Island of Ghosts

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “Facilis…” I began again, then stopped. “You are right, we know each other better. You are also a brave man, and an honorable one, and, I would guess, by nature a kind and decent man as well. I do trust you. But if what we were died at the ocean, it has left ghosts to haunt us, and one of those ghosts is a bullying centurion who tormented us from Aquincum to Bononia and tried to make things difficult for us even in Britain. My people have a saying: ‘Some horses cannot be driven in pairs.’ To Arshak’s people, and to many of Siyavak’s, and perhaps even to some of mine, I am damned as a Romanizer already. Arshak at least holds it against me that you, you specifically, vouched for me to the legate. Siyavak is my ally now, but he hates the Romans, and I dare not do anything that would lose him. I cannot make an alliance with you.”

  “You’ve lost Siyavak already. I saw him in Corstopitum, while you were recovering from drowning, cozily chatting with Arshak and… a certain lady.”

  I shook my head. “I have not lost him yet. But if Arshak and the lady you mention knew that, he would die. You see, I do trust you.”

  “May I perish! So Siyavak is spying on them? Things have gone further than I thought.” He was silent for a minute, then said, “And do you understand why? And who? Because I still don’t.”

  This I could answer. I told him, quietly and quickly, what Eukairios had told me about the druids, though I said nothing about the man he had mentioned, Cunedda. I did not trust Facilis not to investigate him further, and that investigation could put Eukairios’ life at risk.

  “May I perish!” he said again, when I’d finished. “That fits.” After a moment, he asked, “Who told you all this?”

  “Another ally.”

  “Roman? Sarmatian? British?”

  “What are the things that I should have heard before I asked Pervica to marry me?”

  He shook his head in frustration, then drew a deep breath. He sat down at the desk and took out a strongbox from beneath it. “The day you went to your young woman’s farm, I went to Corstopitum.” He set the box on the desk. “It’s true, what I told you: I did have some shopping to do for the festival. But I’d also had a letter from Titus Ulpius, the prefect of the Thracians there, telling me that there was something I ought to see. I’d made a point of getting friendly with him and with a couple of the town magistrates, so they could keep an eye on things for me. It’s an important place, Corstopitum: all the messages and messengers to Condercum and Cilurnum go through it, and all the traffic north as well. I went into the military compound, and Titus gave me this.” Facilis unlocked the box and took out a roll of something dull and gray. He handed it to me.

  It was a scroll of lead sheeting. I unrolled it carefully. There were two lines of writing on it, the letters made by points pricked out on the soft metal by the point of a knife. The first line was the writing Eukairios had called druidical; the second looked like Latin. The hollows of the knife-pricks were stained with what looked like blood. There was something evil about the thing, and it made my hair stand up to touch it. “What does it say?” I asked.

  “It says, ‘Ariantes son of Arifarnes,’ ” replied Facilis. “It was stuck in the mouth of a body found hanging from an oak tree in a sacred grove.”

  “Marha!” I set the thing down, and stretched my hands toward the lamp flame to invoke the god’s protection. The heat from the lamp trailed a spot of warmth across my fingers, holding back the cold. I had been cursed before, but never like this, never with another man’s life taken to fix death on me. My people believe that besides Marha and the heavenly gods, there is a dark power under the earth. We call it “the Lie” and do not worship it, but sometimes we curse by it. We say that it claims all oath-breakers and those who murder treacherously. I told myself that I had never sworn falsely or killed except in a fair fight, and I prayed to all the good gods to defend me from it.

  “He’d been stripped and painted blue before he was strung up, and stabbed afterward,” Facilis went on, harshly. “It was done the night of the midwinter solstice, the longest of the year. When Titus told me I didn’t know what you told me about the druids, but it sounded like a ritual murder to me even then. And Titus didn’t want to talk about it, and the magistrates didn’t want to talk about it, and it’s perfectly clear that nobody’s even going to look for the people who murdered that poor bastard. Because they’re afraid-and probably that means that the people who did it are numerous and powerful. But you can be sure that soon the whole countryside will know about it, and know that these druids hate you and have cursed you in the name of their gods, consigning you to perdition by another man’s death. And you should have known that before you proposed marriage to that sweet young woman and decided to leave her, engaged to you, sitting out on an isolated farm in a region where your enemies have friends.”

