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- The Cargoman's Tale -
A bee crawled in aimless circles around my window glass, deceived by the light it saw as freedom - the light that kept it trapped. I moved slowly, quietly, trying to get it cupped and out the door before my mother saw it. My hands hovered over it, the way I had seen my father do it a dozen times before. I tried to keep them steady and not think about its stinger, cursing my mother for transferring to me her fear of these tiny insects. I had to make myself do it, though. I didn’t want my father to be bothered from his work. Not this time. I sucked in my breath, forcing my hands to move. I hesitated. The bee flew up along the thatched ceiling and around the corner of my room as I cringed.
I heard the frantic crash as my mother jumped up from her loom. “There’s one in the house! There’s one in the house! It’s gone after me! Help me, Darius, it’s after me!” I hurried to the door, opening it, hoping it might fly out. My mother stood cornered, batting at the air, screaming, “Dariuuuusss!”
I could hear my father whoa his ox in the field. “I’m coming, Olivia! Don’t despair!” he shouted, his voice both reassuring and full of jest. It amazed me he still acted as if this wasn't an annoying task. Three times this week already he’d been called upon to aid her.
“I’m here, love,” he announced as he entered the house. “I’ll save you! Where is this winged offender?” My mother had folded herself face first into a corner. She pointed towards the far wall. “Ah, I see it,” he said, in a hushed voice. “Go on outside, Mardus and I will take care of this!” She darted out the door as I peered around the corner. My father rolled his eyes at me. “Why did I marry that hysterical woman?”
His joke was made with fondness, as playing the hero in the rescue of my mother seemed enjoyable to him. He studied me while he waited on the bee to land. I’d seen that disappointment on his face before.
“Surely you could have handled this one, Mardus?”
“I didn’t see it,” I lied.
The bee came to rest against the wall. He cupped it swiftly with stable hands and strolled casually outside. “I’ve got it, love. You’re saved.” He released the bee into the air above him as my mother dashed back towards the house. She stopped at the door, her arms tightly wrapped around herself, her eyes scanning the air. My father raised a brow at her, awaiting the usual praise, but she gave him no such recognition. He’d bought the hives and was therefore responsible for this torment being inflicted upon her.
“I can’t take this anymore, Darius. I can’t. I can’t even think straight at my loom, always watching the walls now. It’s enough! You’ve got to get rid of them.”
“But we’ve made decent money off the honey!” He grinned boyishly at his rhyme. Approaching my mother with his arms out, he drew her into a hug and rocked her affectionately, trying to calm her nerves. “You’ve liked having honey for our morning bread, haven’t you, dear?”
“We can buy honey. I know it’s expensive, but really, Darius, I just…I don’t like them. Please!” She pouted at him; an exaggerated quiver to her bottom lip, her eyes gazing up at him at just the right angle to appear large and sad, knowing that look would offset his strong will.
My father sighed in defeat. “There, there, all right, love. The market is busy enough today. I’ll go see what we can trade them for. Don’t fret. I don’t like to see my Olivia fret.” She smiled, her face beaming with appreciation. My father kissed her on the nose. That made me smile as well.
“Mardus!” He called me over to him, tousling my black hair. “Bring the ox in.”
I nodded, galloping like a horse full speed across our small farm to where our ox stood idle in the field. This wasn’t an especially hard task for a boy of thirteen but I was short and lean with wiry limbs and still a bit unwieldy with a heavy plow. I raised it awkwardly, wavering side to side, walking the ox slowly back towards his pen.
“Don’t trade them for corn, I didn’t like that last batch of corn,” my mother was saying. “And not barley again, good Ceres, what a disaster!”
“No, not barley. I won’t make that mistake twice.” He shook his head, laughing. The barley. She’d never let him forget it, since they had argued over its purchase to start with and my father had invoked his ‘final word’ on the matter. Sometimes, I think she prayed for that dry season just to spite him.
