Island of Ghosts (34 page)

I looked at him. “You should not ask such questions, Banadaspos,” I said. “I don’t want dueling between his men and ours. Whatever is between him and myself is our own business.”

He was not satisfied with this reply. “It is our business to guard our prince,” he said sullenly. Then he added, in a whisper, “That story Arshak told of chasing a boar never made sense. But I don’t see how . . .” He stopped. He didn’t see how a quarrel with Arshak could end in a drowning and a lie.

“This affects my honor, not yours,” I said; and at this he fell reluctantly silent.

The rest of the journey to Eburacum was uneventful. We arrived in the middle of the afternoon of the fourth day after leaving Corstopitum.

Eburacum, which we had last visited early in the autumn, lies in green, fertile valley land upon a river, and just south of the Highlands of Brigantia. Besides being the home for the Sixth Legion, the city is the base for the civilian administration of the whole of the northern half of the province—which is run by the legionary legate, though he is officially subordinate to the provincial governor in Londinium. Being in a position of such importance, Eburacum has naturally prospered. The stone-based half-timbered buildings crowd unpleasantly close together, overshadowing the street, and the main market square seems in contrast very bright, surrounded by the white facades of the grand public buildings. The shops sell everything from hunting dogs to imported glassware.

The legionary fortress lies the other side of the river from the market square, a severe castle frowning upon its ostentatious neighbor. All forts are much alike. All have the same shape, rectangular with rounded corners; all have the same two main streets, the Via Principalis and the Via Principia, running from the four gates past the neat barrack blocks, and where those two streets meet, the headquarters building and the commanding officer’s house invariably face one another. I had always found the uniformity repellant before, and this time was unsettled to discover that it merely seemed convenient.

We were met at the fort gates and escorted first to the stable yard, where we were instructed to leave our horses and the wagons, and then to the places where we were supposed to sleep—a guesthouse for Facilis, the tribune’s house recently vacated by Arshak for myself, and barracks for the rest of the men. I did not argue, but I told my men, in Sarmatian, that they could stay in their wagons if they wanted to. We were hardly going to be pushed into the barracks by force, and the wagons could be parked as comfortably in the stable yard as anywhere else, so why quarrel over what can be ignored? I left the others to settle in, and, though it was late in the afternoon, took Eukairios and went at once to see the legate.

I was admitted immediately. Priscus seemed pleased to see me, and was happy to get down to business. He had chosen a number of farms for the horses, but he was perfectly happy to add River End to the list. Eukairios and I had a tentative list of mares to breed in the next season, and stallions to cover them, and the arrangements as to which farm would take how many horses were soon made. Priscus then turned to the “other business” he’d mentioned, and my apprehensions about it turned out to have been entirely misplaced. Another eight dragons of Sarmatian cavalry were expected to arrive in Britain between April and July, and the legate wanted my advice on how to accommodate them. I was surprised and delighted, particularly when it turned out that one of the companies was the fifth dragon, commanded by my elder sister Aryazate’s husband, Cotys, a friend as close as any I’d had in my life. These troops were wintering in various locations between the Danube and the ocean but would cross the Channel as soon as the weather permitted. I gave Priscus a great deal of advice on the spot, mostly to do with choosing sites that had enough grazing and allowing the troops the use of cattle to produce all the milk they’d need. Even when the legate had had enough for one day and dismissed me, I kept thinking of other things to tell him, and ordering Eukairios to write them down. Eukairios was impatient to stop work and go see his fellow Christians, and eventually said so.

“You’ll simply have to learn to write,” he told me, while I chewed on my lip in frustration. His eyes were glinting with amusement.

“But I have heard that writing is difficult, and one must learn very young, or not at all.”

He smiled, putting away his pen. “Now, if I were to assure you that writing’s easy, I might find myself in the same position as your men did when they promised me that riding a horse is the easiest thing in the world, and that human beings just naturally stay on—and then were unable to account for it when I fell off. I certainly don’t find writing difficult. But I did indeed learn it very young, if not quite as young as you Sarmatians learn riding, since you seem to sit on the saddle behind your mothers before you can even walk. All I can say is I think you’d be able to learn it and you’d undoubtedly find it useful if you did. But I must go speak to my friends as soon as possible, so that we can make arrangements for . . . if they agree.”

