The Eagle and the Dragon, a Novel of Rome and China

by Lewis F. McIntyre

  It’s not like that in Rome anymore, Papa. They have the Principiate, ruled by the Princeps Optimus, the Best Ruler. To call someone a republican is to accuse them of treason, for believing that power comes from the people, not the princeps.

  I know. But we had a good long run with that idea. And someday, someone somewhere will rediscover what we did, and build on it, and keep the idea going.

  He read the words on the scroll, well over a hundred years old, and felt connected to his ancestor by five generations, Marcus Lucius of the III Cohort, who had so narrowly missed his own execution. If those men had not recorded their romanitas and passed it on with their language, then Marcus and Marcia would just be Hanaeans with unusual blue eyes from some long-forgotten foreign ancestor. And the Gan Ying expedition might not have taken place without translators fluent and literate in both Latin and Hanaean. And there would have been no return trip by Aulus, and Marcia would not be married to Antonius. He might also still have his balls, too, but maybe there is a purpose in that, too, though hard for him to see what it might be.

  You’re deep in thought, son

  Feeling connected, like I never have been before. The gods weave a magnificent tapestry of threads that direct our lives.

  And we help weave them too, with our choices. Like their choice to preserve their Romanitas.

  Is this … are you… real? Am I really talking with your manes, your ghost?

  It’s real enough to me, son, said his father’s shade with a laugh. But I can’t stay much longer. I can’t explain, but some time from now, my echo will finally die out, and you will call, and I won’t be able to be here for you.

  I am thinking, I might want to stay, to not go back to Rome with Marcia. That will be hard for both of us. What should I do?

  You are a man now, sui manus, in your own hands. You’ll have to choose. I would suggest talking to Marcia first, though. Well, even shades have to sleep. Enjoy Ennius.

  Marcus read the familiar text for several hours. Considering it was written from memory, it was not badly done. Marcus had brought back a copy of the real Annales, along with a copy of Livy’s new history of Rome, Ab Urbe Condita, From the Foundation of the City, considered the most comprehensive history to date. He had hoped to somehow get the books to his father, but they were back in his quarters in Luoyang, and his father was dead.

  Marcus set the scroll aside, poured himself a cup of wine, feeling more at peace with himself than he could remember. He fell asleep in the chair.

  The next day, he went to meet with a childhood friend, Frontinus Quintilian and their other old friends, the gathering prearranged during the wedding. They had been inseparable as youths, their pranks probably contributing to several of the grey hairs streaking their fathers’ heads. It was a most enjoyable gathering, and he retold his story again to a group of men who had never been fifty miles from home, about the magnificence of Rome with its magnificent white marble buildings, much more than the tales of Rome on which they had been raised. This had indeed been a momentous journey that few men had ever done, and he began to grasp its magnitude, and to take some justifiable pride in what they had done. Enroute, he had never felt the accomplishment, living it one day at a time. But in the retelling, the scope manifested itself, reflected in the eyes of the listeners.

  It was disappointing, though, as theirs was probably the last generation in Liqian to retain the dream of Rome. The younger children had no interest in Latin, and Rome to them was somewhere between a great exaggeration and a complete myth. Sulpicius was dead, and no one had bothered to continue his Latin school.

  Marcus rode back to the encampment, to find Marcia outside her yurt tending a fire.

  “Hello, sis. How is the consummation going?” asked Marcus with a big grin.

  “Oh, about as well as can be expected. How is Mama?”

  “Doing well. So is Papa.”

  “You talked to him, too?” she asked quizzically.

  “I think it really is the old man’s manes. But a friendly one.”

  “Yes, he is a sweetheart. I think he couldn’t bear the thought of missing our return.”

  “Marcia, I have something to discuss, very important,” he said, as he dismounted, sliding easily off the horse. He sat down on a log by the fire. “Marcia, I think I might want to stay here, and not continue on.” His heart pounded, she would be very shocked at that.

  She sat in silence for several minutes, sitting very straight, staring into the fire. Then finally, just a simple, “Why?” Her voice quivered a bit, betraying her reaction.

  “This is home to me, sis, in a way Rome can never be. I got together with Frontinus and the gang, and the past ten years just fell away. And Mama, she needs someone to care for her. I have been happier the past two days than I have ever been, I feel like a dried up plant whose roots have just found water again.”

  “What would you do here?”

  “Well, old Sulpicius has died, and his school is closed. I have picked up much improved grammar from being in Rome. I could reopen his school, and try to rebuild the dream. And maybe learn Parthian, some other languages, too. They thought I had a talent for them back in Luoyang.”

  Marcia sat, continuing to stare into the fire, the silence palpable between them. Finally, her eyes brimmed over with tears. “I can’t imagine life without you, brother, you have been my rock and I’ve been your pebble our whole lives together.”

  “Nor I without you. You’re the reason I didn’t kill myself ten years ago, when I cried for hours into your skinny shoulder, after they ‘settled me down’.” His eyes were hot, near to overflowing also. “Papa said I should discuss my decision with you first.”

