by Paul Waters
There was an open-mouthed pause. And then, as I had hoped, they all burst out laughing.
‘The bishop promises I shall soon be made a subdeacon.’
Albinus had found me at the table in the servants’ kitchen, chewing on some bread.
‘That’s good,’ I said, uninterested.
‘Mother will be pleased.’
I carried on eating.
‘Anyway,’ he said crossly, ‘where were you today? I was looking for you.’
‘Here and there,’ I said, regarding him with suspicious eyes as I chewed.
‘At the baths again, I suppose. Your hair’s all wet.’
‘It’s raining.’
‘You know what the bishop says about the baths?’
‘I know. You’ve already told me.’
‘Baths promote lust.’
I sighed and rolled my eyes. I had heard this many times from him. It was true that the baths, as well as being a meeting place for civilized men, are a market for every kind of vice. The Christian way was to avoid them; and I believe they would have closed them down altogether if they could.
How they felt they honoured their god by staying unwashed I could not understand. As for the rest, that was a man’s own choice, and he could not blame the baths for what he chose.
Fixing his eye to make sure he got my meaning, I said, ‘Best keep away then, if you cannot trust yourself.’
He huffed, and told me not to be disgusting, and went strutting off.
I had taken my time coming back from the gymnasium. The violence with Tascus, for all it had ended harmlessly, had drained me. But though my muscles hurt, I felt, too, an undertow of excitement and promise. I had already decided I liked Durano, with his fine looks, honest smile, and shining blue eyes; and as I wandered home through the rain I knew I should go back, come what may.
I asked myself what Sericus would have said, or my father. Sericus, no doubt, would have warned me off. As for my father, I had never known him well enough and could not tell. But now, I reflected, kicking my way slowly through the wet streets, both were gone, and my choices were my own.
So next afternoon I returned to the old bathhouse and gymnasium, and found Durano and the others in the sand-court under the plane trees. When they saw me they called out as if I were some long-missed friend, and the old men under the portico shook their heads and shrugged, and returned grumbling to their dice game.
‘I thought you would not come,’ said Durano.
‘Well I am here,’ I answered, standing tall.
Tascus came lumbering up beside him. ‘Ready for more, young one?’ He grinned and caught at my neck.
Durano gave him a good-natured cuff saying, ‘Leave him be.’ And then, turning to me, ‘Come on, I’ll show you some moves. It’s easy to outwit a brute like Tascus, once you know how. And later, if you want, I’ll teach you how to fight off a man with a dagger, and maybe show you some swordwork too.’
And thus it was, in that run-down back-street bathhouse, that my training began.
He taught me headlocks and bodylocks, blocks and feints and avoiding moves. I learned throws that could floor a man by using his own strength against him; and ways out of holds that seemed impossible to escape. It was rough work, and though Durano took care not to cause me any serious harm, he was never soft. During those first days I was constantly spitting sand from my mouth, and went home bruised and scratched and aching.
There were days when he had to show me the same thing again and again, and it seemed I should never learn. But then, just as I was beginning to think I had reached my limit and could go no further, I perceived with surprise that I had become stronger and quicker and better, and I was once more fired with the will to press on. If I became angry, or fell hard and cried out in pain or frustration, he would tell me we were not a pair of girls at some harvest-time dance, and if I was serious in wanting to be a soldier – as I had confided to him – I had better attend, for my life might hang on it.
And so, seeing the truth of his words, I would swallow my anger and climb to my feet, ready for another beating.
I was reaching the age where it was clear to me I should never be tall. Albinus, who was taller, goaded me with it, and though I told him I did not care, privately I determined that what I lacked in height I should make up for in strength and wit and sheer ferocity.
By the time the planes in the gymnasium court were thick with summer leaves and we were glad of their shade, I was holding my own in my contests with Durano. Then, one day, he arrived with two wooden practice-swords and a pair of wicker shields. He used them to train his new recruits: and now, he said with a grin, it was my turn.
