Fantasy fiction; Great Britain -- History -- Fiction; Space and time -- Fiction
'Not quite, little maid. When I was about sixteen or seventeen, the
Father felt gouty, and we all went to the Waters.'
'What waters?'
'At Aquae Sulis. Every one goes there. You ought to get your Father
to take you some day.'
'But where? I don't know,' said Una.
The young man looked astonished for a moment. 'Aquae Sulis,' he
repeated. 'The best baths in Britain. Just as good, I'm told, as
Rome. All the old gluttons sit in hot water, and talk scandal and
politics. And the Generals come through the streets with their guards
behind them; and the magistrates come in their chairs with their stiff
guards behind them; and you meet fortune-tellers, and goldsmiths, and
merchants, and philosophers, and feather-sellers, and ultra-Roman
Britons, and ultra-British Romans, and tame tribesmen pretending to be
civilised, and Jew lecturers, and--oh, everybody interesting. We young
people, of course, took no interest in politics. We had not the gout.
There were many of our age like us. We did not find life sad.
'But while we were enjoying ourselves without thinking, my sister met
the son of a magistrate in the West--and a year afterwards she was
married to him. My young brother, who was always interested in plants
and roots, met the First Doctor of a Legion from the City of the
Legions, and he decided that he would be an Army doctor. I do not
think it is a profession for a well-born man, but then--I'm not my
brother. He went to Rome to study medicine, and now he's First Doctor
of a Legion in Egypt--at Antinoe, I think, but I have not heard from
him for some time.
'My eldest brother came across a Greek philosopher, and told my Father
that he intended to settle down on the estate as a farmer and a
philosopher. You see,'--the young man's eyes twinkled--'his
philosopher was a long-haired one!'
'I thought philosophers were bald,' said Una.
'Not all. She was very pretty. I don't blame him. Nothing could have
suited me better than my eldest brother's doing this, for I was only
too keen to join the Army. I had always feared I should have to stay
at home and look after the estate while my brother took this.'
He rapped on his great glistening shield that never seemed to be in his
way.
'So we were well contented--we young people--and we rode back to
Clausentum along the Wood Road very quietly. But when we reached home,
Aglaia, our governess, saw what had come to us. I remember her at the
door, the torch over her head, watching us climb the cliff-path from
the boat. "Aie! Aie!" she said. "Children you went away. Men and a
woman you return!" Then she kissed Mother, and Mother wept. Thus our
visit to the Waters settled our fates for each of us, maiden.' He rose
to his feet and listened, leaning on the shield-rim.
'I think that's Dan--my brother,' said Una.
'Yes; and the Faun is with him,'he replied, as Dan with Puck stumbled
through the copse.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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