“I could not accept,” I said. “My people do not keep slaves.” I spoke quickly because I was angry with myself. I already knew that if Natalis pressed me, I’d accept. Now that I’d been offered him, I knew I wanted the scribe badly.
“Oh, you must have some slaves!” protested Natalis. “How can a gentleman manage without them? What do you do with the captives you take in all your wars, eh?”
“We do not take captives, Lord Procurator. We do not keep foreigners in our wagons, and our own people are all free, the sons and daughters of warriors. What would I do with a slave? Eukairios cannot ride a horse.” (I’d discovered this in Bononia when I asked him to take a message, and it had shocked and astonished me.) “Where would I put him?”
“I’m sure you could arrange something,” Natalis said easily.
At this, Eukairios interrupted. “Lord Procurator,” he stammered, “please, my lord, please don’t send me away from Bononia.”
“Be quiet, man! Well, Ariantes? It would be a shame to waste your talents because of a lack of pen and ink.”
“But, Lord Procurator…” begged Eukairios.
“I said, be quiet!” Natalis snapped.
Eukairios staggered over to Natalis and dropped to his knees, reaching out a hand to his master. “Please, my lord, I beg you, my lord, please don’t-”
Natalis shoved the hand away. “Why are you making a scene like this? You don’t have any family in Bononia.”
“No,” pleaded Eukairios, “but I have friends, old and dear friends and-”
“I know all about your friends,” Natalis said, now tight with anger, “and I don’t want them connected with anyone in my office. You’d disgrace us all, Eukairios, if there was trouble here like there was in Lugdunum. Do you think I want to see a scribe from my own office-the office of the procurator of the British fleet! — killed in the arena to amuse the mob? You can go off to Britain with the Sarmatians. Even if you find some more of your ‘friends’ there, no one will pay any attention to them.”
Eukairios went white. He knelt with his hands on the floor before him, like a beast. “I’m sorry, Lord Valerius Natalis,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I… I… you know…” He rubbed at his eyes. “Oh my God, my God!”
“Get out,” Natalis ordered him. “You’re embarrassing Lord Ariantes.”
Eukairios staggered out.
Natalis turned back to me with a forced smile. “The truth of the matter is, I’d be glad if you’d take him off my hands,” he said, apparently realizing he had to explain the scene. “He’s a good, reliable scribe, but he’s a Christian. I’ve overlooked that in the past, but there have been some demands in Gaul to stamp them out, and I don’t want any scandal to attach to the office. He’d be all right in Britain. No one cares about the Christians there.”
“What is a Christian?” I asked, torn between pity for Eukairios and suspicion of Natalis at this admission that he wanted to get rid of the man.
“A follower of an illegal cult. Christ was a Jewish sophist crucified for sedition under the emperor Tiberius, and some of the Jews were stupid enough to decide that he was a god-and not just any god, but the Jewish god, who can’t even be spoken of by name. The rest of the Jews naturally turned on them with all their usual ferocity toward blasphemers, so they went Greek, and now there are adherents of this lunacy in every city in the empire where Greeks are found. It appeals to slaves and riffraff, of course, not the better classes.”
He rolled his aristocratic eyes in contempt, and went on pompously, “The Christians practice disgusting rituals in private houses at night, hoping, poor wretches, that this will give them immortality, and they refuse to worship any divinity except their crucified sophist, and even refuse to make offerings to the genius of the emperor and the spirit of Rome-so, of course, the cult’s illegal. It was banned almost immediately after it appeared, but that hasn’t stopped it spreading. Personally, I don’t see any point in punishing the Christians, and I’ve turned a blind eye to the business as much as possible. I don’t believe most of the stories about them-they aren’t wicked, just silly pathetic fools. And, as I said, nobody’s ever bothered with the cult in Britain-and even if somebody did, no one would worry that you, a barbarian nobleman, had the least sympathy for that kind of nonsense. But if anyone took official notice of Eukairios and his ridiculous religion, he could be killed for it. Complete waste of a good scribe, in my opinion. Now you know the worst of Eukairios. The best-that he’s hardworking, experienced, and able-you knew already. I can add to that that he doesn’t drink, doesn’t get into trouble with women, and keeps out of quarrels. This cult is the one great daring secret of his drab little life.”
