The Last Stoic (7 page)

“On the third week, they started
bringing me books with my breakfast, a different one each day, but still no
talking.”

“At the end of the fourth week,
the chief monk comes to see me.  He asks me how I feel. 
Better
, I say. 
You may leave, he says, and gives me directions to the highway.  So I leave,
thumb a ride into town, and I’ve been a Buddhist ever since.” 

They are quiet for a moment.

“Wow!” said Chantelle.

“Unbelievable.” Mark said, and he
meant it.  He finished reading the last line on the page that was open before
him.

…The sole thing of which any man
can be deprived is the present; since this is all he owns, and nobody can lose
what is not his.

Mark shut the book with a sharp
snap, returned it to Chantelle, and thanked her.

“There are some similarities
between Stoicism and Buddhism,” she said.

“Oh yeah?”

“They both advocate freedom from
earthly desires as a way of achieving true happiness.”

Gus erupted with a gruff laugh. 
“And that’s not easy!”

Mark laughed also.

“What?” Gus asked, still
grinning. 

“Nothing.”

Chantelle caught sight of her
friends from the college entering the courtyard to take up a table.  She waved
strenuously, caught their attention and then motioned that she would join them.

“Well, fellas, it’s been fun,”
she said as she collected her book and coffee mug.  “Welcome to town and I hope
you get your copy soon,” she added. 

“Thanks, I do too.”

“Nice talking to you Chantelle,
maybe we’ll see you around here again,” said Gus. 

Chantelle smiled back over her
shoulder.  As she departed from their table and traversed the wooden bridge
clutching the rope railings, Gus winced again.

“Damn! What’s the expression?  I
was sorry to see her go but glad to watch her leave?”

Finally, she reached her
destination and Gus turned back toward Mark.

“That was smooth!  So this is
this how you operate?”

“What do you mean?”

“All that bullshit about
forgetting the book back home, gift from your uncle…”

“Honestly,” Mark said, “my
grandfather gave me that exact book just before I left.”

“And then that quote, what was
it?  Everything is beautiful, the beautiful be praised, or something like
that?  She lapped it up like it was fucking cream!”

“I opened it up to a random
page.”

“You can’t bullshit a
bullshitter.  That was impressive.  I’ll have to remember that one, especially
if I see Chantelle here again.”

Gus peered in the direction of
the marina.  A yellow rocket-shaped boat chugged toward the docks.

“Let’s go meet the boss.”

The meeting with Paulus Cornelius at the oasis
had been a brief exchange of
pleasantries and introductions.  Gus conveyed Marcus to the Frontinus worksite
and introduced him to a number of his new colleagues, including Primus,
Secundus, and Tertius, names he himself had given them “because their Hispanic
names are too hard to remember and too hard to pronounce.”  Marcus quizzed his
new acquaintances about life at a Frontinus outpost.  They set to discussing
Gus the moment he stepped out of earshot. 

“His real name is Gaius, I
think.”

“No, Lucius.”

“You’re both wrong,” said
Tertius, “it’s Spurius.”

“Why is he known as Gus?” Marcus
asked. 

“Short for Augustus.”

“He thinks he’s emperor around
here,” said Secundus, “a little emperor.”

Primus tapped his fingers
together, forming a peak.

“Thus, Gus.” 

Marcus’ new companions were of
slight stature, with fine, coffee-coloured skin, dark shiny hair and thick,
broad eyebrows.  He was convinced they must be brothers the men looked so
similar to one another.  It amused him how they spoke all at once, finishing
each other’s sentences, bright and animated, with darting eyes and brilliant
smiles, like children at a birthday party. 

“He doesn’t mind that no one uses
his real name?” Marcus asked, directing his question to Primus. 

“Mind? 
He
calls himself
Gus.”

Tertius nodded.

“He prefers it.”

Marcus sprinkled more caroenum
and garum on his portion of aper retostus, the blackened rack of roasted boar’s
ribs, before taking another large bite.

“Don’t mind Gus.  We never do.”

“Welcome to the outpost.  We’re
all three from Baetica, the foremost Hispanic province,” Primus said, bowing as
much as was possible while sitting at the table, his face almost touching his
plate. 

