Island of Ghosts by Gillian Bradshaw Read Free Book Online Page A

with . . . this Arshak. If there are three troops of you, and he commands one while you command another, who commands the third?”
    “Gatalas. I do not know that you would find him easier to liaise with than Arshak, Javolenus Comittus.”
    “Call me Lucius. So if I’m lucky, I liaise with you.”
    “If you choose to view it that way.”
    “I do,” he announced, grinning.
    He was undoubtedly right to prefer me to Arshak or Gatalas. “How far is it to Eburacum?” I asked.
    He was perfectly happy to tell me about Eburacum and his journey from there, and did all the talking the rest of the way.
    Natalis’ house at the naval base in Dubris was even larger and finer than his house in Bononia. I slid off the horse, thanked my companion, and wished him good health—though I called him Lucius Javolenus, not Lucius. I couldn’t bring myself to use his first name alone, not while my mind still teased me with the image of his scalp hanging from my bridle. When he’d ridden off, I went in and introduced myself to the slaves.
    The dispatches I’d voyaged with had contained a letter about me to the steward of the house, and I’d been expected even before Bodica had appeared to arrange a dinner party for me: the slaves were polite, despite my smell of dirt and horses. I gave directions about the apples and remembered to ask for someone to go to the ship to explain to the captain why I wasn’t waiting there. The steward escorted me up the stairs to a bedroom overlooking the courtyard, murmuring that Lord Julius Priscus and his wife were expecting me in an hour, after I’d had time to wash, and would I like a bath?
    I wanted to clean myself, particularly if I was to dine with these important Romans, but the Roman custom of immersing oneself in hot water was still alarming to me. I asked about a steam bath, and was told that only the public baths, outside the base, were equipped for that. I settled for some oil, and cleaned myself as well as I could with that and a strigil. There was nothing I could do about my clothes; after the long journey, I didn’t have any clean ones, even in Bononia. I combed my hair and avoided the mirror on the bedroom table.
    There was still a long time before the dinner. I turned my attention to the room. It seemed very large to me—I had never actually slept in a house before. The walls had been covered with painted plaster, but at least the floor wasn’t stone, and had a carpet: it didn’t feel as much like a tomb as a room on the ground floor would have. I took the mattress off the bed and put it next to the window, draped a curtain to fill in some of the cavernous space, and hoped that it would feel enough like a wagon that I’d get some rest. Then I sat down on the mattress and put my head on my knees. I imagined what my men would do if they were told that they were to be commanded by a Roman. I imagined what the Romans would do to them afterward. I prayed to Marha, the Holy One, the god whom we worship above all other divinities, to open the ears of the Roman legate to my words and make him change his plans. The steward knocked at the door at the appointed time, and I limped apprehensively downstairs.
    Aurelia Bodica reclined on the middle couch with her husband, the legate Priscus, snaring the lamplight in the web of her hair. Priscus was considerably older than her, a thickset man in his late forties, very dark. (I later found out that his full name was Tiberius Claudius Decianus Murena Aufidius Julius Priscus. Important Romans collect names as Sarmatians collect scalps.) No one got up to greet me. Priscus and the two tribunes I had not met before looked at me as the procurator Natalis had, as though I were a dangerous animal; the wife of one of the tribunes, who sat with her husband, flinched when I came in and seemed afraid to look at me at all. Comittus gave me a smile of extreme embarrassment and looked nervously away.
    “So you’re Ariantes,” the legate said in a harsh voice,