The Republic soldiers were as stiff as statues, swords upraised, mouths open in midshout. Leigh was poised on top of his opponent, arms tangled and teeth bared. Hans was staring at the centurion commanding the guards, probably conjugating Latin verbs even while paralyzed. Linh, her clothing torn, was gazing down at the man they’d subdued. Lurking under the eaves of the shed, Emile looked younger and smaller than ever.
Julie was in the strangest posture. She was poised on one foot, impossibly balanced in the act of falling. Her nose was bleeding, but she looked ferociously angry.
Eleanor had dropped to her knees, trying to ward off any more attacks on France.
The light vanished. It was there, and then it was not.
France’s pain was gone. He put a hand to the spot over his right kidney where the legionnaire had stabbed him. His shirt was cut, but the wound was gone. There wasn’t even any blood.
Julie spun around, caught herself, and stopped. She put a hand to her lips. No blood.
The centurion quickly directed his troops to round them up, but he was quite calm about it. The eight teens were escorted back to their places while the three would-be rapists were given a fierce tongue-lashing by the centurion. Hans caught the word verbera, “a beating,” and knew the offenders were going to get more than chewed out.
Shuffling back to the corral surrounded by surprisingly even-tempered guards, Leigh said, “What just happened?”
Hans said, “I don’t know.”
“What was that light?”
France felt his back again and didn’t answer. Whatever it was, he was grateful for it.
Back in the barn, Jenny sat down heavily in her corner. Given all that had happened, she wanted to shout, to run, to kick something or someone as hard as she could. Instead, she felt an incredible calm settle over her. In moments she was asleep. Far back in her mind, her brain cried out in outrage, but her body went slack when her eyelids closed.
Julie took a little longer to submit, but she too seemed unnaturally calm after the violence they’d barely escaped. She remembered it all: the blows, the struggle, the smell of the soldier who gripped her so roughly. She remembered but for some reason didn’t care. Julie saw Jenny slump into slumber and marveled at her coolness. Then she sank back into silence and darkness, wrapped in unnatural peace.
Linh could not stop trembling. As for Eleanor, Linh didn’t see her. She was with them when the guards herded them into the barn. Where was she now?
Linh sat in the dark, shaking. She wondered if the others had perceived what she had. As they were stricken by the brilliant light in the sky, Linh heard voices along with the glare—voices inside the light. She couldn’t tell how many or who they were, but she heard a distinct undertone of muttering. They terrified her. Who had she heard? God? Angels? Beings from outer space? She did not believe in any of these things, but she heard what she heard. Perhaps the most frightening thing of all was the fact no one else seemed to have heard anything.
The night was close around her. Linh detected no more voices, and shortly before sunrise, her fear waned enough to let her sleep.
One by one the boys subsided. Hans felt like he did the time he was given anesthetic gas at the dentist. His arms and legs felt set in concrete while his mind raced around inside his skull, frantic to get out. Only when the dentist increased the flow of oxygen did Hans pass out. Now as he thought about this experience, the same thing happened. His terror at being paralyzed faded. The last thing he saw was Leigh Morrison slumped against a corral post. He looked asleep, but there were tears trickling down his face.
Leigh told himself he had failed. That SOB grabbed Julie, and he wasn’t able to stop him. If that light hadn’t gone off, he, Hans, and France would be dead now, and worse would have happened to Julie and the girls. The flash saved everybody. Good thing, whatever it was . . . His burning eyes closed.
Snores and raspy breathing around France made him feel very alone. He wanted to talk to somebody about what happened, but everyone was asleep. He called out in a loud whisper to Hans, who didn’t respond. The American guy looked comatose. Where was the Belgian chocolate hater? France turned stiffly—his neck felt like it was in a vise—but he didn’t see Emile anywhere. Did the guards take him away?
He lay there a long time, one cheek in the dirt. Unable to move, all France could see was a bit of the pen, the barn where the women and children were kept, and some of the path up to the farmhouse. After a time, he heard faint movement nearby. Slowly, a pair of tiny white feet appeared in his narrow view. At first he thought one of the farm children was out, prowling around, but the feet (and legs above them) were remarkably pale, whiter than any flesh ought to be. They crossed in front of France, close enough for him to hear the tiny footfalls. He struggled to lift his head but only managed to grunt a little from the futile effort. Nevertheless, his visitor seemed startled by the sound and fled.
France looked on in amazement as the little prowler ran past the barn. It wasn’t a person at all, by the look of it. The slim figure, the white limbs were quite clear—and quite impossible.
The goddess statue the farmer kept in a shrine in his yard was walking around, inspecting the captives. France had seen the statue earlier, after the farmer’s daughter left an offering to it. Now it hurried away on slender marble feet. It glanced back once and met the gaze of his open eye. Though its movements were as fluid as any woman’s, its face was an unliving mask of marble.
It took a long time after that for France to fall asleep.
Dawn stirred the farm anew. The stout farmer and his family got to work at first light, as farmers have always done. They did not pretend to be quiet, and soon the Carleton captives stirred from their dewy places, blinking at the sunrise.
