The Long Roads

a short story

I was just walking down the road minding my own fucking goddamn business – gimpy hobbling really, with my aching back, I remember that, and hanging on a tall walking stick or something; something such as that. When was this? Clear as yesterday, I swear. I'm sure it was an actual road for sure, but a dirt township track really, a small road with gravel underneath and built up along the sides with little rocks, the way they always were, with the brown old winter leaves and needles wearing down to a dampish dirt just then as I scuffed along and putting down another year of padding on the top, and rather soft already, if I do recall, even through my worn-down sandals. I had army sandals. I was coming back from leave that time. No I wasn't; that's not it. Shit.

Hello sweetheart, can you pour my cup full? Bless you dear. Can you leave the bottle, please? I think these kind young handsome gentlemen will pay. Thank you very kindly, sir; you have a noble air, a gentleman's nod.

This was when? I was young. I had on combat gear. I think . . . that's it! I was a young kid and they sent me on a courier trip. That was it! I was one of our brave lads gone out to make some money and save the filthy Gauls from their disgusting Celtic ways, and it was a courier trip. But why in a god's Hell would they send an asshole kid with a sprained back? It must have been in Britain. No; that was the first goddamn fucking time my back was ever sprained, from chipping all that fucking goddamn ice. There was this titanic ice storm early spring on the far side of the Alps with just my lone platoon stuck way up in the fucking pass and the army sixty miles away right goddamn down in the fucking city! Oh yeah, every soldier that ever lived has pulled duty like that – of course – but I was actually officially voted "The Asshole Kid" that year and every platoon that ever lived has had one. Well, at least, when they don't have one they miss him, but when he's there they give him so much grief.

Anyway! You know what I was going down to look for? I wasn't even out to look for footwear. We didn't lack for much. The guys sent me out to look for orders. Can you believe it? No? It was an Alpine paradise and finally Top Kick figures out he'd better send for orders. Oh, we had plenty of grub from the locals and we had their work details going around the place and started up construction for the spring. There were five good farms right up there by the pass within a half night's march from the station and more a little further on, so you had better understand we had enough supplies and we had one of the farm girls hired in to fuck and her mother too. And we all had money too, from the fellows' autumn payroll and my enlistment purse at first and then some secret loot one of the fellows had on hand. It was an Alpine paradise, but I had been waving every goddamn morning in platoon formation – I mean that I would stick up my hand and wave – and saying that we'd better check around. Finally, our lookouts spotted heavy dust activity down toward the city and still no letters or spring payroll or inspection came.

Gods in Heaven! That is it! I was actually sticking up my hand in platoon formation every goddamn morning for a week and this was actually what I was saying: "Let's go ask for an inspection." Thinking up new arguments. Right! See, I was proud of the job we'd done on the station house just since last fall and I was saying that we ought to send somebody down to ask for an inspection and we would show it off. And Top Kick like to tore my balls off the third time that I said it. And what else was it? Oh yeah, the lookouts spotted that heavy dust down toward the city and this was even a damp spring.

Well anyway, Top by then, after he sees this cloud of dust rising above the forest mist horizon, was dancing on the parapet in sheer and utter frustration. I have never seen a human being actually yank his own hair out but our big old Top Kick was trying to do it and dancing up and down so that the green pine logs really bounced underfoot and so I, a raw recruit in some alarm twenty feet up off the ground, started back and looked for a steady post to grab. I tell you true; I've stood on a log wall that truly was falling in the crush, with the timbers chopped out free of the ground, and it shook less than that, in the miserable moment when you're on top between one eye blink and the next you realize for sure they're pulling down the wall on which you stand while a whole sea of armed men dueling with each other surges one way or the other down below. And in that case, the parapet shook less than that. I never stood on a burning wall. In sheer frustration, see. Was the army moving out? Why had they sent no word nor pay? Was there a war on now? Was there a battle already? It was likely just some spring maneuvers, but it could be anything and we could be left behind in our delightful little Alpine hideaway that might be enemy country now already. If we got left behind, how about our share of future loot? And if this country had turned against us, we'd better figure it out fast so we can hope to sneak back home through the mountain passes, but what kind of soldierly act would that be in any case?

You can imagine we didn't get much sleep that night, with all our dice and wine and ladies going around all while we talked it over at the sacred fire, but next morning at platoon formation, who do you think old Toppy smiled upon at last?

They should have all chipped in and gotten me a specially commissioned gilded breastplate with sapphire tits and a picture of an asshole in the middle.

Well anyway, my back was a whole lot better by then, three weeks or so along, and I was hobbling along not too uncomfortable for half the morning going downhill on the local roads with no one but my sword swinging at my hip and the spear that I leaned upon for company and just simply following the sun's path after the first couple miles of mountain track. But the roads were small. It was still morning yet, a cool damp breeze along toward noon in the heavy shadows of the big trees and buds sprouting out on every twig and here I come along. Whiffs of smoke from people's cabins. I remember I was mostly looking off into the heavy woods on either side there and growing a wee bit cautious since I hadn't seen a human soul for at least, maybe, half an hour. And that was enemy country just fifty years ago; I mean, fifty years before then. You still couldn't learn a goddamn thing from stopping the civilians that you passed along the way like that. Those Gauls were still Celts, really.

