Awakenings

by D. Hinson

c2001 all rights reserved

Page 4

Part 5

The next morning, Lucilla went to Maximus’ room. After a heated discussion the day before he had reluctantly agreed not to get up for at least another day. But the room was empty, and after a moment’s thought, Lucilla went to the stables. Grooms stopped and stared in amazement. She ignored them and, hearing voices in the block where Lucius’ pony was stabled, paused in the doorway to watch.

Lucius was busily grooming the little gray Arab, while Maximus leaned against the wall, his head bent attentively to the boy.

"...when I get too big for Aquila I’d like to put her in foal. What do you think I should breed her to?"

Lucius’ eager high voice floated back to her, followed by the deeper quieter timbre of Maximus’ voice. They both turned to smile at her when she walked in. Lucius was giddy and bright-eyed with excitement. Maximus was leaning against the wall, the long russet cloak wrapped around him. He looked ashen and strained. She moved to stand beside him, and as Lucius chattered happily away, she touched his arm and realized he was trembling almost imperceptibly. He turned to meet her concerned gaze, the laughter lines deepening at the corners of his eyes, but he shook his head once at her and turned back to the boy and his pony.

"You’re...what...nine? You’ll outgrow her in a year or so, so perhaps a Maremma stallion would be a good match. She has plenty of quality, and he would give her foal height and bone."

He smiled at the glowing boy, and then added with a courteous bow of his head "You must excuse me now, while I speak to your lady mother."

"Will you come for a ride with me later?"

"Lucius!" Lucilla broke in, slightly exasperated.

The boy reddened, and then said "My apologies, sir. Perhaps another time."

Maximus, stroking the pony, smiled at him and said kindly "I would enjoy that very much!"

He turned and walked slowly out of the stables with Lucilla. She waited until they reached the garden before turning to him and saying as tactfully as possible "Do you think this wise, so soon?"

He ignored her question, and instead asked, "Can you lend me a good horse? I need to get to Ostia to see Septimius Severus as soon as possible."

"You have the pick of my stables, but Maximus..."

He led her to a bench and gestured for her to sit. "You know how I feel about your father’s wishes. The gods have given us one more chance to fulfill them."

"I know you are resolved in this, but give yourself a few more days. Please!"

"Caesar’s daughter commands me in most things, but this I must do."

She knew he was immovable, so she did the only thing she could do. She arose and stood in front of him.

"Then go, with my wishes for your good fortune. And come back as soon as you can."

He looked down at her, his eyes somber and remote. "If Fate is kind, Lady..."

***

The big Turkish masseur checked his tiny glass bottles of fine oils once more. The villa steward had told him some hours ago to fire up the furnaces and boilers that supplied the luxurious bathhouse. He had obediently done so, though not without some curiosity. The bathhouse had not been used for some time since the lady Lucilla’s husband, Lucius Verus, had died some years back. Now, if they were used at all, it was only rarely by a few senior officers of the guard. The lady had her own bathhouse and her own personal attendants. And he had had no knowledge of distinguished visitors to the Emperor's sister. However, curiosity was something he usually held in check. He had lost his own tongue some years back as a result of listening too closely, too obviously, to the languid, scandal-ridden gossip of the baths.

He heard voices and turned as two men walked in. Bowing to them, he saw that though dressed in very plain but well-cut tunics, they nevertheless both possessed a bearing of self-confident command and natural authority. The taller, a muscular Numidian, looked warily around. His companion was shorter, dark-haired, tanned, but pale and tense. "A soldier..." thought the Turk. "Returned from the Germanian front, perhaps... Recently wounded..?"

His guess was confirmed when the two men disrobed. The Numidian was fit, supple and moved with an easy, relaxed grace. His companion still bore recent, only half-healed scars on leg, shoulders and back.

The two men declined the use of the frigidarium, the cold plunge pool, and instead had a long soak in the hot baths, conversing quietly between themselves. Eventually they emerged and wrapped themselves in the proffered thick towels. Juba stretched out luxuriously in the steamy heat and sighed. "This is the first time I've felt warm enough in months".

He had refused, with some suspicion, the gestured offer of a massage and reclined now on a warm stone bench. A low chuckle came from Maximus, who was stretched out on the marble table.

The Turk was checking him over unobtrusively, thinking "Hmm... arnica for bruising... lavender for relaxation..." He poured scented oil into his hand and rubbed his palms together to warm it up before beginning a long firm stroking of his client's back.

"I have found a grain ship that leaves for Carthage in a week."

Maximus raised his head from where it was buried on his crossed arms. "I am glad for you, my friend. How many days travel from there to your home?"

"Two weeks," replied Juba. His voice was dreamy.

