12January

They are still marching (the ghosts of York)

crisisthirdcentury2
Harry Marringale, a man in his early sixties wearing a gray sweater vest and a dull expression on his wrinkled face to match it, sat alone to tea on the kitchen table of his small house in York, where he had spent the better part of his adult life. It was an old place with creaky floorboards and that musty carpet smell diffused about. A chilly February draft sipped through the eroded frames of the windows causing the polka-dot curtains to shiver ever so lightly. The only redeeming quality of the house was its plumbing: after four decades of use every pipe and drain still functioned as good as new. Harry took silent pride in that every time he flushed the toilet or turned on a faucet. He was a plumber by trade and, even though many would not consider such a vocation fancy, Harry knew that good plumbing was one of the essentials of life despite the fact that, more often than not, people took it for granted in the dawn of the 21st century. Without plumbers civilized society would, in some cases quite literally, be undeniably in the shit. 
 
Next to his steaming cup of tea on the table lay heaped the newspapers of the day. The York Daily Record was turned to the sports section while he had left a crossword puzzle half-finished in the back pages of The Press. Harry’s attention, however, was focused on a rather strange document that day. Not that the document was strange in itself but rather that it was something an aged plumber would never read for recreation: it was a copy of The History Press periodical featuring a long article entitled “Roman York, latest excavation discoveries with illustrations”. Harry had never been particularly interested in history. He had picked up a few things about the Romans, the Saxons, and maybe something about William the Conqueror, back in his dreary school days but none of that had ever quite managed to capture his imagination. At least not as much as playing soccer with his friends after class, for that was mostly what he could remember from his formal education.
 
That day, however, when he saw the copy of The History Press in a newsstand in Pocklington he could not help a shudder of mystified excitement running through his spine. A feeling akin to horror, yet mixed with exhilaration, made the hairs on the back of his neck stand. He stood there, mesmerized, looking at the cover of the magazine. It had the picture of a Roman soldier standing to attention dressed in chainmail armor. In his right hand he held two javelins and with his left he supported an oval shield with a brass boss.  His sandals were tied all the way up to his knee over his linen leggings. “Roman York”, it wrote below in bold letters. 
 
Harry’s face was flushed. He quickly grabbed three of his regular newspapers – and a couple he had never before read in his life – and as he turned to the newsstand vendor to pay he asked for a copy of The History Press in a low voice, as if it were merely a spontaneous afterthought, just as a teenager would ask for a dirty magazine in an attempt to seem inconspicuous.
 
He then headed straight for home where he made himself a hot cup of tea to calm his nerves. The realization that it was forty years to the day since The Incident made his lower lip tremble as he brought the cup to his mouth. He hadn’t talked to anyone about The Incident in such a long time that he himself was finally beginning to doubt it had ever happened. Scholars learned in Roman antiquities had assured him back then that what he had seen in the cellar of the Treasurer’s House could not have been real for it was not consistent with historical facts – Roman soldiers had rectangular shields, the scuta; and their sandals were only ankle-high. Therefore, the experts concluded with raised eyebrows, it must have been the product of a fanciful hallucination brought about by fatigue or an over-active imagination.
 
But Harry never truly believed them. How was it possible his eyes could have so deceived him? And an over-active imagination? Him? He scoffed. They were obviously giving him way too much credit. Harry had always been a down-to-earth man. So much so that it had cost him the affections of a dreamy girl or two.
His eyes scanned through the article about Roman York skipping over words and sentences, lingering on illustrations and turning the pages feverishly. He was not any more interested in history than he had been as a schoolboy; but he was looking for something. 
 
A low triumphant gasp escaped him when he finally found it. His gnarly finger slid under every line as he read silently: according to recent excavation finds in York there used to be a Roman fort just outside the city in the 4thcentury AD. Amongst the numerous finds discovered there, almost perfectly preserved in the dark argillic mud, were the oval Roman shields borne by the lighter-armored auxiliary troops and boot-sandals lacing up to a man’s knee – a necessary modification of the usual low Roman sandal in order to protect soldiers’ feet from the damp and cold of York’s muddy terrain.  
 
Harry put down the magazine and closed his eyes. He leaned back on his creaky chair and held the hot cup of tea with both hands as if it were a comforter which could envelop him whole.
 
His mind wandered back to 1953. He was an apprentice plumber back then, new to the trade. It was a good time to be young: England was still rebuilding in the aftermath of World War II and there was abundant work to be had. The rationing of sweets had just ended earlier that February and people were starting again to look forward to days of plenty. 
 
