Island of Ghosts

II

The sun was shining again, and the water sparkled in the light when I came down to the quay; on the sea’s plain, the waves curled whitely in the breeze. I smelled the sea for the first time then, salt and alien, and for all my bold offers, I was afraid. The procurator had arranged for me to travel in his dispatch vessel, a small bireme that carried letters and messages between the base in Bononia and one on the British coast opposite, a place called Dubris. It was a quick, light galley with one large sail and fifty oars arranged in two banks: it was shallow-decked, thin-skinned, and seemed to be held together only by a few bits of rope. When I stepped down into it I felt it shiver under my weight. The flimsy thing seemed to me quite certain to sink. But my fellows and all my men were watching me, so I waved to them, called “I’ll see you tomorrrow!” and tried to look confident as I searched for a place to sit. My leg wound had left me limping and clumsy, and I bumped into the rowing benches. The captain hurriedly ushered me to the back, out of the way, and arranged me beside the steersman. One of the sailors began to beat time on a small drum, the ship was loosed from the dock, the oars dipped into the water, and we slid out across the blue-green waters of the harbor. I clutched the ship’s side until my fingers ached, desperately praying that it wouldn’t sink.

It didn’t, of course. It was accustomed to make the voyage every few days, and the crossing was a matter of such routine that the sailors found my fears ludicrous. (I was seasick, and they found that funny, too.) They sealed up the lower oar-ports when we were well out to sea to keep out the waves, pulled up a corner of the sail to hold a straight line against the wind, and galloped cheerfully over the salt water in less than five hours. It was still early afternoon when I saw Britain for the first time: a row of cliffs, white above a blue sea, and beyond them, green hills; then the city of Dubris, with its lighthouse overlooking the deep harbor, and its streets climbing up the steep hill behind. The bireme brailed up its sail, let out the lower bank of oars again, and splashed up to the quay amid the shrieking of seagulls and the shouting of men.

I sat in the stern watching even after the vessel had been made fast. The oarsmen gathered their packs and strode off to their barracks in the naval base, their oars slung over their shoulders; the captain and drummer collected the sacks of dispatches and came aft to talk to me.

“Lord Valerius Natalis has offered you the use of his own residence in Dubris tonight, Lord Ariantes,” the captain told me. (It took me a moment to remember that Valerius Natalis was the procurator’s name.) “If you like, I can show you where it is and introduce you to his slaves. Or, if you prefer, we can meet here this evening, after I’ve delivered these.” He hefted the sack of letters.

“I will meet you here later,” I said. He was pleased to be rid of the burden of a clumsy oaf like me, and went off without another look.

I sat by myself for some time after he’d gone. The water lapped against the dock, and the ship rocked gently, like a wagon in a wind. It was extraordinarily quiet-no sound of men or horses, no clattering of harness or weapons. I could not remember when I had last been alone.

After a while, I picked myself up and stepped hesitantly onto the gangplank. I could see the shadow of it falling through the shallow water, making it dark, and a school of small fish nibbling at the stones of the quay. I limped very slowly down the plank, stepped onto the quay-and stopped. I had set foot on Britain, the island that was to be prison or home-and the action seemed almost too simple for such a consequential thing. Was this really the invisible island beyond the world’s end, the island of ghosts we all feared so?

After a moment, I walked on down the docks, out of the naval base surrounding the harbor, and into the town. It felt very odd to go on foot-my people are accustomed to ride everywhere-but somehow the simplicity of it was right.

Narrow houses overlooked the paved street, some of timber and stucco, a few of stone. A tavern sign shaped like a ship swung above the door of one; it had glass windows on its lower floor, wicker interlace shutters above. A man sold fish from wooden tubs outside his shop. Two women talked by a public fountain, one of them holding a baby. A girl carried a bucket of water, her tongue between her teeth as she tried not to spill it. I walked slowly, trying to take it all in. The cool clear afternoon light was the first light on a new world.

The street opened into a marketplace where the region’s farmers had set up stalls. I limped slowly through the bustle and the cries, looking. Some of the people there, the wealthier ones, wore Roman dress of tunic and cloak, but most were clothed in what I presumed was the native fashion. The men wore trousers and sleeved tunics that came to the middle of their thighs, and the women wore longer tunics and shawls. Most of their clothing was made of plain gray-brown wool, but they had a fondness for checked cloaks, which they pinned on both shoulders. They were, I thought, on average a bit shorter than my own people, and a bit darker-not so many blond and red heads, though plenty of blue eyes. Their faces were different, too-rounder, wider about the eyes, without the high cheeks and long thin bones. The more Romanized men were short-haired and clean-shaven, the native men long-haired and bearded, like me. They looked at me as curiously as I looked at them, and I could feel them staring after me, trying to work out where I came from. I was not wearing Roman dress, of course. I had trousers like their own men, but a shirt and sleeved coat instead of the tunic and cloak. I was wearing the coat with the sleeves loose, since the day was warm, but I’d pinned it on my right shoulder, the opposite way from them, and I had a leather hat with a peak, while they were all bareheaded. I was obviously a foreigner and a barbarian-but I was also obviously wealthy. My clothes might have been dirty, but they had been dyed expensively red, decorated with gold beadwork and fastened with gold, and my dagger had a jeweled hilt. I was a contradiction. It was not surprising that they stared.

