What I knew of Maximus' life before he came into mine was short on description.  From Gracchus mostly I had learned that he was a general who had been banished to death, but somehow found his way into the arena as a gladiator.  His escape and subsequent admittance back into the army to his former rank and why were never revealed to me, except that Maximus had told me once that Tigris was a pawn in a deadly game between himself and Commodus, who had been the emperor at the time.  From these two ideas I pieced together he was wronged by Commodus, and was granted pardon by the Senate (thus their somewhat extensive use of him) upon the death of his enemy.  I assumed also that the loss of his beloved wife and son were involved in his conscription to death and his tenure as a slave.  This I gleaned from Justinius' few tidbits of information that he shared with me as the subject came up in our conversations.  His life during some of the years before he bought me was filled with duty to the Senate as their agent, and guiding the peace relations between the German tribes and Rome.  Some was spent with those he felt he could trust with his need to be solitary and removed from prominence beyond his rank and responsibilities to Rome.  He had teased once that he would tell me how he came by his scars and that he would share his stories with me, provided I was good and obedient.

It was a thing we would talk about briefly the day we met, and many times again, how the gods send cruel tests to prove their servants' worth. They had already taken Flavia and his son once.  As the infection from the sword wound on his shoulder festered and entered his bloodstream, he lay over their graves to join them.  The gods guided the Bedouin slave traders to him, to start his journey to his revenge.  It was a gift and a curse both, Maximus often thought, for while revenge drove his every breath after, there was no life inside his heart.  Slavery for him, as it was with me before I came to Maximus, was simply a means of running from ghosts and the knowledge there was no more home.  Fighting was his lot, and every battle might be the one that took him where he wished to be.  That last battle against the hated Commodus should have.

Even in my healer's opinion, the punctured lung resulting from the short, wicked pike Commodus stabbed Maximus with should have killed him.  As Maximus' blood spattered the sands of the Coliseum and he struggled to defeat the emperor in a staged battle designed to end their rivalry for all time and leave Commodus victorious, Maximus could see the gates to his Elysium opening to welcome him home to his waiting family.  There was nothing left for him in this world but a long, solitary life spent serving an empire he no longer cared about.  In paradise, he could farm until the end of time, side-by-side with his son and his wife.  It was all he ever wanted.  But the gods still had reason to keep him alive. 

The soft, white-headed wheat slipping through his fingers disappeared when they gently lifted him away from the afterlife and bore him upon the shoulders of men to the healing hands of the great physician Galen.  The world thought him dead. There were those few that kept the world in the dark regarding the truth.  He was a hero, but one with enemies he might never see.  His defiance of death would mark him a legend ever after, but would also make him a target for further challenge, especially while he lay weak and sick in the secret chambers of Gracchus' home.

Maximus showed no interest in anything at all but undoing the will of the gods, sometimes in any way that caused concern over his mental state as well as the physical. Twice a day, Galen would treat Maximus' wound, draining and cleansing it of infectious matter and sealing it with poultices. Twice a day, he would enter Maximus' quarters to find bandages and herbs thrown halfway across the room from the bed, blood and pus soaking the bed clothes.  He refused all food, and finally Galen found several large, strong men to hold him down while food and water were forced into him. 

Galen was kind to him and patient, chatting to the fallen gladiator while he worked, though he never received a response or even a glance from the hooded eyes that seemed to stare into places that only they could see.  But even the physician's patience could be worn thin.  When a horrified Gracchus discovered a naked Maximus, barely able to stand, hovering at the edge of the roof of his villa, Galen set a guard on him at all times of the day.  Sharp objects, long things that could be knotted, anything with potential to enable one to commit suicide were removed from Maximus' reach. 

I giggled when Maximus imitated perfectly Galen's slow, halting speech pattern and his thick Greek accent.  "General," he began gravely, "I have never let a man die that deserved to live, or who fought for life even while trying to kill himself.  I do not intend to start now."  He drew a breath and fixed me with Galen's pensive, learned gaze.  "You are, by all accounts, an honorable man and great warrior.  I am a warrior too.  Only my enemy is death and sickness.  I have not gained my reputation by letting them win.  I told Lucius I would make you live.  Do not take my honor away by making a liar of me."  Maximus had flung back at Galen his anger and hate of the gods and their games.  But it was a start.  

"He has a great gift," I whispered, touching Maximus' cheek when he finished that part of his tale.  His fingers stole from mine to my shoulder, to trace the long scar where Galen had sewn the torn fragments of my muscles and skin back together, after the bears had tried to tear it from my body. 

