Like You'd Understand, Anyway

Locals had been conscripted for the heavy laboring and carting, he tells us, but everyone pitched in when a problem arose. He outlines the difficulties of ditchdigging through boulder clay. Centurions checked the work with ten-foot rods to insure that no one through laziness had dug less than his share or gone off line.

The rain finally lets up a bit. Our room brightens. A little freshness blows through the damp. My father rubs his forearms and thanks us for our hospitality. The other clerk and I nod at him, and he nods back. He wishes us good fortune for the day. “And you as well,” the other clerk answers. My father acknowledges the response, flaps out his cloak, cinches it near his neck with a fist and steps out into the rain. After he's gone a minute or two, it redoubles in force.

On my half day of rest I make the journey on foot to their little farmstead. When I arrive I discover that my father's gone to visit me. He never keeps track of my rest days. A cold sun is out and my mother entertains me in their little garden. She sets out garlic paste and radishes, damsons and dill. My father's trained vines to grow on anything that will hold them. There's also a new addition: a small shrine erected to Viradecthis, set on an altar. It's a crude marble of Minerva that he's altered with a miniature Tungrian headdress.

I ask if he's now participating in the cult. My mother shrugs and says it could be worse. One of her neighbors' sons has come back from his travels a Christian. Worships a fish.

She asks after my health, recommending goat cheese in porridge for my bowels. She asks after gossip, though it always saddens her that I have so little. How did her fierce little wonder boy grow into such a pale little herring?

She smiles and lays a hand on my knee. “You have a good position,” she reminds me proudly. And I do.

It would appear from my father's belongings that a campaign is about to begin. His scabbards are neatly arrayed next to his polishing tin. The rest of his kit is spread on a bench to dry in the sun. His marching sandals have been laid out to be reshod with iron studs. A horsefly negotiates one of the studs.

She tells me that periodically he claims he'll go back to Gallia Belgica, where the climate is more forgiving to both his figs and his aches. Having returned from service in Britannia as a retired centurion would make him a large fish in that pond. But he has no friends there, and his family's dead, and there's ill feeling bound to be stirred up by the relatives of a previous wife who died of overwork and exposure.

Besides, there's much that the unit could do with an old hand, she complains he's always telling her. Sentry duty alone: some of the knotheads taking turns on that wall would miss entire baggage trains headed their way.

She asks, as she always does, about my daily duties. She enjoys hearing about my exemptions. A soldier's daily duties include muster, training, parades, inspections, sentry duty, cleaning our centurions' kits, latrine and bathhouse duty, firewood and fodder collection. My skills exempt me from the latter four.

She wants to know if my messmates still play their tricks on me. I tell her they don't, and that they haven't in a long while. I regret having told her in the first place.

When I leave she presents me with a wool tunic woven with decorations. I wear it on the walk back.

During training, recruits who failed to reach an adequate standard with a particular weapon received their rations in barley instead of wheat, the wheat ration not restored until they demonstrated proficiency. While I was quickly adequate with the sword, I was not with the pilum and could hit nothing no matter how close I brought myself to the target. My father even tried to take a hand in the training. My instructor called me the most hopeless sparrow he'd ever seen when it came to missile weapons. For three weeks I ate only barley and have had the shits ever since. On the one and only raid in which I've taken part, I threw my pilum immediately, to get it over with. It stuck in a cattle pen.

Night falls on the long trek back to the barracks. I strike out across the countryside, following the river instead of the road, the sparse grasses thrashing lightly at my ankles. At a bend I stop to drink like a dog on all fours and hear the rattletrap of my father's little wagon heading toward the bridge above me. When he crosses it his head bobs against the night sky. He's singing one of his old unit's songs. He's guiding himself by the light of the moon. It takes him a long while to disappear down the road.

By any standards our army is one of the most economical institutions ever invented. The effective reduction and domination of vast tracts of frontier by what amounts to no more than a few thousand men requires an efficiency of communication that enables the strategic occupation of key points in networks of roads and forts. Without runners we have only watchfires, and without scribes we have no runners.