Island of Ghosts (20 page)

“Who has been telling you this?” I asked, and saw the answering flicker in his eyes.

“Do I need anyone to tell me? You can’t
want
to fight for Rome—for the people who murdered your wife and child, insulted their bodies, and tossed them into the fire.”

I slapped him across the face. “Don’t mention them to me, Arshak!” I told him, in a low voice, while he stared in angry surprise. “Don’t ever mention them to me!” I turned and strode furiously on into the stable.

After a minute, Arshak followed me. I half expected him to whisper a time and place to meet to settle the argument, but he said nothing—and, as soon as he met Valerius Victor, became instantly all charm again.

The tribune had a squadron of the Dalmatian cavalry from Condercum, and we rode out with that to escort us: I was politely given to understand that my own bodyguard would not be welcome. When we reached the fort that night, I felt that I wasn’t welcome either. “The air was pretty poisonous,” Victor had said, and indeed, it was thick with bitterness and hatred. The Roman garrison watched me and Arshak ride in the gate with a heavy sullen stare that set my teeth on edge, and they kept it up the whole time we were there.

Though it was late, I asked to speak with Gatalas’ officers in the main hall of the headquarters building at once. The garrison grumbled but, at Valerius Victor’s insistence, agreed, and set up torches, which cast a flickering light over us and made the statue of the emperor, standing larger than life in the chapel of the standards off the hall, seem to be alive and watching. When Gatalas’ men filed in, under armed guard, they gave the statue and the Romans the same heavy sullen stare that the Romans had given us.

I asked Gatalas’ men how they were; they released a torrent of helpless grief and resentment. Their wagons had been broken up, some of their friends had been executed for killing the Romans they’d quarreled with, some had been beaten like slaves, their prince was dead, and they had been ordered not to defend him. Worse, far worse: the Romans had burned his body. They’d watched helplessly, disarmed, imprisoned, and disgraced. Their chief consolation was how many Romans Gatalas had managed to kill before he died.

“He revenged himself,” I agreed, trying to put a hopeful face on it, though I was appalled. “And he has what the gods promised him, death in battle. He was warned of danger from fire, but not of destruction: perhaps his soul will escape. At Cilurnum we sacrificed three horses on his behalf, and prayed to the gods for him. But you were promised good fortune and glory in war, and your prince ordered you to surrender so that you could have what you were promised. I’ve come to help you choose a new commander who can offer prayers for Gatalas’ spirit and for your own future.”

“We have no power over who’ll command us,” they replied. “That was why our lord mutinied. He’d heard that they meant to depose him and set that tribune in his place.” And they glared at Victor, who was sitting by the tribunal, looking blank. He didn’t speak Sarmatian.

“It wasn’t true,” I said. “They thought of doing that before they met us, but they changed their minds, and there were no plans to replace anyone.”

They looked at me sullenly, as though they were sure I was lying. Then they looked at Arshak, who was sitting on the table swinging his foot. “Didn’t you send us a message of warning, Lord?” one of the captains asked. He was a young man, but I’d had him in mind as a possible leader for the dragon: he’d struck me as the most intelligent, as well as one of the most loyal, of Gatalas’ officers. His name was Siyavak, a slim man, with dark hair and eyes that made him stand out from the rest.

Arshak stopped swinging the foot. “I?” he asked. “I didn’t send any message.”

At this they looked bewildered. “Lord Gatalas showed us the message and said it came from Eburacum,” said Siyavak.

“If there was a message from Eburacum, it wasn’t sent by me,” said Arshak, angry now. “Do you still have this letter?”

“It wasn’t a letter,” replied Siyavak, “but we have it. Our lord left it with us, and if the Romans will let me, I’ll fetch it.”

The Romans allowed him, and he came back carrying a bundle wrapped in black. He set it down on the floor in front of Arshak and unrolled the cloth: a set of divining rods tumbled onto the floor. Moving with sharp, angry jerks, Siyavak counted them out, and I saw that they were tied together in sequence by a red cord. They were all black; none of the chalked ones were included. “They promise death and destruction,” whispered Siyavak. “He had them read before us. And on the final rod . . .” He sorted through and picked one up. “This.”

