“Marcia was also shaven?” he asked, smiling.
“She was, your Excellency, bald as a goose egg! But I loved her anyway.”
The banter was good, but it was bringing back too many memories for Marcia: the shock and horror she felt when she saw the arrow protruding from his belly, believing him dead. The long days while he lay unconscious, her sitting beside him, telling him stories, holding his hand, certain that he would shortly give a sigh and breathe no more, so soon after she had known love with him. The cups were refilled, except for Marcia’s. She had taken only a few sips, in fear that her increasingly black mood might get out of control if she drank too much.
Dinner was served, a feast that would meet the highest epicurean standards of Rome. Duck, stuffed with oranges, apples and nuts, whole pig stuffed with sausages for entrails, large trout from the mountain streams, roast goat, and of all things, so far inland, oysters and clams. King Vima was particularly proud of these, brought live from Barbaricum at the mouth of the Indus, traveling hundreds of miles overland in seawater chilled with ice from the Hindu Kush.
Marcia sampled the oysters, raw and fresh, but she had little appetite. The visions in her head wouldn’t go away. She was sitting on the floor in Liqian, next to the dead Wang Ming, herself bleeding, looking at the ugly wound she had made in his stomach. But she couldn’t hate him. Suddenly she felt her gorge rise and with a great deal of effort, restrained herself from becoming sick. The room spun, faded, then she was hearing nothing but a distant voice in Latin.
“Domina! Domina!” The voice echoed in her mind. She knew that voice, and it drew her back slowly.
“Domina! Are you all right? What’s the matter?” she heard Antoniu’ voice as the room swam back into focus. No, thank the gods, I am not in Liqian. What’s the matter with me? She became aware that all eyes in the room were on her.
“I am sorry, Antonius. Sorry! It’s like a nightmare, but I am awake, seeing all the bad things… You, almost killed, Ming dead on the floor,” she whispered in Latin, keeping it from the king at least.
Antonius understood at once. He took her hand. “Hold my hand firmly, amorata mea. Focus on me. It happens to many people, they relive a fight in broad daylight, blots out what’s going around them.”
She nodded. “That’s what happened.”
“Just keep holding my hand, and focus on me. I have had this too, sometimes still do, but it’s frightening the first time it happens. Focus on me, and drink your wine. It will help.”
She took a big gulp.
“Good girl! Just keep holding my hand, and it will pass.” She squeezed his big hairy paw as hard as she could, feeling the rough calluses.
Antonius was aware of the king saying something in Bactrian. He shifted linguistic gears to answer. “I am sorry, your Excellency, we were speaking Latin and I missed your question.”
“Certainly. I was hoping she was all right. Do you need a doctor?”
“Er, no,” he said, cobbling together an explanation that would deflect further questions. “It’s a … a woman thing, Your Excellency. She is fine.”
Marcia gave Antonius a crosswise look, then understood.
“She’s not pregnant, by any chance?” asked the king, with concern.
“No, Your Excellency. Just a little discomfort.”
The king clapped his hands to get a servant’s attention. “Some mint tea, for the lady, please. My wife’s preferred remedy. She swears by it.” The servant silently went out and returned shortly with a hot steaming cup.
Marcia took the cup, nodding thanks, and brought it to her lips, inhaling the sweet scents of peppermint, spearmint and some other things she couldn’t identify. She took a sip, swallowed, and almost immediately her mood began to lift. “Thank you, I think this will do nicely!” This is not monthly cramps, but the tea works with whatever it is, anyway.
Antonius said softly into her ear in Latin, “We’ll talk about this more later, I’ll not drink too much so we can. If it comes back, just squeeze my hand, and I’ll make it go away again.”
She nodded. “The tea is miraculous, Your Excellency. I feel better already. Let’s not waste this banquet worrying any more about me!”
“We are glad you are feeling better, young lady. I was concerned.”
“Thank you, and please thank your wife for me,” she said, nibbling on a chicken leg.
This restored everyone’s mood and the gentle hum of conversation resumed. The king turned his attention to Aulus. “So, Senator, where do you go from here?”