“Very well, very well!” I said, thinking of something else that I would now simply have to try to remember. “Meet me in the morning, and we will finish this then. I will sleep in my wagon tonight, but you may use the tribune’s house they allotted us, if you prefer—or stay with your friends.”

Between thinking of arrangements for the other eight dragons and worrying about Pervica, I had trouble getting to sleep that night. I tossed and turned in my wagon, and at last got up, pulled on my coat, and stepped outside. The night was clear and very cold and the moon was waning. It was about midnight and everything lay still, the stone of paving and walls white in the moonlight, the shadows very black. I limped slowly toward the stables to check on my horses. I was about halfway there when I heard the shouts, faint with distance, and smelled smoke. Then the trumpets sounded from the gates, and there was a sound of feet running. I ran back to the wagon, grabbed my sword and my bow case, and ran in the same direction as the feet, thinking wildly that the city was under attack.

But the alarm had been raised for a house on fire. I arrived at the row of tribunes’ houses on the Via Principalis to find flames pouring from the windows of one of them and half the Sixth Legion, in various states of undress, lining up with buckets to fetch water from the aqueduct. A centurion was shouting at some men to hurry up with an oak beam. I registered all this before I realized that the house was the one I myself had been allotted, and that Eukairios might be inside. I pushed past the legionaries and hurried toward it.

The stone walls of the house radiated heat like an open oven, and the slates of the roof were cracking like chestnuts in a fire and falling into the flames below. The buckets of water hurled by the legionaries hissed deafeningly on the flames, and clouds of smoke and steam billowed out to choke anyone who went near. The centurion bellowed at his men, striking them with his vine staff and pointing at the door; they raised the oak beam and struck with it, trying to batter down the door.

“Is anyone in there?” I shouted.

“That Sarmatian commander!” the centurion shouted back. “The one that arrived today! If he’s yours, help!”

I caught the end of the beam as they swung it back. “I have a slave . . .” I began—but didn’t finish, since the legionaries swung the beam. I leaned with them into the stroke: the door held. We struck again, and it gave. A wave of heat so great that it seared the lungs struck our faces; I saw the inside of the house incandescent, the walls dressed with fire, and the remains of something black across the door. The man nearest the door screamed soundlessly and flung himself backward, and his friends caught him and drew him away coughing and choking, his hands burned and his hair singed.

“If anyone’s still in there, he’s dead,” the centurion declared, as we retreated. He looked at me again. “What were you saying? Is that your commander’s house?”

“It was meant to be mine,” I said, staring back at it, “but I did not use it.” I looked at the centurion. “Someone had blocked the door. There was something across the inside.”

“Someone did the whole damned thing!” he returned. “I’ve never seen a good stone house go up like that, and the first lad to get here said the smoke reeked of lamp oil. And the windows were bolted on the outside. Did you say
you
were meant to be in there?”

I nodded, staring at the house. The roof was collapsing now, but the legionaries still hurled their buckets of water. “My slave may be in there.” Burned alive. Murdered by fire, and burned.

“But no Sarmatian commanders? And no one else? Just a slave?”

I shook my head.

“Well, thank the gods for that!”

There was a stir in the now thick crowd that had gathered in the street, and I noticed Julius Priscus pushing his way into the mob, his crimson cloak askew and his sandals unlaced; he was staring at the flames. I started toward him. The centurion of the Sixth began by following me, but confronted with a wall of backs, pushed in front and cleared a path with his vine staff.

Priscus heard him coming and turned, his face grim— then he saw me, and his eyes flew open in amazement.

“Ariantes!” he exclaimed, and reached over to grasp my hands. “Thank the gods! However did you get out of that . . . that Phlegethon?”

I was not sure who or what Phlegethon was, but his meaning was clear enough. “I was never in it, my lord. I prefer my wagon. But my slave may be in there.”