And here I come upon a holy altar in the road.

It was nothing but a boulder flat on top and stained with blood and forest litter fallen over it just like some farmer might have used to cut up something now and then, but right there at a wide spot in the road. So I stopped and looked around. I must have been dozing on my feet, I guess, because I did not see the thing before I come upon it, but here there was this wide round spot in the road with this altar at the side where you could look down toward a big oak tree in the woods and a huge grinning face was carved into that oak tree too.

That wooden face was staring at me suddenly and the big grin on it hit me just like somebody suddenly swung and hit you with a heavy hammer in the chest, or something such as that, and I staggered back. Now what on Earth was this? I blundered back a good ten steps and stumbled and fell and my helmet even fell right off and rolled away.

It was an altar different from any I had ever seen and I didn't even recognize the thing till I got right there, glancing down and realized this big lumpy rock on the left side of the wide spot in the road was actually a holy altar. The thing that fooled me was there wasn't any kind of statue or anything there, just an old oil lamp stuck up on a stick about a couple yards on down beyond the shoulder of the road between two little trees, and then on down into the woods.

Or actually, there was a big bramble thicket of roses maybe out there with a small stream winding past and there were these two young pine trees flanking the view for you of this empty piece of woods beyond the altar, and the oil lamp hanging on the crooked stick, and I swear by all that's holy, that huge oak tree with the carved grinning face had disappeared. And there was something that simply struck you in the view out there that let you know the woods for sure were haunted.

Well, what on Earth was this? It was a kind of scenic overlook.

It was a wide spot in the road but I didn't look around myself at once. I guess somehow I must have been dozing on my feet, really, see, cause I had not even seen the ordinary-looking statue that I now saw, which I had actually walked right by just at the entry of this clearing. But that was just an ordinary statue of Mercury or somebody like that, and then there wasn't any statue of any kind or carved post or anything at the altar itself. See? Dozing on my feet. I was confused.

And there was some firewood, some kindling sticks, neat and proper stacked there under a corner of the altar, under a little overhang. Firewood? Why was there firewood stacked beside this empty altar? There was no visible charring on the top but only thick moss and stains. Mushrooms were sprouting from the kindling sticks like on any piece of wood up there. So I looked around and saw another statue a few yards further on along the road where it narrowed once again. It was actually an outdoor temple, see, with the road right through and another cart track going up off uphill just there into the woods, and another statue there where the cart track left the clearing. See? Actually, there was an oil lamp on a crooked stick by every statue.

And, looking around there where I'd fell, I found there was a stone-lined small fireplace pit of moderate size in the dirt at the center right where I had stumbled, just in reach, that was filled up nearly level to the ground with charcoal lumps beneath and a scattering of camouflage across it, as across all of the ground, of old brown scattered leaves and needles and acorns and cones. The gods know why, but I rolled over onto my elbows and leaned over that old fireplace at the center and gazed into it and somehow became a wee bit fascinated at that particular whirly pattern of the forest litter that was trapped in there in the small depression in the Earth upon the charcoal bits inside that little circle of fireplace stones.

I remember thinking to myself, this place was nothing but a roadside temple and I didn't know the style. No problem. It was a regular-used temple but just without a roof and walls so it must be one of those native Druid places. Druid, yes; I'm sure I thought I knew it right away, at last, for I had heard of their places of course, but I am sure that I did not tremble. I simply crouched there staring at that swirl of forest litter in that ring of rocks at the center and reached out my hand to take a gleaming little golden-colored thing that struck my eye. Official Asshole Kid.

Then suddenly there is a whirl of wind and there is this figure looming over me, big as a god. My eyes raise up slowly to his face, up past this robe he's got on and his arms reaching out at me, and he is frowning like a thunder cloud and he speaks my fate. I remember all that all right.

Another drink? Sure, you bet. What is this shit? Sure makes you dizzy. What was I going on about? Just now? Oh yeah, the dear sweet army whores. You know, it's funny how a person can forget. It's all the dying that makes you forget. People live such complicated lives and then they die and you don't see them any more. Memory dies inside of you. Did you ever kill someone you knew? No? Nor you neither, sir? That can be hard, depending. Later on, I killed someone I loved. But that's a different story.

The pretty ladies. That fall when we had just arrived up at the pass, me and some other guys went out with the commissary corporal. We went all around the farms up there to draw the tax list up since I could read and write and speak the Gaullish tongue better than average, and one place we found there was this widow woman with just one daughter left about the place. Old Skippy the corporal is leaning on a fence rail there by the house after we looked around and says politely to the lady; "What if we hired your girl to come up and stay at the station and be a whore? She's pretty as you are, nearly. For the winter, anyway? We'll pay one third up front in real coin, and she won't lack for food nor fire nor smiles. Another third midwinter, balance due come spring." That's what he offered.

