The Fire Waker

by Ben Pastor

  "The army and false teachers are to be avoided, but of all the dangers from which Christian men must guard themselves, women are the worst. Their bodies are pits of perdition. Being monthly defiled by filthy humors, weak-minded, and prone to all irrational beliefs, they rank below ignorant boys and barbarians who cannot speak Greek or Latin. Their sensuality is a fluid that attaches itself to the eye of men and clots their ability to see, which is why Eros is represented blindfolded. Forget not that the first created woman dragged man into sin!"

  I will disregard the rest of the text. As it is readily seen, several categories fall under Agnus's theological ax. Never mind that he calls as a witness to his argument against women a deity like Eros, whose authority he ought to reject. One would never believe, reading such self-righteous pomposity, that the selfsame fire waker does not mind stooping to chicanery and falsehood.

  It makes me laugh that Helena threatens now and then to become a Christian. How would she like being termed a "pit of perdition"? Such disregard for women convinces me that should Casta be arrested or put to death, Agnus would not consider it much of a loss to himself or to his superstition.

  December 23, Saturday, IX day before the Kalends of January

  "Leather trousers. Does it mean you're off on a campaign?"

  "It doesn't mean I ran out of woolen trousers."

  "Where to?"

  Aelius wouldn't say. He nodded in the direction of the headstones lined against ben Matthias's wall. "Good business for you, in any case."

  "Don't make me more cynical than I am, Commander. Besides, any threat to the Empire is bad for business." Ben Matthias hooked his thumb in the apron tied to his waist. "It is true that I have developed this nifty method of setting five stonecutters in a row: The first only dresses the front of the headstone; the second roughly chisels out the panel where the portrait will be; the third carves the basic portrait—male or female, military or civilian; the fourth cuts the standard inscription, leaving the name blank; and the fifth workman adds words or features when available."

  "Clever." Pacing around the room, Aelius looked at the sketches and models. "And my headstone, the one you carved at Confluentes?"

  "I left it there, as an advertising sign for the franchise shop." Super-stitiously the Jew touched his groin. "It'd be bad luck if I presented you with it as you prepare to leave for Barbaricum. May I interest you in waterproof, sunproof shield paint?"

  "If you have black and yellow, that we could use." Aelius stopped in front of a finished bust. "A portrait of His Divinity? It's a speaking likeness of him!"

  "Thank you."

  "But it looks as worried as he does."

  "Exactly. What an artist is trying to do these days is to convey the pathos of life, Commander. Already in antiquity, the Greek Skopas understood that a soldier-ruler like Alexander had to be represented as in the thrall of Fate, an Achilles-like figure of doomed beauty. Why do you think the great Macedonian is represented with his head turned to one side, his gaze uplifted to look anxiously above him, as if an eagle or a god were sweeping over him? Such was the way the ancients thought they should represent the chosen nature of the hero. These days we have a more controlled way of conveying the drama of individual life. To my mind, the face must show the furrows of thought, worry, responsibility. If the face is too young to be marked—I am thinking of Gordian III, or the beastly Elagabalus, who died in their teens—it has to appear marked nonetheless, because our mind shows the weight and wear of existence long before the body follows suit. Two, three quick horizontal lines across the forehead, commas at the sides of the mouth. The eye must be open, staring ahead. I want to impress a frozen quality of expectation, and at the same time the resolve that one needs to look trouble in the eye. None of the bending and twisting commotion so beloved in the days of Marcus and Antoninus, when marble coffins were a squirming confusion of embattled men and horses, maenads, drunken satyrs, carved nearly in full relief to better gather dust." Ben Matthias swept his hands all around the granite head, quick gestures of removal and cleansing. "Less, less, less. Simplify! A few telling lines are all you need."

  "Simplicity is a virtue in most endeavors, I find." Aelius looked around the workshop. It was a time for farewells. Already the approaching date of departure made objects and sights strangely extraneous to him, a phenomenon he'd observed in himself before. Commonplace things and their details became new and alarming. In fascination, he stared at the way dust from ben Matthias's apron convulsively sought the outdoors when he stopped on the threshold to look at the clear day.

