Chapter 4

Day 23

Antia was on one shoulder and Tacita the other when I awoke. I was surprised to find that my morning entertainment was Marilla and not Fausta. “Thank you,” she whispered emotionally when we finished. “I will behave and be a good slave.”

“Ask Tacita what it’s like to be my slave,” I suggested. “You will find that your life is almost the same as the free women.”

Since her naked, nubile body was giving little Quintus ideas again, I climbed out of bed, but had Marilla come with me. I was glad that I bought another cart yesterday because I would need it today.

We grabbed bread and cheese to eat and found the men making saddle trees and saddles starting work, along with several new slaves that Celsus had purchased yesterday. The leather worker thanked me for the new sets of tools and the leather.

One of the stable hands studied what I was doing intently while I saddled Boots. They had put on the bridle and reins before bringing him to me. I was glad that I didn’t have to “invent” those, too. The other stable hands helped Marilla hitch the mule to the cart. The six ceramic crocks that I bought yesterday were still in the cart, although they were nestled in straw this morning rather than cushioned by the leather I had used on the way back from Puteoli.

Brutus was with me again today and was again mounted since he figured I would ride Boots. A few minutes down the road, a lone bowman stepped out of the trees with an arrow nocked and drawn.

I suddenly discovered that Boots used to be a warhorse. Without any prompting, he charged the man, knocking him down. I held onto the reins and pulled him up so that he reared while I stood in the stirrups. When he landed, one hoof hit the bandit in the chest. By the time I dismounted and checked, the bandit wasn’t dead, but wasn’t far from it.

He died before we reached the lake, where I left Marilla and the cart. I found the two men using Celsus’s fishing boat and explained what I wanted. I also requested that they release at least five live fish a day into Lake Avernus. If they found the fish floating the next day, they could stop. I wanted to see if we could introduce local freshwater fish into that lake.

Then I spoke with the other fishermen at the lake, asking them to save the entrails when they gutted their fish, dumping the entrails into the ceramic crock I left for them. I even promised each boat an “as” (a copper coin) for each filled crock.

Marilla had already unhitched and tethered the mules, so I tied the body across one of the mules and headed for Puteoli with Brutus.

“How did you do that with the horse?” Brutus asked.

“The horse charged the man all on his own. I just pulled him back so he would rear. That’s one of the many things stirrups are good for,” I replied.

“I’ll say. You were standing in them and not seated on the horse at all. If my horse did that, I’d fall off,” he laughed.

When we reached the forum, we found the Magister and explained that the man had tried to rob us. Since the Magister recognized both me and Brutus, who belonged to the highly respected Celsus, he accepted our word and registered the death and circumstances. He awarded me the man’s meager belongings, a knife, a bow, and six arrows.

The attempted robbery reminded me of something I had planned to do. Before leaving the forum, I located a man who sold tents and found one I wanted. It was more of a pavilion-style tent than a pup tent and was big enough for three men. I bought two throw rugs to cover the floor of the tent, ostensibly to keep down the dust, and then bought a strong box with a lock. I was glad that we had the mule with us to carry everything back.

Once we were back at the quarry, I took Janus and Marius aside. I told them about the tent I bought for them to use. I wanted them to build a wooden floor for the tent and beneath the floor, create space for the strongbox. The strongbox should be kept inside a wooden frame and be covered by the wooden floor with the rugs on top of that. This gave them a place to lock up and hide the money.

They were now up to eight cranes and had a row of filled crates along both sides of the road where the carts pulled up to be loaded. Marius showed me the first form for the paving stones. I approved it and suggested making hundreds of the forms when they had time, along with making a covered work area near Lake Lucrino. They also needed to make forms to hold the concrete for the edge stones.

Leaving the pozzolana business in good hands, I gave Janus the bandit’s bow and headed for the lake. Once there, I was quickly up to my proverbial elbows in fish guts. The air bladders had been separated into one crock filled one-third-full of lake water. The rest of the guts were in the remaining crocks. By the time we arrived, they had almost two hundred air bladders from the fish. I had our fishermen row out into the lake where they dumped the crock that was a quarter full of fish entrails. I told the men to remember where they dumped it and to fish there tomorrow. I had them toss a bit of the entrails into Lake Avernus near the spot where they’d released the fish today.

