Island of Ghosts

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “Because,” I answered, “you are British, and Roman, and, I think, Brigantian, and the kingdom that this plot would produce would be unwelcome to you on several counts.”

  “The present government does not love us,” the other replied. He was a serious, dark-eyed man. “We are persecuted in every corner of this empire, and treated like sheep to be slaughtered. Our kingdom is not of this world, and we have no business interfering in the counsels of princes and legates.”

  “And if the Selgovae and Votadini came up to this city and began to sack it?” I asked. “Would you interfere with them?”

  “We would not shed their blood,” said Dark Eyes solemnly. “We would oppose them, and die in the name of Christ our Lord.”

  “That wouldn’t do our neighbors any good!” replied the other British Christian, before I could say anything. “Nor our brothers and sisters, nor our wives and children! We are Brigantian, as he said: why shouldn’t we defend our home? And the man is asking us to carry letters, not to shed blood.”

  The Romanizer held his hand up. “Not in front of our guest!” he said. “Lord Ariantes, our brother Eukairios has vouched for you in the strongest terms, and said that you are kind, generous, and a peacemaker. He says that by helping you, we might prevent a cruel and bloody rebellion. We know… something… of the people involved in this affair, and we’re inclined to believe him. But your people also have a very evil reputation, and it’s hard for us to… How shall I put it?”

  “Make an alliance with a Sarmatian.”

  He grinned at me quickly, and suddenly I liked him. “Well, yes,” he said. “I wouldn’t have thought a dragon was the natural ally of a flock of doves.”

  I spread my hands before me. “Granted. But I already have as an ally a Roman who before was a bitter enemy. If I can make an alliance with the eagles, I can make one with a flock of doves.”

  “Eagles have more in common with dragons than doves do,” said Dark Eyes. “They are both killers.”

  “Eukairios said he was a peacemaker,” said the Brigantian champion.

  “He doesn’t look it,” said Dark Eyes. “Sitting there on the floor with his sword on his back and his hand on his dagger! And the stories I’ve heard say he’s killed dozens of men with his own hands.”

  I took my hand off my dagger and looked at Dark Eyes thoughtfully, rubbing my knee. I wondered who and what he was, and who’d told him about me. “I have killed above thirty men,” I answered. “I have stopped counting. It is true, we are not a peace-loving nation-and we were sent to Britain as soldiers, and could not choose peace now even if we wished to. But I do not want there to be a war.”

  “What do you want?” asked the Romanizer softly.

  I gave him the honest, shameful truth. “I would like my dragon to rest quietly in Cilurnum, with nothing more to do than patrol the Wall, put down occasional raids, and breed horses. But I confess to you honestly that my own men might ask the gods instead for glory and victory in war.”

  “That’s what I’ve heard,” said Dark Eyes. “There is nothing, I was told, that gives a Sarmatian more pleasure than killing any man whatsoever.”

  I looked away, down at my hands now resting crossed on my torn knee. “In ten years’ time,” I said quietly, admitting another shameful truth that I’d known now for some time, “there will be no real Sarmatians in Britain. I am not what I was, nor is Arshak, nor are any of us. If you live in one place under an alien code of discipline, collect your wages four times a year, and spend your time drilling and patrolling, you are not the same as a nomad who lived by his herds and made war for pleasure. The only question has been, what do we become instead? I have answered it, ‘Roman soldiers.’ Arshak says, ‘British warriors.’ And perhaps there is no great difference in it. We are killers, in your terms, whatever we do-though you would do well to remember that as soldiers, we would defend you, while as warriors, we would become your oppressors. But I do not like the company we would keep as warriors, and I think even if we succeeded, we would succeed only to the destruction of all that is best in us. We used, in the past, to love truth, respecting our friends and keeping our oaths; we used to fight fairly, and spare the helpless. Those are the customs I wish us to keep, whatever else we may lose. I swear it on fire”-I raised my right hand and stretched it toward the brazier- “that I have asked for your help in a good cause which I believe ought by rights to be your cause, and that I will deal with you justly and without treachery.”