  I couldn’t breathe. I went to the window, which was closed and shuttered, and leaned my head against the sill where the winter air seeped through. After a moment, I slammed my hand against the frame. I had taken the gifts of the gods and blessed them, and because of it Pervica’s life was in danger.

  “What happened on the way back from Condercum?” asked Facilis.

  “What you think,” I said, without turning round.

  “Was it the lady Aurelia?”

  “Yes. She said that Gatalas’ death had been a mistake, that it had been intended for all his dragon to mutiny. She said that what she wanted was a kingdom of the Brigantes, and that there was a good chance of getting it, since the Romans had already abandoned the Picts as too troublesome to govern, and might be persuaded to do the same with the Brigantes. She said that the natural allies of the Sarmatians are the Britons, not the Romans. Arshak believes it all. I think he is in love with her, and expects to reign as her consort when she is queen.”

  “What? She’s an adulteress as well?”

  He was shocked, which seemed ridiculous to me. After all, she was betraying her husband whether she was sleeping with Arshak or not. But Romans take adultery much more seriously than Sarmatians do. Even the husband can be prosecuted if he’s thought to have tolerated it-though he can sleep with any unmarried woman he pleases, and commit no offense. My own people consider it a woman’s business who she sleeps with. “I do not know,” I told Facilis. “It would be risky for them, would it not? And difficult to find privacy, in Eburacum. But does it matter?”

  He snorted: yes, it did, but he wasn’t going to argue about it. “And what did she offer you?” he asked instead.

  “We did not get that far. I told her I would as soon lead my men on horseback into the sea as trust them to her good faith.”

  “And what happened then?” He asked it in a whisper. “That was the bit that made no sense, that you ended up in the water with no sign of a fight. Did she… You said they’re supposed to know magic, these druids…”

  “They may, but she did not rely on spells. When she met us, she brought out wine, saying that by this she put the whole conversation under the sacred bond of hospitality. My cup was drugged. Even before I refused her, she had drugged it.” It was unexpectedly humiliating to admit it, and remember my helplessness. “Arshak was angry at first; he wanted to fight,” I continued, after a moment. “But she told him he would be accused of murder if he did and sent him off with the hunting story. She did not want him there when she drowned me-I think because she did not want him to see how much she enjoyed it.” I turned away from the closed window and went back to the desk, where the lead roll with my name on it lay cold and lethal in the lamplight. “But I think I owe my life to that drug. I was weak with it, and chilled, when she put me in the water: I could not struggle. She said she had never drowned a man before, only animals, and animals would have fought. She must have turned me over and decided that I was dead before she left me, and so I was still alive when I was brought to Pervica. Marcus Flavius, what am I to do? I thought it was only my own life that was threatened. But they would kill her from sheer malice.”

  “You could go to the le
gate, or write your friend the procurator of the fleet, or even the governor.”

  “I? There is another ghost that haunts us-a prince of Iazyges who led raids across the Danube and drank from a Roman skull. I am on trial already. You yourself were commanded to put me under arrest earlier this very month. Who in authority would believe what I said about the wife of a legate?”

  “I’d vouch for you.”

  “You could not vouch for what you did not see. Anything you said would offend Siyavak more than it helped me. I would be arrested for slander, and my men would mutiny, and probably I would be murdered in the prison, unable to defend myself. And what of the others here? Would Comittus vouch for me? Or would he say what his kinswoman asked him to?”

  “Gods! I don’t know. I like Lucius-but I don’t know. What we really need are some allies in the British camp. Well, what about this other friend of yours, the one who isn’t Roman, Sarmatian, or British? Couldn’t he testify for you?”

