The winter was very harsh that year, and Varus ordered the army to take to their winter quarters earlier than usual. Arminius received permission to return to his father’s house in the land of the Cherusci to look after his mother, who was a widow now and lived alone. Varus offered no objections. Velleius or Taurus might have seen things differently, but they had not been stationed to headquarters. Velleius had returned to Rome and Augustus had entrusted him with the task of conducting a legion to Illyria to reinforce Tiberius, who was still facing fierce resistance from the peoples of the regions in revolt. A great honour, which the legate did not fail to note on the tablets he still carried with him. One day he would write his memories. As far as Taurus was concerned, no one knew where he was, although rumour had it that he had returned to Italy to the bedside of his nearly eighty-year-old mother.
Alarming reports began to filter through to the command of the Army of the North regarding strange encounters and movements of the tribes along the Rhine. Several of the officers tried to learn more but with very little success. It did not go unnoticed that the moments in which the rumours were circulating happened to coincide with Arminius’s absences from the winter quarters.
They would have been surprised to see him sitting next to the fire talking with his mother.
‘Are you still in love with Thusnelda?’
‘More than ever.’
‘Stop hoping.’
‘Where is she?’
‘You’re asking me?’
‘You know everything, Mother. Everyone confides in you. So?’
‘She’s with her sister, who’s about to give birth. At the village, on the little lake.’
The next day Arminius set off in the direction of the little lake, where his father had always kept a hunting shack. He settled in with Borr, his horse. Just so he might see her. Even from a distance.
She appeared two days later. She went to the spring, broke the ice with a little axe and took some into the house. The setting sun had just emerged from the clouds and its rays made the millions of miniscule ice crystals sparkle and set her golden hair aflame. Arminius wanted to leave his hiding place, but he didn’t wish to frighten her. He thought of the day he’d first seen her and it brought to mind the prophecy of the Chatti: the one girl who sees Freya under her eyelids the day the rites of spring were celebrated would be given the gift of prophecy. And she would pronounce an oracle on the eve of a great battle. The sun had been setting on that long-ago day and the sun was setting now, over an expanse of snow. He reflected at length, then waited for night to fall and lay down to rest. He would depart early the next morning.
Dawn roused the lands of ice and although the sun was just a sliver of light on the horizon, it whitened the sky and lit up the snow on the ground. Arminius mounted his horse and retraced his tracks to return home. He had seen her, but he hadn’t dared speak to her. After a short while, he urged his mount into a stream at the bottom of the valley so as not to leave a trail. He was thirsty, and several times he slid down the side of his horse, a white stallion that vanished in the snow like a pegasus disappears among the clouds. He travelled downstream for a while, then exited and climbed up the hill to his left. From there he could see a long valley that opened on the southern side of the little torrent; it was black with fir trees that left space here and there for gigantic skeletal oaks. He’d never gone that way before and he set off, although he was aware he might get lost.
The colossal oaks and the firs that pierced the sky filled him with an unfamiliar feeling halfway between wonder and fear. The wind whistled through the valley, hissing among the oak branches and bending the tips of the fir trees. He sensed that he should turn back, but there was something pushing him forward. He stopped for a moment on a high bit of land and looked as far into the distance as he could. All he could hear was the rush of the torrent and the snorting of his stallion puffing out little clouds of steam. He tried to move on, but the horse baulked as if something was wrong.
‘Come on, Borr, forward! What is it? What are you afraid of?
Borr scraped the ground with his hoof and dilated his nostrils. Arminius stroked his neck to calm him and as the wind seemed to abate, he suddenly sensed a presence behind him. He unsheathed his sword and spun around.
Thusnelda.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked her. ‘Why are you alone?’
‘Because I like you. And because no one even dares to look at the daughter of Seghest.’
‘I’ve dared. I’ve been watching for two days, freezing for days and nights, and you haven’t noticed.’
‘I didn’t know it was you, but I felt it.’
‘And I felt you, spirit of the dawn and of sunset. I fell in love with you without even knowing what love was. I’ve desired you without knowing what desire was since I was an adolescent. I dreamed of you in the perfumed nights of Rome and Damascus; you appeared to me light as air. I could smell the fragrance of your skin and of your hair even though I’ve never been close to you. Why did you follow me?’
‘Because I saw you leaving. I recognized you and I wanted to see you, talk to you. I’ve dreamed of you too under the resin-scented beams of my bedroom.’
Arminius sprang to the ground and she let herself slip from the side of her horse as well.
They were facing each other.
‘I remember the first time I saw you at the festival of spring. I was dazzled by your beauty, by the way you looked at me. Then you closed your eyes. They say that the girl who Freya appears to in the darkness of her closed eyelids receives the gift of prophecy. Were you that girl? Did Freya appear to you? Did she?’ Arminius insisted.
Thusnelda looked into his eyes but did not answer.
They were very close. The wind picked up and blew their capes into a tangle. An eagle circled wide above them letting out a shrill cry that echoed between the smooth slabs of rock that covered the sides of the mountains.
