S. P. Somtow - Aquila.pdf - S. P. Somtow - widez2

AQUILA IN THE NEW WORLD

Somtow Sucharitkul

CHAPTER I

ONCE, WHEN I WAS VERY YOUNG, FATHER TOOK

ME in the motor-car to the Via Appia, to see a man being

crucified. It was some slave, some minor offense that I don't

recall; but it was the first time I had ever seen such a thing. All

the way there—and the way from our estate is olive-tree country,

beautiful in the height of summer—Father was lecturing me

about the good old-fashioned values. It was as much for the

benefit of Nikias my tutor as for myself.

As we approached the Via Appia we would run across

peasants or slaves; I remember that their awe at seeing my

father's gilded motor-car, with its steam chamber stoked by

uniformed slaves, with its miniature Ionian columns supporting a

canopy of Indish silk, was sometimes comical, sometimes

touching. Only someone of at least the rank of tribune might

possess such a vehicle— although they are much slower than

horses—for their secret parts are manufactured, somewhere deep

in the heart of the Temple of Capitoline Jove, by tongueless and

footless slaves who can reveal little of the mysterious rites

involved. Truly the Emperor Nero must favor my father, who had

never plotted against him and always sent him curious and witty

gifts, such as that funny glowing shroud from Asia Minor that had

been used to wrap up the living corn-god, sacrificed each year

only to be found reborn in some unfortunate young man.

It was stifling. My toga praextexta was drenched with sweat.

When we got to the crucifixion, it was late in the day and hard to

get a good view; and even my father was weary of lecturing me,

and did so only intermittently as Briseis the pretty little cupbearer

filled and refilled our goblets with snow-chilled Falernian. I was

young then, as I have said, and remember little of the poor

wretch's agonies; he put on a good show at first, shrieking

hideously as the ropes were tightened and the cross raised, but

presently he sank into lethargy, his eyes (which I only saw by

virtue of being perched on the motor-car's driver's seat) glazed

over, and flies stormed all over him. We gorged ourselves on

melons and on a concoction of peacocks' brains and honey.

As we started home, my father, stimulated by the sight of

bloodshed, harangued me all over again, standing proudly over

the prow of the motor-car with his white mane and his senator's

toga trailing in the evening breeze.

"Titus, old boy," he growled gruffly, dropping pointedly into

Latin instead of using the Greek of casual conversations,

"remember that you're a Roman. As a citizen you'll never be

crucified, of course; but even so, a lesson well learnt and all that.

The old ways are the best—I don't mean to espouse the Republic

or anything foolish like that, Jove forbid, only to make sure you

grow up straight and true and my son, eh, what! We should never

have let those slimy Greeks come over and transform us into

culture vultures... in the old days men were hard, fighting hard,

playing hard, not like your mincing tutor over here." (Nikias and I

were giggling in the back over some childish matter.)

"Listen, young man, when I talk to you! After all, the Divine

Emperor Lucius Domitius (or Nero as he likes to be called) may

do all this acting and singing, but he chose me, a sober and

staunch man of courage and integrity, to receive the gift of this

magical horseless chariot, of whose locomotive secrets only the

gods Vulcan and Jove know."

"But Sire," said curly-haired, beardless Nikias of the gaudy

tunic and scented hair, "it is said that this device was invented by

a Greek scientist, Epaminondas of Alexandria, by enlarging on

the theses of the ancients Aristotle and Archimedes; that this

same Greek now holds an important, but secret, position in the

Temple of Jove; that this mysterious engine, over which rites

must be said and sacrificial blood spilt before it will run, is a

simple mechanical device, the basis also of the equally

mysterious ships which even now have returned from Terra Nova

laden with curiosities—"

"Impudent scum! You can't buy a decent slave for a thousand

gold pieces," my father said. "I suppose I'll have to beat you for

impertinence." He pulled a little flail from a fold in his toga.