I returned to my father, climbing up to sit on our fence, as mother continued her extensive list of things he shouldn’t get. She looked radiant in the sunlight, the little gems in her hair combs and necklace glittering as she shook her head. Standing barefoot in a simple linen toga against the gray stone of our home, her skin so perfectly white, as if she’d been chiseled by a sculptor from a thin slab of unblemished marble. I rarely saw her shine this way. She usually never stepped outside without her cloak.
“I’ll find something of use. Don’t worry. Go on back in the house,” my father said, finally losing his patience. He gave her back a gentle pat, meant to persuade her towards the door, and then started for the city gate, which sat just a few minute’s walk from our home.
“Take Mardus with you!” my mother called after him desperately. “Please!”
“All right, woman, all right. Back in the house!” My father beckoned to me with his head. I ran eagerly up the road after him.
“You’re making your mother crazy,” he said. I grinned, but remained silent. I knew I’d been too much of a problem to her lately, but I’d been so miserably bored. I’d outgrown playing as a child. I no longer cared to build miniature stone cities in our garden, or walk all the way down to the bridge by the river to sail my toy boats down the Aniene. My schooling had concluded and my father had hired slaves who came to work our fields, so there had been little else for me to do than get on my mother’s nerves.
I followed him closely, nearly doubling my pace to keep up with his long strides. We lived right off Nomentana road, the first farm house on the left outside the Collina gate. The gate, built out of large imposing stones, was one of several that gave passage into our city, the great Republic of Rome. We both waved to the legionaires as we passed underneath it. The same teams of men had guarded that gate for as long as I could remember and every one of them knew me by name.
Tall red brick buildings surrounded us as we cut through Caesar’s piazza. There was a statue here that was my favorite in the city. Not cold and still, but alive and full of motion. A soldier, firmly seated upon an armor-adorned war horse, with its curved neck and open mouth surging forward towards battle. It looked so real, just frozen in time. The gardens here were of no interest to a rambunctious blue-eyed boy since I’d not been allowed to play in them, but if I had been, I’m sure I would’ve wrecked them in little time. There seemed little point in gardens, or fountains for that matter, when they were off-limits to children who would have known how to put them to their best use.
The market was a chaotic place to me, compared to the tranquility of our farm. Vendors vied with one another for everyone's attention, ensuring a steady stream of strange noises, guttural clucks and shouts. My father paced up and down the crowded aisles, twisting at his blue stone ring, his mind caught up in deep thought and contemplation.
“We could trade for a horse,” I offered my wishful but uninvited opinion.
“Mardus, you know I don’t need a horse. Stop trying to make me buy a horse!” He shook his head at me with a good-natured smile. His consistent humor was admirable. Very little seemed to agitate him. “What would I do with the thing?”
“Now, chickens!” He stopped to admire the birds. “I could build your mother a hen house for them and she could have fresh eggs. Do you think she’d like that?”
“She definitely would,” I answered for myself.
“Yes. A fitting investment, I think. You can never be too sure, but that should never stop you from trying. Fortune favors the bold! Men who are afraid to make an investment will never know prosperity. You should jump in when opportunity presents itself. Better a poor attempt at success than none at all.”
I rolled my head side to side with each sentence, mimicking his words. I had heard this speech from him more times than I could count. His investments weren’t always profitable, but in truth he had done very well for us three. We owned our farm with its five fertile acres and he had acquired the ox, two sheep and a mule. We were definitely one of the better off families among the modest farms, although we suffered next to the larger estates and villas that dotted our hillside, villas owned by men who honestly hoped to see us fail, as covetous as they were of any land not yet their own.
Having made his trade, he turned for home. Our bees would be two chickens by tomorrow’s eve and my mother’s frayed nerves would be lessened for a time.
Passing back through the gate, my father stopped to chat with the legionaires. He brought up politics once again, engaging them at length with his ‘expert’ opinions. Rome certainly gave him an abundance of things to talk about. It seemed nearly every day there was a new war, conquest or conspiracy. Between Cicero and Caesar alone, he could spend hours in discussion with these men.
