Island of Ghosts

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “You’ll have to tell me what?” said Longus himself, striding into the chapel.

  Eukairios put down the pen again. “Lord Flavinus, I have written, at my master’s dictation, some sixty or seventy letters about the dragon’s pay and allowances. He’s given presents to officials in the legate’s office, the governor’s office, the grain commissary, and the treasury. He has, as you know, come up with complicated schemes to pay for the horses. We’ve worried over the price of glue to mend bows and the cost of a blacksmith’s furnace. Would you have thought there was any detail of this troop’s finances he didn’t know about?”

  “No,” said Longus-expectantly.

  Eukairios pointed at the box. “The commander’s pay.”

  “Isn’t it thirty thousand a year?”

  Eukairios started laughing again. I looked at him in exasperation. I was not in a mood for jokes. “You should not laugh at me,” I told him.

  He sobered quickly. “It is thirty thousand a year, my lord, as Lord Flavinus Longus said. Fifteen thousand now. Item: fifteen thousand denarii for the commander’s pay, here.” He flipped a page in his ledger. “You countersign there.”

  I countersigned and picked up the box containing fifteen thousand denarii. It was very heavy. Quite suddenly I loathed it, and hated the tomblike, stone-walled chapel, the standards along the wall, and particularly the statue of the emperor with his preoccupied, philosophical face. I had been a prince, and owned herds and flocks; I had led raids, and traded with the East; I had held a scepter and judged the disputes of my dependants. Now I was a hireling. I wanted to hurl the box at that smug statue-but that would be sacrilege and treason. I put down my wages again.

  “Put it back in the strong room for now,” I ordered Eukairios.

  “Yes, my lord.” He put down his pen again and got up to obey, and I noticed that he looked even wearier than usual. He had, of course, done most of the work for the payday, checking over the accounts, keeping the books, writing out the five hundred pay chits that now had to be copied over in duplicate. “Wait,” I ordered, and he stopped. I unlocked the box, picked up a stack of the coins, and counted out a hundred of them, the same amount as my men had been allotted for their first six months’ basic salary. “A financial detail you also were unaware of,” I said, pushing the money toward him. “The commander’s scribe’s pay.”

  I was unprepared for his reaction. He went white, then red, and stared at me as though I’d insulted him. He didn’t touch the money. “You can’t do that,” he said at last.

  “Why not?”

  “You don’t pay slaves!”

  I didn’t know how to answer that, so I shrugged. “I have chosen to pay you. If you do not wish to keep the money, dispose of it as you wish.”

  He picked up the coins with shaking hands. “All my life,” he whispered, “all my life…” He looked up, blinking at tears, and seemed suddenly to register the amount. “No, you mustn’t give me this much, my lord. It would offend the men of the dragon if I got as much as they do. Here…” He pushed three little piles of ten coins back toward me, then fumbled them into the box himself, closed it, and locked it. He looked at the seven piles remaining on the table and nodded. He wiped his eyes. “All my life,” he said again, “I’ve been on the supplies ledger, not the pay ledger. Item one scribe, item rations for same.”

  “Does it make much difference?” asked Longus impatiently.

  “Yes,” said Eukairios, still staring at the money. “Yes, it does. It’s almost like being free.” He looked back at me and smiled shakily. He was beginning to recover himself. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “I thought-I hoped-since you’re generous, you might give me a denarius for the Saturnalia. I never expected this at all. I’ve never been paid before.”

  “Nor have I,” I said. “I am glad you enjoy it.”

  “Oh, so that’s it,” said Longus. “It offends your princely dignity to get wages. I wish someone would offend me with the same amount. Look, I came to tell you that my sister has just arrived back from Corstopitum with a guest of yours, and if you’re going to be a courteous host, you’d better come and greet her.”

  “I’ll countersign the rest of the accounts later,” I told Eukairios, and went out with Longus to welcome Pervica to Cilurnum.

