by Ben Pastor
Decimus said nothing, but appeared to know the road very well. He turned at one point, where the trees grew closer to the verge, and their heads in the wind made a sound as of bellowing great bulls. The gravel became deeper; hoofs slipped now and then. In the woods the darkness became nearly unbearable. When it broke, without warning, the clearing seemed to shimmer with light. But the moon had only risen above the horizon. Before and below them, in a dale, a villa sprawled, its terraces and porches lacquered white by the moonbeams, like an enchanted place, or the land of the dead.
Decimus spurred, reached the villa first, and was dismounting when Aelius joined him. In the shade of the moon, nothing was visible of the facade; nothing was heard beyond the moan of hinges when the door opened.
Inside, it was a Roman-style home with an elegant hallway. Decimus lit a lamp, exchanged a few whispered words with someone, through the crack of a side door, and kept walking toward a flight of stairs. Aelius followed with a singular tightness of his heart, holding his breath. A fresco of Eurydice being rescued from Hades flashed at his side, undulating in the wake of the lamplight. Orpheus looked back, anxiously. The mythical bride, veiled, stepped back with a rigid gesture of the lifted arms, palms upturned, like one who falls irremediably into forgetful-ness. The idea—the certainty—that Decimus's fabled daughter lived here caught Aelius like a cold flame.
Decimus did not say, "Wait here," but proceeding without permission seemed improper. Aelius stopped on the threshold of a chamber, large for a bedroom, whose darkness was mitigated by the lamp his colleague brought in. At first he judged the bed empty, nothing but a bundle of quilts. A rich bed, gleaming with carved ivory and gilding, in a space carpeted and warm.
Setting aside the lamp, Decimus leaned over the mattress, and the bundle of quilts moved. A thing was lying in the sumptuous bed. As it stirred, Aelius made out its misshapen head, a forehead bulging and swollen at the sides, a skull all lumps, barely covered by scarce, hanging hair. The lower part of the face formed one tumor-like swelling that was more than a chin, high and gross, so that flat nose and lips were squashed and scarcely visible between those bulges. The head hung on the creature's chest, heavy and sleepy-eyed like a newborn cat's. Short, childish arms hung from her shoulders; the hands were large, long, and white. When she was raised in a sitting position, the hands began moving slowly, ceaselessly; inarticulate sounds came from the sunken mouth. Decimus petted it, unaware as the creature seemed to be of endearments. Only the food—sweets—placed in front of her seemed to cause a reaction, and she reached for it without using her hands, trying to lap it directly from Decimus's hand, but the shape of the face would not allow her to, and she grew furious. Hands flapped inert; the formless head struggled against its own weight, helpless squeals coming from within it. Decimus placed the sweets into her mouth then, one at a time, calming her. Seated on the bed, he combed down the stringy, thin hair over her ears, cradling the monstrous head against his chest.
When Decimus left the room, noiselessly pulling the door closed behind him, Aelius had gone to stand a few steps down the corridor, leaning against the wall with his arms folded and his head low over them. He said nothing while his Roman colleague passed in front of him, lamp in hand. Nor did he speak when Decimus, halfway to the stairs, turned back. "If you come a moment to the library," he invited him, in his usual bantering tone, "I'll lend you an insufferable panegyric of Severus by a Syrian poet." And because Aelius still would not react, he let out a mean laugh. "Well, are you coming? We have a war to fight."
During the ride back, in the face of Aelius's muteness, Decimus chatted on, acting as if nothing had happened. The wind had fallen. Human prattle chafed the silence of trees and fields all around, otherwise unbroken. Unbroken, too, was the dark, after a long, smoke-colored cloud hid the rising moon.
"I can hear your mind turning like a millstone." The well-bred voice of his colleague reached Aelius' ears. "You've been thinking about it ever since we had dinner. Why torment yourself in ignorance? I can tell you where the fire waker is: in Barbaricum. If they're still together, he and my distant cousin should have crossed over between Carnun-tum and Ala Nova this afternoon at the latest."
Aelius opened his eyes wide in the night. "What do you mean— /low?"