“Your Excellency, we were hoping for your advice on that. So far, we relied on caravans to get this far, along with a brief sojourn with the migrating Xiongnu. Our next destination should be Bactra, Demosthenes’ home. That is west of here, not too far, I understand?”
“Just a few days. In fact, I have a military convoy going there at the end of the month, and if you all don’t mind being my guests until then, you are welcome to travel with them, under my safe passage. From Bactra, you will want to go to Aria, also not far, the convoy commander can no doubt connect you with another convoy going there. It is also not far, but that is the limit of Bactrian territory, after that it’s Parthian territory. They are looking for you by name.”
“Is there a way around Parthia?” asked Aulus.
“Not by a route you would want to take. You would have to go around the Caspian Sea, which is a long way through nomadic territories. The nomads, if they like you, will protect you with their lives. If they don’t, they may eat you and make a drinking cup out of your skull. There are no cities there. Best take your chances on the Parthians.”
Gaius nodded in agreement. “XII Ful was based in Baku a few years ago, and it’s about two or three days’ sailing to cross the sea, and nothing on the other shore when you get there. We had a few navy patrols go there for curiosity, or to drop off scouting parties to keep an eye on the Parthians’ flanks, but there isn’t much worth seeing. Hunting, maybe.”
“So, Your Excellency, advice on outwitting the Parthians?” asked Aulus.
“Easy. I have people here whose job it is to get people in and out across borders without being identified. Those beards are new?”
“They are, your Excellency. Shaving is a luxury on a caravan.”
“I imagine so. So don’t shave them. Clean-shaven gills mark you as Roman before you open your mouth.”
Ibrahim had been listening intently. The king shifted his attention to him. “I suspect you might know some tricks of your own.”
Ibrahim smiled, stroking his pointed salt and pepper beard, now with a little more salt and a little less pepper than when he left Luoyang. “Your Excellency, I have some ideas. I’ll be glad to offer them to your people.”
“I am sure you do, my dear scoundrel, and I am sure you will!” he paused and turned his attention to Aulus, who had noted the scribe taking note of this discussion.
“So, Senator, from Aria, you will go northwest to Hyrcania on the southern coast of the Caspian, from there, hug the coast line, until you get to Roman Armenia. About fifteen hundred miles from here. Anyone of you speak Parthian?”
Ibrahim answered up. “I and Yakov speak it passably well, and also Aramaic. Not too different from Bactrian, and spoken commonly there.”
“That’s very good. If you keep your identity under wraps, you should be able to slip right on through. You can either travel alone or in a caravan, whichever you prefer, but it will not be the difficult traveling you had getting here, through desert and mountain country. Cities, inns, you should be fine. I presume you have money?”
“We have Roman gold and silver coins,” answered Ibrahim.
“My treasury can change them for Bactrian and Parthian coins that will attract less attention. Be aware, tensions are starting to heat up with Rome there. My people think Pacorus is casting his eyes on Armenia again. But no one thinks war with Rome will come for several years,” said King Vima.
“Thank you, we will be alert. If I may ask,
if war came between Rome and Parthia, whose side would you be on?” asked Aulus.
“You may. I would be on the Bactrian side. We depend on trade continuing to flow, and our taking sides in your war would disrupt that trade. If I took your side, Pacorus would come to settle scores with me afterward, and Rome has no reach to protect me from that. So, pragmatically, I will remain neutral, go on keeping the worst of the nomads off his eastern flank, and continuing trading with both of you. Though, if I have to employ smugglers to get goods to and from Rome, the wartime prices may not be those to which you have become accustomed.”
“I appreciate you honesty, your Excellency. We will convey that to Trajan.”
“With my regards. Please join me in my private quarters at noon tomorrow for lunch, and we can continue business then, and I may have some more items for us to discuss. For now, I would like to concentrate on enjoying our fine wine, and sharing jokes and stories!”
