IN THE TIME OF FOG

PART NINETEEN:

"Just view it as a different sort of chariot and you'll be fine,"

Caroline smiled, trying not to look terribly amused.

"And you say my horses, they are all under that...lid?"

"All of them. Many horses."

They were sitting inside Caroline's station wagon on a deserted

dirt lane that ran toward the back of her property.

"It is a strange concept, you know," Maximus said wryly,  putting

the car in drive as she'd shown him and pressing gingerly on the accelerator. "Horses under a lid."  He made a little sound deep in

his throat and the car rolled slowly forward about 5 miles an hour.

"Just turn the wheel to follow the curve of the road and you'll be

fine, we'll all be fine, the car will be fine."

Pressing his lips tightly together, he sped up to 15 miles an hour.

"Ah HA!" she cried. "See, you're getting the hang of it!"

"There is something...hanging?" he muttered, guiding the car

away from a maple that grew rather close to the edge of the road.

It only  took him a  few moments,  though, to understand the

general concept behind making the car behave as he wished it

to. Over and over he sped up slightly, slowed down, stopped,

backed up, and in a wide spot, practiced turning it around.

.....................

"So many died," he said, his voice low. After lunch he'd wanted

to see the end of Gladiator again, to try and fit together somehow
what had happened in the film with what had actually befallen

him. "But not Juba," he added, "not Juba."

As he watched himself run toward Cicero in a desperate attempt

to reach him, to lift him before he hung, he turned, looking at

Caroline. "This is, for me, perhaps more...perhaps somewhat...

of what it is like to view this as a movie. Without memory of this,

it is as though someone else were doing these things. Not entirely, but...somewhat."

When the scene moved away from his arrest to the next morning

on Commodus' balcony, he had no personal experience of what

had befallen him, the obvious beating, the stripping off of his

armor. In all the parts of Gladiator before the tunnel, he...knew...

what had happened to him that was not shown on the screen. And

the parts that were onscreen, he saw those through his own eyes,

not from outside as the film showed. But here, at the ending, he

could see himself only as a spectator. The difference, for him, was

quite profound.

"Sid," he said under his breath.

"What?"

"Sid. He took me from my life."

"He also took you from your death, Maximus. There is that, too."

"I know," he replied seriously. "But perhaps my death was my

life."

She swallowed hard. "Then...then...."

He saw her face, saw the look in her eyes. "Shhh," he soothed.

"I am here. This is the way of things...now. The way of things

for me."  He touched her hair. "In the 'palace' and on the island,

I was lost, not knowing where I was, when I was, only that I had

been a  certain  place  and then I  was no longer.  There was no

reason...no sense...to anything.  Nothing.  But here, with you,

things begin to fit together, I begin to understand.  You, Caroline,

you alone have shown me where I am, have let me grasp again

some sense of who I am."

The scene on the screen switched to Quintus' approach to him

under the colosseum. "What you say to him, Maximus, about

life not giving us anything we are not by nature fitted to bear.

Have you thought of that,  of what you say there,  in terms of

what Sid has brought into your life?"

"That I may, therefore, be fitted to...bear...2007?"

"Something like that," she smiled.

"And the fact that I am not even real?"

She slid  her  hand up  his thigh.  "Maximus, there is  absolutely

nothing in this world or the next which is more real than you."

"You intend to prove this, do you?"

Her lips found the  notch between his collarbones.  "I do," she

barely murmured.

"We are not very good at finishing movies," he added, just before

a sharp gasp escaped his lips.

"Much nicer than being stabbed in the kidney," she whispered as

she clicked the remote off.

"How much?"

It took her a long time to show him.
 

Later, her backside nestled against him, they lay on the couch

and watched the end of the movie. How strange, he thought, his

right leg and arm draped  over the curves of her body, to lie here

like this and watch myself die. He knew from previous viewings

the step by step of how it happened, knew how and when it was

coming. Suddenly, though, he wondered about Lucilla.

"At the end, Caroline, Lucilla is all right. Did she remain so? In

history, I mean, was that how it happened?"

Caroline  sighed.  She had been reading through  encyclopedia

articles about the time. "I'm afraid not, Maximus."

