Your Caius Aquilla

by Fredrick, John Andrew;

  Your Lora Caecilia

  P.S. Reading over your last I came across the bit where you wish me to recount our nuptials. Perhaps another time. I find I’m in a bit of a pet, kind of vexed & in a wax & haven’t a mind to do it just-the-now. Forgive me, husband. I revile him, if you must know, & his astonishing advances. I bemoan my state, my maybe-fate, of perhaps succumbing to his most unwelcome & quite tempting overtures & strategems upon my person.

  P.P.S. What d’ye think he meant by “redheads?” I don’t mean to come off as peevish or petulant or anything, but still. Surely my hair is brown with tinges only of random auburn. I wonder if he’s colorblind as well as… What do you call someone who stammers? A stammerer, I imagine. Almost onomatopoeic, I should say. Huh. But the question of whether he’s a stammerer or a stutterer remains. I fear I may have given you too much of this quote-unquote good neighbor, but I find myself in a state of semi-fascination over him—his quirks & queer manner, at least.

  P.P.P.S. Aeschylus! No—Aristophanes. That’s right.

  I Mars

  Dear Friend:

  Hail! How are you? Hope you are doing fine. Kids, too. How am I? I’m all right. Marcellus isn’t, however; in fact, he’s dead. I’m starting to think that being my tentmate’s a bad fate and a very bad fate indeed. First Beefy, now him. They’ve given me a new guy, Domitus, whom I’ll tell you about in a sec. Marcellus—he got it in the neck. Absolutely brutal. It wasn’t even during a fray, but when we were traipsing home (how it burns to write that word—what I mean is, as we were clomping back to base camp). We alighted upon a lovely rushing stream, the water so clear and tempting-looking on a (they say unseasonably) hot and muggy, sweltering day. Spotting limpid water, Marcellus took off a-running, crow-hopping and skipping and flapping his arms like a giant bird, to make the other lads laugh, I imagine; flung his helmet away from him theatrically; and about five seconds after he bent then splayed himself out to drink/dunk his head in the frothing currant, an arrow zinged zing! right straight into his effing neck. Fast as you can say, “Look out, mate! There’s an arrow headed toward your head!” out of bloody nowhere, the thing came. What a shot: spectacular. As we’ve seen heavy action three days in a row now (the enemy had catapults—gods know where the godsforsaken savages got them; it really slows things down in terms of us just mowing them over, when they have artillery of some sort like that), we didn’t go a-chasing after the yodeling hordes who cried alas and fled like cowards, retreated or whatnot. Normally we rush after them, so as to cut them to bits and have some extra fun, but the generals, I reckon, reckoned that we’d had enough for one day and moreover that that might be a clever tactic, a trap, on the enemy’s part: they run away, then lead us to some gully or gulch or valley where they’re waiting to—here’s a new word I learned—ambush us. I guess it means to come out of some bracken or from behind a boulder or deep, dark wood and attack, pop out from behind a hedge or a huckleberry bush or something, I don’t know, and start smiting. Hide then strike. Ambush—what a funny old word. “We were ambushed.” Pretty efficacious plan or ploy, if you ask me, if unconventional and not exactly comme il faut. So anyway, there’s us, all happy we got to knock off for the day, dismissed and looking forward to having some “free time” for picking wildflowers (honeysuckle, bluebells, buttercups, hyacinth) or floundering round or splashing each other in the many opalescent ponds and streams and waterfall/pools and rivers they’ve got going round here—and that’s when Marcellus got, well, knocked off. We’d stopped for a break, in a clearing, just before Mar saw the water through a clump of tall trees; I had closed my eyes for a mere second or two, taking in the glorious warmth of the sun, looking up at it, the sun, with eyes closed—it gives you a funny feeling, doesn’t it? I opened them just in the nick, looked over, and saw the whole bleeding thing. I must’ve blinked around twenty times in a row: I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Thing was, on our way back an owl had just hooted in the middle of the afternoon. Three allegorical times, it did. Gave me the howling fantods like anything. We should have known something was amiss, something not-good was going to happen. Never a good omen, an owl calling in midday. About the worst thing that could happen. Save, of course, an arrow getting you—and right smack in the neck, no less—while you were simply taking a simple sip of river water. When the owl had hoo-hoo’d his hoo-hoo we all sort of stood there stock