I paused to look at some sheep that were penned between three wicker hurdles. They were an unfamiliar breed, more lightly built than the ones I was used to: most were grayish brown, but a few, a longer-tailed, squarer sort, were white. I stopped for longer by a horse dealer. His horses were small shaggy animals with large heads and thin necks: I didn’t think much of them. But I noticed that they all wore iron shoes. My own people never trouble to shoe their horses-it’s unnecessary in a land without roads-and most of the auxiliary cavalry I’d met didn’t either. I’d seen horseshoes before, but never had a chance to inspect them. I went over to one of the horses, patted it, and knelt to check its hooves. Its owner came over and asked me a question in an unknown language.

“I am sorry, I do not understand you,” I said. “Do you speak Latin?”

“Indeed, man…” he said, then, correcting himself, “My lord, indeed I speak Latin. Are you interested in the beast? He’s a fine worker, pulls well at the plow or the cart, only four years old; you may have him for just thirty denarii.”

“How far can he go in a day?” I asked-the first question any Sarmatian asks when buying a horse.

The horse dealer stared at me. “Indeed, my lord, I don’t know.”

It shocked me almost to tears, and I had to look away and pretend to study the hoof again. I felt utterly foreign and alone. “How far can he go in a day?”-the question came from another world, a world where people lived in wagons and traveled from grazing ground to grazing ground, a world to which I could never return. Here the question was “Can he pull well at the plow?” and I wouldn’t even understand the qualities that answered it.

I put the horse’s foot down, stood, patted it on the shoulder. “Thank you,” I told the horse dealer, and limped off.

I stopped at a public fountain on the other side of the marketplace and had a drink of water. A fat woman selling apples offered me a cup to drink from. As I returned it, with thanks, I looked at the apples, which she had in a large wooden barrel. They were small and red. “How much are they?” I asked.

“I’d sell a basketful for a couple of eggs, my lord,” the woman replied, beaming, “but you may have one for nothing, seeing that you’re a foreign gentleman.” She handed me one. “Have you come from across the sea, my lord?”

Plainly she had a lively curiosity. I took a bite of the apple: it was sweet. “I have,” I told her, when I’d swallowed it, “and I have some fellows there. I would like to buy your apples to give to them, freewoman. Will you sell me the barrel full?”

“What? The whole barrel?”

“If it is agreeable to you.”

“Indeed, my lord! The whole barrel? Then you’d want the barrel, as well as the apples? That would be… let me see… You may have the apples for four asses, and another five for the barrel.”

I had some coins in a purse, and I dug nine coppers out. The woman looked at them and shook her head. “My lord!” she said. “These are sestertii!”

“Well, how many of them make up one as?” I asked.

She stared at me in amazement, then giggled. “My lord!” she cried. “There are two and a half asses to one sestertius! Where are you from, my lord?”

I set my teeth. I’d acquired the money on raids, and kept it in case I ever needed to do any trading with Romans: my own people don’t use it. Now I would have to learn what things cost. At least the apple seller hadn’t tried to cheat me. I gave her five of the sestertii.

“Only four, my lord, only four, and I owe you one as change!” she said, laughing and trying to give one back.

I shook my head. “The fifth is in thanks for your honesty. Will that buy the apples?”

“Indeed!” she said, beaming. “Will you bring a cart to collect them, my lord? Or should my man drop them off with you when he comes this evening?”

I hesitated. Should I send the apples to the procurator’s house or to the ship?

There was a sudden commotion from just up the street, and I looked up to see a white stallion trotting into the marketplace. I stopped worrying about the apples. This horse was altogether different from the sorry animals I’d looked at before. It was several hands higher, straight-backed and deep-chested, and moved with a light step. It was a fine horse. I had finer ones myself, even in Bononia, but I might have bargained to buy the animal in the days when I lived in my country and owned herds; I liked its hindquarters and the line of its neck. It had some harness on but no bridle, and it was clear from the shouting of the people around it that it had slipped its tether and was running loose. A young man in a fine cloak ran into the marketplace after it and stopped. “Oh, Deae Matres!” he groaned, seeing the stallion trotting away across the paving stones. “Fifteen denarii to the man who can catch that horse!” I watched to see how they would do it.

