Emperor tt-1

by Stephen Baxter

  So Agrippina had spent three years of her life in Massilia on the southern coast of Gaul, cramming Latin, learning to read and write, absorbing rhetoric and grammar and the other elements of a Roman education, and soaking up Mediterranean light. It had left her transformed in every way, she knew. And yet she had had no hesitation in coming home when the time was up.

  'I went to Massilia against Nectovelin's wishes,' Agrippina said. 'But I wouldn't have been here in the south without him. I wouldn't have met you. And none of it would have come about without the Prophecy.'

  Cunedda shook his head. 'A strange story. How dramatic it must have been, that moment-the painful labour, the attending women, the brothers, the brooding grandfather-and then the drama of the spouting Latin words! And that one moment, lost in the past, has echoed throughout Nectovelin's life.'

  This romantic musing reminded Agrippina of why she had fallen so firmly in love with Cunedda in the first place. She curled up her fingers and gently scratched the palm of his hand. 'But even though it shaped his life, Nectovelin can't read his own Prophecy.'

  'You could read it for him.'

  'I offered once. He pretended not to hear. He hates my Roman reading. I may as well have waved an eagle standard in his face.' She suppressed a sigh. She had debated this many times with her cousin. 'Words give you such power. If he could read he would be the equal of any Roman, the equal of the Emperor Claudius himself.'

  He looked up at her, the stars reflected in his eyes. 'Dear 'Pina. A head full of words, and dreams!'

  'Dreams?'

  'We need to speak about the future. Our future.' He hesitated. "Pina-Claudius Quintus has offered me a position in Gaul.'

  This sudden, unexpected news turned her cold. She knew that Quintus was one of Cunedda's principal contacts for his pottery business.

  'Quintus is expanding,' Cunedda said, uncertain what she was thinking. 'He likes my work. He'll be a partner in the new concern, but it will be my business, just as here.'

  'And you didn't bother to tell me any of this?'

  'I wanted to be sure that old Nectovelin wouldn't just keep me away from you anyhow. But he seems to accept me, doesn't he? And now that he does, we have to decide what to do. Think of it, Agrippina. If I go to Gaul the trade routes across the whole empire will be wide open to me. And I won't have to train up another woolly-arsed Briton every time I open up a new line!'

  'Now you sound Roman yourself,' she said.

  He gazed at her, evidently trying to judge her mood. 'Well, is that so bad? It's you who grew up in Gaul.'

  'But I came back,' she said softly.

  He frowned. 'Look, if you're unhappy we don't have to do this. I'll find some other way to build on Quintus's faith in me.'

  'You'd do that for me?'

  'Of course. I want us to share the future, 'Pina. But it must be a future we both want…'

  She sighed, and lay back. That was the trouble, though: what did she want? In Gaul her friends, while kind, had always looked down on her as a barbarian from a place beyond civilisation. But now there seemed to be no room for her in Brigantia either, where nobody could share the sparking in her mind when she read. There were more practical issues too. In Britain a woman could rise to be the equal of a man-or better. Why, the ruler of her own nation was a woman, Cartimandua. In Rome, though, she could never aspire to be more than somebody's wife-and even if that somebody was as delicious as Cunedda, could it ever be enough?

  'I've upset you,' Cunedda said softly. 'I'm sorry. We'll talk of this tomorrow.' He cupped her cheek in his warm hand. 'Can you read the sky, Agrippina? Are the stars the same, where you were born? There.' He picked out one bright star. 'That is the star we call the Dog, because when we first see it, early in the mornings, we know it marks the start of the summer. It is the lead dog of the pack, you see. And in the winter we look for that one'-he pointed again-'for when it rises in the east, we know we must plant the winter wheat. We believe that once a girl was washed up on a beach, perhaps not unlike this one, having swum from a faraway land. In her belly was the seed that would grow to be the first king of the Catuvellaunians. But that first night she was cold and it was dark. She built a fire, and the embers flew up into the air. And that is how the stars were formed.'

  'We have similar stories,' she said. 'And we read the sky.'

  He ran his hand down her side, thrillingly. 'Tell me about Brigantia.'