His brow knit. "I killed Commodus, did I not?"

"In the movie, yes, you did."

"But it was not thus in...history?"

She didn't know how to tell him. "No, Maximus. History was not

like that."

He sat up, fixing his gaze on her face, totally unconcerned about

their state of undress. "How was it like?"

"She died before Commodus did, Maximus. On Capri."

"Capri? Why was she on Capri?"

"Commodus had her sent to a prison there before...."

"Before?"

"Before he had her murdered."

He licked his lips. "The Senators?"

"Commodus had many of them, them and their families, murdered

as well. There was a plot, you see, and Commodus found out about

it."

"Like in the movie?"

"Not really,  Maximus. The good guys didn't win.  Not then.  Not

for another decade."

"He ruled many years?"

"Twelve. And he was killed in the palace by a wrestler."

He put a hand over his eyes and she could see how deeply his teeth

were sunk in his lower lip. "Not real," he whispered. "None of it."

"No, Maximus, I'm sure that's not the case. Tell me what you know

of Germania, how long that went on, where else in the empire you went."  She remembered  he  had said he had seen much  of the

world. Where would that have been?

"It was late winter," he began, "and we were encamped near the Danube in the area of Vindobona."

"That's good," she affirmed. "Marcus was near Vienna."

"Vienna?"

"The modern name for your Vindobona."

"The campaign had begun thirteen years earlier. I, of course, was

no General in those days. But it was all, that whole campaign, set

aside a few years later so we could go to Syria and Egypt where

there was rebellion. Some say it was instigated by Faustina herself, Marcus' wife. He did not wish to believe it was so. But we were

there two years." He smiled at her. "It would perhaps make a

good movie, you think? Me, younger in Egypt?"

She thought so,  indeed!  And she knew that it was true that the

rebellion  had been  largely Faustina's doing.  Faustina was a

formative figure in young Commodus' attitude toward life.

"I sailed for Spain from Egypt," he explained, "but only very

briefly. Then the campaign to push the frontiers of the empire

from the Danube to the Carpathians began.  Marcus had spent

a short time in Rome and we met again in Germania. Does this seem...real?"

"Very real, Maximus. That is, indeed, how Marcus' campaign

in the German frontier went. Tell me of Commodus."

"He was 19 when Marcus...died. He had had a twin brother, but

he had died when  he  was only four.  For some reason Marcus

always favored Commodus over him anyway. But often I wondered

...if the brother had lived instead?"

"And Lucilla?"

"She was 12 when he was born. She married Lucius Verus when

she was 16. He was co-emperor with Marcus, you know, but died

in Germania. Is it true that Commodus abandoned the German

wars after Marcus died? I heard many things in the gladiator compound, but I...."

"It is true, Maximus. The peace he made relinquished all the gains

of the last two years of the campaign."

Maximus rubbed a palm across his chin. "All?"

"I'm afraid so."

"And Marcus' death?"

"They  still don't  know for sure,  Maximus.  There was plague in

the camp, smallpox, and there are rumors that perhaps Commodus poisoned him."

She decided to stop there. Evidently he didn't know Lucilla had remarried,  against her will,  the military  governor Tiberius

Claudius Pompeianus,  who had served with  Marcus on  the

German frontier.  Did he know of the other rumors, that Lucius

Verus may have been the lover of her mother as well? Or that

half the young senators involved in Lucilla's plot had probably

slept with her? No, Maximus had enough to digest as it was.

Maximus  had  one  more question.  "Marcus?  How was he

remembered?"

"When I think of Marcus Aurelius," she said openly, "I think of

the philosopher. That is how he is remembered."

He nodded his head, closing his eyes. "It was his wish, you know."

"I know," she said quietly. "What is your wish, Maximus?"

He was silent a long time, keenly aware of  the length of her bare

flesh against his. "I wish," he began, then paused. "I wish to find

a place for myself in this time, in this land. I wish...," he was losing

the ability to think as she pressed against him.

"I wish...."

ON TO PART 20

BACK TO LIBRISCROWE

BACK TO PART 18

BACK TO INDEX