Island of Ghosts

by Gillian Bradshaw

  The next thing I remember is someone pulling at my shoulders: my leg twisted and I lurched back into consciousness with a cry of pain. There was a pause, and then I was lifted again and turned over, and someone said, in Latin, “We’ve got to stop the bleeding.” I looked up and saw Facilis standing over me.

  “You bastard!” he said vehemently. He was very red in the face. “You slippery bastard!”

  I looked away. I knew vaguely that he wasn’t supposed to be there, but I didn’t want to think about it. I felt very faint and sick, and the pain in my leg was terrible.

  “Do not stand there!” Facilis shouted, in his villainous Sarmatian. “Your lord is bleeding to death. We must get his armor off and stop it.” I realized he hadn’t been addressing me this time.

  I fainted when they took my armored trousers off, and probably screamed as well; I don’t remember. They pulled my leg straight, stitched the big vein in the leg, which had been torn but fortunately not severed, put a compress on the wound to stop the bleeding, splinted the whole, and tied it up: I woke up again during the last part of this, and saw that it was Comittus who was tying the knots. I remembered he had said he knew some field surgery, but I was still too faint to wonder how he’d come there. I was relieved, though, when Leimanos brought a stretcher up: I’d known that he was there.

  They moved me next to the fire, covered me with horse blankets, and gave me a drink of wine from a flask. I lay still for a while, listening without understanding to the voices, Latin and Sarmatian, speaking around me. After a time, Facilis appeared overhead again. He knelt down beside me.

  “We’ve rigged a horse litter,” he told me, “and we’re going to take you to Corstopitum. Incidentally, you’re under arrest.”

  I nodded weakly. “What are you doing here?” I asked him. My voice came out very faint and far away.

  He snorted. “I could ask the same question of you, and with much more justification. You bastard! There was no reason for you to fight him. The whole thing was going to be over with tomorrow anyway.”

  “Honor,” I said, and smiled.

  “Vae me miserum!” he exclaimed in disgust. “Sarmatians!”

  “If you are taking me to Corstopitum,” I said, “could someone ride to Cilurnum and tell Pervica and the others that I am still alive?”

  “You don’t deserve to be!” he told me. “Lucius!” Comittus appeared again. “He wants someone to ride to Cilurnum to tell the lady Pervica that he’s alive, and the rest of his precious savages as well. You go, and take Leimanos with you to make sure the others know it’s true and behave themselves. Keep the bastards confined to camp.”

  Leimanos himself appeared, with Banadaspos, both looking distressed. “Is he going to live?” they asked anxiously.

  “Unless the wound takes the rot,” replied Facilis impatiently. “Though if we hadn’t come along, you lot would probably have stood about lamenting his injury and praising his courage while he bled to death. Sarmatians!”

  “I will not leave my lord to be imprisoned by you,” Leimanos declared angrily.

  “You think he’s going to be imprisoned, in the state he’s in?” asked Facilis. “He’ll be shoved straight into the fort hospital. They’ve got a proper doctor there, not just a couple of orderlies like at Cilurnum. He’ll be fine.”

  “I will not leave him,” Leimanos insisted, glaring at Facilis as though he suspected the centurion of plotting to clap me in irons and rack me on the hospital bed.

  “You will go back and reassure the men,” I ordered him. “You have sworn me an oath on fire, and you will keep it.” He looked at me in distress, and I added softly, “We will reach the Jade Gate yet.”

  He caught my hand, kissed it, and went off. Banadaspos looked at Facilis silently.

  “You can come,” the centurion told him. “You and ten of the bodyguard can keep him safe. The rest go back to Cilurnum with Leimanos.”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked Comittus.

  “Marcus thought you might try to do something like this,” he replied. “He asked Severus at Condercum to tell him if you’d sent any messages to Arshak, and we found out the time of the meeting. We were planning to stop you on the way. But Severus got the day wrong: he thought it was tomorrow, and nobody realized until this morning after you’d left the fort. We came pelting after you with all five squadrons of Asturians, but we missed you on the road, and only arrived in time to see the end. Severus still isn’t here.”

