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sealieBy Sealie and LKY
Warnings and disclaimers in Part One
"Thank you, solider." He didn't have to ask, at this time of day the commanding centurion would be using the bath house. He abruptly changed direction. He'd have to find Marcus and assign the boy’s duties later.
"Jim!"
The streets vanished, the fresh air turned stuffy and closed in smelling.
Blair had him by the shoulders, panic etched in deep age lines on his normally carefree face. "Holy shit, man. You were in the mother-of-all zone outs."
Jim lifted a shaky hand to his stinging cheek. "I-I wasn't zoned. I was looking for Marcus but..."
"Whoa, *whoa*." Blair exclaimed. He gently pushed Jim back to sit on a shallow stone alcove. "It happened again? Describe it now, Jim. While everything is still fresh."
Jim looked over Blair's shoulder, they were alone. He briefly wondered what had happened to that stiff shirt giving Sandburg grief. A twinge of guilt speared him for leaving Blair up stairs alone to face the stupid accuser. He checked his watch, trying to get his thoughts in order. Only fifteen minutes had passed.
Blair didn't take the delay with much grace. "Jim, come on! We decided to be open about this, remember? Don't go all silent on me now. Spill it."
So Jim did. He let every detail, every name, ever feeling come out and Blair ate it all up with rapt attention, not interrupting him once. The experience was sublime, euphoric even. An attentive Sandburg. When he was done he had a shell-shocked Sandburg.
"Oh... my... God..." Blair stared wide eyed at Jim until it made him squirm.
"What?"
"This is," he faltered. "God, man, this is incredible." He looked around the room "What were you near when this happened? Were you touching one of these?" Blair scurried over to the pillars. "Which one?"
With a sigh, Jim pointed to the middle stone. He watched Blair slowly stretch out a hand and touch it, mild disappointment showing on his face as he followed the etchings with his fingers. "What I wouldn't give..." he whispered softly before getting a firm look on his face and turning back to Jim.
Jim knew that expression and it scared him.
"We've got to get to the bottom of this man."
“I’m not touching it again.”
Blair waggled his finger from side to side. “Bear with me.” The finger emphasised each word. “You were not Jim Ellison? You’re experiencing the whole thing as someone else?”
“Yeah.”
“So you’re definitely not an outside observer, you’re the legionary?”
“Centurion,” Jim corrected automatically.
Blair’s eyebrows rose. “Centurion?”
“I think,” he hedged. “They’re important, aren’t they?”
“I dunno, to be honest,“ Blair said.
“I… he has a position of responsibility. Commander?”
“Do you know what a centurion does?”
Jim shook his head.
“But you know that your guy is important?”
“The pimply teenager called me, sir.”
“You know.” Blair shook his head. “You have to find a mirror next time you trip and get a look at yourself.”
Jim crossed his arms. “I can tell you that whoever he is he doesn’t look like me.”
“How?”
Jim rolled his eyes deliberately. “He’s shorter, he has a Mediterranean complexion, dark hair.”
“How do you know?”
Jim pushed up his sleeve, showing the fine, light brown hairs on his forearm. “Me tall, pale, Caucasian, northern European descent.”
Blair grinned. “So basically, you probably looked a little bit like me.”
“Well, your hair’s about right, but your skin’s paler--” Jim paused a beat, “--I was, of course, taller.”
Blair stuck his tongue out. “Okay, I want you to try to step out of the vision. When you described your Great-grandmother, you watched the experience, you didn’t share the experience. I think that a boy –- you must have been three, four?”
“Three,” Jim supplied.
“So you didn’t have the life experience to even begin to encompass the vision. Your centurion is a solider.” He began to pace. “A ranger on the frontier. It’s familiar. But I think that you should be able to step back. So when you try it again, try and view the whole thing.”
Jim casually scratched his jaw. “Hmmm, try again? Yeah right.”
Blair’s backpack rested on the floor by the wall. He squatted and foraged inside the main compartment producing a large pencil and a folded piece of paper.
“What are you doing?” Jim asked.
“What I wish I’d done yesterday,” the grad student said bitterly. He unfolded the paper and looked expectantly at Jim. “Can you hold this up for me?”
Blair stood next to the pillar that had started the latest vision. Jim wanted no part of it. He shook his head. “This is a trick, right? To get me to touch it again?”