"Just what I said. How is her business. I haven't given up on the idea of laying my hands on the property she so inconsiderately gave to the Christians, thanks to Judge Marcellus. So let's say that during a brief meeting in Mediolanum I lent her what she needed to buy her way out of Italy, and out of my thinning hair. They'll catch her, sooner or later."
"You have no morals whatever."
"Morality is for peasants and romanized yokels like yourself."
Savaria, capital of Pannonia Prima Savia, 27 January, Saturday
Aelius slept hardly at all but was lucid in the morning. Riding into Savaria, he had to admit that an ample footnote to his biography of Severus would have to concern the rebuilding of Danubian cities after the Marcomannic Wars. Savaria's wide, well-paved streets, the aqueduct and baths, the governor's palace and the glorious temples—these were welcome sights after the nearly monthlong march. Adjacent to the thriving quarter populated by merchants from Aquileia was an affluent Jewish district, where Aelius had agreed to deliver a couple of business letters to one of ben Matthias's endless relatives and pick up messages and letters come for him from the Jew.
Ben Matthias's associates had no mail for him, but at the city's military post exchange he found a note from his mother, waiting to be picked up by the next courier and delivered posthaste. Your father is not getting better, it read. I sent for your stepsister, sisters, and their husbands. If at all possible, do come.
Time was tighter than it had been during the march. The ceremony and parade in the governor's presence, the official parting of the units for separate assignments at the border, would take most of the daylight hours. His regiment, the Ioviani Palatini, quartered two days away at Mursella, but a cohort from his old Persian campaign cavalry wing, permanently attached to his unit, had come to town to meet him, and the Guardsmen had already joined them at the city barracks. Hastily, Aelius penned a reply for his mother, explaining that moving out toward assigned positions took precedence. He would come as soon as he could get away. As his next delivery address, he gave the army fort at Arrabona, less than two hours from the frontier.
At the third morning hour, the units met for a common sacrifice at the provincial altar— ara Provinciae —and the taking of omens from live victims. The omens were favorable, but Aelius (and his colleagues, too) knew all too well that clean, ruddy, healthy animal entrails were kept on hand by priests for such occasions. The praeses himself, in his governor's regalia, witnessed the assigning of standards, eagles, and dragon-headed windsock banners to the soldiers, lined along the street that led from the Mall to the eastern gate.
Beyond the walls, since dawn a widespread haze had been rising from the northeast like a white tide, as if the enemy across the frontier were building its own rampart against the brightly arrayed, formidably armed foot soldiers and troopers.
30 January, Saturday, III day before the Kalends of February
The post commander at Arrabona had been his father's colleague during Aelius Spartus's last assignment, and the first thing he told Aelius when he came to report with his regiment, was, "A messenger came early this morning from your mother, Aelius. I've known Lady Justina thirty years, and I have never known her to be overdramatic. She was especially anxious that her message reach you, as your father's condition has worsened, and she fears for his life. Three days will not make much difference to your departure for Barbaricum, so I suggest that you go home and see to your family business."
Aelius Spartus's estate, northeast of Savaria, i February, Thursday
"Husband, how wide open is the house,
How the keystone collapsed from the door!
And now who will look after us anymore?
And now who will speak for us an
ymore?
And now who will protect us anymore?
And now who will take care of the children anymore?
Oh, good of a lifetime, my life!
Who will tell the family, my husband?
Who will cry with you, my husband?
Who will walk with you, my husband?
Who will visit your grave, my husband?
Oh, good of a lifetime, my life!
His mother's lament through the open door, and the fierce clap of hands at the end of each verse, filled the air like a bird's mournful call, like the dry sound of axes in the woods. No one was there to welcome him in the entry room; no sign that he'd been overheard came from the inner house. Only when his shadow, long in the rising sun, poured itself across the floor and reached the threshold of the bedroom did the high wailing stop at a peak, as if the voice itself had been cut.
