Chapter 9
Tullius looked down and saw the blood soaking through his clothes. He made a half-hearted swipe at it as if to brush away the ugly stain. His hand came away red and wet.
“Oh,” was all he said, as if noticing a trivial inconvenience.
“Get back in the carriage and lie down,” I suggested. “We will see what can be done—at least try to change the dressing.”
“No time for that now,” Tullius objected. He looked around as if confused by what was going on around him. “Why have we stopped? We should keep moving.”
“Your wound has reopened,” I said, fear making me shrill. “We have to stop the bleeding somehow.”
“Later—once we’re safe,” Tullius replied. To Claudius, he said, “We move on.”
Claudius regarded him and, with a glance at me, said, “The horses must be watered. The dead should be buried—” He indicated the shady grove around us. “This is as fit place for a grave as any.”
“Listen to him,” I said. “Claudius is right. We will move on and we cannot take them with us.”
But my father held firm. “The proconsul and his wife were important people and were well-liked by the folk of Glevum. They were Christians and should be accorded a proper burial on consecrated ground—Giddis, too. I’ll not have it said that we left them beside the road like muck swept from the stable.”
He was adamant and when roused I knew better than to try to change his mind. There was no reasoning with him when he got like this. “Nobody would say ever that,” I countered and did a quick calculation. “But we’re at least five or six days from Glevum, maybe more. We have to do something with the bodies. What would you suggest?”
Claudius and I looked to him for an answer. Tullius’ mouth worked silently as he considered, then said, “Let them travel with us as far as the next settlement. We will make provision for them to be collected by the proconsul’s people and taken to Glevum for a funeral.”
“Let it be as you say,” Claudius said, accepting the decision. “And pray God the raiders do not return.”
The commander turned and began shouting orders to his men. Tullius allowed me to help him to his place in the carriage where I prevailed upon him to lie down and let me examine the wound. He at first refused, of course, but my persistence won out and he grudgingly gave in. Also, I think the ache had grown more acute and his strength had begun to flag.
With some difficulty, he eased himself to the floor and stretched out as best he could in the confined space and closed his eyes. I gently raised the side of his tunic. The bandage holding the dressing wad had soaked through, and the pad itself was a sopping crimson mess. I untied the binding knot and gently, gently pulled away the pad—stifling a gasp as I glimpsed the extent of the damage. In the exertion and excitement of our desperate retreat, many of Lucius’ neat stiches had ripped away allowing to the wound to reopen. It now gaped raw and ragged and weeping blood.
“How is it?” asked my father.
“Not too bad,” I lied. “At least, not as bad as I feared.”
He said something, but face was turned away just then and I had to ask him to repeat what he had said. He did, and for the first time, I heard a note of genuine distress creep into his tone. “It hurts, Aurelia.”
“Drink some of your potion,” I told him, “and I will make a new pad and bind up the wound again. When we reach the next settlement, we can maybe get better help.” I prayed inwardly that better hands than mine could attend my father—and that soon.
Lifting his tunic, Tullius lay back. He closed his eyes, and drew his arm over his face, bracing himself for what was to come. I gave him a sip of opium from his little flask, and set about tearing a few strips from the hem of my mantle. One of the soldiers had fetched water in a jar; I drank some and made my father do the same, then used the rest to wash away as much of the blood as I could. I folded the torn cloth to make a tidy pad, and then carefully positioned this over the nasty gash in my father’s side. That done, he struggled up and, while he held the crude dressing place as best he might, I wrapped the binding around him and tied it. I tried to wash some of the blood out of his tunic, but that only served to make it worse, so I pulled it over his head and hung it over the side of the carriage to dry until we started off again. Then I covered him with my cloak.
“Thank you, Aurelia. You are a blessing.”
“Rest now if you can,” I told him. He had lapsed into drugged sleep before we resumed our journey a short while later. Despite the lurching and rattling of the carriage, he slept on, moaning softly every now and then when one of the wheels hit a hole or rock.
The day was waning before we finally reached a holding of sorts: not much more than a large house surrounded by several smaller dwellings and a cluster barns and storehouses arranged around a bare dirt yard, constructed on an older style with split-pine logs, and a steep, high-pitched roof with deep eaves and thatched with river reeds. The smaller buildings were likewise made of pine and thatch, save for one red brick storehouse.
We could see the holding from the road and turned onto the lane leading to it. I don’t even think the place had a name at all. If it did, I never knew it. In any case, the settlement was home to several families of the Carvetii, if I heard right—or maybe the Coritani. Prosperous and orderly, the farm steading was dominated by a single large dwelling—one of those called a lodge house—and the whole surrounded by large fields of that stubby rye they grow in the north. The folk were hospitable if slightly wary, but once we had explained who we were, made proper introductions, gained their trust, and offered to pay for our stay—and for the transport of Mona and Giddis’ bodies—they could not do enough for us.