still for a second; only brave-foolish Marcellus laughed it off, curiously: “You guys are so bloody superstitious,” he sniffed. “It’s only a hoary old hoot owl. Bad luck? Wives tales for the credulous! An harbinger of absolutely nothing; a flat-faced bird that calls out to find mates—just like a meretrix might in old Rome or anywhere you find them. Why do you lot look so glum and stuff? Really! Come on now, lads, let’s make haste and get back: I’m well hungry, quite famished—aren’t you? When’s the last time any of us had a meal or even a snack? Breakfast was yonks ago! Let’s go. Come on. Let’s hustle.” I daresay he would bid us sally forth and toute de suite. “Up, up, you lazy buggers,” said he. “Make haste!” said he. Make haste to hasten his own demise, is more like it, poor old soul. What if he had said instead, “How ’bout we kick back for a spell by this placid, viridescent meadow, find a stream to skim stones in, have a spot of lunch (well, a snack, rather, as we grunts don’t carry lunch with us on fray days, it not being a great idea, the generals think, for us to even contemplate the idea of quitting fighting in the middle of a battle in order to sit down and refresh ourselves with a full meal) and a wee lie-down, just for a violet hour or so, knit our war-roughened hands behind our valiant, sword-heaving heads, forget the hot gates, the nicks and cuts of the day’s fray, the dust and the guts and the blood gushed and enjoy the dream music of this sweet emerald burbling stream, huff deliciously the fulsome and refreshing breath of these innumerable wildflowers, that night-blooming jasmine, those beeches and birches, yellow willows, gorse, eucalyptus, amaryllis, ice plant soughing in the slight warm wind?” Had he done so, suggested such a thing, he might just be alive and kicking right now, raffishly telling us a tall tale, laughing mirthlessly, or keenly gnawing a roasted turkey leg or picking at his bum and making a scrunchy face of some sort, something sure to put anyone off their food, even a base Iberian. The enemy archer who got him might’ve headed back to his base camp, missed seeing us completely, had a snack himself of some sort (barbarians surely must eat something—I’ve never asked one what they munch on, seeing as we’ve had a “No Quarter” order for months now and take no prisoners ever never), and he, Marcellus, would be here right now, munching a sugared or salted loaf or an handful of pig jerky, making a joke at someone’s expense. Mine, for instance. We’re all of us completely nonplussed, I can tell you that much. We’re constantly aware of it, its possibility, nay, probability, and never ready for it, really, the death of a comrade, how one day someone’s right here, the next he’s being buried or burnt. Marcellus, gods rest his bumptious soul, was a good mate, a good guy, a good soldier, a good laugh, too. I must’ve gone spinach green, seeing him flopped forward into the water, him with a feathered lance in his neck, the red blood like wine turning the stream pink. Had to marshal my every nerve just to cope. Very sad to see him go. Very, very sad, am I. But now the lads, esp. this Domitus, look at me askance like I’m some curse somehow, worse than a chorale of owls first thing in the morning: “Good luck, Dom,” one wag yodeled when Lieutenant Optio assigned him my way; “Nice knowing ya, mate!” the guy fluted, hooted, cackled afterward. Ouch. Ouchly. The guys can be so unfeeling sometimes. Moving his kit slowly over, Domitus, mincing in, all pallor and sweat, flashing a sweet shy smile said: “Lookee here, Caiuth Aquilla, if you don’t mind too terribly horribly much I think I’ll just move my cot outside and thtuff. I thure hope you won’t be frightfully offended, old man. I mean, I thall keep my gear in here, all regulationlike and whatever, but I’ll thleep outside, I think. No offenth and I hope you underthand, but… It’s just…well…cheerth, anyway…” I felt so bad. So sad. So low. He
couldn’t even look me in the face, poor fellow. Like I was poison, he looks at me. Like I was about as much fun as cold soup or a full latrine; as licking a whole coat of bright yellow paint fresh off the wall of an underground privy in central Constantinople would be. Trepidatiously, and with the most distressingly deferential tone, he, Dom, pursed his mouth, said: “Maybe you could thacrifice a crow or a thnake or thomething like that.” You can tell he’s really quite scared to think that there’s some demonstrable and irrefragable connection between rooming with me and being “next,” as it were. Dreadful. Completely dreadful. I don’t know what to say—to him or anyone. Anyway, just a short letter this time; I will write more soon. I’m just a bit down right now, love. Lovingly, dourly,