Island of Ghosts

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “He is not a follower of the extreme sect,” I said. “He did not know what Bodica had done until news of it reached the whole camp, and he was distressed when he learned it.”

  “I think you may be right,” said Facilis grimly, “but I think he’s got a few explanations to make to us, nonetheless.”

  “I pray to all the gods that he is innocent,” said Banadaspos. He spoke softly and with passionate sincerity. But his hand was on the hilt of his dagger, and it was perfectly clear what would happen to Comittus if he were guilty.

  I looked at him levelly and said, “You swore to me that you would stay quiet and do no violence until I gave you leave to strike.”

  Banadaspos looked back, then let his breath out unhappily through his nose and took his hand off his dagger. He nodded.

  “I think that he is innocent,” I consoled him.

  We made the journey back as quickly as we could-though this was no great improvement on our time for the journey down, given the short days and the appalling weather. Eukairios and I went over the list of names and passed on to Facilis a few whom the Christians of Eburacum had considered ringleaders. He did not press us for more; he in fact seemed very relaxed, and more cheerful than he had been since I’d known him. He rode beside the wagon and talked to Vilbia, he played with the baby-whose thin cry grew stronger and louder by the day-and in the evenings he chatted with my men, making no further attempt to disguise his knowledge of our language. It emerged that he’d learned it much as I’d learned Latin, from a settled farmer on our side of the Danube whom he’d paid to teach him when he was still a private soldier, hoping to make himself useful enough to his superiors to win promotion. He genuinely was what he had told Valerius Natalis and Julius Priscus, a legionary expert on Sarmatians, and he had been advising his superior officers on us for years.

  “Well, what did you expect?” he asked me, when I expressed my surprise at this. “You knew that the emperor had appointed me himself. Your three dragons were the first to be sent west, and two of them were considered particularly likely to be difficult. Naturally the emperor looked for an officer with some experience to put in charge of you. He made a mistake, and I botched the job-but he chose sensibly on credentials.”

  “Why was Lord Gatalas considered likely to be difficult?” asked Banadaspos, who was with us during this discussion.

  Facilis gave him a snort and a bob of the eyebrows. “Gatalas wasn’t. He never looted the villa of a governor of Asia, or drank from a centurion’s skull. Even when I decided to follow you lot to Britain, I was more worried about your own commander than either of the other two. It’s why I asked for Cilurnum.”

  We arrived at Corstopitum around noon on the fourth day of the journey. When we reached the bridge, I arranged that Facilis and Eukairios would go into the city to see if they could arrange a place for Vilbia. Kasagos and his squadron would stay with the wagons and, when somewhere had been found for the girl, take them on to Cilurnum. I and my bodyguard would ride at once to River End Farm. I was very anxious to see Pervica.

  I found the farm this time without difficulty. I reined in my horse at the top of the hill and sat looking for a moment. There had been snow during the night, and the fields were white and smooth; the river beyond flashed icily silver in the fitful sunlight. The farm buildings nestled in their hollow, whitened thatch above gray walls, kitchen smoke rising in a thin blue column from the back. It was a scene of such peace that my eyes stung to look at it. I’d been afraid that when I crested that hill I’d see only blackened ruins.

  I dismounted, unsaddled Farna-leaving the armor on her-and saddled and mounted Wildfire instead. I thought Pervica might enjoy seeing her horse ridden, and the stallion was now well trained enough to manage about a farm, though I wouldn’t have taken him into a city, let alone a battle. I started him down the hill at a slow trot, with my bodyguard jingling after me.

  We were about halfway to the farm when I heard a shout of terror to my left, and I glanced over to see a sheepskin-cloaked figure-surely Cluim-running frantically toward the farm. He jumped the wall, hurtled across the yard, and plunged into the house, still shouting. Then Pervica walked out onto the porch-even at a distance I recognized her grace, and the way she held her head. She stood there, directly before the front door, her arms crossed; as I drew nearer, I saw that her face was set in anger and a kind of proud desperation. I slowed Wildfire to a walk, then stopped him altogether at the yard gate, and sat still, looking back at Pervica in confusion.

