Rome - 7. Chapter 7

It was early morning when they saw the land Appias had given them. Lucinius studied the map, looked at the markers, and yes, this was the land. If you didn’t know that a battle was fought here, you would quickly come to that conclusion. Nothing was left standing. There were rocks, cement blocks, plus broken pottery all over the ground. There were a few grapevines, but the grapes weren’t even good enough to eat, let alone make wine. Lucinius was angry, angry enough to make his father regret giving him this land. “Aumen, we’ll make a Villa here, with trees and gardens. We will raise sheep, goats, and chickens. Regardless of what my father thought he had done, we’ll survive and become prosperous.” Lucinius was angry but not in a destructive way. He would turn that anger toward the ground and prosper.

They needed to set up camp. Looking around, they selected an area with the least amount of debris. Aumen took a shovel and started to clear away the debris. He hadn’t removed much when he called Lucinius. He uncovered a mosaic floor. Lucinius looked and recognized this must have been the floor of a house that once was here. “Aumen, this will be our home. We need to clean away all of this debris.” So for the rest of the day, they removed all of the rocks, stone, plaster pieces, and other debris from where the tile floor was exposed. As the sun dipped below the horizon, they still hadn’t finished. They were tired.

“Lucinius, there was a stream to the east of us as we were coming up the hill. Let’s go and use it to clean ourselves.”

“Good, we’ll take the mules and my horse. They can get a drink, and there might be grass there they can eat.”

Lucinius rode his horse, Aumen rode one of the mules, leading the other. It took them thirty-five minutes to reach the stream. Lucinius’s horse could smell the water and started to run, Lucinius let him. Arriving at the stream of water, they let the animals have a drink. They led them to the grass that grew on the sides of the stream. Aumen was the first in the water, not long followed by Lucinius. Aumen showed Lucinius how to clean himself with the soft sand at the bottom of the stream. They laid on the grassy banks until the sun-dried them. Seeing that the animals had fed, they led them to the water for one last drink before heading back.

The next morning Aumen took the animals back to the stream for water. Lucinius had a breakfast of cheese and fruit ready when Aumen returned. Finishing their breakfast, they returned to finish what they started yesterday. When they got to the courtyard, the stones were too heavy for them to move. As they tried, “Stop Aumen, that isn’t a stone. It’s the bottom part of a statue. Let’s see if we can find the top part, it might tell us something about the statue.” They searched the ground, but all they found was a nose and a lot of smashed rock.

Feeling that they removed as much as they could, they turned their activities to clear the ground of all of the stone, blocks, bricks, and debris. What they couldn’t handle, they left. By the time the sun was setting, they had cleared quite a bit of the small stuff.

Eating the last of the bread and fruit, “Tomorrow we’ll go to Rome. We need more food, and I’ll see if Grandfather can help us to clear these big rocks from our land.”

Aumen picked up on ‘our land’ and hoped it might mean what he thought it might mean. He remembers his comment about being a slave to Lucinius would be alright, but if he were free, he would still stay with Lucinius. All the way to the stream, he smiled.

In the morning, Lucinius couldn’t decide if he should take the cart or not. In the end, Aumen answered that when he saw Aumen was ready to go and the mules were hooked to the cart. When they got to the bottom of his land, Lucinius looked back. He sighed and shook his head. Aumen knew he was discouraged, they worked hard for several days, and it seemed they made no progress.

“What do you think your grandfather is going to say when you tell him about the house we uncovered?”

“I don’t know. I think he’ll be glad for us, but there is so much more we need to do.”

“Don’t let your father win.”

Lucinius looked at Aumen. “What do you know about what my father wants?”

“I heard your grandfather tell you he won’t let him win, so I assumed your father wanted you to lose. When I saw this land, I knew he wanted you to fail. This will take a long time before you’ll see a profit from this land.”

“Once we get this land cleared, we’ll have a rough time for a little while. But with the house we uncovered, this must have been a profitable land at one time. If you and I set our mind to it, it’ll be profitable again. We can hunt and maybe fish for ourselves. It’s the animals that will have a hard time. We need to find pasture land for them. We can’t keep going to the stream to feed them, and we can’t leave them there.”

When they arrived in Rome, it was late. The sun was going down. They stopped and got some food at a vendor on the way to the home of Gaius. Arriving at sunset, a slave recognized Lucinius and took the animals. Lucinius went to the house, calling for his grandfather. When Gaius saw Lucinius, he thought something was wrong. Lucinius hugged his grandfather, “I missed you, so I had to come and see you.”

Gaius knew that wasn’t true, “What’s wrong, are you alright?”

“Yes, we need supplies. But I have good news. We found what must have been a house on the land. It looked like it was quite large, and in the courtyard, there was a statue, but the head was demolished, so we can’t tell who it was.”

“Come sit down and tell me all.”

For the next hour, Lucinius told Gaius about the land, what they have been doing, and the problem he has in removing the large stones and blocks. He wanted to get a large hammer to break up the rocks so he can remove them. “I think the land is fertile. If that house was part of a Villa, then I’m sure the land will be able to produce.”

“I have correspondence from your other grandfather. I knew him from the Senate. We were friends. I told him about the land. He said when you’re ready, he will send trees, sheep, and goats to you. But you cannot tell your father.”

“That’s good news, and now I just need to hire some people to help clear the land.”

That evening Lucinius told Aumen what his grandfather said about his other grandfather who lived by the ocean. “Did you tell him we needed men to help us clear the land?”

“Yes, tomorrow we’ll buy more supplies and hire some men to come and help us clear the land.” Aumen wondered how much that was going to cost. As if Lucinius could read his mind, “I have some money that we can use to pay the men. When grandfather and I freed you from the slaver, I was given money as a gift from the people that were at the party. Money isn’t the problem now. Labor is the problem.”

“I’m glad we brought the cart. It will be loaded when we go back.”

The boys stayed with Gaius for three days. During that time, they visited the Baths often. They arranged for an architect, a friend of Gaius’s, to visit and look at the house they uncovered. With Gaius’s help, they hired three men to help clear the ground. With a cart load of supplies, two extra horses, the five left in the early morning for home, as Lucinius now referred to his land.