Constantius had grown very silent. “I was born in Dacia Ripensis. Strange to think that it will become the frontier. I suppose the Goths will be fighting what’s left of the Carpi, the Bastarnae and the Vandals for it now.”
“Not the Vandals,” corrected the centurion. “Aurelian has brought them in as federates and enlisted them as auxiliaries.”
Constantius frowned thoughtfully. “It may work; the gods know the Germans breed good fighting men.”
The barge took us as far as Borbetomagus. There, we joined a party of traders who were taking their pack mules along the Nicer and through the hills to the Danuvius. The farther we travelled the stronger my awareness of the density of the land around us became. In all my life I had never lived more than a day’s journey from the ocean, but now solid earth surrounded me, and even the mighty rivers were no more than the blood flowing through her veins.
These lands might have been abandoned by the legions, but they had not yet reverted to barbarian rule. The villas and farmsteads the Romans had carved out of the forest still prospered, and we were glad of their hospitality. And for me, this leisurely journey through Germania brought the unexpected benefit of my husband’s undivided attention. When he first joined the army Constantius had been posted to the German limes and knew them well. To hear his stories of garrison and battlefield gave me a picture of who he truly was that was to stand me in good stead thereafter.
But with each league we travelled my own past fell farther behind me. I became Julia Helena only and entirely, and memories of that Eilan who had been a priestess of Avalon dwindled until they had no more substance than a dream.
A moon of travel brought us to the upper reaches of the Danuvius, where we found another boat that would take us downstream. Here the great river flowed east between the Suevi hills and the lowlands of Rhaetia. When the autumn haze cleared, we could see the snow-clad Alpes glittering on the southern horizon, drawing gradually closer and lower until the river passed through a gap in the hills and presently made a sharp turn southward through the broad Pannonian plain.
This river was in fact far longer than the Rhenus, but going with the current, we moved faster. Presently we turned eastward once more, heading, so Constantius told me, towards the Euxine Sea. To the south lay the lands of Graecia of which Corinthius had told me so many stories, to the north, Scythia and the unknown. The land itself told me that we had journeyed far indeed. As the season advanced towards winter, cold winds blew down from the mountains, but the days were not appreciably shortened, and the trees and plants were different from the ones I knew.
I had thought that we would stay with the boat all the way to the Euxine, but when we stopped at Singidunum, Constantius reported to the fort’s commander and found there orders that had been waiting in case he should come that way. The Emperor, having settled the barbarians, was preparing to march on Palmyra, where Zenobia had attempted to wrest her desert kingdom free from Roman rule.
Aurelian wanted Constantius, and he wanted him now. Authorization for posthorses was therefore included, and chits for lodging in the government mansios along the way. Leaving Philip and Brasilia to follow with our goods, Constantius and I set out by horseback along the good military road that led through Moesia and Thracia to Byzantium. From there, a ferry took us across the Straits of Marmara to the province of Bithynia, and the city of Nicomedia, where the Emperor and his court were now in residence.
“Wait until summer—this can be a beautiful land,” said Constantius. His tone was bracing, as if I were a homesick recruit. It was not so far from the truth, I thought, tucking my heavy shawl more firmly around me. We had been here for over four months, much of which Constantius had spent riding back and forth between Drepanum and Nicomedia, where the Emperor was preparing for the Palmyran campaign. Zenobia, who called herself Queen of the East, had laid claim not only to her native Syria, but to Egypt and parts of the province of Asia as well. In another moon, the army being sent to punish her would be gone.