Island of Ghosts

by Gillian Bradshaw

  Eukairios, who’d been standing quietly by the entrance to the cabin all this while, dropped his accounts ledger with a clatter and stared at Natalis in horror. “Lord procurator!” he gasped.

  “I could not accept,” I said. “My people do not keep slaves.” I spoke quickly because I was angry with myself. I already knew that if Natalis pressed me, I’d accept. Now that I’d been offered him, I knew I wanted the scribe badly.

  “Oh, you must have some slaves!” protested Natalis. “How can a gentleman manage without them? What do you do with the captives you take in all your wars, eh?”

  “We do not take captives, Lord Procurator. We do not keep foreigners in our wagons, and our own people are all free, the sons and daughters of warriors. What would I do with a slave? Eukairios cannot ride a horse.” (I’d discovered this in Bononia when I asked him to take a message, and it had shocked and astonished me.) “Where would I put him?”

  “I’m sure you could arrange something,” Natalis said easily.

  At this, Eukairios interrupted. “Lord Procurator,” he stammered, “please, my lord, please don’t send me away from Bononia.”

  “Be quiet, man! Well, Ariantes? It would be a shame to waste your talents because of a lack of pen and ink.”

  “But, Lord Procurator…” begged Eukairios.

  “I said, be quiet!” Natalis snapped.

  Eukairios staggered over to Natalis and dropped to his knees, reaching out a hand to his master. “Please, my lord, I beg you, my lord, please don’t-”

  Natalis shoved the hand away. “Why are you making a scene like this? You don’t have any family in Bononia.”

  “No,” pleaded Eukairios, “but I have friends, old and dear friends and-”

  “I know all about your friends,” Natalis said, now tight with anger, “and I don’t want them connected with anyone in my office. You’d disgrace us all, Eukairios, if there was trouble here like there was in Lugdunum. Do you think I want to see a scribe from my own office-the office of the procurator of the British fleet! — killed in the arena to amuse the mob? You can go off to Britain with the Sarmatians. Even if you find some more of your ‘friends’ there, no one will pay any attention to them.”

  Eukairios went white. He knelt with his hands on the floor before him, like a beast. “I’m sorry, Lord Valerius Natalis,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I… I… you know…” He rubbed at his eyes. “Oh my God, my God!”

  “Get out,” Natalis ordered him. “You’re embarrassing Lord Ariantes.”

  Eukairios staggered out.

  Natalis turned back to me with a forced smile. “The truth of the matter is, I’d be glad if you’d take him off my hands,” he said, apparently realizing he had to explain the scene. “He’s a good, reliable scribe, but he’s a Christian. I’ve overlooked that in the past, but there have been some demands in Gaul to stamp them out, and I don’t want any scandal to attach to the office. He’d be all right in Britain. No one cares about the Christians there.”

  “What is a Christian?” I asked, torn between pity for Eukairios and suspicion of Natalis at this admission that he wanted to get rid of the man.

  “A follower of an illegal cult. Christ was a Jewish sophist crucified for sedition under the emperor Tiberius, and some of the Jews were stupid enough to decide that he was a god-and not just any god, but the Jewish god, who can’t even be spoken of by name. The rest of the Jews naturally turned on them with all their usual ferocity toward blasphemers, so they went Greek, and now there are adherents of this lunacy in every city in the empire where Greeks are found. It appeals to slaves and riffraff, of course, not the better classes.”

  He rolled his aristocratic eyes in contempt, and went on pompously, “The Christians practice disgusting rituals in private houses at night, hoping, poor wretches, that this will give them immortality, and they refuse to worship any divinity except their crucified sophist, and even refuse to make offerings to the genius of the emperor and the spirit of Rome-so, of course, the cult’s illegal. It was banned almost immediately after it appeared, but that hasn’t stopped it spreading. Personally, I don’t see any point in punishing the Christians, and I’ve turned a blind eye to the business as much as possible. I don’t believe most of the stories about them-they aren’t wicked, just silly pathetic fools. And, as I said, nobody’s ever bothered with the cult in Britain-and even if somebody did, no one would worry that you, a barbarian nobleman, had the least sympathy for that kind of nonsense. But if anyone took official notice of Eukairios and his ridiculous religion, he could be killed for it. Complete waste of a good scribe, in my opinion. Now you know the worst of Eukairios. The best-that he’s hardworking, experienced, and able-you knew already. I can add to that that he doesn’t drink, doesn’t get into trouble with women, and keeps out of quarrels. This cult is the one great daring secret of his drab little life.”

