Island of Ghosts

V

The scribe Eukairios did not show up that day, and that night I began to believe that he had indeed run off in Bononia. The following morning, however, while we were busy striking camp and harnessing the horses, one of my men appeared at my wagon escorting him. I’d just finished arming myself for the journey and had climbed onto Farna, who was the best horse I had for carrying armor. The slave stopped in his tracks and stood looking up at me with a mixture of misery and resolution. He looked even smaller and drabber among so many glittering Sarmatian horsemen, and he was clutching a bundle of clothing tied to a stick.

“I’m sorry I’m late, my lord,” he said. “The dispatch vessel didn’t arrive back in Dubris until last night, so I stayed at the lord procurator’s house until this morning.”

“I am glad you arrived in time,” I replied. “We will set out shortly; you should get into the wagon.”

The men slept six to a wagon, but because I was commander, I had a wagon to myself. These were light wagons for campaigning, horse-drawn, not the heavy ox-wagons we would have lived in at home. But mine was still a large one, and both the body and the felt awning were stained red; the four horses that drew it were already harnessed. They were matched red bays, not large animals, but strong, enduring, and with some spirit, and they were tossing their heads and moving restlessly under the yoke. “I… don’t know how to drive…” Eukairios began, looking at them and losing some of his resolution.

“No one expects you to. The men of my bodyguard take turns. Just climb in and sit down.”

He climbed in; after a moment, he climbed through into the front and sat on the edge of the driver’s bench, over to one side.

Comittus galloped up on his shallow-hocked black. He had a gilded helmet and breastplate, and was wearing the purple tribune’s sash: he, too, had armed for the journey. “We’re ready to go!” he called, his eyes dancing with excitement. I turned and gave the troop drummer the signal to give the call to assemble: I had a few things to tell the whole dragon before we set out.

A few minutes later the wagons had been whirled out of the way and the dragon was gathered before me. The rain had finally stopped, and there was a bright September sun. I looked out over a plain of steel and horn, gleaming in the light. The horses shifted and danced, the banners of the squadrons tossed in the light breeze, and behind me on my left I could hear the air singing in the mouth of the standard.

“My brother azatani,” I shouted, trying to pitch my voice so they could all hear, “we are bound on the final stage of our journey, and I ask two things of you. First, I have sworn upon fire that we will do no harm to any Roman along the way: I entrust you with the keeping of my oath. I don’t say just that I want you to respect the lives and property of those you meet; I say that even if a thief should visit us, you must be blameless. Take him alive and give him to the legate to punish. Second, remember, now that you are armed again, that we are not in our own country and not free to follow our own customs. If you fight duels among yourselves, not one but both the duelists will die, the first at the hand of his opponent, and the second executed by the Romans as a murderer. I cannot defend you from that; even if you fight a man of another company for the sake of my own honor, I cannot defend you. So if you must fight, do so with blunted weapons, and not to the death.

“In twelve days we will be in Eburacum, and four days after that, in Cilurnum, where we will be based. I hear that it is a pleasant place beside a river, with abundant grazing for horses and good hunting nearby. We will need to travel no more than thirty Roman miles in any day, and I trust that we will be well provided for along the way. There are no more oceans to cross, and we will travel now as warriors, armed and honorable, and not as wretched prisoners. May God favor us!”

They cheered, waved their spears, and shouted, “Marha!” I gave another signal to the drummer, and he rattled out the call to march, which was taken up by the banner-bearers of the squadrons. Arshak and Gatalas were still speaking to their men, so we circled the parade ground while we waited for them to start. I never like to keep the men standing about waiting.

“What did you say to them?” asked Comittus, who’d turned his horse beside mine.

I told him, roughly.

“Would they really start fighting duels if you hadn’t warned them?” he asked in amazement.

I looked at him sideways, wondering what it must be like to lead a body of men who did not fight duels over every half-imagined slur. “Of course,” I said. “Though not so much with men from this dragon. We all know one another. But there are one or two points of conflict with the troops that follow Arshak and Gatalas.”

“What? I ought to know if I’m to… liaise properly.”

True enough. “The others sneer at the Roxalani in my company, and the Roxalani sometimes take offense. I am lucky in Kasagos, who is senior to the other Roxalanic captains. He is a sensible man and a priest and diviner, and he knows how to calm his fellow tribesmen and soothe their opponents-but still they fight, at times. Then we are second to Gatalas in the order of march. The men do not mind coming behind Arshak, because he is of royal blood, but Gatalas, they say, is no better than myself. So they and Gatalas’ men boast to one another that their horses are faster, their armor stronger, their own skill greater, and their commanders braver and more glorious-and sometimes they fight over it.” After a moment I added, “They did it to some extent even on the way from Aquincum. But then they were unarmed, and they were too wretched with bad food and weariness to have much heart for boasting. It will be worse now.”

I could have added that now Gatalas’ men were certain to say to mine, “Your commander is a Romanizer,” and my men would probably reply angrily, “Who got you that beef you’re eating?” and there would be blows over that, too. But what would be the point of trying to explain the danger and dishonor of Romanizing to a Roman?

The Romans were waiting for us by the tribunal. Priscus had even fewer troops than I’d expected: fifty dispatch riders and one century. He sent Arshak’s dragon in front, with a guide, and followed it with his own troops and their baggage. Gatalas’ dragon came next, and then the wagons, and finally my own company brought up the rear. Normally I would have expected that to be a dusty position-but everything was far too wet. The worst problem was horses losing horse-sandals in the churned-up mud verge of the road. As soon as I’d arranged the squadrons, I was obliged to leave them to dig the horse-sandals out on their own while I joined the legate. Senior Roman officers usually ride together when their forces are on the march, though Sarmatians stay with their men. Facilis had imposed the Roman order of march on us during the journey from Aquincum, largely to keep an eye on the officers and separate us from our followers, and I wasn’t surprised to find that Priscus retained this precaution.

