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† tamen defendebat aerarium | OPEN

WHO: Gaius Gracchus
WHERE: The fields, the storehouse in 6I, around the village, and the Inn
WHEN: October 8-31
OPEN TO: All!!
WARNINGS: Brief mentions of slavery

The seasons are turning. It starts with a chill in the air, nights that are deeper and days when the sun feels a little less bold. Then, of course, the trees start to turn, green shading into gold and through to reds, oranges, browns, so that the woods start to be mottled with autumnal shades. It's Gracchus' first autumn here, but he knows how to read the world around him and see the way this place is rolling towards winter.

He may be a city man, born and raised in and for Rome, but he's also the owner of farmlands, and the patron of Italian farmers. He'd worked for small farmers for years on his agrarian commission, and he'd gotten to know some of them over that time. The patterns of the harvest impacted on his and his brother's support, and he knows them well enough to recognise that the changing leaves and falling temperatures mean that the crops the village has planted will soon need to be stored against the winter.

He spends some time working in the cleared area where the crops have been planted. Some mornings he'll be there, either watching the people at work to learn more about what they're doing, or helping out himself.

He spends more time in the village storehouse with his tablets and stylus, or the set of tools he'd claimed. It's still run-down, like many of the buildings in the village and almost all of them in the village beyond the edge of the canyon. There are holes in the roof and some run-down and damaged parts of the interior he thinks must have been damaged in the recent earthquakes.

The first thing he does is stocktake the storehouse, going from area to area with his tablet and noting down what is where. He still remembers the conversation he'd had with Kate Kelly months ago about planning and organising what they have in storage and what they need. But the most important task, and the one he turns to later in the month, is fixing the damage and cleaning the storehouse. He brings rags and supplies from the Inn for the cleaning, and collects wood from the forest and what's left of the damaged abandoned buildings for repairs. There's not much left to salvage, but he takes what he can find. Some days he's inside working on the walls, and sometimes he's on the roof, and other days he's cleaning, the sort of work he'd once have gotten a slave to do. Whenever anyone comes by, he's glad to accept any help.

He returns to the Inn each night tired from exertion, but pleased with his work, and each evening after the small group that lives there finishes their evening meal, he remains downstairs, planning his next day's work.

[ all locations are open, feel free to catch him in the fields, storehouse, scavenging around the village, or in the Inn]

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"We need to know what we have, and that it will be safe over winter."

The state the storehouse had been in before he'd started working on it, food might not have lasted over winter. They'd managed in the first year; the damage had been from the earthquakes, or storms, or one of the recent disasters that had happened, and there are more people to feed now than there had been at first.

Gracchus gestures towards the door of the storehouse, in invitation for Kate Kelly to come in if she wishes to talk to him. It's hardly equipped for dining, but there are things for people to sit on, as people do here while they eat. He won't go, though, unless or until she does.

"That was while I was quaestor. I managed the supplies and money for the army. But I did many other things when I was tribunus plebis. I had many new ..." He pauses, struggling for a word to describe plebiscitia in English. "Rules made for public money and administration, for building roads and starting a town and supplying food to the people. It is difficult to explain, I am not sure of the words in English."

He's shown himself to be polite, respectful, and she's long since recognized that few people here see the need for chaperoning. But despite how long she's known Mr Gracchus, her eyes flick from the storehouse to him and back, and she shakes her head a little.

"Maybe we'll sit out here?" she suggests, for her ankle is making her limp today.

Kate's patient as Mr Gracchus talks, but more than that, she starts to smile. He's enthusiastic, his dark eyes bright and his presence infectious.

"We'll take it slowly. Ain't in a rush, are we? So, you said 'rules'? Is that like organisin' it? Makin' it happen?"

Once, he wouldn't have considered it proper to be alone with her with no witnesses around or nearby, for he is a married man with many enemies, and she a young woman of lesser rank than he. Things are different here: people seem to think nothing of being alone with someone of the opposite gender, and rank is nonexistent except by way of reputation. But when she suggests they sit outside instead, he nods and settles himself onto the steps of the storehouse, placing the basket down beside him.

"'Rules' is not the best word. The people meet to vote on things that have been suggested, and if they are approved, they must be done. Often the tribunus who suggested it would be responsible for making sure it was done, or the people would decide who should do it, or it might be decided by chance. I made many things happen. I helped distribute land to the people, and I made sure they got their allotment of grain, and that the roads I proposed were built."

Much has happened to him since then, and he doubts that many of his reforms will survive Opimius' campaign against them. But there's still a pride in the way he holds his head, because he had done great things, had carried on his brother's work and his legacy, although he had faced the Senate's opposition.

No man here has been handsy with her. Some have flirted - but then, she'd be surprised if they wouldn't - but no hands, no leers, no one making crude comments. Yet, still, she knows what can happen. Sometimes, moments, situations, make her warier than she usually is. But Mr Gracchus easily acquiesces, and outside they sit. Kate's wariness is nothing more than a brief dark undercurrent to her smile.