  “No. If he or his friends went before a magistrate, they would be sentenced to death.”

  “What are they? Smugglers? Christians? Never mind. So you’re sitting and waiting, and hoping that they, or Siyavak, turn up something that you can use as evidence?”

  I nodded. “I was a fool even to think of getting married,” I said bitterly. “No, there is only one course. I must tell Pervica everything. She must either stay here with me and send her people safely away from her farm-or she must declare that, on reflection, she does not want me, and leave as though she were my enemy.” I picked up the lead sheet. “May I show her this?”

  He nodded. “I’m sorry, Ariantes.”

  I shook my head. “No-I am grateful to you. If she had gone home and died because of me, I would…”

  I didn’t know what I would do, and my mind suddenly threw up before me the image of Tirgatao, vivid as a thing seen through a window-torn open, a horse-head thrust in her womb, burning on the corpses of our children. I nearly dropped the lead sheet, and I had to set my teeth together hard to stop myself from screaming.

  “Are you hurt?” asked Facilis. He tried to take the cursing tablet away, as though afraid it might have poisoned me.

  I rolled the lead sheet slowly into its scroll and shook my head. It wasn’t true, of course. I was hurt. I had been hurt badly early that summer, and the wound had just been kicked open. “I am sorry we cannot be allies, Marcus Flavius.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked. “We are allies. But I’ll keep quiet about it.”

  The next morning I rode down to the fort village early, knocked at the door of Flavina’s house, and asked to speak to Pervica. She herself came running at the sound of my voice, and greeted me with a smile so joyful I felt sick with fear and grief.

  “I must speak with you privately,” I told her.

  “If you like,” she agreed, her eyes dancing. “But not too private: spare my reputation before the wedding, please!”

  “Come up to the camp with me, then,” I said, “and we will find somewhere suitable.”

  We walked back up to the camp, leading my horse, because she was reluctant to ride through village, fort, and camp perched before me on the saddle. My leg ached by the time we arrived back at my wagon, I was tired from a night spent sleepless, and I was in a very black mood, which the cheerful greetings and congratulations of everyone around us only made worse. I pulled some rugs over from in front of the ashes of the fire and set them by the door of the wagon, right at the back of the awning. “Is this suitable?” I asked. “We can be seen here, but will not be overheard.”

  She laughed. “Very scrupulous! I wish we couldn’t be seen either-but reputations are like eggs: there’s no mending them once they’ve cracked.” She sat down on the edge of the wagon, inside the open door, and stared curiously backward into it. “You know, it is pretty in there. It’s like… like the inside of a jewel box. All those rugs and swords and things. What’s the hairy thing over on this side?” She reached under the bunk, by the door, and pulled out the pile of the scalps I had removed from my horses’ bridles when I first arrived in Britain.

  I pushed them hastily back, and she looked at me in surprise. I drew my finger across my forehead and around the side of my head.

  She didn’t understand for a moment-and then she did. She looked at the scalps again, this time in revulsion.

  “I am sorry,” I said. “It is a custom of our people.”

  “There are a lot of them,” she said quietly.

  “Twenty-eight. All men I have killed with my own hands. There were others, too, whose scalps I had no opportunity to collect. I have stopped collecting them now, because the custom horrifies the Romans, but most of my men took some from the Picts we defeated, and I have said nothing to them about it. They take great pride in their strength and skill, and so they should.”

  “I suppose I will have to get used to it,” she said slowly. “But I’d like it if you’d bury these.”

  I sat down on the rug at her feet and leaned my head against my bad knee. Her calm resolution to adjust to everything made it harder for me. “Pervica,” I began helplessly-and stopped.

  She stroked my hair away from my face and rested the long, firm hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said humbly. “I know you’re not Roman. I don’t expect you to become Roman either, really, but it’s just hard for me to… to grasp it all at once.”

  “That is not it! Pervica, I was wrong to ask you to marry me.”