Priscus was riding a solid and rather sleepy-looking gray at the head of the century-the legionaries, of course, marched on foot. Arshak and Gatalas and their liaison officers were already on his right when Comittus and I cantered up, and Facilis rode slightly behind them, keeping out of their way. Aurelia Bodica was on her husband’s left, sitting in her flimsy painted chariot again, with both the white stallion and another white horse to pull it. (I’d noticed her covered carriage with the baggage train, drawn by a less exalted horse.) She was even lovelier than I remembered, and she smiled at us very brightly.

“Greetings, cousin! Greetings, Lord Ariantes!” she called. “Isn’t it lucky the rain’s stopped?”

“Just in time for the journey,” agreed Comittus, falling in beside her.

She gave me a look of sweet concern. “Though I gather that you had very wet weather to travel in over the last month, Lord Ariantes. My husband”-she glanced toward him-“has been telling me that your troops have had such a difficult journey so far that you all have a number of men lying in the wagons with the baggage, too ill to ride. I hope we can recover them.”

I felt ashamed of my distrust of her. “I trust they will recover, Lady Aurelia Bodica,” I replied, “given better food and supplies.” I was glad she’d given me the chance to call the legate’s attention to the question of supplies again.

Priscus snorted.

“Well, I’ll be glad to help if I can,” declared Bodica earnestly. She glanced over at Arshak and Gatalas as well, and raised her voice so that they, too, could hear her offer, “As my husband can tell you, Princes, my family and my friends own a great deal of land and cattle in northern Britain, and I’d be glad to use whatever wealth or influence I have to help your people settle in happily.”

The legate smiled, and leaned out of the saddle to pat her hand. “You needn’t worry, my dear,” he told her. “I’m sure we can settle them without digging into our private fortunes. But thank you.”

Bodica gave him a lingering smile back. I bowed my head and thanked her for her kindness in making the offer; Arshak and Gatalas did the same. I gathered from their manner that they’d been introduced to her before I joined them, and that they found her impressive.

“Oh, and Lord Ariantes,” Bodica went on, “I believe I never actually thanked you for catching my horse the other day. Please excuse me! I was so surprised to find one of your people actually in Britain, it went right out of my head. But really, I’m very grateful. I do love this horse, and who knows what might have happened to him if you hadn’t caught him?”

“I am glad to have been of service to you, Lady,” I replied.

Arshak turned his mount, cantered behind the chariot, and pulled in beside me. “What is this?” he asked me, speaking Latin in courtesy to the company. “You had the good fortune to be of service to the lady?”

Bodica laughed. “Didn’t he even tell you, Lord Arshak?” (I noticed, with some surprise, that she said his name correctly, with the sh sound most Romans can’t pronounce.) “Was that modesty, Lord Ariantes, or didn’t you find the adventure worth repeating to your friends?”

I was taken aback: I hadn’t considered being knocked down by a horse an adventure.

“Ariantes is not given to boasting,” replied Arshak, giving me an affectionate look. “I think otherwise any service to a lady such as.. your wife, my lord Julius Priscus” (the pause before he tactfully brought the legate into the conversation was only just noticeable) “is a tale he would gladly have told us.”

Bodica gave him a look that said, “That is very pretty flattery, sir!” Priscus, however, was frowning anxiously. “How did the horse get loose?” he asked. “You hadn’t mentioned that, my dear. You just said you’d met one of our Sarmatians in the marketplace. Blizzard didn’t.. that is, the beast didn’t cause any trouble for you, did it?”

Bodica explained. Priscus gave Comittus a scowl, which the tribune received with a nervous, appeasing smile. “You were in charge of the escort, weren’t you, Tribune?” demanded the legate. “What were you thinking of, to let the beast slip its tether like that? Blizzard is a very valuable animal, shipped all the way from Iberia! You should have seen to it that he was tied securely.”

“I don’t know how it happened, sir,” replied Comittus. “I thought he was tied up securely.”

Priscus snorted again. “Don’t think. Check! That horse is not just a valuable animal, it’s a powerful one: it might injure Bodica if it got loose at the wrong time.” He glanced anxiously at his wife. “Really, my dear, I wish you’d use the gelding instead.”

“Oh, but I adore big strong fiery stallions, Tiberius, you know that!” Her quick, laughing under-the-lashes glance reinforced the double meaning.

Priscus gave a pleased grunt. “All the same,” he added, “there’s such a thing as too much fire in a horse. You remember that last animal you had nearly killed a groom, and I don’t like to think-”

“Tiberius!” she exclaimed, warningly, though she smiled on it, and he stopped. Her taste for fiery horses was evidently a sore point between them. No wonder Comittus had been anxious when the beast got loose.

“A stallion such as the lady Aurelia’s is no more dangerous than any other horse, if it is well trained and well handled,” I put in, trying to be helpful. What I said was true, though in fact, like most cavalrymen, I’ve always preferred a good quiet mare for any purpose, such as battle, that might frighten or alarm a horse.

Bodica gave me another dazzling smile, but the disquieting look was back in her eyes. Priscus gave me a hard glare. After a moment, Bodica began to ask questions about our mounts and our other horses.

It was an easy day’s riding, as I’d promised my men. We stopped in the middle of the afternoon, only twenty Roman miles from Dubris at a place called Durovernum: it had been decided that an easy journey north would give us time to recover from the hard one we’d had to Bononia. The men were in a good mood, happy at having their weapons back, happy at having reasonable food, happy at riding through the green rolling hills with their dragon leaping before them, the first Sarmatians to have crossed the ocean. They sang as they rode and told stories. I was less cheerful, worrying about the future. They might be happy now, but when they got to Cilurnum they would realize that they were here forever. Then they would miss their wives and families, hate the fellows who shared their wagons, and long for the open plains and the herds and wagons they had left behind. There would inevitably be trouble with drink and women, if there were any nearby, and quarrels over precedence and honor. And up to now they hadn’t spoken enough Latin to quarrel with Romans-but I guessed that they would learn it. When we stopped at Durovernum, I was eager to leave the legate and his party, with whom I’d been obliged to ride, and get back to my own men.

