Thomas Harlan - The shadow of Ararat

"What is it?" Maxian asked.

"My lord… please do not take this amiss, but when you were working on her wound, did you feel the curse within her?"

Maxian paused for a moment, reconstructing memories of his work in his mind.

"No," he said, shaking his head, "I felt the lead in her body, of which there is more than a little, but not the contagion."

"Has she lived in the city her whole life, then? Or is she another import, like the Mauretanian?"

Maxian considered-though he had spent more than one enjoyable afternoon or evening, or even night, in the house of de'Orelio in the company of the slave girl, their conversation had rarely turned to herself. With a little start, the Prince realized that he had told the witty green-eyed girl far more than he had ever intended about himself and his brothers.

"I don't remember it well, but I think that she was raised in the house of the Duchess. The daughter of house slaves, probably."

Abdmachus scratched his head in puzzlement. "So she has lived in the city for-what?-sixteen years? Yet she is not afflicted. You have lived here for only twelve years and you carry as much of the curse as that old man of fifty. I think, my lord, that what we seek is not tied to the city at all. The lead, surely, is as much an affliction to the people of the city as the coughing sickness in winter. This is something else, something that is tied up in the Empire. It only manifests itself in the city so strongly because so much of the effort of the Empire is concentrated there."

The Prince nodded slowly, as his mind broke apart the Persian's argument and turned it around and about, examining it from all angles. He rubbed his nose, deep in thought.

"The old man," he said at last. "What do you know of his life, Gaius Julius? What was his occupation? Did he always live in that district, or did he come from somewhere else? What did he do?

The dead man spread his hands.

"Well," he said, "to hear the neighbors tell of it, he had always lived there, in a top-floor apartment with a bad view. He did tinker's work-repairing shoes, leather goods, pots, pans, things like that. He drank his share of wine, didn't make any trouble, and kept out of the way of politics and crime. By my view, quite a respectable citizen. You probably know him better, having been in his guts and seen what he ate and shit the last day of his life.

"But I know one thing that they seem to have forgotten-I wager he never mentioned it, less he was dead drunk and the wine wasn't enough to keep his memories at bay. He was a citizen-a twenty-year man, by the Legion brand on his shoulder and the discharge mark."

Maxian turned back to look down on Krista's recumbent form. Her chest rose and fell slowly under the grubby cotton tunic that she was wearing. Without thinking of it, he checked the pulse at her neck and wrist. She was sleeping easily now. He ran his hand over her face and the sleep deepened. When she woke, she would feel no pain or aftereffects of the blow.

"A citizen. I am a citizen, by birth and action. The slaves are not…"

Something tickled at the edge of his thought, something from his youth in Narbonensis, something about…

"…the children of citizens, or citizens themselves. I remember a herdsman on my father's estates in Narbo, he said that the young of a strong bull are stronger than the offspring of a weak bull. The blood of the father and the mother affects the child." His voice sharpened.

"This contagion is carried by those who are citizens of the children of citizens of the state. It must be passed by blood from generation to generation."

Abdmachus rose from his chair and joined Maxian at the table.

"Eventually," the Persian said, speculatively, "it would affect the majority of the population, save those who were never citizens or whose parents had always been slaves. I might even get stronger with each generation."

"A pretty theory," Gaius Julius said from the steps, "but how did it afflict the citizens of the city in the first place? The lead didn't carry it if what you say is true. I somehow doubt that a wizard wandered around the city, bespelling everyone. Someone would have noticed. So, how did it first happen? And, more to the point, is it still happening now?"

Abdmachus sighed and returned to his chair. He was growing weary of the strain of all this. He devoutly wished that he could slip away and find a ship to take him back home. It was nearly a decade since he had last seen the green hills of his homeland or ridden under night skies familiar from boyhood. He had trouble understanding merchants from home now, and he continually caught himself thinking in Latin. Sadly, he put those thoughts away and wrote down the latest conclusions in short-stroked characters on the wax tablet that he always carried with him.

"My lord," he said when he had finished, "this is a strong spell to maintain such durability. I've been a sorcerer for nearly all my life, and the thought of constructing such a thing makes me feel a little ill. There are two kinds of things I can think of that would make such a thing work; first, that a sacrifice of blood be made when the working was done. Second, that the subject be permanently marked or forced to ingest something that fixed the pattern to them. These things make me think that perhaps… perhaps it is a religious ceremony. Something that each citizen undergoes upon coming of age? I am not familiar with those kinds of customs among your people…"

Gaius Julius shook his head, grimacing. "No, there's the little ceremony when you come of age-but that's just wine and grain on the family altar and a party. I suppose excessive drinking might cause it… that would explain much of the last six centuries. But then it must be past my time, since I don't show its effects… What?"

Maxian was staring at the dead man.

"Show me your arms," the Prince said.

Gaius Julius stared at the Prince for a moment, then shrugged out of his tunic. He showed first one arm and then the other, front and back sides. Maxian grunted and turned away, lost in thought.

"Well?" the dead man asked as he pulled the tunic back on. "You want to explain that?"

"You served in the Legions?"

"Yes, though from the reading I've been doing, not the Legions that you have now! My troops were either my personal followers or citizens called up when the city was threatened. No, let me take that back. My men were professionals-I suppose the last of the citizen-soldiers were in my grandfather's time. What of it?"

"You don't have a brand, or mark, on your arm."

Gaius Julius laughed; a sharp bark of amusement. "No, boy, I was a political officer! The brands are for the men who enlisted or were levied-they had to serve a long term-six to twenty years-and you don't want them to desert, now do you? I would never be branded, nor would any officer of the equites. We served out of choice, to further our political careers. This Augustus, this 'son' of mine, seems to have reorganized the Legions and instituted new programs-the branding, the issuance of a certificate of enlistment, an identity badge stamped from tin." He paused. "So much changed after I died."

The dead man looked old suddenly; truly old, not just his appearance, but his spirit and will, for a moment, seemed to be as ancient as his body. Enough of his new world was the same, or similar, that the things that had changed-like the wine, or the size of the city, or the abject poverty of the poor and the rampant excesses of the rich-struck him hard. Maxian looked at him with sympathy just for an instant and then forced his mind to remember that the old man was dead and a tool, little more. A lever, perhaps, to move a mountain.

Abdmachus had been shuffling through the notes that he and Maxian had made, and he pulled out a parchment book, complete with a leather binding. He opened it and turned to the third or fourth page. Clearing his throat, he read aloud in a carrying voice: "To the Republic of Rome, to the Senate, to the People and to the Law of the City of Rome, I swear that I will serve faithfully, to obey my officers, to follow commands, to keep ranks and to stand when others may flee. Upon my honor, the honor of my family and my blood I do so swear."