“From Verulamium,” Marcus
replied, mumbling through a mouthful of roasted meat, “Britannia.” 

“There’s Xander the antique
Greek.”

Secundus jerked his thumb toward
an old man who was hobbling toward the tent exit.  Perfectly white hair swayed
in all directions from the top of his head.

“Nice enough fellow, sharp as a
wasp’s ass.”

“Too sharp.  Mark me, he annoys.”

“All defer to him like sheep to a
shepherd.  Even Paulus.”

“Xander thinks the Greeks, from
their own genius, invented mathematics and astronomy and, due to their
benevolence, took it upon themselves to bestow the gift of knowledge on the
rest of us ignorant pig-fuckers.”

Secundus gestured lewdly with the
rib bone in his hand.

“Speak for yourself,” Tertius
said, feigning offence.

“They did invent mathematics
didn’t they?” Marcus asked.  That’s what they taught at the academy in
Verulamium.  The Baeticans were tickled.

“What about the Egyptians?”

 “The Sumerians?”

“Xander claims to have
apprenticed under Ptolemy.”

“Is that possible,” Marcus asked,
“wouldn’t that make him 125?”

“Look at him.  Does he look a day
under 150?”

“I’ve seen dried figs looking
fresher.”

Tertius pointed a triangle of
bread toward the end of their table to a large, shambling man with pallid,
splotchy skin who was hunched behind a great arc of charred meat.

“That’s Gnaeus.  A northerner.  A
Gaul.”

Gnaeus raised a shiny hand in
their direction and snorted without raising his face.

“The Immensus from Narbonensis,
we call him.”

“As you can see, he’s vast. 
Particularly around the middle.”

“Supposedly he is our demolition
specialist.”

“Not much of an engineer, but he
can dismantle a full rack of boar’s ribs in under twenty minutes.” 

The giant Gaul grinned at him,
sticking his tongue out between two thick, oily lips.  Marcus averted his eyes.

The Baeticans laughed and went
around the rest of the room describing each of the few architecti left in the
tent, complaining and lauding with equal measure.  Marcus was surprised to find
that so many of his new colleagues came from the far flung corners of the
empire.  Only one or two were from old Roman families or established regional
lineages.

“Yes,” Secundus agreed, “and
you’re the first Briton.”

“What brought you here?” Marcus
asked.

“Same as you I expect.  To suck
at the teat of the great Roman she-wolf.”

“Well, actually, I’m here to
apprentice, so eventually I can return to Verulamium and take over my
grandfather’s firm.”

Tertius giggled.

“You want what we all want.”

“What’s that?”

“To be richer than Croesus,”
Primus replied, “and to spend the rest of your days drunk as a priest, eating
and drinking and fucking.”

The Baeticans began discussing at
length how they might pursue those aims that very evening.  Marcus considered protesting
again to better explain his motives but Gus had reappeared.  Secundus, Tertius,
and Primus reverted to their native tongue.

“Come Marcus, I’ll show you the
rest of the worksite.”

Marcus followed Gus out of the
dining tent to a stand of palm trees under which loin-clothed men lay snoozing
beneath the generous shade of the fronds.  Litters and wagons were scattered
around the shade’s circumference.  Gus picked out the largest litter, climbed
up onto its couch of brocaded cushions and beckoned to Marcus.

“Hup!” he barked as Marcus sat
beside him.  Eight of the men languidly picked themselves up and took their
positions on the rails, two each at either corner.  With a collective grunt
they hoisted the litter. Gus issued his command and they were underway.

They advanced along a ridge, past
the barricades and the soldiers posted every few paces.  Behind the fencing,
expressionless men and women, some shouldering packs, some clutching limp
bundles to their chests, shuffled single file toward a squat gate in the border
wall, out into the unexplored hinterland beyond.  Their village of mud huts and
primitive shacks was already forgotten, flattened and ploughed under by the
cascade of silt and rock; leavings from the highway construction.  The seasonal
pastureland in the hills and the thin strip of fertile earth of the valley had
been washed into the river.  It looked as though a titan had stood up on that
ridge and had dumped an immense pail of water, sticks and stones down the
valley slope, with the bulk of it collecting in a mess at the riverbank. 

“They’d have to leave
eventually,” Gus said, “this whole area is going to be converted into olive
groves.  For oil.”