And the lady really frowns and shakes her head unhappy at that, and even stamps her foot almost as if she's been insulted, and looks up at the sky. But the farm is wrecked. Really. Wrecked. Her fella died real slow and didn't have a brother, I come to find out later. Anyway, she stares around real hard for a couple minutes and realized she had no choice but to think it over. This lady's fence is down on the downhill side and most of her stock run off. The creak has overflowed and washed some of her better ground chock full of stones. Her barn is pretty full but she has showed us how the roof has sprung a leak and much of the hay's already spoilt. Her smokehouse, as we saw, is damn near empty. I'll wager that she's hardly seen a penny in her hand that year.

She finally straightens up and pinches her nose and asks how much we're paying. She says then, well, the daughter goes off sipping dew drops now and then but ain't never done no whoring no-ways. The girl's a free woman anyhow since poppa died, so the momma would have to ask her. But you could see the momma calculating. I'm a mountain farm boy too, and I could plainly see they weren't about to drag on through a winter with what they had, and that was fall. They had to do something, especially with the taxes coming due.

So momma finally asks if she could come to visit anytime, and her girl would be fair treated like a free woman should, or else she'll take her home. And Skippy, a good man with an oath, he draws his sword and calls me and this other guy to witness and swears upon the eagle on the hilt. He personally guarantees the money and guarantees the girl a private corner all to herself in a dry snug cabin, and food as good as much as we eat, and momma can come to visit anytime the weather might permit and take her home if need be too, if debts be satisfied and no crime done, saving any actual military necessity. And furthermore, he mentions, we shall teach her daughter all the doings any woman ever needs to know, for then and later on in life; that as additional inducement.

So then the lady looks at old Skip real serious and turns her face to show the profile of her face. She then commences to pull her dress right up. She bends down and gathers it all up real business-like and gathers it all up above her bosoms and turns slowly about several times to show all of her shape and says, well anyway, if the girl says yes then could she work herself sometimes? And could her money make their taxes up, instead of the girl's?

Now Skippy was an older guy, maybe forty more or less, and tender hearted, and I could see right then that he had fallen all at once in love. And so we got two happy ladies for the winter and old Skip damn sure saw we treated them right.

Where was that? Britain? Naw, in Britain it was different, I can tell you. In Britain they burned our cities. They did us there just like wolves on sheep. This was in the eastern part of southern France.

Why is it that I find all this is so hard to remember now? The bits of it come out of the fog so dimly, as if I were an old man now, and then some detail strikes a light into the mind's eye like tender taking light in a pile of fuel or like a light gleaming from a gemstone or from steel. Yes, it's death that fogs your memory but it's life too. I lived a lot of years after that winter and spring and then, I know, a lot of years in other lifetimes since. The Druids got it right on that I guess, about rebirth. They got that straight. Have all my Roman Army friends been dead and then reborn like I, or is it just that Druid's curse? They killed me with that mighty curse at that roadside temple, yes they did, though it steamed and stewed around me many further years. Is it part of that fate which they cooked for me that I have come back and walked this world so many times? Or is that how it always goes for everyone?

I remember the first time they came up, and it was beautiful. The weather wasn't bad and we had all been working hard all day, and they had come up with the civilian workers in the morning. I mean they came up with the work crew in the morning, queuing up outside the side gate just after sunup when the clerk came down to open shop, and then we worked all day. I was the clerk, of course, as I think I mentioned. There was just a normal private's guard with me, of course, since I was a private, but when these two women from the farm appeared before me in the little doorway in the great log wall – just behind a laborer whom my two comrades were just then at that moment going about disarming – well I knew that I must call a sergeant. The ladies were lugging a huge big bundle that looked like clothes and blankets. They were evidently set on moving in.

I shouted back up to the tower to fetch Top Kick if they could get him, or another sergeant, and the tower shouted back. So, by then my pals have dropped the peasant's toothpicks and such into our strongbox and we've waved him on along to the bunch that's going to work, and I tell my lads to lug the ladies' bundle in and put it back someplace aside to wait. And they dropped it in the fucking mud puddle, they did, so I cussed the two fellows as best I could and they laughed at my lame attempts of proper soldiering just like they always did.

So the mother and her daughter, sturdy tall figures in their woolen wraps, they stood before me waiting, up there in a corner of the tall timber walls we'd built in one of the foothill passes where the cool autumn breeze was always waving in the browning grass of summer's end and the grass of earth gave way to great granite stones that stood up against the morning sky, where the path led up between great standing blocks of stone that were a gateway of the mountains, climbing further on toward Heaven; there in this fort we'd built into the very wall of the mountains where a path toward home was threaded in. And there before my little lumber desk near the side gate in the morning's purple shadow, the girl looked in my eyes. Her eyes were blue. I know that much.

And all that day, some of our guys would sneak off to stand watch at the cabin they were moving in.