I took the fish fillets and buried them between layers of wet straw. Half went to the men at the quarry; the rest went home with us. Some of what we took home was given to Celsus’ cook and the rest went to our kitchen.

I was surprised when Junia, one of the first cooks I had hired for the workmen, joined us in bed tonight. She was much older than the nineteen years of my current body, and probably near the thirty years of age I was in my previous life. Despite the age difference, she was enthusiastic and we both enjoyed the experience.

Day 24

After breakfast and setting my tomatoes outside in the sun again, I joined the slaves working on the bows. First, I showed them how to pound the dried sinew to separate it and break it into short strands of wool-like fibers.

Next, we started boiling the carved and shaved pieces of mouflon sheep horn. Yesterday, I had started boiling the fish air sacks in one iron pot and the balance of the entrails that weren’t dumped into the lake in another, larger pot. The two pots had been boiled over a low fire with people trading off stirring it for several hours until it had become a thick, yellow glue. Now the fun started. After reheating the solidified glue, I glued strands of sinew along the spine of a bow. Then I fitted the horn to the belly of the bow, making any necessary last-minute adjustments to the horn by shaving it with a knife to make it fit, all the while wishing I had a rasp.

When it fit perfectly, I glued it in place and then wrapped the entire bow with willow bark that was glued on. The willow bark was from branches and had the inside scraped so it was even thinner. It would help to protect the bow during wet weather. Then I wound hemp twine around the whole thing to hold everything in place. When it was complete, I set the bow on its side, out of the sun, to dry. I now had my first bow made of laminated layers of sinew, sapwood, heartwood, and bone.

I supervised the slaves as each made their first bow, explaining the reason for each step and correcting any mistakes. By lunchtime, we were out of sinew, but had twenty-nine bows completed and drying. We switched to making arrow shafts, a process several of them were already familiar with. I had four of the men carving pieces of deer antler to make artificial cocks for the strap-ons.

I checked the leather workers and found Celsus’s slave in charge of training twenty new slaves to make saddles. They already had several saddles under construction and pieces of leather cut out for the next batch of saddles. I could see his nervousness turn to pride when I complimented him on the work the new slaves were doing.

I noticed that some of Celsus’s guards were taking turns using the first two saddles. The five men explained that they had thought the saddle was a frivolous toy and completely unnecessary until they tried it. Now they wondered how they ever rode without it. I suggested that they find some twenty pes lengths of wood that were as big around as their forearm and make long, sturdy lances. Using a spare piece of shorter wood, I showed them how to carry it on a horse to use against someone on foot, or even against someone else on a horse. I also reminded them that they would need longer swords than their usual gladius for use from horseback.

After lunch, Celsus and Theodocio were watching as the men practiced with the lances. The men had found some sabers that Celsus had captured during the war against Hannibal. The sabers were longer than the standard gladius and they practiced with those, attacking posts set in a course they rode through.

“Our losses against Hannibal would have been much lighter, and the war won much sooner with saddles and those weapons,” Theodocio commented thoughtfully.

“It would have been over even sooner with the bows,” I said. “Imagine being able to rain thousands of arrows down on your enemy from more than a stadium and a half away. How many of their foot soldiers would have even reached your lines?”

“Is this bow a weapon from your time?” Theodocio asked.

“No, it is one being used even now in a place some four thousand milia passus east of here, but it will be hundreds of years before the people who use it reach Anatolia (Turkey),” I replied.

“With a weapon from my time, I could stand with a hundred men and annihilate a hundred thousand enemy troops in less time than it takes to eat breakfast. The problem is that everyone has those weapons, so they don’t give anyone an advantage.” I wasn’t even going to try explaining artillery, missiles, or bombs.

“Are you able to make those weapons?” Theodocio asked.

“No, they are far too complicated for me to make. I might be able to make the powder they first used and find a use for it, though,” I mused aloud.

“I’m returning to Rome in a few days and want to take a saddle with me,” Theodocio commented.

“That’s fine. We’ll have more ready by then,” I agreed.

I reminded the men, “Once the others try it, everyone will demand one. Celsus will need hundreds of men to make the saddles, as well as more men to make the bows and the arrows, although we’ll need many sources of sinew, horn, and feathers to be able to make so many bows and arrows.”

