Ashes Under Uricon
Chapter 14. Death (367)
By Mihangel
Nunc suscipe, terra, fovendum,
Gremioque hunc concipe molli.
Hominis tibi membra sequestro,
Generosa et fragmina credo . . .
Nos tecta fovebimus ossa
Violis et fronde frequenti
Titulumque et frigida saxa
Liquido spargemus odore.
Take him, earth, for cherishing,
To your gentle breast receive him.
Body of a man I bring you,
Noble even in its ruin . . .
But for us, heap earth about him,
Earth with leaves and violets strewn,
Grave his name, and pour the fragrant
Balm upon the icy stone.
Prudentius, Burial of the dead
There were more Irish around than when I came this way three years before. Four times they stopped me, but Maqqos-colini's ring saw me through. Twice I was shot at by Britons: at Mediolanum whose gates were shut, and at Rutunium which had no walls at all, the guards were taking no chances. Unkempt, in simple homespun clothes, I doubtless looked more Irish than British. Both times I had to work my way around the town. Farmsteads were burning again, and from time to time there were corpses by the roadside, left where they had been cut down, gnawed by foxes or picked by crows, awaiting someone to give them burial. I rode on. I had a more urgent need. My mind was full of Lucius, and I was rehearsing our reunion.
The market gardens by the bridge over the Trena had been trampled. Another mile, and Viroconium was in sight. So too was a troop on horseback, a ragged brigade sporting a motley collection of weapons. It challenged me, and I had to think twice to reply in British. And one of its members I knew, my old friend and bed-fellow Amminus, who at first did not recognise me.
"Gods!" he cried when he did. "Is it Docco? So you're alive after all!"
But he was oddly restrained, almost embarrassed, in his welcome. Alarmed, I asked how the town was faring. It had been attacked, he said, and it had withstood, but there had been mayhem in the countryside. He turned the conversation quickly to where the nearest Irish might be. Reassured but puzzled, I rode on. Even here there was no traffic. At the cemetery outside the north gate were whole rows of new graves, some dug but not yet occupied, and many more that were freshly filled. Casualties, then, but evidently from the country, not the town.
I saw him from some distance away. At first he was down on one knee, head bent, placing flowers on a tomb, unidentifiable. Then as I drew nearer he stood up, and his figure was unmistakable. Dismounting, I hitched my horse to a grave marker and approached. He was absorbed, and did not notice until I was close, when he started and his hand whipped to the sword on his belt. But unlike Amminus he recognised me at once. Wordless, hearts too full even to smile, we stood taking each other in. He looked dreadful: exhausted, face drawn, dark rings under weary blue eyes, unshaven, left arm bandaged. Then the spell broke, and we embraced.
"Docco!"
"Oh, Bran!"
But words still came hard. Where to begin?
"Your arm?" I asked, unthinkingly in Irish.
"An arrow. It's nothing," he replied in Irish, equally unthinkingly. Then he realised, with a short bark of a laugh. "Oh, of course!"
He seemed relieved to see me, but not particularly surprised, almost as if I was expected. And like Amminus he seemed reticent. Then he visibly pulled himself together and switched to British.
"Docco, this is a sorry welcome. But you've got to know the worst." His hand was on my arm.
Worst? I looked cautiously at the grave. It bore no marker yet. But Tad was in his forties, no longer young.
"Not Tad?" I asked tentatively.
"No, your Tad's all right. No, this is worse, in a way. Docco . . . Lucius is dying."
I gaped, the breath knocked out of me.
"Dying?" I whispered. "Wounded?"
"No. Disease. Tisis."
My heart sank, if possible, further. Tisis killed more of us than anything else, some quicker, some slower. There was no cure for tisis.
"I must go to him. Is he at Pulcher's?"
"No, with us. But don't go yet, Docco. An hour won't make any difference. There are things you must know first. More things that will hurt you. I'm sorry, Docco . . . Let's sit down."
Numbed, I obeyed. We sat on the muddied grass, Bran's hand now on my knee.
"Let me try to tell this in order. When you . . . left us, Pulcher assumed you were dead. And once you'd been gone two years, he was completely convinced you were dead. That was when he revealed what Maponus had told him in the temple. That your love affair was blessed, but that it would be short-lived, and that he was to tell nobody until it was obviously over. It had been short-lived, he argued, and now it obviously was over. Therefore Lucius was free to marry and procreate in the normal way. In the proper Roman way. In fact he insisted on him marrying. Don't blame Lucius, Docco. Don't blame him at all. He had no choice. He resisted, he protested, and so did we, to our utmost. But he was under his father's authority, and you know what Pulcher was like."
