Island of Ghosts (39 page)

XIV

W
HEN  I  WENT 
into my wagon early next morning to collect my armor, I found the slave girl and her baby still asleep, though Banadaspos was up by then. Vilbia lay on her side, huddled under the blankets, a pitifully thin girl with a white exhausted face. Of the baby I could see only the top of a head with a few curling wisps of black hair, cradled on her arm. The rug had slipped loose from on top of them, and I pulled it up; as I did so, I saw the marks on the girl’s bare shoulder. Scar on top of scar, and some of the slashes were new. I remembered that Facilis had said she had given birth only eight days before: she should not have been up at all, let alone beaten for slowness. I straightened the rug and went out, feeling angrier with Bodica than I had since I met her. To try to drown a strong opponent because he might prevent you getting a kingdom where you can practice your religion freely is understandable; to torture a miserable girl who only wants her baby back is unforgivable.

Eukairios arrived a little later to find us harnessing the horses, and was shocked. Although we’d concluded most of the business we’d had in Eburacum, he’d expected us to stay another day at least, to tie up any loose ends and to rest the horses. He’d bought some good parchment and drawn up a manumission document in triplicate, all ready to be signed and witnessed. But he wanted seven witnesses to make things absolutely beyond legal question, preferably mostly Roman citizens, and preferably mostly literate since I was unlettered: it was clear that now he’d have to wait until we were back in Cilurnum. However, he swallowed his disappointment quickly when I explained what had happened at the dinner party, and wrote two letters for me, one to the legate, apologizing for my insubordination and excusing myself, and the other to Siyavak with reassurances and promises of help. I sent one of the bodyguard to the commandant’s house with the first letter, and Eukairios to the Christians with the second, and the rest of us set out at once. I was apprehensive when we rode up to the gates, but we were allowed through without question. When the fortress was safely behind us, I sighed with relief and touched my horse to a canter. Eukairios and the other messenger had to gallop hard to catch up with us.

Facilis didn’t catch up with us until the middle of the morning, when we stopped for a meal at a roadside farm where we could buy some milk.

“You were in a tearing hurry to get away,” he observed, dismounting beside me. “Were you still worried that the legate wasn’t going to let you go?”

I had been worried about precisely that, of course, and he saw it and gave a bark of laughter. The slave girl Vilbia, who’d been hiding in the wagon, heard and recognized that laugh at once, and stuck her head out. “Is that you, Marcus Flavius?” she called.

“It is indeed,” he said genially. “And have you seen where we are, girl?”

She hadn’t—we’d woken her when we harnessed the horses, but she’d crawled under the bunk with the rug over her—and she jumped down from the wagon beaming delightedly. “We’ve escaped!” she exclaimed. She flung her arms about Facilis and kissed him on the cheek. “You got me out! They never even thought of looking for me in that wagon! Oh, Marcus Flavius, thank you; may the gods bless you!”

Facilis grinned and patted her on the back.

Eukairios was staring in shock: he hadn’t known that Vilbia was there. “Isn’t that . . .” he began.

Someone explained to him what she was doing there, and he shook his head in amazement. After a moment, he started smiling. Someone else brought Vilbia a bowl of warm milk from the farm for her breakfast, with a piece of our bread ration from Eburacum, and she went back into the wagon to be with the baby while she ate.

“You’ve left the fortress as stirred up as if you’d looted it,” Facilis told me, grabbing a piece of bread for himself and sitting down on the drystone wall of the field where we’d halted. “I was up to headquarters first thing this morning, and everyone was suspecting everyone else and cursing you. When I left, Priscus had just got your letter excusing yourself: I think if you hadn’t sent it, he’d have been annoyed enough to have you summoned back.”

“I had no wish to offend him,” I said.

“So you said in your letter. It made him slightly less offended than he would have been otherwise. Publius Verinus has been told to investigate the arson attack on you, though I don’t think he’ll get anywhere. I’ve been detailed to find out about the ritual murder in Corstopitum, and I have letters authorizing me to pursue inquiries. I just hope nobody finds out I’ve stolen my commanding officer’s wife’s slave.
Me miserum!
” He took a big bite of the bread.

