Book of Bravery: A Novel 2,000 Plus Years in the Making

CHAPTER III

Rise and Fall of Empires

Quintus didn't wander aimlessly after he returned to the West. For most parts, he was quite industrious. The idea of doing nothing as he waited for events to unfold was not appealing.

After leaving the mountain, it took him a year to return to the Roman Empire, which by then had taken up Christianity — a faith he came to appreciate for its demand for human decency.

He found this new religion exalted kindness and mercy as opposed to the old Roman pagan rituals accepted by the culture of his youth. After hundreds of years on the mountain learning the Way, his own beliefs in deities naturally moved on from what he was born into. Now he understood that gods and enlightened beings were unseen and unknown but at the same time were righteous and compassionate — qualities they wished humankind was more attuned with.

In that new Roman Empire, Quintus established a life of sorts in the ancient metropolis of Aleppo in what is today Syria. He stayed there for a decade before moving on. In his next location, he altered his identity by changing his surname only. To retain some sense of self, he retained his first name. It was a pattern repeated over and over every ten years or so.

It was in Aleppo that his career in construction began. It was a decision that proved fruitful. From there, he worked his way up in the building trade around various parts of the eastern Mediterranean, and after a hundred years or so, he became a fine builder as well as an accomplished architect.

In the years that followed, buildings accompanied him throughout history. They easily outlived people and outlasted empires. Their durability comforted him in an ever-changing world. Through late antiquity, he went on to build some of the grandest structures of the period, the third Hagia Sophia in Constantinople being a notable example.

Much of Quintus' time was spent within the boundaries of the Eastern Roman Empire, which eventually became known as the Byzantine Empire. Among his favorite cities that he lived and worked in were Jerusalem, Barca, Germa in Galatia, Mokissos, and Mystras in the southeast of the Peloponnese.

From the seventh century onwards, the Byzantine Empire's borders gradually contracted due to invading Islamic armies and infighting. Eventually, the last vestiges of what was the Roman Empire succumbed to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, but by then, Quintus was already long gone. Two hundred years earlier, he left Constantinople and traveled through Eastern and Central Europe to assist with the rebuilding of what the Mongol invasions had destroyed. Given the amount of destruction and slaughtering done, he was busy for some time.

A century later, just after the worst of the Black Death cut Europe's population by half, Quintus headed towards the Italian peninsula. It was overdue that he returned to the land of his birth, although the attachment he once had about returning was no more. For just over a hundred years, from Rome to Bologna, he built hundreds of castles, places of worship, and homes. He similarly influenced dozens of Italian architects who went on to design some of the definitive structures of what would be known as the Renaissance period.

Around 1460, Quintus ventured back north, this time through the Old Swiss Confederacy and then the German states. He kept heading up into the unions of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway avoiding trouble while doing good deeds, his Tao Yin exercises and meditation, as he went. He then did a U-turn and arrived in what is now the Netherlands in the uneventful summer of 1472.

A year later, Quintus was in France, where he spent some 20 years before he moved to Spain, arriving just as Christopher Columbus stumbled upon the New World.

After some time there and in Portugal, he sailed across to England, where he once again applied his building skills, which attracted the attention of a certain King Henry VIII, who had him work on construction projects at King's College Chapel and Westminster Abbey. Quintus spoke with the Tudor king only on one occasion during some renovations, sometime before the monarch's 40th birthday when he was still thin and respected. As they talked, Quintus noted the king's mood was off, something one of the monarch's counselors attributed to an old jousting injury.