  The anger flickered, then suddenly vanished. Her face opened into a flood of an equally desperate joy. “Ariantes!” she shouted, and ran toward me.

  I bent down in the saddle, unlatched the gate, and pushed it open; Pervica ran through, her arms stretched up, and I caught her, pulled her onto the saddle in front of me, and kissed her. Wildfire snorted in alarm and put his ears back, rearing, and I patted him hastily with my free hand. “It is only Pervica,” I told him. “You know her.”

  “Ariantes,” she said again, holding me tight.

  “Pervica,” I answered. “You are well? You are safe?”

  “I’m fine,” she replied. “You’re riding Wildfire!”

  “ We are riding Wildfire,” I corrected. The horse knew where he was, of course, and was eager to go back to his nice warm stall in Pervica’s barn: he danced impatiently beneath us. I clicked my tongue to him and made him trot about the yard in a circle to keep him steady, then, to show off, made him turn and circle the other way. Pervica laughed. She started to put her head against my shoulder, then pulled away again hastily.

  “I can’t hug you,” she told me, smiling into my face. “You’re too scaly!”

  There was an anxious shout from the doorway, and I saw Cluim again, standing in the doorway with a boar spear in one hand and my dagger in the other. Pervica waved to him. “It’s Ariantes!” she told him, and he slumped in relief and sheathed the dagger.

  I suddenly understood, and stopped Wildfire. “Arshak has been here,” I said. “You thought I was him.”

  Her smile vanished. She let go of me and slid to the ground, then stood there with one hand on the saddle, looking up. Her expression was unmistakably one of grief. “You both have the same kind of armor,” she admitted quietly.

  I dismounted and faced her. “When did he come? Has he threatened you?”

  She sighed and swept both hands over her face upward, pushing her hair back. “We can talk about it in a minute, inside,” she said. “Do your men want to stop in the back again? I’ll tell Elen and Sulina to get them something warm to drink.”

  I put Wildfire in his stall, and left most of the men to build their fire; Cluim came to join them rather nervously, breaking into a grin when they made him welcome. But I asked Banadaspos to come into the house with me: I felt already that this would be something my bodyguard would have to know about.

  Pervica led us into the dining room. The carpet I had given her now adorned the floor; she sat down heavily on the couch. I sat down on the floor next to her, leaning against the couch, sideways to allow space for my sword, with my arm on the cushion beside her.

  “When did Arshak come?” I asked again.

  “Two days ago,” she told me, very calmly.

  “Was he alone, or did he bring his men with him? Did he threaten you?”

  “I… no. He didn’t hurt me, and he made no threats. He came with about thirty men-his bodyguard, I suppose. He said he’d heard that I’d saved the life of his brother prince, and that you were going to marry me, and so, he said, he’d come to greet me. I think… I think he just wanted to know where I was.” Her face had closed up again.

  “Then why were you so afraid, you and Cluim?”

  “Nothing. Just what you said about him before. And I hadn’t realized. You’d said he was arrogant and dangerous, but I just hadn’t realized. He’s like some beautiful predatory animal, a golden eagle or a wildcat, which kills by nature. The way he smiled frightened me.”

  And
that was plainly true, but her face was still closed. There was something he had said or done that she did not want to tell me. “But what did he say to you?” I asked, putting my hand against her knee. The muscles tightened under my touch with a little shiver.

  “Nothing.” The bolts were being shot home behind her eyes. “Nothing that bears repeating.”

  I was silent a minute. “He insulted you?” I asked at last.

  She gave a weak smile. “He was not polite.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Never mind. It’s my affair, not yours.”

  “It is my affair,” I said. “If he insults you, he insults me. Please, tell me what he said to you.”

  “It was only words! It was a ridiculous thing to do, to ride over from Condercum just to say a few insulting words to a woman he’d never met. People round here will only laugh at him for doing it. People don’t take it seriously.”