  “It is our cause,” said the Brigantian.

  “It is not!” said Dark Eyes.

  “Christ is our cause,” said the Romanizer. “Him and him alone-but to serve him may mean serving goodness and justice wherever we may find it, as it is written: ‘and they said to him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? and he replied, Amen I tell you, whenever you gave it to the least of these my brothers, you gave it to me.’ ”

  “He is not a brother!” exclaimed Dark Eyes angrily. “Least or greatest!”

  “He is a neighbor, then,” snapped the Brigantian, “and engaged in a struggle with our enemies, who, by all accounts, have called on the aid of demons to curse him and have tried to murder him in this very city. Should we pass by on the other side, in the vain hope that the brigands won’t actually threaten us?”

  “We put our trust in God, come what may,” replied Dark Eyes. “Not in princes.”

  “We’ve prayed over this already, and argued it,” said the Romanizer. “I had a strong conviction of our Lord’s guidance in this before, and meeting the man has only reassured me. I’m sorry, brother, that it hasn’t helped you.”

  Dark Eyes scowled. “He could have been worse,” he said, after a pause. “So you’re determined to go through with it?”

  “For Christ’s sake!” exclaimed the Brigantian. “It’s our own city and our own homes at risk!”

  “We have a clear choice between helping a man who is working for peace,” said the Romanizer, “or standing aside and letting the forces of destruction and violence take their course. I am for peace.” He stood and walked over to me, holding out his hand. “You have your alliance.”

  XIII

  The Christians were helpful as soon as their decision was made, even Dark Eyes, though it was plain he was reluctantly going along with the majority. They provided the name of someone who could write letters for Siyavak, a password and means to contact this person, and promised that any letter he wrote would be passed swiftly and secretly to me. Then the Romanizer produced a set of wax tablets. “We drew this up last night,” he said. “It is a list of people we know to be druids, together with their hiding places, and officials known to be sympathetic or bribable. But before I give it to you, you must swear not to show it to the authorities. Most of these people are innocent of any crime, and many of them abominate the practices of the extreme sects-but any of them would suffer cruelly if their sympathies were known.”

  I put my hand over the fire and swore that I would not betray the information to the authorities, but only use it to defend myself and to collect evidence against the plotters, and I was given the tablets. I thanked the Romanizer with some warmth.

  “No, we must thank you,” he returned. “You’re the one running the greatest risks in this contest. We will pray for your safety.”

  I was contented when I rescued my horse from the goat shed and rode back along the cabbage-scented alleyway. My allies seemed both efficient and reliable. Eukairios was very silent. When we were riding back through the gates of the fortress, however, he gave one of his sudden dry chuckles, and I gave him a questioning look.

  “Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. But his eyes were dancing.

  “I did something you think is funny?” I asked resignedly.

  He chuckled again. “The way you sat there on the floor, my lord, the perfect picture of a noble savage, telling Senicianus that you’d lost count of the number of men you’d killed! He was so shocked I thought he’d fall off
his seat. I thought you’d lost them all, I really did. But it worked: they could see that you were being completely honest with them, and they realized that they could trust you.”

  I snorted. “I was not trying to be amusing. And you must not go about telling people that I am a peacemaker. It is a disgraceful thing to report of the commander of a dragon.”

  He chuckled again. “Not to Christians. But I will keep my mouth shut in future on that shocking truth.”

  I looked at him with affection. There he sat, a small dark man in his forties, perched clumsily astride my red bay carriage horse and grinning at me. Riding, the cost of horse fodder and size of stud farms, the Sarmatian language: he had struggled valiantly to master them all. By rights he ought to hate me. He had been given to me very much against his own wishes, snatched away from home and friends and forced to adapt himself to a world nearly as alien to him as it was to me. “What would you do if I freed you?” I asked him.

  The grin vanished. We were crossing the bridge from the city to the fortress now, and for a long minute we rode in a silence stirred only by the soft clopping of the hooves of our horses. “Would you do that?” Eukairios asked, in a strained voice.

