I nodded, and wondered if he realized how much he had just given away with that little word “either.”
On the third day after leaving Dubris we arrived outside Londinium. Priscus wanted a day to conduct some business with the governor in the capital, but he did not want to take us into the city. He commandeered a house for himself and his lady, in a field with a clean stream in it about a mile south of the city, and next morning left us camped in the field while he rode in. He took a dozen of his dispatch riders but left the rest, and the century, under the command of Flavius Facilis and with instructions to keep an eye on us.
Eukairios asked permission to go into the city as well. “I could buy some tablets and some ink and writing leaves,” he said. “And I’d like to look up some friends-with your permission, Lord Ariantes.”
“You have friends in Londinium?” I asked. “Are there Christians there as well?”
He jumped, then gave an apologetic smile. “I forgot that you know. I wouldn’t say the name, my lord, not so loudly! I was told a few names, and… and a password. I hoped…”
“See them if you wish. And buy the things. Buy yourself some better clothing, too. How much money do you need?”
He glanced down at his tunic with a surprised expression, as though the threadbare gray-brown patched thing were perfectly respectable. “How much better do you want it to be?” he asked.
I shrugged. “You know what a nobleman’s slave should look like better than I. Buy what is fitting to my position.”
He took a silver denarius for his writing supplies and twenty-five for new clothes.
“Is there anything else you wish to buy?” I asked him.
He stared at me a moment, then gave a sudden dry chuckle, stopped quickly in embarrassment. “You really don’t know anything about slaves, do you, my lord?” he said. “I took a few sestertii more than I’m likely to need-and I’m honest.”
I handed him three more sestertii. “Honesty is rewarded,” I said. “Do you need to borrow a horse?”
He took the coins with pleasure and pushed them quickly into his purse. “Thank you very much, my lord! But you’ve forgotten that I can’t ride.”
It was still hard for me to remember that anyone could not ride. “Well then, walk-and enjoy Londinium. Stay in the city tonight, if you wish, but be back tomorrow morning.”
When he was gone I went to the center of the camp, and I was there, discussing business with Arshak and Gatalas, when Aurelia Bodica came driving up in her little chariot. She had no attendants with her, not even her driver; she guided the white stallion herself, turning it neatly around the wagon shafts and past the tethered knots of horses, and drawing it to a smart halt in front of us. Her blue cloak had fallen back from her shoulders, her cheeks were flushed with the wind, and her eyes were dancing. “Princes of the Sarmatians!” she called, smiling at all of us. “I have come to ask you a favor.”
Arshak instantly leapt forward and offered her his hand to help her down from the chariot; Gatalas, just a second behind him, had to content himself with catching the stallion’s reins. “Lady Aurelia,” Arshak said, smiling at her, “you need ask no favors, since we are yours to command.”
“Oh, thank you, Lord Arshak! I’ve decided that I’d like to go into the city, and I need an escort. My husband has already gone, of course, and taken all the tribunes, so I’ve come to ask you if you could provide one.”
“It would give me honor,” replied Arshak at once. “I and my bodyguard will escort you.”
“Lady Aurelia, your husband wished us to remain in the camp,” I intervened. “Have you told the camp prefect what you want?”
She smiled at me, her eyes sparkling. “I have not. I know perfectly well what Facilis would say-‘You can’t trust Sarmatians; I’ll give you a dozen legionaries.’ But I’d much rather have an escort of Sarmatians. Legionaries are dull. If I went in with them, everyone would think I was a centurion’s wife. But if I go in with Lord Arshak and his bodyguard, the whole city will be out on the streets staring, particularly if you put all your armor on. Please do put all your armor on! Why shouldn’t we show off to the capital a bit? Don’t worry about my husband being angry, Lord Ariantes. He won’t punish you for leaving camp if you go with me.”
Gatalas laughed. I cursed inwardly. From the way Bodica had phrased it, it sounded as though I were afraid of her husband. Perhaps she thought I was.
“Your husband’s anger does not concern me, anyway,” Arshak told her. “I am pleased to escort such a noble and beautiful lady, and I wish to see the city myself. Ariantes and Gatalas will remain here to look after the men, yes?”