  “That’s nice of him,” she said, choking on her tears.

  “If you want me to come with you, I will.”

  Marcia struggled to get her emotions under control, and neither said anything for another few minutes. Then Marcia wiped her eyes and spoke. “I can’t ask that of you, brother. It’s just that I will miss you terribly.” She turned toward him and buried herself in his arms, sobbing uncontrollably, her whole body shuddering. “I love you, brother!”

  Then Marcia pulled away and tried to recompose herself. “We are leaving day after tomorrow. In my toy box, there is a little Hanaean bamboo poem, Mama gave it to me on my twelfth birthday. Would you bring that please before we leave?”

  So Marcus packed out his belongings from the tent and returned to the house. The next day, the group gave him a great going away. Aulus determined that there might be a way to communicate with Marcia, if Marcus could find people on a westbound caravan going to Roman territory to carry a sealed letter. All they had to do when they arrived would be to drop off the letter to any Roman government or military person, and it would be in Aulus’s cubiculum in Rome a few weeks later, delivered by the cursus publicus Roman government mail Aulus gave him his seal to use for the letters. It was a long shot, but better than nothing.

  The next morning at daybreak, the massive encampment broke up their yurts and set out, encumbered by their flocks and herds. Marcus had spent his last night in the communal yurt, rising to see them off.

  His staying behind put a damper on Marcia’s spirits for several days. This did seem to be a better choice for him, but gods, she was going to miss him!

  That night they encamped in the Zhangye area, then got underway again at first light, passing through brilliantly colored rock formations. Broad parallel stripes of red, yellow, white, green, brilliant turquoise blue, violet, each nearly equal in width, looked as though the gods had a draped a brilliantly striped blanket over the rolling mountains. The road meandered along the side of these magnificent multicolored cliffs for miles and miles.

  Hina rode up alongside Marcia, her body rolling easily in the saddle with the motion of Eagle between her thighs. “Beautiful, isn’t it? I have always loved crossing these mountains.”

  “Yes, they are beautiful,” answered Marcia, but without much enthusiasm.

  “
Missing our brother, my sister?” asked Hina, sympathetically.

  “He’s my brother, and yes, I am,” she answered curtly, then retracted it almost at once. “I’m sorry, that’s unkind. You’re trying to be friendly, and I am being nasty because I am miserable. Yes, I am missing him. We hope we might be able to exchange letters, but realistically, he is lost to me forever.”

  “He made his choice. And you have put up with my bad temper more than once, for less reason. How is your battle scar coming?”

  “Antonius took the stitches out yesterday, and other than itching a lot, it looks like it’s fine. Antonius wants to rub some cream onto it to keep the scar soft, I can’t imagine why.”

  “Men!” she laughed.

  Hina made her excuses and rode off on Eagle. She was newly appointed by the shanyu to head up a zuun of a hundred men, and they would be riding out ahead as scouts in front of the migration by several miles, wary of the Han fort at Jiuquan two hundred miles ahead.

  It was December, and the nine-hundred mile transit from Liqian to Turfam was made miserable by the weather, taking almost two months. At one point, fierce westerly winds brought in a blinding sandstorm from the Taklamakan desert, which, combined with daylong subzero temperatures, forced the migration to lay over for a week, huddled in their yurts around dung fires and wrapped in blankets.

  They reached Turfam in mid February, and mercifully, temperatures stayed above freezing most of the day. The migration would lay over for several days here, to allow the animals and people to recover from the arduous trek. Here was the departure point for the Xiongnu. They would be continuing to Dzungaria hundreds of more miles to the north, between the Tien Shan and the Altai mountains, while Aulus’s party would find a way to continue west. It would be another sad parting of the ways.

  CHAPTER 68: TWO MOVE ON TOGETHER

  Hina was ambivalent about Galosga’s imminent departure with the Da Qin group. He had touched her heart and healed her soul the way no other man ever could have done, and she would miss him deeply. The “mating” had long since moved past the physical, and she could enjoy sitting quietly with him during her fertile periods, when she normally would not allow any man close to her, and Galosga in turn accepted these periods of intimate abstinence. She fondly remembered one such time when the fierce desert winter relented, sitting alone with him under the night sky, his arm about her shoulders for warmth, telling her the names of the stars and constellations in his own language, and their legends among his people. She trusted him completely, and she would certainly miss him.

  On the other hand, she wanted to end this dependency on him, and go back to being the self-sufficient woman that she had been before. She had her zuun. Only two other women in the oral history of the clan had been warriors, and only one had risen to lead men, and that just an arban, generations past. She looked forward to winter’s abatement when she could begin to train her men in earnest, put her stamp on their style of fighting. She was blazing unknown territory. That part of her looked forward to seeing Galosga on his way, back to the faraway west to find his mysterious wife and children. But that part would miss him also.

  So she was a bit disconcerted to find that he intended to continue on to Dzungaria with the Huyan clan, and request adoption by them. He mentioned this while riding alongside her on a day when the temperature and the wind permitted conversation.

  “Galosga, you can’t do that! You must find your way back home to your family!” she protested.