  “My people and Arshak’s do.”

  “No! Look, please! I don’t want to tell you because I don’t want you to fight him! He’s not like Cinhil; even I could tell that! In any fight with him, someone would die-and if it wasn’t you, you might still be charged with murder afterward. He did this to provoke you: don’t you see that?”

  “Pervica,” I said, “this concerns my honor.”

  “Oh, that’s the ultimate reason, is it? The one to which all other considerations must bow down!”

  “Yes. If you do not tell me, I must go to him in Condercum and ask him what he said. His bodyguard will doubtless boast of it.”

  “Oh, no! No!”

  “He expects nothing less.”

  “So you’ll oblige him? Just like that?”

  “Yes. We are enemies now; that is beyond retrieval: we have chosen different paths, and he watched while I was drugged and taken off to die shamefully. I would prefer to settle the matter between us like Sarmatian noblemen, and I think he would prefer to do the same, rather than allow his allies to kill me by sorcery or treachery, which is why he is trying to provoke me. I met him on the road to Eburacum and I let him understand then that I would fight him whenever he wished. But whatever happens, one or the other of us will be dead before this is over. You must understand why he came here. I am his enemy, and he wished to triumph over me in you, to dishonor me. In our own country he would have burned your wagons and driven off your flocks. But here he would have to account for his actions to the authorities-so instead he insults you, which is a thing the authorities will take no notice of, but which I cannot ignore. Without honor, I am nothing at all. My men are disgraced in me, and I am powerless to command them.”

  She looked down at her hands, twisting together in her lap. “Maybe we shouldn’t get married, after all,” she whispered; then, “I know we shouldn’t get married, after all.”

  I took my hand off her knee. “You cannot mean that. You know that I want you, and I thought you wanted me.”

  Now her face twisted as well, fighting the tears, but she still would not look at me. “It’s not what I want that matters. I thought of this earlier; I didn’t want to say it, but I must. I see it now. We shouldn’t get married.”

  “Even if you refused me now,” I said, after another moment of silence, “I would still have to fight Arshak.”

  “Oh, no!” She pressed her hands to her face.

  “Tell me exactly what he said, please. I would rather learn it from you than from him.”

  She sat still with her hands over her face. “When I saw him coming,” she said, slowly, “I ran out to meet him. I thought he was you, and by the time I realized my mistake, his men had surrounded me. Nobody threatened me, but they sat there on their horses like so many steel statues and stared at me. He… greeted me. He was very polite at first, and said what I told you, that he’d heard you were going to marry me, and he’d come to pay his respects. Then he smiled and said that it was an odd thing for a king’s nephew to be paying respects to a common herdswoman. He said that in your own country, you’d married the daughter of a scepter-holder, a lady descended from princes and great warriors, famous for her spirit; while here, he said, you Romanized, and courted a soldier’s bastard out of gratitude for the tatters of your life.” Banadaspos caught his breath, and she dropped her hands and looked up at him quickly. “Please!” she said to him. “I don’t want him to fight Arshak. There’s no point. I am a soldier’s bastard, and it was gratit-”

  “It was not,” I said quickly. “I told you that before. It is not.”

  She looked unhappily into my face. Her hands made a quick, abortive gesture, as though she had been about to reach toward me, and stopped herself.

  “And was that all?” I asked.

  She took a deep breath. “You want the part his men will repeat, don’t you? He said, ‘It was different in our own country. Ariantes was famed as a warrior there and men admired him. But he was injured in the war, and it broke his spirit. Now one leg and his courage are crippled, and he contents himself with a thing like you after loving a golden princess.’ I told him to get off my land. He didn’t go, of course, so I turned and tried to go back to the house. His men wouldn’t let me; they closed in all around me. I tried to duck under the horses, but one of them caught my arm, and his friend caught my other arm, and they both held me, facing their master. He picked up his spear, and I thought for a moment he was going to kill me. Then I realized that he wouldn’t, he wanted me alive to tell you this. I understood-of course I understood-that he only wanted to humiliate me to provoke you. He rode toward me, smiling that horrible smile, and caught my cloak pin with the tip of his spear, and then he turned aside, and his men let him through the ring and fell in behind him; the men who’d held me threw me down in the mud and followed as well. He’d pulled my cloak off my shoulders, just like that, without scratching me: he shook it off his spear as he rode off, and the horses of his followers trampled it. The pin was broken. That is what happened, and that is everything that happened.”