“Well, for once I’m pleased with your savagery!” exclaimed Priscus, ignoring my reference to a slave. “Publius Verinus”—to the centurion of the Sixth—“what happened here?”

“Clear case of arson, sir,” the centurion replied smartly. “One of my lads was coming back from a night out, and he smelled smoke as he passed it—and said it reeked of oil. He saw fire through the cracks in the shutters, and tried to open the door, but it was locked. By the time he’d raised the alarm, the whole place was ablaze. When we battered the door down, we found that someone had put something right across it. The shutters were bolted, too, on the outside.” He gave me a level look. “Somebody wanted to kill the commander here pretty badly.”

A wall of the house collapsed, its stones cracking explosively. The fire, though, seemed to be dying now under the constant stream of water from the buckets. It must have burned everything in the house that could burn. I prayed silently that that did not include Eukairios.

Priscus gave me the same level look. “Who wants to kill you?”

I was silent for a moment, struggling with myself. The name of his wife was in my throat, choking me. I had a friend who had, perhaps, just died horribly, and whose life was considered a thing too inconsequential even to discuss. I wanted badly to revenge him. But I could not say Bodica’s name: I still had no proof. Besides, I didn’t know for certain that Eukairios was dead. He’d preferred staying in his friends’ houses in the past, and might well be comfortably asleep in the town outside the fortress gates. “There was . . . an object found near Corstopitum,” I said at last. Someone was bound to tell Priscus this if I didn’t. “A lead scroll, pushed into the mouth of a murdered man found hanging from a tree in a sacred grove. It had my name written on it. The general conclusion was that it was the work of some Picts, resentful of their defeat.”

Priscus drew in his breath with a hiss and blinked at me several times.

“There are no Picts in the middle of a legionary fortress at night,” declared the centurion of the Sixth. “They might, just, slip into the town, though even that’s pretty unlikely this far south—but they’d never get over the walls of the fort.”

“No,” I said, giving him the level look back. “So it must have been a Roman. And why the Romans would wish to kill me, I do not know—though my men, and the men of the fourth dragon, will doubtless think of a reason. With your permission, Lord Legate, I think I must go back to my men now, or they will be alarmed.”

Priscus caught my arm. “There’s nobody under my command who wants to kill you,” he said harshly. “May the gods destroy me if it’s false! You’re the one we can work with, and worth all the other Sarmatian officers put together.”

“Sir, I do not doubt your goodwill. But it would be better if you did not use such terms, as it would offend the other officers. May I go reassure my followers?”

He let go of me, and I bowed and walked off.

I was halfway back to the wagons when I heard a shout behind me, and I turned to see Eukairios running toward me through the moonlight, waving both hands wildly. I gave a cry of relief and ran toward him.

“Thank God!” he said, and, “I thank the gods!” I exclaimed, at almost the same instant. I caught him by the shoulders and shook him, to make sure he was really there and not ashes in the burned house. I was smiling so hard my face hurt.

“The house is burned down,” I told him. “I was afraid you were inside it.”

He shook his head. “No, I was staying at a friend’s in the town. But I heard the alarm, and came to see what was happening. I didn’t
think
you were in the house, but I wasn’t completely sure. Was it . . . was it arson?”

I nodded.

“Everyone thought you were there. Everyone except your own men.”

“Yes. I do not know what to say to the legate. It is clear now that it must have been a Roman who arranged it: only army people are allowed in the fortress at night. They will think of the message that was sent to Gatalas. They will start guessing. But we still have no evidence, and how can I speak without it? It would be easy for them to kill me, if I were arrested here. Something in the prison food while I awaited trial for slander, another fire—nothing would be easier. Marha! I do not know what to say.”

I started back toward the wagons, and Eukairios fell in beside me. “You’re very upset about it,” he remarked. He sounded surprised.

“I am very glad you are alive,” I told him, beginning to recover myself. “I thought you were dead and your body burned.”

He stopped a moment. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, yes—of course.” He hurried to catch up with me again, and we walked on together, as though we were members of one household. We arrived back at the wagons, where my men were gathered in an anxious knot that broke in shouts and exclamations of relief when I appeared.