I never would have credited it: a whole marketplace of people, and no one knew how to catch a horse. They lunged at it, their cloaks flapping-and of course, it shied. They ran after it, and it snorted and laid back its ears. They yelled advice at each other, tried to grab its nose, tried to shoo it into a corner like a sheep, and it began to kick. The few, like the horse dealer, who had some notion of how to go about calming the animal were swamped in a crowd of eager helpers who threw the poor beast into a panic, and in a few minutes the stallion was reduced from alert interest into blind frenzy, rearing and lashing out at everything around it.

“Do you have a rope?” I asked my apple seller, who’d been watching the excitement with horrified delight.

She had a rope, and she handed it to me eagerly. I limped toward the stallion, making a lasso as I went. It was now bucking madly, striking sparks from the cobblestones, and the young man was wringing his hands.

I stopped about fifteen paces from the stallion and began swinging the lasso. The onlookers were now frankly running away from the horse instead of toward it, and it didn’t take me long to get a clear shot. I tossed the rope about the stallion’s neck; when it lunged away, I let it pull me a few steps, then drew the rope tight and began talking to it quietly. The horse stopped and stood still with its ears back, trembling. I walked forward very slowly, still speaking to it soothingly, until I was near enough to touch it. The ears flicked nervously forward as I ran my hand down the sweat-damp neck.

Then a large red-faced man gave a yell and lunged at the horse from the other side. “I’ve got him!” he shouted. And of course, the horse tried to bolt-toward me. I was knocked onto the pavement, and the horse stepped on me-and, worse luck, stepped exactly on my wounded leg. The pain was sudden and excruciating, and I screamed. A lifetime’s instinct made me lie still and let go of the rope-one doesn’t hold a frightened horse on top of oneself-and the horse clattered on over me. The red-faced man grabbed the rope, and then a dozen hands were clutching the horse and leading it away.

“I’ve got him!” shouted the red-faced man again. “I caught him!”

“You never did!” retorted my apple seller, bustling over. “The foreign gentleman caught him, we all saw that, and when you shoved your greedy hands in, you nearly lost him again. My lord, are you all right?”

I was lying on the ground clutching my leg. The apple seller bent over me and tried to pull me up, but the movement twisted my leg again and made me gasp with pain. The young man in the fine cloak dropped to his knees beside me. I noticed, for the first time, the narrow purple stripe on his tunic. “Deae Matres!” he exclaimed again. “I hope you’re not hurt. You practically saved my life, catching that animal. Did it kick you?”

I set my teeth and managed to sit up. “You can catch your own horse next time,” I said.

“It’s not my horse; it’s my commanding officer’s wife’s horse. If it had got hurt while I was in charge of it”-he whistled-“I might as well have resigned from the army at once. Priscus would never forgive me. By Maponus! Your leg’s bleeding.”

I looked: there was blood on my hands. The wound must have torn open. I let out my breath in a hiss.

The apple seller began to shout at the red-faced man in British. The red-faced man shouted back. I wanted to get away; I tried to climb to my feet, but when my weight came onto my injured leg, there was a spurt of such red-hot pain that I had to sit down again.

“Lie back, lie back,” said the young man, “Let me see your leg.. ” He began pulling the trouser leg up.

“No,” I said. “The horse caught an old wound. Leave it.”

He paid no attention whatsoever. “I know a bit of field surgery,” he told me. “My name’s Comittus, by the way, Lucius Javolenus Comittus, a tribune of the Sixth Legion… Hercules!” he’d shoved the trouser leg up above my knee, and seen the scars. There were three, one above the other, and since I’d only got them that summer, they were still red. To my relief, it was the top cut, the one just above my knee, that had broken open, and that only a little down half its length. The pain had been so hot I hadn’t been able to tell where it was. But the top cut had been the least serious of the three. It was the lowest slash that broke my shinbone.

“Lucius Javolenus?” came a woman’s voice. Comittus looked round quickly, and I looked too.

I guessed that this was his commanding officer’s wife, the owner of the horse. She was certainly a lady of some importance. Her fair hair was piled on her head in the kind of elaborate curls that require a trained slave to arrange them, and the cloak held modestly closed before her was of the most expensive kind, dyed a rich blue throughout, and bordered with patterned flowers. And despite the modesty, it was plain she was both young and beautiful. The rounded eyes were vividly, liquidly blue, an intensity of color I had never seen among the Romans before, though it’s not uncommon among my own people-Arshak’s eyes were much the same shade. The oddly familiar eyes stared into mine with impersonal curiosity. I did not look back at her gladly. Bad enough to look a fool; worse to look a fool in front of a beautiful woman.

