“But you cannot remain here forever.”
“Why not?” I countered. “I have all I need—and more besides.”
“A very great deal more besides,” he declared. “Aulus left everything to you. What about the house in Rome?”
“What about it? Sell it. Give it away. I don’t care.”
“It is worth a fortune.”
“Then it will make some undeserving dog very rich.”
“And Columella’s fortune—you’d give that away, too, I suppose?”
I shrugged. “Why not? I have more than I can spend now.”
“But you don’t spend anything at all that I can see,” argued the senator. “You live here like a ghost, haunting the groves and shore. It is not healthy. You need to get back to work. Great things are happening in the city; opportunities abound. Now is the time to make something of yourself, and unless you seize the day, it will pass you by.”
“Good.”
“Come back to Rome,” he said, his voice and manner softening. “If you don’t want to live in Domus Columella, I understand. You can stay with me until you find a place you like better.”
“I like living here, Graccus,” I told him.
“But you are not living here,” he said, “you are wasting away. You are dying.”
“Then why can’t you just let me die in peace?”
“You cannot mean that. You are distraught.” He frowned, puffing out his cheeks in exasperation. “Well, who can blame you? It has been a dreadful ordeal, after all. Perhaps you need a little time to get over it.” He seemed to be talking to himself; he sighed, regrouped, and started again. “I am sorry. You are right. Winter here, gather your strength, and we’ll talk again in the spring. There is no hurry. No hurry at all.” He rose and prepared to leave. “No hurry for you, but quite the opposite for me. I must go.”
“So soon?”
“The emperor is expecting me. We are to sail to Crete for some reason. I will call on you again in the spring.”
I saw no one else that winter and received no further communications from Graccus. The rain lashed the old tile roof, and the wind drove the pigeons to hide up under the eaves, but in all it was a mild and fairly short season, and it was not long before the days began to lengthen once more. When it grew warm enough, I went to the graves to sit and watch the grass grow on the bare mounds. Dea gave me some wildflower seeds to plant, which I did—not because I cared one way or the other about dressing the graves but because it was the kind of thing Oriana would have done, and I wanted to please her.
For the rest, Graccus was right. I haunted the villa like a wraith: aimless, wandering, drifting here and there without purpose, without volition, stalking the grounds in a gloom of my own making and slowly succumbing to a sick and debilitating melancholy.
I saw this myself but did nothing about it. I spent whole days strolling along the seaside, listening to the waves, watching the tides sweep endlessly back and forth across the strand. What, I asked myself, was the use? Life was without meaning, and a meaningless life was mere existence—no better than that enjoyed by the snails and mussels in the tide pools, creatures that lived and died by the whims of wind and wave.
All was meaningless. Rank futility wrapped me in its bleak embrace and fed my ever-increasing pessimism on hopelessness. Despair, dark and potent, found in me a fertile field and spread its noxious spores. They festered and grew. As spring drew on, there ripened a black, cankerous fruit in my heart.
Soul-sick and inconsolable, I roamed the grounds, indifferent to all that happened around me. Whether I rose in the morning or failed to rise, bathed or did not bathe, dressed or went about in filthy rags—it was all one to me. I ceased shaving, and my beard and hair became long, tangled, and unkempt—which made Dea cluck and fret like a mother hen over a worrisome chick. She strove with me to eat and drink, but to no avail. Food had lost its savor, and the smell of it turned my stomach. I consumed enough to keep myself alive, but little more, and I watched the bones sharpen beneath my pallid skin.
Sometimes I lay in my room for whole days without stirring, only to emerge at sundown to wander the grove and shoreline the entire evening and far into the night—sometimes failing to come in at all and sleeping under the olive trees or in the grass above the strand.
On one such night I lay awake watching the stars spin slowly, slowly in the heavens until the rising sun leached the starlight from the sky. I stared into that fiery golden disk and felt the warmth on my face as it began to pour heat and light onto the waking world. The brilliant light scorched my eyes, yet still I gazed into the burning whiteness, and into my mind floated the memory of a vow I had made in my former life.