There was a pattern of scratches on the blackened surface of the rod, little lines parallel to one another or at angles. It was nothing like Latin writing, but it looked as though it might have a meaning. “What is it?” I asked, taking the thing, still bound to the others by the blood-colored cord. The whole bundle was one of the most frightening things I had ever seen: it seemed to vibrate with a menace of supernatural disaster beyond anything the mind could conceive. There would have been some white in any normal reading.

“Gatalas said that the messenger who brought the bundle gave him the name of a man here who could interpret it,” Siyavak told us, still in the low voice, “and he said he had shown it to the man, and the man read the marks as though they were writing. ‘Beware,’ it says, ‘the Romans have lost patience. You will be arrested and replaced by Victor.’ ”

I looked at the tribune, who was now standing over the rods and staring in confusion, aware that something had been disclosed but having no idea what.

“Have you seen these before?” I asked the tribune, in Latin.

He shook his head. “They’re some of the divining rods you use to know the will of the gods,” he said. “Why do they matter?”

I explained, and showed him the stick with the markings. Something shut suddenly behind his face. “Jupiter Optimus Maximus!” he whispered.

“What is it?” I asked.

“The writing’s . . . British,” he replied. “I can’t read it.”

And he didn’t want to look at it. But he had understood something about it that we had not.

“Someone from one of the Pictish tribes must have sent it,” he went on, “trying to provoke the mutiny, to distract our troops so that they could raid our lands.”

“Didn’t Gatalas show these to the Romans?” I asked Siyavak.

He sat back on his heels, looking at Victor intently.

“He did not show them this,” he said, in Latin now, and to Victor, not me. “No. He went to you, though, he asked what you would do about the command of the dragon.”

“I didn’t understand,” said Victor. “I thought he was trying to find something else to quarrel about.”

“You said that you had once planned to be commander in his place.”

“I only said that because I thought he knew! I told him the plan had been abandoned!”

“How could anyone believe you, with things as they were?” Siyavak turned back to Arshak. “We thought this was from you, Lord Arshak, that you’d heard something in Eburacum.”

“No,” said Arshak. He took the rod and slipped it out of its loop of cord, then turned it in his hands, looking frightened. “No, they can vouch for me at Eburacum. I’ve had no chance to send anything. And it wasn’t true.”

“Who was the messenger who brought it?” I asked. “Who interpreted the markings?”

“I don’t know,” replied Siyavak. “My lord Gatalas didn’t say.” He looked at me bleakly. “So he died for nothing then?”

“No,” I answered. “He died for a lie.”

“We will revenge him,” said Siyavak, his eyes beginning to smoulder. “Marha! Whoever sent him this murdered him, as surely as if they’d sent him poison! We will revenge him!”

“You will have to work with the Romans to do that,” I said.

He looked at Victor again; all of them looked at Victor. “Very well,” Siyavak said, angrily. “We can do that.”

W
HEN 
I 
LEFT
next morning they’d agreed to a joint command by Siyavak and Victor and were planning a funeral service for the dead. The air was still poisonous, but no longer sullen; the hatred was balanced by a sense of purpose. I had hopes that when they got away from Condercum they might yet find a way to be happy.

Victor remained at Condercum to supervise the fourth dragon. He offered us some Roman cavalry as escort, but Arshak declined the protection of men who detested us, and I agreed with him. Arshak and I set out back to Corstopitum on our own. It had turned colder, and there were a few flakes of snow drifting from a slate-colored sky. I was tired—I hadn’t slept much in the stone barracks block—and the world of camps and war seemed more confining and oppressive than ever. I didn’t want to put my armor on that morning; the weight and the sound of it set my teeth on edge. I packed it behind my saddle. No need to get it wet, I told myself, and my coat and hat were warmer. Arshak, who’d armed for the journey despite the snow, eyed me contemptuously.

We rode off in silence along a road that was almost entirely empty. We had not spoken to each other since his reference to Tirgatao, and now he sat on his horse with his head bent, eyes fixed on the animal’s mane in a hot manic glare. We’d ridden the better part of ten miles along the military way, and had passed the fort of Vindovala, when Arshak suddenly sat up straight and turned the glare on me.

“You struck me in the face at Corstopitum,” he said.

“I did,” I told him. I’d had time to calm myself again, and I knew how to answer him. “I ask your pardon for the blow. But you mentioned a thing that’s like a hot iron in my heart, and you can’t be surprised that I was angry.”