  “There has been trouble with this cult in Gaul?” I asked, after a moment.

  “They executed a pack of the cultists in Lugdunum,” Natalis admitted, “and some administrators in the South have called for a purge. I’d intended to shift Eukairios to Dubris anyway. But I’d rather give him to you. I do believe you’d find him useful.”

  I was silent for another moment. I, too, believed I’d find the scribe useful. It was against all the customs of my own people to keep any slave, and I didn’t like the sound of this cult at all-but I needed the man to write letters for me. I wouldn’t know how to buy or hire another scribe. I had no idea how much a good scribe would cost, and I suspected that I’d need all the money I’d brought with me to secure a good position for my men. “Thank you, Lord Valerius Natalis,” I said at last. “I accept him.” I got to my feet. “But let me give you a gift as well, in gratitude for your efforts on our behalf.” I unfastened the gold pin from my coat. It was dragon-shaped, set with rubies, and about as long as my middle finger. “This I have worn as prince-commander of a dragon of Sarmatian cavalry,” I said. “Very few Romans have ever held one of these, my lord Natalis. Perhaps the emperor alone. I trust you will keep it and remember my people kindly.” I set it in his hands.

  Natalis went pink with pleasure. “You have quite outdone me in your generosity, Lord Ariantes! Thank you, thank you very much indeed!” He took his own brooch off and pinned his cloak with mine instead. He fondled it a minute, running his fingers along the curves of the gold. “I will certainly remember you with friendship.”

  I’d thought that morning of giving him one of my horses; I saw that I’d been correct to offer instead this, which a Sarmatian would have valued less. I was relieved. I had another pin-in fact, I had a wagonful of valuables I had brought along especially for bribing Romans-and it would have been hard to part with any of the horses. “As I shall remember you,” I told Natalis. “But you must excuse me now, my lord. I ought to stay with my horses to make sure they come to no harm. I could not easily replace them.”

  Eukairios was sitting beside the horses with his cloak over his head. When I came up he pulled it off his head again and rubbed his face. The hold was only dimly lit by the light that came in down the gangways, but I could still see well enough that he’d been crying. “Wh-what happened?” he asked me. It was a sign of how distressed he was that he omitted my title.

  “I accepted you,” I told him. After a moment I added, to defend myself against his misery, “He would have sent you away from Bononia anyway.”

  “To Dubris?” When I nodded, he rubbed his face again. “I didn’t realize he knew,” he said wretchedly. “I always thought no one in the office knew.”The one great daring secret of his drab little life, as Natalis had called it, had proved to be no secret at all, and he was trembling with the shock of it. “He told you I was a Christian?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah. And had you ever heard anything about us?”

  “No. But I understand that it is illegal.”

  “It’s all lies, what they say,” Eukairios declared bitterly. “Wicked lies. People have die
d for them, tortured until there wasn’t any sound flesh to use the irons on, but it’s all, all lies. We don’t”-he looked up and met my eyes directly-“we don’t hold incestuous orgies and feast on human flesh. We are forbidden to shed blood; we are told to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. If I had any choice in the matter, my faith wouldn’t allow me to work for the regular army, let alone for a man who decorates his horses’ bridles with men’s scalps and drinks from a Roman skull. God help me.”

  “I do not have that cup anymore,” I said. I was touched by his defiance, the more so as he’d never referred to the scalps or the skull story before. In Bononia he had been attentive and deferential, and warmed to friendliness with his own efficiency. “I will not require you to shed blood, Eukairios, or to do anything else your faith forbids. I only want you to write letters.”