Harry’s boss, a crippled veteran of Normandy by the name of Alwyn Knowles, had just been called by the City to look into a problem of leaking pipes in the cellars of the Treasurer’s House.
 
The Treasurer’s House was one of the oldest buildings in York. In medieval times it had served as home to the treasurers of the York Minister, hence receiving its lingering name, but long centuries of architectural intervention and rebuilding had completely effaced its once somber character of the middle ages. Harry knew it as a colonial manor house with a modest surrounding landscape of bushes and hedges cut into geometrical shapes. Ever-green ivy crept upon its many-windowed façade and a solemn air of desertion and abandoned dignity seemed to flow down from its cascading roof. Since the 1930s it had been passed by its last owner, a wealthy local industrialist, to the National Trust and thus came under the jurisdiction and care of the City. 
 
Early that February morning, when City officials called upon Alwyn Knowles, a prolonged leak in the cellar pipes had been spotted and they feared it could lead to foundation damage or, worse yet, to an explosion of the boiler. Alwyn, to whom the City already owed a considerable amount for previous services rendered, wasn’t all that eager to take up the job but figured that there was no harm in sending his apprentice, Harry, to take care of the problem on his own.
 
Harry Marringale, young and level-headed as any man could ever hope to be, made his way to the Treasurer’s House dressed in his blue overalls, with his toolbox in his hand. It was a cheerful and bright morning with but a hint of cloud in the sky. His neatly combed hair glistened with a generous dose of Brylcreem and he was humming Al Martino’s “Here in my heart” under his breath. He did not believe in ghosts. He could hardly believe he had finally mustered the nerve to ask Sarah Alford out on a date.
 
Upon reaching the Treasurer’s House he was greeted by the caretaker, a bushy-browed man of few words, who showed him in and led him to the cellar. It was a dreary place of perpetual half-light since no electric lights had ever been installed there and the only source of illumination was the daylight coming from the street above through a series of narrow, semicircular gridded windows. If the cellar had at one time or another been used for storing wine barrels it was no longer apparent for it stood completely empty from one end to the other. Its walls were made of crimson brick and its floor was of packed dirt, much as it would have been in late medieval times. All along the ceiling ran a complex circuit of led pipes intertwining in brass junctions and valves. In one corner, close to the street, the dirt floor seemed recently excavated to a depth of about a foot and a half – probably for the purpose of fitting an underground gas pipe, Harry guessed. 
 
Once the caretaker left, Harry set about his business shining his flashlight on the ceiling pipes. He walked slowly across the cellar looking for the reported leak. The smell of damp earth was overpowering in his nostrils but leaks were tricky things to pinpoint accurately, especially in such a mess of pipes where the old overlapped with the new. Without realizing it he found himself near the excavated hole and he idly shone his flashlight down. It was only a few square feet wide and at the bottom he clearly saw ancient cobblestones, tightly knitted together in a wide pathway disappearing on both ends in the dark earth. Harry didn’t give it a second thought. He knew it must be some part of the old Roman road: bits and pieces of it were found all over town whenever someone would dig deep enough to lay the foundations of his house. Frankly, he could not understand what all the scholarly fuss was about every time a new part of the road was unearthed. After all, it was just stones!
 
He picked up humming “Here in my heart” once more and turned his attention to the pipes. The beam of his flashlight glinted off a droplet of water and he smiled to himself. He had found the leak.
 
Propping up a ladder the caretaker had provided him he climbed on it with his flashlight held in his mouth to take a closer look. It seemed like an easy enough job. He bent over his toolbox and rummaged through it looking for a wrench and some linen. 
 
Suddenly he thought he heard something like a faint whistle. He ceased his humming and listened. There it was again! It was a shrill sound coming from the distance within the cellar, raw and brassy but definitely musical. He shrugged his shoulders. It must have come from the street – a car’s horn or a kettle from a nearby house with the kitchen window open. Sound was sometimes transmitted in weird ways, especially in underground places where acoustics would often prove singular. He turned his attention to the leaking pipe.
As soon as he picked up his wrench there came that sharp, trumpeting call again; this time so close, as if from the opposite side of the cellar. He turned around in surprise. There was no one there: only the murky half-light and the perpetual quiet of an old place.
 
“Hello?” he called out, thinking that the caretaker had come down.
 
The keen note of a brass horn pierced the silence, clear and musical. It was horrible for there was no one there whence the sound came; and yet there was no mistaking the direction of the call. Harry shivered and his heart began beating faster and faster.
 
“Who’s there?” he stammered in a trembling voice.
 