“No,” said Gatalas, “I will come too. I will leave Parspanakos” (the captain of his bodyguard) “in charge of the dragon, and I will take ten men.”
I hesitated. I did not want to go into Londinium: I’d never liked cities, I didn’t want to leave my followers unsupervised, and I’d resolved to avoid Aurelia Bodica. On the other hand, she thought I was afraid. Besides, if I didn’t go and the other princes did, their troops would have yet another thing to hurl in the faces of my men- particularly after Aurelia Bodica’s comment. “I will come as well, then,” I said. “I do not wish to fail in the respect due to a legate’s lady.”
“Of course,” she said, tossing her head. “So I shall ride into Londinium with three princes of the Sarmatians to escort me, one of them the nephew of a king! There are not many women can boast of that!”
So we all accompanied the legate’s lady to Londinium, each of us with ten men from our bodyguard. Aurelia Bodica wanted to visit a temple and she wanted to go shopping. She had the length of silk Arshak had given her husband, and she wanted some of it unraveled and rewoven with linen thread, so that it would go further: Londinium, apparently, was the best place in Britain to have this done. She chatted pleasantly as we approached the city, about this, about the shops and the temples-but as we came up to the bridge that crosses the Tamesis River into the city, the talk became more serious.
“Londinium,” she said, stopping her chariot just before the long wooden span and gesturing at the city beyond-the quays with the ships drawn up to them, the warehouses, the house roofs huddled behind. Across the river and to our left was a larger building with an elaborate facade. “That’s the governor’s palace,” Bodica said, pointing to it. “Tiberius will be there now.”She shook the reins and started the chariot forward again. “But you can’t see the bridge from the palace. All the windows look inward. Very Roman, I think, to study your own imported magnificence rather than the circumstances of the province around you. Look there!”
She pointed along our bank of the river, to our left. There was a cross fixed in the mud by the waterside, with a tattered mass of flesh and bone sagging from it. A few birds fluttered about it, pecking.
“They often leave the bodies of criminals there,” Bodica told us. “As a warning. You can’t see them from the governor’s palace, either. When my ancestress, the queen of the Iceni, sacked Londinium, she hung up the bodies of… Roman nobles… along the same bank. Hundreds of bodies.”
Arshak’s face sharpened. “She sacked the Roman capital, this queen? She had many followers?”
“Oh, very many! In those days the whole island longed to throw off the Roman yoke and live free under its own kings and queens. We were a race of noble warriors then, like your own people.” As we rode into Londinium she recounted the story of Queen Boudica of the Iceni: how an unjust Roman official had ordered her to be flogged and her daughters raped; how she’d raised the South against the Romans and sacked the two greatest cities; how finally she had been defeated in a fierce battle; how she’d taken poison rather than grace a Roman triumph. It was a tale of courage and desperate heroism, and I was moved by it despite myself.
“That was a long time ago,” Bodica finished quietly. “More than a century now. The British horse has been broken to the yoke now, and pulls the cart quietly-except in the North, where it still frets a little. I expect that, in time, your own people will be yoked beside it.”
We all stiffened at that. “Our people have never been conquered!” Arshak said fiercely.
“But you’re here,”she pointed out-sadly.
“We are the price our people paid for a truce. My uncle is still king of the Sarmatians. The emperor hates him, but the emperor had to make terms with him nonetheless. Our nation is noble, not one of slaves.”
Bodica bowed her golden head. “At times,” she whispered, “I wish my own people could say the same.”
Her voice was soft and sad-but there was a look in her eyes that contradicted that softness. It was like that of a wrestler who’s found his opponent’s weakness. Arshak noticed nothing: he was plainly enjoying himself. As we rode off the bridge into the city, the citizens did indeed run out into the street to stare at us, and he preened himself in their gaze. Bodica began to ask him about his own battles against the Romans, and soon the talk was of struggles and scalping. Gatalas was less happy, but largely because he had fewer scalps to boast of. I was not happy at all. My old distrust was back, stronger than ever, and I wanted only to get away.
