Island of Ghosts (48 page)

He slapped my shoulder. “You don’t intend to forget me completely, then? You remember that?”

I nodded.

“I’ll miss you, as well.” He added it very quietly, as though it embarrassed him to say it, and hurried on, “But it’s been pretty damn clear ever since we reached Cilurnum that you never needed me to keep an eye on you. And I imagine you’ll be in and out of Eburacum fairly frequently, as well as down to Londinium, advising people on how to treat Sarmatians: we’ll see each other from time to time. Anyway, there is a quick way of getting married, without going through all the ceremonies. You have Eukairios draw up a legal contract expressing your intent to marry a Brigantian citizen, one Pervica, and arranging your various properties however you wish. Then you sign it, she signs it, three witnesses sign it, and that is sufficient evidence of
affectio maritalis
to satisfy any court in the land. I’ll file it for you when I go down to the archives, and the job’s done. You’ll need your citizenship papers, though. I can collect them for you from the governor’s staff. What names do you want on them?”

I shrugged. Roman names.

“Well—to whom do you owe your citizenship?”

“First to the governor, then to the emperor.”

“Quintus Antistius Ariantes? Marcus Aurelius Ariantes?”

I flinched. “Marha!”

He grinned at me. “A bitter mouthful, is it? You’ll get used to it. Which one shall it be?”

“Marcus Aurelius.”

“The safest choice. The governor would be flattered if you used his names, but his term of office ends in a year or so, and he can’t be offended at you choosing to honor the emperor. I won’t call you Marcus, don’t worry.” He got to his feet. “I’ll go arrange it for you. Good health!”

Eukairios arrived a few minutes after he’d gone. “Pervica said you wanted to see me, Patron,” he said.

“I wanted to marry her today,” I said. “Marcus Flavius says that you can draw up a marriage contract concerning our property, and that we need three witnesses for it. He says he will collect my citizenship papers from the governor’s staff, take them down to the public archives, and file the contract for us. Is that all it needs?”

“That should be— What citizenship papers?”

I looked at him sourly. “I am rewarded with Roman citizenship.”

“Oh.” He sat down beside me and stared into the fountain. I noticed quite suddenly that his eyes were red.

“What is the matter?” I asked.

He looked away from the water reluctantly and rubbed his eyes. “I . . . was visiting the brothers here, and they had a letter for me from the
ekklesia
in Bononia, the one I used to belong to. Three of my friends have been arrested, and were sent to Augusta Treverorum to die in the arena.”

“I am very sorry,” I said, after a moment’s silence.

He shook his head. “We say it’s a glorious death, to die praising Christ in the arena.” His voice had thickened. “We say that it’s the sure road to the Heavenly City, and that God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

“But you wept, nonetheless.”

“They were always so
kind
!” he exclaimed passionately, beginning to weep again. “Especially Lucilla. There was never a stray cat that went hungry from her door, and if she saw a child crying in the street, she comforted it. She used to send me honeyed wine when I’d had my rations stopped, and charcoal to warm my cell in the winter. Oh God, God, I loved her! They are going to throw her to the wild beasts.” He looked up at the dull sky, his face contorted and streaming. “I want to take the soldiers who arrested her, the magistrates who ordered it, the jailers who keep her prisoner—I want to take the whole howling mob of people who are going to watch it—I want to take them all, and cast them into the lake of Hell, and watch them burn!”

“I am sorry,” I said again.

“Vengeance is evil. I should forgive my enemies.” He was back in control of himself. “Otherwise the wounded strike the wounded, and so the world is chained in suffering. I should be glad for my sister and my brothers: they are leaping from a moment’s pain into eternal glory. I am confident that Christ will give them strength and bring them home.”

There was another minute of silence. I thought about the kind Lucilla, doomed to die in the arena; about the Pictish prisoners we had taken; about the druids imprisoned in this very city. I thought about Tirgatao’s death.

“So,” said Eukairios, after another minute of silence, “they’ve given you the Roman citizenship.”

I nodded. “Tell me, Eukairios, should I refuse it?”

“No!” he said, in astonished disbelief. “Of course not!”

“I do not want it. The gods know, I do not love Rome.”

“But you’ve risked so much to defend Roman power!”

“I had a choice between that and joining its enemies, who seemed to me much worse. I was not offered the choice my heart would make; one never is.”

“What choice would that be?”

I was silent for a long time. I did not want to be a Roman, but I already knew that I was no true Sarmatian anymore—and I still had no clear idea of what the Britons were like. What world would I choose, if I had my freedom?

“A world without hatred,” I said at last.

Eukairios looked away, into the fountain. He reached over and stirred the stagnant water with his hand. “You’re right,” he whispered. “That’s not a choice we’re ever offered.”

I touched his shoulder.

Pervica came into the garden and hurried over to me. I stood up, balancing on one foot, and let her take my left arm. “Facilis says he can arrange for us to be married today,” I told her. “Eukairios can draw up the contract, and Marcus will take it to the archives this afternoon.”

“I went to see Publius Verinus, the camp prefect here,” she replied, “and he says we can have a guest room in the commandant’s house, despite it being so crowded. He was very pleasant when I told him we wanted to get married, and wished us joy.”