The legate, however, insisted that all the senior officers first come with him to the house at Durovernum where he would be staying-and then the local nobleman who owned the house obliged us to come in and have a drink with him. Arshak and Gatalas seemed pleased, but I did not want to stand about sipping wine and making small talk, leaving my horse untended in her armor and my men unsupervised in their camp, and as soon as I could, I made excuses and left. The local nobleman was some relation of the legate’s wife, and Lady Aurelia Bodica offered to show me where her kinsman’s servants had put my horse.

She picked her way carefully across the stable yard to where Farna was tethered, holding the skirts of her long cloak and gown high out of the mud. She had long straight legs and delicate ankles, and she stepped very proudly, so that it was a pleasure to watch her.

“What a beautiful animal,” she commented when we reached Farna.

I nodded, warming to the woman. Farna was worth all the other horses I’d brought put together, and they were all exceptional. She was seven years old, a golden chestnut with black points; she had a fine head, broad neck, deep, powerful chest and hindquarters, a round barrel, and straight legs. In conformation and in temperament, in strength and in endurance, in patience and in courage, she was altogether without fault. She was of the breed called Parthian or Nisaean, the largest and noblest of all breeds of horse, and she carried her blanket of gilded armor easily. I’d slipped the bit out of her mouth and loosened the saddle girths when I’d dismounted, to make her comfortable, and I slapped her side and began adjusting them again.

“What is he called?” asked Aurelia Bodica, coming over to pat Farna’s neck in the gap above the armor. The horse was so heavily armored she couldn’t tell its sex.

“She is called Farna,” I said.

Bodica smiled and patted Farna again. “What does that mean?”

“ ‘Glory.’ ”

“Glory,” repeated Aurelia Bodica softly. “Glory! Is that what you hoped for when you named her?”

The question, like many of her questions, was perceptive. “It is what I hoped for,” I admitted. “Then.”

“Not anymore?” She was watching me closely, her head a little on one side. I suddenly suspected that she’d shown me to my horse simply to have the opportunity of testing me in private, to see if I were indeed the sort of tool she and her husband were searching for. The warmth I’d started to feel cooled abruptly.

“No,” I said carefully. “I am not so ambitious now.”

She reached over and touched the back of my hand, her eyes still fixed on me intently. “Why not? Glory, surely, is the noblest ambition of free men.”

“I won glory in Pannonia,” I said, telling her the bitter truth. “I and my followers and others like me. And our people have paid for it with war, defeat, and… this.”

“You think I’m asking this for my husband, don’t you?” she said, with that unsettling secretive smile I’d disliked before. “He thinks so, too. But I am a noble-woman, and I can speak on my own account. My ancestors were kings. My family was offered the citizenship of Rome many times, but refused it-until my father inherited, a few years ago. I’m no more a Roman than you are. My people used to love glory too, and I can’t believe that it always comes at so high a price. War can bring victory as well as defeat, after all.” Her fingers curled around my own. “Though I am grateful to your defeat for bringing you here. My husband values you above the other two commanders. So do I.”

I turned away from the horse and looked at her in surprise. Her face, turned upward toward mine, was flower-like, disturbingly beautiful, and her hand now clasped my own firmly. “Lady,” I said, far less sure of myself than I had been a moment before, “Arshak is my superior in honor.”

“But not in experience,” she replied. “Nor, I think, in ability. You’ve achieved a great deal more for your men than he has. You might achieve more still.”

“I hope that I will,” I said, uncertainly. I wished I knew whether the way she held my hand was mere courtesy or something more. Roman customs in such matters are very different from those of my own people. “I wish them to have honor among the Romans and be content.”

“And that is all? No glory? No… revenge?”

I shook my head.

“Because it brought you war, defeat, and this,” she said, smiling again. “Is ‘this’so terrible, Lord Ariantes?” She touched the side of my face lightly, leaning forward.

I knew that if I matched that movement, she would come directly into my arms and let me kiss that unsettling smile away. A part of me burned to do just that, but I stood as if I had been turned to stone. I didn’t trust the place and the moment, in the stable yard of an unfamiliar house-and I didn’t trust her.

“By ‘this’ I meant servitude to Rome,” I told her harshly.

“So. Then it is terrible. What if someone offered you freedom? Do you want to become my husband’s man and Rome’s loyal servant?”

I couldn’t answer. Even if this were a test her husband had suggested to her, I couldn’t bring myself to say, “Yes,” and “No” was a road that led only to death.

Bodica laid her palm against my cheek. “You hate Rome,” she observed. “Ariantes, you don’t need to worry about saying so, not to me. My own people have suffered too.”

A door creaked open behind us, and Bodica instantly shifted her hand from me to Farna. “Such a beautiful mare,” she cooed. She glanced round and smiled warmly. “Tiberius, I’m over here! Don’t you think this is a beautiful horse?”

Her husband came out of the house and crossed the stable yard toward us. Arshak and Gatalas were behind him, together with the local nobleman, our host. “I thought Ariantes would be gone by now,” Priscus told his wife. “Have you been discussing horses with him all this time?”

She laughed. “Haven’t you noticed that all the Sarmatians can talk horses for hours? Seriously, Tiberius, don’t you think a foal by my stallion Blizzard out of this mare would be the best horse in the world?”

When I returned to my wagon, I tended my horses and sat by the evening fire in silence, going over the scene in the stable yard again and again and trying to understand it. I couldn’t. I couldn’t even tell whether the way Bodica had touched me was a sign of serious interest or meaningless flirtation, let alone guess what she’d meant by her talk of freedom and glory. I felt as though I were riding in a mist across a battlefield mined with pitfalls and scattered with caltrops that would lame my horse. Everywhere I turned there might be danger, but I could neither stand still nor go back.

