Dragons and Romans

by William David Ellis

  “Oh well,” she sighed again. “It will be all right.” Trying not to admit she really wanted to see Regulus and hoped perhaps he wanted to see her as well. They seemed to have developed a bond, and then the flood of broken soldiers came, and well… he never sent for her or checked up on her. Miriam’s thoughts grew foggy as she slipped off into a well-deserved rest. Issur had finally fallen asleep, and when he did, she didn’t linger long after.

  She was awakened by a call at her tent entrance. “Miriam? Miriam? Are you all right?”

  At first, Miriam didn’t recognize the voice, then she did, and was shocked it was Regulus. “General?” she answered nervously.

  “Yes?” he responded. “May I come in?”

  “Oh General, my tent is a mess. I have not cleaned up… the baby.” And then Regulus entered the tent.

  “I am not used to being told no, ma’am.”

  “Well,” she huffed. “I have a sick child. Sir!”

  Regulus looked at Issur. “So, I can see, and that is why I brought Nachum with me.” Nachum, the brilliant young Jewish physician of the Roman army stood beside Regulus and gestured for the child. “Hey, little guy. What seems to be the problem, huh?”

  Regulus smiled and looked at Miriam. “I would really like to talk with you, Domina Miriam.”

  “General Regulus, I would be honored.” Miriam replied, in a you-picked-a-hell-of-a-time-to-do-it tone that usually included a but somewhere in it. “But couldn’t it wait till morning? I mean, whatever job you want to talk about over bread—I believe that is the term your note used—could probably wait, right? I mean my priority as a mother…”

  Regulus tilted his head, puzzled, “What job, Miriam?”

  “Excuse me?” she returned, just as confused. “In your note right before the battle erupted, the one you wrote to set me free, you said you wanted to discuss a position in the army when I came to eat with you. That is correct, isn’t it?” She asked with every word coming a little slower. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a light began breaking through.

  “Well, I wouldn’t have thought of it as a job,” he whined, a little disappointed.

  “Sir, you have confused me thoroughly,” she said, now starting to hope, but still wanting Regulus to come out with it.

  About that time Nachum, who knew both of them very well, laughed. “I really can’t believe I am hearing this. You would think two people as brilliant as you both would not be….”

  Regulus growled, “Nachum!”

  And Miriam barked, “Shut up!”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” Regulus smiled and then turned back to her. “As to that job, I will expect…”

  Miriam looked at him, both eyebrows raised to her forehead, hands on her hips, and a bright smile beaming. “What, sir, will you expect?”

  Regulus was about to answer when Issus started howling again. As she turned to the child, Regulus followed her and said, “Let me have that boy. I think what he needs is a big Roman finger.” And with that, he inserted his index finger into the baby’s mouth and began to gently rub his aching gums. The child quieted down immediately.

  “Now, seeing as we have solved this problem, at least momentarily, why don’t you and Issur accompany me to my tent and we shall dine and discuss your new position.”

  Miriam really was confused for a moment. There for a second, she allowed her heart to soar. He loves me and wants me to be his wife. Then Regulus seemed to falter, and although fairly sure he was planning on asking her to be his wife, nagging doubts haunted her. He had seemed just about to ask when Issur starting howling. This was frustrating. Her thoughts swirled in a thousand directions, and she didn’t know whether to just play along or ask him what exactly he had in mind.

  Nachum saved the day. “Commander Regulus, you are going to ask Domina Miriam, aren’t you?”

  About that time Han Xing, who had escorted Regulus to Miriam’s tent, piped in, “Yes, you are, aren’t you?”

  Sarrius, who escorted all of them, added his two cents. “Aren’t you?”

  Miriam, seeing the wave headed her way, joined in as well, “Ask me what, for heaven’s sake?”

  “Oh,” Regulus paused, “I thought it settled. I mean, it is obvious, is it not?” A quick look around the room at the frowns and raised eyebrows convinced him it was not obvious and did indeed need to settled.