  "You see that my workshop is outside the Jewish district. As a Jew, graven images should be an abomination to me. As an artist, they seem to me the only thing that stands between me and the forgetful-ness of death. I carve them out of anxiety and the desire to ensure that my work stays, and lasts. It's like this, Commander. You go to war with your great armies: What will remain of you all? Tales by the fireside? History? You may write your own history, to make sure the tale is told correctly; but will it be your version that remains, or your enemy's?"

  The correspondence between his feelings and ben Matthias's words made Aelius thoughtful, on this side of sadness. He said, "If I am not mistaken—I am scarcely an expert in the field—Jews trust in the permanence of their own scripture, without the need of graven images."

  "Please do not ruin my exposition, Commander. We're not engaged in theology here. Simplicity and permanence. I favor porphyry and granite, because they are nearly indestructible, and because they are so difficult to carve: You have to simplify your portraits."

  The farewell to ben Matthias was characteristically short and ironic. The Jew said that "one never knows, Jews are like parsley, to be found in all dishes on all tables." They might see one another even on the frontier, if Aelius happened to stop at Intercisa. "Why not?" Aelius answered. "I have friends among the First Thracian troopers stationed there."

  Parting from Helena was even easier. She was head over heels about Sido, she confessed; kissing Aelius on both cheeks, she told him to behave himself and not to forget what she'd told him. "When we were making love, or at another time?" "Impudent dog, you know very well what I mean." She bit his ear-lobe with a last kiss. "Remember what I said about a man on top."

  As for Curius Decimus, the occasions to meet him had become fewer in the last week Aelius spent in Mediolanum. His colleague was away, visiting relatives and whatever else in the region. The evening of the second-to-last day he came to visit, with the excuse of returning the three months' advance rent paid for the annex. "You scarcely stayed here three weeks. It'd be indecent to keep the sum."

  "The government is grateful," Aelius answered. But he was smiling. "Won't you come in?"

  "I was hoping you'd ask."

  As before, they sat in the wicker chairs facing one another. Incense had been burned recently in the wall niche of the family altar; its oily scent did not escape Decimus, who openly approved Aelius's act of devotion. "It's good doing it now and then. These walls don't get enough old religion."

  Aelius looked at him. The mask of politeness and disdain fit less well on Decimus's face after the drinking bout. Comments on his colleague's remark were unnecessary, and accordingly he said nothing. He discovered that he had very little to say to Decimus, in fact. The court dockets, Protasius's words, and his own observations formed a twin image of the man, much more sinister and reliable than the finicky disguise sitting here.

  "Now it's the time of fear, isn't it?"

  Amity as a wicket hiding the trap, again. Aelius heard the words go inside him like spikes, as if he'd stepped in despite his vigilance. "But I am not afraid," he said slowly.

  "Yes, and you never stumble. I know." Decimus smiled with his ugly little teeth. "We are to travel together, serve together—the truth is to be told once in a while. Even in your pan-Roman army, Aelius Spar-tianus. Officers and gentlemen seek their likes' company before a campaign, and open their comradely hearts."

  "Are you afrai
d?"

  "I don't know what fear is."

  And that was how they opened their hearts to each other.

  Afterward, Aelius stayed up until late. Decimus's visit had interrupted him while he readied to unseal a letter from home, whose handwriting at first he did not recognize. Now he opened it and saw that it had been sent a month earlier. From post exchange to post exchange, it caught up with him now: That was hardly a novelty. What surprised him was the sender. Never before had news come directly from his mother. The tone and style of the writing revealed a capacity to articulate he had not suspected in her. He knew she was literate, but all communication (scarce, to tell the truth) that through the years had come from his parents had been written and signed for both by his father. In fact, only because he was "still under the weather," as Aelia Justina put it, did she put pen to paper to let her son know how things were in the province.

  She referred to another brief that must have gotten lost in the mail, in which work being done on the family's retirement home was probably mentioned. It all confirmed an ominous mood of expectation in Pannonia and elsewhere on the frontier.

