by Manda Scott
An unsteady hand reached forward to caress Cunomar’s hair. The boy stood rigid, his skin flickering like that of a horse bothered by flies. Caradoc stepped up behind him, granting the comfort of a father’s presence. The sunlight scoured his prison-darkened eyes. The air smelled too heavily of fruit and sweet autumn flowers. With a little time, it became clear that Claudius was the source of the strongest smell, of concentrated roses, and that it covered imperfectly other scents of rosemary and pungent garlic and underneath of old age and dried spittle.
“So clearly yours,” said the emperor wistfully, and this time his eyes held contact a fraction longer, so that soul, fleetingly, could meet warped and pensive soul, could plumb the depths of a fierce, thwarted intellect locked in a marred body. Caradoc felt ice track down his spine and fought not to shudder.
Claudius smiled. “They say your family has been your first priority since their capture,” he said. “And that their concern has been first for you and then for each other. This is, of course, a truly Roman virtue and most commendable. My wife has expressed a desire to meet you and I have allowed it. In fact, I have commanded all of my family to meet you and your son. Together, you are an instruction in what binds a family close in love and in adversity.”
A brass bell decorated with geometric symbols lay on a table close at hand. The emperor rang a trilling peal. Echoing bells rattled on down a corridor and were answered presently by the scuff of footsteps. A youth only a little older than Cunomar ran in with little ceremony although the guards saluted as he passed between them.
Father greeted son stiffly, but gladly. Claudius said, “This is my son, Britannicus. He is named for the conquest of your country. Your presence here means he will be able to visit your province in safety long before he becomes emperor.”
He cocked his head, the better to judge the impact of his words. Caradoc smiled and let his eyes take in the full length of the child. The boy was flat-footed and small. His wavy mouse-brown hair was not his father’s, nor did his features carry Claudius’ stamp, a fact for which he may well have been grateful. When he grinned at Cunomar, he radiated an innocence and charm his father lacked. He could have been any man’s son. There was nothing to mark him as Claudius’ get.
“A fine child,” said Caradoc. “I trust he will make as fine an emperor.” If his stepmother does not have him slaughtered to put her own son on the throne. On Mona, it was not Claudius’ son who was considered most likely to be the next emperor, but his stepson.
Claudius laid his good hand on the child’s arm. There was a pattern to his tremors: they were worse when he was making decisions and stilled afterwards. Reaching for the bell, he rang it again. The violent shaking of his hand steadied as the peals fell to silence. “You must meet the remainder of my family,” he said.
Caradoc, smiling steadily, retrieved his son and brought him to a safe distance.
The stepson came first: Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, known as Nero. He had been a beautiful child and was growing into a beautiful man, and knew it. The curled red-gold hair, hanging longer than true Roman sobriety allowed, fell lightly on his alabaster brow. He walked with the careful tread of a dancer and the head-tilt of a Greek actor of the old school, giving life again to the young Achilles, but his skin was pure as a girl’s and his eyes were a girl’s eyes, craving love. For a breath’s pause, balanced in the doorway, facing his stepfather, he could have been Helen, confronting the maddened Menelaus. A question was poised on his lips, a request, a boon, that might have been answered, but a cacophony behind him drowned it unspoken, and his entrance, careful as it was, vanished beneath the waves of his mother’s arrival.
In Rome, where women were given no power, the Empress Agrippina, niece and wife to the emperor, mother to Nero, had taken it with both hands and held it tight to her breast. Like everything else in her life, her entrance into the audience chamber was a choreographed affair. The sound preceded her, reaching those waiting while she was still beyond the turn in the corridor: the measured tread of her bodyguard, the murmurings of Polybius, Claudius’ religious secretary who had become her man in all but name, the muted chiming of gold on gold and the delicate counterpoint rattling of pearls.
