name is not Latin.”
He understood what I wanted. “My name’s Greek. I’m not,” he said, still thickly but with his usual precision. “Many gentlemen think it adds a touch of elegance to a household to give Greek names to the slaves. My mother was a cook in a gentleman’s house in the countryside, thirty miles from Bononia, and our master had me educated and sold me as soon as I was old enough and trained enough to be valuable, when I was fourteen. The office bought me. That is the only other time I’ve changed hands. I never expected to be sold again-or given away.” His voice was growing thicker again. “I have my other clothes in Bononia, and a couple of books, everything I own. I haven’t said good-bye to anyone. I thought I was going back tomorrow.”
“Then go back, collect your things, say your good-byes, and return,” I said. “I will ask Valerius Natalis to send you on his dispatch vessel. You know yourself that we must load the supplies for the journey to Eburacum and plan the itinerary; we will not leave Dubris for another two days. That should give you time.”
“You’re not worried I’d run off as soon as I got home?”
It hadn’t even occurred to me. “I am not used to slaves,” I admitted. “I have never owned one before. Would you run off?”
“It would be against my religion,” he said, taking his face out of his hands and glaring. “If you’re not used to slaves and won’t keep foreigners in your wagons, what are you going to do with me?”
I sighed. “I suppose I will have to let you stay in my wagon, at least during the journey, although it is against our customs.” I winced inwardly at what Arshak and Gatalas, and my own men, would think of it. The fear still twisted in the back of my mind, the terror that I would be turned by the Romans and used against my own people. I had to have the use of letters, though, to defend them. “You will have to ride in it, too, at least at first-though I hope it is not against your religion to learn to ride a horse. When we reach Eburacum, we will see what else can be done.”
There was a long minute of silence. Eukairios sat staring at his hands. The ship rolled, and one of my horses-the courser, who was always a high-strung animal-neighed nervously and kicked. I slid into the stall beside him and coaxed him into calmness again with my hands and voice. When I slipped out, Eukairios had stopped staring at his hands and was looking at me doubtfully. What sort of treatment could he expect from a master such as myself-a barbarian prince who’d killed Romans freely in the past, and now not only owned him, but owned a secret that could cost him his life?
I pitied him. “I am sorry, Eukairios,” I said, again answering the misery. “You do not want me for a master, and I do not want to be the owner of a slave. But you know yourself that I need someone to write letters for me; for the sake of my men, I need it. Serve me faithfully and I will deal with you justly and without treachery, and reward you, as soon as I may, with your freedom. This I swear on fire.”
I meant to keep my oath. But I knew it would be a long time before I rewarded him with his freedom, and a part of me hoped that he’d forget his religious scruples and run off as soon as he set foot in Bononia.
It was night when the transport reached Dubris, and the ship wallowed into port with the guidance of a lighthouse on the promontory above. When it had docked it had to be unloaded, a task that promised to take some time. Natalis stopped to wish me good health before going off to his house to rest, and I asked him to send Eukairios back to collect his things.
“You’re not afraid he’d run off?” Natalis asked, as Eukairios himself had done.
“He says it would be against his religion to do so,” I answered. “I am content to let him go.”
“Very well, very well. I’ll take him with me tonight, shall I, and send him off first thing tomorrow morning?”
“Thank you, my lord.” A wagon we were pulling out of the hold lurched, and one wheel slipped off the gangway. Its owners crowded round, trying to push it one way; Natalis’ sailors tried to drag it another; behind it, the tired horses waiting to get out began to whinny and kick. “Good health!” I called, leaving Natalis and hurrying to take charge.
“Good health!” the procurator called after me, and, as an afterthought, “You know your people are all camped at the parade ground?”
“Eukairios read me that letter,” I said, shooing my men away from the stuck wagon. “We can find it.”
The parade ground was not hard to find, but it was after midnight by the time we reached it. The wagons of the men who’d crossed before us were already in their concentric circles, but the fires were banked down and everyone was asleep. It was beginning to rain, a fine drizzle that made the ground soft. We were too tired to prepare a meal, and simply moved our own wagons into the outermost circle, saw to the horses, and went to bed.
I was tired, but I lay awake for a little while, listening to the rain splashing in the felt of the awning, and the sound of the horses tethered outside. I remembered lying listening to the rain with my Tirgatao, warm in her arms, holding her and not needing to say anything. The grief was like a black chasm, more unfathomable than the sea; I could no more understand or limit it than I could the deep waters. What would she have said if I’d suggested keeping a Roman slave in our wagon?
I got up, went out of the wagon and checked my horses unnecessarily, then went back in and slept like the dead.
I woke next morning late, muzzy-headed and stiff-legged, to find Arshak and Gatalas waiting outside ready to raise another mutiny. It was still raining.
“They won’t give us our weapons!” Arshak declared angrily as soon as I stumbled out of my wagon. “They swore we would have them in Britain, but now they say we must ride to a place called Eburacum. They don’t mean to return them to us at all!”
“Let me eat first,” I said.
Leimanos, the captain of my bodyguard, at once brought me a chunk of bread, then, with a grin and a flourish, presented me with a cup of milk. The milk was the result of letter-writing in Bononia: we hadn’t had any on the journey, and I’d tried to arrange for the loan of some cows during the few days we were in Dubris. But I doubted that the neighboring countryside had spared us more than a few beasts, and most of the men must have had to make do with the sour beer we’d been given on the journey. I guessed that when Leimanos had set this cup aside for me, the others had squabbled over the rest. Another thing to sort out. I sat down on the step of my wagon and began eating.
“Did you know?” asked Gatalas, angrily.
“Of course I didn’t,” I replied sharply. “I’ll join you in protesting-after I’ve eaten.”
“Protesting?” Arshak snapped. “What’s the point of ‘protesting’? We must do something to show them that they cannot tell us lies and escape. Gatalas and I have decided that we will not leave this city without our weapons. When you’ve finished eating, you can go and tell them that.”
“ I can go and tell them?” I snapped back, beginning to lose my temper. “Why only me? If you and Gatalas decided it, you and Gatalas can tell them so.”
There was an abrupt silence. I looked from one to another of my fellow commanders. Why only me? Because I was the Romanized one and compromised already. If I went alone, they could keep their own hands clean of ignoble bargaining, take the advantage, and leave the shame to me. “You perhaps think that my nature is better suited to dealing with Romans than yours?” I asked quietly. I half wanted to fight one of them just to prove myself a Sarmatian.
Arshak and Gatalas looked uncomfortable. “You’ve been able to deal with them successfully so far,” Arshak said.
“I am still a prince of the Iazyges,” I told him. “No less than you, Gatalas, or you, Arshak, for all your royal blood.”
“I don’t deny it,” said Arshak, embarrassed now. “But you went to Britain before the rest of us, and you met this legate, Priscus, and you were managing well with the procurator in Bononia. I thought, since you knew the men…”
“Haven’t you met this legate yourself now?”
“Briefly,” Gatalas answered for him. “We both met him briefly when we arrived.”
That “briefly” was probably to the good. I hadn’t told anyone what the Romans had planned to do with us, either what I’d overheard in Bononia or what I’d argued against in Dubris. It would have fed suspicions and inflamed resentment, and it was just as well there’d been no chance for the others to learn what I had. But I was not in the mood to be pleased about it. “Then why couldn’t you go to him yourselves and tell him what you’d decided?” I