"I think so." 

"He made you want to live again."

"No.  He only showed me the way back from the gate."  I thought on that while he went on.  

He had only agreed to keep breathing and not destroy the shell of his body.  He had not consented to feel anything or enjoy the cage of the human world.  Despite the strength his body gained back, and the alertness of his mind, his heart remained dead.  Words said to him were commands he obeyed as he placed his feet on the path of life, but their import was lost to his soul.  When asked his advice on matters of Rome and its holdings he gave it from the stores of his knowledge, but there was no conviction to drive the words.  There were two men within Maximus, he told me: the one who did what was expected of him and another who lived hidden behind silent walls of personal despair.  I understood something in that revelation; how he seemed to know me so well from the day we first laid eyes on each other in the dank underbelly of the arena.  He had been as I was- a prisoner more of his own heartache and refusal to share it with another, than by human means of entrapment.  It was the only thing he owned that could not be taken from him.

As the months rolled along, Maximus became restless.  Winter's pallor began to cover the ground, and the threat of being shut indoors under watchful eyes was too much for him to bear.  He wrote a single letter, his first since the night before his decisive battle with the Quadi and Marcomanni two years previous.  Its contents bore his worry over his beloved dog and horse, and the sword his father had given him to Valerius, who still served as Master of Foot with the Felix III.  Valerius' response was that Cicero had entrusted him with those possessions and if Maximus wanted them, he had to come retrieve them himself.  That was all the incentive Maximus needed to steal away from the villa.  Sneaking past the guards at the gate on a borrowed horse, he made his way north to Germania.

Another would have passed them off as little things in the scope of all that was removed from Maximus' hands when Commodus ordered his death.  To Maximus, though, they were precious for the memories and symbolism that each item he had asked about carried with it.  Scato, the big black gelding that still carried Maximus, was of his brother's stock, a fine war-horse for a man destined for great things. A tearful adolescent boy who hoped to grow up to be like his uncle had shoved the reins into Maximus' hand the day Maximus had left Hispania for Germania. Lupa was a tiny puppy when Marcus Aurelius had given her to him, a reminder of whom he served and a pledge to remember the wolf mother fabled to have raised Rome's founders.  And the sword was the bearer of his father's pride, his teachings, his gentle voice in his son's ear to brandish honor and strength in the face of all, friend and enemy.   Things presented as gifts from loved ones, but designed to help make him the man he became.  It was that man he was searching for.  It was Maximus Decimus Meridas, not the Spaniard or a hooded ghost (as the young gatekeeper described him to Valerius, when he rode through the imposing fortress of Vindobona to see his friend) risen from the arena's sand that he needed to be.  His feeling was that if he could find his heart in affairs of state again, he could be whole. 

"But it wasn't there?"  I asked when he paused, a dark shadow falling across his distant eyes when he started to tell me of the conversation he held with Valerius that night. 

"You're getting ahead of me.  Am I boring you?"  Rolling my eyes at his jest, I shook my head. 

"No.  Just a feeling I get from your eyes.  They give away the ending."  

"They can't.  The ending has not yet happened.  But I'm getting to the good part.  So be patient and listen.  There were others to be careful of, before I could even begin to carry out the letter of the Senate's wishes, which was the first thing Valerius warned me of..." I knew from the way he searched my eyes to ensure my reasoning and understanding.  I nodded them to him, and looked away, suddenly afraid of what I was finding out about my master.  Because what he did not say to me, was that his life beyond our time in Eire was not settled.  The tale did not end with his return to Germania.

One good thing Commodus did for Rome, begrudgingly admitted by Maximus, was that he did for a time try to keep relations with the German tribes peaceable.  His mistake was that while he was busy trying to weed out conspiracies against himself between Lucilla and the Senate, he was not conscientious regarding those in whom he had placed trust to guide negotiations between the empire and its barbarian neighbors.  Officers like Maximus, hand-picked by Marcus Aurelius to secure the borders from overrun by foreign peoples, were replaced with men chosen by Commodus to represent his agenda, though it was unclear just what that might be.  Unlike Marcus, though, Commodus had no interest in remaining in Germania to oversee that his will was carried out as he directed. And it was not.  The treaty to annex the lands of the Marcomanni, Alemanni, and Quadi was destroyed, without quarrel from the emperor.  Uneasy truce existed only because the tribes had lost too many men and resources to put up much of a resistance.  The occasional raids, such as the one Justinius and Macrinus had encountered weeks before we left Vindobona, were the extent of their trouble making.  It had little to do with the strength of the Roman ambassadors' treaty skills.  I could identify well with what Maximus was telling me.  I had seen it firsthand in Britannia. 

