But it was night, Cato was ill, and it was my responsibility to get us back after we’d completed our mission.
The chorus of wails had not died down and could still be heard like a wind blowing from the wilderness. I thought of the dogs that always came to scavenge the bodies of people we hung up, and the others we left lying, and I thought of the noises they made as they fought for their food, but this was something different. It wasn’t snarling or howling; it wasn’t the sound of four-legged animals. It belonged to the wind or the rain or the sea or whatever grows in the depths below. I had no idea how I’d get to sleep. None of us had any idea how we’d get to sleep. We did whatever we could to put off having to shut our eyes and be left alone in the dark.
Cato got undressed and stood there, naked in front of the small square opening in the wall that led out to the night. I lay down on the floor and tried to stretch my back. Tuscus and Celsus kneaded each other’s muscles while they stared into space.
“It wasn’t right, what we did,” Cato mumbled. “We shouldn’t have accepted this mission, it wasn’t worthy of the Empire.”
“I thought we would fight for Rome,” said Tuscus. “Not go around sacrificing Jewish babies.”
Celsus lay down and rolled over. Cato scratched his genitals as he went on muttering to himself. He was getting on my nerves. What was wrong with him? He was supposed to be a leader. He was the best among us; I could never beat him when we fought or trained together.
I asked how he was doing and whether his touch of sickness had passed.
“Shut up,” said Cato. “I’m not sick, it’s gone now.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “I don’t want that damn stuff all over me tonight.”
Cato came across until he was standing over me.
“Young or old, who cares?” I said. “I wasn’t the one who started throwing up like a girl. Shit, you’ve probably caught some Jewish disease.”
Before I could even get up, his punches hit me on both sides of my face. I pinched my nose and felt around to see if any teeth had fallen out in my mouth. Cato told Tuscus to bring me the washbowl.
“Get yourself cleaned up,” he told me.
I called him a damn fool, a wet rag.
“Shut up and get washed,” he said. I took the washbowl.
“Who’s a little girl now?” Tuscus smirked. Celsus lifted his head before quietly lying back down. Cato got dressed and lay down.
“I’m not sick,” he said. “It’s gone now.”
I looked over at him with his crooked nose and great chin. His mouth twitched like the small shivers of a hurt animal. He shut his eyes, then opened them again. Closed them and opened them.
“Those were our orders,” he whispered. “It wasn’t our fault, they were orders.”
That very moment we heard a strange sound of weak laughter. We stared at each other. There was the laughter again, louder this time. There was somebody in here with us. Tuscus was already on his feet. Cato signaled at him to stay calm.
“Oh, you can hear me, can you?” said a voice. It was a sharp voice, yet deep at the same time, like a knife grating through black sand.
“It wasn’t nice of me to laugh at you,” the voice continued, “but you’re like little children, trapped in those beastly bodies of yours.”
A man was sitting there, hidden in the shadows by the door. How had he got in? How long had he been sitting there? Cato got up and walked over to the stranger. Tuscus followed him. They’d both taken out the knives they always kept on them when they slept.
“Stop,” said the stranger. “What good will it do you to cut holes in me? You’ve cut so many holes tonight that the town can’t hold all the blood pouring out.”
The stranger’s eyes were a grayish white. He was older than any of us. A walking stick was leaning next to him where he sat.
“Who are you?” asked Cato.
The stranger breathed in, then let out a slight sigh of sorts before he spoke: “I’m blind, and yet I see many things. I’m what stays in the shadows while the light falls elsewhere. I’m here as an envoy of King Herod, but my knowledge extends all the way to Emperor Augustus and his generals.”
We were all taken aback. I felt myself stand up straight.
“Everything changes,” said the stranger, “but you men here may endure forever. The ancestors of those who belong in this land were kings. What about their descendants now? They’re under your heel. And what about your descendants, where will they be many hundreds of years from now? Under the heel of others. Even with all that’s happened before, all that’s happening now, and all that is yet to come over the hundred or thousand years of night ahead of us, know this: there’s a place for you in this story. What you do now may be remembered. Children will sit and listen to their mothers and fathers telling the story. There’s no yesterday or tomorrow in tales like these; there’s no thousand years ago or thousand hence. Everything is now. Everything. Even the creatures that walked over this land before we existed. Even the things they’ll build in worlds yet to come. Roads, walls, palaces, and castles. The air will be filled with all of creation, and the birds will no longer fly alone.”
The stranger stopped, leaning down toward the ground and shaking his head, before turning back to us, his eyes open.
“But now it’s nighttime, and day will soon be upon us, so I’ll be brief,” he continued. “I’ve got a few little stories for you, if that’s what I may call them. I want to tell you that you mustn’t worry about what you’ve done tonight.”
“We’re not worried,” I said. Cato turned toward me and told me to be quiet.
“Capito,” said the stranger, suddenly seeming old. “You’ll become a great warrior in this army. Maybe there’s an officer in you too.”
“How do you know who I am?” I asked. “I’ve never seen you before.”
“I know who all of you are,” said the stranger. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now.”
Then Cato spoke, asking the man to tell us who he was and what he was doing here, but I wished Cato would shut up. I just wanted to hear more. The stranger smiled, and his teeth were white, as if he had shining stones in his mouth. He held up his hands, and even though he wasn’t near us, it felt as if he were touching our faces, stroking us on the cheek.
“You’re skilled soldiers,” he said. “Better than any Herod has ever had in this wretched realm of his. The best the rulers in Rome can send to a backwater like this. And you know that. You know what you are. Nobody can guard you like Celsus can, keeping an eye on everything that’s going on in the evening darkness or at the market.”
Celsus was still lying on his side, turned away from us. Nothing of what was being said appeared to stir him.
The stranger continued: “Nobody can walk like shadow better than Tuscus can, striking with the force of a lion, coming at an enemy like a leviathan from the ocean depths, dark, heavy, precise, and without mercy. You’re a warrior melted down and reshaped into a new kind of soldier, a kind that generals dream of, and that the weak fear.”
Tuscus looked down at himself. His giant hands hung down along his sides, and there was a strange motion in his fingers. It was as if Tuscus’s whole body began to glow, and I was about to say how ridiculous he looked when the stranger said my name again. And now he seemed younger, his hair soft, his skin taut, and his eyes as clear as the coldest water.
“Capito, Capito,” he said. “Maybe you’re wondering what I’m about to say now. There’s nothing to wonder about: you already know it. Everyone in this room knows it.”