  “I am not sure this needs to be a staff decision,” he balked. “I mean, I am not planning a battle or commanding a siege. I don’t think I need your help. So, if you will?” he added, pointing to the door, nodding toward it with his head. His friends reluctantly took the hint and filed out the room.

  Miriam pretended to be following them when he grabbed her, “You are not dismissed.” He held her close. The clean scent of her fragrance and the brilliance of her beautiful brown eyes greeted his embrace. He leaned in and kissed her while still holding Issur in his arms. She kissed him back.

  When they broke, she looked up at him, smiled and asked, “What new position?”

  Coming this summer…

  The Princess Who Forgot She Was Beautiful

  The old man sat down slowly, listening to his joints crack as he eased into his chair. He wasn’t sure he should be doing this. He had never been very good at speaking to children, but his daughter, the city librarian, had insisted, begging him to come and tell stories to the children gathered to her library for summer vacation. Their mothers were grateful for the small break it gave them to shop, catch up on chores, or just take a nap. His daughter was excited the kids were doing something besides sitting in front of a video screen. Only the old man was struggling with it. He was not sure what he would tell them. Should he read a book or try to tell a story? He didn’t know many stories. Actually, he only really knew one, and that one was so outrageously unbelievable, he did not want to tell it. So, as he lowered himself into his creaking chair and faced the squirming horde of children, he didn’t know where to begin. He had some story books he could read and was prepared to read them, but they really didn’t appeal to him much more than facing down the pack of noisy, constantly moving ankle-biters that confronted him. So, he took a deep breath and began with a question.

  “Well, now my dears...” he began. His tone of voice changed, and he slipped into the magical mode he automatically moved into when addressing a group of people. He moved closer to them and bent down slowly, studying them until he had captured every gaze. Then speaking in a slow, deep voice, he asked, “Do you know a story about dragons?”

  He was immediately answered with a chorus of loud replies, some excited, others frowning and revealing their exposure to a virtual world where everything existed. One sadly obnoxious little child with a tight smile that hid a mean little spirit started to mock the old man but was stunned to silence when the old man rumbled in a stern commanding voice, “No, I mean a real dragon.” The look on the man’s face combined with the authority of his tone quieted the group.

  A little girl of about five said, “My momma said there is no such thing as real dragons.”

  She said this in such a tentative way that the old man immediately responded, “And she is right little one .... There are no more dragons… Not now... But there were. This story only has one dragon in it, so it’s really not scary, and it’s really not about the dragon.”

  “So, what is it about?” the little girl asked.

  The old man smiled and said, “It is about a princess who forgot she was beautiful.”

  “Really, how did she do that?” a curly-haired darling with wide brown eyes asked.

  “Was she hurt?” a pigtailed little freckle-faced cutie wanted to know.

  “Did she get hit on the head?” a rambunctious little boy laughed, then stopped for a moment to hear the answer.

  “Well, let me tell you about her,” the old man began.

  “Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess who forgot she was beautiful. So, she didn’t act like she was beautiful. People were always telling her she was a prince
ss and that she was a beautiful young woman who at sixteen should know better and shouldn’t act like she didn’t. Even though everyone told her she was beautiful, she could not believe them. So she spit, said bad words, got into fights, laughed when she shouldn’t, and generally made a nuisance of herself, and that was just the beginning of her troubles… but I am getting ahead of myself...Now, where was I?”

  “She was spitting and acting mean,” answered the big-eyed little girl on the front row, her gap-toothed smile beaming.

  “Oh yes, she was a mess and headed for bigger messes … until she met the boy who had forgotten how to be brave. But I’m still getting ahead of myself, and that’s not in the best tradition of stories is it? Now, where was I? Yes, the princess had forgotten she was beautiful. How could such a thing happen, you ask?”

  “Are you sure she wasn’t dropped on her head?” a busy little boy with blue teeth from sucking a lollipop asked. “My sister was a cheerleader, and her squad threw her into the air and dropped her, and she couldn’t remember anything for a whole day!”

