Leaving for home the next week, we set out in a hired wagon so Gisela could be comfortable, and to bring Juno and her belongings back. I still had not told Gisela the complete truth, swearing to do Vibius great bodily harm if he let it slip out before I was ready to tell her the rest of the story. All I knew at the time was that she was happy, and if she was happy, I was happy, so that meant I was content to let it stay that way for as long as I could manage it, no matter how much it pained Vibius. When I told Vibius that Gisela was coming, at first he was not thrilled, saying it would slow us down. Then he realized that the plan to have Juno live with Gisela would most likely go more smoothly if both were given the chance to get used to the idea, and a journey together would be the best way to accomplish that. Since we could not do a return journey with the two of them without bringing Gisela along on the first leg, he quickly got used to the idea. I was not quite so quick to agree with his conclusion, for a couple of reasons. First was the inconvenient fact that I still had not told Gisela, and every passing mile heightened my anxiety, my imagination running wild thinking of her possible reaction. Would she demand that we turn around and go back? And if I refused, would she get out of the wagon and start walking back? If so, what would I do then? The second part of all this that bothered me was my worry about the baby; I did not know much at all about women and pregnancy, yet I was fairly sure that sitting in a bouncing wagon was not a good thing for it. However, when I brought this up to Gisela, she scoffed at the notion.
“Pullus, I marched with Caesar’s army every day, up until a week before I gave birth. This is more luxury than I know what to do with.” I was smart enough to know that pointing out that she lost that baby was not a good idea, so I simply kept my mouth shut. The way matters turned out, I finally broke the news to Gisela on the third day of our journey, over breakfast as we sat at an outdoor table at an inn along the way. She was munching on a piece of bread to go with the boiled bacon we had purchased to supplement our rations, a wisp of hair straying down across her forehead, which she distractedly kept trying to put back in place as she watched the people around us. She was always fascinated by everything going on around her, and it was this curiosity about the world that I found so appealing, probably because it matched my own.
Clearing my throat, I began, “Gisela, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”
Her head whipped around, eyes narrowed suspiciously as she waited for me to blurt out whatever it was I had to say, and I felt an icy finger trip up my back. I can laugh about it now, the fact that I felt as much or more fear facing my woman than I did facing another man in battle, but back then it was no laughing matter. There was a healthy dose of fear of Gisela’s anger, although to be fair it is not as if I had not been warned; Calienus regaled us with stories of her rages and tantrums, yet they were much more amusing if you were not the subject of one of them. Vibius immediately got up from the table, mumbling something about answering a call of nature, and inwardly I cursed him for his cowardice.
“What? Well, come on, out with it. Don’t stammer about.”
This of course was a guarantee that I was going to do the exact thing she told me not to, so I stumbled and fumbled, trying to phrase things in such a way that there was less likelihood of the cup she had snatched off the table as I was talking being hurled at me.
“Well, Vibius asked me something, and I wanted to talk to you about it before I give him my, I mean our, decision.”
There, I thought, I might as well drop Vibius in the cac if I were going to be swimming in it too. She did not reply, just lifting that damn eyebrow that told me to press on.
“He’s decided that he's going to ask Juno to come back with us.”
Before I could finish, her face split into a smile, her rosy cheeks lifting as she clapped her hands together.
“Oh Titus, that’s wonderful! I’ve been hoping that he would finally get up the nerve to do the right thing instead of mooning about.” This was a good sign, so I decided to just get the real nut of the matter out and done with, yet before I could, she said something that is just further proof that I will never understand women.
“Of course, she will stay with us,” she announced, and I felt my jaw drop.
Seeing my expression, she completely misread it, saying crossly, “Now, you do NOT think that she is going to live by herself, away from home for the first time and never having been around the army? Don’t you even think about arguing about this, Pullus. I will not stand for it. Besides,” her face took on that practical expression that I knew so well, “she will be a help when my time approaches and I can barely waddle about.”
She looked me directly in the eye and said with a sweet smile that was as much a direct order as any that came from Caesar, “You agree of course, don’t you my love?”
I gulped, and nodded.
It took a week and a day for us to reach Hispania, thanks to the roads that Caesar had the Legions build during our winter years in Gaul; without them it would have taken more than two to get there and leave us barely a month at home. I sent word ahead as soon as I knew that both Vibius and I would be coming, and I am ashamed to say that the letter was the first in several months. More accurately it was a couple months short of a year since I last wrote, but I told myself that it was only because I was so busy as Pilus Prior, which had the benefit of being partially true. The bigger reason was that I had changed, and no longer really had anything in common with my family. I felt that I left them behind, becoming something they could never understand, especially since their world consisted of the ground they could cover in a day’s walk, whereas I had seen so much of the world the idea of going back to that way of life was unthinkable. And being brutally honest, I had long outgrown my homesickness and stopped missing my sisters, as well as Phocas and Gaia, some time ago. I still planned on fulfilling my promise, and in fact carried with me a large amount of money, more than twice what I thought I would need to free Gaia and Phocas from my father. Despite my ambivalence about going home initially, I will say that the closer we got the more excited I became, as Vibius and I bored Gisela to tears regaling her with stories of our childhood, not that she showed it. My worries about the trials of a long journey and the toll it would take on her proved to be unfounded; if anything she seemed to flourish being out in the open air. Vibius and I did not completely dominate the conversation, however; I learned more about Gisela, her childhood and her people than I did in the previous years I knew her. She had seven brothers and sisters; that I knew, but I did not know that she was especially close to one sister who died when Gisela was twelve and her sister fourteen. Her eyes filled with tears as she spoke of her, and it was the first and last time she ever spoke of it. As she talked I thought of Livia and Valeria, and resolved to let them know how much I did care about them, even if I had not done a good job of showing it. But as I was about to find out, I was too late for one of my sisters.
Rolling into Astigi, both Vibius and I were struck by how small the town was compared to our memories. Neither of us had made it to Rome at this point, yet we had seen places like Narbo and even Vesontio that made our town look positively shabby. The scene in the forum was much the same, with the same people doing the same business. Although people recognized and seemed to be happy to see us, I could tell there was a certain apprehension in their attitude towards us, reminding me of our last homecoming. Vibius noticed it as well, turning to me as we rode through the street towards his house.