The servants cleared away the plates, brought out an iced desert, and story swapping began, the hijacking, the firefight at Galle, the small boat pirates in Malacca. The stories slowly turned to ribald jokes, with Marcia first rehashing the one about the traveler among the Xiongnu sharing the chan-yu’s wife for the night. The punchline ‘wrong hole,’ brought down the audience, the king included, and set the tone that they need not be overly concerned with Marcia’s sensibilities.
Antonius closed with one he insisted was a true story from his Syrian tour. “You know, your Excellency, we use camels in the Roman army. One-humpers, not two-humpers like here. I was showing this brand new subaltern tribune - he couldn’t have been eighteen or nineteen, but full of his aristocratic self - I was showing him the lay of the camp, how watches were run, and we got to the camel paddock. I was explaining we used ‘em for transport and such. And he dug me in the ribs and whispered, “Question, centurion! When you and your men need a woman, what do you do around here?’
“And I says, ‘Sir, mostly, they come down here at night and take a camel…’ and he got really red in the face, kind of shocked, and said ‘Not while I am in charge! Any man that does that, I’ll have him flogged!’ And he turns on his heels and struts off.
“So a few weeks later, well after sundown on the first night watch, there’s this hell of a racket from the camels. I and the centurion of the watch grab some boys, torches and weapons to go down and see what’s up. Rustlers? Wolves?
“So we all show up and there’s our young tribune standing behind a camel, who is very upset with what the boy is trying to do, making a big fuss. The men start laughin’ so bad, they dropped their torches. I was afraid they’d set the hay on fire, and the tribune was turnin’ red as a beet. I said, ‘Son, I think you need to step back from the camel before she bites you!’
“So he does, and then glares at me, real angry, ‘Centurion, you told me you men come down here to take a camel when you… when you…’
“You didn’t let me finish, son! I was going to say … ‘to ride into the town a few miles from here where they got a fine brothel.’ At that point, I lost it and doubled up laughing also. I have never laughed till it hurt, but that hurt!”
The king was nigh unto doubling over himself, as was everyone else, howling with laughter at what must have been an outrageously funny incident … except, of course, for the young tribune. All the king could get out was a gasped “True story? True story?”
Gaius chimed in, “True story! You can imagine the nickname the lad got in the officers’ mess. A few months later, he was reassigned to the governor’s staff in Caesarea, and that was the end of his military career!”
“Oh, I should hope so!” The king was laughing so hard he was almost crying. He took a couple of deep breaths, readjusted his crown and said, “And nothing can top that joke! Excellent evening, thank you for accepting my hospitality, and I will see you at noon tomorrow for lunch.” Rustam had silently reappeared in the room from wherever he had been waiting, himself still chuckling over the last joke. “Please escort my guests to their chambers, Rustam, and thank you for preparing such an excellent banquet on such short notice.”
“I am honored, Your Excellency.” He gave a small bow and motioned the party toward the door, while the king departed through another.
Quite a lot of wine had been consumed, and Aulus needed some assistance, a bit wobbly and bleary-eyed. The rest were just happily drunk. Per his promise, Antonius was not, and Marcia had drunk only a few cups. She opened the door and Antonius followed her in. During their absence, servants had moved in a second wooden clothes closet and a bed more suitable for two, nicely cushioned, leaving two oil lamps lit on the wall on shelves on either side. These gave off a bright steady glow, pleasantly scented, for a golden ambience. An air vent somehow brought fresh air into the windowless room, occasionally making shadows dance on the walls.
“Good, I was afraid I was going to have to fight you for the bed, the other one was certainly not for two!” she said, slipping off her cloak and the long stola and hanging them in the closet. She did a quick inventory of the other clothes, several salwar kamis, another stola of a different color, a heavy robe for the bath, and several tunics of different styles. She was still wearing her under tunic, much shorter and more translucent than the cotton one Antonius was wearing, having happily shed his toga and hung it up.
“Damn, it’s been years since I’ve worn a toga. Hmm, my coming of age ceremony, before I joined the army, but I left that one home. I bought one for this mission, which I guess is still in Luoyang, but never wore it once. I’m not even sure if I got the folds right,” he growled.