  I stopped my courser. “If you would agree to stay in my service, as a paid secretary, yes. But if you would go back to Bononia, no. I am sorry, but I cannot afford to lose you.”

  He clenched his hands together on the reins and stared at me in consternation. “I hated Bononia!” he exclaimed. “I found that out within ten days of leaving it. All the stupid petty rules, and the short rations and the beatings if I complained or made a mistake; the way my supervisor loaded me with other people’s work and took the credit for mine. I loved my friends there, who supported me and cared for me when times were bad, but I was utterly wretched. But I didn’t even realize that until it ended; if you’ve staggered a long way under a burden, you don’t really know how heavy it is until you put it down. I’ve been very happy working for you. Hadn’t you realized that?”

  I thought he had not been unhappy, but this astonished me. I shook my head.

  “I would be very glad to go on working for you, my lord, very glad, in any circumstances.”

  “If you want your freedom, then, you may have it,” I told him. “You know my people do not keep slaves. You can… How does one go about freeing a slave?”

  He laughed out loud, a laugh that ended in something very like a sob. “ ‘She may sing, but we are dumb,’ ” he said, quoting verses in a voice suddenly harsh with both triumph and extraordinary pain.

  “ ‘Oh, when will my spring come?

  When will I be like the swallow, and renew my tongue?

  By silence my song has perished, and Phoebus looks aside.

  Thus Amyklai raised no alarm, and by its silence, died.

  Whoever’s never loved, love tomorrow; love tomorrow, whoever’s loved before.’

  “I can draw up a document for you.”

  I had a sudden conviction that he had quoted those lines before, in the days when he had talked back to his superiors and been beaten for it. He had watched love passing him by then, and cried out for the spring of freedom that came now, too late. It was as though the solid rock of my own identity shivered, and I reached at the unimaginably foreign state of what I might have been if I had been born a slave.

  What Eukairios cried in that moment was for himself, and I had no business intruding into it. “Then do so this afternoon,” I ordered. “But now we must hurry or we will be late for our appointment with the legate.”

  We left the horses in the stable yard, which reassured my men, who were fretful as heifers that have lost their calves. We were not late arriving for the meeting with Priscus, which was just as well, since we were very late leaving. To my relief, the legate made no reference to the events of the night before and began at once to discuss the arrangements for the other dragons instead. We’d talked for a couple of hours and written a few letters when the legate’s secretary stuck his head round the door and announced that Siyavak and Victor had come, as ordered. Priscus told the secretary to admit them-in just a minute.

  “I want to extend the plan for the horses to their numerus,” he explained. “But I don’t want any talk about the other Sarmatian troops in front of Siyavak. It will be some time before the Fourth Sarmatians live down their previous commander’s mutiny, and it would be better if they didn’t know how many other Sarmatians there are in Britain or where they’re posted. Do you understand me?”

  I nodded, though I was taken aback. I had, of course, noticed that I was being trusted with knowledge, but I’d assumed that the information was no longer considered sensitive. It was obviously not as sensitive as it had been, but still too delicate for Siyavak’s attention. I was being rewarded for my Romanizing. Priscus gestured to his secretary to let the others in.

  Siyavak looked tired and strained. I thought he was pleased to see me, but he would not look at me for long and sat at the opposite end of the room. I wished that I could talk to him: I had no idea whether he was still my ally, after all this time spent with Bodica. We discussed how many horses the fourth dragon could spare as brood mares and afterward some other business that affected both our companies, until the secretary stuck his head around the door again and said that it was time for the dinner party. It seemed we were all expected to be there-except, of course, Eukairios.

  “Hercules!” exclaimed the legate. “Is it five o’clock already? Well, we’d better go then. Not polite to keep a lady waiting!” He stamped out the door. Victor hurried after him, trying to discuss some bit of legion business that had been pushed aside before, and Siyavak slipped out behind them. I paused to say good night to Eukairios and arrange to meet him in the morning, and started after the others. When I stepped into the corridor, I found Siyavak waiting.