Groaning sounds still came from within, and women sobbed, but Justina walked out drying her eyes. She pinned her hair back in a severe bun, which was her habitual way of wearing it. How ritual her complaint and bitter recriminations had been, how overlaid on her grief, was obvious by the way she resumed her army wife's lucidity.
She did not say, "You have come late, too late," or any such thing. She embraced him and then kept him at arm's length, holding his hands, to take a good look at him. "You have gone gray," was the other expected comment she could make, and did not. As a matter of fact, Aelius remembered, his mother seldom said the obvious, or commented on what was under everyone's eyes.
"Did you have a safe trip?" was the first question she asked. And with her right hand lifted, mildly she bade him not answer with an apology for his obvious lateness. "You must have had your reasons," she only added.
From the bedroom, the sounds of weeping came fainter, long, tremulous, a sign that the paid mourners were beyond the violent stage of the wake. Alerted that the dead man's son was about to enter, they stood from their kneeling positions around the bed. Their faces, bruised with their own blows, scratched with their nails until blood ran, were like those of women possessed. Chunks of hair yanked from their heads were strewn over the old man's body. And to the body they spoke in one voice. "Here comes Aelius, your son, your only son, who is visible to you but not to Death." From a brazier where boughs burned slowly in a bed of embers and incense, letting out an acute perfume, they lifted sprigs and sent a cloud of smoke in Aelius's direction, making him invisible to Death. "Here he comes, the keystone and the door that keeps the house safe."
Justina watched her son look at the body. Seven small coins had been placed on the old man's eyes, mouth, hands, and feet, to pay for his passage to the other world; the one on the mouth represented an offering from his wife, the two on his eyes from the son, those on his hands from the daughters, the two on his feet from the sons-in-law.
The mourners stood by the bed to receive their compensation. Justina placed a coin into the cupped hands each one held out, kissed them on both cheeks, had them kiss her back, and then passed around what remained of the funeral feast in small baskets, as no piece of bread or chunk of meat from the ritual dinner must go lost or uneaten. "The rest I have given to the beggars," she whispered to Aelius. Only after they had all left with thanks, and with sidelong looks at the son who had come late for his father's death, did Justina gesture for Aelius to follow her into the kitchen. There the hearth was unlit, ashes strewn over the logs and embers to make sure that no flame burned in a dead man's house. A single glass full of wine and a loaf of bread sat on the table, as the ghost would return overnight to drink and eat a last time, while the family spent the dark hours elsewhere.
She said, "Three nights ago I dreamed of picking up green saplings, which as you know is a bad sign. The following night I dreamed that I was folding white sheets—another unfortunate message." Placing her right hand on the upturned palm of his, she touched his chest with her forehead. "He asked for you, and I told him you were on your way."
Aelius kept his lips tight. It was difficult to read his feelings, even for him. He let his mother's words go through him, breathing slowly.
She lifted her hand to his cheek, holding it there as she did every time they met after a long time: an affectionate way of checking her son's face against her memory. "I walked into each room of the house, and told every object that your father was dead, and held a mirror to each thing of value so that its image may follow your father into the other world. And we counted out loud all the properties and animals that belonged to him, so that through their names they, too, may follow him to the other world."
From the back door, she pointed to the first house where they'd lived after retirement, a small farm at the farthest end of the estate, now only used when grandchildren and friends came to visit. There, where she and her husband had awaited the refurbishing of the villa, she'd brought the linen used during their early years together, the old pots and pans, bedclothes, and the marriage bed, which she would never use again. "When you marry, Aelius, take your bride there. Make your first son there."
How he had undervalued her, Aelius thought. Justina was like a fixed star, small in the dark but a reference point for everyone and everything in the family. "Your sisters and their husbands are at Savaria to seek lawyers." He heard her say it as a matter of fact, without rancor, only making him aware of it. "Father was too superstitious and too attached to life to make a will, so now your brothers-in-law insist that they be repaid for the million sesterces each of the three of you loaned him when he bought the property."
Aelius discovered when he opened his mouth that the sound of his voice was new to the house, that he'd never said a word since coming. "Father paid us back the three million within six months' time: I was there?