Blair rolled his eyes and returned to the pack. He pulled out a square, blue plastic-wrapped package. He ripped the end open with his teeth and tossed it to Jim who caught it in the air. Jim peeked inside. “The socks from the airplane?”
“Yeah, I lifted the comfort kit you didn’t use. The socks will keep you from touching the stone. Now, help me hold this up. I need a rubbing.”
Jim pulled out the long socks and stuffed the wrapper in his pocket. Standing, he used them like mini hot pads. “Where?”
“Here,” Blair said. “I want the words and these symbols along the edge. Didn’t you notice they’re similar to the one that’s missing?” Blair started the rubbing using the edge of the pencil as he talked.
“No,” Jim admitted. “What happened to that English Tradition guy?”
Blair grinned. “I had to commit some serious name dropping, but he backed off. It helps that we’re staying at Professor Dicksee’s house.”
“He’s a big name?”
“Oh, yeah.” Blair looked smug. “He’s big.”
They worked silently for a while. Jim didn’t pick up even a tingle from the weathered carved stone. That’s the way he liked it. Blair hummed under his breath, pausing in his work only to tuck a lock of hair behind an ear when it fell over his eyes.
“That’ll do.” Blair lifted the thin paper and examined the finished product.
“Yeah, it looks good. So, what are we going to do with it?”
“Well,” Blair started carefully folding. “I doubled checked about the plaque and it was found up north where they’re currently excavating the site of the old Roman fort. Funnily enough, it’s the one that I was thinking of visiting. Now, I’m not sure because it’s been a while since I studied this, but this pillar ties into the same era. Might be a connection. I say we definitely check the fort out.”
“Roman fort?” Jim pinched his lower lip in thought. “You mean like the ones that guarded Hadrian’s Wall?”
“You know about that?” Blair asked, eyebrows lifting.
Jim smacked a flannel covered arm. “Anybody that appreciates military strategy knows about the Roman Wall. Hell, the Romans wrote the book on efficient warfare. They practically invented it.”
Blair grinned. “Good, so when we go there, it counts as doing one of the things you wanted to do, right?”
~*~
Tiny the Terrible, Tortuous Tonka car putt putt putted along the one track, windy road. In the passenger seat, Jim kept one foot braced on the floor board, the other planted against the glove compartment. His knee was up by his ear.
“Rabbit!” Jim noted, loudly.
“I saw it. I saw it.”
The rabbit lackadaisically hopped out the way.
“I was concerned that hitting it would damage the car,” Jim deadpanned.
Blair mock laughed.
“Keep your hands on the wheel,” Jim said.
They dipped down a bank, which at speed might have been interesting, and zipped up the other side. A sheep watched them pass by. Jim consulted the map for Nth time; they were on the correct road to a World Heritage Site… a single-tracked, barely tarmaced road – it didn’t compute.
“Oooh.”
A wooden sign post loomed up ahead at a cross roads. The Fort of Vindolanda was two miles on the right. Dutifully, Blair came to a complete stop on the deserted road and looked left then right, tongue peaking out of the side of his mouth.
Jim gritted his teeth.
Manipulating the gear stick, Blair rocked on the gas pedal and clutch and they pulled away.
“Look, Look!” Blair suddenly pulled into a passing place.
“What?”
“There’s the Roman Wall.” Blair pointed at the low grey wall dotted along the bridge of the rolling hills on the horizon. The landscape was harsher than the Centurion’s memory of the Wall. The land was bleaker; the grass on the south side of the wall was cropped low by foraging sheep. The occasional tree stood gnarled against the elements. Jim did not know when the Centurion had walked along the wall - spring or summer. Yet the land felt different – older? Leaning towards the windshield, Jim allowed his eyesight to telescope. The Wall loomed up, only a few layers of grey stone remained, instead of the forbidding, defending Wall of his memory.
“Wow,” Blair breathed. “Two thousand years old, pretty cool, eh?”
“Hmmm, pretty cool.” Jim smiled at his enthusiasm.
“Hey, this is a good place to stop. How about we have lunch here?” Blair was clambering out of Tiny before he had finished speaking.
Jim consulted his stomach; he could do lunch.