  All the joy went out of her in an instant: she stared at me with a face like a woman glimpsed by lightning, white and terrified. I turned and caught both her hands in mine. “Listen to me,” I said. “I have enemies. I knew my life had been threatened, but I was confident they could not reach me here, in the middle of my own camp among my own men. I thought that no one would trouble the innocent, that no one would know or care about you, secure in the countryside, but I see now that I was wrong, and I have put you in danger. Look.” I pulled out the lead scroll, which I’d shoved into my belt. “Facilis showed me this last night. It was found in the mouth of a man who’d been murdered in a sacred grove.”

  She took it slowly and unrolled it, then stared blindly.

  “It is my name,” I told her.

  “I can read,” she replied, sharply. “If you don’t want to marry me, say so plainly. Don’t make excuses.”

  “Do not be a fool. I wanted to badly enough that I forgot to think, to take any precautions. I was stupid and made a serious mistake: we must do what we can to retrieve it now. You must not go back to your farm as my betrothed. Either we must marry at once or you must pretend to quarrel with me, say that the engagement is off, and go home as though you were angry.”

  “And which would you prefer?” Some color had come back to her face, and there was a hint of anger in her voice.

  “I would prefer it if you married me, of course. I would give you an armed escort back to River End, and you could send your people to safety, then return here.”

  She stared at my face searchingly, then slowly relaxed. She dropped the lead sheet onto the carpet beside me and stared at it, as though only now was she able to take in all that it meant. “Who did this?” she demanded in a whisper. “You know, don’t you?”

  I hesitated, then took her hands again. “I will tell you,” I said, looking into her face, “but you must tell no one else.”

  I told her everything I’d heard or guessed about Aurelia Bodica from the time I arrived in Britain up to that moment. I told her hurriedly and angrily, and she sat and listened in silence. At the end she covered her face with her hands.

  “I am sorry!” I said, wretchedly. “I should not have involved you, and I regret it.”

  She leaned over and grabbed my shoulders, looking angrily into my eyes. “Don’t regret,” she commanded. “I love you. How can you regret loving me?”

  “I do not,” I answered. “But I regret very much that I have put you in danger.”

  “If you don’t regret loving me,
then I will not pretend to quarrel with you and go home angry.”

  “Then we must marry at once. I will try to find out what the legal situation is today. I am not a citizen, and it may need some special-”

  “I won’t do that either! I’m not going to be chased about by these people, or send Cluim and the others away from their own home. I know a druid. He blesses our orchard every year, and we give him a basket of apples and a jug of mead made with our own honey. I will talk to him about this Aurelia Bodica and her vile cruelty, and see what he has to say for himself! Give me this!” She snatched up the cursing tablet. “I’ll take it to the temple of the Mothers. I’ve worshipped them all my life, and they’ve always been kind. This… this is wicked. Calling on the gods to commit murder is a crime against gods and men both.”

  “No!” I said, now very alarmed.

  “You know nothing about the old religion. This”-she hit the leaden scroll-“this is a twisted parody of it, a gall, a deformity. They have no business murdering anyone, and most of them know it. And I am not someone they could murder. Everyone knows me, Saenus’ widow Pervica. Everyone knows I honor the gods. They couldn’t string me up just because they hate you.”

  “If they want this kingdom of the Brigantes, they would accuse you of treachery for opposing them.”

  “ They may want one, but ‘want’ must be their master. There are men, no doubt, who long for revenge on an enemy, or an escape from their debts; there are ambitious nobles who dream of holding power in their own hands instead of bowing to legates and prefects; there are druids who long for an end to persecution. There are probably enough of them in all that when they talk among themselves they think everyone supports them. But there won’t be any more general uprisings of the Brigantes, certainly not here near the Wall. We depend on the army here for our livelihoods: without the troops to buy our grain and our meat, the whole region would wither away. And an alliance with the Picts which involved giving them our farms to plunder-no, no, no! It’s as ludicrous as the idea of a princess of the Coritani calling herself queen of Brigantia. No. You’re not British or a farmer, or you’d realize at once that these people have no power in the countryside.”