Emperor tt-1

by Stephen Baxter

  But still Brica's flood of Latin continued; still Cunovic scribbled at his tablet. The words were strange, enigmatic, disconnected: Horses large as houses…A little Greek…Dead marble…

  Cunovic started to understand that this was a description of the future-or a future-a description of events that could only occur long after he and Brica and all of them were long dead. Fearfully Cunovic imagined a wizard in some dark cell, somewhere in the past or future, pouring these alien words into the head of the helpless Brica, in this moment when birth and death were in the balance-a wizard, a Weaver of the threads of history, threads that were human lives. But why?

  Cunovic didn't know if he was serving the cause of good or ill by writing down these words-and yet, once having started, he found he dared not stop. And as the words formed in the wax, words in a language the woman could not possibly know-words in the language of the most powerful empire on earth-Cunovic tried to suppress his own superstitious fear.

  I

  INVADER AD 43-70

  I

  Agrippina and her three companions rode to the strip of dunes that lined the coast.

  It was close to midday. The air, drenched with sunlight, tasted sharp, like lightning, and Agrippina felt her skin tighten in the gentle breeze. She could already smell the salt in the air, and she thought she heard the soughing of waves. They had crossed a strip of land, drowned at high tide, to get to this near-island, and so the sea surrounded them.

  At the edge of the dunes they turned the horses out to forage. The horse Agrippina had shared with her brother Mandubracius, a patient old gelding she had been riding since she was fifteen years old, would not wander far. She was sure that the same could be said of the heavy-muscled beast Nectovelin had been riding: even a war horse would surely not defy her warrior-cousin. Cunedda's horse, though, was much more flighty, though she had enjoyed the ride to the beach, as had her rider.

  They walked across the dunes, carrying packs of food, leather bottles of water, spare clothing. They all wore weapons, knives tucked into their belts. This was the land of the Cantiaci, nominally allies of Cunedda's people the Catuvellaunians, but relationships among these strange southern nations were fluid, and it always paid to be on your guard. Nectovelin lugged the heavy leather tent they would all be sharing, folded and tied up with rope. 'By Coventina's shrivelled dug,' he swore, 'this is heavier than it used to be.'

  Agrippina hung back a little, letting Nectovelin stomp ahead, while little Mandubracius, ten years old, scampered after him. That way she won a rare moment alone with Cunedda. She leaned close and let him steal a kiss.

  'But a kiss will have to do,' she said, breaking away.

  Cunedda laughed and pulled back. 'We'll have time.' His southern language was like her own Brigantian tongue, but not quite the same-exotic enough to be pleasing to the ear.

  Cunedda was twenty-four, just a year older than Agrippina. Where she was pale he was dark, his hair rich black, his eyes deep brown. Today he wore a sleeveless woollen tunic, and his flesh was turning a tantalising honey brown in the summer sun, quite different to her own pale skin and streaked strawberry-blonde hair. She thought that Cunedda had something of the look of the Mediterranean about him, of the smooth-spoken boys who had pursued her so hard and so fruitlessly while she grew up in Massilia. And he was a prince of the Catuvellaunian royal line, a grandson of dead king Cunobelin, which made him still more intriguing to her.

  She could smell the salt sweat on his bare skin, and she longed to hold him. But she could not; not now. They walked on.

  Cunedda said, 'Look at old Nectovelin tramping along. He's like a tree uprooted from the forest.'

  'He walks like a warrior,' she said. 'Which is all he's ever been.'

  'He has the family colour, that red hair going grey. He really is your cousin?'

  'In a way. My grandfather, Cunovic, was brother to his father, Ban.'

  'He hardly looks the type for a nice day on the beach!'

  Agrippina shrugged. 'It was his idea. Any chance to let him get to know you, Cun! In fact he's in charge today, as much as anybody is…'

  Cunedda was in this part of the world for trade, to promote his pottery business, but also as an envoy to the Cantiaci from the Catuvellaunian court at Camulodunum, north of the great estuary. Brigantian Nectovelin had been appointed as his bodyguard for the day.

  It wasn't terribly unusual to find Brigantians here in the south working for the Catuvellaunians, who had been the dominant power in this corner of the island since before the Roman invasion ninety years ago, when long-dead Cassivellaunus had faced down Caesar himself. It was Nectovelin's service for Cunedda's family which had brought Cunedda into Agrippina's life in the first place.