Then he saw it. A Roman soldier clad in long chainmail armor, with a sparkling helmet of bronze, appeared out of the brick wall. He was carrying a circular trumpet and blew rhythmical notes on it perfectly attuned to the pace of his marching. Harry’s jaw dropped and his knees buckled. The Roman soldier marched straight ahead, the music of his horn resounding throughout the cellar vivid and strikingly clear. It was a sound that should not be there; and yet it was. The soldier was not a ghost either – at least not in the traditional sense of ghosts. His form was not incorporeal, ethereal or specter-like. He appeared as solid and real as the wrench in Harry’s hand. Everything about him was perfectly human. His brown eyes glimmered with life, blood flushed his cheeks and his iron-sod sandals clinked as he walked. But, grotesquely enough, his legs were visible only from the knee up. It was as if this solid, material figure was walking through the cellar floor, his feet touching on some other level than mortal feet would. 
 
Harry gasped in horror and his knees gave under him. He fell from the ladder on the muddy floor hitting his head on his toolbox. His flashlight tumbled down and its beam fixed on the excavated hole. The Roman trumpeter did not seem to notice any of that.
 
Behind him from the brick wall emerged a magnificent rider astride a gilded horse. He was also a Roman – an officer, judging from his cuirass shaped like the muscular torso of a Greek god and the plumed crest on his helmet. He too, followed in solemn procession behind the first man, his sparkling eyes fixed straight ahead. 
Frightened out of his senses, Harry squirmed around on all fours but he could not avert his eyes from the mystifying spectacle even as blood from his bruised brow trickled in front of his eyes. Figure after figure of Roman foot-soldier appeared out of the brick wall in solemn procession, following their officer in an orderly double column. Their oval shields were raised at their sides displaying a crest he did not recognize and they all wore light shirts of chainmail armor. They seemed as real as life except for the fact that their feet were sunken knee-deep in the soil – a fact that did not seem to impede their otherwise normal marching pace. Bewildered and struck with awe as he was, Harry was able to count twenty Roman in all parading before him in defiance of all logic governing the continuum of space and time. 
 
When the trumpeter reached the excavated pit Harry could suddenly see him whole. He had not been grotesquely dismembered, as he had first assumed in his horror. The man wore tall boot sandals strapping up to his knees and his feet were walking on the Roman road; as they would have been sixteen centuries ago. When he reached the opposite wall he simply stepped into it and disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared and gradually his music faded away as if travelling at great speed down an unseen, deep tunnel. 
 
Harry turned his attention to the rest of the spectral company. Their faces were gaunt and haggard from the hardships of a sad and crude way of life he knew nothing about. They stared straight ahead like men whom discipline has put under an invisible, rigid yoke. In his racing mind he pictured them travelling in long galleons from their distant homelands to the dark and clouded shores of Britain. Something in their expression told him of horrors they had faced in deep, dark glades surrounded by howling druids and woad-painted hordes of warriors ravening for their blood. He thought he could recognize among them the faces of brothers who had been through Hell and back together – and at once his fear and amazement was replaced with a profound feeling of sympathy and melancholy. Somehow, he knew they were marching to their deaths; and they knew it too. But they would rather be loyal in death than disgrace themselves by throwing down their shields and running. 
 
Fortis cadere, cedere non potest.
 
The words came to him and he whispered them but he had no idea what they meant. 
 
Most fair and tragic of them all was their captain. His features were those of a young Mediterranean nobleman, someone versed in subtle poetry and the intricacies of rhetoric lost to the modern age. He could have avoided this death-march had he wished to; but he would not abandon his men to the slaughter. He would not break the sacred oaths he had taken under the eagle standards.
 
Tears swelled up in Harry’s eyes even as he realized it was completely the irrational thing to do. All these sentimental impressions he was suddenly getting felt as real as if he had somehow experienced them firsthand himself. Had he gone insane in one spectacular breakdown? If that were the case then, he though, insanity felt surprisingly sane.
 
One by one the soldiers vanished into the cellar wall, their footsteps fading away into an unseen distance. Harry was left alone in the murky light amid his scattered tools and the toppled ladder. Water from the pipes slowly dripped down his bloody forehead and mingled with the tears freely streaming down his cheeks. 
 
When, half an hour later, he staggered out of the cellar feeling light-headed and faint the caretaker grabbed him by the shoulders.
 
“My God, man!” he exclaimed. “What happened to you? You seem like you've seen a ghost!”
 

 

“They are still marching…” Harry murmured in a cracking voice. “They are still marching!”

Article Published: Sunday, 12 January 2014