There was a low wall, probably made of stones stolen from the Wall, skirting the edge of the track. It provided a perfect perch from which to view the world around him. Blair rifled around the Fenwick’s store bag, pulling out their packed lunch. He set two brown bottles on the wall, two packets of Chicken flavour crisps, an apple, banana and two wrapped sandwiches.
“Ha, sandwiches and lashings of ginger beer.” Blair cackled. “It’s an adventure!”
Jim picked up the bottle, and twisted off the cap. The label declared that the contents were botanically brewed ginger beer. Tentatively, he slurped; there was a bit of a bite.
“Good,” he declared.
“The chips are weird.” Blair shook the chip packet. He read, “Lemon chicken and tarragon flavoured crisps. Whatever.” He tore the cellophane wrapping and dug in.
Jim studied the long wall as he ate his lunch. In some places the Wall looked knee high, in others it would be over Blair’s head. His new ‘old’ memory gave him a clearer picture of what the wall had looked like, what it had represented. Still, it said something about the Wall’s presence that here they were, nearly two thousand years later, still able to see parts of it intact.
He brushed the crumbs off his jeans. “So what’s the plan when we get to this fort?”
Blair tilted his head in thought. “I figger.” He swallowed a mouthful almost too large for his plumbing before continuing. “I figure I’ll watch you, mostly.”
“What are you going to watch me do?” A twinge of unpleasantness reached long fingers into Jim’s understanding, like a breaking sunrise. He should have seen this coming.
“Touching, man. Lots of touching.” Blair stuffed another bite into his grinning maw.
The road to the fort wouldn’t have rated as a driveway back home. Jim still couldn’t get used to the idea of single lane roads for two directions of travel. They parked, paid the fee for entrance and wandered down a pebbled walkway through a grassy field. Trees in full foliage dotted the distant landscape, nary an evergreen in sight.
It wasn’t natural.
“Here.” Blair scooted off the path and knelt by a line of square stones. “Touch,” he ordered.
Jim glanced around. Acres and acres of rolling hills filled with light gray stoned outlines of building foundations dug out in the grassy field. Here and there a person wandered, but it was a weekday and they mostly had the place to themselves.
No one seemed to notice the two new American arrivals.
Jim sighed and left the path. He squatted down next to Blair and touched the stone. Faking a shudder, he closed his eyes and kept his face lax as he listened to Blair’s near orgasmic audible reaction. The kid managed almost twenty seconds of silence before the verbal increase.
“Well? What do you see? Come on, Jim. Spill!”
Opening his eyes and frowning, Jim answered, “It’s not what you thought, Chief. I don’t think you’re going to like this.”
“What?” Blair gasped, leaning forward.
God, he was so easy.
“The ancient sentinel says, now that I have you here. I’m to sacrifice the guide--”
Blair blinked. He opened his mouth, closed it, and blinked again.
“You ass!”
Jim found himself sitting on damp grass with a mammoth grin on his face. He finished, “--to the Roman God ‘Shut up and Learn to Vacation.’ That’s just a rough translation, of course.”
Blair snorted. His mouth twitched. He plopped down, sitting cross legged and rested his forehead on the palms of his hands, his elbows on his knees. “Yeah, I guess I had that coming.”
“Ya think?” Jim slugged his shoulder lightly. “What’s say we both wander around a bit, read the signs, drink in the history and get together afterwards to compare notes. Then, maybe, I’ll do some ‘touching’ for you.”
Blair raised his head. “Cool.”
They separated. Jim stood overlooking that site as Blair tappy lappyed off, his attention caught by an anthropological mystery. Before Jim lay the foundations of a complex, embedded in a raised plateau. Behind it, the land sloped away, finally dipping down to a wooded valley. Water cascaded behind a barrier of trees. On the other side of the valley, the hills rose and skirting the heights was the Wall. The hill provided a formidable natural barricade to the fort of Vindolanda and the tinkling stream was a viable water supply.
Jim nodded; strength, defensible and water.
Hands in pockets, he sauntered down the pebbled path to the raised plateau. For the most part the foundations were the only thing visible. Jim explored the edges of the fort first. Circular foundations within the wall marked the servants’ quarters. He followed the paths between officer’s quarters, places where business was conducted, arms were stored and the barracks for the soldiers to rest. At the ancient site of the bathhouse, he marvelled over the early ingenuity. Running water would have flowed underneath the stone floor, heated by fire pits within the walls until steam rose. The hypocaust was deep enough for a small child to crawl through. The outline of the fort in his head, he entered the building ruins proper. There was a gate to each division of the compass: north, south, east and west. Only a few stones remained.