“Aurelia Bodica,” cried Comittus, “this man caught your horse, but it kicked him on an old wound when he caught it. Do you think we could find Diophantes? I think he needs a doctor.”

The blue gaze sharpened. Aurelia Bodica ignored Comittus and stared at the scars. “It looks as though someone tried to chop off your leg with an axe,” she said, in a dispassionate, assessing voice.

“With a Dacian long sword,” I corrected her.

And suddenly the memory of it came over me with a terrible clarity: my horse falling in the mud, and the swordsman screaming and running at me as I rolled free, holding his sword two-handed above his head. His face was white, and there was a smear of blood down the side of it; his teeth as he screamed were like dogs’ teeth. I tried to scramble away, and the sword came down; I screamed, tried to roll over and get to my feet, and the sword came down; I rolled onto my back again, trying to get my own sword up, and the sword came down. Then somehow I managed to strike his sword with my own from a sitting position, and knocked it out of his hands. Then someone else hit me in the back, I was thrown forward onto my face, and the next thing I remember clearly is lying in the mud, soaked with blood, too cold for pain, and watching the moonlight silver the bronze eye-guard of the dead warhorse before me.

I pushed Comittus’ hands away from my leg. “I do not need a doctor,” I told him. “It is sore, but not serious.”

The apple seller plonked herself down and offered me a handkerchief of threadbare linen. “You can use this for a bandage, my lord, and I’ll get you a nice piece of raw beef to put on it. That’s the best thing for a bruise.”

“Thank you for the bandage,” I said, taking it and tying it around my leg, “I do not need the beef.” I pulled my trouser leg down and got my good leg under me, then rose cautiously to my feet. Everyone in the marketplace had crowded round to look at me. The white stallion had been tied to a post at one side. I felt an idiot.

“Do you want the fifteen denarii for catching the horse?” asked Comittus.

“I do not catch horses for money,” I said, straightening my coat and looking about for my hat.

“I didn’t think you did, somehow,” said Comittus cheerfully, “but I thought I’d offer. Can I buy you a drink, then? Would you care to come to dinner? You practically saved my life.”

I spotted my hat under the red-faced man’s foot, and limped painfully over. “My hat,” I told him, looking at it pointedly. He moved over at once, picked it up, and tried to dust it off. I took it from him and rubbed it clean on his cloak. He spluttered angrily, but couldn’t quite bring himself to protest: he knew he’d acted stupidly. Besides, I was a few inches taller than he and might have been dangerous. I pulled the hat onto my head.

“We’re staying at the naval base,” Comittus told me. “I escorted Aurelia Bodica to the temple of Minerva, just out of town, and we’d stopped for her to do some shopping when the horse got loose. I don’t have much space in my quarters at the base, but there’s a very good tavern just outside it…”

“I thank you, no,” I said. I turned to the apple seller. “Have the apples delivered to the naval base, to the house of Valerius Natalis. Say that Ariantes bought them, and they’re to be shipped to Bononia tomorrow.”

“You’re Sarmatian, aren’t you?” said Aurelia Bodica suddenly.

I turned back to her and met her eyes for a moment. “Yes,” I said. For a moment I was tempted to introduce myself-“Ariantes son of Arifarnes, scepter-holder and azatan of the Iazyges of the Sarmatians, prince-commander of the sixth dragon.” But what was the point? The titles would mean nothing to her, and I was not a scepter-holder or prince now: I was the commander of a troop of Roman auxiliary cavalry.

“Are you really?” exclaimed Comittus excitedly. “Then we’re comrades! We’ve come down from Eburacum to meet you!”

“What?” I demanded, staring at him.

“My commander, Julius Priscus, is legionary legate of the Sixth Victrix in Eburacum, and commander in chief of all the forces in the North. We were told to come down to Dubris to meet three troops of Sarmatian cavalry which were expected from Bononia. I’m going to be in command of one of them.”

“You?” I asked, in confused disbelief. “How, ‘in command’?”

“Well… as prefect of the ala, you know. The troops will have their own officers-I suppose you’re one of them-but I’ll be in charge, as they won’t… that is, I’d heard you wouldn’t be very used to Roman ways.”

I stared at him, appalled. My imagination suddenly shaped another picture of him, etched with a ferocity I hadn’t felt for months, and precise with details only too familiar: Comittus lying on the cobblestones with my spear in him, and my dagger’s edge running across his forehead, around the sides of his head, and lifting the curly brown scalp away from the reddened skull. How could any Roman, let alone this one, be in charge of my men-my dependants, my followers, my own people? And if the Romans expected to appoint some of their own people as prefects, what did they plan to do with Arshak, Gatalas, and myself? Second-in-command, joint command, what?