“Three kinds of light obtain,” declared Datho on the night I stood before him: “that of the sun and, hence, fire; that of the knowledge obtained from the instruction of wise teachers; and that which is possessed in the understanding of God, which illuminates the heart, and is the true light of the soul.
“Therefore, my son, seek the True Light in all your ways; search diligently and with tireless perseverance. Take the Light as your law, your love, and your guide, now and henceforth, forever. If you would do this, answer now upon your life.”
I had stood before him and answered, “Upon my life I make this vow.”
It was a lie then, and I felt its wicked sting now. I had gone my own way, and that way had led me to this barren place: alone, miserable, heartsick, and grief-stricken, death hovering at my shoulder. It occurred to me as I lay with the sun searing into my eyes that the lie had triumphed and it was killing me.
“If there is a God in heaven,” I muttered, my voice raw with thirst and exhaustion, “hear me now: I am finished. If you want this life, you can have it. Otherwise today I die.”
I waited awhile to see if anything would happen. There came no answer—but then, I did not expect one. So it was death for me, too.
Still I endured the fiery light a little longer. At the moment when I knew I must look away or be forever blind, I turned my eyes toward the sea and, in my sun-dazzled sight, saw a tall man walking along the strand: a shadow shape only, a quavering dullness in the radiance.
I blinked and looked away. When I looked back, he was still there, and nearer. As he came closer, his form took on solidity and substance. He was dressed in a green-and-blue-striped cloak, with a red mantle and trousers of black and yellow. Around his neck he wore a torc of red gold as thick as a ship’s chain; silver bracelets gleamed on his arms, and rings adorned every finger.
Under his arm he carried a leather bag, and as he strode swiftly nearer, I saw that the bag was full of parchment scrolls—innumerable letters, tightly wound and sealed. He came to where I lay and stood over me, looking down, his face lost in the radiance of the sun. I shielded my eyes from his blazing countenance.
“Who are you, lord?” I asked.
“I am Victoricus,” he answered, and, withdrawing one of the letters, he placed it in my hand. Receiving the scroll from him, I unrolled it and read out the heading of the letter. The words shimmered as if made of fire. They said: THE VOICE OF THE IRISH.
Even as I read out those words, I heard a cry falling from the clear, empty sky—a voice I recognized, but who? Before I could discern who it might be, the voice was suddenly joined by others, all of them calling out as one, saying, “Noble boy, noble boy! Come walk among us again!”
It was the folk of Sliabh Mis and Focluit Wood—it was Miliucc’s people—calling out to me, begging me to come to them once more. That they should beseech me so pierced me to the quick.
In that instant something broke inside me. It was as if somewhere deep within, a wall that had stood strong and tall and straight for so long suddenly cracked, and great chunks began falling from it, allowing the pent-up waters of a raging flood to surge through and into the void that was my soul.
Overcome by this flood tide of strong emotion swirling through me, I struggled to my feet. I swayed for a moment but, unable to stand, s
ank to my knees once more, gasping and gulping as my stony heart rent in two. Great tears welled up in my eyes; I lowered my face to my hands and wept—how long, I cannot say, but when I finally raised my head to look around, the man was gone, nor could I find any sign of the scroll—but the sound of the voices still echoed in my ears.
“Noble boy, come walk among us again!”
The tears flowed down my cheeks and neck, and I raised my face to the sun and let them flow. I wept for my poor dead Oriana and little Concessa, and for the sad ruined waste of my life. In my shame and contrition, I wept for all those I had deceived and betrayed—all the empty promises and the vows so blithely ignored. I wept for the easy deceits I used and the love I had thrown away and for the stubborn, willful blindness that forever kept me from seeing the truth.