Evidenced by this was the termination of Maximus' successor (and subsequent predecessor's) life at the hands of his own men.  These men, and Valerius' involvement was a questionable variable he never revealed to Maximus, were displeased that the years of hard fighting and duty to the previous emperor were being unraveled by men who concerned themselves only with fleecing wealthy provincials and tribesmen, creating more unrest.  As the murmuring from subdued peoples continued, so did the fear of backlash and a tearing down of the efforts of the army to provide that tenuous barrier between peace and war.  There was no doubt that had the tribes the time and the means to do so, their numbers and arms would have been replenished sooner, and the campaigns and promises made to them by Marcus Aurelius forgotten by them as well as by Commodus.  But it was not yet Maximus' time to right the damage being done with a friendship forged with Athelgir of the Marcomanni. 

Valerius, sensing that Maximus himself was not firm in his soul, cautioned him to seek his path elsewhere for a time, to see the world and what was taking place in it, to prepare himself for the task he was conscripted by the Senate to receive.  The Senate needed time to gather itself in readiness to again govern the people, anyway.  But the citizens were so used to the rule of an emperor, and the glory of being the conquering nation of the world, that it was difficult for them to let go of their tradition.  Young Lucius by his blood was the likely face of that tradition, but his youth and apparent lack of strong supporters would leave him vulnerable to comers vying for his inheritance. It was only a matter of time- time that Lucilla hoped Maximus would spend healing and preparing to hold her son's trust in his hands.

Commodus' empty throne, the sacred task given to Maximus by Marcus Aurelius, stood in need of an occupant.  There were many willing enough to usurp any contender to possess it.  By any means necessary. Because he was considered dead and therefore a threat unknown, he could move anonymously and unmissed except by those who knew he lived.  And thus he could gain the alliance of those who might otherwise have not cared about the need for ties with the nations Rome already considered hers.  But as time would show again and again in places thought to be already tamed by the culture of Rome, peace is only secured by the contentment of a people.  And the people were not content. 

Maximus would find this out, the further he rode into Gaul.  Having not shorn his hair in months and wearing nondescript clothing aside from his hooded cloak, and travelling in winter, he could move among the inhabitants unaccosted for being Roman or of the nobility.  His blue-green eyes, piercing when one noticed them, marked him a Celt or of mixed blood, which, I teased him, meant he was Roman.  But when he could understand the conversations, he listened.  Gallia was in a state of subdued anger over the taxation of the very wealthy by greedy governors, which in turn created a hardship on the poor who often were little more and sometimes less than slaves to their own lords and tribal heads.  No open rebellion was as yet taking place, but Maximus surmised, and was confirmed, that only another imbalance was needed to create strife and civil war.  I wonder sometimes if Tigris had dreams of the future, too. 

Tigris was the reason Maximus was in Gaul. Maximus would say at times that a gladiator never really lets go of the arena, no matter how long they remain in the games, or how many years pass after their last exit.  Perhaps it is the lingering essence of blood and adrenaline, the scent of fear and power, or the fellowship of others who share your way of life and rarely begrudge you the expenditure of their lives.  But whatever the case, Maximus sought out the man whose reign of undefeated champion he had ended, to find that Tigris also had never been able to quite leave it behind.  As a warrior, I understood them and the bond that was to form and change my life.  They were men with pasts mired in a war of cultures with different points of view on the necessity of supremacy, Gaul and Rome, Maximus' Spanish heritage aside. But away from the talk of moving inside either political system or the games that had initially introduced them to each other, they were men with similarities and an eye for good horseflesh.  They could often be found at the race courses, betting against each other spiritedly when they were not discussing more serious matters behind the doors of Tigris' gladiator school. 

Like our mutual enemy Livius, Tigris was a man with ties.  But his were in the council of chieftains on the Celt side of matters, rather than to the Senate, where Livius chose to keep his loyalties.  I started a bit when Maximus explained the conversations they had over where Maximus might start looking to place his talents.  Britannia, Caledonia, Eire.  Maximus caught my uncomfortable shift, and stroked my hair thoughtfully. 