Perching on a box, Kate listens to him and Mr Gracchus' enthusiasm only continues. There are a few words in his speech which makes her pay sharp attention. Not for anything that could help in this village, but for might have helped earlier. Years earlier. For her entire life.

"Allotment of grain? You... you gave people food?"

"There are many people in Rome too poor to buy grain to feed their families," he says, and it's hard not to want to sweep back into the grand speeches and appeals that he'd made to the people when he'd proposed the grain law to the people. It had been a good law, a way to help the poor people of Rome, and the poor men who'd been dispossessed of their farms and livelihoods on their return from military service, or by the actions of their wealthy neighbors.

He still feels that plight, even here, though his anger at how it had all turned out flashes across his face because he's never been good at burying his feelings when he speaks. That was always Tiberius' talent, not his own.

"I set a low price for a set amount of grain so they could afford it. And I made sure it happened myself, I was there watching as the people came for their grain. I put food in their mouths."

He's still proud of it, and the darkness that had been in his expression lifts as he talks about feeding the people. They'd turned on him, but he'd been their protector, and their champion. He can't reproach himself with that.

Kate never really knew her father. With eight children to provide for on poor land, with an Irish convict's past, when a neighbour's calf had wandered onto the property, Red Kelly couldn't let the opportunity pass. And he'd been caught for that act, of slaughtering the calf for his family. Caught and sent to prison, and when he came back he drank himself to death and poor Ned had become the man of the house at not even eleven.

Was it any wonder that Ned had turned to crime himself? No. No, what else was he supposed to do? The Kellys had nothing. Kate knows that desperation all too well, made head of the household herself at not even fifteen.

"You're a good man, Mr Gracchus," Kate says. "I... my family's poor, poor farmers. Such a thing what you made happened, that... That would have helped us a lot."

He will always remember what Tiberius told him, in a letter home to Rome, about what he'd seen in Etruria as he passed through on his way to Numantia: vast, fertile farmlands lying neglected, tended only by foreign slaves, lands which should have belonged to the families of Roman farmers that had lived there for generations. They'd been pushed out by the demands of the army and the duplicity of their neighbors, by men with money and influence who thought that made them above the laws of the Senate and People of Rome.

Tiberius had died for trying to do something about it, and the anger at the injustice of the people's tribune dying for trying to serve the people is still dark and bitter in Gaius' heart. What Kate Kelly says, though, is a reminder of the good that Tiberius had done. Tiberius, and Gaius after him, working alongside their in-laws and friends, redistributing the ill-gotten lands back to the Roman poor.

They'd helped people, and they'd been destroyed for it.

"I wanted to help people like your family," he says, his voice dampened a little, now, his expression more sober with the regret that's set in in his time here that things hadn't ended differently. He doesn't know what will happen in Rome now, but with Opimius in charge and so few left of Gaius' friends to defend his policies, he doubts the land commission -- or his reforms -- will last.

"My brother gave land back to farmers who'd been forced off their family farms. I wanted to continue his work, to help the poor in Rome, as well."

She's a good listener, and there are words that Mr Gracchus is saying, and how he is saying it. An elder brother, whose work needed to be continued. That regret in Mr Gracchus' face.

She wonders what happened to his brother. She wonders and she opens her mouth to... she's not sure. Ask, maybe, offer sympathy. Instead, she finds herself saying something quite different.

"No one wanted to help people like us in Victoria," Kate says quietly. "We had to help each other. We... My family wanted to be farmers, but all the good land was taken. We had to rent bad land, work it, or they'd take it away and give it to the squatters. They're the ones with all the good land, the money, the connections." Her voice is dark and bitter, the words spilling out like a wound's been pressed.

Then she blinks, quickly, her hazel eyes too bright. Drawing in a sharp breath, she shakes her head slightly.

"Well. I guess we're both motivated to make sure no one here goes hungry, eh?"

The Gracchi themselves are landholders. So are the all the respectable aristocrats and politicians in Rome. He holds a large estate, worked by free men under a free overseer. He's aware that in her description of the situation in her home in Victoria -- Victory, a beautiful name -- he falls on the side of the squatters by his birth and his wealth. The Senate had tried to impeach his laws against his own landholding. But the size of some of the estates he'd seen in his work for the agrarian commission was outrageous, given the law clearly stated the limits of public land that could be worked by any man.

"We wanted to help," he tells her, his voice modulated softly, to meet hers. "To take land from men who had more than they were allowed, return it to families so they could go back to their old lives. I know not what will happen now."

Flaccus had been with him on the Aventine that day. Carbo's allegiance had been suspect, and Opimius had been determined to destroy Gaius' work.

"But we can help these people."

It's hardly Rome, but it's something, and it's all he has now. Better than most can ask for in exile.

She huffs a breath, glancing down with a wry smile before glancing up again. "We can. We are and we will, and that's what I meant to ask before we accidentally took a trip down that lane."