  “The day was changed,” I said.

  “You slippery bastard,” Facilis grunted. He picked up one end of the stretcher; Leimanos took the other. They carried me over to the horse litter they had rigged, put me down on it, very gently, and strapped me in so that the movement wouldn’t jar my leg. I looked back and saw my helmet sitting on a stake, as it had been in my dream. I guessed that the pack below it contained my armor. I turned my head and saw Arshak’s body lying at the other side of the clearing, still in its golden armor. His face was covered with blood, and his men sat in a circle about him, disarmed, watched by some of the Asturians. Leimanos followed my gaze.

  “Do you want me to collect his scalp?” he asked.

  “No,” I answered. “The customs are different here.”

  XVII

  I was in the hospital in Corstopitum for fourteen days. I didn’t need to stay there so long, but I was technically under arrest for the whole of that time, and no one wanted to put me in the prison. Pervica came down from Cilurnum with Eukairios, and they found a place to stay in the town and came to keep me company. Eukairios started to teach me to write, and read me letters about what was happening elsewhere.

  The mutiny was strangled on the twenty-third of January, the day before it was scheduled to take place. The legate Julius Priscus ordered the arrest of a number of his officers, then resigned and allowed the spies of the grain commissary to arrest his wife. Bodica wrote a letter to Arshak, not knowing that he was already dead, and poisoned herself in the prison. A lot of people afterward who hadn’t seen the letter claimed they had, and cited it as scandalous and salacious, but it wasn’t; Facilis showed it to Eukairios, who repeated it to me. “Aurelia Bodica, to Arsacus, prince-commander of the second dragon, greetings,” it said. “My white heart, we have been betrayed. I would have made you a king, as you deserve, but the gods have decreed otherwise. The purposes of the Hooded Ones are hard to understand. They did not effect my curse and my prayers have gone unheard. Yet I beg them again to hear me, and to receive my spirit, and yours. Farewell.”

  I still don’t know if she had, as Facilis thought, committed adultery, and it still doesn’t seem very important. She had undoubtedly betrayed her husband, but at least she genuinely loved the man she had chosen in his place. I did not forgive her for her pleasure in drowning me, let alone for Vilbia, but it was some relief to learn that she was, after all, a human being, and not the demon she had appeared.

  Siyavak, who had indeed been arrested with his pretended allies, was released on Bodica’s death and publicly proclaimed the discoverer of the conspiracy, a hero of the Roman state-which cannot have pleased him-and the revenger of Gatalas, which I know did. He was given the kind of decorations Romans always give to award conspicuous courage-a silver spear, a golden crown, and an assortment of armbands, torques, and medals. He was also confirmed as commander of the Fourth Sarmatians, and his liaison officer, Victor, was recalled to the headquarters of the Sixth Legion. Siyavak sent me a letter announcing his satisfaction at revenging Gatalas’ death and at receiving honors from the Romans, which, he said, had greatly pleased his men. He also congratulated me for killing Arshak. “I’ve heard that the Romans revile you for fighting him when he would have been arrested anyway,” he wrote, “and the man who writes this letter deplores it. But it was honorably done, Prince, and I was glad to hear of it, for I would have been ashamed to see him, the descendant of kings, imprisoned and executed by the Romans. I look forward to seeing you again, and hearing of the combat, which I’ve bee
n told was terrifying both for its skill and for its ferocity.”

  Pervica had one very surprising piece of news from her druid acquaintance. It seemed that the druids of the North had held their convocation and that, with Cunedda dead and the rest of the extreme sect in fear, the whole meeting had swung over to her friend Matugenus. Instead of being branded a heretic lover of Rome, he was a hero of the true religion. The meeting had denounced “those who betray their own people to foreign plunderers out of hatred of their enemies,” and voted that human sacrifice of an unwilling victim was blasphemous. The followers of the old religion all over the North were delighted with Matugenus, and Matugenus was enormously pleased with himself. Through Pervica he sent me a message saying that he would pray for my swift recovery, and offering me the friendship of his order.