I nodded, taking my own piece of bread and sitting down beside him. “What will you do with her now?”

“One step at a time!” he replied. He frowned. “I don’t dare keep her in Cilurnum. It’s a small place, I’m known, people may recognize her. Comittus certainly knows her. Corstopitum’s probably a better place for her, though still a bit risky. It’s bigger, and she should be all right if I can find a safe house for her to stay inside. I’d ask your young woman to take her on that farm, but . . .” He stopped himself.

But he was as unsure of Pervica’s own safety as I was.

“I have a friend in Corstopitum,” said Eukairios, coming over. “He could find somewhere for her to stay.”

“Thank you!” Facilis exclaimed, surprised and pleased. “This is the ‘correspondent’ who sent you that letter about the mutiny, is it? Does he have a house of his own?”

“No, sir. But he’ll know who might be able to arrange things. Would you be prepared to”—he rubbed his fingers together significantly—“if it’s necessary?”

“If it gets the poor little bitch a safe refuge, yes.”

“My friend won’t want any money himself,” Eukairios explained, with some embarrassment. “Not when I tell him there’s a child’s life at stake. But hiding runaway slaves . . . well, you know how it is.”

“Hercules, Eukairios!” exclaimed Facilis, greatly amused. “Anyone would think
you
know how it is!”

“Eukairios,” I said, “do you have the tablets we were given yesterday?”

He nodded, becoming all at once very tense and unhappy. “Yes, my lord. I . . . looked at them last night. They . . . they contain at least one very unpleasant surprise.”

“Fetch them now,” I ordered.

He went off. Facilis looked at me suspiciously. “This is the result of the ‘plotting with strangers’ your men were so worked up about last night?”

“Yes. You have authority, you say, to pursue inquiries. I have information that might help. I cannot give it to you directly, though. I swore on fire that I would not show these tablets to the authorities, as most of the people whose names are written on them are innocent of any wrongdoing but would still suffer if their sympathies were known.”

“Whose are the names, then?”

“I have not had time to read them. It is a list of known druids, together with those who have helped them and the places they have hidden.”

“Jupiter Optimus Maximus! How on earth . . .” He stared at me in disbelief. “Is it from Siyavak?”

I shook my head. “When I hear from him, I hope to end the contest. This merely begins it.”

Banadaspos’ eyes lit up.

“Then how in the name of all the gods . . .”

Eukairios came back with the tablets. He stood holding them under one arm, looking at Facilis apprehensively. If Facilis used the list openly, the druids would probably realize where it came from, and then Eukairios and the Christians would suffer in turn.

“Very well,” Facilis said, swallowing his astonishment. “I won’t ask how you got them. I won’t ask to see them. I won’t charge anybody just because they’re on that list. I’ll simply go and visit them privately, with you, if you like, and use my authority to search for evidence. There’s no point me swearing it on fire, because I’m no Sarmatian, but I promise you solemnly not to abuse your sources, and may the gods destroy me in the worst way if I do. Does that satisfy you?”

I nodded. I didn’t trust him not to break his oath, but I did trust him to honor mine and to avoid cruelty.

“What’s the nasty surprise, then?” Facilis growled, turning to Eukairios. “Who’s on the list?”

The scribe opened the tablets and looked down them, and set his finger against one entry. When he spoke, it was in a low voice that even the rest of our party, eating their bread and drinking their milk a few feet away, could not hear. “There is the name of a man believed to be from the city of Lindum, who came to Eburacum about a year ago, and has been active among the druids there on occasions since. The name, as reported here, is Comittus son of Tasciovanus. He is described as a young man, and believed to be an army officer.”

“Hercules!” whispered Facilis; “Marha!” exclaimed Banadaspos.

“The only thing I’m not sure of is the patronymic,” said Eukairios. “ ‘Javolenus’ is, of course, a Roman family name, and would not be used for . . . religious purposes. Lindum as origin is, I believe, correct, and the time matches.”

“It makes sense,” whispered Facilis. “He’s had one foot in the British camp all along, his cousin got him his place, and he admires her. He always swears by the divine Mothers and Maponus and the other old gods of the Britons. It fits horribly well.”

“Do the tablets say if he follows the extreme sect?” I asked.