The only thing I felt with any certainty was that I wanted nothing more to do with Lady Aurelia Bodica. I was bitterly ashamed of what I’d felt when she touched my cheek. I had not touched any woman since I last said good-bye to Tirgatao, and I was disgusted to find myself stirred by Bodica, however lovely she was and however noble. I had enough to worry about, too, without dangers from feuds between Roman factions or the threat of punishment for adultery with my commander’s wife.

The only other man in the dragon who seemed gloomy was Eukairios. He sat silent by the fire while the rest talked and laughed in a language that he, of course, did not understand. After a while, he asked me where he could sleep, and I took him back into the wagon and cleared a space for him.

I woke in the middle of the night to the sound of sobbing. It pulled me from deep sleep, and for a moment I could not remember when or where I was. “Artanisca?” I said, sitting up. “Artanisca, love, I’m here. Don’t cry.”

The sobbing stopped abruptly, and as it did I realized that it had not been a child’s sobbing, but the hard, painful gasping of a man. I remembered Eukairios.

“I’m sorry, my lord,” came the slave’s voice out of the darkness, still rough with grief. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

I dropped onto my back again and stared up blindly into the blackness. “No,” I said. “I am sorry that you grieve so for Bononia.”

“I didn’t mean to complain,” he told me. “You have been very kind. It was a great consolation to me to be able to say good-bye, and to have my friends’ prayers supporting me as I set out. I do thank you. But it’s… foreign to me. It will get better in time. I’ll learn the language.”

He was speaking to encourage himself. “Yes,” I said. I closed my eyes, willing myself to be still.

“What does ‘artanisca’ mean? It is what you said just now, isn’t it?”

I was silent for a long minute. “It is a name,” I answered, at last. “My little son. He is dead.”

“Oh!” After a moment, “I am sorry, my lord.”

“Yes.” I pressed my hands against my face, trying to stop my own tears at the thought that Artanisca would never wake me in the night again, never; Tirgatao would never get up to pluck him from his cradle and place him between us, round and warm, and slide her slim arm around my back, leaning her head against my own. Never, never, never.

“What do your people say of the dead?” I asked, saying something, anything, rather than gaze into that black chasm. “Do followers of your cult burn them, like the Romans, or do they lay them in the earth?”

“Either, my lord,” Eukairios said, after a surprised pause. “Bury if we can, burn if we can’t. We believe that if we have died in faith, it doesn’t matter how our bodies are treated.”

“But you believe in immortality.” I remembered Natalis on the ship, mentioning the cult’s disgusting rituals done in private houses at night, to give immortality.

“We believe that one day this earth will shed its skin like a snake, and be renewed; that it suffers now like a woman in labor, but when its pain is ended there will be joy. Then all things will be made new, and the dead rise from ashes or the grave, and all that was broken will be made whole.”

“You believe that the bodies of the dead can return from ashes?”

“If they were made once in their mother’s womb, they can be made again from the earth, or smoke, or ash. What matters is what they were when they lived, not what was done to them afterward.”

“My people believe that when fire destroys the body,” I said, “the soul is destroyed too. Fire is holy, and death pollutes it.”

“If you think fire is holy, shouldn’t it purify death?”

“That is not what we believe of it.”

We were silent for a little while. I imagined Tirgatao burning, and the pain was so great I couldn’t breathe. I spoke. I had to, even though I was weakening myself before, of all people, a miserable slave. “My wife’s body was burned,” I said, “and my little son’s as well. They were in the wagons. The Romans came-the second Pannonian cavalry. Tirgatao took Artanisca and jumped out of the wagon, hoping to run with him to safety, but she was heavy with our second child, and slow; they saw her. She had her bow, and shot at them; they told me she killed one man. The rest fell on her with swords and killed her. Then they killed Artanisca. They were angry because we had made them suffer in the war, and because she had killed one of them. They looted the wagons and set them on fire. They cut her body open, and tore the child from her womb, and hurled it on the fire. I pray to all the gods it was dead! They took a horse’s head, and put that in her womb, and flung her on the fire, like that, and Artanisca after her. Another woman who had hidden in a well saw it all. I was wounded on the field, five miles away; I was lying in the mud all the while, not conscious. When my men came to find me next morning, they did not tell me what had happened. I asked and asked for Tirgatao, and they said she was not there. I thought she had been sent to safety.”

I heard the floorboards creak as he moved. “Christ have mercy!” he whispered.

“I do not believe a crucified Roman would help it.”

“But you believe fire is holy, and your god, Marha, is holy and good?”

“That is what my people believe.”

“Then… then surely, fire for your wife and child would be release, not destruction?”

“Perhaps,” I said. “The Romans burn their dead to release the soul. Perhaps they are right. I hope they are right, and you also.”After a moment I added, thickly, “It is the thought of Artanisca that hurts me most, when she was already dead, screaming beside her body. He was two years old. I think of him crying, and of her burning. I was helpless to prevent it, and helpless to revenge it, and I am helpless still. Do not repeat anything of what I have just said. To anyone.”

“God forbid!” he said vehemently. “I’d as soon tear a man’s skin off and wear it round the camp.”

“My people do that sometimes.” I felt very tired now, and ashamed. But the chasm had moved away a little, and I could breathe again. “I am sorry, Eukairios, that I have made you suffer too. I have seen enough suffering this year to wish to see no more of it. But if you should mention what I have said, I would have to kill you. A commander must be strong.”

“You don’t need threats, my lord, to make me be silent.”

Not because I must be strong, but because he knew I was weak. It was a strange feeling, being pitied by a slave. It should have made me angry, but didn’t. It was comforting, to have another human being in my wagon, not be alone; comforting to be able to grieve without fear. “Good night, then,” I said, beginning to drowse off.