  “You ordered him to leave your land, even though you were alone and surrounded by his men?” asked Banadaspos. “And when he threatened you with his spear, you faced him in silence?”

  Pervica glanced at him impatiently and nodded. Banadaspos smiled fiercely. He would report it to the rest of the men, I knew, and they would all be pleased that Pervica had the kind of courage they expected of their commander’s lady.

  I sat in silence for a minute. There were two sides to this. One was what Arshak had meant by the visit. That was perfectly clear, and would be settled between us. The other was what Pervica had thought and felt because of it, and of that I was deeply uncertain.

  “Banadaspos,” I said-in Latin, as a courtesy to Pervica-“go and explain to the bodyguard what happened; tell them that the dishonor will be revenged.”

  He stood. He was stiff with excitement and apprehension. “Do we ride for Condercum now?” he asked.

  “Gods, no! The horses are tired. His whole dragon is there, and I could not guarantee the security of the rest of you once the duel is over. Besides, do you think the Romans will allow us to fight? We will go back to Cilurnum tonight, send messengers, and make the arrangements.”

  He nodded, bowed, and jingled out. I turned to Pervica. “Why do you say we should not marry?” I asked her. “Because you think that if we are not going to marry, there is no cause for me to revenge the insult to you? Or for some other reason?”

  She bit her lip. “There are other reasons.”

  “We are of different nations, whose customs and ways of life are very far apart. My life is threatened, and by that, yours is as well. I am the slave of my honor, which must always be the chief consideration, to which all others bow down. Those reasons?”

  “No!” She looked intently into my face again. “No, I think I guessed all that before. I won’t say I understood it, but I think I could see it was there. No, it’s because so much of what Arshak said was true. You were born a prince in Sarmatia-not just one of the provincial nobility, a member of t
he equestrian order, but one of the really great families, the senatorial aristocracy of your own people, the consulars. I hadn’t understood it before. I’d been thinking of you as though you were just the prefect of a wing of cavalry, which was a rank above me but not out of reach. But I realized it when I met Arshak. There’s no equality between us, and a marriage without equality is dangerous-particularly to the lesser partner.”

  “It is a very long ride from here to the Danube, and further to cross it,” I answered sharply. “Here I am only a cavalry commander. And anyway, it is not the same among us as among the Romans-we have no ‘provincial nobility’ and no ‘consulars,’ only scepter-holders, nobles, and commoners. You own flocks and have dependants, so by our own reckoning you are noble. For a scepter-holder to marry a member of the lesser nobility is no disgrace to anyone. Arshak said what he did to insult you, nothing more. And here near Corstopitum, some people must take another view of the whole matter. Here they must think, ‘Pervica is a landowner, a beautiful young widow with a prosperous farm and a position in the region. She can choose to marry anyone she pleases. What does she want with an illiterate barbarian who’s happier in a barn than in a house, and expects her to sleep in a wagon?’ ”

  She flushed. People-probably Quintilius-had obviously not just thought it, they’d said it, and to her. “There is another reason!” she said, breathlessly, and I saw that the other had made her uncomfortable but that this was the real heart of it. “I don’t want you to remember your first wife, and then look at me and feel ashamed.”

  “I would not.”

  She shook her head. “I know you loved her. I knew that even before I knew your name or who you were. And I’m sure she was all that Arshak said she was. I thought I wouldn’t mind coming second to her, but I see now that it’s a mistake, you would mind, and I could not bear that. I will not be a rag tied to your tail, a disgrace-not even for you. The gap’s too big. In time you’d grow to hate me.”