I just stared at the soldiers, listening intently to their voices while they debated with my father. They always sounded so self assured--a trait I greatly admired. My childhood dream was to be a legion commander. Even when I grew older and understood it was a position afforded only to the wealthy, I still held on to that dream. What innocent mind doesn’t imagine there will be magical exceptions when they’re proven to be great?
The soldiers who patrolled our road often stopped and leaned on our old gray wood fence to chat. They were like tiny triumph parades, standing out amongst the dull green fields with their bright red tunics and shining silver metal breastplates. I knew them only as conquerors and victors, proud looking men who belonged to the greatest army in the world. They were revered, respected, and incapable of defeat. In my small world they were very much like gods, and for this reason alone, I looked forward to joining the army.
Mother loved the chickens, but she immediately assigned me the unpleasant task of keeping their boxes clean, another chore piled on me in hopes of keeping me occupied. Chores are of little use, though, when you’re thirsting for adventure, and only increased my boredom. The world was such a big place while our farm grew smaller by the day. I could hear her whispering complaints about me to my father some nights when they believed me long asleep, but on this night, she offered a solution.
“You have to find something for him to do, Darius, he’s constantly underfoot. He has no other children his age nearby, no one to talk to all day. I feel bad for him, but what am I supposed to do? He’s out there all day with his stick swords attacking anything that moves. He’s completely destroyed the scarecrow and the hedges. I caught him today riding the mule, running the poor thing ragged down the road while he took swings at the tree branches.”
“He has too much energy,” my father agreed. “Gods, my poor mule.”
“You’ve got to start allowing him to leave the farm. Take him out a little each afternoon into the city. Why don’t you? The library perhaps, or over where they’re building the basilica, I’m sure he’d like watching that, or the barracks, Darius. They’re not far down the road, and you know he’d love watching the soldiers. He can go there himself. You know he would if you’d only let him.”
The only time I actually was allowed to enter the city was on market day or for festivals and always in the company of my father. Whatever aversion he had to my being exposed to it as a child was becoming unreasonable in light of my age. I grew excited at the idea of being able to venture there on my own. A whole city to explore would afford me endless things to do.
“I don’t know what good could come of it,” he said, “but perhaps a few days a week. All right.”
The suggestion was a brilliant one on the part of my mother and I loved her for having made it. The more we ventured into the city, the more acquaintances my father made, and the more time he would spend in discussion and debate with them. I seized these opportunities to wander off on my own. I loved to walk to the barracks to watch the infantry train. Though these were common soldiers, to my imagination they were all men of the 10th Legion, infamous and elite.
The barracks had wooden buildings, an armory and training apparatus, bordering a hard dirt yard, sectioned off from the street by a low stone wall. I started going there most every day to climb up on that wall. Balancing atop it, with a stick in my hand, I could copy their sword fighting techniques. Most of the soldiers were off fighting barbarians, but a few always remained garrisoned in the city. I had heard talk that they might build a new armory and barracks closer to the campus but since we never walked that far, I prayed that wouldn’t happen.
We never ventured towards the far ends of Aventine or Subura because, as my father would say, “the closer one gets to the docks, the further one gets from civility.” I didn’t understand this as a boy, although I was able to observe that deeper into the city there was a noticeable difference in the appearance of buildings and roads.
The area around our library gleamed. The piazza there was surrounded by buildings with tall columns and arches of polished marble and rigid stately statues all arranged with symmetrical unity, while the narrow moldy side streets leading off towards the Tiber were full of older buildings, made of rough uneven stone.
Further still were common people, crowded several floors high in thin-walled, timber framed insulas, who shared stinking public latrines and cluttered the muddy streets with their noise. I would never have ventured to that part of the city by myself, had it not been introduced to me in an odd fashion a few weeks later. I stayed to the barracks. The only place I wanted to go. The only place I would have ever gone.
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