  The Festival, which we celebrated over three days, was a huge success. We lit the bonfires of the Sada, and the Romans chose the king of the Saturnalia, and we sacrificed to Marha and to Saturn side by side. I’d managed to locate some hemp seeds for my troops, and they were able to toast them in the traditional steam bath before the feast, from which they departed half-drunk on the smoke and howling with pleasure. Mare’s milk, to make koumiss, the usual drink, had proved harder to find, and we had to make do with wine and beer. Still, there were plenty of those, and plenty of roast meat, and milk, and honeyed almonds; the Romans exchanged the little pottery dolls they give on the occasion, and we gave a few of them as well and wished each other a joyful festival. Roman troops always prepare entertainments for the Saturnalia, setting aside money for it from their pay packets over the whole year, and buying wild animals from hunting syndicates for spectacles, as well as laying up food and drink. There were bearbaitings, then, and wild beast fights with boars, dogs, and bulls. My men had never seen these before, and enjoyed them even more than the Asturians did, watching with whoops of excitement and going off full of praise for the courage of the dogs. We, for our part, had arranged horse races and tilting matches, which the Romans also enjoyed. Then there were songs in Sarmatian, in Latin, in British; there was music on the harp and the kithara, the flute and the drums; there was dancing and acrobatics.

  Pervica enjoyed herself, though she didn’t like the spectacles-she was sorry for the animals. Longus’ sister Flavina proved to be a pleasant woman, tall, dark, and mournful-looking like her brother, and with the same irrepressible sense of humor; she was married to another of the Asturian decurions, who, in the usual peculiar fashion of men on active service, was expected to sleep in barracks in the fort, rather than with his wife in the village. Pervica got on well with her and with the widowed mother, who also shared the house. (Longus told me afterward that he’d had some concern about that side of things, as his mother had never forgiven me for tipping her son off his horse.) But Pervica got on well with everyone. I introduced her to my officers, and she greeted them as respectfully as they greeted her, and they approved of her. She laughed at Longus’ stories, particularly when they were about me, and she listened attentively to Comittus and understood his good sense. I noticed her at one point having a long conversation with Facilis, and he was smiling at her. She slipped into the same effortless partnership with Eukairios that I had myself. Everything was perfect; everything was almost too perfect. The days were of white sun and midwinter calm: perhaps we could all feel the storms ahead, and decided to grab at our happiness while it was there before us.

  I felt pressed by that urgency from the first evening I saw her in Flavina’s house, smiling at me from beside the fire, as warm and shining as the light itself. Why, I asked myself, should I delay loving her? I had confidence in her, her grace and dignity, her strength to deal with anything that might come, her kindness-and every time I saw her, my confidence grew. Apart from anything else, so I told myself, delays would only damage her reputation. Everyone knew she was my guest, and had come because of me. Her name was joined to mine: why not her body as well? I knew what I wanted and I was fairly certain that she would not refuse. Why shouldn’t I be reckless, and ask?

  On the evening of the third and final day of the Sada celebrations, I had my chance. Everyone was in the Sarmatian camp-my men, the Asturians, nearly all the villagers, the inhabitants of both the brothels. There was music, and a few strong fellows still had the energy to dance. All the officers, with their various womenfolk, were by the main fire in front of my wagon, under the awnings. The stars were white in the winter sky and the sparks leapt upward from the fire like a stream of molten gold. We wer
e roasting chestnuts and drinking a little hot spiced wine.

  “This is lovely,” said Pervica, dreamily. She was reclining against a bale of straw, and the firelight gilded her face and made deep shadows against the softness of her throat. “If you’re used to this, Ariantes, I’m not surprised you don’t like living in a house.”

  “I still think a wagon must be pretty damn drafty to sleep in,” said Longus.

  “It is very comfortable,” I said. “In our own country there are often deep snows in winter, even before the solstice. But we are always warm.”

  Pervica twisted about to look at the wagon behind her. “Doesn’t the wind come up through the floor?” she asked.

  “It has felt on the bottom,” I said, “and rugs. I will show you.” I got to my feet and held out my hand to her. She hesitated only a moment before taking it.