  And today, Agrippina hoped, she would be able to make Nectovelin accept that Cunedda was here to stay.

  They came over the breast of the dunes and faced the sea, a pale blue blanket under the heavy sun. It looked almost Mediterranean to Agrippina, who had seen that central sea for herself, but this was the Ocean, a tide-swollen beast much feared by the superstitious Romans. A low island lay on the breast of the sea a few miles off-shore.

  'That's close enough to the water for us,' Nectovelin growled. 'He dumped the heavy tent on the sand. Agrippina saw how the sweat on his back, trapped by the tent, had turned his tunic black.

  Mandubracius whooped. 'Catch me if you can!' He ran to the sea, limbs flashing, an explosion of ten-year-old energy. He was so pale he looked like a ghost, barely part of the world at all.

  Nectovelin hardly raised his voice. 'Get back here, boy.'

  Mandubracius froze immediately. He turned and jogged back.

  Cunedda marvelled. 'He's like a well-trained dog.'

  Nectovelin said, 'Oh, I train my dogs better than this.'

  Mandubracius trotted up, sweating, panting a little, but not resentful.

  Nectovelin pointed. 'Here. Put the tent up.'

  'I never put a tent up before.'

  'Then you need to learn how.'

  Mandubracius plucked at the leather sheet. 'But it's hot. We've walked for ever. And it's heavy. Look, I can't even lift it!'

  Nectovelin snorted. 'By Coventina's snot-crusted left nostril, I never heard the like. A Roman legionary would have dug out a whole fort in the time you've been standing there like a whelp. Get on with it. I'm going to bathe my feet.' He walked away.

  Cunedda said to Mandubracius, 'I'll help you-'

  'When he gets stuck,' Agrippina said gently. 'Let him figure it out for himself first. Come. Walk with me to the sea.'

  They followed Nectovelin, while Mandubracius struggled to unfold the stiff leather.

  II

  Nectovelin loosened his sandals to reveal feet that were a mass of hair and fungus-blighted nails. He stepped into the sea, sighing as the cool wavelets broke over his toes. Agrippina kicked off her own sandals to follow. Cunedda was wearing heavier boots and socks, Roman style, and he sat on the damp sand to loosen them.

  Then the three of them stood in the sea, side by side like standing stones, facing east towards the grass-covered island, the calm Ocean, and Europe invisibly far beyond.

  Cunedda said cautiously, 'I'm surprised at you, Nectovelin.'

  'Why so?'

  'You held out a Roman soldier as a model to the boy. Suppose he ever had to face a Roman in combat?'

  'I build up the Romans in his head. But when Mandubracius sees them for the dour little runts they really are, he will have no fear.'

  Agrippina said, 'But it won't happen. The Romans won't be fighting the Catuvellaunians or the Brigantians or anybody else.'

  'Caesar did,' said Nectovelin.

  Cunedda said, 'And I've heard Caratacus talk of a massing of Roman troops in Gaul, at a coastal town. He and his brother even gathered a few thousand men on the coast in case the Romans crossed. Of course the Romans never came, and it's too late in the season for campaigning now anyhow, and everybody went home. But still-'

  'But still, that's all j
ust rumour. The difference with Caesar's time is that now there is all this trade.' She pointed to a shadow on the horizon, a squat heavy-sailed ship. It was a trader from Gaul, probably, a massive ship of nailed timbers, with iron anchors and rawhide sails. 'In Massilia they say that an invasion of Britain would cost the Romans more than it would be worth, because they make so much from customs duties on the trade across the Ocean.'

  'Caesar made war here.'

  'And the Romans are afraid of the Ocean,' Cunedda said. 'Isn't that so? They would never dare cross the water anyhow.'

  'Caesar crossed,' Nectovelin said simply. 'The truth is, nobody wants to believe the legionaries would come again because nowadays everybody sucks on the golden teat of Rome. You're a potter, aren't you, boy?'

  'Yes.' Actually Cunedda was much more than that; he ran a thriving business, employing twenty artisans, having made good use of his inheritance.

  'And who do you sell your pots to? The Romans?'

  'Not just the Romans-'

  'Those who ape them. The Trinovantes, the Iceni, the Atrebates. Those who live under their protection. Certainly not to us Brigantians.' Nectovelin jabbed his finger in Cunedda's chest. 'If not for the Romans you wouldn't make a living at all, would you?'