And then toward nightfall with the shadows deepening, with the tools all honed and oiled and hung up for the night and the civilians counted back out through the gate again, Top Kick called us all together in formation in our dirty shirts on our little four square yards of Mars Field inside the front walls. And Toppy says we're going to have official lecture on the whores.

Toppy walks up and down our little lines, beating us pretty much at random with his stick a little just for emphasis. And the first thing he mentions is the financial situation. He states their wages and says these are wages, not piece work, so don't go tipping them too much. Save your money to chip in when we settle up. So forth and et cetera. And he commands the right squad shall have first goes tonight, the left tomorrow night. Some fellows almost groaned out loud at that.

Then Skippy puts his hand up and Toppy recognizes him and Skip adds in that if the ladies refuse some particular guy for some particular reason, then he's just out of luck, so treat them right. And he confides a lesson that he's learned from past experience: don't gamble with them, let them keep their stuff.

And finally Top goes into a thing beating his own palm with his stick and roaring like a bear that the whores can damn well do any goddamn thing they please around the goddamn place, short of stealing or cutting someone with a knife or military treachery, and that is damn sure that.

He had us break ranks and follow him and old Skip down our little alleys round the corner to the women's cabin where we gathered all outside and Skip knocked on the door. By then, of course, our guys were hanging in over the window sills and shoving each other to look in so that from our sudden onslaught and our usual noise the ladies in some fright had retreated from their doings in the cabin proper back behind their boudoir curtain, dropped half their wool and spinning gear and then rushed out to get it once again. So, with three dozen sweaty shouting Roman soldiers hanging in at the little windows and shouting back to those who could not see, there stood Corporal Skippy quite politely rapping at the cabin door and calling loud but humbly to inquire if we could enter. He pressed his ear to the rough planks of the door in hopes of a reply.

The lady of the house comes forth alone from their curtained private corner over past the fireplace and there was quite a comic little show like a stage play almost, for here was this timorous uncertain pretty lady in housewife clothes going out to answer the door for a strange man who wanted in to make love with her and/or her daughter. We clapped and hooted after she had lifted up the bolt and opened the door a crack and she peeked out at him to say; "What do you want, sir?" As if she didn't know.

And when the laughter calms a bit, Toppy standing there by Skippy speaks up in half-way French; "Ma'am, I better introduce the fellows to you. I better lay down the law about your house for clear and certain; lay down the law for them, that is. Tell about your privacy rules in particular. May we kindly come in?"

"All of you at once?" she says.

I call out the translation and somebody from the right squad yells "Not all at once!" and we all laugh.

"Yes ma'am," says Top, "if you wouldn't mind, that would be best. I always got to make things clear as water for these apes."

We hooted all the louder, being apes.

So she opens the door for Skip and him and we climb and clamber in the little windows. There were a couple of decent plank wood couches there in the cabin room, all piled with blankets, and we heaved them around to sit upon, and sat upon the floor, just like it was a show, all crowded in and many hanging on by me to get good renditions of the dialog when someone spoke in French. Top and Skip strode over to stand before the fireplace and do the lecture. But the lady, she goes directly back into the boudoir corner once again behind the curtains and there is whispering behind those long brown and white plaid blankets that hung down to the floor while Top stands there with nothing much to say. Well, he does point to the curtains where they touch the floor and says that is the River Rubicon. Aside from actual military necessity of course, we'll keep our noses out of there or else he'll strip our hides.

But after a good five minutes of earnest whispering inside there, which we're all straining to hear with no success, while Top is bouncing on his heals and no one yet appears, he walks over and stands by the curtain and clears his throat real loud.

A hush from everyone, then "Yes?" comes momma's voice.

"Well, ma'am," says Toppy, "what we ought to do is – well, we got to get this thing started and I don't think these jugheads will behave until we do – I'm sure you understand – so, if both of you could kindly both come out for a minute and remove your clothes."

We cheer.

The lady waits then scrounges up some Italian and says back real loud; "Is this well? For all at once? For all at once? In truth? You have been honest. If this is best, then yes we shall."

So Toppy goes a little further, says kind of hopeful through the blanket; "Maybe then by chance you know a bit of dancing too?"

Comes the girl's voice at last; "Dancing!" comes this sharp young female voice in some alarm, "I did not know you wanted for to dance!"

"Oh no, ma'am!" cries Top. "I don't mean really dancing, no I don't! Just any kind of brief lascivious display at all will do just fine, I'm sure! Maybe you could just come out and squeeze your tits and everything at 'em and smile. Just maybe come out necked and walk around and bend over a little, maybe, see. Cause, really now, I figure we better let 'em all get a real good look right now to start or else there'll be no keeping peace here tonight unless I stand guard all night myself. And then I'd have to beat the living shit out of 'em in the morning."