"It was no accident."  Saying nothing, I focused my attention on the crocodile tooth lying haphazardly along his shoulder, above his scar.   The seed was planted years before the Senate commissioned it, it was clear to me.  It was the outline of a plan to put roots of peace into a very unstable political situation on the verge of explosion, long before Rome's heads-of-state ever decided that a fresh, honest ambassador of their goodwill was needed in the isles.   Had they not seen for themselves the need, I wondered if Maximus would have suggested it to them.  Knowing that he preferred not to discuss political issues with any but trusted family and friends, I decided I would ask him at the right time.  And in the back of my mind niggled the thought that it would be sooner, rather than later. 

Peacekeeper.  The word leapt unspoken from his dialogue, like one of my dreams embedded in his tale.  The thing that eluded my people and his, from the day Julius Caesar had set foot in the misty lands of the Pritani, was peace.  I wondered if Maximus had realized it at all, and if he even understood it now.  But his purpose was realized, and mine was starting to take shape in the similarities of our lives to this point. 

"Was that the other post?"  I finally asked.

"Yes."  He was not surprised.  He was not reticent.  He simply waited for me to come to the conclusion and internalize it as I would.  And then we would move forward with the effects and reach solutions. 

"Then where did you go?" I dammed my flood of questions and thoughts.  I could gather them again later, when I needed them answered.

"Africa."

"Boats?" I grinned.

"I hated every splinter of them."  

As was Maximus' way, he earned the love and loyalty of people by his quiet speech and example, without force.  Even in the gladiator cells he was the leader by silent vote, for the dignity he displayed under the harsh mantle of slavery and his courage in facing Commodus as a common man.  Though it had cost many their lives, they followed Maximus to their freedom, the night Commodus had foiled his attempt at escape.  Among those men who looked to Maximus for direction was a young Numidian man named Juba, whose gentle spirit coupled with a warrior's heart caught Maximus' attention, and they became fast friends through many trials.  Maximus needed to know his friend had arrived home safely. 

Juba had longed for the day he would be loosed from the hand of their master to make his way home to the wife and daughters who were left to carry on life without him when he was stolen away to live in bondage.  From the salt mines of Carthage, he was led to the caravan that would bear Maximus to Zucchabar.  I did not flinch when Maximus described the method Juba had used to rid Maximus' shoulder of infection.  Nor was I surprised when Maximus expounded on the regimen of healing that his friend had prescribed in the warmth of the African air, when Maximus found him again.  Things Maximus would love- tending a patch of land and raising vegetables, or hunting with Juba when it was necessary.  Activities designed to build his muscles and drive the lasting effects of poisoned blood out of his lungs.  The man that had left Rome had been a thin, pale ghost, a shadow of the great general that inspired stories. 

But the idyll he found with Juba's people would only last as long as duty did not require his presence.  And there was one more thing he had to do, before he answered the call.  Two years had gone by, since the day he left Gracchus' home.  Almost three had passed since the day he killed Commodus.  It was five, since he had been pronounced dead and had found himself a gladiator.  And while he enjoyed the camaraderie of the man he considered a brother and the women that never let him go hungry or unattended, there was a family in Hispania that he missed and desired to see.  And there was still an empty place that ached when he observed Juba with his wife and daughters.  

Of all the places Maximus had been, none seemed as foreboding and welcoming at the same time as Hispania.  He entered on the southern shores, so there was no need to travel through his own farmstead, but his brother's sprawling fields, their childhood playground, were a thing that would bring memories painful and beautiful back to life regardless.  But no welcome, however celebrated or small, would equal the crushing embrace of Antonius that threatened to imprison his younger brother forever.  And the tears of a quick-tongued sister-in-law that wept with relief and fussed over him every day that he spent under her roof told him that the gods still looked after him. 

"That," the wicked smile spread over his face, over the sweet antagonism of his relationship with Julia, that had everything to do with familial affection and not dislike, "was worth every minute."  But coupled with the humor was the hint of moisture at the corners of his eyes.  Remembering the openness of their hospitality and the love showed to a perfect stranger, I understood the emotion that overcame him.

It was while he rested in Hispania that rumor would give way to speculation, regarding Maximus' mysterious past.  An unexpected visit from the governor was all it took to set tongues wagging throughout the empire.  Geta's word went straight to his brother in Gallia, Septimus Severus, who in turn sent a long query to the Senate.  By the time they answered it, all the empire was aware that he who was dead lived.  A letter from a decurion serving in the Felix III, bearing his surname and addressing him as 'uncle,' convinced him it was time to heed the advice that Valerius and Tigris had given him. So he traveled to Rome once more, this time as a free man with the intention of keeping a promise made to his emperor and Gracchus, resuming his place as head of the armies of the north to begin the process of peace.