  The old man shook his head, looked across his reading glasses and frowned, then continued on. “Everyone knows that princesses are always beautiful. But she had forgotten she was beautiful because no one continued to tell her, no one who really loved her. You see her parents were so busy running the kingdom and doing royal things that they didn’t get to talk to her much. When they did, it was always: How are your grades? Are you minding your manners? And such as that. She didn’t remember sitting on her father’s lap or at her mother’s knee. She didn’t remember being told she was so pretty by an adoring father or having her hair combed by a preening mother. She had never even ever, ever been told a goodnight story. So, quite naturally, she forgot she was beautiful.

  “Now many unscrupulous young men tried to tell her she was pretty. But their words somehow came out garbled or stammering such things as ‘I like me and want you,’ or ‘I would look good with you,’ and other things not suited for this story. Their words came out garbled but true because her fiery godfather had given her a gift. It looked like a simple jeweled ornament to wear with a dress. But it was a discern-ornament. And anyone who spoke to her would have to say what they meant, even if they didn’t mean to say it.

  “But no one told her she was beautiful until one day the princess was walking through the town market looking at all the little shops and venders, who were selling everything from chickens to toys that made bubbles, when she heard a loud clamor, then a clatter, then squealing and screaming and more clamor.”

  “Excuse me... excuse me,” the little girl on the front row interrupted, raising her hand and demanding to be seen. “Excuse me!”

  “Yes?” the old man peered over his glasses, stopped the story, and stared at her. “What is it...?”

  “I don’t know what clamor is. What’s a clamor? I never heard of it before. Is it like loud noise or what?”

  The old man looked at her, stroked his chin, wiped the itch off his mustache, and forcing a frown in front of the smile that hid in his eyes said, “Clamor means bellow or bawl or a holler. It can mean an uproar, commotion, or racket … understand?”

  “No sir,” she said quietly.

  A little boy in the back stood up quickly to laugh at the young girl and accidentally knocked over a small bookcase. Books went flying, and children went sprawling, and finally when the commotion had settled down and the librarian and the old man had got everybody’s attention back, he said with a sigh, “Young lady, that was a clamor.”

  She looked up at him and smiled brightly showing the gap in her baby teeth and said, “Oh.” Then like a royal princess addressing a court jester, she said, “Carry on, please.”

  He laughed and said, “I’m trying.” Then began, “The commotion in the market was so loud the crowd merged like a muddled river and ran and walked and stumbled in the direction of the noise. When the princess finally got to the center of the racket, she heard the loud squeals of a full-grown piney woods rooter.

  Several small heads tilted like a puppy convention, and the old man stopped and asked, “You mean you don’t know what a piney woods rooter is?”

  The snaggle-tooth spokeswoman addressed him so shyly and embarrassed he almost laughed. “No sir, we don’t.”

  “It’s the dragon, isn’t it?” the little boy who had knocked down the bookshelf yelled. “It’s a dragon. I know.”

  The old man looked at him and said, “Of course not! If it were a dragon, the market would have been engulfed in flames! It was an escaped boar hog. A huge, five-hundred-pound big, bristle-back, sharp-tusked, angry pig! It seems a local farmer had wanted to sell the animal and brought him to market in a most unusual fashion. The hog was so big, its pen would not fit in the back of the farmer’s wagon. So, ingenious fellow that the farmer was, he kept the pig in its pen but carved out some places for the animal’s feet to fit through and then walked the squealing pig inside his mobile cage to market.” The old man squealed, “SQWEEEE, EEESQWEEEEEE,” and the children laughed and laughed and tried to mimic him and asked him to teach them, and of course upset a few chairs, and finally once again they settled down, and the old man continued the story.