Now, that was going to be momma's first night humping three dozen hearty soldiers and I must say she handled herself quite well. She called back out to Top right away, still in Latin even; "Yes, we shall do something!" Then the girl's voice pretty loud again then whispering inside while we shout all the encouragements that come to mind, and momma sticks her head out of the curtains, just her head, and calls to all of us, but then in French; "We can show you a little hearth and homefire ceremony that we sometimes do on winter nights. We'll do some dancing with it. How about that?"

And we all cheered, no matter that the fellows hardly understand a word.

And she said; "Can someone light the fire?"

Now there was a great stampede up to the fireplace, all following me of course, for all the rest must only guess what she had wanted to get done. Skippy barely steps aside intact. The sticks were all there ready on the grate but I had seen the flint box on the mantle and I got it, so it was I who shouldered in to strike the light and hear the boys cheering when the tinder and the kindling took, and I plying the bellows with a will. Me, Official Asshole Kid. And the whole crowd milled around back over to our seats on the couches and floor.

Then momma calls to us; "Do any of you have a harp?"

I translated. We looked at one another, shrugging. No. But somebody speaks up and says this fellow plays a flute. We had this old guy who really played the flute quite well; third sergeant he was. What was his name? He's dead, except I think I met him one time since, when he was strumming peaceful tunes that tore my heart out on an old beat up guitar in a U. S. Army mess hall far away in South Korea. Well anyway, that time the lady asks what instrument he plays and I translated his answer into French, even though he was actually speaking French, that he plays the flute.

The lady says to him; "Well then," she says, "I hope it's loud enough. Is your flute big?" She gestures to be understood and we erupt in laughter thinking, naturally, about his dick.

And the old sergeant says something like; "Yes ma'am, it's pretty big and it makes sweet music." I translated that to Latin.

While we're laughing she replies, "Can you play some winter music or some nighttime music of some kind? Maybe something for sundown, when night is coming. But not sad music; something with a pretty tune." And old Sarge sends somebody running out to fetch the thing.

The little show the ladies did, now that's what's beautiful. A few minutes on, momma and her daughter back inside and plotting what to do; the flute arrives and I shout to the ladies that it's here. So momma sticks her face out through the curtains once again, the room all dim with mostly just the fire glow, and some lamps our guys had lit, and she says sweetly to the piper that he should begin. Our old sergeant strikes a lovely strain that I had heard before, a song about the peaceful meadows when the sun goes down and the shepherdess is bringing in the sheep, and after a verse of it, out the ladies came a-prancing out.

They were not naked then, not yet, but each had on a brightly colored tunic like the Gaulish women wear, down nearly knee length long, but these were open down the front, for only a single bow was tied to fasten the garments at the throat. They walked out to the firelight thus: titties glowing from inside the woolen cloth, bare strong thighs and round wide bellies and curly pussies plain to view, bare feet stepping the floor, the mother so composed as if she wore the crown among a whole town's naked priestesses at a may pole or something like, the girl awkward as befit her youth and trying to pretend we were not there and almost stumbling on the flagstones as she watched her mother's moves, while the mother paced high-stepped neatly to the rhythm of the flute till there they stood before us silhouetted at the blazing fire. They both turned toward the blazing warmth and knelt to pray. The piper stopped and all was hush.

I could not clearly hear the mother's whispered words. But when the girl then spoke her prayer it was that awkward girlish voice, that blend of hesitations and resolve, that mix of "uh..." and "mmm..." and squeaks with deep sincere devotion. I started up there in the front row with my ears pricked up to the first words of the prayer she spoke. For the moment then I thought here was a girl I knew from home, but a girl toward whom I'd scarcely even dared to glance for she was another lad's.

Then when the mystic words were done – strong words of invocation they were, a prayer to Vesta Of The Hearth, but by a name she's known in Gaul, and words that deepened the hush around all of us and sanctified that room with powerful duty and love – then up they stood and the mother beckoned the daughter to her where they stood there at the hearth and each pulled loose each other's bow and helped each other take their tunics off and lay aside as if, almost, this was a simple night of homely life and they were bound to bed.

Some of us cheered but others elbowed them to silence.

And still they were not done. The mother found the piper with a glance and with a silent nod bade him begin again. With that soft melody begun, she knelt in profile to us – earning many sighs – to take up each of the pokers and tongs and bellows and things that we had left about and handed each to her daughter, instructing with little gestures of the hand to stretch and reach up higher than she needed to reach in hanging each thing to the mantle board. Our piper found some trick of sound he knew to lift the heart each time she did. The very gawky manner of the young woman's stance – on tiptoe one foot only, turning, kneeling, standing, leaning with one hand upon the wall, reaching up each time and all aglow in soft round flesh, the youthful swelling of her breasts that softly bounced, her trembling hand, her buttocks and the parting of her thighs – there was beauty past all measure to my heart. There were her large pink nipples bulbing outward with the swelling new growth.

It is the soft round fullness of a woman's breasts that beckons me above all else. Scarcely did I dare to think that I could somehow earn the joy of sucking these.