There was no physician. That would have been too much to expect. But one of their womenfolk served as a healer and knew much about wounds of various kinds. Claudius fetched her to meet us. “I am Agnese,” she said when my father haltingly emerged. He had bled through his bandage again and stood leaning against the side of the wagon with a hand pressed to his side. “What has happened here?”
After I had explained about my deafness, she asked again and I told her what I knew of my father’s injury and how he came by it. Agnese listened intently, then agreed to examine him and apply her skills. She had kind eyes and an easy manner, and I warmed to her immediately. “I would be most grateful,” I told her. “We both would.”
She went to where Tullius stood half-collapsed beside the wagon, spoke briefly, and returned only moments later. “Your father has refused my help.”
“He can be stubborn.”
“Maybe you could you speak to him? Reassure him? It really would be for the best.”
I led my father to one of the long log benches lining the side of the lodge house and sat him down. Gray-faced now, his features drawn, he leaned to one side. I knelt before him. “Father, hear me. You must let Agnese tend you,” I told him, placing my hands on his knees. “She is a healer and you need help.”
“I need nothing—save to be left alone,” he said curtly. “I just want to rest.”
“Why are you behaving like this?”
“I hurt, Aurelia!” he snapped. “Is that so difficult to understand?”
“Then do something about it!” I snapped, exasperation making me sharp. “It may be Agnese can give you something to better ease the pain. If nothing else, at least let her change the dressing.”
He made to get up—as if to quit the discussion—but sat back down. “Oh! Oh!” he groaned. “It hurts.”
I stood up and signaled to Agnese to join us. “She’s going to examine you and that’s the end of it.”
She was with us in an instant with her cloth bag of medicines and, as my father took her arm and limped into the lodge, I was dispatched to her daughter for some clean rags and her jar of ointment. The girl was maybe a year or so older than me and knew her mother’s ways very well. She wore her long dark hair in heavy braided plaits and, like her mother, was dressed in a simple yellow mantle with green girdle with a pattern of swirls and spirals embroidered in silver thread. A handsome piece and I told her so.
“I’m Justina,” she said and, after I told her my name, she ran off to gather the requested items. Meanwhile, I returned to the carriage and fetched the last bit of opium potion Lucius had given Tullius. It was almost empty, but I snatched up the flask and returned to the lodge where Justina joined me a few moments later. We went in and I watched while to the two of them persuaded my father to lie down on one of the bench beds lining the walls of the great room; they removed his tunic to expose the injury, and then bent to their work.
Hands clasped beneath my chin, I watched as they poked here and there, doing this and that; but, since I could do nothing save interfere and worry, I drifted back outside. The westering sun was warm still, and bathing the soft air in a golden, honeyed light. The split log bench outside the lodge door invited me to sit, so I obliged. The morning’s tumult, fraught and frantic and terrible as it was, felt as if it had happened half-a-lifetime ago—possibly to someone else. I sat back and closed my eyes to enjoy the peace of the soft air and warmth of the sun on my skin. I allowed myself to forget, if only for a moment, the long journey still ahead.
Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Today’s trouble is enough for today.
This is what Tomos—my wise friend, and one of Venta’s more venerable priests—always tells me. Actually, he says, “Be not therefore solicitous for the morrow; for the morrow will be solicitous for itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” But it means the same thing. And as I sat there in the sun, I thought: How right he is!
Mulling this over in my mind, I heard someone approaching and opened my eyes. It was Claudius, our brawny equitum—still in his fighting gear, or most of it—and wanting a word.
“Here—sit,” I invited. “There is room for two on this stump.”
He wavered on the edge of declining, then relented and took a seat beside me. He was tired and smelled of stale sweat. He folded his hands in his lap and, after a moment, said, “The burial is finished. The headman here gave us a little timber to line the graves.”
I wondered if I had heard him correctly. “Timber?”
“Aye, that will make it easier to retrieve the bodies,” he explained. “When the time comes.”
“Oh.” I had been so anxious about my father, I had put the burial out of my mind and now felt bad for my lapse. I thanked him for taking on that necessary chore.
He accepted my thanks and said, “Is there any word?”
“About?”
“About the magistrate—his wound?”
Of course, he knew that the healer had been called. “Not yet. Agnese is tending him now. She will be finished soon, I hope.”
“I’m wondering what orders to give the men,” he said. “They want to know if we’re to be moving on tomorrow. The way things are . . .” He let the thought go. “I didn’t know what to tell them.”
“Tell them that the troubles of the day are sufficient unto the day, and that tomorrow’s worries can take care of themselves.” I opened my eyes and glanced at him. “How’s that?”
He regarded me for a moment, then gave a little chuckle. “That’ll do.”