“Good night, my lord.”

I did not want to meet his eyes next morning. But he walked up to me while I was saddling Farna, and asked, in the dry quiet voice he’d used in Bononia, whether I wanted any letters or accounts done. I asked him a question about how the Romans handled accounts, and he began explaining it. Comittus appeared while he was still explaining, and joined in the explanations. The talk was interrupted by our setting out, then resumed and continued for a while on the road. I was aware, as Comittus and I rode back to the place beside the legate, that Eukairios had turned his attention to the man who was driving my wagon and was trying to learn a few words of Sarmatian.

“He’s a good scribe,” observed Comittus. “Natalis did well by you.”

“Yes,” I answered. Natalis had done very well by me-or perhaps very badly. I could not treat the man as a slave now. Property does not wake up crying in the night, or pity the tears you shed in return. I might grow to hate the man because he knew my weakness-or we might end up friends. How we would manage remained to be seen.

“I suppose I ought to learn some Sarmatian, too,” Comittus said, thoughtfully.

I looked at him appreciatively. “I think the men will learn Latin. But a few words from you in their own tongue would please them.”

“I’ll try and learn some, then,” he declared, eagerly. “Though I must say I’m glad you speak Latin as well as you do. Your Latin is much better than the others’-a little formal, maybe, but it’s educated Latin. Where did you learn it?”

“My father had a… I do not know the word for it. A client or tenant; a man whom he permitted to farm some land where he had grazing rights, in return for some of the produce. There were a number of these people near the Tisza River, at the winter pastures. This one was educated. At any rate, my father used to remit a part of the tribute from this man in exchange for Latin lessons for myself and my sisters. He wished us to speak educated Latin. Nobles of our nation try to learn some Latin, but we have little opportunity to practice it, in our country, and only use it for trading, or raids. I had a better teacher than most.” I didn’t add the other truth about my Latin, that it was good because I’d enjoyed the lessons and gone to talk to the old man even when I hadn’t needed to. I’d always been ashamed of that. “He used to read us poetry,” I said instead.

Comittus laughed. “ ‘Arms and the man I sing, who first from the walls of Troy’?”

“Yes, he did read us that.”

“Did you like it?”

I shook my head. “We have our own songs of heroes, which are bloodier, and more to our own taste. But I liked some of the other things he read us. Did you grow up speaking Latin?”

He flushed slightly. “Yes, of course! That thing Gaius said, that ‘Brittunculus’ gibe-that was just a joke. I’m as much a Roman as he is. My family’s had the citizenship since my grandfather’s day.”

“I meant no offense. I was wondering if I should learn some British.”

He relaxed again. “Ah. The fact is, British is my first language-though I learned Latin before I could read.” He added it so hastily that I suspected he had learned Latin in order to read.

“Is Javolenus a British name?” I asked.

He looked astonished. “No, of course not. No, he was a procurator when my grandfather got the citizenship-the first Javolenus, I mean. Why did you think it was?”

“You said you had a British name, and Comittus sounded Latin to me,” I answered. “Comitia, comites, comitatus…”

“That’s only got one t sound in it. Completely different word.” He gave me one of his sudden confidential grins. “At home they call me Comittus all the time; I’m only Lucius in the army. If you like, since you’re not a Roman either, you can call me Comittus as well.”

I nodded, and wondered if he realized how much he had just given away with that little word “either.”

On the third day after leaving Dubris we arrived outside Londinium. Priscus wanted a day to conduct some business with the governor in the capital, but he did not want to take us into the city. He commandeered a house for himself and his lady, in a field with a clean stream in it about a mile south of the city, and next morning left us camped in the field while he rode in. He took a dozen of his dispatch riders but left the rest, and the century, under the command of Flavius Facilis and with instructions to keep an eye on us.

Eukairios asked permission to go into the city as well. “I could buy some tablets and some ink and writing leaves,” he said. “And I’d like to look up some friends-with your permission, Lord Ariantes.”

“You have friends in Londinium?” I asked. “Are there Christians there as well?”

He jumped, then gave an apologetic smile. “I forgot that you know. I wouldn’t say the name, my lord, not so loudly! I was told a few names, and… and a password. I hoped…”

“See them if you wish. And buy the things. Buy yourself some better clothing, too. How much money do you need?”

He glanced down at his tunic with a surprised expression, as though the threadbare gray-brown patched thing were perfectly respectable. “How much better do you want it to be?” he asked.

I shrugged. “You know what a nobleman’s slave should look like better than I. Buy what is fitting to my position.”

He took a silver denarius for his writing supplies and twenty-five for new clothes.

“Is there anything else you wish to buy?” I asked him.

He stared at me a moment, then gave a sudden dry chuckle, stopped quickly in embarrassment. “You really don’t know anything about slaves, do you, my lord?” he said. “I took a few sestertii more than I’m likely to need-and I’m honest.”

I handed him three more sestertii. “Honesty is rewarded,” I said. “Do you need to borrow a horse?”

He took the coins with pleasure and pushed them quickly into his purse. “Thank you very much, my lord! But you’ve forgotten that I can’t ride.”

It was still hard for me to remember that anyone could not ride. “Well then, walk-and enjoy Londinium. Stay in the city tonight, if you wish, but be back tomorrow morning.”

When he was gone I went to the center of the camp, and I was there, discussing business with Arshak and Gatalas, when Aurelia Bodica came driving up in her little chariot. She had no attendants with her, not even her driver; she guided the white stallion herself, turning it neatly around the wagon shafts and past the tethered knots of horses, and drawing it to a smart halt in front of us. Her blue cloak had fallen back from her shoulders, her cheeks were flushed with the wind, and her eyes were dancing. “Princes of the Sarmatians!” she called, smiling at all of us. “I have come to ask you a favor.”

