Gillian Bradshaw - Island of Ghosts

The mouth lifted in a gentle, ironic smile. “It isn’t because you’re in the wrong place: none of the living can find the dead. You are alive.”

I stared at her incomprehendingly. She took my hand, turned it in hers, and ran her thumb up my wrist: the blue line of blood went white, then leapt forward again with the force of life. “You are alive,” she repeated softly.

I looked at her doubtfully. “If I am alive, why am I in a tomb?”

“Why do you think you are?”

I put my hand to the wall again. “It is stone.”

“Do they only use stone for tombs where you come from? This is a house. You are at River End Farm, five miles from Corstopitum in the region of Brigantia. My name is Pervica, Saenus’ widow, and the house and farm are mine.”

I touched the wall again, frowning. My mind was still not clear. I felt that I’d heard of Corstopitum before, but I couldn’t remember anything about it.

Pervica knelt and put my arm over her shoulders. “You should get back into bed,” she said, and helped me into it. “Now, do you still feel sick, or could you eat some barley broth?”

I let her fetch the broth, and drank it when she brought it. When I handed her the empty bowl, I suddenly realized that I was still wearing nothing but the blanket around my shoulders, and I hurried to cover myself. “How did I come here?” I asked.

“We took you from the river yesterday afternoon,” she answered.

“I do not remember,” I said, frowning again.

“You wouldn’t remember,” she said soothingly. “You were very nearly dead.”

I shook my head. “I do not remember going to this river at all.” It troubled me.

She noticed, and continued gently. “Probably you’ll remember in a little while. Where are your family, or your friends? In Corstopitum?”

“I do not remember,” I repeated. “Sometimes… I have been there, I think.”

“What is your name?”

“Ariantes.”

“You remember the important things, then. Don’t worry, the rest will come. I’ll send Cluim into Corstopitum this afternoon to ask if anyone there has missed you. Cluim looks after my sheep; he was the one who found you. He saw your red coat against the green of the riverbank when he went to gather the sheep yesterday, and he went and pulled you out. He thought at first you were dead, but you coughed, so he covered you with his cloak and ran shivering back to the house to fetch help. We put you in the cart and brought you in by the fire, and the warmth recovered you.”

I nodded, helplessly, and tried to sit up again. “Where are my clothes?” I asked.

“There.” She pointed to a rack by the foot of the bed: there they all hung neatly, the hilt of the dagger gleaming in the dim light. “They’re still a little damp, so I wouldn’t try to put them on yet. Try and rest.”

“You took them off me?”

“You needed to get warm,” she said reprovingly.

It was warm in the bed by the fire. “Yes,” I said, drowsily. “I thank you.”

When I next woke, it was dark again and my strength was returning. I sat up and looked at the embers on the hearth. After a minute, I rose and put some fresh wood on, and watched the flames burn up, bright and yellow. Image of Marha, the holy one, the pure lord. I stretched my hand out to him, and suddenly the sight of it made me shiver. There my fingers, so cunningly articulated, moved at my will to honor the god: I was alive. For a long time I had regretted that life. In my heart I believed I should have died on that day of thunder, and never seen defeat or heard of the end of those I loved most. And now, all at once and without thinking, I was glad to be alive, to see the fire burning and smell the thick sweet smoke; to feel my strength rising in me again. The world of the dead is one we cannot share. However long we stand, gazing at the tomb, in the end we must turn and ride home. We are wonderfully and mysteriously suspended in a web of bone and blood, able to think and move, love and believe. Alive. Thank the gods!

I couldn’t go back to the bed. Though I now knew I was in a house and not a tomb, I still found the close stone walls deathly. I fumbled my clothes on by the light of the fire, pulled on my coat, slung the blanket over my shoulders, and went to the door.

A full moon was shining on the snow in the farmyard, and the stars were white and high in a clear cold sky, scattered so thick that the night was radiant with them. The hills glimmered in the moonlight, and everything was still, frozen in an impossible beauty. My breath steamed. I stepped out, closing the door behind me, and limped along the side of the house. By the time I’d reached the corner, I was shivering, and I turned for shelter to a wooden barn just beyond it. I slipped into this and stood still, smelling the scent of cows, and the closer, more familiar home-smell of horses. At once I was tired again. I found a pile of clean straw in a corner, lay down in that, rolled up in the blanket, and went back to sleep.

When the cocks crowed I woke feeling hungry and myself again. I stretched and stood up, then shook the straw off the blanket and hung it over the wall of a stall. Outside the barn, dawn was breaking pink and radiant over the snow-covered land. Six cows watched me peacefully from the other end of the barn, chewing their cuds as they waited for someone to come and milk them. Two horses were loose-tethered opposite them, and a third horse was in the box stall I’d hung the blanket on, tethered with its head to the entrance. This last was looking at me with its ears back.

“Good morning,” I told it.

It rolled its eyes and shifted nervously.

I walked round to the door of the stall and looked at the animal more closely. It was a stallion, chestnut with white socks and a blaze on its forehead, and it was a fine horse, round-hooved, heavy-hocked, and big enough to carry armor-though, like most British horses, a little light in the forequarters. But it had whip scars across its withers, and more scars on its nose and at the corners of its mouth: it was nervous because it had been mistreated.

It never occurred to me that Pervica could have been responsible. I had come back to life at the touch of her hand, and I could not associate any cruelty with that gentle face and ironic smile. I at once assumed that this was some beast she’d taken pity on, as she’d taken pity on me, and I looked at the animal with fellow feeling. I spoke to him soothingly, but the stallion still rolled his eyes, keeping his ears back as though to say, “Keep your distance. I won’t let you hit me.” There was no real hatred there, though, just fear.

I looked about and found a rag that had been used to clean harness. I picked it up and went over to the other horses. One was a mare, and I rubbed the rag against her rump, then went back to the stallion and let him smell it. His ears came forward again as he sniffed-an old trick, but a good one. I stroked his neck, talking to him quietly, and ducked under the door, which was the high kind with two bars at waist level. The ears flicked back and forth, the stallion snorted, but couldn’t make up his mind to attack, and I went on patting him and crooning to him until he began to think he liked it. I went out, fetched a handful of grain, came back and fed it to him, murmuring all the time to keep him calm. I noticed as he ate that at some point his tongue had been torn so badly that it needed stitches. I judged that the scars on his nose had been caused by a psalion, the metal hackamore that closes when it is pulled, which the Romans sometimes use for recalcitrant carriage horses.

The barn door opened and a man came in. He was dressed in the common gray-brown woollens of the Britons, but with a sheepskin cloak instead of a check one. He stared at me and gabbled something in his own language.