Jim looked over his shoulder. Blair was crouched down on his haunches deep in discussion with two younger college students who were working at a roped off site beyond the boundary of the guard house. They were probably excavating some gutter or such. Jim bent his knees and reached out to run fingers over a flat stone sitting on end that was part of the southern gate. A square outline bordered the stone, weathered by the passage of thousands of seasons.
“The architect said that the cadre of legionaries could--”
Jim turned on his haunches and looked up with a start. A young man stood on the other side of a short stone wall, obviously being restored since trowels and buckets of cement sat beside the newly constructed, growing wall.
The guy kinda looked like Sandburg: dark curls, although the man’s were shorn; square jaw line and broad brow; deep-set dark, blue eyes beneath feathery brows. Jim squinted. This guy was Blair’s younger brother, he would have bet his bottom dollar on it.
“Blair,” Jim called over his shoulder.
“--which will be in time for the new delivery of stone. The legate said that the stone will arrive from Segedunum at the end of the week.”
Was the guy simple minded? Jim looked for a possible keeper. “Eh, so… are you all right?”
“Yes. Are you, Lucius?” The stranger stepped back away from the short wall. He toed the uneven rock floor.
Jim noticed the sandal poking out from under the toga.
An.
Old.
Roman.
Sandal.
*Shit*
The ghost essayed a gentle smile. “Have you a headache? The apothecary made some powders, a mixture of willow and peppermint. I thought the peppermint for your stomach and the willow is, reputably, beneficial for pain.”
A white toga, edged in dark blue and a heavy dark, blue cape. Layers of material hung around his shoulders. Yet not a drop of drizzle touched his sable curls. Jim looked to the sky; the overcast, sodden clouds had been peeled away as if by a giant’s hand to reveal a perfect blue.
“Aren’t you warm?” Jim asked the revenant.
He shuddered. “I don’t think I’ll be warm until I get back to the Senate. I can’t wait for the baths to be finished.”
Jim chanced a glance over his shoulder; his Blair was still deep in conversation with the grad students.
“When will they be ready?” Jim hazarded.
“The architect said three days, the tiles need to set. Then it’s bath time.” And the young man gave a wiggle which echoed Blair’s own excited wriggling.
“Son, what’s your name?”
The kid cocked his head to the side. “Marcus,” he offered, and then said, concerned, “Lucius? Are you having a spell?”
“Hey, Jim!” Blair hollered. “Come over have a look at this!”
Jim jerked around and then spun back, but Marcus had disappeared.
“Jim!” Blair beckoned frantically. “Come on over.”
Jim let out an aggrieved sigh and skirting around the temporary barrier of trios of palisades staked together he made his way to Blair’s side.
Blair had his lips pursed together in his ‘I’m concerned’ expression as Jim reached him.
“Yeah, what is it, Chief?”
Blair’s brow was furrowed. “Claire and Ben here have just unearthed a shot.” A small perfected round stone ball sat on the centre of Blair’s palm. “Cool, eh.”
Automatically, Jim held his hand out. “Very cool.”
Blair dropped it in his hand. Jim breathed an internal sigh of relief as nothing happened.
“You see anything interesting?” Blair asked on many levels.
Jim twitched. “Just old stones foundations. Looks like you’re having all the fun.”
Blair’s cheek bulged, his tongue absentmindedly worrying a tooth as he looked back at where Jim had stood. “So who were you talking to?”
No way could Blair have overheard anything. The kid was standing too far away. “No one.”
“Liar.”
Jim let the stone ball roll back into Blair’s waiting palm. He had more sights to see and had no interest in pursuing this argument in the making. A shift in the breeze brought the smell of fresh coffee.
On the other hand…
“Didn’t the guy when we paid say there was a café over that hill?” Jim pulled out a folded pamphlet and looked over the rough map printed on the back.
“We just ate!”
“My treat. I’ll fill you in.” Jim knew that Blair wouldn’t be able to resist that.