The Turk quietly kneaded Maximus' shoulders.

After a moment Juba said, "Maximus, if I had died in the arena, my wife would have married again one day..."

Maximus was silent for a moment. "Why do you tell me this?"

"Because you have done what you set out to do. Our lives are our own again..."

Maximus echoed, smiling faintly "And a gift of the Gods..."

Juba chuckled. "I did not know if you heard me say that!"

Maximus' head was buried again, but the amusement was evident in his voice. "Oh, yes, I did!"

After a moment Juba continued, "And I would not have expected her to grieve the rest of her life. She needs a man to protect her; my daughters need a father."

Maximus rolled on his side to face him, his face set. "My life is not yet my own. I still owe a promise I made to my Emperor."

"And when that is fulfilled?"

Maximus looked away. "I must go to Septimius Severus, who commands my old army outside Rome. After that… I will wait until then to decide the course of the rest of my life."

"You deserve peace of mind, my friend."

"But where will I find it?"

Juba did not answer. The Turk bowed as they walked out an hour later. No tip, then. He shrugged to himself. Politics did not interest him.

***

She stood in the courtyard at dawn the next morning to see him ride off, accompanied by Juba and a dozen soldiers she knew to be personally loyal to her. They had spoken only briefly since he had decided to go to Ostia, and he had known she would not demean herself or him by asking him to stay. So he left, glancing only once at her as he turned his horse’s head and rode down the road, his shoulders bowed beneath his cloak.

"You are the son I should have had." Marcus Aurelius' face floated back to him. He had one chance left to fulfill his Caesar’s wishes.

Part 6

Lucilla, seated listless and heartsick on the edge of the atrium pool, watched the rings slowly widen from the crumbs of stale bread that Lucius had thrown in to entice his pet carp. He lay on his stomach, trying to tickle the brightly coloured fish. Lupa lay sleepily in a pool of late afternoon sunlight, dozing.

It was a week since Maximus had ridden off to Ostia. A week full of rumours and counter-rumours, ending in Septimius Severus seizing the reins of state from the Senate and proclaiming himself Emperor. She had waited day and night for a messenger, a rider, any word at all from Maximus. Only once had there been word via Gracchus - that the newly returned General of the Armies of the North had personally overseen the fight that had taken the city gates from the control of the Praetorians. And Quintus was dead. From Maximus himself - nothing... She seemed to be sitting in a frozen moment of time.

Now she heard the clatter of a troop of horses arrive in the courtyard, and a barked word of command. Then the voice of her steward, and a deeper, quieter voice.

"Where is the lady Lucilla?"

"She is in the atrium, General."

Footsteps on the marble floor, footsteps that slowed and hesitated before the doorway. She raised her head, sudden tears pricking her eyes, and stared unseeing at the sky. But the wolf bitch had already heard and was scrambling to her feet. Two bounds later and her paws were on Maximus' shoulders, as she strained to lick his face.

Lucilla rose and turned to greet him as he stood in the doorway; the sun glinting off his dark hair and striking sparks from his polished breastplate. Lucius was dancing around him excitedly, exclaiming, "You did it! You ARE the Saviour of Rome."

Maximus smiled down at him, ruffled his hair and gave him his helmet. "No, I’m not. General Septimius Severus is the true Saviour of Rome, and you will have to go to the Capitol to meet him soon." His eyes met Lucilla’s shining ones over the boy’s head. And she saw in his eyes that she was his refuge and his dream of peace.

She said, "Come... walk with me?" Together they strolled out to the terrace. She paused to bend down to a white rose to sniff its last autumn scent and asked, carefully, "You are well?"

"Yes, I thank you..."

He walked to the parapet and looked out over the orchard. He was still booted and cloaked, the heavy russet cloth falling in long, straight folds from powerful shoulders to ankles.

"What will you do now?"

"I’m not sure. All I ever wanted was to go home."

"Home... because home was where you lived in your wife's heart."

He nodded. "As she lives in mine, still."

"And where she will always live, I know, Maximus. But you have another home, too, if you wish it."

He turned to look at her. With the fading sunset behind him his face was impossible to read.

She wondered how best to continue. Finally she said hesitatingly "You will always live in my heart. Will you not find a new home here with me?"

He looked again out over the vineyards golden in the dusk and mused, "Harvest again... two years gone by."

"Two years... a long time." she said gently. "Time, perhaps, to begin to live again."

"Two years in which I lived only to do what I had to do. " He turned back to look at her and said, his voice low. "I have much to thank you for, and I haven't properly - yet."

"You have nothing to thank me for", she said, her heart in her eyes. "When I thought you had died - and because of me! - I wanted to die too!" Her voice died away, almost inaudible. "I have loved you all my life."