  “But the pig was so big, and the pen so fragile that when the piney woods rooter got to market and smelled the roasting pork and frying bacon, he panicked, broke out of his fragile pen, snorted, screamed, and ran away from the farmer! Squealing and snorting, he tore through the market, upsetting tables with his great tusks. He knocked down people and smashed through fruit stands. Then the pig’s deep-seated, mean little eyes sighted a poor young man. The pig grunted fiercely, lowered its head, and charged the boy who tore down the street running for all he was worth. Finally, the pig cornered the young man. The piney woods rooter trapped the boy against a vender’s fruit table and proceeded to take out his anger on him by tearing out the seat of his pants and chasing him under the fruit table. The pig pushed his big, slobbery snout under the table, rooting and snorting, desperately trying to take out his vengeance on the poor boy.

  “But the young man tired of it, and angry and embarrassed, he reached up and grabbed the big pig by his nose…” The old man halted in mid-sentence compelled by the confused faces of audience. “You see, the boy had been brought up on a farm and knew how to get a large hog’s attention by pinching it on the nose and climbing on its back. With one arm still wrapped around the beast’s snout and two fingers in its nose, he pushed the hog’s great head out from under the table and proceeded to jump on its back.”

  “Yuck, that’s nasty,” the little girl on the front row frowned, then turned to see a studious young man seated next to her with his fingers in his own nose trying to figure out the proper hog taming technique. The little girl gagged and leaped away from her companion. The old man, chortled, shook his head, ignored the turmoil, and continued his narrative.

  “The young man did just that and began riding the hog back through the market to the farmer. But the gallant hero, caught up in the moment and concentrating on getting the hog safely back to the farmer, had forgotten the deplorable state of his britches. The market venders, appreciative of the young man’s efforts, applauded. The unthinking and forgetful lad, grateful for the attention of the crowd, bowed, proudly revealing his battered bottom side. The crowd began to laugh reminding him of his deplorable condition, and he immediately grabbed the first person close to him without really looking to see who he had taken hold of and shouted, “Shield me!”

  “It was just at this moment that the princess had walked up to the young man, and when the young man bowed, she was the closest person to him and wound up being nabbed for the duty of backside-covering.

  “The crowd roared in laughter at the young man’s discomfort. He still had not noticed who he had grabbed to shield him. He was facing forward and carefully walking backwards causing the princess to walk backwards with him.

  “Together they almost cleared the central market like a pair of crabs gently retre
ating from a net when one of the market vendors recognized the princess and gasped, ‘Your majesty!’ The young woman tried to quickly hush the man, but it was too late. The whole crowd took up the cry. The back-peddling pig warrior stopped, turned red as a beet, closed his eyes, and gently shook his head in unbelief. He still had not looked at the princess behind him. She was grimacing at his discomfort, embarrassed for him. He was holding her tightly to him covering his ripped pants. When he stopped at the crowd’s alert, he had forgotten where he had placed his hand. Suddenly remembering, he jerked his hand away like she was a hot coal, brought both hands around to cover his backside, and turned to face her.

  “The princess winced, and tongue-tied, attempted to say something comforting but only managed, “Hi,” in a very awkward sort of way. She closed her eyes in extreme discomfort and embarrassment as the young man clinched his teeth and answered, “Hi,” back. Finally, the young man’s courage broke. He could bear his embarrassment no longer and took off running. He tripped over a bunch of spilt vegetables on his way out, jumped up and ran as fast and as far from the laughing crowd as he could.

  “The princess wasn’t laughing. She was very, very quiet. A person in the crowd caught her look and immediately grew still. Another stopped to see why their friend had gotten quiet and saw the same cold stare of the princess. He gulped and also grew very still, silenced by the princess’ chilling gaze. Soon, a chain reaction of stillness fell on the whole group. One by one they slipped away until the princess was left standing alone in the street.

  “The princess didn’t notice. She walked slowly away, dazed. She should have been angry because she was the one the young man grabbed, drawing her close to cover himself, but she was not. She was angry because the people had mocked him. He had single-handedly pulled down a five-hundred-pound sharp-tusked, wild animal that could have torn someone to pieces, and the crowd, whose fortunes and possibly even lives he had saved, only laughed at him. That made her mad! She also realized she didn’t know the young man, and that his bravery should be rewarded. So, she made up her mind, right on the spot, that is what should happen and would happen.