There is no winter in Gaul; only the end of summer, and a clear understanding of its absence. There is nothing to be planted, and nothing to play at. It is not cold. It is not hot. The absent sun shines on dull, absent grass. Absent is the word for Gaulish winter. I didn’t know this absence in my girlhood when Gaul was all I knew. Then I saw a bit more of the world, and the lack became incarnate.
When we first came to Britannia I was three times a mother, and our son was just a baby. My husband was a soldier; Vindolanda was his most recent station. He liked it there. I didn’t. I didn’t live in the garrison (I wasn’t allowed), and after a while, I began to fear it. But he was proud to serve there, and I could be proud to help him.
We women lived in our own village. It was ten stone huts surrounded by a turf fence, just within walking distance of the fort. It was noisy with crying and singing, and the constant, high-pitched screaming of excited children. The fort was silent. We came every morning to collect the laundry, and otherwise, we avoided Vindolanda. We went in groups. Soldiers that far North got away with what they pleased, even with good centurions.
We lived there for ten years, but I don’t remember them. What I remember are the winters. I remember the warm feel of my woolen palla, and how the embers of last night’s fire glowed soft red in the dark of the huts. I remember the long walk to Vindolanda every morning, a child’s hand in each of mine, the sun honeying the trampled snow.
Prima always pulled ahead. She was seven that first winter. When she hiked up the skirt of her tunic, she ran faster than all the other children. She ran faster than all the women too. Marcia was only three, and she was in awe of her. She’d stare as she raced down the road, still clutching at my skirts, and her little lips would quiver. By the third winter Prima was our messenger. She could run the path in ten minutes.
I remember one windy day in January it snowed—a good thick fall. Prima hated the hut after five minutes. She and Marcia marched outside, took up sticks, and began to draw.
Those were the happiest days of our time at the wall. We sat in circles in our huts and sewed while the children played outside. The British women knew good songs, and the Gaulish women knew good stories. After a while, none of us felt the cold.
I remember another windy day at the end of another January. Prima ran off to Vindolanda with a message for her father—I found out later that Marcia asked her to. She took no one else with her. I worried after ten minutes. I asked around after an hour.
After two hours I was running down the road with my skirts hiked to my knees. After three hours Vindolanda held no sign of her, and after three weeks I was told to accept that.
We left the following year.
My Gaul has no winter winds. No little runners with skirts hiked comically high, no younger sisters with their mouths hanging open. I am glad now to have left Britannia. But every winter the absence of it grows, and I think again of what I left behind.
Inspired by the child skeleton discovered beneath Vindolanda, who was not given a proper burial, and who we know nothing about.