"Damn these horseless monstrosities anyway! Nothing to whip,

the thing just chugs along without any feel to it—" At that he

began to lay into my poor tutor; but it was more of a gesture than

anything, and he missed more often than not.

"Tell me about Terra Nova, Nikias!" I cried. It was the first

interesting thing to happen that day. "Is it true they've found

barbarians?"

"Yes, and giant chickens, too, that go gobble-gobble-gobble,

and vast herds of aurochs, and the fiercest barbarians

imaginable—thousands in number! Why, they decimated the

Tenth Legion before General Gaius Pomponius Piso—"

"Insufferable!" my father said. "Everyone knows that the

Roman army, in its discipline, its order, and its bravery, has not

been beaten in a thousand years."

“Tell that to the Parthians," said Nikias, deftly dodging a

blow.

"They must be really fierce, these Terra Novans," I said. I

know I had stars in my eyes, because even then I knew I was

going to be a general and have a legion all to myself. Father could

afford, after all, the kind of bribery that would get me some

minor foothold in the establishment, and I'd go from there. "Are

they as fierce as the Britons?"

"Fiercer. Wilder," said Nikias, and then added (keeping an

eye out for my father) "but I'm not going to tell you a thing about

them until after you've memorized all the aorist and second aorist

forms of these contracted verbs. See, when alpha, epsilon or

omicron stems come into conjunction with the conjugatory

endings—"

"Bloody Greek grammar," my father grumbled as we pulled

into the estate.

"He's just jealous," Nikias whispered in my ear, "and besides

the Emperor only invites him to those parties so that wily

Petronius can make fun of him when they have those

poetry-improvising sessions, and your blessed father, who can't

tell a hexameter from a hole in the ground, has to get up and

warble to the lyre—I hear Petronius is writing him into his new

novel, and the in-group at the palace is just in stitches —"

Perhaps I've painted too genial a picture of those days But

alas, they were all too short. My father lost favor with the

Emperor, got accused by the Empress Poppaea of some tom

foolery, and was permitted to commit suicide. Despite the law,

which is quite firm on the fact that descendants of traitors who

honorably run on their swords may inherit as though the

escutcheon had never been blighted, the Emperor somehow

managed to confiscate the estate.

It was Nikias, that slimy Greek as Father used to call him,

who saved my hide. He had a cousin, a eunuch, who was high up

in the palace bureaucracy, who had become a millionaire simply

by accepting one out of every three bribes that came his way,

regardless of whether he followed up on the request to which the

bribe was attached; and so our truncated family came to live at

court.

Meanwhile I grew tall. Nero and a few other emperors

expired in various unpleasant ways. Terra Nova was all the rage

for a while, and several modern cities with all the

amenities—baths, arenas, circuses—were built, mostly along the

eastern shore of that huge land mass, and procurators sent to

govern the thriving colonies of settlers and Romanized natives.

The legions pushed westward into what is now the province of

Lacotia. Some of our horses escaped and began to breed in the

wild; the Terra Novans, in only a few years, became by all

accounts the most adept of horsemen.

Frankly, I changed a great deal after Father's death, which

taught me a salutary lesson about the human condition. I

determined to become a fine Roman; to become, in fact, the very

man my father had thought himself to be. I boned up on my

Caesar and on all those battles; I studied Xenophon and all the

Greek military historians; went off with the legion and got myself

a few border commands; saw action in Britain, when the Picts

came down on Eburacum, and again against some recalcitrant

barbarians on the Dacian border....

After a while I was noticed by the Divine Domitian; and it

was on the very day that the Emperor granted Roman citizenship

to all the barbarians of Terra Nova, and awarded himself the title

of Pater Maximus Candidusque, or White and Greatest Father,

that he also honored me with the command of the Thirty-fourth

Legion.

CHAPTER II

TITUS, OLD CHAP," THE EMPEROR SAID TO ME, "have

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