  She smiled in the dark. 'Brigantia is a huge country that stretches from sea to sea, east to west and north to south. You can ride for days and not come to the end of it. The name means "hilly" in our tongue. I was born in a place called Eburacum, which means "the place of the yew trees". Our holy animal is the boar. And Nectovelin was born in Banna, on a ridge overlooking a river valley that looks as if it has been scooped out with a spoon. It's a beautiful place.'

  'And sexy Coventina, this huge goddess Nectovelin jokes about?'

  'She is all around, in the landscape. You can see her breasts in the swelling of the hills, her thighs in the deep-cut valleys…' She moved with the stroking of his hand. 'Oh, Cunedda…'

  On the dark water, an oar splashed.

  IV

  Agrippina sat up sharply.

  Cunedda was startled. 'What's wrong?'

  She pressed her finger to his lips. When she stared out to sea she could see nothing at all. But there it was again, the unmistakable slap of a clumsily handled oar, the clunk of wood striking wood-and a muffled curse, a man's voice.

  'I heard that,' said Cunedda, whispering now. 'You have sharp ears.'

  A growl from the dark. 'Keep your yapping down.' Nectovelin was a shadow against the night. Agrippina wondered if he had been awake all the time after all.

  Cunedda asked nervously, 'You think they are pirates?'

  Agrippina said, 'Who else makes landfall in the dark?'

  Nectovelin grunted softly. 'Who indeed?'

  'What do you mean?'

  Cunedda said, 'Whoever it is, we don't want them to know we're here. We should douse the fire.'

  'Already done,' Nectovelin said. 'But they'll smell the smoke-'

  'Hello!' The small voice came drifting up from the beach. It was Mandubracius, of course. He was carrying a torch, and as he walked down to the sea he was suspended in a bubble of flickering light, a slight, spectral figure.

  For a moment there was utter silence from the water. But now came a reply. 'Hello?' A man's voice, heavily accented.

  Nectovelin cursed colourfully. 'I thought he was still sleeping. My fault, my fault.'

  Cunedda tried to rise. 'We should stop him.'

  'No.' Nectovelin held his arm. 'They may just let him go. Better to risk it than to reveal ourselves now.'

  Agrippina felt as if a leather rope attached her heart to the little boy walking down the beach. 'He's only a child. He's curious, that's all.'

  'Hush,' said Nectovelin, not harshly.

  Mandubracius reached the edge of the water. Now, indistinctly, by the flickering light of his torch, Agrippina made out the boat that had landed. It was bigger than she had imagined, flat-bottomed, evidently for ease of landing on the beach. She saw men aboard, faces shining like coins in the torch's dim glow. One of them stepped into the water and spoke to Mandubracius. Gruff laughter rippled around the landing craft. Mandubracius seemed to take fright. He threw down the torch and turned to run.

  But the man standing in the water drew a short, blunt sword, and with it he cut down Mandubracius.

  Immediately Nectovelin's hand clamped over Agrippina's mouth. There was a sharp word from the boat, perhaps of reprimand. Agrippina thought she heard a name: Marcus Allius. And then the light died at last.

  All this in a heartbeat.

  'Listen to me,' Nectovelin said, and Agrippina could hear the grief in his own whisper. 'There must be fifty of them in that boat alone, and there will be more boats, hundreds perhaps, landing all around this harbour. If we try to take them on we will die too. Instead we must stay alive, and tell wha
t we saw.' Still Agrippina struggled, but Nectovelin's grip tightened. 'Believe me, I feel as you do. Worse. I am responsible. And I won't rest until I have avenged his death-or given up my life for his. But not now, not tonight.'

  Gradually he loosened his grip and uncovered her mouth.

  Breathing hard, the sand harsh on her skin, she whispered, 'Very well.'

  Cunedda was panting too, eyes wide. He nodded.

  'Follow me, then,' Nectovelin said. 'Keep low. Try to leave no track. We'll get the horses, and then-well, we'll see. Come now.'

  He began to pick his way across the dune. Agrippina followed, and Cunedda brought up the rear.