Even a joint command would end in disaster. Here I was, determined to safeguard my followers by keeping the peace with our Roman masters-and I ached to scalp the first Roman colleague I met. What would my officers do? Or my fellow commanders? I thought of Arshak and his coat of Roman scalps. This Comittus was as cheerful and bouncy as a puppy. Members of the equestrian order often begin their careers by serving as military tribunes on the staff of a legion. They don’t need any previous military experience, and I doubted Comittus had supplied any. He would manage Arshak about as well as the red-faced man had managed the white horse, and the result could easily be death and grief all round. Someone in Britain had miscalculated badly. Perhaps, like the procurator Valerius Natalis, they thought we were conquered barbarians.

I found that my hand was on the hilt of my dagger, and I made myself rub it slowly, trying to banish the images of blood. “I think perhaps we had better have dinner together,” I said quietly. “Perhaps I might speak with your commanding officer, as well. What you have said…” I shook my head. “Javolenus Comittus, if you had said that to Arshak, that ‘I will be in command,’ I think he would have taken your life.”

Comittus looked bewildered. The woman, Aurelia Bodica, smiled. “Is this… Arsacus… your commanding officer?” she asked.

“He is my fellow officer, Lady,” I said, “but senior to me in honor, being of royal blood.”

“Is he here in Dubris too? We hadn’t heard that any of your troops had even arrived in Bononia yet.”

“We arrived in Bononia yesterday afternoon, Lady. The others are still there. I came over on my own this morning. The others will follow when I have told them all is well.”

“I see.” She smiled again, very prettily this time. “I’d thought perhaps we could all have dinner together this evening, Sarmatian and Roman officers together, and you could explain to us how we should manage your troops. Instead, I’m afraid it will have to be you and four Roman legionary officers… What did you say your name was?”

“Ariantes.”

“ Lord Ariantes? I’m afraid I can’t even invite you to dine out, because my husband and I are also staying at Natalis’ house. But I hope you will share a meal with us, and I will invite the tribunes as well-I’m inviting you now, Lucius Javolenus! You can tell us all about your people’s customs and how we can avoid offending them.”

I thanked her and agreed. Comittus thanked her too. She smiled again and said she would have to rush back to arrange the dinner party, wished me good health, and set off back up the road. Comittus collected the horse and followed her.

My leg was still too painful to allow me to walk any distance. I limped back to the fountain and sat down on the rim. The curious crowd at last tired of gaping at me and began to take down the market stalls and pack up for the day; even the apple seller excused herself. I supposed that it was not really surprising that Bodica had guessed I was Sarmatian, given that she knew we were expected and I had mentioned Bononia. Yet I had felt something strange in that stare, and in the smile when I referred to Arshak killing the tribune. It unsettled me. I wondered how much authority she held. It was odd that Comittus had called her by her own names: she should have been Aurelia Julii, after her husband. Was it really so clear to everyone that she wasn’t Julius’ Aurelia, but her own? And the name itself was an odd one for a woman of rank. When they acquire Roman citizenship and Roman names, many people retain their own name as their last and take the family name of the Roman they received the citizenship from, often the emperor. The obvious “Aurelius” was the man I’d met at Aquincum, or perhaps his predecessor. But that would make the citizenship of Bodica’s family very recent, and she didn’t carry herself like an upstart. And even without that puzzle to trouble me, I was staggered at the task of trying to explain the Sarmatians to four Roman officers at a dinner party. If I couldn’t convince them to change their plans, though, there’d be a mutiny in Britain even if there wasn’t one in Bononia. I might even lead it myself. I could not — could not-yield command of my own men to some ignorant and inexperienced young Roman.

The white horse trotted down the street again, this time pulling a flimsy little chariot of painted wood and leather. Bodica was sitting on the bench seat while a groom drove, and Comittus rode behind on a flashy but shallow-hocked black stallion. Bodica noticed me and waved as she went by, and Comittus turned his horse aside.

“Is your leg really all right?” he asked, stopping in front of me. “If it isn’t, you can ride Thunder back to the base. Here, I’ll walk.” He slid off the black and offered me the bridle.

I looked at him for a moment. I do not like borrowing anything, but I doubted that I could walk the distance without straining the wound, and I’d had enough trouble with it already. (Riding’s no strain. I have ridden while asleep.) “Thank you,” I said, and took the bridle.

“I’ll give you a leg up…” he began-but I was on top of the horse by then. I checked how it was trained, remembering to use my knees in the Roman fashion, instead of my heels as I would with my own horses. Comittus looked as though he had expected to instruct me on the horse, but thought better of it. “Well,” he said, and swallowed. “If you want to ride him to Natalis’ house, just give him to one of the orderlies when you get there and tell them I’m in the north barrack block; they’ll return him.”