“Truth against the world,” Pelagius had said—the axiom of the Ceile De—and I, who had never sought the truth in any way, sought it now with a broken and contrite heart. “Lord and God,” I cried, “be my Vision and my True Word. Let me walk in the Land of the Living again.”
As if in answer to my plea, the voices echoed once more in my heart: “Come noble boy, walk among us again.” And, oh! The sound of those Irish voices, at once so plaintive and appealing, so full of yearning, resonated deep within me. That selfsame longing struck down into my hollow, empty heart, took hold and filled it. I lay on the strand and felt it grow in me until it inhabited all my being and there was room for nothing else.
Inert, unmoving, I felt the sun soaking into my flesh, into my very soul, restoring me with its warmth and light. I lay on the beach clinging to the slender hope that perhaps I might actually do as the voices suggested. As the sun mounted higher, this hope grew into a fragile desire. Still I held to it, refusing to let it go, and desire broadened and deepened into a swiftly solidifying determination: I would return to Ireland.
This is what the voices were calling me to do, and this I would do.
Up I rose, turned my back on the sea, and walked toward the house, volition returning, gaining strength with every step. By the time I reached the house, I was all purpose and conviction.
Hungry, thirsty, and full of sorrow at how I had allowed myself to sink so far, I washed myself and then bade Decimus to cut my hair and shave me; he happily obliged, while Dea flitted around the kitchen preparing a meal which she laid before me with manifest pleasure. While I ate, I thought about my decision and wondered if the Irish would truly receive me.
But, I thought, even if they did welcome me, what would I do there?
The question had only to be asked, when like a resounding echo the answer came winging back: become a filidh again.
Mystified by the obvious simplicity of the solution, I could not quite take it in. I walked around the rest of the day turning the thought over in my mind—tenderly, gingerly, like a beggar holding a rare and extremely delicate treasure he has found—unwilling to entrust much hope or confidence in it, lest I deceive myself. Even so, I could not resist fingering it, touching it, examining it from every direction. Could I? Could I really return to the life I had begun there?
Was there anything to prevent me? Nothing that I could discover. Money? I was heir to the Columella fortune. Distance? Danger? With my fortune I could travel the world in comfort and security, if not absolute safety.
Over the next few days, the determination hardened in me to return to Ireland. I would go back and take up my long-vacant place as filidh and complete my training to become a bard.
FIFTY-SIX
HAIL AND WELCOME!” cried Graccus, bounding into the reception room of his fine, palatial house. “This is a pleasant and long-awaited surprise.” Taking my arm in his, he walked me through the house and into the palm-shaded courtyard. Water splashed from a marble fountain shaped like a dolphin leaping from a pool. Nearby a small table and chairs were set up beneath a striped canopy.
“I am glad you have finally returned to your senses.” The elderly senator was so happy to see me that I could feel my resolve melting away. To disappoint him was the last thing I wanted but the very thing I had come to do.
“I have returned, yes,” I replied, bracing myself for his disapproval. “But I cannot stay.”
“And why not? We have much to discuss, you and I. A very great deal has happened in Rome since you left, and I have not been idle.”
“I’m on my way to Hibernia. There is a ship waiting for me at Neapolis even now. I’ve only come back to Rome to settle my affairs, and then I am away.”
“I see.” Senator Graccus gazed at me, the smile slowly fading from his face. “Which affairs,” he said stiffly, “do you mean?”
“The property left to me by Vicarius Columella.”
“Yes, what about it?”
“I want to sell it.”
His good-natured features arranged themself into an expression of petulant disapproval. “Do you have any idea what that entails?”
“Only that a buyer must be found and a price agreed. Beyond that, I had hoped you would guide me. I will trust your judgment entirely.”
“Come along, then. We will talk.” Graccus led the way to the canopied table; he took one chair and waved me to the other. Seeing a glimmer of a chance to influence my decision, the astute senator swooped at once. “You have been traveling. You are tired. Here, now, sit with me. Let us have a drink and discuss this.”