Clad in the totality of her wealth, a sum greater than the entire tax revenue of Britannia in the nine years since the invasion, Agrippina needed no retinue to proclaim her regal. The bodyguard still did their best and the shine in their eyes proclaimed a devotion that was not felt by those serving Claudius or either son. She emerged between them, a vision in red and gold. The audience room was her chamber, clearly; no-one else would have required the red of the walls so exactly to match the colour of her lips and the rubies at her neck. The soft, dyed doeskin of her shoes blended perfectly with the blood-wine porphyry of the floor, the pearl buttons sitting proud as pale flecks in stone. Her hair, parted severely in the middle and pulled back to the nape of her neck, set about with hairpieces of jewel-studded gold, could have been sculpted from marble. Her stola was a whisper of red silk, bordered in imperial purple, and the skin of her arms, emerging from its folds, was as flawlessly white as sand on a northern beach. In every respect, she was the archetypal woman of Rome, a thing of plucked and painted beauty, brought to power through her husband and the violence of her intrigue. She was as far from Breaca as the trained and pruned flowers in the garden were from the oaks and hawthorns of an uncut forest. It was impossible to imagine them cast of the same flesh and blood. Caradoc, bowing, did not try.
Her eyes were aquatic green and they held a man’s gaze for as long as his heart beat and beyond. Caradoc bowed again, that he might avert his own gaze without causing offence. Faced daily with this, he too would have developed the shifting half-glances of the emperor. Nero, whose eyes were a pale imitation, but who nevertheless should have been acknowledged, was forced to shuffle sideways, to avoid the bodyguard.
The procession came to a halt, a spear’s length from the doorway. The empress stared, unblinking, taking in Cunomar before Caradoc. “The barbarian who cares so much for his children. How wonderful.”
The lady smiled, a practised flexing of painted lips. Claudius grinned with her in perfect, vacuous mimicry and it might have been a reflex, the true expression of the inner fool caught in the radiance of his superior, but that his eyes, swaying sideways, locked, shockingly, with Caradoc’s. In that look was all the proof one could want that the rumours on Mona were true, that the emperor would deny his wife nothing, not the least whim, until such time as she stepped over some final, invisible mark—and then he would kill her as he had done her predecessor. Perhaps the assassination of his only son would be that mark. Perhaps she knew it. Caradoc looked at the boy Britannicus and saw the rictus grin of fear stretch his mouth far more palpably than it did his father’s. He knew where the danger lay.
“Is it necessary to shackle him so? We hold his wife and daughter, after all. He will not harm us, surely?”
Agrippina said it winsomely, tilting her head on one side. Her eyes blazed with guileless charm. The heavily painted lids blinked once, daring the prisoner to prove her wrong, to prove himself the better of the guards and of Claudius.
Still grinning, the emperor nodded. The nearest of the horse-guards reached for Caradoc, who stepped back a pace and held himself out of reach, taking Cunomar with him.
“I think not,” he said. “It is better the chains stay in place, my lady. In so beguiling company, I might else forget too soon how I came to be here.”
The guard hovered, awaiting orders. The empress’s smile became brittle a moment, then plastic again, a source of sympathy and amusement, solace and the offer of freedom. The emperor ceased to smile and looked on thoughtfully.
“It need not have been so,” said Agrippina at length. “Had you not set arms against us, you would be welcome here as one of our subjects. We would be discussing trade and the collection of taxes, not the manner of your death and the fates of your family.”
Caradoc inclined his head. With perfe
ct civility, he said, “And I would be imposing an unwanted slavery on an entire people, instead of simply those of my blood.”
“But you would be free and rich from the collection of taxes.”
“I was free before, and rich beyond measure, without the imposition of taxes to keep others in ancient gold.” His eyes swept the antique gold of her neck chain, the Macedonian staters fixed in her earrings. Rome had grown to power in the three centuries since they were first minted.
The green eyes flashed. Agrippina, who had spent her early adulthood in exile off Mauretania, diving for sponges by order of Caligula, unhooked a trail of pearls from one ear. Holding them high, she said, “I dived for these, and others like them, twice a day, bursting my lungs to find them amid the grasping weed and the dark places beneath the sea. They are the product of no man’s taxes. I believe I have earned the right to wear them.”