I looked at him for another moment. It had been a kind gesture to offer me his horse. He’d been trying to make friends. “I do not know where Natalis’ house is,” I confessed. “I have not yet been there. If it is agreeable to you, Javolenus Comittus, perhaps you could walk with me and show me the way.”

He brightened and agreed at once.

“What did you mean when you said this Arsacus would kill me for saying I was in command?” he asked as soon as we set off.

“Was it unclear?”

“No, but… what’s wrong with saying it?”

“Arshak’s troops are Arshak’s men. He is…” I groped for a Roman parallel. “He is their patron, they are his clients. Their families also were clients of his father, and his father before him. You are a Roman-until this summer, an enemy. How would your clients feel if things were reversed? If they were marched out into the plains among the Sarmatians, and then told that you, their patron, were no longer their patron, but that they must look instead to a Sarmatian prince who knew nothing of their ways and could not even speak their language? Would they not refuse? And Arshak is the nephew of a king, and will not want a Roman tribune to interfere with him. He is not a patient man.”

“Oh. I hadn’t thought of it that way.” After a moment, he asked earnestly, “So what should we do?”

“Could you not call yourself an adviser? Or a mediator? Or a… liaison officer, who speaks for the legate, but leaves the command to us?”

“I could! That’s all I will be, really.” He began to brighten again. “That’s all right, then! Though I hope I’m not appointed to.. liaise with… this Arshak. If there are three troops of you, and he commands one while you command another, who commands the third?”

“Gatalas. I do not know that you would find him easier to liaise with than Arshak, Javolenus Comittus.”

“Call me Lucius. So if I’m lucky, I liaise with you.”

“If you choose to view it that way.”

“I do,” he announced, grinning.

He was undoubtedly right to prefer me to Arshak or Gatalas. “How far is it to Eburacum?” I asked.

He was perfectly happy to tell me about Eburacum and his journey from there, and did all the talking the rest of the way.

Natalis’ house at the naval base in Dubris was even larger and finer than his house in Bononia. I slid off the horse, thanked my companion, and wished him good health-though I called him Lucius Javolenus, not Lucius. I couldn’t bring myself to use his first name alone, not while my mind still teased me with the image of his scalp hanging from my bridle. When he’d ridden off, I went in and introduced myself to the slaves.

The dispatches I’d voyaged with had contained a letter about me to the steward of the house, and I’d been expected even before Bodica had appeared to arrange a dinner party for me: the slaves were polite, despite my smell of dirt and horses. I gave directions about the apples and remembered to ask for someone to go to the ship to explain to the captain why I wasn’t waiting there. The steward escorted me up the stairs to a bedroom overlooking the courtyard, murmuring that Lord Julius Priscus and his wife were expecting me in an hour, after I’d had time to wash, and would I like a bath?

I wanted to clean myself, particularly if I was to dine with these important Romans, but the Roman custom of immersing oneself in hot water was still alarming to me. I asked about a steam bath, and was told that only the public baths, outside the base, were equipped for that. I settled for some oil, and cleaned myself as well as I could with that and a strigil. There was nothing I could do about my clothes; after the long journey, I didn’t have any clean ones, even in Bononia. I combed my hair and avoided the mirror on the bedroom table.

There was still a long time before the dinner. I turned my attention to the room. It seemed very large to me-I had never actually slept in a house before. The walls had been covered with painted plaster, but at least the floor wasn’t stone, and had a carpet: it didn’t feel as much like a tomb as a room on the ground floor would have. I took the mattress off the bed and put it next to the window, draped a curtain to fill in some of the cavernous space, and hoped that it would feel enough like a wagon that I’d get some rest. Then I sat down on the mattress and put my head on my knees. I imagined what my men would do if they were told that they were to be commanded by a Roman. I imagined what the Romans would do to them afterward. I prayed to Marha, the Holy One, the god whom we worship above all other divinities, to open the ears of the Roman legate to my words and make him change his plans. The steward knocked at the door at the appointed time, and I limped apprehensively downstairs.

Aurelia Bodica reclined on the middle couch with her husband, the legate Priscus, snaring the lamplight in the web of her hair. Priscus was considerably older than her, a thickset man in his late forties, very dark. (I later found out that his full name was Tiberius Claudius Decianus Murena Aufidius Julius Priscus. Important Romans collect names as Sarmatians collect scalps.) No one got up to greet me. Priscus and the two tribunes I had not met before looked at me as the procurator Natalis had, as though I were a dangerous animal; the wife of one of the tribunes, who sat with her husband, flinched when I came in and seemed afraid to look at me at all. Comittus gave me a smile of extreme embarrassment and looked nervously away.

“So you’re Ariantes,” the legate said in a harsh voice, looking me up and down.

“Greetings, Lord Julius Priscus,” I returned, now feeling quite dizzy with anxiety. “Greetings to you all.”

