Island of Ghosts

XI

My men received their first pay packet the day Pervica arrived at Cilurnum, two days before the festival. All the other troops on the Wall had been paid already: our pay was late because of all the negotiations. The amount we were finally given was the standard auxiliary pay-two hundred denarii a year-plus an allowance for one and three quarter horses, with another extra amount for the upkeep of our armor. It was less than I’d wanted, but, it must be said, a considerable advance on the first offers and more than the Asturians were getting. The usual half had been deducted to pay for rations, and another variable amount for horse fodder and replacement of equipment. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that the total had been backdated to the time we left Aquincum: it was a substantial amount. Moreover, the captains were given seventeen times the basic rate of pay, an even more substantial amount, and one that could help smooth over any short-term troubles with debt. Since arriving in Cilurnum, we’d bought anything that needed buying with whatever money or valuables we’d taken with us, and I’d been watching the first stirrings of trouble with shopkeepers and moneylenders. Now we were in the clear again. With the pay we were also given a notice from the legate, relaxing one of the restrictions on us: the men could now apply to me for permission to leave the fort, in groups not smaller than three nor larger than sixteen, and could stay away up to three nights if that permission were granted. This meant that they could go hunting or ride into Corstopitum to spend their money, and otherwise behave more like free men than prisoners.

I drew the dragon up and made a severe speech warning the men against moneylenders and the dangers of getting into debt, then brought them all into the chapel of the standards in the fort headquarters, where the clinking bags were handed out beneath the impassive gaze of the statue of the man we’d sworn our oaths to at Aquincum. The men went off in a proper holiday mood to prepare for the Sada feast.

I found their excitement depressing. Six months before we had scarcely known what money was: now, even the slowest man in the dragon had been able to understand instantly that he earned more than the Asturians did. I was tired and irritable when I limped back to the chapel of the standards to check over the final accounts with Eukairios and the Asturians’ treasurer, who had the key to the strong room. It was late in the afternoon by then. Halfway through the accounting, I noticed another pay box under the table, and I heaved it up and shoved it across at Eukairios. “What is this for?” I asked him. He answered, with a smile, “The commander’s pay, my lord.”

“Oh,” I said. Eukairios went on copying pay chits into two registers. I sat beside him, ready to countersign the pages with the scrawled dragon mark I’d been using since Bononia. “How much is it?” I asked, after a minute.

Eukairios set down his pen and laughed. He shook his head, picked up the pen again. “I’ll have to tell that one to Longus,” he said.

“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 were 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.”

“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 legate, 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.”

“They had power enough to murder at least one man and go unpunished through fear.”

“Some townsman who’d done something to offend them! No. My darling, I’m far from saying that these people aren’t dangerous. I know about them, I know they are-but not to me. To you, yes, because you’re a foreigner and without a place here, and no one would risk offending them for your sake. But I can help you. I can talk to the people I know, the true followers of the old religion, not these visitors from the South. I think they’ll help. They don’t want the Selgovae and Votadini descending any more than the rest of us. All it needs is someone like me to ask them.”

“Pervica!” I said, horrified, “You must not!”

“You forbid it, do you?” she asked, her mouth setting.

“I have no right to forbid. But you must not. Even if you were right to be confident of your own safety from the druids, still you would not be safe. Arshak is a powerful and arrogant man, and totally lacking in caution. He is to go to Condercum after the festival, with the second dragon, his followers, and if he learned that you were stirring up trouble against his lady, he would kill you first and think of explanations for the authorities afterward.”

“He isn’t British. Does he speak British? Then he won’t know anything that’s going on in the countryside. And the people I mean to speak to won’t give my name away. Even if they don’t help, they won’t want me killed, and if they do help, they’ll take the credit for their actions themselves.”

“You cannot go back to your farm and… and spy for me. You cannot. You will be killed.”

“I can, I will, and I won’t be. I’m not going to abandon my property and my dependants, and you can’t expect me to. Would you, in my place? And I’m not going to sit in your wagon like a piece of baggage while you run stupid risks and make terrible mistakes through not knowing things I could easily discover. I’m British: I have more rights in the matter than you do!”

I got up and walked off a few steps and slammed my hand against the wagon. “And what if you are killed?” I asked her.

“What if you’re killed? That’s even more likely. I’m only incidental: you’re the one they want.”

“I have five hundred men at my command, and thirty in particular whose chief task is to preserve my life and honor. And even if they fail, I can face my own death.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “Don’t you understand?” she asked. “Perhaps you could face your own death-but I couldn’t. I never loved my husband. I liked him, I obeyed him willingly, because he was kind, because he loved me, but I could never give him either respect or love. When he died I thought I would spend the rest of my life in independence. I was content enough-until I went into my stable and saw you standing there, with Wildfire eating from your hand. Then I knew that I had never been alive at all. I don’t care if I die now, but I’m not going to live without you.”

I went back and knelt before her. “Pervica, please!” I said. “You have seen what I have done with your horse, how he is beginning to trust me, how he comes to me for protection from the cold, and expects me to feed him? If he came, and I beat him till he staggered, who would he trust then? Do not die, Pervica. It would destroy me.”

She put her arms around my neck. “I will not die,” she told me solemnly. “But I won’t do what you ask.”