Just the Beginning

For a moment I ponder my mother’s words. A seed carried on the wind? One in a generation that walks a different path? A weed among the grain? That last one in particular brings to mind a vivid image, as if it were a memory, of a rugged mountain rose growing among the stalks of a vast field of golden wheat. I had never heard her speak of such things so directly and yet they meshed with other things I’d heard her say over the years. Growing up, especially after Dad’s ****, I would catch my mother looking at me as if deciphering a puzzle. The older I got the longer those looks became. The most soulful of them all coming when we received word of my inheritance. That night she had looked at me in that way of her until the stars had fully emerged at which point she suggested that I not sell the land but go and try to make something of it myself. It was only in retrospect I now saw the significance of her letting me go to pursue the path that was destined to take me away from here one way or another.

With my mother now ready to hear it I begin my story again. I detail the trip to Rome, the **** market and the predicament I was in. With ears to hear it Mom smiles and shakes her head.

“That’s the boy I raised alright.” Sliding her hand across the table she lays it on Rosa’s arm. “The gods put my Quint right where he was needed.”

I grin, pride for my Momma growing in my heart. I go on to tell her about the trip from Rome down to Grumentum along the famous Appian Way before striking South into more rustic and wild lands. Keeping it concise I give her the highlights of our trip, Rosa adding details as I went in language far more descriptive and evocative than my own. The more explicit details are skipped of course but there is enough hinted for her to get a sense that Rosa and I’s relationship was a little bit more nuanced that your classic boy meets girl romance. It melts her heart nevertheless. With each passing tale she grew ever more accepting and even warm to Rosa’s presence. Mom listens in horror about the Christian enchanter, her eyes light up on hearing about the pegasi, and when we at last get to the part where I stormed the harpy’s cave to rescue Rosa and she hears about the close call I’d had she rises and comes around the table to hold my head to her bosom.

“I’m okay, Mom.” I say softly, hugging her back. “Thanks to Rosa’s prayers.”

“It was my lord Sylvanus.” Rosa whispers, her small hand rubbing my back as she relives the trauma of that moment along with my mother. “As I said, Madam, your son is a hero in every sense of the word.”

“That’s his father in him.”

“I might have charged the harpy but the sacrifice was Rosa’s. Sylvanus took her sight for answering her prayer.”

“A small price to pay, my love. I would have given him everything.” She grips my arm. We share a smile and an embrace. Across the table my mother sees the bond in our touch as she had heard in our words, understanding and acceptance blooming into approval in her brown eyes.

I close out the first half of my tale with our triumphant arrival to Grumentum and the state in which we discovered uncle Paullus’ pleasure palace.

Setting out some cups of hot tea she settles back into her chair and says. “You experienced more on that trip than some do in a lifetime.”

Our simple weave of love and adventure then becomes frayed and tangled as I continue on into our experiences in the valley a few days away. I tell her of Grumentum and the foul xenophobia that had grown roots there, I tell her of new friends, new adversaries, new challenges, new discoveries, new family and a fearsome enemy turned worker under my supervision turned trainer turned mentor turned foe again and finally turned savior. The only major detail I leave out is that of Rosa’s magic. I felt it safer for everybody that she didn’t know.

Mom says. “This Toke…the northman…he was all those things? He trained you only so he could fight you?”

“It was more complex than that. He was a man of honor who died in battle with the songs of his proud warrior ancestors in his throat. He could have been a Jarl, instead he wore rags. He was a man taken from his people and broken by an Empire who would see such men on their knees.” I kiss my mother’s hand then sit back to put my arm around Rosa and pull her tight to my side. I give my mother a long and somber look before saying. “And that is why we are leaving.”

“Leaving?” Mom whispers, her eyes showing a wounded understanding before I’d even explained it. Beneath the pain I saw that she had been expecting this.

“As Ceres and every other god who will listen as my witness, I will not see my daughter in chains.” I say firmly. Rosa curls tight into me, her head resting on my chest. “Through no fault of her own, condemned only by the blood that runs in her veins, Rosa has been debased, scarred and **** to live with her head bowed low. She is my Lady, my love, but in the eyes of the law she no more than my property. That will change. But not here. Not soon enough to spare our child from that fate as well.”

We sit for a time in silence as Mom grapples with what she’d just learned. I knew this couldn’t be easy. When she’d let me go to settle at Paullus’ she knew there would be visits and letters. This time was forever. This time the seed would sail to a land beyond the emperor’s glory. There would never be another surprise visitor walking down from father’s tree again.

During this silence we hear a cry from beyond the door. “A sword! Quin’s got a sword! A BIG one!”

“Put that back you snooping rascals!” Comes Cassie’s shout followed by a string of harder words as she gives my younger cousins hell as if they were her own kin, which they were in a way.

“Hey! OW!”

After the yelp of a boy follows Plautia’s laugh. “She warned you! You deserved that, Popo! Ha ha ha!” Yeah, Cassie was blending in just as I knew she would.

Mom says softly. “You carry a sword now? I suppose you would with the life you lead.” Setting down her tea she rises and walks from the room. After the sounds of scraping wood and some rummaging she returns with a coiled bundle of thick leather straps. She unfurls onto the table to reveal that it was a belt with a loop for a scabbard on one hip and an apron of metal plated straps hanging down the center to gird a soldier’s loins. “Your father’s cingulum. It was returned with his pugio, which was passed on to you. This is the only thing I have of his from his soldiering days. The very last thing.” Her work calloused fingers gently run across the steel plates and leather before she pushes it across to me. “You can use this. What am I going to do with a sword belt around here?”

“Momma.” I whisper as I look upon the belt. The leather was still supple, the metal polished, this had been cared for. “I can’t take…”

“Yes you can! And you will. He would have wanted it that way.” She turns away from me to straighten the teapot on the stove, even though it needed no adjustment. “Maybe…it’ll help…you more than it did…” Her voice breaks as her head bows and her shoulders heave with a sob.

I rise and go to my mother, hugging her from behind. “Oh Mom.”

She grips my arms. “You take that belt, okay? You remember whose it was. You remember who gave it to you.”

Tears blur my own vision though do not spill as I kiss her head. “I will never forget.”

After just a minute she sniffles and nods her head. Taking a deep breath she composes herself again.

I look at the belt gleaming on the old wooden table. “I can’t…I don’t have the words…”

Rosa says softly. “Thank you would be a good start.”

“Thank you, Mom.”

She nods again, this time more forcefully as she comes to peace with this decision. “Yes. This is right. Yes!” Her voice grows stronger with each word. She turns and looks up at me, lovingly stroking my face. “You’ll make him proud. You already have. If he could see you now, if he could hear these stories…” Her words fading she nods yet again, her sorrow turning to something brighter. “The dagger will fit on the left hip. There’s a spot for it.”

“Yeah, about that.” I say. “The dagger…IS the sword.” As her brows furrow in confusion I say. “My story isn’t done. Remember I told you that the northman became a savior and a hero in the end? Well the next part of my story involves him, Dad’s dagger, and a magical metal minotaur.”

“Gods! The story continues!?”

“It’s still being written.”