I laughed and took up the toy weapon, and swung it about. I had long been eager for sword-training, which seemed to me the real skill of a fighting man. Always up to now he had held back, saying a man must know how to fight with his hands, and how to move, before he began to hide behind a sword. Good swordsmanship, he said, was not just hacking and thrusting, as many men thought; indeed the real skill lay not in the weapon but in the movements, which is why he had taught me those first.
In Durano’s circle there was Tascus the Spaniard, and two others: Romulus, from the remote hills of southern Gaul, and Equitius, tall, fair-skinned, and placid, whose family lived in the wild mountain country that divides Gaul from Raetia.
I soon came to understand that Durano, though he was the youngest, was the quickest-witted, and they deferred to him in most things, trusting his judgement, which seemed sure. Though they were much given to loud horse-play and practical joking, they were straightforward and honest with it, and accepted me with open, artless warmth. They were always shoving and hugging one another, and I, never having known it, at first found their physicality off-putting.
But, like a creature that is made tame by kindness, as the weeks passed I grew used to their touching and feeling and hair-ruffling, and allowed myself, slowly and by careful degrees, to be drawn into their rough male closeness.
Even Tascus, whom for a long time I was wary of, I grew to like, and realized that Durano had been right: he would never have harmed me, for under his harsh exterior he was like a child eager to please.
My new friends took me for what I was. In doing so, they allowed me to become a man I had not been. For the first time since I had come to London, I began to feel happy.
With the daily exercise my muscles filled out and my body grew lean and hard. But the changes were not only outward ones. I grew in confidence, and began to be guided by my own true lights. Nor was it only fighting skill I learned from them. I left Albinus shocked and staring when, after one of his sly digs, I threw out some barrack-room crudity in reply. He broke off from what he was saying and gaped.
‘You’d better not let Mother hear you speak like that,’ he haughtily declared.
I shrugged. ‘Let her hear what she likes.’
But that, I knew, was empty bravado, for all I felt better for saying it. My way of escape was not yet open: I was sixteen; still too young to enlist in the army.
Meanwhile, an uneasy truce had settled between me and Lucretia. She complained to her friends that I was a violent, wicked heathen; but, whatever she had said to Balbus, she had not succeeded in having me cast into the street. I had refused to let her co-opt me into her schemes; but in spite of this Albinus’s career in the Church was progressing. So she kept her distance, and was content to let me know I was despised.
Summer came on. When the weather grew hot we broke from training and, taking me to a spot he knew upstream, Durano taught me how to swim.
This I hated more than anything, and told him so, saying men were no more intended to swim than fly. But he just laughed and said most soldiers never troubled to teach themselves, and when their troopships foundered, or they fell off a pontoon, or slipped fording a river, they drowned for want of a skill easily learned.
I asked him why, this being so, he was any different.
He paused at this, and I saw his face darken.
/> ‘Because,’ he said, ‘of my father.’
His home had stood beside a quick-flowing river prone to flood, and his father had forced him to swim as soon as he could walk; not, he told me, by gentle easy lessons as he was doing, but by tossing him headlong into the icy torrent, then sending the slave to fish him out before he drowned.
I shuddered at the thought, and said his father sounded a harsh man.
‘So he was. But I learned fast, and knowledge of swimming has saved me more than once. I suppose you could say I have him to thank, though I should choke on the words before I told him.’
We were together on the grassy bank, drying off in the sun. The hot air smelled of river mud and the faint animal scent of Durano’s body lying beside me.
‘Where is he now?’ I asked.
‘At home in Gaul, for all I know.’
‘You don’t see him?’
‘No.’
And then, as if this had been too abrupt, he said, ‘I never pleased him; it’s easier not to go. Anyway, he has a new, young wife. She doesn’t care for me.’ He glanced up, and the sun caught his blue eyes. ‘Or maybe,’ he added with a wry laugh, ‘she cares too much.’
He fell silent and frowned out at the flat wooded islet in the middle of the river. We had spent the afternoon swimming out to it and back. Absently, he reached out and touched my side, and traced the contours of my ribs with his finger. He was always doing such things.