Livid, I tried to get up. "I'm going to . . ."
"No, Docco." His hand was firm on my knee, holding me down. "It's too late. Pulcher is dead. I'll come to that. All right? Well, he found Lucius a bride, the daughter of a friend of his in Corinium. Sulpicia, she was called, a nice enough girl, very Roman, very docile. Lucius didn't love her. He still loved you. Only you. He's told me so often enough. And the only battle he did win -- that all of us won -- was that he and Sulpicia should live with us, not with the Pulchers. So that's what happened, a year ago. And before too long Sulpicia was pregnant."
I did not know what to think. My lover, my lover, married. Bedding a wife. Getting a child. But it wasn't his fault. He had to . . .
"Then everything started to happen at once. Lucius fell ill. He'd already been showing signs of . . . malaise, I suppose you'd call it. He'd lost all his energy and sparkle. Six weeks ago he caught a cold, and suddenly he went downhill. A deep cough, pain in his side, loss of appetite, fever. The doctor diagnosed tisis, and the worst form of it, galloping consumption. He told us he couldn't live. And Lucius knew it too."
I stared, my mouth open. "Bran . . . was he . . . is he . . . frightened of dying?"
"Well, he'll be glad to go. He's had enough."
Bran's eyes strayed across to the marker, not far away, that stood over the grave of old Pacatus and Titianus.
"Tempus erat quo prima quies mortalibus aegris
Incipit et dono divum gratissima serpit.
It was the time for exhausted mortals when rest descends and, by the gods' gift, creeps welcomely over them.
Remember? But yes, he's frightened too. Who wouldn't be? Not knowing what lies beyond, if anything. But he still hopes that you'll come back. He's said that if you were there to . . . to hold his hand as he went, he'd have fewer fears. That's one reason why I'm so glad you've come in time."
Again I made to move, but still he held me down.
"There's more to tell, Docco. Three weeks ago Sulpicia's time fell due. She wasn't strong, and she died in childbirth. But her baby survived. A boy. A lovely boy. We got a wet-nurse in for him, and he's doing fine. He's strong where his mother was weak. Lucius was shocked about Sulpicia, of course, but delighted about the baby. And Pulcher was delighted too, to have a male heir after all. Anyway, we buried Sulpicia here."
Bran patted the grave beside him.
"Lucius wanted to give his son a British name, but he daren't antagonise Pulcher too much. He chewed it over with us, and because Pulcher was mad on hunting -- and Lucius too, come to that -- we suggested Maglocunus, 'Prince-hound.' So that's what he called him. Maglocunus. As British a name as you can get, but Pulcher wasn't too miffed.
"Then a week later, two weeks ago, the Irish appeared out of the blue, hordes of them, and attacked the town. They gave us a hard time. There can't have been much more than two thousand of us, defending two miles of wall. Thank the gods -- and Pulcher -- for the new palisade. Without it, they'd have got in. And ever since then we've been up to our necks in clearing up. Trying to get back to normal. Looking after the country people who've lost everything. Finding their dead. Burying them."
Bran waved his hand at the nearer graves.
"And the very morning of the attack, before it started, Pulcher had taken the rest of his family out to see his new hunting lodge. It had just been finished, and he was terribly proud if it. They never came back. It was a week before anyone ventured that way and found their bodies. Pulcher, his wife, his three daughters, three slaves. Stripped of their jewellery, even their clothes. They're buried here too."
He patted the grave once more.
"There's only one bright note -- our farm's untouched. Well, maybe there's another one. Because he still hoped you'd come back, Lucius appointed us Maglocunus' guardians. Us. You and me. But the fact remains, Docco, that Lucius is dying. The end can't be far off. There's someone with him all the time. Your Tad, at the moment.
"So there you are. I'm sorry, Docco. But you had to know."
Yes, I had to know. But I was numb.
"Let's get back to Lucius."
I retrieved my horse and mounted. Bran walked alongside. As we passed in through the north gate I could not fail, even in my fuddled state, to notice the arrows and spears still sticking into the timber of the palisade. At our house the sound of hooves brought Tigernac and Roveta out at a run, and they fell on my neck. It also brought out Tad, looking old and very tired. In each other's arms we sobbed our hearts out. Then he took me in.