Her face, turned up to mine, was flushed and radiant. I smiled into it. In that part of me that was neither Roman nor Sarmatian, I kicked shut the doors of all the worlds that offered, and chose the one that no one would give me, the way to the Jade Gate, where I could never go.

Historical Epilogue

T
HE  SARMATIANS  WERE 
a real people. Nomadic speakers of an Iranian language like their cousins the Scythians, their different tribes—Iazyges and Roxalani, Alans, Aorsi, and Siraces—at one point extended from the plains of eastern Hungary as far as the Caspian Sea. They appear in the art of the Greek cities of the Black Sea and on Trajan’s column; at one point in the late third century, the Romans appear to have regarded them as the greatest of all the barbarian threats.

The historical peg on which this book has been suspended—the presence of some 5,500 Sarmatians in the Roman army in Britain—is also genuine. The fragmentary remains of book 72 of Dio Cassius’
Roman History
preserve this detail of the peace settlement that in 175 ended the Danube campaigns of the emperor Marcus Aurelius. That the Sarmatians arrived in Britain and remained for some time is attested by a tombstone from Chester, an inscription relating to a settlement of Sarmatian veterans at Ribchester, and some probably Sarmatian fragments of armor and definitely Sarmatian beads at a few sites—including the fort of Chesters (Cilurnum) on Hadrian’s Wall. Of such bits and pieces is history constructed. My own construction is, of course, full of details, but it’s only fair to warn the reader that many of these are invented or borrowed. For example, it isn’t clear that the cavalry surrendered to Marcus in the settlement of a.d. 175 were all armored: the British bits and pieces suggest armored units, and it makes sense that Marcus would demand this if he could, but the Iazyges did use unarmored mounted archers and could have sent principally these. Another bit of historical cheating is my use of the “Thundering Victory.” This actually took place in a
different
Danube campaign of Marcus Aurelius. But the only battle Dio describes with the Sarmatians—a dramatic encounter on the frozen Danube—is pretty clearly a minor skirmish, only recounted because the old Greek liked melodrama: it wouldn’t do for the end of a war. Better a real battle misplaced than an invented one, I thought.

For descriptions of Sarmatian customs my principal sources are Ammianus Marcellinus (on the Halani or Alans, a Sarmatian tribe, XXXI.2.16ff), Strabo, and, to a lesser extent, book IV of Herodotos (his “Sauromatai” are generally considered to be the ancestors of the later Sarmatians). Most of the archaeological work is in Russian or Hungarian, and hence inaccessible to me, but I’ve read what I could find in English. I must mention in particular T. Sulimirski’s
The Sarmatians
(Thames and Hudson, 1970), a nice clear archaeology book with excellent illustrations, though a bit careless with references. A couple of other books that were generally very useful were Ann Hyland’s
Equus: The Horse in the Roman World
(B.T. Batsford, London, 1990) and Anthony Birley’s
The People of
Roman Britain
(B.T. Batsford, London,1979).

A couple of other points need to be mentioned. First, anachronism spotters will have noticed that my Sarmatians ride with stirrups. I am sorry to disappoint you (she lied, smirking), but this is
not
an anachronism: Sarmatians were using stirrups in the first century
B.C.
, when grave goods in tombs near the Sea of Azov included saddles equipped with them (M. I. Rostovtzeff,
Iranians
and Greeks in South Russia
; some discussion by W. W. Tarn,
Hellenistic Military and Naval Developments
; see also Sulimirski,
The Sarmatians
). I am fully aware that many scholars—principally medievalists—say that stirrups were invented by the Goths in the fourth century
A.D.
or the Franks in the seventh, or even the Normans in the ninth, and use them to account for everything from the fall of the Roman Empire to medieval feudalism. I read and believed those books myself. I was flabber-gasted to discover that they were wrong. If any scholars are reading this, may I beg you to go check the evidence?

That is a scholarly error: I wish also to address a popular one. Readers may have noticed that Natalis’ bireme is rowed by sailors who live in barracks, and wondered what happened to the galley slaves. There is, in fact, no evidence for galley slaves on Roman warships—or, for that matter, on any other naval vessel of the ancient world. (For a good summary of the evidence for oarsmen on ancient vessels, see L. Casson,
Ships and Seamanship
in the Ancient World
, Princeton University Press 1971.)
Ben Hur
got it wrong.

The Roman Empire in 175 undoubtedly anticipated a long peace, particularly when Marcus Aurelius easily succeeded in suppressing the rebellion of Avidius Cassius in the East and returned in triumph to Rome. However, Marcus died in 180, and left his conceited and incompetent son Commodus to succeed him. Things soon began to fall apart—particularly in Britain. There was a major invasion across Hadrian’s Wall in the mid 180s: Corstopitum (Corbridge) appears to have been sacked, and some important Roman commander (it’s not clear who, but possibly a legionary legate) was killed in battle. Commodus seems to have ordered no action to rectify the situation, and the troubles went on for some years. The angry British army even made an attempt to make the legionary legate of York emperor before things settled down again, and discontented rumblings were heard from it for even longer. But that, as they say, is another story.