Gillian Bradshaw - Island of Ghosts

I drew the dragon up and made a severe speech warning the men against moneylenders and the dangers of getting into debt, then brought them all into the chapel of the standards in the fort headquarters, where the clinking bags were handed out beneath the impassive gaze of the statue of the man we’d sworn our oaths to at Aquincum. The men went off in a proper holiday mood to prepare for the Sada feast.

I found their excitement depressing. Six months before we had scarcely known what money was: now, even the slowest man in the dragon had been able to understand instantly that he earned more than the Asturians did. I was tired and irritable when I limped back to the chapel of the standards to check over the final accounts with Eukairios and the Asturians’ treasurer, who had the key to the strong room. It was late in the afternoon by then. Halfway through the accounting, I noticed another pay box under the table, and I heaved it up and shoved it across at Eukairios. “What is this for?” I asked him. He answered, with a smile, “The commander’s pay, my lord.”

“Oh,” I said. Eukairios went on copying pay chits into two registers. I sat beside him, ready to countersign the pages with the scrawled dragon mark I’d been using since Bononia. “How much is it?” I asked, after a minute.

Eukairios set down his pen and laughed. He shook his head, picked up the pen again. “I’ll have to tell that one to Longus,” he said.

“You’ll have to tell me what?” said Longus himself, striding into the chapel.

Eukairios put down the pen again. “Lord Flavinus, I have written, at my master’s dictation, some sixty or seventy letters about the dragon’s pay and allowances. He’s given presents to officials in the legate’s office, the governor’s office, the grain commissary, and the treasury. He has, as you know, come up with complicated schemes to pay for the horses. We’ve worried over the price of glue to mend bows and the cost of a blacksmith’s furnace. Would you have thought there was any detail of this troop’s finances he didn’t know about?”

“No,” said Longus-expectantly.

Eukairios pointed at the box. “The commander’s pay.”

“Isn’t it thirty thousand a year?”

Eukairios started laughing again. I looked at him in exasperation. I was not in a mood for jokes. “You should not laugh at me,” I told him.

He sobered quickly. “It is thirty thousand a year, my lord, as Lord Flavinus Longus said. Fifteen thousand now. Item: fifteen thousand denarii for the commander’s pay, here.” He flipped a page in his ledger. “You countersign there.”

I countersigned and picked up the box containing fifteen thousand denarii. It was very heavy. Quite suddenly I loathed it, and hated the tomblike, stone-walled chapel, the standards along the wall, and particularly the statue of the emperor with his preoccupied, philosophical face. I had been a prince, and owned herds and flocks; I had led raids, and traded with the East; I had held a scepter and judged the disputes of my dependants. Now I was a hireling. I wanted to hurl the box at that smug statue-but that would be sacrilege and treason. I put down my wages again.

“Put it back in the strong room for now,” I ordered Eukairios.

“Yes, my lord.” He put down his pen again and got up to obey, and I noticed that he looked even wearier than usual. He had, of course, done most of the work for the payday, checking over the accounts, keeping the books, writing out the five hundred pay chits that now had to be copied over in duplicate. “Wait,” I ordered, and he stopped. I unlocked the box, picked up a stack of the coins, and counted out a hundred of them, the same amount as my men had been allotted for their first six months’ basic salary. “A financial detail you also were unaware of,” I said, pushing the money toward him. “The commander’s scribe’s pay.”

I was unprepared for his reaction. He went white, then red, and stared at me as though I’d insulted him. He didn’t touch the money. “You can’t do that,” he said at last.

“Why not?”

“You don’t pay slaves!”

I didn’t know how to answer that, so I shrugged. “I have chosen to pay you. If you do not wish to keep the money, dispose of it as you wish.”

He picked up the coins with shaking hands. “All my life,” he whispered, “all my life…” He looked up, blinking at tears, and seemed suddenly to register the amount. “No, you mustn’t give me this much, my lord. It would offend the men of the dragon if I got as much as they do. Here…” He pushed three little piles of ten coins back toward me, then fumbled them into the box himself, closed it, and locked it. He looked at the seven piles remaining on the table and nodded. He wiped his eyes. “All my life,” he said again, “I’ve been on the supplies ledger, not the pay ledger. Item one scribe, item rations for same.”

“Does it make much difference?” asked Longus impatiently.

“Yes,” said Eukairios, still staring at the money. “Yes, it does. It’s almost like being free.” He looked back at me and smiled shakily. He was beginning to recover himself. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “I thought-I hoped-since you’re generous, you might give me a denarius for the Saturnalia. I never expected this at all. I’ve never been paid before.”

“Nor have I,” I said. “I am glad you enjoy it.”

“Oh, so that’s it,” said Longus. “It offends your princely dignity to get wages. I wish someone would offend me with the same amount. Look, I came to tell you that my sister has just arrived back from Corstopitum with a guest of yours, and if you’re going to be a courteous host, you’d better come and greet her.”

“I’ll countersign the rest of the accounts later,” I told Eukairios, and went out with Longus to welcome Pervica to Cilurnum.

The Festival, which we celebrated over three days, was a huge success. We lit the bonfires of the Sada, and the Romans chose the king of the Saturnalia, and we sacrificed to Marha and to Saturn side by side. I’d managed to locate some hemp seeds for my troops, and they were able to toast them in the traditional steam bath before the feast, from which they departed half-drunk on the smoke and howling with pleasure. Mare’s milk, to make koumiss, the usual drink, had proved harder to find, and we had to make do with wine and beer. Still, there were plenty of those, and plenty of roast meat, and milk, and honeyed almonds; the Romans exchanged the little pottery dolls they give on the occasion, and we gave a few of them as well and wished each other a joyful festival. Roman troops always prepare entertainments for the Saturnalia, setting aside money for it from their pay packets over the whole year, and buying wild animals from hunting syndicates for spectacles, as well as laying up food and drink. There were bearbaitings, then, and wild beast fights with boars, dogs, and bulls. My men had never seen these before, and enjoyed them even more than the Asturians did, watching with whoops of excitement and going off full of praise for the courage of the dogs. We, for our part, had arranged horse races and tilting matches, which the Romans also enjoyed. Then there were songs in Sarmatian, in Latin, in British; there was music on the harp and the kithara, the flute and the drums; there was dancing and acrobatics.

Pervica enjoyed herself, though she didn’t like the spectacles-she was sorry for the animals. Longus’ sister Flavina proved to be a pleasant woman, tall, dark, and mournful-looking like her brother, and with the same irrepressible sense of humor; she was married to another of the Asturian decurions, who, in the usual peculiar fashion of men on active service, was expected to sleep in barracks in the fort, rather than with his wife in the village. Pervica got on well with her and with the widowed mother, who also shared the house. (Longus told me afterward that he’d had some concern about that side of things, as his mother had never forgiven me for tipping her son off his horse.) But Pervica got on well with everyone. I introduced her to my officers, and she greeted them as respectfully as they greeted her, and they approved of her. She laughed at Longus’ stories, particularly when they were about me, and she listened attentively to Comittus and understood his good sense. I noticed her at one point having a long conversation with Facilis, and he was smiling at her. She slipped into the same effortless partnership with Eukairios that I had myself. Everything was perfect; everything was almost too perfect. The days were of white sun and midwinter calm: perhaps we could all feel the storms ahead, and decided to grab at our happiness while it was there before us.