I couldn’t sleep. I wasn’t as exhausted as was usual because of Quintus’s help. My mind raced to do all I could before undergrad classes began in two weeks. I was in my room, trying to figure out just what I had left to work with, what I could cobble together into some kind of final thesis that wouldn’t get laughed out of the department, and do something to prove I wasn’t useless without Anglesey Man when the doorknob rattled. I stood to find Quintus on the other side of it.
“Come in,” I said in Latin, realizing two seconds too late what I’d done. I slammed a textbook closed over the picture nearest me, the close-up of Quintus’s tanned, wrinkled face, and stood stalwartly in front of my desk as Quintus tried to rip the picture from me.
“No,” I said, bracing my muscles in the expectation that he might just lift me off the floor and toss me aside. He looked sternly at me; his eyes ringed in red.
“Azi,” he said with force, “Give it to me.”
“No,” I said weakly, trying, and failing, to keep my composure. He moved closer, and I stifled a sob. It was the first time I’d felt menaced by him, since…since we’d met. My knees were at the point of buckling when he reached his arm behind me and took the picture from its place, his silent, watchful gaze ever on me.
A last-ditch effort, I put my hand to his wrist, but was no match for the determination I felt there. I did the only thing I could.
“I am sorry, Quintus, I have to look. You do not.”
He swallowed hard and turned the image over in his hand to face him. I watched helplessly as the light left his eyes. His arm went limp, dropping the replica of his death mask on the floor. He stumbled backward and grasped at the last minute for the door frame. I lunged for him, catching him around his thick waist before he crumpled to the floor. He was so heavy my own legs almost gave way underneath me. But I stood firm.
“It’s okay. You are here, Quintus. I am here.”
He became sensible of me as I spoke and clasped desperately at my arm on his chest. He closed his eyes tight in a frightened expression, as if to open them would open the abyss under his feet and send the world spinning around him.
“Azi,” he pleaded, as if searching restlessly for me.
“I am here,” I repeated. “I am here.”
“Are you?” he asked, his deep voice now nearly a whimper.
“Yes.”
He opened his eyes to me, reaching for my face and drawing me to him, our foreheads touching. He shivered as if intensely cold.
“That is not you,” I said firmly.
“For longer than you can imagine, it was.” His reply made me shudder, as from an unseen, infernal wind.
“I am sorry, Quintus, I did not intend—”
“Shh, I know. I know you must. You were right, I should not have—forgive me.”
“Please, let me,” I said, moving slowly away from him to clear my research away and shuffle it under the bed. “It will not happen again,” I promised, leading him to my bed to sit down. He laid his head on my stomach as I stood before him and gripped my hips. He kept his head hung low, as if he were ashamed. What he thought was a proper way for a man to deal with coming back from the dead, that I haven’t the foggiest about. I stood patiently while he regained his composure. He seemed to like my fingers in his hair as much as I liked his in mine. He was on the verge of purring contentedly when he appeared to remember why he had come.
He pointed at the computer screen on my desk, beckoning to use it. I was relieved not to have to dig deeper into my Latin. I understood him fine most of the time, but my respondent vocabulary was rapidly nearing its limit without a dictionary. I couldn’t shake the slamming headache I’d had all day. No amount of Tylenol could compete with my overwrought nerves of harboring a bog body come back to life and the stress of recalling enough Latin not to sound like an imbecile. I spent so much of my mental energy anticipating what would freak him out that I was the one going to pieces.
“Are you all right?” I asked, sitting at my desk and tilting the monitor in his direction.
He nodded. I came because I was curious. Felix, Ravi, they have traveled far to come here? Their speech is different from yours.
I laughed. “Are you a linguist?” It took him a moment to comprehend what I’d asked, but he indicated that he was, of a sort.
“Felix is from Barcelona. Err,” I corrected, “south of Gaul.”
And Ravi?
“Her parents are from Mumbai—India—but they live in New York. South of here. Most Americans are from somewhere else.”
And you? Where are your parents from, originally?
“My father’s family has been here for so long I don’t remember. And my mother’s people have always been here. Narragansett.”
He grunted, and I sensed he was just getting to what he really came to ask.
How many years do you have? the screen read.
“How many—oh, how old am I? Twenty-four. You?”
Two thousand thirty-six.
His sense of humor was back. Always a good sign.
I ask because… he hesitated, then started again, taking a different approach. Your parents left you when? he asked.
“I was ten.” He looked down at his borrowed shirt. Embarrassed, I tripped over my own words. “I just never…I never got rid of…”
He dismissed the thought. I am sorry, my angel.
The conflicting impulse to blush and cry at his words nearly choked me. “Drunk driver,” I said simply. They might not have had cars in ancient Rome, but I’ll bet at least one man behind the reins of a chariot had put away one too many. The grave look on his face reflected his understanding.
