“I know, I know, I should have talked to you before, but I didn’t want to ruin the festival, and I didn’t realize you were going to make up your mind so fast. Still, the sooner you hear it, the better.”
“Very well,” I said, reluctantly. “We can talk.”
“Not here. It’s too public. Come to my house in the fort.”
I hesitated, and he added, very quietly, “I can vouch for your safety going there and back, and I won’t ask you to eat or drink anything.”
I should have realized that he would notice my precautions. I sighed again, and nodded.
He had one of the empty Asturian barrack blocks to himself, and lived in the decurion’s quarters at the headquarters end. He’d bought one slave in Eburacum to look after it for him, a thin, ugly boy who was snoring by the hearth in the main room when we came in, flushed with festival drink and happily gorged with feasting. Facilis grunted, put a blanket over the boy, and left him asleep. He ushered me into the bedroom instead and lit the lamp. It cast a yellow light over the cold stone walls. The floor was packed clay, without even bracken to warm it, and the bed had been shoved into the corner to make room for a desk. It was so cold that our breaths steamed in the lamplight. If ever a room looked like a tomb, it was that one.
“Now,” said Facilis, “First the things I need to know. What happened to you on the road back to Condercum?”
“That is common knowledge.”
“The hell it is! You didn’t go hunting. Longus told me: your bow was still unstrung in its case. The woman hadn’t unstrung it, because she commented on the shape of it, and thought the water must have spoiled it. And it’s a pretty odd hunter who wades into the river to collect a quarry he’s killed with an unstrung bow.”
“A bow can be unstrung after use, and put back, to keep it dry.”
“It can be-but it wouldn’t be, with a quarry about to be washed downstream. And I talked to your young woman. When you were found, you were lying on your back in the shallows-but your face was covered with mud. The lady’s no fool: she understood what that meant, though she was trying to pretend to me that she didn’t even when she told me about it. She can see for herself that you’re not admitting to anything and she’s going along with it, but she’s worried, and was letting me know as much as she could. Come on! I know there’s something going on. You’ve stopped eating in the fort, and you wear armor and take your bodyguard with you even to exercise your horses-you, the slip-in-and-out sick-of-war shirtsleeves one. Someone tried to murder you, and you think someone’s going to try again. And I can guess why. Someone made you an offer, and you turned it down, didn’t you? Who? What did they want? Has Arshak accepted it?”
“Facilis,” I said slowly, “I am sorry.”
“Please!” His voice cracked. “I’m not your enemy. I was an idiot on the way from Aquincum, I can see that now. But I was sick with grief, I thought then it was my one chance to get a little of my own back, and I never expected to want to make alliances later. Look, what we used to be died at the ocean, and we know each other better now. You’re a brave man, and an honorable one, and a damned fine officer who’ll do anything to look after his lads, but you can’t handle this alone. I want to help. Trust me, please! This is my fort now, and your people are my lads, too, and we’re in the thick of somebody’s plot to make them die in a mutiny like Gatalas and take a few thousand Roman lives as they do it.”
“Facilis…” I began again, then stopped. “You are right, we know each other better. You are also a brave man, and an honorable one, and, I would guess, by nature a kind and decent man as well. I do trust you. But if what we were died at the ocean, it has left ghosts to haunt us, and one of those ghosts is a bullying centurion who tormented us from Aquincum to Bononia and tried to make things difficult for us even in Britain. My people have a saying: ‘Some horses cannot be driven in pairs.’ To Arshak’s people, and to many of Siyavak’s, and perhaps even to some of mine, I am damned as a Romanizer already. Arshak at least holds it against me that you, you specifically, vouched for me to the legate. Siyavak is my ally now, but he hates the Romans, and I dare not do anything that would lose him. I cannot make an alliance with you.”
“You’ve lost Siyavak already. I saw him in Corstopitum, while you were recovering from drowning, cozily chatting with Arshak and… a certain lady.”
I shook my head. “I have not lost him yet. But if Arshak and the lady you mention knew that, he would die. You see, I do trust you.”
“May I perish! So Siyavak is spying on them? Things have gone further than I thought.” He was silent for a minute, then said, “And do you understand why? And who? Because I still don’t.”
This I could answer. I told him, quietly and quickly, what Eukairios had told me about the druids, though I said nothing about the man he had mentioned, Cunedda. I did not trust Facilis not to investigate him further, and that investigation could put Eukairios’ life at risk.
“May I perish!” he said again, when I’d finished. “That fits.” After a moment, he asked, “Who told you all this?”
“Another ally.”
“Roman? Sarmatian? British?”
“What are the things that I should have heard before I asked Pervica to marry me?”
He shook his head in frustration, then drew a deep breath. He sat down at the desk and took out a strongbox from beneath it. “The day you went to your young woman’s farm, I went to Corstopitum.” He set the box on the desk. “It’s true, what I told you: I did have some shopping to do for the festival. But I’d also had a letter from Titus Ulpius, the prefect of the Thracians there, telling me that there was something I ought to see. I’d made a point of getting friendly with him and with a couple of the town magistrates, so they could keep an eye on things for me. It’s an important place, Corstopitum: all the messages and messengers to Condercum and Cilurnum go through it, and all the traffic north as well. I went into the military compound, and Titus gave me this.” Facilis unlocked the box and took out a roll of something dull and gray. He handed it to me.
It was a scroll of lead sheeting. I unrolled it carefully. There were two lines of writing on it, the letters made by points pricked out on the soft metal by the point of a knife. The first line was the writing Eukairios had called druidical; the second looked like Latin. The hollows of the knife-pricks were stained with what looked like blood. There was something evil about the thing, and it made my hair stand up to touch it. “What does it say?” I asked.
“It says, ‘Ariantes son of Arifarnes,’ ” replied Facilis. “It was stuck in the mouth of a body found hanging from an oak tree in a sacred grove.”
“Marha!” I set the thing down, and stretched my hands toward the lamp flame to invoke the god’s protection. The heat from the lamp trailed a spot of warmth across my fingers, holding back the cold. I had been cursed before, but never like this, never with another man’s life taken to fix death on me. My people believe that besides Marha and the heavenly gods, there is a dark power under the earth. We call it “the Lie” and do not worship it, but sometimes we curse by it. We say that it claims all oath-breakers and those who murder treacherously. I told myself that I had never sworn falsely or killed except in a fair fight, and I prayed to all the good gods to defend me from it.
“He’d been stripped and painted blue before he was strung up, and stabbed afterward,” Facilis went on, harshly. “It was done the night of the midwinter solstice, the longest of the year. When Titus told me I didn’t know what you told me about the druids, but it sounded like a ritual murder to me even then. And Titus didn’t want to talk about it, and the magistrates didn’t want to talk about it, and it’s perfectly clear that nobody’s even going to look for the people who murdered that poor bastard. Because they’re afraid-and probably that means that the people who did it are numerous and powerful. But you can be sure that soon the whole countryside will know about it, and know that these druids hate you and have cursed you in the name of their gods, consigning you to perdition by another man’s death. And you should have known that before you proposed marriage to that sweet young woman and decided to leave her, engaged to you, sitting out on an isolated farm in a region where your enemies have friends.”
I couldn’t breathe. I went to the window, which was closed and shuttered, and leaned my head against the sill where the winter air seeped through. After a moment, I slammed my hand against the frame. I had taken the gifts of the gods and blessed them, and because of it Pervica’s life was in danger.
“What happened on the way back from Condercum?” asked Facilis.
“What you think,” I said, without turning round.
“Was it the lady Aurelia?”
“Yes. She said that Gatalas’ death had been a mistake, that it had been intended for all his dragon to mutiny.
