A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome

  “You are no woodsman,” she said in her sweet and penetrating voice, “or you should have found me at once.” She threw another piece of bark down on him, gleefully, then like Quintus she called, “Catch me!”

  Marcus did not pause to consider it unseemly that a betrothed girl should behave like a boy. He was up on the first branch before he realized it. The girl bounded higher above him and his face became hot at the sight of suddenly revealed and beautifully formed smooth young calves and thighs. She seemed to climb without effort, without tearing her clothing, without uttering irritable noises at any scraping of rough twig or branch. Then she was easily at the top of the tree, swinging lightly. She did not look down at the climbing youth. She looked, from her perch, at some distant scene and began to sing in soft voice, some weird, hardly heard melody. Marcus paused halfway to gaze up at her, full of wonder. Never had he met such a strange and delightful creature, untouchable, removed, full of fantasy. She gave the aspect of one alone, unaware of man, clothed in secrets, immortal. The high light flashed on her uplifted face and in her wildly blue eyes, and Marcus, for an instant, was conscious of a little fear. Her veil, freed at that height from restraining foliage, lifted and’ blew in the wind, concealing her features one second, like a nymph in moonlight, revealing them the next. Her hair was a glow of fire on her shoulders and breast and back. She swung and sang, detached from the earth, in an aloneness that defied the youth, or separated him from her.

  Then she glanced down at him and her face changed again, became solemn, almost cold.

  “It is dangerous,” said Marcus. “For a girl.”

  She regarded him musingly as if he spoke in a language she did not know, as one listens to the conversation of creatures not of one’s kind.

  “Shall I help you down?” he asked, afraid of her remoteness.

  She did not answer. Without visible effort she stepped down through the branches, balancing gracefully, descending without sound, never once slipping or clutching. She passed him and did not look at him. She fell to the ground from the last branch as lightly as a falling leaf. Then, her head drooping a little, she stood as if waiting, and Marcus, climbing down, wondered if she waited for him or for some voice he would never hear, or some call beyond his ears.

  Then he stood beside her. They did not speak. They did not look at each other. They only looked through the arches of trees at the incandescent water, now tipped with crimson on the hurrying crests. All at once a sense of peace and fulfillment came to Marcus. It was rare for him to make an overt gesture to anyone, out of his shyness and his respect for others. But his hand moved a little and took the hand of the girl. He expected her to change her mood again and snatch her hand away, offended or laughing. But her hand lay in his, smooth, cool as leaves.

  “What were you singing?” asked Marcus in as low a voice as he could.

  The girl said nothing.

  “It was the sound of the wind in the spring,” said Marcus, “or like a fountain at night when everyone is asleep.”

  “It is my own song,” said the girl. She looked at him again, and again he was startled by the absolute blue of her eyes, darkened faintly now by her lashes. “They say I am a very peculiar girl. They do not know.”

  “Then I am peculiar also,” said Marcus. The girl smiled at him. “Yes,” she said. “Were you not I would not be standing with you now.” Her young breast, just rising under her dress, lifted and trembled. “They do not know,” she repeated. “I have never told them. My dear mother had a mortal disease and while she was dying my father plunged his dagger into his breast and died with her. They think I did not see them, but I stood in the doorway in the moonlight. When my father was dying he held my mother in his arms, and they died with their lips together, and my father said, ‘Where you go, my beloved, there will I go also.’ I have never forgotten. I sing my song to them, so they will hear me in the Elysian Fields.”

  Marcus thought the story not horrifying, but infinitely moving. The girl said, as if she heard his thoughts, “I was five years old, my mother was but twenty, and my father a year older. I did not grieve for them; I do not grieve for them now. They could not endure to be separated. Not even the gods could part them.”

  Marcus thought of his own parents. Was it possible that disparate as they were in character they were one flesh? Was marriage truly sacred, as the old laws asserted?

  The girl startled him by speaking in a different voice. “Why was the heron not afraid of you? They are the shyest of birds.”

