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.Vusca turned his head and saw, across the streaming night, the dim glows of the easterly town, the sparkof Dis Light on the Light Tower.He felt together a dismal sense of futility and a raw pride.He had cometo care for it, this outcast place.Perhaps, when Rome was only a pile of rubble, Par Dis in exile mightsurvive.More rain went down his neck like a cold lesson.Remember you are mortal.So much for the whore's amulet.Even now, like a dolt, he had it in a pouch round his neck.It surelyfailed to keep him dry.And then the world blew up.There was just a dot of white and then a drench like fire.As he flew, turning, falling, he thought, quitedistinctly, he had known something like it before, but he did not know where or when - an earthquakemaybe, or a nightmare.He landed hard, bruised on the metal of his armour.He lay and thought about this, and then he found aheap of armoured men tumbling over him like clanking puppies.He pulled himself out and to his knees, and saw the mason running in a circle screaming.He was naked,and his body smoked."By the bowels of the Bull," said Vusca, standing up.He seemed to be lightheaded.Drunk after.all? He fought the urge to laugh.He lifted his hands.Theywere scalded.He put up these scalded hands, and touched his singed hair and brows.The mason fell down. Beyond, three sentries were pelting up the wall towards them.The terrible rumbling was only thunder.Something was on fire.Something was burning there, just past the mason, between him and the running soldiers.It was all that was left of the Pilum Commander."Jupiter, Father Jupiter," moaned one of the Velites.Vusca had the urge to laugh again.He held it down."It will be yours," said the Centurion Secundo."Not a man here doubts it."Vusca did not want to seem like some blushing virgin.But he was afraid too of what had alwayshappened in the past."It may be you," he said."You've seen more service than I.I'm content."The authority would not come from Rome.There was, at the moment, power enough in Gallia to settlethis.A few more days, and he would know.The Velites carried on as if they already did know.How not, when Father Jupiter himself had made thechoice? He had struck down the Pilum with his own divine thunderbolt, and left Retullus Vusca and hismen unscathed but for a memento of crisped hair.(The mason, though he lived, did not count.)The authority came at the end of the month, slipshod as things always were now, all language.But theseal was the correct one.Vusca went out to look at his troops.They cheered their new Pilum with willing lungs.He was surprised.He had never thought himself popular, had been sure he was not.His heart was in his mouth.That moment, perhaps, was the apex of his life.Lavinia wrote him a letter, and for days he put off reading it, for she seemed only able to say, think,accomplish one thing: misery, complaints, and tears on paper were little improvement on the personalhand-to-hand variety.Eventually he did read the letter.It was very simple.She had been a poor wife to him.She regretted this.She wanted to go and live in the villa.If he preferredto divorce her, she acceded.On his advancement she praised him.It was only as he deserved.He had come to realise there would be monetary complications if they divorced.Besides, he had no planto remarry.He doubted that Lavinia had.She did not mention it.He pondered his answer.At last, he preferred not to put anything into writing.He would go to visit herinstead, at the Insula Juna.If she really was contrite, she might be quiet.Perhaps she would not cry.Hecould tell her she could live at the villa, he made no demands.He was sorry for her, and did not want heralways on his conscience.He had not seen her for months.In the dream, he recognised the bearded man, his kilt and oiled muscular body.They walked as ifphysically together along a white platform, under the leaning wall of a white building.The sky was the drum-skin sky Vusca had seen before, but smooring into darkness.Stars came out.The white glazingcaught the starlight, and Vusca saw three shadows falling before them.He was astonished to cast ashadow himself, more curious as to the third.He turned to see who made the third shadow, which was ofan odd shape.No one was there.She had done something different to the room.It looked brighter, even in that dull daylight.A bowl ofpurple grapes had white flowers wreathed among them; a local shawl he had never seen before wasdraped prettily across a couch.Lavinia came to greet him.For a minute, he did not know her."How well you're looking," he said lamely, staring.She had gained weight.Her skin was fresh, her forearms, her throat, were rounded as they had not beensince she was sixteen.The linear cuts in her face had filled out and were gone.She wore her hair a newway, not Roman, more Greek, with a ribbon across her forehead.She was not old, ten years his junior.Suddenly he remembered.She waited on him as she had been used to do when they were first together, sending the slave away.She was very soft.She said very little.She left it all to him.In the end he was lost for words.Then she said, "Do you think I've changed?"He looked.He said, "Yes."She told him why."I'm not a Christian any more."She said she had failed all the Christian precepts, although she had tried so hard.She went around withher heart withering, blaming him, blaming God.Then, on the forum, she saw a procession from the IsisTemple.That afternoon she went there.It was not, she assured him, a hive of orgiastic rites.The religionhad altered.It had to do with Woman.Lavinia had found herself at the cool feet of the statue.She saidthat suddenly the terrible gnawing, which had been feeding on her for years, was lifted out of her.Shemade an offering and joined the prayers.After this, she went regularly to the temple.She had notforgotten the Christos, she said, but it was a religion she was too weak to follow.Isis, who understood,had redeemed her.She could be at peace, now.She could let him go, now.Vusca hesitated [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.Vusca turned his head and saw, across the streaming night, the dim glows of the easterly town, the sparkof Dis Light on the Light Tower.He felt together a dismal sense of futility and a raw pride.He had cometo care for it, this outcast place.Perhaps, when Rome was only a pile of rubble, Par Dis in exile mightsurvive.More rain went down his neck like a cold lesson.Remember you are mortal.So much for the whore's amulet.Even now, like a dolt, he had it in a pouch round his neck.It surelyfailed to keep him dry.And then the world blew up.There was just a dot of white and then a drench like fire.As he flew, turning, falling, he thought, quitedistinctly, he had known something like it before, but he did not know where or when - an earthquakemaybe, or a nightmare.He landed hard, bruised on the metal of his armour.He lay and thought about this, and then he found aheap of armoured men tumbling over him like clanking puppies.He pulled himself out and to his knees, and saw the mason running in a circle screaming.He was naked,and his body smoked."By the bowels of the Bull," said Vusca, standing up.He seemed to be lightheaded.Drunk after.all? He fought the urge to laugh.He lifted his hands.Theywere scalded.He put up these scalded hands, and touched his singed hair and brows.The mason fell down. Beyond, three sentries were pelting up the wall towards them.The terrible rumbling was only thunder.Something was on fire.Something was burning there, just past the mason, between him and the running soldiers.It was all that was left of the Pilum Commander."Jupiter, Father Jupiter," moaned one of the Velites.Vusca had the urge to laugh again.He held it down."It will be yours," said the Centurion Secundo."Not a man here doubts it."Vusca did not want to seem like some blushing virgin.But he was afraid too of what had alwayshappened in the past."It may be you," he said."You've seen more service than I.I'm content."The authority would not come from Rome.There was, at the moment, power enough in Gallia to settlethis.A few more days, and he would know.The Velites carried on as if they already did know.How not, when Father Jupiter himself had made thechoice? He had struck down the Pilum with his own divine thunderbolt, and left Retullus Vusca and hismen unscathed but for a memento of crisped hair.(The mason, though he lived, did not count.)The authority came at the end of the month, slipshod as things always were now, all language.But theseal was the correct one.Vusca went out to look at his troops.They cheered their new Pilum with willing lungs.He was surprised.He had never thought himself popular, had been sure he was not.His heart was in his mouth.That moment, perhaps, was the apex of his life.Lavinia wrote him a letter, and for days he put off reading it, for she seemed only able to say, think,accomplish one thing: misery, complaints, and tears on paper were little improvement on the personalhand-to-hand variety.Eventually he did read the letter.It was very simple.She had been a poor wife to him.She regretted this.She wanted to go and live in the villa.If he preferredto divorce her, she acceded.On his advancement she praised him.It was only as he deserved.He had come to realise there would be monetary complications if they divorced.Besides, he had no planto remarry.He doubted that Lavinia had.She did not mention it.He pondered his answer.At last, he preferred not to put anything into writing.He would go to visit herinstead, at the Insula Juna.If she really was contrite, she might be quiet.Perhaps she would not cry.Hecould tell her she could live at the villa, he made no demands.He was sorry for her, and did not want heralways on his conscience.He had not seen her for months.In the dream, he recognised the bearded man, his kilt and oiled muscular body.They walked as ifphysically together along a white platform, under the leaning wall of a white building.The sky was the drum-skin sky Vusca had seen before, but smooring into darkness.Stars came out.The white glazingcaught the starlight, and Vusca saw three shadows falling before them.He was astonished to cast ashadow himself, more curious as to the third.He turned to see who made the third shadow, which was ofan odd shape.No one was there.She had done something different to the room.It looked brighter, even in that dull daylight.A bowl ofpurple grapes had white flowers wreathed among them; a local shawl he had never seen before wasdraped prettily across a couch.Lavinia came to greet him.For a minute, he did not know her."How well you're looking," he said lamely, staring.She had gained weight.Her skin was fresh, her forearms, her throat, were rounded as they had not beensince she was sixteen.The linear cuts in her face had filled out and were gone.She wore her hair a newway, not Roman, more Greek, with a ribbon across her forehead.She was not old, ten years his junior.Suddenly he remembered.She waited on him as she had been used to do when they were first together, sending the slave away.She was very soft.She said very little.She left it all to him.In the end he was lost for words.Then she said, "Do you think I've changed?"He looked.He said, "Yes."She told him why."I'm not a Christian any more."She said she had failed all the Christian precepts, although she had tried so hard.She went around withher heart withering, blaming him, blaming God.Then, on the forum, she saw a procession from the IsisTemple.That afternoon she went there.It was not, she assured him, a hive of orgiastic rites.The religionhad altered.It had to do with Woman.Lavinia had found herself at the cool feet of the statue.She saidthat suddenly the terrible gnawing, which had been feeding on her for years, was lifted out of her.Shemade an offering and joined the prayers.After this, she went regularly to the temple.She had notforgotten the Christos, she said, but it was a religion she was too weak to follow.Isis, who understood,had redeemed her.She could be at peace, now.She could let him go, now.Vusca hesitated [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]