.”

  “Complain to whom, sir?” asked the angel.

  “To…” started Banewill and thought better of continuing. “I’ll complain to, you know…,” he stammered after a pause. “To…
” He nodded upward.

  “To an authority higher than myself?” asked Mr. Worthy. “Good luck with that.”

  “Casio doesn’t know his family was killed?” thought Maternus.

  The angel shook his head ‘no.’

  “What’s he thinking?” asked Banewill, charging across the room to get between Worthy and Maternus. “You’re communicating with him in one of your mysterious ways. What are you making him do?”

  “I forgive Casio, as well,” said Maternus aloud. “He was serving his family, and a man owes his family more than he owes his friends or his nation.”

  “Oh, crap!” swore Banewill. “What’s next? Is he going to start praying?”

  He lumbered back to the kitchen stool, sat down heavily, and impatiently checked his watch again.

  “Thank you, sir,” said Casio to Maternus.

  “If it is within your power to let me take the place of these two men, I would willingly do so,” said Maternus. “I do not wish them to suffer longer for my sake.”

  Banewill looked as though he had been dropped from a very high place, while Mr. Worthy glowed (literally) upon hearing Maternus’s offer. As for Maternus himself, he felt his chest expand as it had done whenever he stood at the barracks doorway at the beginning of a lovely spring day, looking across the green countryside and seeing only peace and good weather. Being more attuned to physical sensations than he was to analyzing his thoughts, he did not at that time understand the motion in his chest was the wrath he had long nursed for Casio and Marcellus being replaced by a newfound sympathy for his former companions.

  “Go ahead and hit me with a lightning bolt,” sighed the demon, and he slumped against the counter, the figure of dejection.

  “Are we still going to kill anybody?” asked the emperor.

  “Let’s do have the trial,” decided the upbeat Mr. Worthy. “How do you vote, gentlemen?” he asked Casio and Marcellus. “Should Maternus be returned to Hell?”

  “He was the best man I ever served under,” said Marcellus. “I say let him go.”