“You looked fine, carus.” She sat on the bed, her legs folded up under her, with a generous amount of thigh exposed under the short silk. “So, what the hell happened to me this evening?” she asked, as Antonius clambered onto the bed from the other side to sit facing her.
“Is this the first time yer’ve had anything like this?” he asked, looking at her intently. He held both her hands in his on his lap.
“I’ve had bad dreams, but nothing when I was awake,” she answered.
“Like I said, I’ve had I guess, hundreds of young soldiers go through the same thing. Yer mind recoils at killing a human being, and yer first one is especially hard. Yers was especially hard because yer knew him, and maybe cared for him a little.”
She nodded. “He wasn’t always bad. There were times he made me smile.”
“And that’s all right. And the other, about me almost getting killed, well, that one will come back for a while too. The good news is, the more yer talk about these, the better it gets, and one day they’ll be just memories, yer can take them out of their little box in yer mind, look at them, turn them around, and just put them back. They won’t hurt much, or be scary. But that will take a while. Right now, they are like boils in yer mind, yer have ter keep lancing them and squeezing them till they dry up. But don’t do that alone. Have me, or someone else with yer, when yer do that. But don’t bury them. Yer saw what that did ter Hina.”
“Galosga helped her a lot.”
“He may have saved her life. We had a soldier, lost his best friend in battle right next ter him, an’ a couple of years later, he went mad and tried ter kill everyone in his tent. They had ter kill him, and if they hadn’t, we’d have had to execute him, ‘cuz he did kill one of them. Sad.” He paused. “But enough gloomy stuff from me. Do yer feel better?”
In answer, she grabbed Antonius around his neck, kissing him so hard she could feel their teeth clicking together. She was desperate for him, rolled onto her back on the bed and pulled him onto her and into her, no preliminary cuddling needed or wanted. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried his bristly black beard in her shoulder, legs tightly around his waist, and thrust hard and urgently against him, desperate for release. She was normally very attentive to Antonius during their lovemaking, as he was to her, but tonight he was just an instrument for her. It might have been a minute, it might have been five, but when release came, s
he arched against him strong enough to lift him up, her body convulsing under him.
She lay gasping, her body suddenly limp, her heart pounding, breath ragged, the last aftershocks of her pleasure rippling through her flesh. “If this is how these bad daydreams are going to end, I am going to have to dig up those memories pretty often,” she purred, rubbing her cheek against his whiskers.
The next morning, servants brought them breakfast in their rooms, nan and yogurt with juices and tea. And overnight, their personal baggage from the stable appeared, stashed in the hallway for each to pick out their personal belonging. Marcia brought hers and Antonius’ into the room. She went through her bundles, searching for the beautiful dress and jacket that Antonius had gotten her in Turfam. That seemed to fit her mood for the morning.
Properly dressed, everyone waited for Rustam’s summons in Aulus’s room, making comparisons between these and their accommodations back in Luoyang, deciding that both were definitely imperial quality. And Antonius, no stranger to heavy drinking, opined that King Vima was definitely a heavy drinker.
“Are you sure he was drinking the same thing we were?” asked Aulus.
“Aye, I was watchin’ fer that old trick. Speaking of us drinkin’, Senator, how’s yer head this morning?” he laughed, thumping Aulus’s head playfully.
“It’s still on my shoulders, but sometimes I wish it would go away.”
Antonius fished a few pieces of willow bark out of his purse and handed them to Aulus. “Here, chew on these a while. It’ll help yer head. Roman army hangover cure, willow bark.”
About midmorning Rustam summoned them to the king’s private chambers. They went through the throne room, now completely restored to stately elegance after last night’s festivities, and through another door that opened into his private living quarters.
The large living room, with white marble walls and light gray floors overlaid with intricately woven carpets depicting geometric patterns and hunting scenes, was richly but subtly furnished with contrasting brown leather sofas, chairs and small black lacquered tables. A life-size black statue of the goddess Anahita faced the entrance, silently welcoming visitors. Various other plain white marble rectangles held a Buddha contemplating the universe, other small statues, or lamps. Silver circular plaques hung on the walls above the lamps, carved with Greek maenads and other mythological creatures.
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