I sat down, and he took his place across the table, gazing at me with fatherly concern. “It will not be easy,” he said after a moment. He picked up a jug of wine and poured the dark red liquid into two glass cups. “With the plague, most of the best people have fled to the country.” He handed me a cup. “Buyers for a property of that quality are scarce. It could take”—he puffed out his cheeks—“oh, months at least, perhaps years before you could find a suitable party.”
“Would it take that long?”
“You will stay here, of course,” Graccus said, moving on swiftly. “What about the island villa?”
“That is settled already. I have given it to Dea and Decimus.”
“You just gave it to them?”
“I did that.”
“Have you any idea what this gift cost you?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Well…” He shook his head in mild incredulity. “I commend your generosity, if not your sagacity. That estate was worth”—he tapped his teeth in thought—“let us say you could have named your price. I can think of any number of noblemen who would sell their firstborn for a chance to own it.”
“Maybe some of them would feel the same about the town house.”
“I would not count on it,” he warned. “No, that will be a far different matter. There are properties aplenty in the city now.”
The mere thought of waiting chafed me raw. I could see my newfound determination ground down and down to a fine powder to be blown away by the first contrary wind. Reckless in the grip of my decision, I pressed ahead. “Graccus,” I said, “tell me the truth. What do you think the house is worth?”
He swirled the wine in his cup. “In excess of seven hundred thousand solidi,” he answered at last, “more or less.”
“I will sell the house to you for half that amount. What do you say?”
He laughed. “I say you are being very foolish. Even if I had that much money ready at hand, friendship would prevent me from taking advantage of you.”
“Two hundred thousand, then,” I said.
“Succat, please.” He held up his hands. “I cannot.”
“One hundred thousand,” I said firmly. At this the senator’s eyes grew round.
“I begin to believe you are serious.”
“One hundred thousand gold solidi—and Domus Columella is yours.”
He hesitated, licking his lips. I could see him weakening.
“Come, Graccus, I know you want it as much as I want to give it to you. Take it and let us part as friends.”
“You are insane,” he declared, shaking his head firml
y. “No. I will not do it.”
“Please, Graccus. I cannot stay here any longer. The ship will not wait forever. When it sails, I mean to be aboard.”
He gazed at me, a paternal sadness stealing into his eyes. “Why must you go away?” he asked. “And why, of all places, to Hibernia?”
“There is nothing for me here,” I began.
“Not true,” protested the old statesman quickly. “The way is open for you to become a senator and then surely a vicarius. Beyond that who knows? One day you might even become a consul. A man of your integrity and intelligence—why, anything is possible.”
I smiled in gentle reproof at his shameless flattery. “Please, Graccus, we both know better.”
“It could happen,” he insisted.
“Then let it happen to someone else.”
“But why, of all places on the civilized earth, choose Hibernia?”
“I want—” I began, my voice tightening as emotions seized the words. “I left something of myself there, and now I must find it.”
He frowned. “You were a slave in that barbaric land, were you not?”
“I was a slave, yes. But I was alive there, too—in a way I have not been alive since.”
“Nonsense!” he snorted, dismissing the idea.
“No, it is true,” I insisted. “I tried to live as a Roman. I loved Oriana, and for her sake more than for my own I tried to make a life here in Rome. But this was never my home.”
“And Hibernia, I presume,” he said, “is where you now belong?”
“I cannot say,” I replied. “But I know that my time here is at an end.” I could see he did not believe me. “Listen, Graccus,” I said, and then I began to tell him of my life in Ireland. I told him of Sliabh Mis and King Miliucc’s holding, the people there and their simple, forthright ways. I spoke of Sionan—the first time I had mentioned her name aloud to anyone since the day I left—and Cormac and Datho. I described the wooded hills and green valleys, the mountains and plains, and the all-encircling sea; I told him of the druid house, the study there and the daily chores; I described the Comoradh as Filidh, the Gathering of Bards, and the initiation I had undergone to join the ranks of the druids.
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