I barely recognised Lucius. He was pale as a corpse, appallingly emaciated, coughing up green phlegm shot with blood. His swollen red-rimmed eyes opened, resting first on Tad.
"Tad," he mouthed.
"He's been calling me that," Tad whispered, "Ever since Pulcher died."
The weary eyes swung to Bran.
"Bran."
The eyes moved to me, and widened.
"Brother!" he muttered. Tears trickled down, and he actually smiled.
I went to him. I lay down beside him and slid my arm under him. He was nothing but skin and bone, and sweating profusely. But a skeletal arm crept over me, and I kissed the hollow cheek. I transmitted love as hard as I could, and I felt a response, feeble but real. I have no idea how long we stayed there, wordless but together again at last.
The next thing I was aware of was Tad gripping my shoulder.
"He's gone, Docco, he's gone. But he died happy. In your arms."
How that night passed I have no recollection, and I do not wish to recall.
Next day Bran dragged me unwilling to the bath. The gods know I must have needed it. From that morning I remember only three things.
One was that Bran cut my hair short and meticulously combed what was left, picking out the lice.
That was necessary.
I remember raising a worry that was niggling insistent at my mind.
"Bran, you say Maponus told Pulcher that our love would be short-lived. So Maponus saw the future. Things are predestined, after all."
That grieved me deeply; maybe because Lucius and I had agreed that they were not.
"No, Docco. They aren't. Lucius told me, after he fell ill, how you'd talked about predestination when you were on the boat. And he'd wondered exactly the same as you. But he'd come to realise that when we went to Maponus he must already have had the seed of the disease in him. Maponus recognised that, and knew that there was no recovery. His death wasn't fore-ordained far in advance, any more than it was fore-ordained that our cows should die of ragwort poisoning. It was a matter of chance that he picked up the tisis. But from the moment he did, he was doomed, just as our cows were doomed from the moment they ate the ragwort. Once you're at that stage, there's nothing that men or gods can do to change things."
Bran laughed, shortly.
"You know, Docco, Lucius kept quoting Vergil to the end. Desine fata deum flecti sperare precando, he said once. Stop hoping to change the will of the gods by praying. Not just because praying does no good. But because there's no will of the gods to change."
That was a relief.
The third thing I remember was meeting Maglocunus. He was tiny, naturally, with scanty dark hair. Bran put him in my arms and looked over my shoulder. The baby seemed to focus on our faces, the faces of his proxy parents, and he smiled. Maybe it was only a burp, but he seemed to smile. He was now a member of the senatorial order of the eternal city, yet he bore the most British of names. Good reason to smile.
But that did not really sink in.
There were not many mourners at the funeral. The townspeople and the rural folk had buried all too many of their relatives and friends, and they were preoccupied with trying to return to normal. The Irish, moreover, were still on the warpath, still roaming the countryside in search of plunder. The town was full of refugees, a permanent watch was mounted on the walls, and at the cemetery Amminus' small band of militia offered some protection against surprise attack.
Tad and Bran were there, of course, and Tigernac and Roveta. So was Ulcagnus, and Lucius' old tutor Papias, and a few surviving slaves, Drostan among them, from the Pulcher household. Of the Pulchers themselves not a single one was left, except for little Maglocunus who was far too young to attend. The wasted body of Lucius, the tangible remains of my love, we laid to rest, not alongside his father and mother and sisters, not alongside his wife, but alongside Mamma.
"That's what he requested," Tad had told me, "after the other Pulchers died. He wanted to be with our family, not his own. In a British grave, not a Roman one."
That renewed my tears, but it was good. One day I myself would lie alongside my Lucius. May it be soon. Quicquam mihi dulce meorum te sine, frater, erit? Shall my life, brother, know any joy without you?
We shovelled the earth back over him. We went through the time-honoured formalities. We poured offerings of wine and oil and perfume, and sprinkled the obligatory herbs. I had cut my fledgling beard and shaved -- or rather Bran had done it for me, for I had never wielded a razor in my life -- and the meagre result I burned over the tomb, together with my shorn hair and no doubt some Irish lice as well. It was the sole product of my years away from Lucius. It was all of me that I had to give him, except a broken heart.
Then we went home without him.
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