  Agrippina said, 'Go easy, old man. Don't forget he's paying your wages.'

  Cunedda said, 'Anyway what's wrong with taking money off the Romans? I would have thought you'd approve.'

  'Why does it matter to you what I think? You're shagging my cousin, aren't you?'

  Cunedda coloured.

  Agrippina snapped, 'So you knew all the time?'

  Nectovelin tapped his forehead. 'You think I lived to the ripe age of forty-seven without eyes that see, ears that hear? Anyhow Bala told me.'

  Agrippina gasped. Bala of the Cantiaci had once been a friend; they had fallen out over Cunedda. 'That malicious bitch, I'll rip her throat out.'

  Cunedda laughed. 'Now you do sound like Nectovelin's cousin.'

  Nectovelin pinched one nostril and cleared the other, leaving a trail of mucus on his beard that he wiped away with his sleeve. 'And that's why you came to the beach. To get around me.'

  Agrippina linked his arm affectionately. 'Oh, don't be difficult, you ridiculous old fraud. You know you've been the nearest thing to a father to me, since my own father died.'

  'But you don't need my say-so to spread your legs.'

  'Don't be crude! No, but I want you to be part of us, part of our relationship.'

  Nectovelin eyed Cunedda. 'There are worse choices you could have made.'

  'Thanks,' Cunedda said dryly. 'But I thought you didn't like us Catuvellaunians.'

  'It's nothing personal. I don't like any of you soft southerners.' He glared around at the sunlit beach. 'This is the arsehole of Britain. And that's why Caesar shoved his Roman sword up it.'

  'And if this is an arsehole,' Cunedda said carefully, 'are you the turd that is passing through, old warrior?'

  Nectovelin frowned, and for a dreadful moment Agrippina thought he would take offence. But he winked at Agrippina. 'Nice reply. But I was the wittier, wasn't I?'

  'Oh, you're a regular Cicero,' Agrippina said dryly. 'You must have a little bit of Roman in you after all-'

  'As did Cassivellaunus once Caesar got hold of him.'

  They all managed to laugh at that.

  Nectovelin said suddenly, 'But if you hurt her-'

  'I won't,' Cunedda said.

  'Are you afraid of me, boy?'

  'Not you,' Cunedda said bravely. 'Her, yes.'

  Nectovelin's stern expression broke up into another laugh, and he clapped Cunedda on the shoulder.

  Agrippina walked forward, and the deeper water lapped deliciously against her bare legs. 'Look.' With her pointing finger she sketched the line of the coast. 'This bay would make a good harbour. It's sheltered by that island, and by the shingle banks over there to the south.'

  Cunedda said, 'Somebody else has thought of that.' He pointed out a heap of nets, a crowd of seagulls squabbling over fish guts on the beach. 'In fact I don't know why this place isn't teeming with ships.'

  'Because it's too new,' Nectovelin said. 'There was a great storm here, a few years back. A sand bar was breached. That island didn't even exist when I was born.'

  Cunedda nodded. 'Then the harbour wasn't here in Caesar's time?'

  'No. And he didn't land anywhere near here.' Nectovelin described how Caesar had made a tough landing beneath the white chalk cliffs of the south coast.

  Agrippina reflected, with the faintest unease, on a titbit of information she had picked up from a trader in Durovernum, the main town of the Cantiaci, the local people. Though the Cantiaci didn't have a name for this new harbour, the Romans did: they called it Rutupiae. In their endless obsessive mapping and surveying, and the low-level spying they carried on through their traders, the Romans had spotted the potential of the place, even if the locals hadn't.

  Her eye was distracted by another silhouette on the horizon. Perhaps it was another hide-sailed trading ship from Gaul. There seemed to be a lot of traffic today. But the air was misty, and she couldn't quite make it out.

  'Look,' Cunedda said, 'Mandubracius is waving. He's got the tent up!'

  At that moment the shapeless black mound the boy had erected subsided to the sand.

  Nectovelin harrumphed. 'He's done his best. Let's go rescue him.' He led the way out of the sea and up the beach.

  III

  The four of them spent the day playing games, talking, eating, drinking. It was near midsummer, and the light faded only slowly from the sky. Nectovelin even grudgingly accepted some of the Roman wine Cunedda had brought.