  “I thank the gods!” he whispered hoarsely. “I was beginning to think I’d get no chance to speak to you at all.”

  “Are you safe?” I asked him.

  “For the time being. She thinks I’m drunk with admiration for her, like the rest. Have you thought of a way for us to communicate? I don’t dare speak long now: if we come in to this dinner together, she’ll notice.”

  I took a deep breath, prayed to Marha, and gave him the name and password that the Christians had given me that afternoon. “That is a man who can write letters for you,” I said, “and send them secretly. He’s a kind of ally-but I beg you, make no mention of him to anyone. He’s a member of an illegal cult, though a different one from the druids, and he’d die for his faith as much as they would for theirs if his allegiances were known. But do you want to arrange a meeting with me now?”

  “I want to, oh gods! — but it’s not wise, Prince. She has spies everywhere in this city, and I’ve seen what she does to people who betray her. I must go now, or she’ll become suspicious.” He pressed my hand and hurried ahead, and I followed, slowly, dreading it.

  There were seven of us at the dinner: Siyavak and Victor; Priscus and Bodica; myself and Facilis-and the centurion I’d met the night before, Publius Verinus Secundus, who turned out to be fort prefect for Eburacum. We were seated in the three places in those pairs, with Secundus sharing a couch with me and Facilis, on our host’s right. (I took my sword off and hung it on the arm of my couch when I arrived.) Bodica looked more beautiful than ever, dressed in a gown shot with the silk we’d given her husband, her hair arranged very simply with a few gold hair combs. But, to my surprise, she was in an obvious and appalling temper. The reason soon emerged: her hairdresser had gone missing.

  “The silly little slut’s still gone!” she was telling her husband while the slaves were showing me to my place. “She’s been missing since this morning now, and you said it was nothing to worry about! I told the duty officer to keep an eye out for her on the gates-I’m sure the little bitch is hiding somewhere, and means to run away for good. She knows I was angry with her and she’s trying to get out of being punished. When I catch her, she’ll
-”

  “Now, now,” said the legate soothingly, “you know she had that baby recently. It disturbs the minds of even freeborn ladies, losing a baby, and she’s just a feeble-minded girl. She’s probably just panicked and run off to cry over it.”

  “But look at my hair!” protested Bodica. “I don’t dare let that idiot Vera curl it, she never gets it straight, and now we’ve got all the officers here and it’s twenty years out of fashion!”

  “My dear, you look lovely as ever,” Priscus said gallantly, taking her hand and escorting her to the couch, “and I’m sure the officers agree with me. Gentlemen don’t notice fashion nearly as much as you ladies seem to think we do, and who cares for curls when the hair and face are so charming without them?”

  We all agreed, and Bodica, though still seething, settled down to her part as hostess. I remembered how Facilis had been enraged by Bodica’s treatment of this slave girl before, and glanced at him. He reclined stolidly on the other end of the couch, looking expressionlessly at nothing in particular. The slaves handed us our cups of wine.

  We talked harmlessly about the wine and the food and what we’d done during the Saturnalia through the first courses. I deliberately spilled my first cup, managed to wipe my plate off before eating from it, served myself the appetizers from the opposite ends of the serving dishes, and then ate as little as I decently could. Facilis noticed, of course, but said nothing. Bodica noticed as well, and gave me a sweet smile and a dangerous glare. I assumed that the wine was safe: it was served, as always, from a common mixing bowl, and the slave had no opportunity to slip anything into my cup alone. I was aware, halfway through the main course, that I was probably drinking too much of it. But I was hungry-the meeting with the Christians had caused me to miss my lunch-and very tense, and the slaves kept refilling my cup as fast as I emptied it.

  When the main meal was finally over, Priscus swung his legs off the couch, sat up straight, and gave all of us a benevolent smile. “Now,” he said, “to what I really wanted to discuss this evening. Ariantes, who is trying to kill you?”