They were small seed pearls, not very even, hanging together like grapes on a vine, the only imperfect items in the whole of her ensemble. She rolled her fingers that they might catch the light from the garden, then flung them high out over the marble.
Caradoc lifted his hands against the weight of the chains and caught them. Blood leaked from his wrists to make small liquid pools on the porphyry. Cunomar shuddered, biting his lip to hold silence. On the far side of the room, Nero winced.
Ignoring them both, Caradoc held the pearls high in the light, as she had. “They are beautiful, my lady. I do not question your right to wear them.”
“But you do question my right to my gold.”
She was angry, but not yet vengeful. It was said of her that she admired courage above all other traits and despised sycophancy. Offering prayers to silent gods that the rumours be true, Caradoc said, “Among my people, gold is considered the province of the gods. It cannot be eaten or ridden, it provides no warmth against winter’s chill. We give it first to the gods as evidence of our gratitude, and what is left we wear in their honour, not our own.”
She was quick; she understood the words he left unsaid. One painted brow peaked. “And so the gods should not be robbed so that men can pay their gold in taxes?”
“I believe not. It is not only the gods that suffer, but the people. Our land was our own; by the grace of the gods we farmed it, we reared our horses, we hunted, we bred our hounds, mined our lead and tin, silver and gold, and we lived as a free people. Why, because we have lost one battle, should we submit ourselves to slavery that others may grow rich on our labours?”
“That is the penalty for losing a war.”
“But we have not yet lost the war.”
Agrippina’s lips parted fiercely. “You will not think that as you die.”
“But the governor, Scapula, as he dies, may do so.”
He had spoken beyond himself, unthinking, with words not his own. In the cracked silence that followed, Caradoc felt the withdrawal of the gods as a man feels a blade pulled out of flesh in which it has just now been embedded. He had not thought himself so ready a mouthpiece, nor that his gods desired his death so urgently. He lifted his gaze to that of the empress, expecting to see the work of a morning, the careful weaving of care and courtesy, destroyed. The lives of his two children hung on this woman’s care and her courtesy. Very badly, he did not want to see either destroyed.
“My lady, forgive me, I—” My lady, forgive me, I spoke out of turn. The last time I saw Scapula, he was riding his horse across a battlefield he had just taken. If he is dead, the gods know it, but I do not.
He did not say it because he was no longer given heed. The hard green gaze was focused beyond him and quite unreadable. Claudius, too, appeared to have forgotten his presence; he was turned toward the doorway, his face searching, like a blind man in winter who feels the heat of the sun.
“Your excellency—”
Caradoc turned. Between the guards stood aged Callon, father to Narcissus, the elegant, tutored freedman who ran the empire for his master. Agrippina’s perfect, painted lips twitched in open disgust. In Claudius’ court, the enmity between the empress and those of the secretaries whose loyalty remained solely with their emperor was legendary.
Ignoring her, Callon signalled again to his master and was invited to enter. Stooping, he murmured in his emperor’s ear. Claudius stopped smiling. For a long moment, it seemed he might faint; then he turned to his empress and her son.
“You will leave us.”
She glared at him, snake-eyed and venomous. Silence stretched between them. At length, the empress nodded. “Whatever my lord commands.” With consummate dignity, she gathered her son and departed.
Unsmiling, Claudius turned back to the garden; his treasure and his escape.
“You will walk with me,” he ordered. The sweep of his arm included all those who were left.
CHAPTER 20
“Scapula is dead.”
Narcissus, son of Callon and emperor’s freedman, was hysterical, or close to it. He stood in the doorway to the prison cell, flanked by the horse-guards and two Praetorians. The evening before, he had seemed to Dubornos urbane and all-powerful. A man of middle height and middle weight with dark, well-barbered hair and heavy brows, he had commanded the guards and the doctor, had procured the bandages and clothing, food and wine, had spoken Latin and Greek with equal fluency and displayed a working understanding of Gaulish. His reputation had preceded him as Claudius’ most trusted adviser and the man who had persuaded the mutineering legions to embark on the ships which took them to Britannia in the long-delayed invasion. Word on Mona, brought months after the event, said that the invasion itself was Narcissus’ plan, his means to consolidate his master’s power and thereby his own.
