“Oh, no,” Crus said with a groan. “Stop looking into my soul.”
Rufio remained silent.
“Have you ever pissed yourself in battle?”
“Four or five times.”
Crus looked at him sharply. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I’ve never lied to you.”
“I’m so thirsty now,” Crus said. “I cannot get enough water.”
“That’s common.” Rufio knew that after-battle discussions were vital. They exposed tactical mistakes, and also they enhanced a soldier’s confidence by shining a lamp onto his skills. More importantly, they helped him to face his private horrors. Rufio realized long ago that terrible experiences were tacky as fish glue. They always stuck. The fools were those who denied this and continually pulled them off, ripping away pieces of the soul every time. The wise soldier was he who examined these experiences, accepted them, and then wove them onto his spirit like a section of new garment. Only when they had become a permanent part of his character did they lose their power to torment. Now they could protect and instruct, rather than horrify and corrode.
“The first one I killed I’ll never forget,” Crus said. “He was no more than twenty. The older pirates pushed him forward to take the onslaught. He came at me with a rusty blade. It was pathetic. I sank my sword into his stomach. It went in so easily I wasn’t sure I’d actually done it. His mouth opened and I think he groaned, but I’m not certain. Everything was so quiet. I couldn’t even hear the men fighting beside me. I couldn’t see them either. I couldn’t see anything. Only this boy’s face. His legs turned to mud and he began to sink. He looked so sad. He reached out and tried to grab the front of my lorica. It’s weird, but that I could hear. I can hear it still—his fingernails scraping against the mail. Then he went down. I swear, I almost saw the life escape from his mouth like a vapor. I moved on and we finished our business. Afterward I went back to look at him. His eyes had never closed. His lips were still parted. I was stunned to see that I’d stabbed him four times. I have no memory of that. We threw him over the side like trash. Someone who’d once been a laughing baby at his mother’s breast.”
Rufio let him wallow in his emotions for a bit, then said, “Look at me, tribune.”
Crus turned around.
“Consider this. When I face an enemy on the battlefield, I don’t pause to weep that he might have a wife who will mourn his fall. Or children who will go hungry. Or aging parents who will die bitter and alone. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“I don’t have the luxury to recall the verses of Roman poets singing of the virtues of the colorful barbarians. Their quaint ways and homespun customs. What do those Romans know? Bloodless parasites who rarely venture outside their own villas. Whose idea of barbarism is an undercooked game bird. When a savage three feet away from me draws his sword, I see someone who wants to shatter and burn all I hold dear. All that Rome is. All she’ll ever be.” He paused, then said, “I’m not reluctant to destroy him. I hunger to destroy him.”
Crus turned away from his centurion.
“Sometimes . . . sometimes you frighten me more than the enemy does.”
“If you’re frightened of me, you’re frightened of life.”
“You have a rather grand view of yourself, don’t you?”
“I’m just a simple soldier.”
“That’s all?”
“No more.”
“You’re batting me away again, centurion. I don’t believe you mean that.”
“You’re traveling from Gaul to Egypt to the East—and it’s all Roman. That’s the grandeur. The centuries and cohorts that make it possible. That’s where the greatness lies.”
“And you?”
“I’m just one of thousands. It’s the totality. These soldiers with their courage and their skills and their honor. Their ferocity, too. It’s the legions that are the true pride of Rome. The glory of the human race.”
“May I ask you something very personal?”
“You’re my superior.”
“I’m just a man.”
Rufio smiled. “Please ask whatever you like.”
“How many have you killed? Do you know?”
“I keep no tally. Though others do.”
“Very many?”
“Oh, yes.”
“More than ten?”
“Many more.”
Crus looked away. “Do you know what bothers me the most?”
“Yes.”
He quickly turned back. “You do?”
“Of course.”
“What?”
“You fear that you’ll dream about it.”
“Will I?”
“Times beyond counting.”
Crus sighed and gazed back at the black water.
“Killings never go away,” Rufio said. “They burn your soul like a hot iron. One or a hundred—they sear forever. Now you’ve learned that.”
“That’s not acceptable,” Crus shouted with the patrician arrogance Rufio had not heard in many weeks. “I reject that.”
“No one can reject reality and still hold onto his sanity. But you have to learn that a killing is not your enemy.”
“It certainly isn’t my friend.”
“No, but it can be your ally. Use it.”
“How? To haunt the night?”
“To teach you. There’s no sterner tutor than the hand of death.”
“What can stabbing a man possibly teach me?”
“The value of what you have. The slashing sword of a hateful man tells you instantly that most of what you thought you cared about is meaningless. Those great villas you build in your mind. The mansions of power and wealth. You know now they’re just structures of nothingness. Walls built of wind.”
Crus was about to say something but turned away.
“Go on,” Rufio said.
“Do you know what I thought about right after the battle?”
“Of course I do. Lucia.”
“I’d have given everything I own just to hold her for a moment.”
“At the end of every fight, after I’ve accounted for my men, I always experience the same thing—the smell of the flowers Flavia crushes in her hair.”