  It was dark in the wagon, and I left the door open as much for the firelight as to keep things respectable. She couldn’t see the rugs, and tripped over the edge of the bunk. I caught her and steadied her, and she laughed. I did not. The desire I had felt for her ever since I saw her coming into the stables flared up when I touched her, like a dry pine branch on a fire, and I felt as though my heart had stopped.

  “I’ve been wanting to see what they look like inside,” she said, standing there with my arms around her, “and now I’m inside, I still don’t know.”

  “You are free to come inside this one whenever you choose,” I told her. I was saying more than I’d meant to, but I couldn’t regret it. “If you want it, it is yours. I offer it to you now.”

  She laughed again. “You must have had too much to drink. I’ve told you, you shouldn’t give me any more gifts. Certainly not your own wagon. Where would you live?”

  “Here. With you.”

  I could feel the laughter go out of her, the muscles tensing under my hands. “I’m not sure what you mean,” she said uncertainly.

  I let go of her. I should have realized I would have to be more formal. She did not know our customs on such matters, and I was unfamiliar with hers. “I am sorry,” I said. “I meant it honorably.”

  “What?” she said. “I still don’t understand.”

  “I was suggesting marriage, Lady Pervica. That is the usual custom of my people when a man and a woman share a wagon.” Repeating the offer in Roman terms only made me more sure of myself. I wanted her, not just now, but to come home to over years; I wanted her in my wagon, loving and beloved, filling the chasm Tirgatao had left. She had called me back to life, and I wanted her to remain, life in the place of death.

  “Oh! Oh…” She stood very still, staring at me through the darkness. I could hear the others talking outside, and farther away, a man singing a ballad at another fire, an old slow tale of the deaths of heroes. “You don’t need to do this from gratitude,” Pervica said at last, slowly and with great firmness. “I would much rather stay single than have a man marry me from some misplaced notion of gratitude.”

  I put both arms around her, pulled her against me, and kissed her. It was so desperately and impossibly sweet that I was shaken by it; I felt naked and helpless, as though it were the first time, the first clumsy passionate kiss of a young boy and girl. Pervica stroked my face, then held me hard. “You’re not doing it from gratitude?” she asked again, still, still, unconvinced.

  “No,” I said, thickly.

  She pressed her face against my shoulder. “Oh, my white heart, my dearest darling, yes. Yes. Yes.”

  I kissed her again, touching her body, which was smooth, and strong, and answered mine.

  “You shouldn’t have asked me, really,” she said, breathlessly, when I let her go again. “It’s just the way we met that’s done this. If we’d met one another on the road or at the market, you wouldn’t have noticed me, and I wouldn’t have spoken to you.”

  “Perhaps,” I said. “But why should you say that what we saw in that extreme is false, and how we appear at a market, true? The gods gave with both hands when they spared me from dying in the water. For my part, I mean to take their gifts and bless them.”

  “So I notice,” she said, and I could sense the ironic smile, invisible in the dark.

  I kissed it. “You are laughing at me,” I told her. “People have been laughing at me a great deal recently. It is very bad for my reputation. I am supposed to be a bloodthirsty savage.”

  She giggled. “And staying in here with you much longer will be very bad for mine. I’m supposed to be a modest young widow. You’re going to have to let me go back and reassure them all that I am a respectable woman, really.”

  Whatever reputation she got in the fort now, she would have to live with over many years. I helped her down from the wagon, and we walked back to the fire.

  Longus’ sister Flavina lifted her mournful dark face to Pervica and said, “So do you think it looks comfortable?”

  Pervica sat down and hugged her knees, her face radiant. “Yes.”

  Flavina laughed. “And when are you going to move in?”

  “That will have to be decided,” I intervened. “But the lady has consented to marry me. Wish us joy.”

  They all jumped up exclaiming, and wished us joy.