And then a bit of proper dance at last! The mother brought her daughter to the near edge of the hearthstones once again and stood facing and hand in hand began to prance a ring. It was a wondrous failure of a dance almost at once, the music growing much too fast as the women tried to spin, the mother stepping high and daughter stumbling, both gazing in each others eyes and laughing right out loud so that we laughed – laughing in their pent-up fear of all these brutal men, I know – until they must just sit themselves together on the floor, embracing close, to let the music spin the ring alone until it stopped.

And so at last in silence then, the mother leaned to kiss her daughter's brow. One hand caressed the daughter's hair most tenderly. She whispered something to her ear, to which the daughter hesitantly nodded. Then the daughter turned to search our crowd with those blue blue eyes, for the first time I think, and with her mother watching where she pointed, my darling pointed straight at me.

Nothing else at all was visible to me for that instant. There was just a cloud of light around that clear and glowing face and those deep eyes.

There was a little more, I think. Perhaps they danced again. No that's not it; there was a little pantomime. I guess they'd prearranged the ending of their show. They stood and each one stretched herself and tried to yawn. I think I do recall the mother rubbed herself and squeezed her tits and butt and between her thighs more than she really would have done when going off to bed at home – but no, now that I think on it, perhaps that was a thing she'd shown her husband too, for it all seemed so natural – and now suddenly the girl was finally overcome with modesty, I think; I see her hands pressed to her eyes and breasts a moment, all of which inflamed me more – so that her mother led her to me by the hand where I stood and I strode forward, while all the men were cheering or guffawing at my luck.

I was the first of us to make love with that girl. With all the others driven out like sheep by Top, save old Corporal Skippy with the lady on the other couch, and with the window shutters shut against prying eyes, me and my heart's delight drank from each other for the first time then – love's sweet embrace – and lay in one anothers arms until the banging on the cabin door made plain our time was done for now.

I asked her later, how did she manage that first night? She did as well as I could hope to do on my first battlefield. She said that as she bounced upon the creaking couch that night and got so raw and sore, she thought of me. And she told me of a time, a little girl, she'd stanched a frightful bleeding scythe cut on her mother's leg. She had come there with the one purpose to save her mother's life again. Then I had somehow helped her struggle through. While the winter fell heavy then wore away, she took me to her boudoir several times, of this may Fortune be pleased. For me one time when momma was away, she wore her brightest dress and sat me down on her own private bed, and then tried every bit of jewelry that she had, showing everything to me, in her finest clothes.

And so you see, when I met that colonel that is why I asked him for the green and scarlet broach.

"That broach?" he says and looks down at it. He says; "Why, boy, it's only junk. It's painted brass. I use it for a purse pin for the weight. I was going to give you twenty-five cents."

"Oh no," says I, "If it's all the same to you sir, if it's fair, I'd really like the pin. It's for my dolly, see."

At that he smiles. His dark brown face was lined with worried creases, half from working for that general we had I guess, but when I say it's for my dolly, he really smiles. And then the man confides in me. He pulls the broach from off his purse and puts it in my hand then sticks his hand inside his purse as well and says; "Listen here, son, there's talk we might be bound for Britain for the wars. It's only talk, you mind, but still. If you're to take your dolly there, you'll need much more than that." And he says; "Is it a boy or woman?"

I answer; "It's a very pretty woman, sir, and she can dance."

"Slave or free?" he says.

"She's free."

"Then this might do." he says and, looking down to check what's in his hand, pulls forth a big and gleaming hundred dollar gold piece.

I hold out my open hand again, staring at the gold you may be sure, but when he puts it in my hand beside the broach he clasps my hand shut between his and says; "Look in my face, soldier." I look and he says; "I am Antoninus Africa. Remember me."

And I repeat his name and speak my own.

And he says; "If we ever meet on any battlefield, remember me."

And that was that. Oh no, there's one thing more. He said to me too; "Always guard her freedom if you love her." And that was what I said beside her funeral pyre; "She was always free." Perhaps too free; she came with me. It's well known that Antoninus was a former slave; that's why he spoke so. I saw this fellow through the thick of fighting in Britain often enough, and on parade of course, but never spoke with him again nor had the honor of saving him with shield and sword. Perhaps he's dead; I don't recall. Oh yes, he's dead of course.

And there I was that day, just wandering down toward a Roman Army field encampment on maneuvers with a worn out shirt beneath my gear and hobbling and I flags down a horseman and ask if my regiment's anywhere about.

But they lead me to the general instead, where Antoninus was.

Now, that general we had that time was an old sergeant but gone to wreck. He was a drunk. I guess he had his dollies for all his clerks – that's what I heard – and you know how well that works. So here comes this straggler stumbling into camp with worn out shirt beneath my gear from some detachment that has been sent off and just fucking forgot, by the gods, through some damn clerical error or some such shit, and this general lolling on a chair in his chariot kind of babbles and stares down at me through bleary eyes wondering who the fuck I am and why the fuck they brought me to him.