Arshak instantly leapt forward and offered her his hand to help her down from the chariot; Gatalas, just a second behind him, had to content himself with catching the stallion’s reins. “Lady Aurelia,” Arshak said, smiling at her, “you need ask no favors, since we are yours to command.”

“Oh, thank you, Lord Arshak! I’ve decided that I’d like to go into the city, and I need an escort. My husband has already gone, of course, and taken all the tribunes, so I’ve come to ask you if you could provide one.”

“It would give me honor,” replied Arshak at once. “I and my bodyguard will escort you.”

“Lady Aurelia, your husband wished us to remain in the camp,” I intervened. “Have you told the camp prefect what you want?”

She smiled at me, her eyes sparkling. “I have not. I know perfectly well what Facilis would say-‘You can’t trust Sarmatians; I’ll give you a dozen legionaries.’ But I’d much rather have an escort of Sarmatians. Legionaries are dull. If I went in with them, everyone would think I was a centurion’s wife. But if I go in with Lord Arshak and his bodyguard, the whole city will be out on the streets staring, particularly if you put all your armor on. Please do put all your armor on! Why shouldn’t we show off to the capital a bit? Don’t worry about my husband being angry, Lord Ariantes. He won’t punish you for leaving camp if you go with me.”

Gatalas laughed. I cursed inwardly. From the way Bodica had phrased it, it sounded as though I were afraid of her husband. Perhaps she thought I was.

“Your husband’s anger does not concern me, anyway,” Arshak told her. “I am pleased to escort such a noble and beautiful lady, and I wish to see the city myself. Ariantes and Gatalas will remain here to look after the men, yes?”

“No,” said Gatalas, “I will come too. I will leave Parspanakos” (the captain of his bodyguard) “in charge of the dragon, and I will take ten men.”

I hesitated. I did not want to go into Londinium: I’d never liked cities, I didn’t want to leave my followers unsupervised, and I’d resolved to avoid Aurelia Bodica. On the other hand, she thought I was afraid. Besides, if I didn’t go and the other princes did, their troops would have yet another thing to hurl in the faces of my men-particularly after Aurelia Bodica’s comment. “I will come as well, then,” I said. “I do not wish to fail in the respect due to a legate’s lady.”

“Of course,” she said, tossing her head. “So I shall ride into Londinium with three princes of the Sarmatians to escort me, one of them the nephew of a king! There are not many women can boast of that!”

So we all accompanied the legate’s lady to Londinium, each of us with ten men from our bodyguard. Aurelia Bodica wanted to visit a temple and she wanted to go shopping. She had the length of silk Arshak had given her husband, and she wanted some of it unraveled and rewoven with linen thread, so that it would go further: Londinium, apparently, was the best place in Britain to have this done. She chatted pleasantly as we approached the city, about this, about the shops and the temples-but as we came up to the bridge that crosses the Tamesis River into the city, the talk became more serious.

“Londinium,” she said, stopping her chariot just before the long wooden span and gesturing at the city beyond-the quays with the ships drawn up to them, the warehouses, the house roofs huddled behind. Across the river and to our left was a larger building with an elaborate facade. “That’s the governor’s palace,” Bodica said, pointing to it. “Tiberius will be there now.”She shook the reins and started the chariot forward again. “But you can’t see the bridge from the palace. All the windows look inward. Very Roman, I think, to study your own imported magnificence rather than the circumstances of the province around you. Look there!”

She pointed along our bank of the river, to our left. There was a cross fixed in the mud by the waterside, with a tattered mass of flesh and bone sagging from it. A few birds fluttered about it, pecking.

“They often leave the bodies of criminals there,” Bodica told us. “As a warning. You can’t see them from the governor’s palace, either. When my ancestress, the queen of the Iceni, sacked Londinium, she hung up the bodies of… Roman nobles… along the same bank. Hundreds of bodies.”

Arshak’s face sharpened. “She sacked the Roman capital, this queen? She had many followers?”

“Oh, very many! In those days the whole island longed to throw off the Roman yoke and live free under its own kings and queens. We were a race of noble warriors then, like your own people.” As we rode into Londinium she recounted the story of Queen Boudica of the Iceni: how an unjust Roman official had ordered her to be flogged and her daughters raped; how she’d raised the South against the Romans and sacked the two greatest cities; how finally she had been defeated in a fierce battle; how she’d taken poison rather than grace a Roman triumph. It was a tale of courage and desperate heroism, and I was moved by it despite myself.

“That was a long time ago,” Bodica finished quietly. “More than a century now. The British horse has been broken to the yoke now, and pulls the cart quietly-except in the North, where it still frets a little. I expect that, in time, your own people will be yoked beside it.”

We all stiffened at that. “Our people have never been conquered!” Arshak said fiercely.

“But you’re here,”she pointed out-sadly.

“We are the price our people paid for a truce. My uncle is still king of the Sarmatians. The emperor hates him, but the emperor had to make terms with him nonetheless. Our nation is noble, not one of slaves.”

Bodica bowed her golden head. “At times,” she whispered, “I wish my own people could say the same.”

Her voice was soft and sad-but there was a look in her eyes that contradicted that softness. It was like that of a wrestler who’s found his opponent’s weakness. Arshak noticed nothing: he was plainly enjoying himself. As we rode off the bridge into the city, the citizens did indeed run out into the street to stare at us, and he preened himself in their gaze. Bodica began to ask him about his own battles against the Romans, and soon the talk was of struggles and scalping. Gatalas was less happy, but largely because he had fewer scalps to boast of. I was not happy at all. My old distrust was back, stronger than ever, and I wanted only to get away.

“You’re very silent, Lord Ariantes,” Bodica said at last. “You’ve said barely ten words together to me since Durovernum. Have I offended you?”

I bowed my head. “Not in the least, Lady. You have shown me much honor.”

“Are you keeping quiet, then, because you don’t like boasting? From all I’ve heard, you’ve done as much damage to your enemies as Lord Arshak, if not more.”