“There has been trouble with this cult in Gaul?” I asked, after a moment.
“They executed a pack of the cultists in Lugdunum,” Natalis admitted, “and some administrators in the South have called for a purge. I’d intended to shift Eukairios to Dubris anyway. But I’d rather give him to you. I do believe you’d find him useful.”
I was silent for another moment. I, too, believed I’d find the scribe useful. It was against all the customs of my own people to keep any slave, and I didn’t like the sound of this cult at all-but I needed the man to write letters for me. I wouldn’t know how to buy or hire another scribe. I had no idea how much a good scribe would cost, and I suspected that I’d need all the money I’d brought with me to secure a good position for my men. “Thank you, Lord Valerius Natalis,” I said at last. “I accept him.” I got to my feet. “But let me give you a gift as well, in gratitude for your efforts on our behalf.” I unfastened the gold pin from my coat. It was dragon-shaped, set with rubies, and about as long as my middle finger. “This I have worn as prince-commander of a dragon of Sarmatian cavalry,” I said. “Very few Romans have ever held one of these, my lord Natalis. Perhaps the emperor alone. I trust you will keep it and remember my people kindly.” I set it in his hands.
Natalis went pink with pleasure. “You have quite outdone me in your generosity, Lord Ariantes! Thank you, thank you very much indeed!” He took his own brooch off and pinned his cloak with mine instead. He fondled it a minute, running his fingers along the curves of the gold. “I will certainly remember you with friendship.”
I’d thought that morning of giving him one of my horses; I saw that I’d been correct to offer instead this, which a Sarmatian would have valued less. I was relieved. I had another pin-in fact, I had a wagonful of valuables I had brought along especially for bribing Romans-and it would have been hard to part with any of the horses. “As I shall remember you,” I told Natalis. “But you must excuse me now, my lord. I ought to stay with my horses to make sure they come to no harm. I could not easily replace them.”
Eukairios was sitting beside the horses with his cloak over his head. When I came up he pulled it off his head again and rubbed his face. The hold was only dimly lit by the light that came in down the gangways, but I could still see well enough that he’d been crying. “Wh-what happened?” he asked me. It was a sign of how distressed he was that he omitted my title.
“I accepted you,” I told him. After a moment I added, to defend myself against his misery, “He would have sent you away from Bononia anyway.”
“To Dubris?” When I nodded, he rubbed his face again. “I didn’t realize he knew,” he said wretchedly. “I always thought no one in the office knew.”The one great daring secret of his drab little life, as Natalis had called it, had proved to be no secret at all, and he was trembling with the shock of it. “He told you I was a Christian?”
“Yes.”
“Ah. And had you ever heard anything about us?”
“No. But I understand that it is illegal.”
“It’s all lies, what they say,” Eukairios declared bitterly. “Wicked lies. People have died for them, tortured until there wasn’t any sound flesh to use the irons on, but it’s all, all lies. We don’t”-he looked up and met my eyes directly-“we don’t hold incestuous orgies and feast on human flesh. We are forbidden to shed blood; we are told to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. If I had any choice in the matter, my faith wouldn’t allow me to work for the regular army, let alone for a man who decorates his horses’ bridles with men’s scalps and drinks from a Roman skull. God help me.”
“I do not have that cup anymore,” I said. I was touched by his defiance, the more so as he’d never referred to the scalps or the skull story before. In Bononia he had been attentive and deferential, and warmed to friendliness with his own efficiency. “I will not require you to shed blood, Eukairios, or to do anything else your faith forbids. I only want you to write letters.”
He rubbed his face again, then, giving up on suppressing the tears, buried it in his hands. “God help me,” he said again, thickly. “I thought I’d stay in Bononia for the rest of my life.”
“Were you born there?” I asked, both to calm him and because I felt I should know more about him. “Your
