Gillian Bradshaw - Island of Ghosts

“If it has to be, let me help. It’s too much for you to bear alone.”

“No! The road’s empty now, but who knows when someone will come along? We mustn’t be seen together. Just help me to put him in the chariot: I’ll do the rest.”

Arshak picked me up by the shoulders, slung me over my horse, and led her over to the chariot. I was aware of it, through the mist, but I could not move. It was the most I could do to pick my head up a little, and then I couldn’t hold it. I was put in the chariot like a corpse and shoved under the bench seat. I was aware, in the dim scent of damp leather and wood, of Bodica and Arshak whispering good-bye, and then the chariot jolted into motion.

It rolled over paved road for some distance, and I struggled in the mist and darkness, half-unconscious, half-awake. When I could think at all, I wished, stupidly, passionately, and irrelevantly, that I had succeeded that time in reaching the Jade Gate. It was cold. After a time, I realized that we’d left the paved road and were bouncing along a rougher surface. Again I struggled to get up, and couldn’t. I twisted my head, and saw beside me the edge of Bodica’s gown, her feet in the expensive shoes of embossed leather, and a mud track beyond. The chariot turned, and the mud was replaced by grass, green winter grass with a light sprinkling of snow. The chariot stopped.

The world faded a moment, and I felt horribly cold and sick. Bodica hauled me out of the chariot and rolled me over on the grass, then went and did something with my horse, which I saw had been tied behind the chariot. She bent over me and unfastened the baldric for my sword, took it off, refastened it, and hung it from my saddle. Then she took the bow case out and put it in my hand. She knelt and looked in my face. “You can see me, can’t you?” she whispered. Her eyes were very bright and she was flushed and smiling. “I’ve given you the bow because they’ll think you were hunting. I’ve hung up the sword because you would have taken it off if you were wading out into the water to fetch something you’d shot.”

Water. I tried to move my head; after what seemed a long time, it shifted, and I saw the river, only a few feet away.

“Yes, there,” said Bodica, gleefully. “You’re going to drown. I’ve never drowned a man before. Only animals.” She giggled, sat down, and began taking her shoes off. “You believe that people who drown are damned, don’t you?”

I could not move or speak. Bodica leaned over me again, her face close to mine; she ran her hand up my arm and pressed my shoulder. “You’re strong, aren’t you?” she whispered. “A big strong warrior and a commander of men. And you’re going to drown like a helpless little puppy.” She giggled again, rubbing my shoulder like a lover, and then leaned closer still and kissed me, open-mouthed, hot and wet. It was peculiarly horrible. It was my death she kissed then, and her pleasure in it was somehow even worse than the thing itself.

She stood up, put her shoes and socks in the chariot, and pushed me with her bare foot; I rolled helplessly over toward the river. I closed my eyes. Tirgatao, I thought, just let me find Tirgatao when I’m dead. Marha, Jupiter, any legal or illegal god you like-let my people’s beliefs be wrong, and let me find Tirgatao and Artanisca.

Bodica gave me another push, and I rolled over into the water. She pulled up her skirts and stepped into the shallows after me, pushed once more so that I lay on my face. The last thing I was aware of was the weight of her foot pressing me down.

I woke in the dark, smelling fire. I could not feel my own limbs, but the cold was like knives in my chest and stomach. I coughed and someone lifted me; I remember their skin seemed red-hot against my side. I tasted the river in my mouth and felt it, heavy in my chest. I struggled to toss it off, coughing, gasping, and vomiting, and the water gurgled in my lungs and ran from my nose. The other held me up, put a basin under my mouth, spoke soothingly, and at last, when the spasms stopped, set me down and drew blankets over me. I lay still, drifting numbly; slept; woke again feeling warmer. The fire-scented darkness still surrounded me. My hands and feet felt as though they were burning, my head ached, and I still felt sick. I struggled to move, and a woman’s voice said something, softly and gently, and a hand smoothed my hair away from my face. I relaxed.

“Tirgatao,” I said, feeling as though I were fitting back into life, like a sword into its sheath or a latch onto a door. I opened my eyes, trying to find her.

But it was not her. The reddish light of a fire showed me a woman beside me, but a strange woman with a long, oval face, hair indeterminately dark in the faint light, a gentle mouth, long hands. I stared at her for a while in bewilderment. “Where is Tirgatao?” I asked at last.

I spoke in Sarmatian, but the woman replied in another language. I looked at her blankly, and she said something else. I felt that I ought to understand the second time she spoke, but I could not, and I wept because I could not. The woman stroked my hair again, and said “shhh, shhh,” which at least I could understand. I lay still; after a while I went back to sleep.

When I woke again, it was lighter, and I felt less ill. There was still the smell of fire. I lay on my side, staring out at a wall. After a time, I put my hand against it, and felt that it was made of stone. Then I knew that I was dead and in my grave. I lay for a while, considering this without distress. It didn’t surprise me, but I couldn’t remember how I had died.

It suddenly occurred to me that if I were dead, I might find Tirgatao. I pulled myself up onto my hands and knees, looking around. The stone walls enclosed me, but there was a hearth on my left, with embers glowing redly under a gridiron. The packed earth floor was covered with dried bracken, and herbs and dried meat hung from the ceiling. I sat back onto my heels. I was on a kind of bed, with a blanket over me, and all my clothes were missing. I pulled the blanket around my shoulders and stood up. My knees were weak, and my bad leg almost gave under me; I staggered and put a hand against the wall to balance myself. There was a door in the far wall, and I started toward it.

A woman came suddenly through another door, on the other side of the hearth, and ran over to me, saying something in an unknown language. I remembered her as the one who’d been beside me in the dark. She caught my elbow, speaking to me and trying to lead me back to the bed.

“I must find Tirgatao,” I told her.

“You shouldn’t be up,” she said, in her second language-only now my mind understood it as Latin. “Do you understand me? You shouldn’t be up; you’re much too ill.”

“But Tirgatao…” I said, in Latin now. “I must find her. She was burned, not buried, but perhaps she is wandering the air, and will come in when I call her. Perhaps she is outside. Please, I must find her.”

“There’s no one outside,” said the woman.

I pushed her off and staggered to the door. I scrabbled with the latch a moment, then pushed it open. Beyond it was a farmyard, with chickens scratching in the fresh snow, and beyond that, white hills and dark leafless trees under a gray sky. I leaned against the doorframe, staring at it. It was all wrong. It was not my country at all. They’d buried me in the wrong place. “Tirgatao!” I called desperately, hoping somehow she could still hear me, “Artanisca! Tirgatao!”

“Please come back in and let me close the door,” said the woman. “You should not stand half-naked in the cold. You were chilled and very nearly dead when we found you.”

I let her close the door and lead me back to the bed. My strength barely got me back to it, and I collapsed on the floor beside it and wept bitterly, then coughed up some more water. “They burned her body,” I told the woman, when I could speak again. “That is why she is not here. And they have buried me in the wrong place, and now I cannot find her.”