  Agrippina was glad Mandubracius was here. He was a good-hearted child, full of affection, who wanted nothing more than for everybody to have a good time. In fact she wondered if, unconsciously, she had planned it this way, to have Mandubracius around when she faced Nectovelin over her relationship with Cunedda, as a way to lighten the mood.

  First Mandubracius and then Nectovelin succumbed to tiredness, and retired to the tent.

  Cunedda and Agrippina walked a little way away from the light of the fire. They brought some spare clothing to spread out on the cool sand, and lay side by side, peering up at the slow unveiling of the stars, while the sea lapped softly.

  Cunedda took her hand. 'Do you think he's really asleep? I've heard that old soldiers never sleep.'

  'You make fun of him, but he really is a warrior. After all his birth was attended by a Prophecy!'

  'Really? Tell me,' Cunedda said, intrigued.

  So Agrippina told him how Nectovelin's mother had supposedly started babbling during her difficult labour. 'Brica never explained how come she spouted Latin, for she died in childbirth-although the baby, Nectovelin, survived.' Her grandfather Cunovic had written out a fair copy of the 'Prophecy' on parchment, and had given it to Nectovelin as he grew older.

  'I love stories like this,' Cunedda said. 'What did it say?'

  'Well, I don't know for sure. Something about the Romans, something about freedom, a lot that made no sense at all. Cunovic had a theory about it, that it was a scrying of some kind, poured into Nectovelin's mother's head by a god, or perhaps by a wizard of the future meddling with the past. A "Weaver", Cunovic called him. He was rather frightened of the Prophecy, I think. He dared not destroy the copy he had made, but he was happy to pass it on to Nectovelin…I'm told Nectovelin has carried it around all his life, even though he can't read it!'

  'And yet it shaped him.'

  'Yes. Because of the Prophecy Nectovelin believes he is destined to be a warrior, destined to fight Romans-just as his own great-grandfather fought Caesar. It probably hasn't helped that that great-grandfather gave him his name too.

  'But for most of his life he has been a warrior without a war to fight. In Brigantia there is only a little cattle rustling, and a warrior can't get his teeth into that! And he certainly never fit in as a farmer. He was always moody and aggressive. "L
ike living with a thunderstorm in the house," my mother used to say. He never had children, you know-lovers, but never children. And so, when he heard that you young Catuvellaunians were becoming adventurous-even though he was in his thirties by then-he came down here for a bit of fighting. Cracking a few Trinovantian skulls suited him. But he's still restless. You can see it in him…'

  Since the days of Cassivellaunus, while the Romans brooded across the Ocean, the Catuvellaunians had been busy building an empire of their own.

  The Catuvellaunians still boasted of their 'victory' over Julius Caesar, even though in fact Cassivellaunus had won no more than a stand-off with the overstretched Romans. Before he left Britain for good, Caesar had insisted on the Catuvellaunians respecting their neighbours the Trinovantes, who had been friendly to Caesar. Well, that hadn't worked; before long, with brazen cheek, the Catuvellaunians had actually taken the Trinovantes' base of Camulodunum as their own capital.

  Then had followed the decades-long reign of Cassivellaunus's grandson Cunobelin, when the Catuvellaunians had been content to sit on their little empire. Agrippina had the impression that Cunobelin had been a wise and pragmatic ruler, able to balance the competing forces of internal pride within his nation with the constant danger represented by Roman might-and all the while growing rich on lucrative trade with Rome.

  But then Cunobelin had died. His empire had devolved to the control of two of his many sons, Caratacus and Togodumnus-both in fact uncles of Cunedda, though they weren't much older than he was. To them Caesar's incursion was beyond living memory. And under them the Catuvellaunians had gone in for aggressive expansion.

  During the ensuing raids and petty wars Nectovelin had risen quickly, and found a place in the princes' councils.

  As his personal wealth grew Nectovelin brought some of his own family down from Brigantia to help him spend it. But he hadn't always been pleased with the results, such as when Agrippina's mother had accepted an offer to let her young daughter, like two of Cunobelin's younger sons, be educated in the empire. The Romans claimed this strengthened links between the peoples, but harder heads described it as 'hostage taking'. Still, Agrippina's mother had seen the benefits of a Roman education. She had even given her daughter a Roman name.