A little of the glare faded. “Do we have to be enemies?” he asked, almost pleadingly.

“We’re not—are we?” I returned.

“You’ve taken the side of the Romans.”

“We both swore at Aquincum that that was our side.”

“It isn’t! It never was! It can’t be!”

“Then whose side is our side? The side of the people who sent that message to murder Gatalas?”

He drew in his breath with a hiss and looked away. What were they doing to us? he’d asked. Gatalas dead, me Romanizing, and himself . . . He hadn’t said. He’d known, though, that what was happening to himself was terrible. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said, in a frozen, unnatural voice.

I was afraid that if I said anything more, I would have to fight him, and that would be disaster however it ended. So I said nothing.

We rode on for another mile, and were nearing the turn down to the old road and Corstopitum when we heard a jingle of harness ahead of us and Bodica’s chariot turned onto the military way in front of us.

She was alone. The blue cloak she wore was pulled over her head against the cold, and she held the reins under it: for a moment the white stallion trotted toward us driven by a shapeless, faceless shadow. Then it stopped, the horse shivering under the yoke, and waited while we rode on toward it.

Just before we reached it, Bodica loosened the hood and turned into a lovely woman again. “There you are!” she announced, smiling prettily. “I thought I would take the horse out for some exercise, and perhaps meet you on your way back from Condercum. I wanted to talk with you.”

Arshak said nothing. He dismounted, strode up to the chariot, and handed her the divining rod with the marks on it.

Her smile vanished. She turned the rod in her fingers, then shook her head and handed it back to Arshak, saying something I couldn’t quite hear. “Can we stop and talk?” she asked, more loudly, looking at me earnestly with those vivid blue eyes. “I’ve brought some hot wine against the cold.”

“Lady Aurelia, greetings,” I said. “I thank you, no.”

She looked at Arshak. “We need to talk,” she told him. “We all do. Didn’t you speak to him?”

He nodded. “Ariantes, stop with us a minute.”

I looked down at them both and gathered the reins. The sudden openness about the fact of their conspiracy frightened me. I wished I’d put on my armor after all. But there was an obvious question to ask, and I had to ask it.

“Lady Aurelia,” I said, “was it you who sent Gatalas that rod?”

She simply stared at me, neither nodding nor shaking her head, neither smiling nor frowning. “I’ve come here to speak to you,” she said. “I would have spoken before, but you avoided me.” Then, deliberately, she turned away and took a flask wrapped in a blanket out from under the bench seat. “I hope that I’m speaking to a friend. Let me treat you as one. I offer you hospitality, and we will all hold what we say under the sacred bond of guest friendship. Then, no matter what comes afterward, we’ll know each other’s minds.”

I walked my horse closer to the chariot but did not dismount. Now it had come to it, I did not want to know. If I knew, I would be at odds with Arshak, perhaps with all my people.

“You said we were not enemies,” said Arshak.

I was bound to hear his explanation. I sighed and nodded. Bodica pulled two cups from under the seat and poured the wine; it steamed slightly in the chill air. She handed one up to me, took a sip from the other, and handed it to Arshak. I took a sip; it was tepid, rather than hot, and had been sweetened with honey.

“You can’t love Rome,” said Bodica.

I said nothing.

“You’re a very able man,” Bodica coaxed, “and a prince in your own right. Why shouldn’t you serve the kingdom of the Brigantes instead of the masters of a city in Italy?”

“There is no kingdom of the Brigantes,” I replied.

“But there could be! Rome used to govern hundreds of square miles beyond that wall there, but it was abandoned because it became too costly to keep. If Brigantia became too costly to keep, they’d abandon that too. Don’t you see that we’re much more like you than the Romans are, that your natural alliance is with us? We don’t worship money, kill men in the arenas for pleasure, or murder women and children when we make war.”

“Your ancestress, the queen of the Iceni, murdered women and children when she made war,” I replied, “or so I have heard. You exaggerate your likeness to us. And you are not Brigantic. Your ancestors were kings and queens, but of southern tribes. You would have no rights in any kingdom of the Brigantes if one did exist, and I do not believe you plan to set up an independent Brigantic kingdom with someone else as queen.”