  “I have never hurt one of them, nor any other creature,” said Marcus. “Surely God loves them also. I respect that love in them.”

  The girl dropped his hand. She bounded ahead of him, her palla caught by the evening breeze. Marcus did not follow her. She raced to the bank and the bridge, and then she was upon it.

  “Will you come again, Livia?” he called after her.

  But she did not answer. She disappeared as a nymph disappears, and he was alone in the forest, to wonder again if the brief and baffling encounter had occurred at all. He was only sure of it when he felt a sharp abandonment as though something ineffably lovely had left him after the smallest of glimpses.

  At dinner that evening he was unusually silent among his grandfather, his father, and his adoring brother, Quintus. His mother, as befitted an old Roman, did not dine with the men. Tullius had recovered, as Helvia had predicted, from the bout of illness which had brought him close to death.

  “Something has disturbed our Marcus,” he said.

  “It is the pangs of youth,” said the grandfather. “How I remember them! All things seemed wondrous and engrossing to me at that age. Yet, in the light of years, how ordinary they truly were!”

  But Tullius was not satisfied, because he still had dreams.

  “Do not let your dreams die, Marcus,” he said in a low voice to his son.

  Marcus could not understand his curious unease and his inner excitement. He knew these had been aroused by the strange girl he had encountered—if he had really encountered her at all. But what they portended, what they meant, he did not know. He thought about her betrothal to Lucius Sergius Catilina, and his mind recoiled incredulously. It was something out of place, out of reality, not to be accepted. A marriage between those two would be like a marriage between a nymph and an evil centaur. A marriage between a stone and a flower. A marriage between a dryad and a wolf. He put down his knife and stared emptily at his plate.

  “What is it, Marcus?” asked Tullius.

  But Marcus could not answer. For once, he could not speak to his father, nor to anyone. Something was sealed within him. So, he thought, there are times when there is no communication, not even among those who love. Could he speak to Archias, who was a poet and wise? No. All at once he thought, I am sure of nothing, and he passed completely into manhood.

  Then Quintus, who was feeling his own first surges of adolescence, said, “Marcus is in love.” And he grinned delightedly at his brother.

  “Nonsense,” said the grandfather. “He knows no girls, and he has not yet passed through the ceremonies of his age.”

  “He is in love with life,” said Tullius, remembering his own youth.

  I am in love with Livia, thought Marcus, and suddenly he was taken by ecstasy and by desolation and a sense of loss which in itself was pleasurable.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The news from Rome was grievous and the family wondered if they should return. There were long discussions between the grandfather, the father, and the tutor, Archias.

  “Why is not Marcus interested in his country in these days of crisis?” asked the grandfather.

  “At present, he is dreaming,” said Tullius with apology. But he did not know of what his son was dreaming. “Let him be for a little.” He was hurt that his son had not confided in him.

  Each day Marcus haunted the bridge, the banks, the forest paths where he had seen Livia. But she did not appear. With less than half an ear he heard the agitated discussions in the
family circle about Rome; for once he was not eager or listening. All his mind and heart and body and soul were involved with one mysterious girl whom he had seen but for a few minutes. He began to write poetry at a tremendous rate. He was like a young tree growing and absorbed in itself at the edge of a battlefield, aware only of sun and wind and the stretching of its limbs and the thrusting of its leaves. Even Quintus, his playmate, found himself avoided. Seeing his dreaming expression, his vagueness and absent eyes, Helvia thought, with the knowledge of women, My son is in love. With a slave girl? She did not approve of a man of a family cavorting with slaves, though she understood this was done in Rome. To her it was supremely immoral and distasteful and not to be countenanced. But all her discreet watching did not bring her enlightenment. There were pretty little slave girls of ten and twelve and even Marcus’ age; he did not look at them.