  ... Everyone is fortifying his house these days, Aelius. We are all aware that what happened forty years ago could happen again, and are not about to be found unprepared. Everywhere masons and carpenters at work; one could say there are no unemployed in this province. Itinerant mosaic-layers and stonecutters make a splendid living. They are mostly Italics from Aquileia and Gradus, some of them former soldiers who understand the needs and taste of military settlers.

  The army closes an eye on the fact that ours is an independent civilian response to potential threats from the outside. Each man a soldier, a citizen-soldier, if you will, each house a garrison. The style, as you will see when — the Gods willing — you come to visit, is fairly uniform. It includes two or four projecting towers, second-storied usually, which double as granaries and places to keep dry fruit and farming implements. Once those doors are locked, an attacker would have to fight just to get inside. Of course, light suffers from these arrangements, and quarters are somewhat cramped; but we are all glad to do our part, as we see it as an additional border line to protect the Empire. The Roman-style villas are much more relaxed, and more beautiful, with their open porches and gardens with canals and fountains. But there are hardly doors you can lock in those properties, and — if life should put us to the test — we will see what we will see . . .

  31 December, Sunday, eve of the Kalends of January

  Outside Silver Gate, the one-legged beggar hobbled from across the street, leaning on a makeshift crutch. At the head of the bridge he sat on the cobblestones against the parapet, to keep out of the direct wind. Pieces of ragged, unidentifiable army clothing covered his nakedness; his one foot wore an ill-fitting boot over a toeless knit sock. His right stump, tied into the threadbare cloth of his trousers with a string, was severed above the knee.

  Blue with cold, he cut a miserable figure when he first eyed Aelius, who was approaching on horseback at a walk and looked his way.

  "Charity for a man who gave his all to Rome, and was crippled in the war!"

  Aelius clicked his tongue for his horse to halt. "Which campaign?"

  "Armenia, most honorable Commander, and Persia after that. I was at Daphne near Antioch, when we took the Persian king's harem ... I was there when we entered Ctesiphon. Charity for a soldier!"

  "What unit?" His back to the fierce wind, Aelius leaned from the saddle to drop a coin in the man's hand.

  "The Bear Standard troopers, Ala Ursiciana."

  A second coin followed. "Your colonel?"

  "Ah, Commander—" The beggar caught Aelius's attention, and kept his palm expectantly open. Frostbite on his knuckles and fingertips cracked and bled under a crust of filth. "That's the man I lost my leg saving, when he fell and couldn't pull himself out from under his dead horse. A hail of arrows rained on me while I ran back for him. Twice he urged me to save myself, and twice I was wounded but would not cease my efforts." The coins clinked in his hand, asking for more. "You should have seen me."

  Aelius simpered. "I should have seen you, all right. I led the Bear Standard troopers at Daphne and Ctesiphon."

  "You—and—and did you not fall from your horse?"

  "I didn't fall once during that campaign. And we call our horses mounts."

  The beggar hung his head. The meager skin of his neck reminded Aelius of a turtle, but even turtles were less malnourished and cleaner. "A man has got to eat, Commander."

  "That's true."

  "No one wants to hear you lost your leg under a wagon wheel. It sounds common. And in the streets it's damn cold this time of year." The hand stayed reluctantly half-open. "Now you'll want your coins back."

  Aelius looked ahead, at the span of the bridge. He blew air through his lips as men sometimes do when they're doubtful or annoyed. No one was coming from the other end, and behind him, he saw that people were busy at the market stalls. He unclasped his army cloak— first-rate weave from Aquitania—and stretched it down to the beggar. "Ask soldiers what unit they served with, before you make up tales."

  Incredulous, at first the beggar wouldn't take the cloak, but seeing the officer's impatience he grabbed it and jealously wrapped himself in it twice, pulling his hale leg under it to keep it warm.

  "May the gods give this back to you tenfold, Commander."

  Aelius smirked. "It'd be too large a cloak."

  Aelius had made it a rule not to sleep in his own bed (whether it be at the camp, barracks, or other quarters) the night before starting out for a military campaign. Inns, friends' houses, occasionally even the open air would do. And he had to be alone, much as others went to drinking parties or sought the company of a woman, or caroused the night in brothels, stumbling out in the morning with their eyes full of sleep, not thinking.