Crus stared at Rufio for a moment, then said, “Help me not to lose my mind here.”
“Mind? You’re a tribune. I’ve never known one who had a mind.”
Crus laughed and laid a hand on the centurion’s left shoulder.
Rufio smiled with him. The centurion knew that humor—especially the blackest humor—was the essential caustic for dissolving the bloody crusts of the battlefield.
“We’ll work on it together,” Rufio said with the reassurance of an older brother.
Flavia came up with two cups of wine.
“Thank you,” Crus said.
Rufio smiled his thanks with his eyes, and she left as quietly as she had arrived.
The two men sipped their wine in silence. Crus gazed ahead into the night, while Rufio was soothed by the pleasant monotony of the creaking of the great vessel as it sailed on.
“I want to visit Alexander’s tomb when we reach Egypt,” Crus said.
“Good. Every soldier should.”
“Well, finally we agree on something. I admire him as much as you do. I—why are you laughing?”
“As much as I do?”
“Yes.”
“I despise him.”
Crus hesitated. “Are you testing me again?”
“No.”
“Then why . . .”
“Because he was despicable.”
“You don’t think he was brilliant?”
“I didn’t say that. He’s part of that great trio with Hannibal and Caesar. No one has ever had a greater military mind, and he was brave to the point of folly. A more audacious commander never walked the earth. But as a man, he was nothing. His life was obsessed with a single empty idea—conquest without purpose and without end. He liked to pretend he was spreading Gree
k culture, but he was no more civilized than a gutter rat. The Macedonian slaughterer would have laughed at the idea of morals. He wouldn’t have recognized Greek culture if he fell into it up to his neck.”
“Your views certainly aren’t typical of most soldiers I’ve known.”
“Should I apologize?” Rufio said with a laugh. “Hannibal was a barbarian of sorts, but he had his code. Some of it was the hatred of Rome, but that’s just part of the sweep of history. And Caesar pardoned every vile traitor who had schemed against him. Alexander? At the height of his power and fame, he brought false charges against some of his finest commanders. The little Macedonian savage was afraid that these poor dedicated soldiers might try to steal some of his glory. So he accused them of treason and had them killed.”
“But his brilliance was—.”
“Irrelevant. It was a natural talent. Do you admire a beautiful woman just because she’s beautiful? She didn’t have anything to do with it. It’s what she is inside that matters. And of what use were his talents? Destruction on a scale never seen before or since. And as soon as he died, the whole rotten edifice came crashing down. A miserable, twisted butcher. He lived in a frenzy of death and died in a drunken stupor.”
Rufio finished his wine and threw the cup over the side, as if the entire conversation had soured him.
“And yet Caesar killed many,” Crus said.
“Caesar did things we wouldn’t confide to our little daughters in their bedtime stories. But he towers over everyone. He had his codes, though sometimes they seem elusive to us. Alexander was a moral dwarf. If you remember only one thing, remember this—Caesar forgave his enemies, Alexander killed his friends.”
22
EITHER I WILL FIND A WAY OR I WILL MAKE ONE.
ROMAN SAYING
Flavia and Neko picked their way quietly around the sleeping soldiers. The centurions were already moving about the deck. It seemed to Flavia that even when centurions slept, they were at least half awake.
Neko held Flavia’s right hand to guide her step in the darkness. She was as sure-footed as a doe on a rocky slope, but she allowed Neko to think he was helping her.
When they reached the foredeck, Neko pointed south.
“Look out there and see something you have never seen before and will never see again.”
Hundreds of stars flickered in the sky, but there was nothing new in that.
“I don’t see it,” Flavia said.
“Yes, you do. Look at that large star straight ahead.”
She peered into the distance. “It looks yellow. Why is that?”
“Because that star was not made by the gods. It’s made by men.”
“You’re teasing me. Men cannot make a star.”
“And yet they have.”
She looked again. “What is it, Neko? Tell me.”
“It is one of the most magnificent creations in all the world—the Pharos, the great lighthouse of Alexandria.”
Flavia continued staring. “What is it for?”
“A tremendous beacon that shines night and day to warn sailors they are approaching the reef that girds Alexandria. It glows from a limestone tower over three hundred feet high.”
“How is that possible? How can they keep a fire burning on a tower that touches the sky?”
“They cannot. The fire burns deep in the tower’s bowels at the base. Massive mirrors of polished bronze—so big they would shame the Titans—snare the light and reflect it outward for all to see.”
Flavia averted her eyes and glanced down at her hands on the rail. “I feel so small.”
“No, do not feel that way.”
She looked up at the Egyptian. “What is a woman on horseback along the Rhenus compared to something like that?”
“And yet that woman shook the core of the toughest man I know. And rescued his spirit when the wounds of life had almost destroyed his fire.”
“Could I really have done that? Or is this all just a dream?”
“Self-doubt from Flavia? It does not adorn you favorably. Cast it off.”
“I think it’s the strange humors given off by the sea. They’re beginning to poison my judgment.”