  The autumn was drawing to an end; only at noon was the sun warm and golden; the wind had a sharpness in its edge. Marcus began to think that he had dreamed of Livia Curius, for sometimes his dreams were very vivid and on rousing himself from them he had a momentary difficulty in separating fact from fantasy. Once, he remembered—and it was only this summer—he had been half-sleeping in the warmth, deep in the wild grass, his back against a tree, while Quintus had circled about him examining, climbing, exclaiming to himself in his usual exuberant fashion, sometimes hurling himself on the ground in somersaults, sometimes leaping up a great tree to inspect a bird’s nest, sometimes imitating the vociferous crows, sometimes just broadjumping or throwing a wooden spear.

  Then it appeared to Marcus that the sun darkened and a host of men, fierce in armor and with violent faces, suddenly emerged from the forest and set upon Quintus and did him savagely to death. Marcus could not move; he heard Quintus’ cries; he heard the clash of swords and the movements of terrible enemies. He tried to rise, but iron lay over his flesh and held him down. He tried to scream, and not a sound left his lips. Then all was quiet again and Quintus was lying dead and shattered in his blood near his brother’s feet. A hideous darkness fell on Marcus’ eyes. When he could open them again he saw Quintus crouching to spring on a grass frog, and all was light and serenity once more. Marcus uttered a great cry; he struggled to his feet, dazed, his heart pounding madly, and he seized his brother to him and embraced him tightly, to Quintus’ innocent amazement. Quintus stood still and let Marcus weep over him and hold him.

  “You were asleep, Marcus,” he said at last. “It must have been a fearful dream.”

  Marcus let him go. Yes, it had been a most fearful dream. Marcus was not overly superstitious, though he possessed considerable mysticism. Archias, when he scoffed at omens and portents as unworthy of a civilized man, yet admitted there was a vast area beyond the sight and ear of man to which man was blind and deaf. From whence had the gods arisen? Who had set the boundaries of the world? Who had fashioned everything in its intricacy and delicate precision? Who had created Law? Man, Archias said, truly knew nothing at all.

  “Superstition rises out of lack of knowledge,” Archias would say. “Nevertheless, millions of things will always be beyond man’s comprehension. The scientists say that birds hear sounds and see colors we shall never see; the dog hears what man’s dull ear will never discern. The stars are beyond us; what are they, more than what the scientists say they are, which may be their error? Man cannot comprehend God with his senses; it must come from his soul. What little comprehension man has of God comes from something intuitive in himself, more profound than instinct. It is that intuition which is the civilizing agent in man, the source of pillars and columns, painting and music, the foundation of Law. But we ponder on it—unless we are an Aristotle or a Socrates—only to our confusion and dismay.”

  Where does fantasy end and reality begin? Marcus would ask himself, haunting daily the places where he had seen Livia. Now he could believe in wood nymphs and strange spirits and apparitions very easily. What of the voices of Delphi? The books of the sybils? There were intellectual and worldly men who, if they did not actually believe in these things, admitted that man knew very little and that it was arrogant of him to think that reason explained all and that ultimate knowledge will ever be the possession of mankind. Archimedes had said that with a lever of a certain length, and standing in a proper place, he could move the world. Someday man indeed, as the ancient books said, would fly the oceans and the continents like a bird of passage, and might invade the moon. But what would these things tell him of the deeps and chasms and strangenesses that lived in his soul and defied the philosophers?

  All Marcus’ senses were heightened in these days. He saw lights on leaves he had never noticed before; the feeling and texture of rough bark under his hands excited him. The cry of migrating birds filled him with ecstatic loneliness. He was exalted at the sight of the last flowers. The river spoke to him in mysterious tongues. He wanted to be alone at all times, to feel the exaltation that kept sweeping over him. He longed for Livia, fantasy or no fantasy. He was like one exiled, yet rejoicing in exile, feeling a delightful melancholy. He looked at the moon, and it was no longer a mere satellite of the world, as the dull scientists said, but a huge golden secret on which golden men dwelt and uttered mystical words. It lay on branch and fading grass and on the rooftop, and on Marcus’ hands, and he trembled with joy and with sadness. He thought of God, and God seemed nearer than ever, more imminent, all pervading.