Colonel Antoninus – that is where I met that worthy man – he prompts the general with some basic questions and I report our situation: timber palisade and tower; all peaceful and well supplied except for shoes and that we've missed a payroll; normal civilian traffic through the pass; Toppy has sent word that the stone tower house should be done within two weeks or so, depending on the weather, and then stone walls maybe by midsummer. I say they sent me in for orders.

The general shouts out; "Orders? Hold your ground! Hold that pass no matter what!" He stamps his foot upon the chariot floor.

Antoninus, frowning deeply, reaches up to lay a calming hand on the general's fist there where he's got a grip on the chariot rail. Antoninus says to me that all I've said has been well done but that I have to go and find my regiment to get our pay and orders and other needs. He nods over toward the way that I should go to find my colonel's tent.

When I'm saluting, that's when the old fart blurts out; "Oh, Tony, something for the courier! He's beat. You give him something."

Then that exchange where I get the green and scarlet pin and the secret hundred dollars.

I plotted where to hide that big gold coin to stop the guys from claiming their proper share; all the way back I schemed and plotted. It was a huge heavy visible lump in my empty purse. Useless thought to bury it; it must be safe within the walls but somebody would surely see me if I buried it, or later going back to check. And if I hid it in our stores or even in our strong box then good old commissary corporal Skip would surely find it and might feel obliged to chip it in the common pot. The only place there was – what does this really mean? – the only secret place there was in my whole world was in my public woman's jewel box. I would give the big coin along with the painted pin and she must promise I would have the money back to spend when urgent need arose.

There we sat on her cot in the dim slanted sunlight through the shutters in her little private corner, her pretty mouth open gaping at the gold disk in my hand.

Her mother comes in through the curtain unexpected, sees it, claps a hand on her own mouth to keep from shouting, turns to see the door is shut, falls down to her knees on the stones and grabs my wrist to look. The gold is gleaming in the dark. She asks us, gasping; "What is it for?"

I tell her something like; "I didn't steal it, but I don't want to share it with the other men. I want to save it for when there's need and it may save us."

She asks just whom I mean to save with it.

I tell her that I mean to save her daughter and her too, if I can do it with a hundred dollars.

She asks me if I really mean this and I swear a little oath that yes indeed, that is exactly what I would like to do if I can.

The momma frowns. She says that was the kind of cowardly oath her people only swore in swamps.

I shake my head, don't understand. What is so serious about that point?

Momma tells that what I've sworn – only that I want to save the girl instead of that I really definitely would do it against any and all odds, you see, come what may – this is a weak cowardly oath. She says this twice.

I made up some stronger oath then, out of my head, on the spot volunteering some kind of sincere mortal duty toward her daughter that I don't exactly now recall, only providing that the girl must keep her loyalty to me.

Then momma nods her head and smiles real grimly and tells me, by her country's native law, with what I've sworn, that if the girl and me get down to fucking anytime in the next four weeks, well then we're bonded proper man and wife. "And," she says, "don't think you'll dip your wick in over there this month." and momma nods toward her own bed.

Oh yes, Britain!

My dolly's mother would not go with us to Britain at first, and swore that nevermore would she go whoring. Her pussy was her own again, she cried in joy. That late spring day she got her final pay, while we were starting to get our gear packed for the trip. She went about our little fortress with a genuine Egyptian myrrh-wood dildo Top had gave her to keep her company as a parting gift, taunting all the fellows all in fun. I see my Gooddie Lady even now, sneaking up above Skippy on the parapet stairs and when he turns around she pulls that big old dildo out from her skirts and squirts the balls to make the oil shoot out. She reaches down to rub the oily thing all on Skip's grinning face and in his hair. She told some awful lies too, secret like, to everyone about the beastly things that all the others liked to do. She bade us all farewell.

Too, she dictated the very oath that I agreed to speak at my own wedding. My future mother-in-law made me take dictation from her own mouth direct and she commanded Top to notarize it at the ceremony. She made me get an actual personal signet ring carved in ivory (a bit of which we had on hand) by the carpenter so I could seal it too myself, saying Toppy's signet of command was not enough.

I swore my bride every goddamn cent that was in my purse and in my bag inside her strong box too and a third part of my future loot and pay and half of what the fellows owed me, I being by then both a cagey artist with the dice and general fac totum, asshole kid no more. And if I did not do my woman's sums correct, I swore I'd be a thief. I swore my life away; I really did. I swore I'd sooner die for her than save myself, but none of this to violate my duty.

And I did not ask for anything from her beyond the ordinary oath at all for Roman wives, and even dropped from that the anti-promiscuity demand, having been well advised how likely is a former whore to wander. And may the gods who ruled the moment of my birth be pleased, I volunteered some more. To please my dear, I called to mind what that ex-slave colonel said and swore I'd ever guard her liberty.

Our Gooddie Lady would not go with us at first, despite her daughter's many tears that they would part, but Skip persuaded. Skip knelt down on his knees with his hands in her lap, out in the yard before the company, and swore that henceforth she would be his alone.