  By the end of the evening we had fixed a date for the wedding-early February, which I hoped would give us enough time to sort out all the details of houses and lands and legal arrangements. I was not eager to sort out anything just then, in that perfect hour. I stood at my wagon watching when Pervica at last walked back to the village with Flavina, past the fires, under the thick winter stars. Already the line of her back, the way she held her head and draped her cloak, the soft shadow of her hair, were familiar to me. In a little while, I thought, I would recognize even the sound of her voice calling in the distance, or her body in the darkness; she would become more familiar to me than my own face, a pillar of my world. For all my desire, I felt in that instant neither anticipation nor dread of anything that fate could hold, but I was wholly content, at peace in that one shining moment of time.

  I turned to go back into the wagon-and saw Facilis, still sitting beside the fire that the others had now left. When he saw me notice him, he got up.

  “I need to talk to you, Ariantes,” he said harshly.

  I sighed. “Tomorrow.”

  “No. Now.”

  I looked at him a moment in silence.

  “There are some things I need to know,” he told me. “And I suspect there are some things you should have heard before you asked that lovely young woman to marry you.”

  “If that is so, it is already too late.”

  “I know, I know, I should have talked to you before, but I didn’t want to ruin the festival, and I didn’t realize you were going to make up your mind so fast. Still, the sooner you hear it, the better.”

  “Very well,” I said, reluctantly. “We can talk.”

  “Not here. It’s too public. Come to my house in the fort.”

  I hesitated, and he added, very quietly, “I can vouch for your safety going there and back, and I won’t ask you to eat or drink anything.”

  I should have realized that he would notice my precautions. I sighed again, and nodded.

  He had one of the empty Asturian barrack blocks to himself, and lived in the decurion’s quarters at the headquarters end. He’d bought one slave in Eburacum to look after it for him, a thin, ugly boy who was snoring by the hearth in the main room when we came in, flushed with festival drink and happily gorged with feasting. Facilis grunted, put a blanket over the boy, and left him asleep. He ushered me into the bedroom instead and lit the lamp. It cast a yellow light over the cold stone walls. The floor was packed clay, without even bracken to warm it, and the bed had been shoved into the corner to make room for a desk. It was so cold that our breaths steamed in the lamplight. If ever a room looked like a tomb, it was that one.

  “Now,” said Facilis, “First the things I need to know. What happened to you on the road back to Condercum?”

  “That
is common knowledge.”

  “The hell it is! You didn’t go hunting. Longus told me: your bow was still unstrung in its case. The woman hadn’t unstrung it, because she commented on the shape of it, and thought the water must have spoiled it. And it’s a pretty odd hunter who wades into the river to collect a quarry he’s killed with an unstrung bow.”

  “A bow can be unstrung after use, and put back, to keep it dry.”

  “It can be-but it wouldn’t be, with a quarry about to be washed downstream. And I talked to your young woman. When you were found, you were lying on your back in the shallows-but your face was covered with mud. The lady’s no fool: she understood what that meant, though she was trying to pretend to me that she didn’t even when she told me about it. She can see for herself that you’re not admitting to anything and she’s going along with it, but she’s worried, and was letting me know as much as she could. Come on! I know there’s something going on. You’ve stopped eating in the fort, and you wear armor and take your bodyguard with you even to exercise your horses-you, the slip-in-and-out sick-of-war shirtsleeves one. Someone tried to murder you, and you think someone’s going to try again. And I can guess why. Someone made you an offer, and you turned it down, didn’t you? Who? What did they want? Has Arshak accepted it?”

  “Facilis,” I said slowly, “I am sorry.”

  “Please!” His voice cracked. “I’m not your enemy. I was an idiot on the way from Aquincum, I can see that now. But I was sick with grief, I thought then it was my one chance to get a little of my own back, and I never expected to want to make alliances later. Look, what we used to be died at the ocean, and we know each other better now. You’re a brave man, and an honorable one, and a damned fine officer who’ll do anything to look after his lads, but you can’t handle this alone. I want to help. Trust me, please! This is my fort now, and your people are my lads, too, and we’re in the thick of somebody’s plot to make them die in a mutiny like Gatalas and take a few thousand Roman lives as they do it.”