He hesitated, and then said musingly. "Lucilla... you know I can’t say the same. But I love you now, and will for what remains of my own life. I think you are right. Time, perhaps, to begin to live again."

He flung his hands out from his sides and said softly, in the deep voice she had loved for so long "All my defenses are down."

She moved in to lean against him. They stood for long, long moments, their hands entwined at their sides. He did not kiss her, but she could feel his fingers tighten around hers, saw his lips part as his breathing quickened. She moved her jeweled hands to his shoulders, and on that, his hands came up and locked around her to imprison them both, and he bent his dark head to seek and kiss her mouth, like a man exhausted by the sun seeking water.

Time passed without conscious thought; she could feel her own heart thudding erratically. "It’s the man I cherish, not the soldier," she finally murmured, half-dazed, and her fingers of their own accord moved to loosen and unbuckle the leather straps of his breastplate. It dropped unheeded to the terrace, and her hands caressed from his shoulders, back down the heavily muscled arms and to the long-fingered hands, with their sword calluses and the soft, tender palm, then moved to the small of his back. He pulled the pins from her piled mass of hair, exultant laughter crinkling at the corners of his blue-green eyes, let it tumble down around her shoulders and entwined his fingers in it, then tilted her head back and kissed her again, this time with luxurious slowness. Under the heat and tenderness of his kiss she felt her bones melt.

He said, his voice smothered against her hair "It's been a long time since I..."

She raised her head from where she had buried it against his shoulder and teased "And I? But I'll be gentle!"

He flung his head back to laugh, then his eyes darkened intently, and he murmured hoarsely "I might not be..."

"Come..." she said, her voice sounding breathless, and she took him by the hand in through the terrace door leading to her suite. He stopped, hesitant. She said gently "You are welcomed... enter in..." He looked at her, his eyes suddenly uncertain. She pushed the door open and drew him in. Lamps were already lit by her bed, gleaming off the velvet cushions and luxuriant fur throws. She suddenly yearned to see him at peace and asleep there, his hard, heavy-muscled body lapped with furs...

They turned to each other. He had loosened and dropped his cloak at the door, and now she pulled the wine-red tunic off over his head. His fingers moved to her shoulders to remove the pins that held her stola and outer tunica together, and they slid with a rustle of silk to the floor. In a swift, graceful move that surprised her, and over her halfhearted protests, he swept her up in his arms and carried her to the bed.

***

Their lovemaking had been a slow incredulous dance of emotions and touches, both of them only half believing what was happening. And when he took her, suddenly and hard, she had gathered his head to her breast afterwards like a small child’s, covering his eyes and soothing away the bone-deep weariness and turmoil of his emotions. He slept almost immediately after that.

Later, she raised herself on her elbow to look down on his sleeping tranquil face. It must have been years since he had last felt at peace in his bed, she thought. She drew her fingertips gently - so gently - down the side of his face, feeling the soft, trimmed beard. Pausing at his half-parted lips, she smiled mischievously, remembering the way his moustache had tickled her throat. He lay on his stomach, his head turned towards her, one hand flung out blindly to find her in the night. He had half-kicked the throws off, and the recent scar on his back showed red and still painfully puckered. There were other scars, too, whip marks, sword cuts, too many to take in. She bent to sniff the smooth golden skin of his shoulders. His warm scent, so totally male, was so intoxicating it made her head swim. She kissed the soft nape of his neck, pulled the sable throw up around them both again against the autumn chill and fell asleep.

***

Galen strolled along the terrace after his usual dawn inspection of the herb garden. He bent and picked up two jeweled hairpins and the heavy breastplate from the stone flags, and thoughtfully traced the gilded wolf’s head. Then he smiled, carefully placed them on a nearby stone table, and resumed his walk.

***

Birdsong, and a waft of fresh air over his cheek, and somewhere honey cakes being baked... Dawn was creeping in the window.

He lay there for a few moments, feeling the peace waft through his heart and mind, then turned to see Lucilla lying asleep curled, catlike, facing him. Her hair lay tumbled over the pillows.

When she opened her eyes again he was leaning on his right elbow looking down at her, his left hand drifting and caressing down her body. She smiled up at him and wordlessly captured his hand to cradle it between her breasts. He bent down to kiss her and with his mouth muffled against her breast, he murmured, "Say my name..."

She whispered "Maximus... Maximus..." With her hand on his bare chest she could feel as much as hear his soft jubilant laugh. She whispered, "love me, Maximus... love me again!" She reached up to caress his face, and his welcome weight settled over her and the soft black velvet of his embrace descended on her eyes. 

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