She said that what she wanted was a kingdom of the Brigantes, and that there was a good chance of getting it, since the Romans had already abandoned the Picts as too troublesome to govern, and might be persuaded to do the same with the Brigantes. She said that the natural allies of the Sarmatians are the Britons, not the Romans. Arshak believes it all. I think he is in love with her, and expects to reign as her consort when she is queen.”
“What? She’s an adulteress as well?”
He was shocked, which seemed ridiculous to me. After all, she was betraying her husband whether she was sleeping with Arshak or not. But Romans take adultery much more seriously than Sarmatians do. Even the husband can be prosecuted if he’s thought to have tolerated it-though he can sleep with any unmarried woman he pleases, and commit no offense. My own people consider it a woman’s business who she sleeps with. “I do not know,” I told Facilis. “It would be risky for them, would it not? And difficult to find privacy, in Eburacum. But does it matter?”
He snorted: yes, it did, but he wasn’t going to argue about it. “And what did she offer you?” he asked instead.
“We did not get that far. I told her I would as soon lead my men on horseback into the sea as trust them to her good faith.”
“And what happened then?” He asked it in a whisper. “That was the bit that made no sense, that you ended up in the water with no sign of a fight. Did she… You said they’re supposed to know magic, these druids…”
“They may, but she did not rely on spells. When she met us, she brought out wine, saying that by this she put the whole conversation under the sacred bond of hospitality. My cup was drugged. Even before I refused her, she had drugged it.” It was unexpectedly humiliating to admit it, and remember my helplessness. “Arshak was angry at first; he wanted to fight,” I continued, after a moment. “But she told him he would be accused of murder if he did and sent him off with the hunting story. She did not want him there when she drowned me-I think because she did not want him to see how much she enjoyed it.” I turned away from the closed window and went back to the desk, where the lead roll with my name on it lay cold and lethal in the lamplight. “But I think I owe my life to that drug. I was weak with it, and chilled, when she put me in the water: I could not struggle. She said she had never drowned a man before, only animals, and animals would have fought. She must have turned me over and decided that I was dead before she left me, and so I was still alive when I was brought to Pervica. Marcus Flavius, what am I to do? I thought it was only my own life that was threatened. But they would kill her from sheer malice.”
“You could go to the legate, or write your friend the procurator of the fleet, or even the governor.”
“I? There is another ghost that haunts us-a prince of Iazyges who led raids across the Danube and drank from a Roman skull. I am on trial already. You yourself were commanded to put me under arrest earlier this very month. Who in authority would believe what I said about the wife of a legate?”
“I’d vouch for you.”
“You could not vouch for what you did not see. Anything you said would offend Siyavak more than it helped me. I would be arrested for slander, and my men would mutiny, and probably I would be murdered in the prison, unable to defend myself. And what of the others here? Would Comittus vouch for me? Or would he say what his kinswoman asked him to?”
“Gods! I don’t know. I like Lucius-but I don’t know. What we really need are some allies in the British camp. Well, what about this other friend of yours, the one who isn’t Roman, Sarmatian, or British? Couldn’t he testify for you?”
“No. If he or his friends went before a magistrate, they would be sentenced to death.”
“What are they? Smugglers? Christians? Never mind. So you’re sitting and waiting, and hoping that they, or Siyavak, turn up something that you can use as evidence?”
I nodded. “I was a fool even to think of getting married,” I said bitterly. “No, there is only one course. I must tell Pervica everything. She must either stay here with me and send her people safely away from her farm-or she must declare that, on reflection, she does not want me, and leave as though she were my enemy.” I picked up the lead sheet. “May I show her this?”
He nodded. “I’m sorry, Ariantes.”
I shook my head. “No-I am grateful to you. If she had gone home and died because of me, I would…”
I didn’t know what I would do, and my mind suddenly threw up before me the image of Tirgatao, vivid as a thing seen through a window-torn open, a horse-head thrust in her womb, burning on the corpses of our children. I nearly dropped the lead sheet, and I had to set my teeth together hard to stop myself from screaming.
“Are you hurt?” asked Facilis. He tried to take the cursing tablet away, as though afraid it might have poisoned me.
I rolled the lead sheet slowly into its scroll and shook my head. It wasn’t true, of course. I was hurt. I had been hurt badly early that summer, and the wound had just been kicked open. “I am sorry we cannot be allies, Marcus Flavius.”
“What do you mean?” he asked. “We are allies. But I’ll keep quiet about it.”
The next morning I rode down to the fort village early, knocked at the door of Flavina’s house, and asked to speak to Pervica. She herself came running at the sound of my voice, and greeted me with a smile so joyful I felt sick with fear and grief.
“I must speak with you privately,” I told her.
“If you like,” she agreed, her eyes dancing. “But not too private: spare my reputation before the wedding, please!”
“Come up to the camp with me, then,” I said, “and we will find somewhere suitable.”
We walked back up to the camp, leading my horse, because she was reluctant to ride through village, fort, and camp perched before me on the saddle. My leg ached by the time we arrived back at my wagon, I was tired from a night spent sleepless, and I was in a very black mood, which the cheerful greetings and congratulations of everyone around us only made worse. I pulled some rugs over from in front of the ashes of the fire and set them by the door of the wagon, right at the back of the awning. “Is this suitable?” I asked. “We can be seen here, but will not be overheard.”
She laughed. “Very scrupulous! I wish we couldn’t be seen either-but reputations are like eggs: there’s no mending them once they’ve cracked.” She sat down on the edge of the wagon, inside the open door, and stared curiously backward into it. “You know, it is pretty in there. It’s like… like the inside of a jewel box. All those rugs and swords and things. What’s the hairy thing over on this side?” She reached under the bunk, by the door, and pulled out the pile of the scalps I had removed from my horses’ bridles when I first arrived in Britain.
I pushed them hastily back, and she looked at me in surprise. I drew my finger across my forehead and around the side of my head.
She didn’t understand for a moment-and then she did. She looked at the scalps again, this time in revulsion.
“I am sorry,” I said. “It is a custom of our people.”
“There are a lot of them,” she said quietly.
“Twenty-eight. All men I have killed with my own hands. There were others, too, whose scalps I had no opportunity to collect. I have stopped collecting them now, because the custom horrifies the Romans, but most of my men took some from the Picts we defeated, and I have said nothing to them about it. They take great pride in their strength and skill, and so they should.”
“I suppose I will have to get used to it,” she said slowly. “But I’d like it if you’d bury these.”
I sat down on the rug at her feet and leaned my head against my bad knee. Her calm resolution to adjust to everything made it harder for me. “Pervica,” I began helplessly-and stopped.
She stroked my hair away from my face and rested the long, firm hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said humbly. “I know you’re not Roman. I don’t expect you to become Roman either, really, but it’s just hard for me to… to grasp it all at once.”
“That is not it! Pervica, I was wrong to ask you to marry me.”
All the joy went out of her in an instant: she stared at me with a face like a woman glimpsed by lightning, white and terrified. I turned and caught both her hands in mine. “Listen to me,” I said. “I have enemies. I knew my life had been threatened, but I was confident they could not reach me here, in the middle of my own camp among my own men. I thought that no one would trouble the innocent, that no one would know or care about you, secure in the countryside, but I see now that I was wrong, and I have put you in danger. Look.” I pulled out the lead scroll,