‘What of your own father?’ he said presently. ‘Was he a good man?’
At first I did not answer. Instead, I drew back my arm and skimmed a pebble at the water, and watched it hop away. I had told him this and that about myself, when he had asked; but I was uneasy speaking of the past. There was too much pain in it.
‘So it is said,’ I answered with a shrug. ‘But I hardly knew him.’
He nodded and frowned. Before he could speak again I stood and with a wide swing threw another stone – too hard, so that it did not skim, but sliced under the surface and vanished.
For a moment I watched the place where it had gone.
‘It’s warm,’ I said. ‘I’m going back in the water.’ And I went splashing off through the shallows.
I did not look back.
But I knew his eyes were watching me.
The time of Midsummer festival came.
The Christians, who are patient in their schemes, have tried to usurp it, as they have with all the old high days, knowing the people will continue to celebrate it no matter what they say.
My aunt and uncle and Albinus went off to some banquet of the bishop’s. Most citizens, though, were out under the warm evening sky, garlanding the streets with sprays of lilac and broom and honeysuckle, and laying up bonfires in preparation for nightfall.
I waited till the house was empty, then slipped off to see my friends.
We had arranged to meet at a tavern in the old quarter. When I arrived, Tascus, Romulus and Equitius were already there, boisterous and loud from wine. Durano came soon after, dressed in a tunic of dark red, with a flower-garland on his head. I had never seen him look so fine.
He shoved the others along the bench and sat beside me. All around us people were talking and laughing. A great charcoal fire glowed in an open grate, and above it a pig was turning on a spit, filling the air with the smell of roasting meat.
Durano filled my cup, and then his own, and raising it said, ‘To you! You too should celebrate tonight.’
Laughing I asked him why.
‘Because if you were one of my recruits you’d be ready to pass out, that’s why. There’s not much more I can teach you; the rest you’ll get by yourself – from practice, and from being in battle. So drink and be happy. You deserve it.’
I threw my arm over his shoulder. ‘Then we should both be celebrating, you and I, for I have learned only what you taught me.’
‘To happiness then!’ he cried. We crashed our bronze wine-cups together and drained them, and refilled them from the jar, and drank again.
Tascus, Romulus and Equitius, meanwhile, were discussing at the top of their voices where to go next. Tascus favoured old Phason’s place, up by the theatre; Equitius was for taking a turn by the river before the crowds gathered, to decide on a vantage place to watch the bonfires. So we argued, and drank, and laughed, and drank again. Even in that crowded rowdy tavern we were the loudest, shouting out to one another, banging down our cups when they were empty, and bawling out for the serving-boy.
Romulus had heard there was music and dancing in the forum, and so, in the end, we decided to go there. By then Hesperus was risen, shining like a beacon low in the pale dusk sky, and when we reached the forum the torches were flaring high in their cressets along the wall of the long colonnade. There were pipes and flutes and tambourines. Someone pulled me into the throng of dancing people, and for a while, reeling and leaping, I lost sight of the others. But then I felt a hand on my shoulder, gently urging me away.
I turned. ‘Come,’ said Durano, his face lit by wine and firelight, ‘let’s walk awhile.’
We edged out of the press, our arms slung around one another, and at length came to the city wall. Then we climbed the foot-worn ragstone steps to the high walkway. From the top Durano pointed, saying, ‘See there.’
I looked out. I had forgotten the bonfires. They had been kindled in the age-old tradition, and were blazing up into the star-flecked sky, yellow flame and rising red-glowing embers, dotted across the dark land, with tiny hopping figures dancing around them.
‘A fine sight,’ said Durano, drawing me close.
I agreed, and for a while gazed out in silence.
Perhaps it was no more than an effect of the wine – for I had drunk a good deal – but, as I stood looking out from the walls, a surge of joy ran through me, clear and pure, like a note of music. I felt my soul straining against the tether of my body, like something shining and entire. Wishing in some manner to share what I felt, I leaned to Durano and kissed his cheek. He smiled; and after a short pause he returned it.