‘After I returned from Italy,’ said Arminius, ‘I was called to come home, to the bedside of my father who was dying. Sigmer, fearless warrior and my teacher. I have a brother, Wulf, who now bears the name of a slave, Flavus. He and I were captured by the Romans and deported to Italy, to Rome, to make us Romans. But I know now that it was fate that allowed me to be taken. Before he died, my father consulted the Germanic oracle, the same that once pronounced General Drusus’s death sentence.’
‘Armin . . .’ murmured Thusnelda. He could feel the heat of her body so close that it warmed his chest. He took her right hand and put it on his heart so she could feel it pounding, his passion.
‘My shining star,’ he said. In the sky a single star remained, trembling in the clear winter blue. ‘Now I know what he went to ask and what answer he got.’
Thusnelda shivered, not from the cold, and said, ‘You will die first,’ and she was speaking of Drusus.
‘Do you know the second part of the prophecy too? What was revealed to my father, about me?’ asked Arminius. His eyes filled with tears.
‘You will die after,’ she said.
‘After what?’ Arminius went on, his voice strong.
‘After you have fought the great battle . . . and after your most relentless adversary has died.’
Arminius dropped his head. Thusnelda was silent for a while, then spoke again: ‘You’re still in time.’
‘No. I’ve come all this way and I can’t turn back. But tell me, my love: what did my father see for the future of our people and what did he dream of?’
‘Blood,’ the voice coming from the girl’s lips trembled. ‘A people drowning in blood.’
They were breathing in each other’s mouths. Arminius felt suffocated by the horror of that vision, but his lips joined hers, open to welcome him. Perhaps he’d already done this in a dream. He embraced her and held her tightly to his chest. He had no more strength to speak.
Half of the sky turned dark while the other half was still blue, staining the snowy peaks of the mountains. The snow came from the north
, a flurry of white flakes. The black fir valley was shrouded in white.
‘I have to travel down this valley to the end,’ said Arminius, ‘but I’ll take you back to your sister’s house first. I’ll come back for you when I’ve reached my destination.’
‘I’m coming with you,’ said the girl.
‘You can’t. We don’t have provisions and you aren’t dressed for this.’
She shook her head, jumped on her horse and flanked Arminius on his steed. They set off and Borr advanced obediently, urged on by the heels of his master.
THE VALLEY WAS completely covered by forests: huge oaks, white-hooded fir trees that stood out against the sky, age-old, twisted field maples, towering birches shaped like candlesticks, their silvery barks streaked black. Flakes of snow gathered on the autumn leaves still clinging to the tips of the smallest branches and formed sheets that slid downwards, making small thudding sounds as they fell to join the snow on the ground.
They advanced at a walk, hour after hour, until the sun which had maintained a small dominion over a strip of sky finally hid behind the dense fir forest, casting long shadows. Then the sun dropped below the horizon but the snow continued to reflect a glow that spread over the silent countryside.
Before it became pitch-dark and the cold became too bitter, Arminius dismounted to search for a shelter under one of the mountainside cliffs. He found a little cave and widened the entrance, removing the loose detritus with his sword and dagger. The tumbling of the gravel and sand were the only sounds to be heard in the immense valley that extended for many leagues downstream and towards west. Their shelter was finally ready and even comfortable, in its own way. Arminius had set aside some dry sand and had spread it evenly over the floor of the little cave, and had then lain the raw wool blankets he kept tied to Borr’s back over the sand, leaving one to protect the horse from the cold of night. He laid a bearskin that he had taken from Sigmer’s hunting shack over the blankets and he helped Thusnelda enter the cave. They still needed a fire. He made a heap of pine needles and on one side placed some very thin resinous branches. He struck a spark using the flint he always carried with him on his solitary journeys. He was used to the Roman army, where the fire was never allowed to go out and anyone could use a firebrand to start his own. As soon as the pine needles caught, he added the resinous twigs and then bigger and bigger pieces of wood until he had built a big crackling fire.
‘It’ll keep the wolves away,’ he said. ‘They can smell the horses, and they’ll attack immediately unless we stave them off.’
‘So fire keeps the wolves away?’ asked Thusnelda.
‘It’s the smoke, more than the fire. When they smell smoke they’re afraid the forest is burning and they run off in the other direction. Bears will do the same.’ He remembered the flaming torch that someone had thrown onto the hilltop, when he and his brother were surrounded by wolves.
Who could it have been? A god, perhaps? Or a mortal man?
‘Just think,’ he said aloud, ‘if there were someone on that mountain top and he happened to turn this way . . . our fire would be the only light in all this darkness, in all the visible universe. The only presence, the only warmth. My father Sigmer told us that when the Frisii came running to help General Drusus when his ships had run aground in the low tide, each one of them held a torch, and it looked like a river of fire was flowing that night on the beach, between the forest and the ocean.’
Thusnelda looked into Arminius’s eyes. ‘A river of fire . . .’
Arminius undressed. The light of the flames flickered over his muscles and made his skin glow like polished bronze.
‘I can’t sleep with clothes on,’ he said with a touch of embarrassment.
‘Neither can I,’ whispered Thusnelda. She loosened the laces on her red wool dress and let it fall like a rose that withered at her feet.