We sat in silence a little while longer and then he got up and went back to his duties and his men. The next time I saw him, he was with his soldiers in the company of some of the holding’s men who were leading them to one of the outbuildings—the bakehouse which, I suspect, was also the brewhouse.
The yard grew quiet then and the smell of wood smoke drifted into the air. I got up and went to the door where I met Agnese coming out. “Ah, there you are.” She smiled and I took that as a good sign and led me back to the bench. She settled close beside me and looked out across the yard where two boys and a dog were playing with a stick.
“How is he?” I asked.
“I was able to stop the bleeding and I’ve given him some of the opium potion. I have also applied a poultice of comfrey and thyme mixed with a little honey.” She told me how this mixture should be prepared and how it should be used if I had need of it later. A natural teacher, I think she could not help herself imparting what she knew, and concluded, saying, “The herbs draw out the poison most wonderfully—”
“And the honey?”
“The honey helps all wounds heal more quickly.” She nodded. “This is useful to know. And if I had any fresh willow scrapings I would make a tisane of that to ease the pain.”
“Also useful to know,” I mused. The talk of honey reawakened my hunger and my stomach gurgled.
Agnese smiled and put her hand on my shoulder, a natural, motherly gesture. “I don’t think you’ve had anything to eat today.” She raised her eyebrows in appraisal. “Am I wrong?”
I shook my head. “We wanted to get as far away from the raiders as possible.”
She gave my hand a pat. “I’ll have Prisca bring some bone broth for him.” She smiled again and stood up. “And a little something for you, too—until we can sit down to a real meal later.”
I rose with her. “Maybe I should go in to him.”
“Justina can look after him. You stay right where you are,” Agnese ordered. “It is a fine evening and you have difficult days ahead of you. Why not enjoy the peace while you can?”
I could not disagree, so I sat back down. I was sitting there, soaking up the serenity, and a woman appeared with a steaming bowl in one hand and, in the other, a small seeded barley cake and a cup of milk on a little plaque of cedar wood. I accepted the food gratefully and soon wolfed down the sweet cake and drained the cup. I stretched my legs out before me and closed my eyes. I must have dozed, because I did not stir again until I heard voices echoing across the yard.
The sun was down and the folk were gathering for their meal at day’s end. I saw Agnese holding the hand of a little girl, no more than four or five summers old. They paused before me. “Dari,” she said to the girl. “This is Aurelia. She is staying the night. Shall we ask her to sit with us at table?”
The little girl gave me a wide-eyed stare and then nodded. Agnese said, “You run along in and find us good places.” She smiled as the girl flitted away—a bright little sprite, darting among the adults.
“Your daughter?”
“My grand-daughter.” She sighed. “It is so hard sometimes.” I wondered at this, but then she added, “Everything is changing so fast. I fear for her—the world she will inherit.”
I did not expect such morose talk from her and it took me a moment to find my feet. “Was it ever any different?”
Agnese shook her head. “No,” she said, brightening again. “I suppose not.”
The meal that night turned into something of a feast. Visitors to the settlement were rare enough that the inhabitants considered us special guests and they laid their best table to mark the occasion. Having slept a little and feeling better, Tullius did not care to disappoint his hosts, so joined us at table. Under the approving eyes of Claudius and his soldiers, our hosts brought out wine from Gaul and a good fat haunch of pork, onions and greens gathered from a plot behind the house, and fresh brown bread in tiny loaves. The moment we gathered, it seemed that they were all eager for news of the procurator’s edict which they had caught word of. The men all wanted to hear the legionaries’ stories about raids and battles. The women wanted to know about the markets in Viroconium and what it was like in Glevum and Venta in the south.
My father held his own for a time, but as the talk grew louder and more boisterous, he made his excuses to leave. I rose to help him back to bed, but he bade me stay and uphold the family honor. What he meant by that, I could only guess. But, as the wine was sweet in my cup and my companions pleasant, I was happy to try my best. For their part, our hosts treated me like a princess from some exotic distant realm. Their innocent deference touched me, going a long way toward restoring my bruised and broken soul. Thanks to the convivial company—and the food and cups of wine—the horrors of the day receded like the vapors of a bad dream touched by the warming rays of a new day’s sun.
When at last we quit the table to go to our beds, we rose as friends. The settlement boasted no guest house, but a corner of one of the smaller houses had been made over for my father and me. The soldiers would stay in the lodge house with some of the younger men. For my part, I was glad not to have to share a bed—though, tired as I was, I do not think I would have noticed in the least.
Tullius was already fast asleep by the time I stepped through the leather curtain dividing the room. I lay down on my pallet and, exhausted by the adventures of the day, the fog of sleep soon stole the world from sight and mind.
We were to overnight at other settlements before reaching Venta, but it would be a very long time before I enjoyed the rustic splendor of a night like that again.