End of Part Six
Part Seven
Warnings and disclaimers in Part One
"Thank you, solider." He didn't have to ask, at this time of day the commanding centurion would be using the bath house. He abruptly changed direction. He'd have to find Marcus and assign the boy’s duties later.
"Jim!"
The streets vanished, the fresh air turned stuffy and closed in smelling.
Blair had him by the shoulders, panic etched in deep age lines on his normally carefree face. "Holy shit, man. You were in the mother-of-all zone outs."
Jim lifted a shaky hand to his stinging cheek. "I-I wasn't zoned. I was looking for Marcus but..."
"Whoa, *whoa*." Blair exclaimed. He gently pushed Jim back to sit on a shallow stone alcove. "It happened again? Describe it now, Jim. While everything is still fresh."
Jim looked over Blair's shoulder, they were alone. He briefly wondered what had happened to that stiff shirt giving Sandburg grief. A twinge of guilt speared him for leaving Blair up stairs alone to face the stupid accuser. He checked his watch, trying to get his thoughts in order. Only fifteen minutes had passed.
Blair didn't take the delay with much grace. "Jim, come on! We decided to be open about this, remember? Don't go all silent on me now. Spill it."
So Jim did. He let every detail, every name, ever feeling come out and Blair ate it all up with rapt attention, not interrupting him once. The experience was sublime, euphoric even. An attentive Sandburg. When he was done he had a shell-shocked Sandburg.
"Oh... my... God..." Blair stared wide eyed at Jim until it made him squirm.
"What?"
"This is," he faltered. "God, man, this is incredible." He looked around the room "What were you near when this happened? Were you touching one of these?" Blair scurried over to the pillars. "Which one?"
With a sigh, Jim pointed to the middle stone. He watched Blair slowly stretch out a hand and touch it, mild disappointment showing on his face as he followed the etchings with his fingers. "What I wouldn't give..." he whispered softly before getting a firm look on his face and turning back to Jim.
Jim knew that expression and it scared him.
"We've got to get to the bottom of this man."
“I’m not touching it again.”
Blair waggled his finger from side to side. “Bear with me.” The finger emphasised each word. “You were not Jim Ellison? You’re experiencing the whole thing as someone else?”
“Yeah.”
“So you’re definitely not an outside observer, you’re the legionary?”
“Centurion,” Jim corrected automatically.
Blair’s eyebrows rose. “Centurion?”
“I think,” he hedged. “They’re important, aren’t they?”
“I dunno, to be honest,“ Blair said.
“I… he has a position of responsibility. Commander?”
“Do you know what a centurion does?”
Jim shook his head.
“But you know that your guy is important?”
“The pimply teenager called me, sir.”
“You know.” Blair shook his head. “You have to find a mirror next time you trip and get a look at yourself.”
Jim crossed his arms. “I can tell you that whoever he is he doesn’t look like me.”
“How?”
Jim rolled his eyes deliberately. “He’s shorter, he has a Mediterranean complexion, dark hair.”
“How do you know?”
Jim pushed up his sleeve, showing the fine, light brown hairs on his forearm. “Me tall, pale, Caucasian, northern European descent.”
Blair grinned. “So basically, you probably looked a little bit like me.”
“Well, your hair’s about right, but your skin’s paler--” Jim paused a beat, “--I was, of course, taller.”
Blair stuck his tongue out. “Okay, I want you to try to step out of the vision. When you described your Great-grandmother, you watched the experience, you didn’t share the experience. I think that a boy –- you must have been three, four?”
“Three,” Jim supplied.
“So you didn’t have the life experience to even begin to encompass the vision. Your centurion is a solider.” He began to pace. “A ranger on the frontier. It’s familiar. But I think that you should be able to step back. So when you try it again, try and view the whole thing.”
Jim casually scratched his jaw. “Hmmm, try again? Yeah right.”
Blair’s backpack rested on the floor by the wall. He squatted and foraged inside the main compartment producing a large pencil and a folded piece of paper.
“What are you doing?” Jim asked.
“What I wish I’d done yesterday,” the grad student said bitterly. He unfolded the paper and looked expectantly at Jim. “Can you hold this up for me?”
Blair stood next to the pillar that had started the latest vision. Jim wanted no part of it. He shook his head. “This is a trick, right? To get me to touch it again?”