Daylight, leaking along the corridor from some distant window, treated him unkindly. His skin was yellowed with age and strain. Threads of silver showed in his hair. His tunic, which had appeared in the previous evening’s lamplight to be a model of restrained good taste, sparked at the hems with silver and gold bullion in vulgar quantities. He took a step forward into the room, not quite close enough for Dubornos to strike a hand across his neck and kill him. The guards hovered protectively.
“Scapula is dead,” Narcissus said again. He ran a pale tongue round paler lips. “The governor of Britannia has died in his bed. In Camulodunum, they say it is the dreamers’ work, in revenge for our capture of Caratacus. Is this true?”
Dubornos said, “It may be.” Horns sounded in his skull, a great fanfare of victory. Joy made him light-headed. His fingers sought the wall and pressed against the plaster for balance. The danger to his own life seemed, at that moment, irrelevant.
“How would they do it? They have not come near him—they couldn’t. He is guarded day and night. Can they kill at a distance?”
Warnings clattered in Dubornos’ mind. He said, “I don’t know. I’m not a dreamer.”
“No.” The freedman snorted, horse-like, high in his nose. “You have only lived these past nine years on their cursed island. Of course you don’t know their ways.” He pursed his lips explosively. Violence and the threat of it clung to him. Caradoc had said, The man is shrewd, intelligent and has no great lust for blood. He had chosen to forget that Claudius routinely tortured to death those who conspired against him; or that his ministers did so in his name.
Narcissus’ agitation brought him a further stride into the room, well within reach. In his head, Dubornos heard Caradoc’s voice. They have the children … If there is anything we can do to keep them alive, we must do it. It’s all there is left. To kill the emperor’s favourite adviser would destroy any chance of Cunomar and Cygfa’s survival. Dubornos watched the man’s arms and the space above his eyes and his heart rocked in his chest as it did before battle. An image of Scapula, dead, floated before him, as real as the room. He thought, Airmid will have done this, for Breaca, and was sorry only that Caradoc was not there to hear the news with him. Aloud, he said, “Men die all the time, from war wounds, pestilence, ill-prepared food. Why should the governor
’s death be considered dreamers’ work?”
From the passageway behind the guards, a second foreign voice said, “The tribes believe it to be so and the legions with them. Word has spread through the ranks that they used Scapula for practice and will come now for his master, that Claudius’ life can be counted in days, not months. The legate of the Second has flogged a dozen men for sedition but the rumour still spreads like fire through the harvest. If it reaches Rome, Claudius is as good as dead.”
Callistus, secretary to the Privy Purse, stepped past the guards and squeezed into the room. He was slightly built with a narrow face and lips artificially red. His hair was entirely white; whether by birth or age or accident was not clear. His eyes were bloodshot and if they had colour, it could not be seen beyond the wide void of the pupil. Like Narcissus, Callistus was panicked and panicking men are as dangerous as fire-blind horses. He said, “Claudius must not die now, he must not. You will tell us how your barbarian soothsayers could reach Scapula and then how we might stop them from similarly assailing the person of the emperor. You will tell us of your own free will or under harshest duress, but you will tell us.”
And so the waiting was over, so easily, with so little forewarning. Relief and the apex of terror made Dubornos dizzy. He laughed. They stared at him; a lunatic, or a witless fool. His skin prickled with the promise of pain. He rolled his shoulders, feeling afresh the coarse scratch of the tunic as it touched his back, his waist, his arms. The crush of the shackle-wounds on his wrists felt warm and comfortable, a known and measurable sensation. Blood pulsed from his head to his feet and he knew every part of himself. For the first time in thirty-two years, he felt at home in the body he was about to lose. As Airmid had said he should, he stood on the dividing line between the worlds, a foot on each bank of the gods’ river, evenly. His thoughts flowed freely, released from all constraints.