  Aware of the intense danger they were all in, Agrippina concentrated on following Nectovelin's instructions, trying not to disturb so much as a blade of dry dune grass. But she couldn't rid her head of the images of those few moments when the torch had fallen to the water: the armour that had glistened on the chest of the man with the sword, the helmets of the men arrayed in the boat-and the eagle standard held aloft.

  V

  From his bench in the rear of the landing craft, Narcissus was able to see the first wave of boats driving onto the beach. Under the stars, there was nothing to be seen of the darkened land beyond, nothing but the swell of a dune or two-that, and what might have been the embers of a solitary fire on the beach.

  Around Narcissus the legionaries, stinking of sweat, leather and horses, worked their oars under a centurion's softly spoken commands. The rowers held the boat in its place against the tide, for Vespasian's order had been that the Emperor's secretary was not to be allowed to land until the general judged the beachhead had been made reasonably secure.

  The delay was perhaps half an hour-or so it seemed to Narcissus, sitting in the dark and silence. The length of an hour was dependent on the length of a day, twelve hours slicing up the interval from sunrise to sunset. He had read from the memoirs of long-dead Carthaginian explorers that in these northern places the length of the day could be quite different from Rome's, the days longer in summer, shorter in winter. That even time was slippery here added to Narcissus's sense of unreality on this swelling sea, in the dark, surrounded by the grunts of irritably frightened soldiers. He had come a long way from home, he admitted to himself.

  Not that he was about to show weakness in front of these men. A lot of them, no more than half-civilised barbarians from Germany and Gaul themselves, were predictably more superstitiously terrified of the Ocean than of anything their half-cousins on the British shore could throw at them. And judging from the retching sounds and the stink of vomit, many of them were having a harder time coping with the sea's gentle swell than Narcissus, who could at least pride himself on a strong stomach.

  Narcissus was comforted, too, by a deep sense of being present at a pivotal moment in history. He was sorry, in fact, to be making his own landing in the dark like this, though it had been necessary for him to be present at the very spearpoint of the invasion. Somewhere out there were the flagships, the big triremes. By day these grand forms, looming on the horizon with their oars glittering, would be a marvellous sight, enough to strike fear into the heart of any transoceanic barbarian; he wished he could see them now.

  At last a light showed on the shore: a lantern, swung back and forth. The centurion growled, 'That's it, lads. You'll be treading on good dry land before you know it. Work those oars now. One, two. One, two…'

  His rhythmic voice brought unpleasant memories of the ship Narcissus had sailed along the coast of Gaul, with the relentless booming of a timekeeper's drum keeping the banks of enslaved oarsmen in step. Narcissus was a freedman, a former slave. In his position he had had to get used to handling slaves. But to be so close to such extreme servitude, where hundreds of men were used as bits of machinery, had been unsettling.

  The shallow-draught landing boat grounded on the sand, and the centurion hopped out into ankle-deep water. With a couple of the lads holding the boat steady the centurion offered the secretary his arm. Thus Narcissus strode onto the British shore, barely wetting his feet.

  The general himself was here to greet him. Narcissus expected nothing less than a personal welcome from Titus Flavius Vespasianus, legate of the Second Legion Augusta and commander tonight of the beachhead operations-nothing less, for even if Narcissus's formal title was no more than the Emperor's correspondence secretary, he had the ear of Claudius.

  'Secretary. Welcome to Britain. I apologise for keeping you waiting.' Vespasian was a stocky, dark man in his mid-thirties. The son of a farmer in Asia, he had a gruff personal manner and an unfortunate provincial accent, but he looked as if he had been born in his armour. Vespasian led Narcissus a little way up the beach, away from the damp littoral. They were trailed by two of Vespasian's staff officers.

  Narcissus said, 'I take it the landing was unopposed.'

  'Virtually. It seems our bluffs worked.' As the Roman forces had been drawn up in Gesoriacum in Gaul, rude armies had gathered on the British shore to meet them-but when the Romans hadn't crossed quickly, those farmer-warriors had gone back to their lands. The eventual crossing was being made so late in the campaigning season that the British had evidently given up waiting for them altogether.

  But Narcissus asked, ' "Virtually" unopposed, legate?'

  'A boy came running down the beach to meet the very first landing craft.'