“Our brave raids against the enemy,” I said harshly, “provoked a terrible war in which our people suffered defeat. I see no point in boasting of it.”

The eager, satisfied, warlike look vanished from the faces of my listeners. The lady frowned; Gatalas became sullen; Arshak looked angry.

“I am proud to have fought for our people!” Arshak declared. “We were defeated, but we have never been conquered!”

The Romans didn’t want to conquer us, I thought. They had no way to govern a people without cities. If we hadn’t raided them, they would have kept the peace; because we had, they’d considered not conquest, but extermination. It was our own greed, for goods and for glory, that brought ruin on us, and that the ruin had not been greater was due as much to a Roman rebellion in the East as to our own courage. But I couldn’t say that to Arshak without offending him.

“What good does it do us to recall this now?” I said instead. “We have all sworn on fire to serve Rome, and if we remember how we fought her, it will only make it harder for us.”

“Is servitude what you want?” asked Bodica.

I had my answer to that this time. “Our heirs in our own country are free. For ourselves, it does not matter: we are dead men, all of us.”

“You don’t look dead to me,” commented Bodica, smiling again.

“We’re only dead in our own country,” replied Arshak, smiling back at her. “Here beyond the stream of Ocean, even Ariantes will have to come back to life in the end, little as he wishes to. Be gentle, Lady: he isn’t used to living with defeat. None of us are.”

“But why should you think that here beyond the ocean, freedom and glory have become luxuries you can’t afford?” Her smile was still directed at me, but her eyes had slid over to meet Arshak’s.

“I don’t,” said Arshak vehemently-and suddenly they were allies. A part of me cried out its agreement with them, and urged me to join them, to accept the hinted offer now, quickly, before it was too late. I think I would have if I’d had only myself to decide for, despite the oath I’d sworn at Aquincum. I had five hundred others, though, who would be bound by my agreement, and because of them I could not choose rashly. Besides, I had, still, the sense that we were being played upon. Bodica was no more a Sarmatian than Facilis was, and enmity to Rome did not make her our friend.

When Bodica had visited her temple I excused myself, saying that there ought to be at least one senior officer in the camp-though I left five men with her to make it clear that I was not afraid of the legate. The other five and I started back.

We weren’t used to cities. The narrow streets of close-set houses, crowding windowless over the road, confused us, and we wandered helplessly for a while, looking for some familiar landmark. I eventually stopped and asked a shopkeeper for directions to the bridge.

“You mean the bridge to Ladybank?” he asked.

“It is the one that crosses the Tamesis,” I replied.

“To Ladybank,” he agreed, nodding. “You go back down to the corner and turn right, then left, and it’ll be there in front of you.”

“I thank you.”

The shopkeeper looked up at me curiously as I gathered the reins again. “We call the other side Ladybank,” he told me. “On account of all the ladies hung up there when Queen Boudica sacked the city.”

I paused.

He nodded, pleased at seeing a foreigner suddenly so intent on his local knowledge. “You’re not from Britain, are you? You’ve heard of Queen Boudica?”

“A little.”

“You’ll have heard, then, that she sacked Londinium. Well, they say that when the old queen took the city, the men were already dead defending it, so she revenged herself on the women. She had the wives and daughters of the Roman citizens stripped, tortured, mutilated, and impaled along the bank there. So it’s been called Ladybank ever since.”

“I thank you,” I repeated. I nodded to him, and started in the direction he’d indicated.

Why, I wondered, had Aurelia Bodica left the cruel executions out of her hero tale and implied that the bodies were those of dead Roman officials? Because she admired her ancestress and believed no evil of her? Or because she knew that cruelty to defeated prisoners would offend her audience and lose their sympathy for the British cause?

We found the bridge, and I left it behind me with a sense of relief. The commandeered house was near the road, with the legionary tents pitched in a neat square in its stable yard; our own camp was behind. When I rode up to the road gate I found Facilis standing there fuming.

“Where are the others?” he demanded, “Where’s the lady Aurelia Julii? Why did you go into the city, may the gods destroy it?”

He must have deliberately decided to call her by her husband’s name; I’d heard nobody else use it. I told him where everyone was, and he swore again. “The lady’s husband offered her an escort this morning, a Roman escort. She said she had a headache and wanted to stay quietly in the house for the day! She’s left her little slave girl confined to the house in tears, and her driver sulking in the stables. May I perish if I know what she’s up to!”

I shrugged and gestured for my men to go on back to their wagons.

Facilis looked at them sourly as they jingled past. “She was parading you, I suppose, like a triumphant general,” he said. “I hope you enjoyed it.”

“I did not,” I replied. I sat for a moment looking down at Facilis. I had no love for the man, but he was shrewd and perceptive, a party to Roman debates from which I was excluded-and he plainly didn’t trust Aurelia Bodica any more than I did myself. “You think, then, that she is ‘up to’ something,” I said quietly.

Facilis let out a long breath through his nose. “I don’t say anything against a legate’s lady, Ariantes. Remember that.”

“Lucius Javolenus Comittus admires her greatly. The other two tribunes are… unhappy at the mention of her.”

“Afraid, you mean.” Facilis’ voice had dropped to a whisper now, and I had to pull my helmet off to hear him. “They, and most of the lads, are afraid of her. And I don’t quite know why.”

“Javolenus Comittus is a native Briton,” I said, slowly. “He is related to her. The others are of Italian descent.”

“And she’s a descendant of the native royalty.” Facilis glanced round, then came over and caught my stirrup. “May I perish, Ariantes, I don’t know Britain any better than you do. I’m a Pannonian and I’ve never been here before. There’s something going on, all right, underneath what they actually say and do, but I don’t understand it and I can’t make it out. The fact that she’s native royalty is part of it, but not all of it by any means. All the lads in the century here are British-born and most of them are from the northern tribes, the ones that have had risings a generation or two ago, but they’re good lads, loyal to the emperor. And they’re afraid of her.”