We stayed for some time, alone in the warm night, until eventually a crowd of drunken revellers came stumbling and shouting along the walkway, and the perfect thread was broken.
‘Come on,’ said Durano, frowning at their noise, ‘let’s go and look for the others.’
We found them in the thick of the dancing still, reeling and stumbling and laughing – and very drunk. Seeing us they pulled us in. I do not know how long we remained, leaping about and falling; but by the time we moved on, my head was spinning and everything was warm and hazy and amusing.
Burly, ugly Tascus led us on, pressing ahead through the crowded streets towards the quarter behind the theatre, shouting out that the time had come for better things than dancing.
I knew from my own private investigations this warren of alleyways and courtyards – and its reputation too. To be sure, there are taverns in abundance. But it is not for drinking that the area is known.
We pushed and stumbled our way along the street. For some reason Durano was reluctant: but we all urged him on with the usual lewd jokes, and soon we came to a garlanded two-storey house, painted with curling vine-stalks, and lit outside with flaring torches.
‘Oh, by the Mother, not Phason’s,’ cried Durano.
‘Come on!’ yelled Tascus and I together, pulling him in.
We entered a low smoky crowded room. There were tables, each with its own little lamp, shaded with a cover of fretted earthenware – the kind of thing one sees in eating-houses, when they want to give themselves an air of something special.
I had never been inside Phason’s before, but Tascus and Romulus were clearly well known, and as we pushed in among the tables they shouted greetings to friends, and slapped shoulders, and grabbed proffered hands. Some of the patrons were busy at dice or knucklebones; but for most it was the girls that were the attraction.
Phason himself came bustling from the back. He was a large Syrian with a black bush of beard and jangling br
acelets. With a good deal of elaborate greeting he conducted us to a free table, and clapped his fat hands for the serving-slave. The wine came quickly, and with it the girls, wearing low-cut dresses of see-through orange silk, open at the sides. One squeezed in between Tascus and Romulus. The other pushed Durano along the bench, then edged in next to me.
‘Hello,’ she said, reaching across me to fill her wine-cup and mine. ‘My name’s Brica. What’s yours?’
I told her. She was emaciated and grey-skinned, with red-painted lips, and cheeks smudged with carmine. She looked as if she were sickening with a fever.
As she wriggled in beside me, her tiny dress rode up. I noticed she had a large yellow bruise on her thigh, high up near the groin. She reached out and began toying with Durano’s close-cut fuzz of hair, plucking and smoothing the little soft tufts, saying it was like a puppy’s. Durano flinched. He seemed not to like this; after a moment, when she did not cease, he removed her hand.
Then, pouting, she turned back to me.
‘That’s a nice name,’ she said, making eyes at someone across the room. From her hot body came the odour of cheap perfume, and female sweat.
I made some answer and drank. Across from me, Romulus was laughing like a man possessed, though no one had said anything funny; and Tascus’s thick face was a mask of concentration as the girl beside him jabbered some nonsense about her earrings. His thick, hairy hand, I noticed, had slipped beneath the table, and was moving slowly in her lap.
I rubbed my eyes. My head was spinning from the wine. Now that I had sat down, I could feel a vague rising sickness in the pit of my stomach. I asked myself why I could see nothing beautiful in these women, when the other men clearly saw so much.
The girl had hooked her calf around mine. I could feel her sharp toenails scratch my skin. She kept giggling and pulling faces at her friend opposite. I glanced at Durano, wishing he would talk to me. But his head was down and he was looking glumly into his wine-cup.
Over the weeks I had known them, along with all the other jokes, there had been the usual banter about women. Tascus and Romulus were the worst. Durano, at such times, said little, though once I heard him say, when Tascus was holding forth, that he was all talk and no action. As for me, I had my own reasons for silence, never having mentioned – not even to Durano, with whom I was closest – that I had never been with a woman.