  That was immediately after the rebellion was crushed. A few days later we heard that the grain commissary, less careful than Facilis, was arresting any druids they could find and torturing them until they confessed to having some part in the conspiracy. Unlike Facilis, the commissary struck blindly. They had no list of druids, only the reports of their own informers. They didn’t take many men, but they did grab everyone whose name was reported to them. Matugenus’ name was on everyone’s lips-and he was among those taken.

  Pervica went to Facilis and told him that Matugenus was innocent, that he’d led the opposition to Cunedda. Facilis told me that he knew that from others and had said as much to the intelligence officers, but that the only interest they took in it was to ask him who his informants were: for him to intervene again would be no help to Matugenus, and could put more lives at risk. There was nothing we could do.

  The governor of Britain, Quintus Antistius Adventus, arrived in Eburacum to decide what to do about the mess of the northern army on the eighth of February. The summons for me to go there had come some time before, on the third. I was carried down in a horse litter, much to my disgust. I told everyone that I had ridden seven hundred miles from Aquincum with my leg in a splint, so I could perfectly well ride a mere seventy-five or eighty to Eburacum, but everyone disregarded me completely. The doctor in Corstopitum said I must not put any strain on the bone, that my riding with it in a splint had done it considerable damage before, and that the only good thing about it breaking again was that now it could at least set straight. Even my bodyguard sided with the doctor, and Facilis gleefully pointed out that I was under arrest and had no choice about which way I traveled. So I went to Eburacum lying on my back in a litter, like a Roman senator’s wife.

  Facilis rode along beside me, with Longus, a squadron of Asturians, and a cavalry cohort from the First Thracians under Titus Ulpius Silvanus. Eukairios and Pervica came as well, Pervica driving her farm cart and Eukairios riding my red bay, but all of my own men were left at home. Facilis promised them that the arrest was only a formality, but said that even so, a man charged with murder really could not go to trial with a bodyguard and several squadrons of armored horsemen at his back. They protested angrily at this. I had to have all the captains summoned to the hospital, so that I could command them to obey their oaths. The Romans promised them that no one was likely to execute me, reminding them that the arrest was just a formality. Eventually they yielded, though sullenly. I charged Leimanos and Banadaspos with making sure they behaved with grace during my absence. Comittus also stayed behind, partly because the fort required at least one senior officer, but also, I think, because he didn’t want his own connections inspected at Eburacum.

  When I arrived in Eburacum, I was put in the fort hospital-again to keep me out of the prison-while my friends found lodgings in the town or squeezed into fort buildings already crowded with the governor’s staff. The next morning a party of soldiers in old-fashioned strip armor and cap helmets marched into my room carrying a sedan chair and asked if I were Ariantes, commander of the Sixth Numerus of Sarmatian Horse. I agreed that I was.

  “Then we’ll take you to see the governor,” said their spokesman. “We’re with the Second Numerus of the Consular Guard. He’s sitting in judgment now, and your case is next.”

  I looked down and rubbed my knee, trying to collect myself. I felt very nervous and unsure of myself, now that it had come to the point. I did not believe that the authorities particularly wanted to punish me for killing Arshak, now that he had been exposed as an oath-breaker. On the other hand, duels between commanders were not something that the Roman state would want to encourage. They might punish me with demotion to make an example of me to the next eight dragons. They could even conceivably execute me. I was glad that my bodyguard had been left behind in Cilurnum, but I wished I had a friend with me now.

  “Do you want to change?” suggested the leading consular guardsman, misunderstanding my hesitation. “If you have Roman dress, we’ll give you time to put it on.”