Blair rolled his eyes and returned to the pack. He pulled out a square, blue plastic-wrapped package. He ripped the end open with his teeth and tossed it to Jim who caught it in the air. Jim peeked inside. “The socks from the airplane?”
“Yeah, I lifted the comfort kit you didn’t use. The socks will keep you from touching the stone. Now, help me hold this up. I need a rubbing.”
Jim pulled out the long socks and stuffed the wrapper in his pocket. Standing, he used them like mini hot pads. “Where?”
“Here,” Blair said. “I want the words and these symbols along the edge. Didn’t you notice they’re similar to the one that’s missing?” Blair started the rubbing using the edge of the pencil as he talked.
“No,” Jim admitted. “What happened to that English Tradition guy?”
Blair grinned. “I had to commit some serious name dropping, but he backed off. It helps that we’re staying at Professor Dicksee’s house.”
“He’s a big name?”
“Oh, yeah.” Blair looked smug. “He’s big.”
They worked silently for a while. Jim didn’t pick up even a tingle from the weathered carved stone. That’s the way he liked it. Blair hummed under his breath, pausing in his work only to tuck a lock of hair behind an ear when it fell over his eyes.
“That’ll do.” Blair lifted the thin paper and examined the finished product.
“Yeah, it looks good. So, what are we going to do with it?”
“Well,” Blair started carefully folding. “I doubled checked about the plaque and it was found up north where they’re currently excavating the site of the old Roman fort. Funnily enough, it’s the one that I was thinking of visiting. Now, I’m not sure because it’s been a while since I studied this, but this pillar ties into the same era. Might be a connection. I say we definitely check the fort out.”
“Roman fort?” Jim pinched his lower lip in thought. “You mean like the ones that guarded Hadrian’s Wall?”
“You know about that?” Blair asked, eyebrows lifting.
Jim smacked a flannel covered arm. “Anybody that appreciates military strategy knows about the Roman Wall. Hell, the Romans wrote the book on efficient warfare. They practically invented it.”
Blair grinned. “Good, so when we go there, it counts as doing one of the things you wanted to do, right?”
~*~
Tiny the Terrible, Tortuous Tonka car putt putt putted along the one track, windy road. In the passenger seat, Jim kept one foot braced on the floor board, the other planted against the glove compartment. His knee was up by his ear.
“Rabbit!” Jim noted, loudly.
“I saw it. I saw it.”
The rabbit lackadaisically hopped out the way.
“I was concerned that hitting it would damage the car,” Jim deadpanned.
Blair mock laughed.
“Keep your hands on the wheel,” Jim said.
They dipped down a bank, which at speed might have been interesting, and zipped up the other side. A sheep watched them pass by. Jim consulted the map for Nth time; they were on the correct road to a World Heritage Site… a single-tracked, barely tarmaced road – it didn’t compute.
“Oooh.”
A wooden sign post loomed up ahead at a cross roads. The Fort of Vindolanda was two miles on the right. Dutifully, Blair came to a complete stop on the deserted road and looked left then right, tongue peaking out of the side of his mouth.
Jim gritted his teeth.
Manipulating the gear stick, Blair rocked on the gas pedal and clutch and they pulled away.
“Look, Look!” Blair suddenly pulled into a passing place.
“What?”
“There’s the Roman Wall.” Blair pointed at the low grey wall dotted along the bridge of the rolling hills on the horizon. The landscape was harsher than the Centurion’s memory of the Wall. The land was bleaker; the grass on the south side of the wall was cropped low by foraging sheep. The occasional tree stood gnarled against the elements. Jim did not know when the Centurion had walked along the wall - spring or summer. Yet the land felt different – older? Leaning towards the windshield, Jim allowed his eyesight to telescope. The Wall loomed up, only a few layers of grey stone remained, instead of the forbidding, defending Wall of his memory.
“Wow,” Blair breathed. “Two thousand years old, pretty cool, eh?”
“Hmmm, pretty cool.” Jim smiled at his enthusiasm.
“Hey, this is a good place to stop. How about we have lunch here?” Blair was clambering out of Tiny before he had finished speaking.
Jim consulted his stomach; he could do lunch.
