Gillian Bradshaw: Island of Ghosts

I shrugged. Roman names.

“Well-to whom do you owe your citizenship?”

“First to the governor, then to the emperor.”

“Quintus Antistius Ariantes? Marcus Aurelius Ariantes?”

I flinched. “Marha!”

He grinned at me. “A bitter mouthful, is it? You’ll get used to it. Which one shall it be?”

“Marcus Aurelius.”

“The safest choice. The governor would be flattered if you used his names, but his term of office ends in a year or so, and he can’t be offended at you choosing to honor the emperor. I won’t call you Marcus, don’t worry.” He got to his feet. “I’ll go arrange it for you. Good health!”

Eukairios arrived a few minutes after he’d gone. “Pervica said you wanted to see me, Patron,” he said.

“I wanted to marry her today,” I said. “Marcus Flavius says that you can draw up a marriage contract concerning our property, and that we need three witnesses for it. He says he will collect my citizenship papers from the governor’s staff, take them down to the public archives, and file the contract for us. Is that all it needs?”

“That should be- What citizenship papers?”

I looked at him sourly. “I am rewarded with Roman citizenship.”

“Oh.” He sat down beside me and stared into the fountain. I noticed quite suddenly that his eyes were red.

“What is the matter?” I asked.

He looked away from the water reluctantly and rubbed his eyes. “I

… was visiting the brothers here, and they had a letter for me from the ekklesia in Bononia, the one I used to belong to. Three of my friends have been arrested, and were sent to Augusta Treverorum to die in the arena.”

“I am very sorry,” I said, after a moment’s silence.

He shook his head. “We say it’s a glorious death, to die praising Christ in the arena.” His voice had thickened. “We say that it’s the sure road to the Heavenly City, and that God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

“But you wept, nonetheless.”

“They were always so kind!” he exclaimed passionately, beginning to weep again. “Especially Lucilla. There was never a stray cat that went hungry from her door, and if she saw a child crying in the street, she comforted it. She used to send me honeyed wine when I’d had my rations stopped, and charcoal to warm my cell in the winter. Oh God, God, I loved her! They are going to throw her to the wild beasts.” He looked up at the dull sky, his face contorted and streaming. “I want to take the soldiers who arrested her, the magistrates who ordered it, the jailers who keep her prisoner-I want to take the whole howling mob of people who are going to watch it-I want to take them all, and cast them into the lake of Hell, and watch them burn!”

“I am sorry,” I said again.

“Vengeance is evil. I should forgive my enemies.” He was back in control of himself. “Otherwise the wounded strike the wounded, and so the world is chained in suffering. I should be glad for my sister and my brothers: they are leaping from a moment’s pain into eternal glory. I am confident that Christ will give them strength and bring them home.”

There was another minute of silence. I thought about the kind Lucilla, doomed to die in the arena; about the Pictish prisoners we had taken; about the druids imprisoned in this very city. I thought about Tirgatao’s death.

“So,” said Eukairios, after another minute of silence, “they’ve given you the Roman citizenship.”

I nodded. “Tell me, Eukairios, should I refuse it?”

“No!” he said, in astonished disbelief. “Of course not!”

“I do not want it. The gods know, I do not love Rome.”

“But you’ve risked so much to defend Roman power!”

“I had a choice between that and joining its enemies, who seemed to me much worse. I was not offered the choice my heart would make; one never is.”

“What choice would that be?”

I was silent for a long time. I did not want to be a Roman, but I already knew that I was no true Sarmatian anymore-and I still had no clear idea of what the Britons were like. What world would I choose, if I had my freedom?

“A world without hatred,” I said at last.

Eukairios looked away, into the fountain. He reached over and stirred the stagnant water with his hand. “You’re right,” he whispered. “That’s not a choice we’re ever offered.”

I touched his shoulder.

Pervica came into the garden and hurried over to me. I stood up, balancing on one foot, and let her take my left arm. “Facilis says he can arrange for us to be married today,” I told her. “Eukairios can draw up the contract, and Marcus will take it to the archives this afternoon.”

“I went to see Publius Verinus, the camp prefect here,” she replied, “and he says we can have a guest room in the commandant’s house, despite it being so crowded. He was very pleasant when I told him we wanted to get married, and wished us joy.”

Her face, turned up to mine, was flushed and radiant. I smiled into it. In that part of me that was neither Roman nor Sarmatian, I kicked shut the doors of all the worlds that offered, and chose the one that no one would give me, the way to the Jade Gate, where I could never go.