"Gargilius and Barga claim otherwise, son. At six percent interest, in five years it amounts to over two million six hundred thousand they claim between them: more than half the value of the entire property. Half of which, according to the Law, should go to you. It robs you of more than half of your inheritance."
"As far as I am concerned, it robs you of all of yours. I want none of it. Mother, my brothers-in-law serve in provincial offices here; they have good stipends, and so do I. You certainly will not come out of putting up with Father for thirty-five years with only a fraction of his property." He spoke with his face averted, not out of shame but because he did not want her to see the bitterness on it. "We all went off or married as soon as we could, but you had to stay."
"They're looking to sell."
"They would have to win the case first, and they never will. What is their plan, to make you move in with one of them? I will not have you settle for hospitality at army post quarters; it is not fitting for a colonel's widow to reduce herself to being a guest of her sons-in-law. As for the silver and money cache discovered thanks to your dream, it all belongs to you by rights."
Of all Aelius had said, one thing seemed to resonate with her. "I traveled for years." She spoke with her hands in his, feeling the calluses of sword-wielding. "Followed your father wherever the army brought us. You were all born in different places, and those who died as babies are buried in a stretch of borderland that goes from Oescus to Castra Regina. Five years since retirement, and in five years we finally built a stable life, grew a garden, had our serfs and animals. I have no desire to move again, even less to keep moving. There are times, Aelius, when I think that only death allows you to stay in one place."
Seen from the back door, the hills Aelius had climbed as a boy drew a line that like all the heights from here to Noricum ran from northeast to southwest. Their highest point, he recalled from the days of his father's assignment to Savaria, afforded a panorama of the army camp, the city, dark forests, and farther down the plain, to far-off Scarbantia and Lake Pelso Superior. Close by, even under the snow cover, the work done thus far to lay out a formal garden amid the vineyards showed the abundance of well-earned retirement, even in these hard times of inflation and war. In the clarity of the western sky, Aelius conju
red his father's face, thinned out by death, emptied of passions, the large body that for more than forty years had served the State and ruled the family. He thought he should say what he did.
"I could pretend that I came as quickly as I could, Mother, but it is not true; I had no intention of traveling faster than a horse could carry me on a regular day. Father did everything he could and more to set me up in the world, and to heighten my chances of success. For that I am grateful, but I did not love him, and I can't pretend now. He was brutal with his soldiers and with us. Did nothing to cultivate his god-given soul or to recognize the god-given intelligence in his wife. You earned his inheritance by your patience and love: I did not, because I never loved him or respected him. In my career thus far, I have encountered half a dozen men who were fathers to me more than he ever was." Piles of bricks to be used in completing the corner towers drew his attention, red against the snow. "As for my brothers-in-law, let them do as they will. Let them hire lawyers and try to cheat you and the Law. You will come out victorious, and they will have to come to your door with the respect due to you, as will my sisters and their brood."
Justina seemed suddenly tired. In the two days since her husband's death, she had no doubt taken care of everything. Now that the family had gathered, her energy was flagging, or else she dreaded the disagreement. "How does it happen, Aelius? Those who most look like us physically are least like us. You resemble your father, and even more so your uncle, although you're more handsome than they ever were. But inside—and it isn't just because of your education—you resemble none of us, except myself, a little. I wonder if that's good or bad, because I worry so much, I feel things, and these times aren't kind to those who feel. Your father was what they call a good husband: He never brought his lovers home, never made a house serf pregnant, regularly sent money when he was away, and built a career. I never wanted for anything material. You were the apple of his eye; I do think he secretly hoped to the last that you were, or would become, involved in intrigue, that you would seek power as others who soldiered with him did. These are the days when the throne is open to all, he would say. You don't know how many times I shuddered at the thought that someone would overhear us, and ruin us all—ruin you, and your chances of advancement." She stood at his side, tall, a solid woman with graying blond hair, clear-skinned. "Or perhaps he did it for himself. One son who'd survived childhood: He bet everything on you. For all his overbearing, he knew his limits. In you, he saw the stuff that he'd glimpsed in others who climbed very high since the days they soldiered with him."