Turning to Celsus, I said, “The men you want to send with me as guards when we search for the mines will need to start training with me soon. The pozzolana mining is already at a point that I can let others run it for me.

“I’ll want the men accompanying me to train with the new bows and saddles. I’ll work with them and train them, but it will take at least a month before they’re ready,” I warned.

“I will send you someone who is knowledgeable about mining to evaluate the sites,” Theodocio said.

“I’ll have sixteen men report to you tomorrow morning to begin training,” Celsus promised.

“Boot camp again,” I chuckled to myself mentally, although I was in better shape right now than I had been when I finished boot camp. Once again, I wondered if my conditioning from the future had come with me into the new body. When I asked, Antia assured me that Quintus had not been in such good shape.

Finding Brutus, I borrowed Boots back from the guards, leaving them with two saddles, one that was ready to use yesterday and one that was ready to use today. I rode to the quarry to check how they were doing, my shadow riding without a saddle. Yet again, everything was running smoothly. Men had started construction of a covered work area by the lake. The pozzolana business was busy with men busy loading several carts, as well as building or filling empty crates.

I liked the way they had the filled crates lined up along both sides of the road to make loading carts for our customers go faster.

Marius waved me over excitedly. “Another ship docked a short time ago. They sent a messenger letting us know that they want forty crates tomorrow. We told them that we already had more than that ready,” he said proudly. “We already sold twenty-eight crates today, thirty-four once these are done,” he added, motioning to the carts they were loading.

“The man from Neapolis came back for twelve more crates. Six carts arrived from Pompeii and we even had ten carts from Capua. That man loved the idea. He heard about us and was able to leave most of his slaves working at home instead of making them walk here to fill the carts and then walk back. He says we saved the drivers two full days of travel and saved forty slaves three days of walking each way and a day to load the carts. He assigned them to prepare the ground for crops, instead,” Marius said proudly.

Marius motioned Janus over to join us in their new tent where he opened the strong box and gave me the proceeds. He had three leather bags and two pouches inside the box. One bag held the money for deposits on the crates. A second held money to pay the men each day and to buy supplies with. The two pouches held Janus and Marius’s shares, and the final bag held my profit.

Camila, one of the newly hired cooks joined the usual women in my bed tonight. When we finished, I noticed her daughter Tullia and two of the other new teenage girls were watching us intently.

Day 25

After my wake-up fun, I dressed and ate. Once I watered my tomato plants, I carried the bowl outside to sit in the sun, I noted that one more had sprouted, giving me twenty-four plants. The others were nearly two inches high already.

Celsus’s sixteen guards showed up minutes later, curious about what they would be doing. “You may have heard about the new bows we’re making,” I said, showing them the bow I finished yesterday, and then returning it to finish drying.

“With these new bows, once you learn to use them, you can hit a target from more than one and a half stadia,” I explained, watching the looks of disbelief on their faces. “To do that, you will need to strengthen your arms enough to be able to draw the bow. If you’ve ever used a bow before, you will find this one much more difficult to draw,” I warned.

We began with stretching, and then sets of push-ups, pull-ups, and triceps exercises. Next, we began lifting heavy stones tied to a rope. I had looped the ropes over a sturdy branch set at chest level. Each man had to brace himself with his left arm against the branch and the pull the rope tied to the stone with his right arm twenty-five times using the same motion he would use to draw a bow. Then he would turn around with his back against the branch and use his left arm to raise the stone by pushing the rope away from himself, like what he would he do as he drew a bow with his right hand. I had eight sets of rocks, each progressively larger. When they could lift the biggest one twenty-five times with each arm, they should be ready for the bows, which should be ready for them by the time they graduated from the heaviest stone.

Celsus had provided eight more of the longer swords we would need to use on horseback, promising to acquire even more. The leather workers had two more saddles complete, so the men took turns using them and swinging the swords at straw-covered wooden posts meant to simulate enemy soldiers. They also practiced charging on the horse and driving the lances into a stack of dried grass that would eventually be used to feed livestock.

We finished our workout by running to Lake Lucrino while wearing our armor and carrying a pack and our weapons. We ran around the lake in the sand, and then back to the estate. I was tired when we finished, but it was a good tired. The men had gamely kept up with me, even though the exercises were unfamiliar to them.