He grunted, and nodded for the steward to begin serving the wine. The others were all reclining on their couches, the legate and his wife in the top place, the married tribune and his wife on the right, and the two others on the left. I did not know where to sit, so I remained standing. I sipped my wine when it was handed to me, wondering what they had heard to make them so disapproving. Then I noticed a letter lying on the table in front of the legate, and guessed that Facilis had sent it, and that it had been read aloud just before I came in.

“Is it true,” growled Priscus, “that you’ve been telling Lucius Comittus that he should call himself a liaison officer to your troops, instead of a prefect?”

“Yes,” I agreed. I repeated my explanation of why. Comittus gave me another nervous smile, then plucked up his courage and moved over on his couch, allowing me to sit down. I was glad to sit. My leg was aching.

“And you’re threatening us with trouble if we don’t go along with this?” demanded Priscus when I’d finished. “You told Lucius that your friend Arsacus would kill him if he called himself commander?”

“No, my lord,” I replied. “I am not threatening, but warning you of trouble. I should not have spoken as I did about Arshak; I cannot say for certain what he would or would not do-but I know our men would rebel. They are angry and afraid anyway. To them the ocean is the end of the world: I am here because they doubted there was anything beyond it, and were afraid of a Roman plot to drown them. A foreign commander could hardly escape offending them. I do not want problems any more than you do. It is my own people who would suffer most.”

“We’ve been hearing about your own people,” said Priscus.

“My lord,” I said, “if Flavius Facilis has written to you, I would ask you to remember that his son was killed in the war this last summer, and he is tormented with grief. His judgment of us is not altogether reasonable.”

The shot went home. I could see them all realizing that Facilis had not written as a senior centurion handing over a charge, but as a man driven by passions like the rest of us, and that I’d known he hated us. They all relaxed a little.

“So it’s not true,” said Priscus, “that this fellow Arshak has a coat stitched with Roman scalps?”

I was silent a moment. “It is true,” I admitted.

“And that he, and your other colleague Gatalas, made themselves bow cases from the skin of Romans they killed in battle?”

“That is true, as well.”

“And that you yourself,” Priscus demanded, glaring at me, “once killed a Roman centurion who tried to stop you when you were attacking Roman settlements in the province of Lower Pannonia-killed him with a rope and a dagger, cut off his head, and made his skull into a drinking cup, which you have to this day?”

“I do not have it to this day,” I replied. “The man’s family came to me at Aquincum and I gave it to them for burial.”

“But the rest of the story is true?”

“Yes.”

“I do not see how you can think yourself fit to be a Roman officer. Jupiter! You’re not fit to live!”

“My lord,” I said tightly, “I have not observed that the Romans at war behave with decency and moderation. Perhaps you do not collect scalps, but you murder indiscriminately to injure your enemies, killing even young children. And I have heard Roman soldiers complaining at Sarmatian women, calling them vicious bitches because they took up arms to defend their babies, and had to be killed before they could be raped.” I had to stop for a moment. A shadow of the helpless rage I’d felt when I’d heard the complaint choked me. I managed to continue more calmly, “My lord, you yourself must have decorated men for their bravery in doing things in war which, if they had been done under other circumstances, you would have punished with death. What is the point of scratching old wounds? From my people’s point of view, we are dead, I and all my fellows. They have held funerals for us. Those who had wives now have widows, who are free to remarry as they please, and our property is divided among our heirs. What I or anyone else may have done in the past concerns no one now.”

“On the contrary, Ariantes, it concerns me very much. How can I hand fifteen hundred Sarmatians their weapons, give command of them to men who drink from Roman skulls, and turn them loose in a Roman province?”

“My lord, we have sworn oaths to the emperor. We cannot go home. I understand that Britain contains three legions and more auxiliaries than I could count, more than enough to destroy us. We must become Roman auxiliaries, or die. Do you mean to help us become auxiliaries, or to kill us?” I hesitated, then went on, deliberately, “The emperor was pleased to get us. Even when he thought of killing us all, he wanted cavalry like ours. I saw him at Aquincum when we rode in and surrendered. He was like a boy with a new horse. He would not be pleased with you, my lord, if you provoked trouble with us.”

Priscus glared at me wordlessly, his jaw set and his nostrils white with anger.

“Why did you use a rope and a dagger?” asked Aurelia Bodica, as though it were the obvious question. When I looked at her she gave me that same sweet, unsettling smile. “When you killed that centurion, I mean.”

