Gillian Bradshaw - Island of Ghosts

I couldn’t answer. Even if this were a test her husband had suggested to her, I couldn’t bring myself to say, “Yes,” and “No” was a road that led only to death.

Bodica laid her palm against my cheek. “You hate Rome,” she observed. “Ariantes, you don’t need to worry about saying so, not to me. My own people have suffered too.”

A door creaked open behind us, and Bodica instantly shifted her hand from me to Farna. “Such a beautiful mare,” she cooed. She glanced round and smiled warmly. “Tiberius, I’m over here! Don’t you think this is a beautiful horse?”

Her husband came out of the house and crossed the stable yard toward us. Arshak and Gatalas were behind him, together with the local nobleman, our host. “I thought Ariantes would be gone by now,” Priscus told his wife. “Have you been discussing horses with him all this time?”

She laughed. “Haven’t you noticed that all the Sarmatians can talk horses for hours? Seriously, Tiberius, don’t you think a foal by my stallion Blizzard out of this mare would be the best horse in the world?”

When I returned to my wagon, I tended my horses and sat by the evening fire in silence, going over the scene in the stable yard again and again and trying to understand it. I couldn’t. I couldn’t even tell whether the way Bodica had touched me was a sign of serious interest or meaningless flirtation, let alone guess what she’d meant by her talk of freedom and glory. I felt as though I were riding in a mist across a battlefield mined with pitfalls and scattered with caltrops that would lame my horse. Everywhere I turned there might be danger, but I could neither stand still nor go back.

The only thing I felt with any certainty was that I wanted nothing more to do with Lady Aurelia Bodica. I was bitterly ashamed of what I’d felt when she touched my cheek. I had not touched any woman since I last said good-bye to Tirgatao, and I was disgusted to find myself stirred by Bodica, however lovely she was and however noble. I had enough to worry about, too, without dangers from feuds between Roman factions or the threat of punishment for adultery with my commander’s wife.

The only other man in the dragon who seemed gloomy was Eukairios. He sat silent by the fire while the rest talked and laughed in a language that he, of course, did not understand. After a while, he asked me where he could sleep, and I took him back into the wagon and cleared a space for him.

I woke in the middle of the night to the sound of sobbing. It pulled me from deep sleep, and for a moment I could not remember when or where I was. “Artanisca?” I said, sitting up. “Artanisca, love, I’m here. Don’t cry.”

The sobbing stopped abruptly, and as it did I realized that it had not been a child’s sobbing, but the hard, painful gasping of a man. I remembered Eukairios.

“I’m sorry, my lord,” came the slave’s voice out of the darkness, still rough with grief. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

I dropped onto my back again and stared up blindly into the blackness. “No,” I said. “I am sorry that you grieve so for Bononia.”

“I didn’t mean to complain,” he told me. “You have been very kind. It was a great consolation to me to be able to say good-bye, and to have my friends’ prayers supporting me as I set out. I do thank you. But it’s… foreign to me. It will get better in time. I’ll learn the language.”

He was speaking to encourage himself. “Yes,” I said. I closed my eyes, willing myself to be still.

“What does ‘artanisca’ mean? It is what you said just now, isn’t it?”

I was silent for a long minute. “It is a name,” I answered, at last. “My little son. He is dead.”

“Oh!” After a moment, “I am sorry, my lord.”

“Yes.” I pressed my hands against my face, trying to stop my own tears at the thought that Artanisca would never wake me in the night again, never; Tirgatao would never get up to pluck him from his cradle and place him between us, round and warm, and slide her slim arm around my back, leaning her head against my own. Never, never, never.

“What do your people say of the dead?” I asked, saying something, anything, rather than gaze into that black chasm. “Do followers of your cult burn them, like the Romans, or do they lay them in the earth?”

“Either, my lord,” Eukairios said, after a surprised pause. “Bury if we can, burn if we can’t. We believe that if we have died in faith, it doesn’t matter how our bodies are treated.”

“But you believe in immortality.” I remembered Natalis on the ship, mentioning the cult’s disgusting rituals done in private houses at night, to give immortality.

“We believe that one day this earth will shed its skin like a snake, and be renewed; that it suffers now like a woman in labor, but when its pain is ended there will be joy. Then all things will be made new, and the dead rise from ashes or the grave, and all that was broken will be made whole.”

“You believe that the bodies of the dead can return from ashes?”

“If they were made once in their mother’s womb, they can be made again from the earth, or smoke, or ash. What matters is what they were when they lived, not what was done to them afterward.”

“My people believe that when fire destroys the body,” I said, “the soul is destroyed too. Fire is holy, and death pollutes it.”

“If you think fire is holy, shouldn’t it purify death?”

“That is not what we believe of it.”

We were silent for a little while. I imagined Tirgatao burning, and the pain was so great I couldn’t breathe. I spoke. I had to, even though I was weakening myself before, of all people, a miserable slave. “My wife’s body was burned,” I said, “and my little son’s as well. They were in the wagons. The Romans came-the second Pannonian cavalry. Tirgatao took Artanisca and jumped out of the wagon, hoping to run with him to safety, but she was heavy with our second child, and slow; they saw her. She had her bow, and shot at them; they told me she killed one man. The rest fell on her with swords and killed her. Then they killed Artanisca. They were angry because we had made them suffer in the war, and because she had killed one of them. They looted the wagons and set them on fire. They cut her body open, and tore the child from her womb, and hurled it on the fire. I pray to all the gods it was dead! They took a horse’s head, and put that in her womb, and flung her on the fire, like that, and Artanisca after her. Another woman who had hidden in a well saw it all. I was wounded on the field, five miles away; I was lying in the mud all the while, not conscious. When my men came to find me next morning, they did not tell me what had happened. I asked and asked for Tirgatao, and they said she was not there. I thought she had been sent to safety.”

I heard the floorboards creak as he moved. “Christ have mercy!” he whispered.

“I do not believe a crucified Roman would help it.”

“But you believe fire is holy, and your god, Marha, is holy and good?”

“That is what my people believe.”

“Then… then surely, fire for your wife and child would be release, not destruction?”

“Perhaps,” I said. “The Romans burn their dead to release the soul. Perhaps they are right. I hope they are right, and you also.”After a moment I added, thickly, “It is the thought of Artanisca that hurts me most, when she was already dead, screaming beside her body. He was two years old. I think of him crying, and of her burning. I was helpless to prevent it, and helpless to revenge it, and I am helpless still. Do not repeat anything of what I have just said. To anyone.”

“God forbid!” he said vehemently. “I’d as soon tear a man’s skin off and wear it round the camp.”