“Of course they are. That is why all seamen are half-mad.”
“Will you take me to see the Pharos when we land?”
“Yes. And the Canopic Way with its shops and entertainments. Rufio will be busy. He has given me the privilege of showing you the land of my birth.”
“That will be an honor.”
Alexandria had been built on a great land spit running parallel to the coast northwest of the Nile delta. Off the northern shore of the city, the lighthouse island, also called Pharos like the structure itself, was connected to the city by an immense causeway the Greeks had named the Heptastadion. This split the coast in two and created a pair of ports, the Great Port to the east and the Port of Good Return to the west.
Rufio sat outside a small tavern near the southern end of the causeway and gazed in admiration, as he always had, at the Pharos. The lower portion, more than two-thirds of its height, was rectangular, the middle section an octagon, and the top a cupola surmounted by a colossal bronze of Zeus.
Behind him sprawled the Canopic Way. A hundred feet wide, it stretched for three miles east and west from the Gate of the Sun to the Gate of the Moon. Its colonnades broke up the street into countless arcades offering every temptation to corrupt the soul of man.
A cool offshore breeze took the edge off the late morning sun. Rufio sipped the superb Alexandrian wine. How absurd that he and his men had almost been sent to the bottom of the sea for a cargo of wine, when the Alexandrians had long ago mastered the mysteries of the grape. Oil, too, had been part of the load, and another oddity. The olives of Egypt were so fine that oil had once been a royal monopoly of the Ptolemies. Rufio took another sip and gave up on the puzzle. Egyptian tastes had always baffled him.
“Alone in a city of so many?” Salario said and sat down beside him on the stone bench in the shade.
“My men are working off their urges. Flavia is exploring the city with Neko, and the tribune is trying to find us passage to Judaea.”
“No luck yet, I assume.”
“Fortuna toys with us.”
“Good. I will take you to Judaea.”
Startled, Rufio searched the master’s eyes.
“Why?”
“You saved my life and my cargo and my crew. I’m not known as a generous man—ask my crew—but I am known as a fair man. I have a debt of honor. Now I will pay it.”
To Rufio, the refusal of a gift was the greatest insult imaginable. “Rome accepts. Thank you.”
“And I’ll return the money you paid for passage here. You’ll need it in Judaea.”
“I’ll personally see to it that the Vestals offer a prayer for you.”
Salario went and got a cup of wine and rejoined Rufio on the bench. They sat in silence for a long time, though they constantly brushed away the street vendors hovering like flies around honey.
“Have you been here before?” Salario asked.
“Oh, yes. I was posted to Egypt long ago. Alexandria is one of the sweetest experiences of a lifetime. I wish I had a month to renew her acquaintance.” He sipped his wine. “Perhaps another day.”
Salario set his cup down on the bench. “I need to ask you something.”
Rufio nodded.
“Your men . . . how long have they served with you?”
“About a year.”
“Did you train them?”
“Some of them.”
“The way they respond to you . . . I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“They’re Roman soldiers,” Rufio said, as if that should be explanation enough.
“It’s that simple?”
“There’s nothing simple about it.”
“That’s what I mean. They cannot be typical.”
“Well, no centurion thinks his men are typical.”
“You’re avoid
ing the question.”
“I don’t believe you’ve asked it yet.”
“My crew obeys me because they fear me and my officers and because they dread not being paid. Why do your men obey you so quickly and so well?”
“Ah,” Rufio said, laughing. “Now I understand. You want me to give you the secret of command.”
Salario turned away. “I suppose I do,” he said, embarrassment in his voice. He looked back at Rufio. “What I saw on that ship looked like magic.”
“Not magic. Divinity. The Roman soldier is the physical presence of the mind of Mars.”
“No, no—no philosophical smoke. Give me a real answer.”
Rufio eyed the old sailor with admiration. There was no putting him off.
“There are reasons beyond counting why a soldier obeys his commander.”
“But there must be some essence. Some core.”
“There is.”
“Share it with me.”
“The first reason is fear—but not fear of me. My men obey me because they fear my disapproval. My scorn.”
“But why would that matter?”
“Because of who I am. Because of what they perceive me to be.”
“It’s that powerful?”
“Yes. And it matters not if that perception is true or false. It matters only that it’s real.”
Salario smiled. “And is it true? In your case, I mean.”
“It’s not appropriate for me to judge myself.”
“Now that surprises me. You don’t strike me as a humble man. Or a blushing virgin.”
“I’m not. But I have my code.”
Salario leaned forward, his forearms on his knees, and gazed out toward the Pharos.
“Why the sigh of despair?” Rufio asked.
“None of my crews will ever respect me like that.”
Rufio said nothing.
“Is there any other reason?” Salario asked.
“Yes. It grows like a branch out of the trunk of the first. It’s more subtle. A tender shoot instead of tough and hardened bark. But its roots are deep and its life is long.”
“Can you explain it to this old salt?”
“I’m tired of wine.” He set down his cup. “How about some spring water?”
Horses on the Storm Page 11