The first thing France did was check his back. The cut in his shirt was still there, but his skin was unpierced. The night’s adventure seemed so unreal, but there was a hole in the shirt where the soldier had stabbed him. Just as strange were the miniature footprints in the dirt around him, perfect impressions of tiny female feet.
His amazement was cut short when Leigh called out to him. France followed the American’s pointing hand and saw three men, stripped of their arms and armor, tied to posts in the farmer’s yard. They hung by their bindings, limp and lifeless.
The centurion strode past, barking orders.
“Ration breakfast this morning! No fires! The march will begin as soon as the prisoners are roused and in order!”
France understood every word he said.
A soldier with a lion’s skin wrapped around his shoulders doubled up and replied, “Can we refill our canteens at the farmer’s well?”
“Detail three men to fill them all,” said the centurion.
He understood the exchange completely. Were the soldiers now speaking French? To the centurion France said mildly, “Sir, what will happen to the men who attacked the girls last night?”
Without batting an eye, the centurion snapped, “They have paid the price of indiscipline!” He moved on, bawling at his men to get them moving.
Hans sidled up. “Either my Latin has vastly improved overnight or they’re speaking German this morning!”
“French, you mean.”
They gave each other a startled look. Hans closed his eyes and sang softly, “‘O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, thy leaves are so unchanging . . .’” He opened his eyes. “That was German, was it not?”
France shook his head. Concentrating, he tried to recite “La Marseillaise” in his native language. Hans assured him he followed every word.
All over the farm the Carleton party were freely using their newfound fluency. People who hadn’t spoken to each other during the entire voyage due to language barriers now addressed each other with ease and clarity.
Leigh was so disturbed by this development, he squatted in the corral writing in the dirt with a twig. Fran
ce and Hans spotted him staring hard at what he had written.
“What is it?” France said.
Leigh’s brow furrowed deeply. “I tried to write, ‘I am eighteen years old,’ in English.” What was traced in the dirt read “Ego sum duodeviginti annus vetus.”
“That’s not English, is it?” he asked helplessly.
“It’s Latin!” said France at the same time Hans did.
Something very strange was going on. Stranger still was the fact that most of the people from the Carleton accepted this profound change with little more than a shrug and a smile. The situation, though perilous, suddenly felt a lot less dangerous now that everyone understood what everyone else was saying. What mechanism brought this about, no one knew—and few seemed to care.
The women and children filed out of the barn, prodded by soldiers. There was much yawning and stretching, but the feel of things had radically changed. Legionnaires moved among the prisoners, dispensing bread, water, and small, hard apples to every open hand. Their swords were sheathed, and no one appeared distressed by their captivity. Children laughed and darted among the stationary adults. One of the farmer’s children followed behind the soldiers passing out fruit, collecting apple cores to feed to their hogs.
Not all the women were relaxed. Julie was glad her nose wasn’t broken, but she remembered every indignity of the previous night. When she asked about the man who abducted her, his fate was pointed out to her. Seeing a man beaten lifeless, tied to a post, made her sick inside. The Carleton women around her took it all in stride.
Linh, sluggish from lack of sleep, was so amazed she could understand her captors, her throat locked up, leaving her speechless. It was Jenny who made the connection no one else noticed.
“The flash of light last night, that’s what did it,” she said, munching an apple between swigs of well water. Julie asked how. “I dunno. All I know is everything is different since the bright light.” That could not be denied.
The prisoners lined up in the road without complaint. Soldiers noisily counted them twice, coming up two short both times. Annoyed, the centurion pushed his way through the crowd, eyeing their faces. He soon discovered who was missing.
“A boy, black hair, this high.” He held a hand edge against his shoulder. “The swarthy girl with the bandage on her arm. Find them!”
Eleanor was in the barn, asleep. She had covered herself in straw and not heard the call to rise. Looking dazed and young, Ms. Martinez led her out to join the others.
Emile proved harder to find. The centurion was about to declare him escaped and start a hunt when the farmer’s wife descended the hill from her house calling, “He’s with us! O great sir, the boy is with us!”
The centurion said, “In your house?”
The farmer’s wife nodded. “When Aurora opened my eyes, he was at the table reading my husband’s almanac.”
Sometime before dawn, Emile had entered the house and helped himself to some cider. He sat by an open glassless window and read the only book the farmer possessed, a short scroll containing a list of omens, good and bad, and the best dates for planting crops.
“Who does he think he is, Tribune Titus? Get him out here!”
Appearing relaxed, Emile came down the rocky path to join the rest of the Carleton people.
Hans whispered to him, “Are you well?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“What happened to you?”
Emile gazed skyward. “There was a flash . . . I was looking right at it. I couldn’t see for a while and stumbled until I found myself in the farmer’s house.”
“We all know Latin!” said Leigh.
Emile smiled. “Yes. High time, too.”