“I wished to match his own daring,” I answered, after a silence. She looked at me quizzically; the others stared with incomprehension and disgust, and I went on, reluctantly, “I had a hundred armored horsemen and three hundred mounted archers, and we had crossed the Danube to raid. We were driving off the flocks and the cattle from a settlement when a centurion came up with just one century and ten legionary dispatch riders, ninety men in all. I do not know whether he had thought we were fewer, or whether he had expected reinforcements to join him. My armored troops alone could have dealt with twice his numbers easily. But he shouted at us to return the beasts to their owners and leave Roman land at once, and I was astonished at his courage. I thought I would have no glory from the contest unless I could match such bravery. So I offered to fight him man to man, and made my men swear that if he killed me, they would not harm him, but leave, as he’d ordered. Then I got off my horse, put my weapons and armor aside, and came to fight him with a lasso and a dagger. He had his armor, javelin, and sword; he told me I was mad, and I told him he had no right to say so, and we both laughed. I spared his men when I’d killed him. I would not have taken his head as a trophy if I had not admired him.”

I remembered riding back with the centurion’s head hanging from my saddle, absolutely drunk with glory, and my men laughing and shouting and singing. What an exploit! Worthy of songs, worthy of a hero! I had never been so proud of anything in my life. When I came home, to my own wagon, my men shouted out the story to my wife, Tirgatao, waving the skull-now scalped and cut in half and scraped clean to prepare it for use as a cup. Tirgatao took it and stared at it in amazement, then put it down and slapped me so hard I nearly fell over. Then she grabbed my shoulders and shook me. “Do you want to make me a widow?” she asked. “Don’t you want to live to see your son?”-she was seven months pregnant at the time. “I want my son to be proud of his father,” I told her, putting my arms around her. “Proud!” she shouted, putting hers around me and kissing me. “You lunatic! Oh, my dragon, my eagle, my golden hero! Don’t you ever do that again!” She was crying with pride and anger, and under both of them was love. And now I was one of the dead, and the story I had gloried in was told by the Romans to disgrace me.

Though they thought the details less disgraceful than they’d expected. They’d obviously taken Facilis’ reference to rope and a dagger as some kind of Sarmatian torture, and now they were looking at me with puzzlement, rather than disgust.

“You don’t want your people to cause us trouble,” said Bodica. It wasn’t a question. The blue eyes studied me as they had before, dispassionately, assessingly.

“I do not want my men to get into trouble,” I agreed. “I want them to live. Enough have died this summer already.”

“Why were you buying them… apples?” Again the smile, sweet and unsettling. “It was apples you were buying in the market, wasn’t it, Lord Ariantes?”

That she asked that question then, after making sure I didn’t want trouble, made me think that she’d already guessed why I wanted the apples. I looked at Priscus: he was puzzled and irritated. He had not guessed. “When I go back,” I said slowly, wondering why she was trying to help me, “if I tell them that there is no trick, and that there really is an island of Britain here, they will believe me, but they will still be afraid. If I give them something from the island-if I give them apples, which they can see, and smell, and taste, and eat, and feed to their horses-then they will be confident. It will be much easier for them then.”

Bodica looked at her husband. “Tiberius,” she said softly, “he’d manage them much better than Lucius or Gaius or Marcus would.”

“I suppose so,” Priscus grunted, releasing whatever he’d intended to do with me, like a dog backing reluctantly away from a bone. “Very well, we won’t tinker with the command of the Sarmatian troops. We won’t make them proper auxiliary alae yet: they can be numeri, under their own native officers. You and your two friends, Ariantes, can command, and you three tribunes can call yourselves liaison officers and make sure the barbarians follow orders. We can work out the arrangements now.” He clapped his hands for the slaves to bring in the first course. “If there’s trouble, though,” he said, glaring at me over the boiled eggs in garlic, “and if you’re responsible, I’ll have you flogged to death. Now I’ll tell you exactly what’s required of you.”

When the wretched party ended and they stopped lecturing and interrogating and allowed me to crawl off to the bedroom, I stood for a minute looking out the window. My head was aching with anxieties and I was dizzy with the newness of it all. I remembered, with a stab of terror, how Natalis had wanted to deal with us. Find a reasonable Sarmatian commander, use him to divide and rule. Other Sarmatians had been reasonable and had ended up betraying their own kind. Was that what Aurelia Bodica wanted? And I realized what it was that I found so unsettling in her: that assessing stare, like a craftsman looking for a tool, and the craftsman’s smile at finding one. I was afraid-afraid of the island, of the Roman army, of the honor and passions of my own people, of the legate, his wife, and myself. But I felt, strangely, more awake than I had for a long time. I could see only the courtyard below, barred with lamplight, and hear only the sounds of the slaves cleaning the dining room and the other guests going to bed. But I could smell the sea. Gatalas’ fears had been all wrong: I was not going to come back a ghost. By passing the salt water, I was forced back into the world, painfully born into another life.

The next afternoon found me back in Bononia.