“No,” replied Eukairios, closing them. “That detail’s been included when it’s known—but usually our . . . informants . . . wouldn’t know that.”

Lucius Javolenus Comittus.
You can call me Comittus,
because you’re not a Roman either.
I remembered him smiling as he praised Bodica, and weeping over the Picts. I also remembered him lending me his horse, and making room for me on his couch in Dubris, and vouching for me to the legate—and arriving at River End Farm with Leimanos, overjoyed to see me still alive. And I remembered, with sudden uncomfortable vividness, his misery when the news of the cursing tablet reached Cilurnum, and his hesitant attempts, repeated attempts, to talk to me about it—attempts I, in my distress over Pervica, brushed impatiently aside.

“He is not a follower of the extreme sect,” I said. “He did not know what Bodica had done until news of it reached the whole camp, and he was distressed when he learned it.”

“I think you may be right,” said Facilis grimly, “but I think he’s got a few explanations to make to us, nonetheless.”

“I pray to all the gods that he is innocent,” said Banadaspos. He spoke softly and with passionate sincerity. But his hand was on the hilt of his dagger, and it was perfectly clear what would happen to Comittus if he were guilty.

I looked at him levelly and said, “You swore to me that you would stay quiet and do no violence until I gave you leave to strike.”

Banadaspos looked back, then let his breath out unhappily through his nose and took his hand off his dagger. He nodded.

“I think that he is innocent,” I consoled him.

W
E  MADE  THE 
journey back as quickly as we could—though this was no great improvement on our time for the journey down, given the short days and the appalling weather. Eukairios and I went over the list of names and passed on to Facilis a few whom the Christians of Eburacum had considered ringleaders. He did not press us for more; he in fact seemed very relaxed, and more cheerful than he had been since I’d known him. He rode beside the wagon and talked to Vilbia, he played with the baby—whose thin cry grew stronger and louder by the day—and in the evenings he chatted with my men, making no further attempt to disguise his knowledge of our language. It emerged that he’d learned it much as I’d learned Latin, from a settled farmer on our side of the Danube whom he’d paid to teach him when he was still a private soldier, hoping to make himself useful enough to his superiors to win promotion. He genuinely was what he had told Valerius Natalis and Julius Priscus, a legionary expert on Sarmatians, and he had been advising his superior officers on us for years.

“Well, what did you expect?” he asked me, when I expressed my surprise at this. “You knew that the emperor had appointed me himself. Your three dragons were the first to be sent west, and two of them were considered particularly likely to be difficult. Naturally the emperor looked for an officer with some experience to put in charge of you. He made a mistake, and I botched the job—but he chose sensibly on credentials.”

“Why was Lord Gatalas considered likely to be difficult?” asked Banadaspos, who was with us during this discussion.

Facilis gave him a snort and a bob of the eyebrows. “Gatalas wasn’t.
He
never looted the villa of a governor of Asia, or drank from a centurion’s skull. Even when I decided to follow you lot to Britain, I was more worried about your own commander than either of the other two. It’s why I asked for Cilurnum.”

We arrived at Corstopitum around noon on the fourth day of the journey. When we reached the bridge, I arranged that Facilis and Eukairios would go into the city to see if they could arrange a place for Vilbia. Kasagos and his squadron would stay with the wagons and, when somewhere had been found for the girl, take them on to Cilurnum. I and my bodyguard would ride at once to River End Farm. I was very anxious to see Pervica.

I found the farm this time without difficulty. I reined in my horse at the top of the hill and sat looking for a moment. There had been snow during the night, and the fields were white and smooth; the river beyond flashed icily silver in the fitful sunlight. The farm buildings nestled in their hollow, whitened thatch above gray walls, kitchen smoke rising in a thin blue column from the back. It was a scene of such peace that my eyes stung to look at it. I’d been afraid that when I crested that hill I’d see only blackened ruins.

I dismounted, unsaddled Farna—leaving the armor on her—and saddled and mounted Wildfire instead. I thought Pervica might enjoy seeing her horse ridden, and the stallion was now well trained enough to manage about a farm, though I wouldn’t have taken him into a city, let alone a battle. I started him down the hill at a slow trot, with my bodyguard jingling after me.