And after that, who raised you?
I shifted in my seat, not sure where this was going. But it wasn’t some great secret. “My uncle, for a while. He moved in with his sons, because I threw a fit when they tried to make me leave. The doctors told them that—”
Doctors? Were you ill?
“No. Here,” I said, putting my finger first to my temple, then over my heart. “Here. They suggested a slower transition, because I wasn’t—” I turned my head to the side and swallowed hard, trying to tamp down on the memories that were banging at the gates. “I didn’t handle it well.”
Quintus nodded sympathetically, and I continued. “They’d left me more than enough money to take care of me for the rest of my life. But my uncle—”
Quintus closed his eyes in a solemn expression, knowing what I meant to say before I said it.
“It was almost all gone by the time my father’s attorney realized what was happening. He fought to have me emancipated and arranged caretakers for me until I was eighteen.”
The others―are they alone also? he asked, indicating the rest of the household, settling into their beds for the night.
“No, their parents are alive and well.”
So, forgive me, but why do they live here?
“It’s only during their education. Their parents live too far away.”
Are they around your age?
“More or less.”
Are none married?
That came as a surprise. “Do any of us look married?”
Pardon me, Azi. I meant no offense. Is that common, to be unmarried at your age?
“Yes, very common. Though you’re pushing it, old man,” I quipped.
Am I too old for you, Azi?
He asked in such earnest, I felt bad for having made the joke in poor taste. “No, Quintus. Not for me.”
He stood, and I rose from my chair as he neared it. His knuckles brushed my cheek in that gentle, yearning way they had before, when I almost—
“Your father, did he…are you promised?”
I mumbled dreamily in the negative, forgetting completely that this was a bad idea.
“Who would I ask, Azi?”
I shrugged meekly under his touch, wishing for the warmth of his embrace.
“Me,” I answered humbly. “Marriages are for…for…”
“For love,” he said softly.
“Yes,” I whispered, my face so close to his that I could smell his warm, sweet breath.
He nodded in quiet understanding, swallowing me in his gaze. I thought he would kiss me. I wished for it so badly, the wanting became a deep pain in my chest. He held me close, and I listened to his two-thousand-year-old heart, thumping confidently in his chest. Why I chose just then to test the waters, I’ll never know.
“I will ask Dean tomorrow, about helping you get home,” I said.
“I am deep in your debt. I will repay it. Good night, Asenath.”
“Sleep well,” I said as I watched him linger in the doorway. I bit my tongue to stop myself from asking him to stay. He could ask if he wanted to.
I could tell he wanted to—his eyes reflected that and nothing else. But in a full house, we both felt the constraints of propriety and discretion. I listened to his sad footsteps echo down the hallway.
I tried for the next hour to come up with a plan for my thesis. I went through all the notes that had gotten me to Wales in the first place, and all the photos still on my camera. It was surreal to see Quintus in his previous condition, and I thanked my lucky stars that my mind had begun disassociating the two from the minute he opened his eyes. Defense mechanism for madness though it might be, I was not prepared to question what came so naturally. But Quintus and Anglesey Man were not completely severed, indeed could not be. Something had been done to Quintus, against his will, and probably against his knowledge. And either in spite of it, or because of it, the bog had preserved him, alive.
No, that wasn’t right. He wasn’t alive, not when we found him. But he was alive now. How did a stake, a bit of amber, and a gold ring accomplish that? Did the person or persons responsible intend for this to happen, to keep him in suspended consciousness, or did they simply set to drown him? Was there more to the ritual he had undergone that hadn’t survived? How could I know, without asking Quintus? Had similar tokens been found before? I’d have to go back over everything I knew about bog bodies, all the theories about how they’d been put there, and why. But even then, what could I say—what could I prove without revealing Quintus? If I used only what was recorded, would my whole thesis be junk science, or worse—a lie? What would my degree mean then?
It was enough to make my head spin, and I’d had enough of that for one day. I needed to unwind if I was ever going to clear my head and make sense of what had happened, what I would do, what I was feeling. I wasn’t sleeping anyway, so, obscenely late as it now was, I headed up to the tower loft.
My finished canvas was there, brooding appropriately. I stared a long time, unsure of where to begin next. I put the canvas to the side and grabbed another. Regarding materials, I had nothing to work with unless I wanted two of the same painting. I looked to the first portrait of Anglesey Man, in soft lamplight, and pinned it up in the corner. I saw only Quintus’s face as it had been, and as it was now. I roughed out the curve of Quintus’s jaw, his straight, dignified nose, his smooth brow, and piercing, brilliant eyes, set in an intense stare.