They sought each other under the bearskin, frenetically, with hands, lips, nails. Her face lost in a cloud of gold, his arms clasping her waist to pull her close, to feel the fire in her loins. When she guided him in, he saw her eyes widen and light up in ecstasy, mirroring the rising flames. He felt himself sinking into an ocean of fire and he lost every sense of time or place.
A wolf’s howl echoed through the mountains and Thusnelda held on tighter to Arminius’s chest. Borr kicked and neighed loudly. The two lovers let themselves fall back alongside each other, panting and exhausted, brows pearled with sweat.
IN THE MIDDLE of the night Thusnelda woke up suddenly with a scream. Arminius startled, then gathered her into his arms.
‘What’s wrong? Did you have a bad dream?’
‘Yes. The torrent, flowing full of blood, dragging dead bodies stained red . . . What are you going to do, Armin? What is all that blood?’
‘You must tell me. You who saw Freya smile at you behind your closed eyelids.’
‘I don’t know . . . I saw the torrent flooding over with blood,’ she continued repeating.
‘I’m going to unite all the Germanic peoples in a single nation. I want to build an invincible Germanic empire and to drive the Romans out. Out of our lands. Forever.’
‘Whatever you do, whatever delirium, whatever carnage I’m witness to, I will always be with you. If I can, I will give you a son, so he can fulfil your legacy, when the time comes.’
The wolf let out another howl that echoed through the entire black forest valley. Borr pawed the ground and scraped the icy snow with his hooves. Just then the moon pierced through the wandering clouds and lit up the marshes and swamps at the end of the valley.
When they were almost asleep again, they heard thunder, although the sky had cleared and no clouds hovered above them. The sound was close, although it seemed distant and somehow stifled; it made the earth tremble and their hearts faltered.
‘What is that?’ asked Arminius, as if he were talking to himself.
Thusnelda looked at him with a dismayed expression. ‘It’s the hammer,’ she replied, ‘the hammer of Thor.’
‘It will be here,’ said Arminius. ‘This dark valley will be their tomb.’
23
THE ARMY SPENT MOST of the summer in camp, while Varus travelled to different parts of north Germania with a robust escort, to administer justice. Arminius could not understand if someone had given him that apparently absurd order or if it was his own initiative. Many young men had begun to become enamoured with Roman civilization, but the veteran warriors who had experienced the force of Tiberius’s armies and then the justice of the new governor were disgusted and repulsed by this new way of resolving problems between individuals or tribes that was completely foreign to them. They also could not bear to pay taxes: they saw them as a tribute that subjugated peoples had to pay to their victors, and they did not consider themselves anybody’s servants.
Arminius often accompanied Varus, and at times they crossed through actual cities under construction, with roads, squares, basilicas, theatres and baths. Mountains of stone and of white Lunense marble, huge piles of wood to build the frames for archways and the vaults for house ceilings and other materials were continuously brought in from every corner of the Empire. This enormous movement of men and supplies involved the circulation of money, and with money came the possibility of buying goods and objects never seen before. In the Roman mentality, the city was the place where the barbarians would realize that up until that moment they’d been living more like animals than human beings. It was the place where the mentality and the customs of men and of peoples could change. For Romans, the Urbs – the city – and the Orbis – the world – were one and the same, and every city had to evoke the majesty of Rome.
MEANWHILE, ARMINIUS HAD persuaded an ever growing number of chieftains to unite with him. Even the Cherusci, who had accepted Roman terms, were anxious to take their independence back and couldn’t wait to take up arms. But Arminius had fought with Tiberius. He had seen the devastating power of the Roman armies and he’d understood perfectly that his own warriors, even the ve
ry best of them, those with the soul of the wolf or the bear, would never be able to win on the field of battle against the Romans. He had convinced them that he alone knew how to crush those apparently invincible formations, but he needed total freedom of command to do so.
The only thing that made him anxious on his journeys with Varus was being separated from Thusnelda. Being away from her stopped him from thinking, even stopped him from speaking at times.
He had promised himself that he would have her and that moment had come. He sent a message through a slave girl who served in camp in exchange for a bracelet and an amber ring. She was to say this: they would meet in a secluded place, in the forest where he’d first seen her crowned with flowers for the festival of spring. She must come dressed in men’s clothing so as to ride away in haste. At dusk.
‘Will she come?’ he asked the slave girl when she returned.
‘It wasn’t easy to talk to her, but I managed in the end. She will.’
Arminius added a few coins to the jewellery he’d promised her, so she could spend them at camp. He spent days planning for their meeting. As the moment drew closer, he felt more and more apprehensive: did he have the right to take her away with him, take her away from the future that her father, Seghest, had wanted for her? Would he be capable of giving her a happy life? The only thing he was sure about was the feelings they shared; everything else was in the hands of the gods. He showed up at the appointed place on foot, holding Borr by the reins. Such a long time passed that he feared she wasn’t coming, but when he saw her arrive, at the time in which the shadows begin to lengthen, he realized that he had got there too early. Thusnelda leapt off her mount lightly and let him free to graze in the field.
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