  He had to think clearly. Having written his testament on the vigil of his assignment to Egypt at the time of the Rebellion, he faced less pragmatic concerns. It was a stage that followed the estrangement from familiar objects. Already he walked around the annex like a foreigner who has never seen the place. Even the riotous charm of the figurines painted above his bed, the Egyptian dwarfs and baboons, surprised him anew; it made him wonder what in the end was habit, if he could so easily forget it. Then came the conscious exercise to make himself familiar with those things around him, and the realization that closeness to objects, textures, shapes in one's bedroom could haunt one's resolve to separate from them, perhaps forever.

  Whenever possible, Aelius packed in advance and sent his things ahead, not to have to review them with the perspective of their becoming objects of a dead man, like the helmet found in the northern bog. Who could ever know what the man who had worn it thought, the night before setting off for the march through Teutoburg Forest? Aelius imagined how the man set aside the ornate helmet, wrapped it carefully, anticipating the wearing of it. Had he thought of the helmet when he'd been killed, as they said often men do strangely think of this or that domestic or paltry object of theirs before dying?

  A fellow officer mortally wounded in Armenia had asked for his neckerchief before dying, with such angry insistence that they had gone to fetch it, useless as it was, and he'd died sucking on it, like an infant. The image had remained with Aelius with a kind of embarrassed horror.

  A week before, he'd written a short note to his parents, informing them that he was leaving for the frontier. Now, on his last night in Mediolanum, his different place was an inn near the barracks, where his Guardsmen were also ready to leave.

  FIRE

  Notes by Aelius Spartianus:

  Whether one takes the northern route or the southern one, only one province (Noricum in the first case, Dalmatia in the second) separates Italy from Pannonia to the east. And, far as they seem to those who remark on their frontier state, the four administrative units that form Pannonia lie only one-third of the way between the Italian Alps and the maximum European extension of the Empi
re, having its terminus at Byzantium.

  Pannonia — whose name is said to derive from the woodland deity Pan — is a vast land of plains, forests, lakes, and high mountains. The inhabitants are also called Danubians because the Danube forms the region s outer limit, and to the great river's spirit have long been devoted the peoples who live on the rich, continuous length of its banks. Physically, male and female Pannonians are tall and sturdy, fair rather than dark, gray- and blue-eyed, resistant to fatigue and bad weather. Their natural pride is tempered by patience and goodwill, which makes them excellent recruits and valuable officers. Their women are modest, honorable, and fertile.

  Shortly before my birth Our Lord Aurelian — Rebuilder of the Army — saw the wisdom of abandoning the unmanageable Transdanubian lands forming the province ofDacia. Thus an enormous territory, conquered about two hundred years ago by the deified Trajan and Hadrian, reverted to Barbaricum. Ever since the days of those two warrior princes, and through the reigns of Septimius Severus and his otherwise abominable son Caracalla, the fortified border we call Limes, or Limit, has become a continuous frontier consisting of river, ditch, stone wall, watchtowers, blockhouses, barracks, and full military camps, connected by rapid-transit military roads and fortified bridges, and strengthened by the occasional counterfortress on the enemy bank.

  Those of us who are natives of Pannonia and Moesia, provinces sharing the same geographic area, depend on Greek and Roman historians for the narrative of our own antiquity, which goes back to before the times of Alexander of Macedonia, six hundred and more years. It appears that our blood is Celtic; more, that the tribes (Boii and Scordisci primarily) that form the ethnic core of the population are not native at all, but came, as I have remarked elsewhere, from Gaul three centuries before Julius Caesar (indeed, my own paternal ancestors are Boii, who settled a vast territory called BoiVs Mountains, Boi-haemium, or Boihaemia, commonly called Bohemia). Having failed in their foolhardy bid to attack Rome, those Celts escaped eastward to settle along the Savus, Dravus, and Tibiscus rivers, tributaries all of the great Danube. Still in their barbaric state, they fought the natives and among themselves.