There was a low wall, probably made of stones stolen from the Wall, skirting the edge of the track. It provided a perfect perch from which to view the world around him. Blair rifled around the Fenwick’s store bag, pulling out their packed lunch. He set two brown bottles on the wall, two packets of Chicken flavour crisps, an apple, banana and two wrapped sandwiches.
“Ha, sandwiches and lashings of ginger beer.” Blair cackled. “It’s an adventure!”
Jim picked up the bottle, and twisted off the cap. The label declared that the contents were botanically brewed ginger beer. Tentatively, he slurped; there was a bit of a bite.
“Good,” he declared.
“The chips are weird.” Blair shook the chip packet. He read, “Lemon chicken and tarragon flavoured crisps. Whatever.” He tore the cellophane wrapping and dug in.
Jim studied the long wall as he ate his lunch. In some places the Wall looked knee high, in others it would be over Blair’s head. His new ‘old’ memory gave him a clearer picture of what the wall had looked like, what it had represented. Still, it said something about the Wall’s presence that here they were, nearly two thousand years later, still able to see parts of it intact.
He brushed the crumbs off his jeans. “So what’s the plan when we get to this fort?”
Blair tilted his head in thought. “I figger.” He swallowed a mouthful almost too large for his plumbing before continuing. “I figure I’ll watch you, mostly.”
“What are you going to watch me do?” A twinge of unpleasantness reached long fingers into Jim’s understanding, like a breaking sunrise. He should have seen this coming.
“Touching, man. Lots of touching.” Blair stuffed another bite into his grinning maw.
The road to the fort wouldn’t have rated as a driveway back home. Jim still couldn’t get used to the idea of single lane roads for two directions of travel. They parked, paid the fee for entrance and wandered down a pebbled walkway through a grassy field. Trees in full foliage dotted the distant landscape, nary an evergreen in sight.
It wasn’t natural.
“Here.” Blair scooted off the path and knelt by a line of square stones. “Touch,” he ordered.
Jim glanced around. Acres and acres of rolling hills filled with light gray stoned outlines of building foundations dug out in the grassy field. Here and there a person wandered, but it was a weekday and they mostly had the place to themselves.
No one seemed to notice the two new American arrivals.
Jim sighed and left the path. He squatted down next to Blair and touched the stone. Faking a shudder, he closed his eyes and kept his face lax as he listened to Blair’s near orgasmic audible reaction. The kid managed almost twenty seconds of silence before the verbal increase.
“Well? What do you see? Come on, Jim. Spill!”
Opening his eyes and frowning, Jim answered, “It’s not what you thought, Chief. I don’t think you’re going to like this.”
“What?” Blair gasped, leaning forward.
God, he was so easy.
“The ancient sentinel says, now that I have you here. I’m to sacrifice the guide--”
Blair blinked. He opened his mouth, closed it, and blinked again.
“You ass!”
Jim found himself sitting on damp grass with a mammoth grin on his face. He finished, “--to the Roman God ‘Shut up and Learn to Vacation.’ That’s just a rough translation, of course.”
Blair snorted. His mouth twitched. He plopped down, sitting cross legged and rested his forehead on the palms of his hands, his elbows on his knees. “Yeah, I guess I had that coming.”
“Ya think?” Jim slugged his shoulder lightly. “What’s say we both wander around a bit, read the signs, drink in the history and get together afterwards to compare notes. Then, maybe, I’ll do some ‘touching’ for you.”
Blair raised his head. “Cool.”
They separated. Jim stood overlooking that site as Blair tappy lappyed off, his attention caught by an anthropological mystery. Before Jim lay the foundations of a complex, embedded in a raised plateau. Behind it, the land sloped away, finally dipping down to a wooded valley. Water cascaded behind a barrier of trees. On the other side of the valley, the hills rose and skirting the heights was the Wall. The hill provided a formidable natural barricade to the fort of Vindolanda and the tinkling stream was a viable water supply.
Jim nodded; strength, defensible and water.
Hands in pockets, he sauntered down the pebbled path to the raised plateau. For the most part the foundations were the only thing visible. Jim explored the edges of the fort first. Circular foundations within the wall marked the servants’ quarters. He followed the paths between officer’s quarters, places where business was conducted, arms were stored and the barracks for the soldiers to rest. At the ancient site of the bathhouse, he marvelled over the early ingenuity. Running water would have flowed underneath the stone floor, heated by fire pits within the walls until steam rose. The hypocaust was deep enough for a small child to crawl through. The outline of the fort in his head, he entered the building ruins proper. There was a gate to each division of the compass: north, south, east and west. Only a few stones remained.