  I had my own clothes, and my friends had seen to it that they were clean. I put on my best shirt to see the governor, and pinned my coat loose across my shoulders. I had a new hat-black, with gold embroidery-but for weapons I had not so much as a dagger, and I felt exposed and ashamed. It was worse when the guardsmen brought up the sedan chair for me. “I will walk,” I told them.

  “We were told you couldn’t,” said their spokesman. “Just sit down in it, sir. I don’t want to get in trouble with the doctors. The governor must have finished the last case by now, and they’ll all be waiting for you.”

  I sat down in the sedan chair. I felt utterly ridiculous.

  The governor was seated at the tribunal in the great hall of the headquarters of the Sixth Legion. The courtyard outside was full of his personal guard, and the hall itself was so full-with his staff, with officers of the legion, with prefects of all the auxiliary forces of the North-that it was hard to see any known face among all the faces. I noticed Julius Priscus, though, standing behind the tribunal. He looked shrunken and aged since our last meeting, and he stood with his shoulders slumped. His eyes met mine as I was carried in, and his mouth twisted. He looked away. Everyone else in the room seemed to be staring at me.

  The guardsmen who were carrying the sedan chair set it down, and I stood up, balancing on my good leg. The governor sat with his hands on his knees, looking down at me. He was a middle-aged Numidian, grizzled brown and dark-eyed, and in honor of the military occasion he was wearing gilded armor under his gold-fringed crimson cloak. The emperor’s statue watched with a preoccupied frown from the chapel of the standards at the side of the hall.

  I saluted the governor. “Greetings, my lord Antistius Adventus!” I said. “Greetings to you all.”

  The governor clear his throat. “You are Ariantes, son of Arifarnes, commander of the Sixth Numerus of Sarmatian Horse?”

  I bowed my head in agreement.

  “You have been accused of murdering the commander of the Second Numerus, Arsacus son of Sauromates.”

  “I killed him, my lord, in fair combat,” I corrected him.

  One of the governor’s staff coughed. “Were you aware that he was plotting a mutiny?”

  “I was.”

  “Was the fight perhaps connected in some way with that mutiny?” the same staff member prompted.

  “We had chosen different sides, sir,” I said carefully. “He wished to fight, and took steps to provoke me.”

  “You might have taken steps to inform your Roman liaison officer, or your camp prefect,” put in a different man, this one an army commander in the red cloak and sash of a prefect.

  I had no intention of discussing Comittus and his druidical connections. “I had informed both of them,” I said instead, politely, “of the conspiracy against Roman power in this region. I had informed them, and the legate, and you, my lord governor, and all who were concerned, of Lord Arshak’s involvement in that conspiracy, as you all know. But I was provoked, as I said, to fight him. And I thought also that for him to die at the hands of the Roman state would be crushing to his people, to mine, and to those of our nation who have yet to arrive in this pro
vince. He was the nephew of our king. Moreover, it seemed to me very likely that many lives would be lost overcoming him, for he was a powerful man and a brave one, and would have fought his arrest. I therefore fought him privately, and the gods granted me victory.”

  “You are a loyal servant of the emperor?” asked the first prompter.

  “I am faithful to my oaths,” I replied.

  My prompter turned back to the governor. “You notice that he was aware of everything that the centurion told us?” he asked. “That this man Arsacus would have been an immense embarrassment to us if he had been arrested and executed, and that many Roman lives would have been at risk in any attempt to arrest him? Isn’t it far better that this loyal commander killed him in a duel?”

  “Yes, I did notice it, Quintus Petronius,” answered the governor, testily. “But I’m still not going to give him a gold crown for it. I agree that it was a mercy of the gods that this fellow Arsacus was taken out quietly and in a way that his followers don’t too much object to, but dueling remains a practice I do not wish to encourage in the British army. Ariantes son of Arifarnes, it’s plain that the man you killed was a rebel and traitor and that you killed him largely because of it, and I therefore have no hesitation in proclaiming you innocent of murder. But I cannot give you the reward you may have expected, because of the manner in which you killed him. In future, you must respect Roman discipline.”