There was one tree, a cedar,
partially denuded, standing erect in the middle of the flood plain, surrounded
by the clutter of the landslide.  Marcus was reminded of the ancient yew that
stood at the edge of the family farm, where the forest met the field, standing
as a sentry before the mystery and allure of the woods.  Anyone surveying the
land for the first time would have had their eyes automatically drawn to its
distinguished presence.  His grandfather and the yew would forever be conjoined
in his mind.

Marcus could easily picture and
locate in his mind’s eye the dozens of knurls and scars that decorated the
tree’s stout trunk.  Each blemish and protrusion had significance as a
foothold, or a marker, or a symbol of something else.  Each feature of the
trunk’s topography had a history.  As youngsters he and his friends spent long
summer hours clambering amongst its broad, sturdy boughs, chasing each other
around its perimeter, or else lounging in mild repose under the generous canopy
of shade.  In the service of youthful imagination, the tree had seen duty
variously as a pirate ship, a Celtic fortress, a siege engine, or one of the
Emperor’s expansive villas.  When seen from a distance, its weathered and
scaling bark had a slight tanned, reddish colour and it resembled the well-worn
leather one might find covering a saddle.  Unlike any other tree in the forest,
the yew’s broad lower branches had returned inexorably back to earth, giving
rise to a new generation. 

As a boy, Marcus had assumed that
the tree had existed, exactly in its present form, ancient and unchanging,
since the beginning of time and that it would continue to stand resolutely at
the edge of the forest until history drew to a close.  Vincentius estimated
that it might already be one or two thousand years old and had been rooted to
that spot long before their people had arrived from across the sea.  And he
predicted that it would stand for thousands more, a notion that filled Marcus
with wonder.  The tree inhabited a time scale that was not easily
comprehended.  What would it be like two thousand years hence?  Would there
still be a farm?  Would there still be people?  What would they look like? 
Would they remember earlier generations?  Would they see
Marcus
etched
primitively into the tree’s bark and be filled with a similar wonderment,
looking back through the millenia?  Such a distant future was unfathomable. 
And yet, the yew lived on, unperturbed by the many minor dramas that would
unfold within sight of its leafy crown.

Not so the cedar of the valley
below.  A work crew descended the valley slope with a pair of two-man saws and
set about felling the final straggler. 

The road ended abruptly amid
heaps of rubble.  Scores of men laboured at the road’s end clawing at the earth
with spades and picks while others hauled away cartloads of the resulting dirt
and debris.  Another large group of men directed by the deafening and
relentless exhortations of a legionary brandishing a whip were straining at a
system of thick ropes, levers and a series of rolling logs as they struggled to
shift a cow-sized rock out of the path. Standing some distance back from the
activity, Marcus’ new boss, Paulus Cornelius, stood with Xander, the old Greek,
consulting a parchment and surveying the scene. 

“Halt!” Gus shouted and the
litter stopped. “Here we are.” 

Gus stepped down, surveyed the
worksite with an expansive wave of his hand. He explained that the firm was
under contract to extend the road ten more miles to the south.  Caracallus
wished to be able to march his legions into the vicinity with greater haste, a
desire made more urgent by a series of uprisings in the area.  In addition, a
local landowner was sponsoring the work in exchange for a few coveted olive
groves. 

“But without a guarantee that he
can safely and easily transport the olives north,” Gus said, “they’re not worth
a copper token. Pluto’s hat! I know little of how the road goes in.  And I
don’t much care.  Collar a team of slaves to dig a ditch, fill it in, pave it
over.  That’s your responsibility.  I just need to keep the Emperor’s generals
smiling.  One visits at calends.  I promised them two miles finished by the
next full moon.  Paulus protests of course.  Whatever we promise, he says it
will take double.  That sort of talk won’t win a contract.  It would go to
Terentius Agricola and his band of jackals.  Paulus understands the viae, but
he has no ability for business.  And, by Hades, we’re not keeping to schedule. 
Paulus!” 

Gus re-entered the litter and
Paulus joined him.  Together they were carried off toward the encampments. 
Marcus watched them go and he turned back toward the clamour and activity of
the nearby excavation to get his orders from Xander.