  “I can do that, and intend to do so.” She hated it when he simply refuted her, without argument. He waited a minute and continued. “I talked to Ibrahim, who has sailed all over the world. He has never heard of any land over the western sea. He said it would be a dangerous trip, trying to find an island, even a big one. We could miss it by a hundred miles and sail right by without seeing it. Still, he offered to accompany me to Gades, and if he couldn’t find a ship that would make the trip, he would buy one and try himself.”

  “So that is your way back.”

  “It is not. I would not risk Ibrahim’s life and his fortune on a dangerous trip like that.”

  “You’re a fool!” she retorted. “I can’t stay mated to you if you come along. You will be on your own.”

  “Perhaps I am a fool, and perhaps I will be on my own. But I am not coming because of you. I have told you of my world. I have been in the world of the west. I was in a city called Alexandria. It must have more people in it than in all my world together, and they have things I don’t even have names for. I can’t live in the west, or east in the Middle Kingdom. Your people are as much like mine as any I have seen. What you have here that is new to me, I have learned to use. Animals that you herd, not hunt, metal, horses. You taught me to ride, and I enjoy the feel of a horse under me. This is my new home, the Huyan clan are my new people. Here I will grow old and die.”

  “Well, you’ll have to do that without me.” And she ran off as she usually did when the conversation didn’t go her way, spurring Eagle to a gallop and whirling away.

  He just kept Gahlida cantering on.

  Hina wound up at Marcia’s yurt, and scratched at the felt door. Marcia admitted her, the inside illuminated with half light from outside. “Well, hello, stranger!” Marcia greeted her cheerfully.

  “I need to talk, Marcia. Galosga insists on continuing on to stay with the clan.”

  “We knew that. He feels very comfortable with your people, and with you.”

  “He’s got to continue on with you. He needs to go back west, and find his way home to his wife and children.”

  “That path is not open to him. But it’s not them you’re worried about, is it?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, feeling on edge.

  “You want to send him on his way, so you can go back to being the tough woman you used to be. But that tough woman is as dead and gone as my meek little Si Huar, and neither of them are ever coming back, Hina. You two share a love for each other that is as special as that between Antonius and me, and I think it frightens you.”

  “Love! Now there is a word out of mushy Hanaean poetry!” scoffed Hina.

  “You know, you and I are the luckiest women in the world,” smiled Marcia. “Most women, be they Roman, Hanaean, or Xiongnu, get about as much choice in their male partner as I did when Wang picked me ten years ago. Roman marriages are made by parents for business ties, politics, or status. Yours are made for clan alliances. And we who get picked, we get the privilege of fucking them when they want to fuck, cleaning for them, cooking their meals, and raising their children. If we are lucky, we get someone we can be comfortable with. If we’re not, we get to put up with beatings, and with their chasing around after other women. You and I, we got to choose the men in our life, and we both chose well.”

  They both fell silent while Hina pondered this, finally getting to the crux of her problem. “I can’t give him what he needs, Marcia. He needs a family and children. I can’t do that… I can’t head up a zuun and be more than his mate, someone who warms his blanket once a week or so. And that is not fair to him. Maybe I could find him another woman who could.” But as soon as she said it, she realized how hard that would be, also… for her. The idea of him being to someone else what he had become to her?

  “Hina, Antonius and I have talked a great deal about what love is and the different ways it shows itself. He says that the highest form of love is the kind that makes you willing to sacrifice something important, even your life, for someone. You have laid out your choices nicely, and those are the two on the table. You have a lot to think about to choose the one that is right for you, and I can’t help. However, I have a few bottles of Liqian wine left over. Would you help me empty them?”

  “Thanks, Marcia, I think I will.”

  So they killed several bottles, not bothering with cups, just passing the open bottle back and forth till they both got a little tipsy, talking about nothing important.

  Then Hina asked, “Can you do me a favor? Can
I have your yurt for a few hours, and you go find Galosga and bring him here? We need to talk.”

  “You have a lot to talk about, you can have it all night if you like. Antonius and I will bunk up in the communal yurt.” She left to find Galosga.

  When Galosga came in a half-hour later, Hina was sitting cross-legged on the blankets. “Please, sit, Galosga,” she said, indicating the place opposite her. “I can talk about things easier with you than any other man, but I still have trouble with some things.

  “First, I am sorry for trying to tell you what choice you should make about where and how to live your life. The reason I treasure you so much as my friend is that you never dictate to me, and I should not do so to you. I did, and that was wrong. If you wish to join our clan, I will not only accept it, I will speak to the shanyu in your behalf. Can you forgive my unkindness?”

  “There is no problem, huldaji, I understand your moods better than you I think. Yes, I forgive you for that very small thing.”

  “This next one will be difficult, and I have asked Tengri to guide us in the path that best suits his will. Galosga, you who fell into my life, continuing as my mate is no longer fair to you if you are to remain here permanently. Either I must become your wife and the mother of our children if you want me, or I must help you find a woman more suitable for you. You deserve a family to replace the one you lost.”