When he talked to me in this fatherly way, my heart began to thump, and I realized that while writing I had fled from the dark winter and my own loneliness into a dreamlike summer in which I forgot the trials I had suffered and remembered only the beautiful things. I had missed Lugunda as I had been writing, and because of the brotherhood in which I joined with the Brigantes, I felt myself more of a Briton than a Roman. And in the way of all authors, I was not pleased to hear this criticism and was deeply offended.
“I’m sorry I’ve not fulfilled your hopes,” I said. “I’d better gather up my belongings and go back to Rome, as long as it is possible to cross over to Gaul in the winter storms.”
Vespasian put his great fist on my shoulder and said gently, “You are still young, so I’ll forgive your touchiness. Perhaps you’d better come with me on a tour of inspection to Colchester, the veteran town. Then I’ll give you a cohort for a few months, so that as a prefect you can have all the formal military training you need. Your British blood brothers will only respect you more when you go back to them in the spring. Then in the autumn you can rewrite your book.”
In this way I received my rank of tribune in the same year, although I was only eighteen. This appealed to my vanity and I did my best to show myself worthy of the responsibility, although active service in winter was confined to garrison inspection, building work and practice marches. Somewhat later I received from my father a considerable sum of money and the following letter:
Marcus Mezentius Manilianus greets his son Minutus Lausus. You will have heard by now of the changes that have taken place in Rome. In order to reward more fully my wife Tullia for her services in exposing the conspiracy, rather than my own services, Emperor Claudius has bestowed on me the privilege of wearing the broad purple band. I have now a seat in the Curia. Behave accordingly. I am sending you a money order to London. Here it is said that the Britons have made Claudius a god and raised a temple with a turf roof in his honor. You would be wise to take a suitable votive gift to the temple. Aunt Laelia is well, as far as I know. Your freedman, Minutius, lives with her at the moment, making and selling a Gallic soap. My wife Tullia sends her greetings. Drink to my memory from your mother’s goblet.
So my father was a senator, something I could never have imagined. I was no longer surprised that Vespasian had been in such a hurry to promote me to tribune. What had happened in Rome had reached him more quickly than it had me. I felt bitter and my respect for the Senate lessened considerably.
Following my father’s advice, I went to the wooden temple the Britons had built in Colchester in honor of Claudius and presented a brightly painted wooden carving as a votive gift. I dared not give anything more valuable as the Britons’ own gifts were worthless articles-shields, weapons, cloths and clay jars. Vespasian had given nothing but a broken sword so as not to offend the British kings with a too valuable gift. At least, that is what he told me.
As the summer came in, I gladly shed my insignia of rank and Roman armor, painted blue stripes on my cheeks and threw the colored cloak of honor of the Brigantes over my shoulders. Vespasian pretended that he could not possibly let the son of a Roman senator loose to be murdered by savage Britons in the forests, but he knew perfectly well that under the protection of the Druids, I was safer traveling in all the countries of the Britons than I would be at home in the streets of Rome.
Recklessly, I promised I would be responsible for myself and my upkeep. Out of vanity, I should have liked to have taken my own horse to prance in front of the noble British youths, but Vespasian decisively refused to allow me to and praised, as usual, the staying power of mules in British terrain. He had had a horse dealer crucified for trying to smuggle a shipload of horses in from Gaul, to sell at high prices to the Britons. My stallion, he said, would be much too great a temptation to them. They had been trying in vain to breed up their own small horses after experiencing the superiority of the Roman cavalry over war chariots.
So I had to content myself with buying suitable gifts for my hosts. First I loaded my mules with jars of wine, for the British nobles were if possible even more given to wine than the legionaries. That summer I spent the longest day of the year at the Sun God service in the round temple of giant stones. I found gold ornaments and amber in an ancient tomb, and I made a journey to the tin mines, to the harbor of which the Carthaginians used to sail hundreds of years ago to buy tin. But the greatest surprise was Lugunda, who during the winter had grown from a child to a young woman. I met her at her hare farm, dressed in her white hare-priestess cloak with a silver band in her hair. Her eyes were shining like those of a goddess. When we had embraced in greeting, we both drew back in astonishment and no longer dared touch each other. Her tribe did not allow her to accompany me on my journeys that summer. In fact it was to flee from her that I left the Iceni country. But as I journeyed on, a living image of her followed me. I thought of her the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning, whether I wished to or not.
I returned from my journeys more quickly than I had meant to, back to her, but I had no joy from it. On the contrary, after the first delight of seeing each other again we soon started quarreling, with or without cause, and we hurt each other so bitterly that I could go to bed hating her with all my heart and convinced that I never wanted to see her again. But when she smiled at me again later and came with her favorite hare and let me hold it, I relented and became as weak as water. It was difficult to remember that I was a Roman knight and my father was a senator and that I had the right to wear the red cloak of a tribune. Rome seemed distant and dreamlike to me as I sat on the grass in the warm British summer with her wriggling hare in my arms.
But suddenly she pressed her cheek to mine, snatched the hare into her arms and with glittering eyes, accused me of deliberately tormenting her. With the hare in her arms, her cheeks flushed, she looked at me so provokingly that I regretted not having given her a good spanking in the days when I had had her in my power in the camp.
On her friendly days, she took me around her parents’ vast grazing lands and showed me the cattle, the fields and villages. She also took me to the storehouse and showed me the cloths, ornaments and sacred objects which were passed down from mother to daughter in her family.
“Don’t you like the Iceni country?” she teased. “Isn’t it easy to breathe here? Doesn’t our corn bread and our thick beer taste good to you? My father could give you many teams of small horses and chariots decorated with silver. You could have for the asking as much land as you could get around in a day.”
But another day she would say, “Tell me about Rome. I’d like to walk on paved streets, see big temples with columned halls and war trophies from every country, and get to know women who are different from me, to learn their customs, for in your eyes I am evidently only an uneducated Iceni girl.”
In honest moments she said, “Do you remember how you held me in your arms one cold winter night in your wooden hut and warmed me with your own body when I was homesick? Now I am home and the Druids have made me a hare-priestess. You’ve no idea what a tremendous honor that is, but at the moment I’d rather be in your wooden hut, holding your hand and listening to you teaching me to read and write.”