I ate lunch and checked on the slaves making arrows. I told them that I wanted a thousand arrows. The leather workers had two saddles that would be ready to use tomorrow and many more nearly finished. With the extra help, they were now finishing two or three each day.

Riding into Baiae with Brutus, I found Antia and asked her to find two more women to make the fish glue for me. They would boil down the air bladders from whatever the fishermen caught each day in one batch. After the fishermen chummed the water of the lake to create a good fishing spot for the next day, the women would boil down the rest of the fish offal. When it was a thick syrup, it would be used for the saddles or saddle trees. Any that was left would be poured out and allowed to harden. When we needed glue, we could reconstitute it much faster by reheating it than by making a new batch.

I also asked her to buy thirty clay pots or jugs and showed her the size I wanted, about the size of a modern two-liter soda bottle. I didn’t want anything fancy because these would have dirt and plants in them. They didn’t even have to be fired.

After kissing her and Tacita, I headed for the quarry. When the guards and I had run around the lake earlier, I noticed that they were busy. They were still busy when I arrived. The captain of the ship had arrived at first light for ten crates and was now back for ten more. In between, they had two builders show up wanting eleven crates between them, and one man who only wanted a small cart filled.

When I returned to the villa, I learned that Theodocio and Celsus were visiting the forums in cities from Cumae to Neapolis and would spend the night in Neapolis. Tomorrow, they would visit the forums farther south, from Herculaneum to Surrentum.

That evening, I filled the clay pots Antia bought for me with a mix of rich volcanic soil and compost, and transplanted half of the young tomato plants. If these survived, I’d transplant the rest in a couple of days.

When Tullia joined us in bed, I looked questioningly at both her mother and Antia, receiving nods of approval from each. “You know that you don’t have to do this,” I reminded her.

“I know,” she replied, blushing. “Watching you last night made me feel strange. I talked to my mother about it today and she explained that what I felt was a desire to do what she was doing with you last night. We talked more, and she said that I could do this if Antia agreed.”

“You definitely have me excited, too,” I replied as I guided her hand to the evidence. Her eyes bulged as she looked at what was in her hand.

“I wondered what Mother meant,” she sighed in little more than a whisper after she recovered. “She said that I would feel like my insides were drawing tighter and tighter like a bow being drawn and then it would release in a glorious feeling.”

Camila rose and hugged me emotionally. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“It is I who thank you for allowing your beautiful daughter to join with me,” I replied, kissing her, which surprised her.

Day 26

Marilla drove the cart carrying the ceramic jugs we used for fish guts to the lake this morning. Brutus and I rode alongside her. She also carried the women who would boil the fish guts down to glue and the tools and fuel they’d need. After introducing them to the fishermen, I had the women begin setting everything up. They used a copper kettle for boiling down the air bladders. That glue would be used on the bows. The much larger iron kettle was used to boil down the rest of the fish entrails, including the heads and tails.

Our two fishermen told me that they had released ten fish into Lake Avernus so far. They saw no dead fish this morning but saw several dark shapes moving beneath the surface yesterday when they dumped some of the offal into the lake.

I stopped by the pozzolana quarry to let them know there were three new women working at the lake. For once, there wasn’t a line of waiting carts, but the men were still quite busy building and filling crates.

The sixteen guards were waiting for me at the villa, along with nine new guards, so we did a repeat of yesterday’s workout.

The lineup in my bed tonight included Minerva, another of the cooks with a teenage daughter. This time, all four teens huddled together as they watched us.

Day 27

Today was another day of boot camp for the guards assigned to me, along with an even dozen new volunteers. Celsus and Theodocio had returned from their trip by the time we finished our workout. With twelve completed saddles, the men had more time to practice riding. Celsus said that we could start wrestling tomorrow. They had found widows to work for Laurentius in Neapolis. He would supervise the wrestling there, as well as in the towns to the south, sending me a quarter of the profit every month since it was my idea.

The news excited the women. Since we had thirty-six wrestlers (thirty-four widows plus Tacita and Marilla) I chose to have four pairs of women wrestle in each of the four cities. Four of the women were temporarily out of commission for a few days. Since Vita and Fausta were eager to wrestle, I let them replace two of the other women, assuring everyone that they would receive a share.