I needed to talk. I didn’t recognize myself. Too much had happened. I’d found Gwyna, lost Agricola, and misplaced my reason. Stricta was safe, at least for now, but Galla was dead. Caelius was free. My teeth were grinding again, so I held my jaw with my left hand and rubbed the muscles. Mollius was the cynic, not me. I was a healer. A problem-solver. A Roman. A native. A man with too many names and not enough time.
We threaded our way along the path until I found it. My father’s gravestone, erected seventeen years ago by his wife, Julia Pacata, who had the wisdom to never call herself my mother. I was sixteen; he’d been made a senator the previous year by Nero, who’d at least had enough decency to appreciate him.
The usual description, detailing his accomplishments, inscribed the monument. It was one of the largest in the cemetery. Julia mourned for three years, and then followed him below. I dismounted, Nimbus watching me with curiosity, her soft nose reaching out to smell my side. I placed a hand on the stone, and followed the carved letters with my finger.
My father understood. He’d taught me to be wise, to be pragmatic, but to never forget compassion. He taught me to survive and succeed in an environment I was never really a part of. He helped me see how people fought, how they feared, how they scrambled and clawed and gave birth and died and started all over again.
I hated so much then, and didn’t know where to start. The natives that killed my mother? But she was a native. The Romans that caused the war? But my father was a Roman, and my adopted father was one by choice. He tried to teach me to take the best from each, but to understand that Rome was the present, past and future. Rome was the sun, and God knows Britannia could use it.
He told me, once, on the day I received my toga praetexta, that I needed to learn to see people as they are, not as I wanted or feared them to be. I’d forgotten that. I’d almost forgotten how.
I could hear Nimbus eating some of the tall grass around the grave. The rough stone felt good. It was wearing thin in a few places: I’d have to hire a stonecutter to renew the inscription.
I climbed back on the mare, who snatched a final mouthful of grass before lifting her head. I turned her to the east, and struck the road to Camulodunum, passing the hills, fertile with rain, the forests, the creeks, the rivers and the vales until we couldn’t ride any more.
We stopped to rest, briefly, while she ate and drank in the afternoon-the sky told me it was after midday. My senses cleared; my thoughts got sharper. I could see the silver flash of trout in the stream, hear the scream of the eagle, the rustle of the hare.
I passed travelers who paid little attention to the man on the grey horse, soldiers who marched a steady beat along the well-paved, well-drained gift from Rome. Couriers passed me at a gallop, and farmers with carts passed me at a crawl. But as the night fell and tumbled in the darkness, we’d covered forty-two miles before we came to an inn, where we lodged, comfortable and warm, Nimbus in a hay-filled stall, I in a snug room, my belly full of ale and cheese and ham, and warm, sweet wine cakes. I didn’t dream at all that night.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I woke up before the roosters. Two long night hours of sleep after a hard journey weren’t enough, but the pain in my legs helped keep me awake. I didn’t want the landlord to wonder why I was in such a hurry. At this hour, he wasn’t wondering about much other than how to wrap his fat hands around a barmaid. I could hear snores and the sound of jowls making sleepy, smacking noises, when I crawled downstairs. He’d served a large party of farmers last night, boisterous, bawdy and bragging about a local whore they’d bought the day before. Today they’d creep home to be greeted by wives waving a skillet in one hand and a poker in the other. Women ran farms: men just talked a lot.
There was a breeze blowing through the stalls, warm, western, carrying some moisture with it, a little heavy in a good way, like a thin blanket on a hot night. I sniffed. Straw and hay and horse manure. They were good smells, smells I missed in Londinium: I missed horses, I missed the clean feel of dirt in my skin. I missed the country.
I heard a shuffle; Nimbus was awake, and after I stepped on his foot so was the groom.
An over-generous tip made him move a little faster. I packed the cheese and bread I’d bought from the inn-keeper yesterday, and we rode out into the night, Nimbus ready for a new journey, her master not quite.
The road was silent. No creak of wheels, no gentle, resigned snorts from tired horses. No sound, no lights, of anything but us. I liked it that way. I couldn’t see much in what little moonlight made its way through the clouds. By dawn, it would be grey, and even in the dark, that’s how it felt. But it was a good grey, a peaceful grey, the grey of the green trees and foot-high grass, the grey of life.
We climbed over one hill, descended into a valley. The wind slapped my face from the south east, and I could smell a storm on it, somewhere out at sea. Then we climbed again, more trees, shielding the wind, arching over the road, protecting us.
Once in a while, a small road branched from the main one, leading to a shrine, or a small settlement. The countryside was filling up, but there was still plenty of room. Sometimes Nimbus slowed, her ears pricked toward the side of the road, catching the sight or scent of an animal. Small yellow or red eyes would blink at us slowly, and then close, climb a tree or dig into a burrow, and live a lifetime before seeing another human.
I had so little time. I was used to pressure: doctors, at least the ones who give a damn, are never far away from it. But this was more than a spearhead in the back, more than one man’s life or a robbery that went wrong. The weight of civil war was crushing me to the ground, and I’d have to run far and fast enough to get out from under it. My leg twitched, and I bent down to rub it. I didn’t have time for pain.
I straightened up and looked down the dark road, and saw Agricola’s grizzled face. I’d been hard on the governor, maybe too hard. As popular as he was, the legions often preferred the man who paid them-and Domitian increased the base pay to 300 denarii just a few months ago. If it came to a show of loyalty, Agricola wouldn’t carry the support of every soldier in Britannia. It wouldn’t come to that. It couldn’t come to that.
I shook my head. The fog inside it and the black around me weren’t going away. I couldn’t let Meditor sacrifice the natives, either. At least not without a fight. The governor was hungry for the history books, yes, but there were plenty of great generals in Rome’s history, and not many great peace-makers. I said a small prayer to Silvanus that Agricola would be one of them. I didn’t believe much in prayers, but it couldn’t hurt.
* * * * *
We’d traveled twenty miles by midday, and I was already sick of my own thoughts. Nimbus wouldn’t talk to me, and I couldn’t afford company, so my mind treaded the same ground until it got stuck in a ditch and couldn’t find its way out.
I wrenched it up and put it back on firmer ground and somehow it threw Mollius in my face. Mollius? Why Mollius? Sure, he drank. Why not? People drank too much for two reasons: they were either very happy or very miserable, and I didn’t know many happy people. I’d worry about Mollius later.
Gwyna? The know-it-all voice that had harangued me a couple of days ago was sullen and hiding in a corner. At the moment, I wouldn’t even mind having a conversation with it. But if I started thinking about Gwyna, I could just pin a sign on my back that said “idiot.” I wouldn’t be good for anything else.