  He rubbed his face again, then, giving up on suppressing the tears, buried it in his hands. “God help me,” he said again, thickly. “I thought I’d stay in Bononia for the rest of my life.”

  “Were you born there?” I asked, both to calm him and because I felt I should know more about him. “Your name is not Latin.”

  He understood what I wanted. “My name’s Greek. I’m not,” he said, still thickly but with his usual precision. “Many gentlemen think it adds a touch of elegance to a household to give Greek names to the slaves. My mother was a cook in a gentleman’s house in the countryside, thirty miles from Bononia, and our master had me educated and sold me as soon as I was old enough and trained enough to be valuable, when I was fourteen. The office bought me. That is the only other time I’ve changed hands. I never expected to be sold again-or given away.” His voice was growing thicker again. “I have my other clothes in Bononia, and a couple of books, everything I own. I haven’t said good-bye to anyone. I thought I was going back tomorrow.”

  “Then go back, collect your things, say your good-byes, and return,” I said. “I will ask Valerius Natalis to send you on his dispatch vessel. You know yourself that we must load the supplies for the journey to Eburacum and plan the itinerary; we will not leave Dubris for another two days. That should give you time.”

  “You’re not worried I’d run off as soon as I got home?”

  It hadn’t even occurred to me. “I am not used to slaves,” I admitted. “I have never owned one before. Would you run off?”

  “It would be against my religion,” he said, taking his face out of his hands and glaring. “If you’re not used to slaves and won’t keep foreigners in your wagons, what are you going to do with me?”

  I sighed. “I suppose I will have to let you stay in my wagon, at least during the journey, although it is against our customs.” I winced inwardly at what Arshak and Gatalas, and my own men, would think of it. The fear still twisted in the back of my mind, the terror that I would be turned by the Romans and used against my own people. I had to have the use of letters, though, to defend them. “You will have to ride in it, too, at least at first-though I hope it is not against your religion to learn to ride a horse. When we reach Eburacum, we will see what else can be done.”

  There was a long minute of silence. Eukairios sat staring at his hands. The ship rolled, and one of my horses-the courser, who was always a high-strung animal-neighed nervously and kicked. I slid into the stall beside him and coaxed him into calmness again with my hands and voice. When I slipped out, Eukairios had stopped staring at his hands and was looking at me doubtfully. What sort of treatment could he expect from a master such as myself-a barbarian prince who’d killed Romans freely in the past, and now not only owned him, but owned a secret that could cost him his life?

  I pitied him. “I am sorry, Eukairios,” I said, again answering the misery. “You do not want me for a master, and I do not want to be the owner of a slave. But you know yourself that I need someone to write letters for me; for the sake of my men, I need it. Serve me faithfully and I will deal with you justly and without treachery, and reward you, as soon as I may, with your freedom. This I swear on fire.”

  I meant to keep my oath. But I knew it would be a long time before I rewarded him with his freedom, and a part of me hoped that he’d forget his religious scruples and run off as soon as he set foot in Bononia.

  It was night when the transport reached Dubris, and the ship wallowed into port with the guidance of a lighthouse on the promontory above. When it had docked it had to be unloaded, a task that promised to take some time. Natalis stopped to wish me good health before going off to his house to rest, and I asked him to send Eukairios back to collect his things.

  “You’re not afraid he’d run off?” Natalis asked, as Eukairios himself had done.

  “He says it would be against his religion to do so,” I answered. “I am content to let him go.”

  “Very well, very well. I’ll take him with me tonight, shall I, and send him off first thing tomorrow morning?”

  “Thank you, my lord.” A wagon we were pulling out of the hold lurched, and one wheel slipped off the gangway. Its owners crowded round, trying to push it one way; Natalis’ sailors tried to drag it another; behind it, the tired horses waiting to get out began to whinny and kick. “Good health!” I called, leaving Natalis and hurrying to take charge.

  “Good health!” the procurator called after me, and, as an afterthought, “You know your people are all camped at the parade ground?”

  “Eukairios read me that letter,” I said, shooing my men away from the stuck wagon. “We can find it.”