I dismounted and stood facing him, holding Farna’s bridle. “And my people?”

He gave a hiss between his teeth. “So you’ve seen it. Yes, she’s after you, all right. You in particular, but Arshak and Gatalas as well. She’s asked and asked about all of you. It could be innocent curiosity, but it isn’t.”

“In Britain, queens have led armies.”

“Just like Sarmatians. I’d feel pretty damned unhappy if a Sarmatian princess were married to a legate on the Danube. But it’s much more complicated here. On the Danube, we were on one side of the river and you were on the other, and we all knew who was who. Here everything’s all muddled up.”

“Southern tribesmen in togas,” I agreed, “and northerners, so you say, in strip armor.”

We looked at each other for a moment. “What do the other two think about the lady Aurelia Julii?” he asked.

“They think she is a noble and beautiful lady, of royal blood, and they are pleased to find a commander’s wife suited to their own dignity. They are flattered at her attention.”

“Arrogant bastards! Them and their damned ancestors!”

I shook my head. “You should not say that to me, Flavius Facilis. It will…”

He joined me on the end of the phrase. “… only make trouble! Very well, very well, you’re an aristocratic bastard yourself, and I’ll keep my plebeian mouth shut about your ancestors. At least you’ve got more sense than the rest of them.”

“What does the legate think?” I asked. That was the real question.

“Lord Julius Priscus is forty-two and a widower. He married the lady last year. He thinks she is wonderfully beautiful and the cleverest woman he’s ever met, and he thinks she’s after your lot to help him manage you. I don’t know. Perhaps she is. They were all shaken to hear the truth about Sarmatians, and they still don’t really believe it.” He stared at me for another moment, then said, “I’d have expected you to jump at what she’s offering, whatever it is. You’re no friend of Rome, and maybe here’s your chance to play ‘divide and rule’ for yourself.”

“I have sworn oaths, Flavius Facilis. And…”

And, and. And I didn’t like the woman. I couldn’t explain why, even to myself. I’d known her only a few days. But I did not like that assessing gaze and the probing questions, and liked them even less coupled with the sweet smiles and girlish enthusiasm, the delicate touch of her hand against my face. To my people, lying is worse than murder, and too much of what she did had the sweetly foul scent of deceit. It was unfair, perhaps, to regard her with so much suspicion. I had dug for information myself, of late, and taken advantage where I could, of Comittus, of Eukairios, of Natalis to some extent. But still, I wanted to keep myself and my people away from her.

“I would have thought that you would… like her better yourself, Flavius Facilis,” I finished instead. “Perhaps she is, as you say, trying to manage us.”

“Perhaps she is,” he agreed. “But I don’t believe that any more than you do. Maybe it’s just because I’m a stranger here, and notice things the others take for granted. And, I admit, there’s another reason, which is no reason at all to suspect a woman of… whatever. I don’t like the way she treats that little girl she has to do her hair. I could hear it, at Natalis’ house and here as well. ‘Please, my lady, I didn’t mean to, my lady, please, no, please…’ and the sound of the damned woman using the stick.”

“What had the girl done?” I asked, shocked.

“Nothing. Got a curl out of place when she did her mistress’s hair, or brought washing water that was cold. Crack, crack, crack, and the girl sobbing. Can’t be more than sixteen. I wouldn’t treat a healthy young recruit that way, let alone a skinny little girl-and one that’s pregnant too, by the look of her. It makes me sick. Where’s your slave?”

“You need not ask that now, Facilis, in the same breath,” I told him, in a low voice, beginning to be angry. “He is in Londinium, shopping and visiting friends.”

He looked at me a moment longer. “No,” he said, finally, “I shouldn’t have said that in the same breath. You wouldn’t hit a slave. Even that business in Budalia” (the rope and dagger incident) “shows that. You wouldn’t cut down a man that had dropped his sword and was using his shield as a stretcher for a wounded friend, either.”

“Who says that I have?” I demanded, now openly angry.

“No one. One of you bastards did-but I guess it wasn’t you.” He turned and stalked back toward the house, slashing at the weeds along the road with his vine-stalk baton.

I remounted Farna and cantered back to the wagons. Now I knew how his son had died. It was some relief to know that, after all, the killer had not been me.

Arshak and Gatalas returned from the city late in the afternoon. They were in a loud and exuberant mood, laughing with each other over the sights of Londinium and the charm of Aurelia Bodica. But Banadaspos, who was second in the bodyguard and who’d been in charge of the five men I’d left in the city, seemed annoyed about something. I asked him what had happened, and he shrugged and said they had simply escorted the lady around the shops. “She is a very lovely lady, the legate’s lady,” he said, “and from what I could understand, very clever as well. But she’s not good with horses.”

He himself was very good with horses, the best in the whole dragon. I’d taken him into my bodyguard because of his skill with them, although he was a commoner by birth, and made him second to Leimanos because of his intelligence, his loyalty, and because I liked him. “What do you mean?” I asked him.

He shrugged again. “That stallion she has for her chariot smelled a mare in the marketplace. It kept trying to get to her, neighing and kicking at the traces. Well, stallions will! But she lost her temper and took the whip to it, and dragged at the reins until its mouth was dripping with blood. She has a bit on that bridle like a steel trap. What is the point of treating an animal like that? Any of us could have brought it around for her if she’d let us. If she can’t manage a stallion, she ought to get a driver who can, or use a gelding or a mare. I tell you, my prince, I can’t bear to see a good horse mishandled, and in my opinion the other commanders shouldn’t have allowed her to do it.”

“I don’t think she likes admitting there’s something she can’t do,” I replied. “And she likes asking for help even less.”

“You’re undoubtedly right,” Banadaspos agreed at once. “But these Britons are all hopeless with horses.”