And so we stood there on those hearthstones where I first beheld the glory of my bride. Skip – being a consecrated clergyman besides all else – released a bird out through the window and watched it wing away and said the day was good. We four spoke our vows in turn, held hands in the regular way and spoke our oaths before the fire to Vesta Of The Hearth and Rufus Bright Child as the ladies wished, and sealed the scrolls. Then while I laid that shining big round solar gold piece in my woman's hand, old Skippy hung a lovely blue bead necklace round his good wife's neck.

I ran him through. I ran him through. And even with a Celtic blade. He told me to. He willed it thus: he said; "I am a captain now and I command it. Run me through." He turned his head and gestured weakly toward a hard-used sword that lay nearby in a severed hand.

I bent my aching back to speak into his face. "NO! NO CELTIC BLADE! NOT I!" I cried above the din. But too, I held my empty hands to show I was disarmed as much as he and cried; "YOU ARE A SOLDIER. YOU CAN WAIT."

But still he lived and by all law he held command. He gasped to force the mortal speech back to his lips and whispered in the ear I pressed against his mouth; "It is a sacrifice. I am a dying priest and sacrificed. It's them that kill me. Use the Celtic blade."

My life is cursed, as you can plainly see, to ever hold a weapon such as that one was.

My hand is shaking. See? I spilt the wine. What wine is this? It's gold! See, with the candle light! Red Celtic gold! It's whiskey, isn't it? Good Scotch whiskey, isn't it? Oh, fill my glass again and let it spill upon the table if it will and let me end this awful tale.

It was my death that I remembered first. It's often thus, I've found, that when you think back to an earlier life it is the ending of it that looms out from the shadows first. Now as clear as yesterday it is. "Never shalt thou see thy home again." That's what the Druid at the temple fireplace said, standing over me there suddenly when I reached out to steal a gold-colored acorn from his hearth, one acorn that alone was somehow gleaming red-gold in a sunlight beam, in perfect Latin I would clearly understand. Thunder like a storm he did while I, that callow dangerous boy, crouched and trembled at his feet.

"Never shalt thou see thy home again."

Twenty years I served, as was the army law, and took my discharge purse. A youth had marched onto the roads to music of the blaring horn. A hard-used veteran straggled back alone.

Across the British Sea and weeks hobbling the long summer dusty roads; a town in my dead wife's haunted country, a crowded narrow lane, a breathless hot twilight evening growing purple shadows late, and me plodding through the bustle yearning only for a soft bed that night for weariness and the pain of old wounds and memories and wanting not another wretched noisy inn. I was on the easy coastward road, come back the whole way almost then through France and only one day more, one river more, would find my boyhood land. For the Druid's curse a dark foreboding hung upon me.

I stopped and spoke that woman in the dooryard there, a young and pretty woman just exactly like some cousin of my wife's, who smiles very cagey and takes my offered coin held out and points toward the stable around the back. I'll have my threadbare cloak for blanket and her donkey's straw for bed. I'll have the filthy barnyard fowl for jolly company. Oh well, tomorrow home.

She frowns at my yearning gaze while I lean on my stick and search her face for some bare hint that she might somehow someways know me after all.

She frowns at my yearning gaze. She looks at my penny in her hand again, then looks up and looks at me very hard and answers a question that I had not even had it on my tongue to ask for one bare instant. She tells me this in these very words: that if I'm looking for some cunt I better find the inn.

The bottle's empty? There's a sin. There was some strength in it. Don't call for more; there is a drop left in my goblet here. Oh, look here at the red pools I've spilled.

I remember this most clear: bright moonlight through the crack of the stable door then sudden thunder and a very heavy rain with extremely gusty wind while I lie in a heap of straw wrapped in my ragged cloak below the roosting chickens up above, cloth across my face to breath despite the drifting dust, and I dream fitful visions of everything. The stable's creaking in the wind. My wife – I think very long on this – she died from following me. My wife died, you see, when the army wagon train was sacked, hacked open with our baby clutched to her bosom just like this – just like this. I found them afterward, dead in gore, and a spear was in her hand. Despite my freely given oath to save her.

That huge gusty rain for an hour in pounding sheets, rushing down the drain pipes, misting through the cracks of the lumber walls. No doubt it ran in on the floor. The donkey chuckling and stamping. More thunder closer and the donkey brayed.

I brooded on the curse. Of course it would not leave my mind. Tomorrow, home or else my Fate fulfilled. Then cold water is dripping down to awaken me and then, almost at once, a full strong stream of it comes splashing on my breast and face while I lie helpless for lack of will. Now what on Earth is this? The chickens squawk and fluster all about in the air and cuss the way that chickens do.

Scarcely can I see, but I had seen the hayloft floor above when I lay down and now suddenly a torrent is rushing down between the hayloft boards. I reached into my shirt and find that ivory signet ring on its string, and clutch the sacred relic of my love.

The screaming donkey kicks his stall door loose and bolts out to the night. I lie still in the gushing silence, drowning in that pitiless flow. The timbers crack and then come crashing down. I hear the thunder yet, and I have not been home.