To which she possibly really started it, spilling things about her family - and how she spilled them, with all that bitterness - without ever meaning to.

"Why I was askin' 'bout the roads, was the ones here get into a right frightful state over winter. All that snow and rain turnin' it to slush. I was wonderin' if you'd know of how to make a bit of a road to the Inn. A proper road, maybe wood or stone."

He still has a way, he knows it, even without the influence his family and his popularity lent him in Rome, and even without the skill in English that he has in Latin. He'd had real feeling in his appeal to her, to both of their desires to help, and Kate Kelly responds to it. There'd been genuine bitterness in her tone, but now she brings herself back to her original point, and it's something he has to consider before he can answer her.

Rome builds beautiful roads, and he'd been involved in road-building projects in Italy. Never actually performing the work himself of course, but he'd frequently inspected it, personally, and he'd watched enough of the work done to know some of what went into it.

"It would not be good enough for Italia, but I believe I could try. We would not need to worry about animals or ..." He pauses, presses two fingers to his thumb in an old classic rhetorical gesture, but the waving of his hand is frustrated rather than emphatic. "What animals pull. For moving things or people."

She's never seen a Roman road, although she's heard things, read things: things in poetry and plays, the whispers of Classical learning and culture that filter through society to her. If she mostly knows of Rome from Shakespeare and poetry, she does know something. And she knows roads are important, that proper ones take time and organisation to make. Even dirt paths need energy. Normally, a village like this, the paths and roads are fine, normal, expected.

But if they are improving things, well...

Everyone goes to the Inn.

Mr Gracchus talks and she tilts her head a little as he stumbles, tries to find the right word.

"Cart," she says, moving her hands together but leaving a space. "A wagon is bigger," here she pulls her hands apart. There are a number of other contraptions, she knows, she's driven some, but it's not important. No sense in confusing the man for no purpose. "Yes, it's just feet we have to worry about here."

"Cart," he repeats, and nods. "Thank you."

They've been talking of many things today that don't often get mentioned in daily conversation here. A cart is a commonplace of everyday life in Rome, presumably in Kate Kelly's world, too, but with no horses here, and few large animals at all, carts aren't mentioned. And for the same reason, they don't need to be considered.

"They damage roads," he continues. "Over time, they wear lines into the stone."

He pauses again, looking ahead to the road that runs in front of the storehouse. "It would be hard to make it very even, and it would take time. It could be possible. We would need to see if we have enough of the right materials."

She has, earlier in the year, thought about training the cattle more to pull carts or sleds. The goats, too, they seem sharp and strong enough for it. But it'd all gotten lost in an exhaustion which has haunted her for months, lingering and sapping excess energy until all she had time and energy to do was the Inn. Food preparation, cleaning, laundry, all her chores. She's finding more of herself now, but it is late in the year to start that.

"Well, so do feet after long enough time. My grandmama, um, my mother's mother, she told me of churches in the old country, all the steps worn from all the thousands of people walking over them for centuries. Which I hope we don't have to worry about here."

That's a thought, if they do, and not a pleasant one.

"Aye, of course. Although I'm thinkin' that anythin' might be better than just the mud we had last winter. Even if just in front of the Inn and the hall, and this building. We've trees enough, and I saw some sharp lookin' blades from last year. We might have somethin'."

"There are roads like that in Rome," he agrees, his expression one of curious interest as he wonders where her old country is, that it has temples hundreds of years old.

"Stone would be better, if we can find enough material to put under it."

The roads here haven't been built like Roman ones. They're not paved, and they don't have the sturdy construction and the bedding of gravel that provides the stone with its support. Wood would be less durable, and to repair the road properly would still need the same sort of bedding.

"Although I think If you just want to stop it becoming too muddy, not build a road to last for years, then wood would work."

Kate frowns, brushing her mouth with her knuckles as she thinks. "For now," she says, thoughtfully, "just to stop it gettin' so muddy. It was startin' to be like a quagmire with the snow and rain and everyone trampin' through it.

But... you're right I think. Stone would be better. We're surrounded by cliffs, we should have loose stones around for cobbles. Or at least, use them to line the roads to keep 'em neat?"

Then she smiles. Charming, sparkling, a little teasing, but in the manner of socially acceptable flirting rather than anything serious or more intentional.

"If that is approved by your Roman standards, anyway."

He smiles, recognizing the flirtation for the simple social charm it is, and shakes his head.

"It is not the way we would do it, but this is not Roma." It's not Rome, and it could never hope to be, for all he longs to be in the city he'd been raised to serve.

He pauses, staring into the distance as he considers the roads he'd been involved in building, and the things that the men who'd built them said. "Even a layer of very small stones would make it more stable, if we could not find material for ... did you say 'cobbles'? The large stones on a road surface?"

It is a word he has not heard before, and he would like to be sure he is using it correctly.

Edited 2017-10-31 11:55 (UTC)

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† tamen defendebat aerarium | OPEN

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