Jim looked over his shoulder. Blair was crouched down on his haunches deep in discussion with two younger college students who were working at a roped off site beyond the boundary of the guard house. They were probably excavating some gutter or such. Jim bent his knees and reached out to run fingers over a flat stone sitting on end that was part of the southern gate. A square outline bordered the stone, weathered by the passage of thousands of seasons.
“The architect said that the cadre of legionaries could--”
Jim turned on his haunches and looked up with a start. A young man stood on the other side of a short stone wall, obviously being restored since trowels and buckets of cement sat beside the newly constructed, growing wall.
The guy kinda looked like Sandburg: dark curls, although the man’s were shorn; square jaw line and broad brow; deep-set dark, blue eyes beneath feathery brows. Jim squinted. This guy was Blair’s younger brother, he would have bet his bottom dollar on it.
“Blair,” Jim called over his shoulder.
“--which will be in time for the new delivery of stone. The legate said that the stone will arrive from Segedunum at the end of the week.”
Was the guy simple minded? Jim looked for a possible keeper. “Eh, so… are you all right?”
“Yes. Are you, Lucius?” The stranger stepped back away from the short wall. He toed the uneven rock floor.
Jim noticed the sandal poking out from under the toga.
An.
Old.
Roman.
Sandal.
*Shit*
The ghost essayed a gentle smile. “Have you a headache? The apothecary made some powders, a mixture of willow and peppermint. I thought the peppermint for your stomach and the willow is, reputably, beneficial for pain.”
A white toga, edged in dark blue and a heavy dark, blue cape. Layers of material hung around his shoulders. Yet not a drop of drizzle touched his sable curls. Jim looked to the sky; the overcast, sodden clouds had been peeled away as if by a giant’s hand to reveal a perfect blue.
“Aren’t you warm?” Jim asked the revenant.
He shuddered. “I don’t think I’ll be warm until I get back to the Senate. I can’t wait for the baths to be finished.”
Jim chanced a glance over his shoulder; his Blair was still deep in conversation with the grad students.
“When will they be ready?” Jim hazarded.
“The architect said three days, the tiles need to set. Then it’s bath time.” And the young man gave a wiggle which echoed Blair’s own excited wriggling.
“Son, what’s your name?”
The kid cocked his head to the side. “Marcus,” he offered, and then said, concerned, “Lucius? Are you having a spell?”
“Hey, Jim!” Blair hollered. “Come over have a look at this!”
Jim jerked around and then spun back, but Marcus had disappeared.
“Jim!” Blair beckoned frantically. “Come on over.”
Jim let out an aggrieved sigh and skirting around the temporary barrier of trios of palisades staked together he made his way to Blair’s side.
Blair had his lips pursed together in his ‘I’m concerned’ expression as Jim reached him.
“Yeah, what is it, Chief?”
Blair’s brow was furrowed. “Claire and Ben here have just unearthed a shot.” A small perfected round stone ball sat on the centre of Blair’s palm. “Cool, eh.”
Automatically, Jim held his hand out. “Very cool.”
Blair dropped it in his hand. Jim breathed an internal sigh of relief as nothing happened.
“You see anything interesting?” Blair asked on many levels.
Jim twitched. “Just old stones foundations. Looks like you’re having all the fun.”
Blair’s cheek bulged, his tongue absentmindedly worrying a tooth as he looked back at where Jim had stood. “So who were you talking to?”
No way could Blair have overheard anything. The kid was standing too far away. “No one.”
“Liar.”
Jim let the stone ball roll back into Blair’s waiting palm. He had more sights to see and had no interest in pursuing this argument in the making. A shift in the breeze brought the smell of fresh coffee.
On the other hand…
“Didn’t the guy when we paid say there was a café over that hill?” Jim pulled out a folded pamphlet and looked over the rough map printed on the back.
“We just ate!”
“My treat. I’ll fill you in.” Jim knew that Blair wouldn’t be able to resist that.
End of Part Six
Part Seven