  'A boy?'

  'Alone, we think. My decurion Marcus Allius dealt with him.'

  Narcissus winced. 'Was it necessary to spill an innocent's blood as soon as a Roman boot touched British soil?'

  Vespasian said neutrally, 'We found the remains of a fire, a crude leather tent, a few trails. But we believe we are still undetected. Just a boy, camping on the beach-wrong place, wrong time.'

  'Wrong for him, indeed.' As he walked, Narcissus drew himself up to his full height and sniffed the salty, night-cool air. 'And did we make a good choice of landing site?'

  'It's as good as we expected from the traders' maps,' Vespasian said. 'In future this place, Rutupiae, will no doubt become a significant entry point.' He pointed into the dark. 'I imagine a sea wall over there, perhaps a fort there-ah, but all of it will lie in the shade of the triumphal arch dedicated to Claudius.' Vespasian spoke respectfully enough, but Narcissus knew him well enough to detect a little gentle mockery. Vespasian went on, 'Our purpose tonight is to prepare the beachhead so that the main body of the force can be landed tomorrow-'

  Narcissus held up his hand. 'I don't need all the details.'

  'Let me summarise, then. During the night we will throw a fortification across this semi-island from coast to coast, multiple ditches and a palisade, and within we will set up a tent camp to process the rest of the landings.

  'Then, tomorrow, when the legions are mustered, we will move out. We have landed at the eastern tip of a peninsula. From here we will proceed west, following the south bank of an estuary, the outflow of a tidal river which we call the Tamesis. Once over the river we will proceed north to Camulodunum, which is the centre of the Catuvellaunians.'

  'Ah yes, those troublesome princes. This "centre"-is it a city, fortified?'

  Vespasian smiled. 'Camulodunum is no Troy, secretary. But the Catuvellaunians are the key power in this corner of the island, and Camulodunum is their capital. Their defeat will go a long way to achieving the Emperor's ambitions.'

  'And the timetable for this grand scheme?'

  'We are confident of taking Camulodunum in this first campaigning season, truncated though it is.'

  'The Emperor himself must take the capital.'

  Vespasian inclined his head. 'It is understood.'

  'It all seems rather simple, legate.'

  Vespasian shrugged. 'Simple schemes are best, Plautius says, and I agree. War has a habit of throwing up complications.'

  That word briefly puzzled Narcissus. 'Complications?-ah, you mean the British.' In the mesh of personal, economic and political motivation that had brought them all here, it was easy to
forget that this land was not an empty arena for Roman ambition but was actually full of people already.

  They reached the line of dunes above the beach itself. Narcissus climbed a shallow bank and looked inland, but he could see nothing of the land he had come to claim for Rome, nothing but more dunes.

  He breathed deeply. 'It smells different, doesn't it? Britain smells of salt and wind. Now I'm standing here I can see Julius didn't entirely exaggerate the strangeness of the crossing in his memoirs. Are your superstitious soldiers right, Vespasian? Have we really gone beyond the end of the world, have we come to conquer the moon?'

  Vespasian grunted. 'If we have, let's hope the moon men pay their taxes on time.' He touched the secretary's shoulder. 'Now I must insist you come down from there and let us get you under cover.'

  Narcissus smiled. 'Please do your job, legate.' And he clambered down from the sand dune, awkwardly, in the dark.

  VI

  While the legionaries constructed their camp, Vespasian entertained Narcissus in a small tent pitched close enough to the water that the secretary could hear the lapping of the waves, close enough to the landing boats for a fast escape if trouble should unexpectedly appear. They drank wine and ate fruit and watched the sea, talking softly. Some of the guard detail took the chance to bathe their feet in the Ocean, letting its salt cleanse them of fungi and other blights. Soldiers always took care of their feet.

  After some hours the camp was ready. As Vespasian escorted him through it, Narcissus was struck by the calm, almost cheerful orderliness of it all. Huddled against the natural cover of a river bank, it was like a little town, an array of leather tents enclosed by neatly cut ditches. Sentries were posted around the perimeter, and Narcissus knew that scouts would be working further out in the countryside, operating a deep defensive system.