  The parade ground was not hard to find, but it was after midnight by the time we reached it. The wagons of the men who’d crossed before us were already in their concentric circles, but the fires were banked down and everyone was asleep. It was beginning to rain, a fine drizzle that made the ground soft. We were too tired to prepare a meal, and simply moved our own wagons into the outermost circle, saw to the horses, and went to bed.

  I was tired, but I lay awake for a little while, listening to the rain splashing in the felt of the awning, and the sound of the horses tethered outside. I remembered lying listening to the rain with my Tirgatao, warm in her arms, holding her and not needing to say anything. The grief was like a black chasm, more unfathomable than the sea; I could no more understand or limit it than I could the deep waters. What would she have said if I’d suggested keeping a Roman slave in our wagon?

  I got up, went out of the wagon and checked my horses unnecessarily, then went back in and slept like the dead.

  I woke next morning late, muzzy-headed and stiff-legged, to find Arshak and Gatalas waiting outside ready to raise another mutiny. It was still raining.

  “They won’t give us our weapons!” Arshak declared angrily as soon as I stumbled out of my wagon. “They swore we would have them in Britain, but now they say we must ride to a place called Eburacum. They don’t mean to return them to us at all!”

  “Let me eat first,” I said.

  Leimanos, the captain of my bodyguard, at once brought me a chunk of bread, then, with a grin and a flourish, presented me with a cup of milk. The milk was the result of letter-writing in Bononia: we hadn’t had any on the journey, and I’d tried to arrange for the loan of some cows during the few days we were in Dubris. But I doubted that the neighboring countryside had spared us more than a few beasts, and most of the men must have had to make do with the sour beer we’d been given on the journey. I guessed that when Leimanos had set this cup aside for me, the others had squabbled over the rest. Another thing to sort out. I sat down on the step of my wagon and began eating.

  “Did you know?” asked Gatalas, angrily.

  “Of course I didn’t,” I replied sharply. “I’ll join you in protesting-after I’ve eaten.”

  “Protesting?” Arshak snapped. “What’s the point of ‘protesting’? We must do something to show them that they cannot tell us lies and escape. Gatalas and I have decided that we will not leave this city without our weapons. When you’ve finished eating, you can go and tell them that.”

/>   “ I can go and tell them?” I snapped back, beginning to lose my temper. “Why only me? If you and Gatalas decided it, you and Gatalas can tell them so.”

  There was an abrupt silence. I looked from one to another of my fellow commanders. Why only me? Because I was the Romanized one and compromised already. If I went alone, they could keep their own hands clean of ignoble bargaining, take the advantage, and leave the shame to me. “You perhaps think that my nature is better suited to dealing with Romans than yours?” I asked quietly. I half wanted to fight one of them just to prove myself a Sarmatian.

  Arshak and Gatalas looked uncomfortable. “You’ve been able to deal with them successfully so far,” Arshak said.

  “I am still a prince of the Iazyges,” I told him. “No less than you, Gatalas, or you, Arshak, for all your royal blood.”

  “I don’t deny it,” said Arshak, embarrassed now. “But you went to Britain before the rest of us, and you met this legate, Priscus, and you were managing well with the procurator in Bononia. I thought, since you knew the men…”

  “Haven’t you met this legate yourself now?”

  “Briefly,” Gatalas answered for him. “We both met him briefly when we arrived.”

  That “briefly” was probably to the good. I hadn’t told anyone what the Romans had planned to do with us, either what I’d overheard in Bononia or what I’d argued against in Dubris. It would have fed suspicions and inflamed resentment, and it was just as well there’d been no chance for the others to learn what I had. But I was not in the mood to be pleased about it. “Then why couldn’t you go to him yourselves and tell him what you’d decided?” I demanded bitterly. “Why sit about like a couple of eagles with ruffled feathers, too grand to complain, waiting for me? And then, the moment I arrive, sending me to deal with them as though I were your message boy!”

  “I am sorry, Ariantes,” Arshak said-rare words for any Sarmatian prince to use, and rarer still in his mouth. “We were mistaken, Gatalas and I. We will all go and see this legate together.”