Chapter 12
On the way to Eternus Urbs, Leigh decided to escape. He had always wanted to, but on the beach or in the pine barrens, there was nowhere to go. The Latin soldiers (that’s what Hans said people from a country called Latium would be called) were well armed and knew their business. After the three soldiers were executed for attempted rape, all muttered talk of escape ceased. Leigh nourished freedom in his mind. As their journey lengthened, he began searching for new possibilities for escape. It would not be a mass exodus. The curious passivity of most of the Carleton survivors continued. Only the eight of them involved in the brawl at the farm seemed unchanged
Half a day from the farm, they reached a great, wide road, arched in the center and well paved, a real Roman road. Signposts pointed the way to places called Voluptario, Fumidus Villa, and Eternus Urbs. Traffic increased, too. Wagons drawn by oxen were common, laden with goods for trade in town. Farmers pushed barrows of produce, and single travelers went on foot or horseback. Everyone wore the simplest clothes—shifts, kilts, and poncholike garments against the morning chill.
Julie asked where all the togas were. Didn’t those old Romans wear bedsheets all the time?
“Not bedsheets,” said Emile. He had taken to lingering behind the others, watching and listening. “Togas are real garments, and only true-born male citizens are allowed to wear them.”
“I bet you’d look lovely in one,” Julie replied.
Once a chariot rattled past. It was pulled by a matched pair of snow-white horses, the most beautiful animals Linh had ever seen. Too bad the man driving them was short, bald, and had an enormous nose, made even more prominent by the wart on the end. Homely he was, but the centurion cleared the road to let him by. Six sturdy men plodded along behind him on an odd mix of elderly horses, donkeys, and a mule.
“All hail Lucius Calvus!” the centurion said after the chariot clattered over the hill and out of sight. He laughed.
“Who’s he?” asked Hans.
“One of the richest men in the city out inspecting his holdings. See his escort?” said the centurion. His name, they had discovered, was Durus Silex. “Rich as he is, he won’t mount his guard properly and let’s them founder along like a troupe of comedians.”
On either side of the road were many prosperous farms. The land was covered with them, growing everything from olives to grapes to hectares of grain, still green and rippling like ocean waves with every puff of breeze. It was this bounty, and the fact that many people were about, that gave Leigh hope of escape. Now there were places to hide and people to blend in with. The fact that he could read and write Latin now only made escape seem more possible.
When he wasn’t tied up helping carry Mrs. Ellis’s litter, Leigh stayed by France Martin and Hans Bachmann. They were ready to run away, too. France was convinced they faced a life of slavery if they didn’t.
Hans’s concerns were more abstract. He still couldn’t wrap his mind around their predicament. How did they—men, women, and children of the twenty-first century—find themselves shipwrecked in an unknown place resembling ancient Italy? How had they started speaking Latin overnight? Why did their captors not seem to notice the change? How had France and Julie Morrison recover so swiftly and completely from their injuries? Hans had no answers. Such ignorance was hard to handle.
Emile loped ahead a few paces. France tapped Leigh on the arm and gestured. Leigh nodded. The three of them walked faster until they caught up with Emile.
“Listen,” said Leigh quietly. “We want to talk to you.”
“About what?”
Down went his voice. “Escape.”
“Really? Where to?”
“Somewhere away from Silex and his men,” France replied. “I don’t know what they intend for us when we reach the city, but I’m sure it isn’t good. I don’t want to be a slave!”
“Or die in the Arena,” added Leigh.
Emile laughed. The others flinched at the bold sound.
“You’ve seen too many sword-and-sandal epics,” Emile said, chuckling.
“What do you think they’ll do with us?” demanded Leigh.
“I have no idea.”
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br /> “Don’t you care?” asked France.
Emile took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We are in a mystery,” he said at last. “I want to see how it comes out.”
They abandoned him, falling back near the end of the line of captives. Bringing up the rear of the column were the archers. They walked with their bows strung, but their arrows were in their quivers.
Early in the afternoon they passed through a small town, Fumidus Villa. This was the biggest place they’d seen yet, with sturdy two- and three-story buildings of timber and stone. The road widened out into a square (“forum” Silex called it) that was lined on two sides with ramshackle stalls and booths made of weathered lumber and canvas. It was market day, but by this hour, sales were nearly over. Most of the stalls were empty, and the rest were selling off what they could to finish. A carpet of trampled hay, horse dung, and squashed vegetables covered the square.
“Hail, soldier! What ya got there?” called a scruffy stall-keeper. The table in front of her had a few knobby carrots and runty onions left on it.
“Newcomers for the capital,” the centurion replied.
Hans noticed his choice of words: not prisoners, captives, or slaves, but newcomers.
Silex let his men break ranks and buy food from the vendors. Lacking money, the Carleton people stood back until the centurion told the merchants to feed them, too. What about payment, some of them loudly demanded.
“Submit your costs to the First Citizen!” Judging by the faces of the vendors, no one cared to bother the First Citizen of the Republic over a few leftover vegetables.
Leigh sized up his chances. The guards were busy eating, drinking, or flirting with girls in the square. Centurion Silex stood in the midst of the crowd, fists on hips, keeping an eye on everything, but he couldn’t see what was going on at the fringes of the square. Leigh could work his way through the people, get Julie, and run for it as soon as they reached the far edge of the crowd. If the Carleton people made trouble, tying up the soldiers, more of them might get away.
Lost Republic Page 10