  In short, he was in love. The gods stood all about him.

  He had never considered Venus and her son Eros as worthy deities. Venus was a wanton. Eros was simply the Roman Cupid. Marcus had been bored earlier by love stories. Why did men let themselves be seized by folly, so that great men became fools and less than beasts? Archias had said that the most immense poetry came from the heart of love, but Marcus had been incredulous. Archias had smiled at him with amusement. “You are confusing love with lust,” he had said. “Ah, my pupil, you will learn in time.”

  Now Marcus understood. It was useless for him to tell himself that it was impossible to love a girl he had seen but once, and she so peculiar and so elusive and not to be understood. But in the very moment of his rationality and his ridicule of himself, he remembered the coolness and smoothness of her hand, the blue of her eyes, the fire of her hair against the sun. A mere chit. He would die if he did not see her again. A weird and laughing and indifferent girl, content with her betrothal to a moral monster; she was not worthy of consideration. He would die if he did not see her again.

  “In these days of Rome’s peril, we must return,” said the old grandfather, and spoke of Drusus who was yet but a name to Marcus. Marcus haunted the thinning forest. He did not truly expect to see Livia ever again, but he searched. What songs the rivers sang! What eternal mystery lay in a blade of grass! How tremendous was the light of the sun! What beating heart waited in the forest! How blue was the autumnal sky! What a thing it was to be a man, conscious of firm young limbs and young body and prehensile hands! Each day was a marvel. Each step was an exultation. Each vista was filled with half-seen shapes of beauty. It was glorious to draw breath. It was a rapture to be alive. Why had he never known this before? His eyes swam with dreams.

  Then one day he came upon Livia again. She sat on a pile of crimson oak leaves under a thinning oak tree, singing softly to herself and running her hands through the leaves. Marcus had passed that tree scores of times. Yet, there was Livia in a white dress with a mantle of blue wool over her shoulders and a blue silk cloth rippling over her hair. But they were not so blue as her eyes, which shone and sparkled in her luminous pale face. He stopped and looked at her, and it seemed that all creation rushed to this one spot and held its breath, waiting, and never had he felt such joy and delight and fear.

  “I have been here every day but you have never found me,” said Livia, gravely. “You were looking everywhere, but you have not seen; have you forgotten I lived?”

  Marcus stepped slowly toward her.

  “For what were you looking,
as you dreamed and walked?” asked Livia.

  “You,” he said.

  She shook her head in wondering denial. “But I was here all the time.”

  “If you saw me, why did you not speak?” asked Marcus. He sat on his heels and looked at her, afraid to breathe loudly for fear that she would disappear and she would be only a fantasy again.

  “I do not speak to men who ignore me,” she said in a lofty tone.

  Then she laughed, her whole face sparkling. “I was in trees and watched you from above. I was behind a trunk, and you passed within paces of me. I sat in grass and felt your footsteps. But you did not find me!”

  She has a voice like summer water, thought Marcus.

  She was not a girl like others he had seen, in the women’s quarters of his grandfather’s houses, or in the streets with their mothers and servants about them. She was not like the girls he had glimpsed in temples, quietly extending their offerings, and praying. He was a youth and he had been stirred by rounded limbs and rising young bosoms and smooth necks and arms. But it had been a passing emotion, which had embarrassed him later when he had looked at his mother and had wondered about her and his father in bed. In some way the very excitement in his loins had seemed shameful and disloyal to his parents.

  But he looked at Livia openly, without embarrassment, and only with the most urgent longing and passionate love, this girl he had seen so briefly once, this girl who might have been a fantasy. He looked at her lips, red and indented on the lower lip. He looked into her eyes, and at the curve of her throat. He looked at her breast and the slenderness of her waist. He looked as a man looks, forgetting everything else.

  “You hid from me,” he said. The thought was a delight.

  She let leaves slide through her fingers, and her mood changed again and she was serious. She appeared to forget him, as she watched the leaves. The light trembled on her throat, her cheek, her hands.