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Gillian Bradshaw: Island of Ghosts

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Gillian Bradshaw Island of Ghosts

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After a while, I picked myself up and stepped hesitantly onto the gangplank. I could see the shadow of it falling through the shallow water, making it dark, and a school of small fish nibbling at the stones of the quay. I limped very slowly down the plank, stepped onto the quay-and stopped. I had set foot on Britain, the island that was to be prison or home-and the action seemed almost too simple for such a consequential thing. Was this really the invisible island beyond the world’s end, the island of ghosts we all feared so?

After a moment, I walked on down the docks, out of the naval base surrounding the harbor, and into the town. It felt very odd to go on foot-my people are accustomed to ride everywhere-but somehow the simplicity of it was right.

Narrow houses overlooked the paved street, some of timber and stucco, a few of stone. A tavern sign shaped like a ship swung above the door of one; it had glass windows on its lower floor, wicker interlace shutters above. A man sold fish from wooden tubs outside his shop. Two women talked by a public fountain, one of them holding a baby. A girl carried a bucket of water, her tongue between her teeth as she tried not to spill it. I walked slowly, trying to take it all in. The cool clear afternoon light was the first light on a new world.

The street opened into a marketplace where the region’s farmers had set up stalls. I limped slowly through the bustle and the cries, looking. Some of the people there, the wealthier ones, wore Roman dress of tunic and cloak, but most were clothed in what I presumed was the native fashion. The men wore trousers and sleeved tunics that came to the middle of their thighs, and the women wore longer tunics and shawls. Most of their clothing was made of plain gray-brown wool, but they had a fondness for checked cloaks, which they pinned on both shoulders. They were, I thought, on average a bit shorter than my own people, and a bit darker-not so many blond and red heads, though plenty of blue eyes. Their faces were different, too-rounder, wider about the eyes, without the high cheeks and long thin bones. The more Romanized men were short-haired and clean-shaven, the native men long-haired and bearded, like me. They looked at me as curiously as I looked at them, and I could feel them staring after me, trying to work out where I came from. I was not wearing Roman dress, of course. I had trousers like their own men, but a shirt and sleeved coat instead of the tunic and cloak. I was wearing the coat with the sleeves loose, since the day was warm, but I’d pinned it on my right shoulder, the opposite way from them, and I had a leather hat with a peak, while they were all bareheaded. I was obviously a foreigner and a barbarian-but I was also obviously wealthy. My clothes might have been dirty, but they had been dyed expensively red, decorated with gold beadwork and fastened with gold, and my dagger had a jeweled hilt. I was a contradiction. It was not surprising that they stared.

I paused to look at some sheep that were penned between three wicker hurdles. They were an unfamiliar breed, more lightly built than the ones I was used to: most were grayish brown, but a few, a longer-tailed, squarer sort, were white. I stopped for longer by a horse dealer. His horses were small shaggy animals with large heads and thin necks: I didn’t think much of them. But I noticed that they all wore iron shoes. My own people never trouble to shoe their horses-it’s unnecessary in a land without roads-and most of the auxiliary cavalry I’d met didn’t either. I’d seen horseshoes before, but never had a chance to inspect them. I went over to one of the horses, patted it, and knelt to check its hooves. Its owner came over and asked me a question in an unknown language.

“I am sorry, I do not understand you,” I said. “Do you speak Latin?”

“Indeed, man…” he said, then, correcting himself, “My lord, indeed I speak Latin. Are you interested in the beast? He’s a fine worker, pulls well at the plow or the cart, only four years old; you may have him for just thirty denarii.”

“How far can he go in a day?” I asked-the first question any Sarmatian asks when buying a horse.

The horse dealer stared at me. “Indeed, my lord, I don’t know.”

It shocked me almost to tears, and I had to look away and pretend to study the hoof again. I felt utterly foreign and alone. “How far can he go in a day?”-the question came from another world, a world where people lived in wagons and traveled from grazing ground to grazing ground, a world to which I could never return. Here the question was “Can he pull well at the plow?” and I wouldn’t even understand the qualities that answered it.

I put the horse’s foot down, stood, patted it on the shoulder. “Thank you,” I told the horse dealer, and limped off.

I stopped at a public fountain on the other side of the marketplace and had a drink of water. A fat woman selling apples offered me a cup to drink from. As I returned it, with thanks, I looked at the apples, which she had in a large wooden barrel. They were small and red. “How much are they?” I asked.

“I’d sell a basketful for a couple of eggs, my lord,” the woman replied, beaming, “but you may have one for nothing, seeing that you’re a foreign gentleman.” She handed me one. “Have you come from across the sea, my lord?”

Plainly she had a lively curiosity. I took a bite of the apple: it was sweet. “I have,” I told her, when I’d swallowed it, “and I have some fellows there. I would like to buy your apples to give to them, freewoman. Will you sell me the barrel full?”

“What? The whole barrel?”

“If it is agreeable to you.”

“Indeed, my lord! The whole barrel? Then you’d want the barrel, as well as the apples? That would be… let me see… You may have the apples for four asses, and another five for the barrel.”

I had some coins in a purse, and I dug nine coppers out. The woman looked at them and shook her head. “My lord!” she said. “These are sestertii!”

“Well, how many of them make up one as?” I asked.

She stared at me in amazement, then giggled. “My lord!” she cried. “There are two and a half asses to one sestertius! Where are you from, my lord?”

I set my teeth. I’d acquired the money on raids, and kept it in case I ever needed to do any trading with Romans: my own people don’t use it. Now I would have to learn what things cost. At least the apple seller hadn’t tried to cheat me. I gave her five of the sestertii.

“Only four, my lord, only four, and I owe you one as change!” she said, laughing and trying to give one back.

I shook my head. “The fifth is in thanks for your honesty. Will that buy the apples?”

“Indeed!” she said, beaming. “Will you bring a cart to collect them, my lord? Or should my man drop them off with you when he comes this evening?”

I hesitated. Should I send the apples to the procurator’s house or to the ship?

There was a sudden commotion from just up the street, and I looked up to see a white stallion trotting into the marketplace. I stopped worrying about the apples. This horse was altogether different from the sorry animals I’d looked at before. It was several hands higher, straight-backed and deep-chested, and moved with a light step. It was a fine horse. I had finer ones myself, even in Bononia, but I might have bargained to buy the animal in the days when I lived in my country and owned herds; I liked its hindquarters and the line of its neck. It had some harness on but no bridle, and it was clear from the shouting of the people around it that it had slipped its tether and was running loose. A young man in a fine cloak ran into the marketplace after it and stopped. “Oh, Deae Matres!” he groaned, seeing the stallion trotting away across the paving stones. “Fifteen denarii to the man who can catch that horse!” I watched to see how they would do it.

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