‘You have been a good soldier, Rufus. The Emperor wishes you to keep your Praetorian uniform, and creates you an honorary member of the Guard.’ The Greek reached inside the folds of his tunic and held out a small bronze plaque. ‘He also wants you to have this. He fulfils his promise.’
For a moment Rufus felt light-headed, and when he reached out his hand it was trembling. It was his manumission. He was free. ‘I…’
Narcissus held up a hand. ‘There is a condition.’
‘I…’
‘You must never return to Rome.’
It was as if the words were jumbled or spoken in a foreign language, the message was so improbable. ‘But why? I have never let him down. I belong with him. He-’ He stopped abruptly. ‘Who will look after Bersheba?’
Narcissus laid his hands on Rufus’s shoulders and forced him to look into his eyes. ‘That is the Emperor’s final gift to you and your son. Bersheba will remain here, in Britain, with you. You are free to come and go as you please in this land, but the legate has orders that you are to be kept on the ration strength as a soldier of the Twentieth. Bersheba too will retain her status, on condition that if she can be of use to the legion, you will provide her. You must understand, Rufus, that this is for the best. You have seen and heard too much for the Emperor to be comfortable in your presence.’
Rufus opened his mouth to protest, but the truth of what he was being told suddenly became clear. The Emperor’s gift wasn’t only freedom, it was life itself. How much easier to rid himself of this nuisance on the voyage back to Rome, with a knife in the back and a weighted sack into the depths? Who would miss a slave and his son?
Narcissus continued, his tone almost kindly. ‘You have two great assets. The first is your self. You are intelligent and hard-working and many a man has made his fortune on those qualities alone. Never underestimate your worth. The other is large and grey and cleverer than both of us put together. Use her well, and kindly, and you and Gaius need never go hungry.’ He smiled and turned to go, then hesitated as if he had changed his mind. ‘I almost forgot. Here is my gift.’
He held out two small leather bags. Rufus took them. They were heavy and he realized that they were familiar. Even Narcissus’s gifts were not what they seemed. The last time he had held the bags was when his friend Cornelius Aurius Fronto had shown them to him in Rome, promising him their contents would buy his freedom. Narcissus had claimed they were lost for ever.
On another day he would have been angry, but not this day.
He reached up to touch the lion’s tooth charm at his throat. It was time.
Claudius stared out over the stern of the galley from beneath the awning erected for him in the centre of the deck. The grey-green contours of the land stretched as far as he could see on either side of the same river that ran past the partially constructed fortress a dozen miles upstream at Camulodunum. Aulus Plautius had chosen the settlement as the site for a permanent base from which he would conquer the rest of the island, but Claudius had his own plans for the place. One day, the gods willing, it would be a city of stone — a monument to his victories.
The invasion of Britain had been a triumph of war and it would win him his own triumph when he returned to Rome. His messengers had already carried news of their Emperor’s glory to the capital. His rivals, Gallus, Galba, Asiaticus and the rest, had seethed and grumbled when they discovered word of the victory would reach home months before they would. They still had doubts, of course; Narcissus’s subterfuge had been too enormous, too blatant, to go entirely undetected. They would gossip and sneer at him among their own kind, but too late to do him any damage.
He shivered. The truth was that he was glad to be free of this island, with its damp and its fogs, its alien gods and its dangerous barbarian inhabitants. Each night he dreamed of the day he had led his legions into battle on the Emperor’s elephant and in the mornings he woke up sweating in fear. How could he have been such a fool? How could he have allowed his enthusiasm and his emotions to carry him on a surge of super-heated blood into the very heart of danger? He didn’t want to be brave. He wanted to be alive.
And he was alive — alive and returning home. To Rome. But here too was a contradiction. For in Rome Valeria Messalina awaited, and, no doubt, further tales of Valeria Messalina’s wrongdoings. There was a reckoning to be had there, but it was a reckoning he did not wish to face. He had already decided he would delay it until after his triumph. Let her enjoy her day in the sun when he was carried from the Campus Martius at the head of his soldiers, and on the Capitol where he would sacrifice to Jupiter in thanks for his victories. He let his imagination take him there. The cheering crowds and the chariot with its matched white horses, the great temple looming above him on its squat hill, the laurel crown above his head and the slave whispering again and again in his ear, ‘ Memento mori — Remember thou art mortal.’
Something flared on a hill inland and to the north of the river mouth. A fire of some sort. A party of woodworkers or some wicked barbarian rite? It didn’t matter. His time in Britain was past and he intended never to return. The soldiers and the bureaucrats could have it now. He had been on the island for all of sixteen days.
The little group on the hill stood mesmerized by the flames clawing their way into the bruised purple of the evening sky from Britte’s funeral pyre. Rufus tried not to see the cloth-wrapped bundle in the centre turn black and disintegrate as the west wind whipped the flames through the carefully stacked cords of pitch-soaked timber. A Gaulish trooper of her tribe had performed the rites as best he could, but for Rufus it was enough that she should know he was here, and had attempted to fulfil her wishes. When it was done, he would gather the ashes and, if the wind was still fair, let it carry what they contained of Britte to the land of her birth. Some instinct told him that she — or what she had been — was already gone.
A small hand gripped his, and he looked down to see Gaius staring into the fire with troubled eyes. They waited until the sky above and the far-off sea below were dusted with gold by the light of a harvest moon. When the last timbers of the pyre crashed down, sending a flurry of sparks into the heavens, Rufus finally turned away and led his son back down the hill. To a new life, in a conquered land, among a conquered people.
Epilogue
Summer AD 51
Caratacus looked down upon the battlefield from his refuge among the rocks and watched his family being led away through the heaped bodies that had once been the combined might of the Silures, the Ordovices and the Catuvellauni. Eight long years he had resisted the Romans. Eight years of pain and death, of heroism and epic endurance. Eight years of mistrust and betrayal. Now the last battle was fought, the last of his strength gone. Three warriors, all that survived of his personal guard, rode with him, and, but for them, he would have been down there among Britain’s bravest and its best, his life gone, but his honour intact. He sighed and closed his eyes. He was so tired, tired unto death. It was over… unless?
Two days later four ragged figures rode on horses more dead than alive through the gates of the Brigante capital at Isurium. Curious onlookers lined the dirt avenue between the huts to follow their progress but made no move either to welcome or to impede them. Caratacus saw that their coming had been expected. A small group of richly dressed figures waited in the centre of the main gathering place.
He reined his pony to a halt and slid painfully from its back, almost staggering as his feet touched the hard-packed earth. A hand reached out to steady him, but he shrugged it away. He no longer had a kingdom, but he still had his dignity. Alone, he approached the Brigante court, feeling filthy and unkempt, oblivious of the noble figure he cut. Among the small group he recognized her husband, Venutius, and Brigitha, but he only had eyes for the slender, dark-haired figure in the green gown who stepped from their ranks to meet him.
He stopped three paces in front of her and dropped to his knees, in the same movement drawing his sword from its scabbard. He heard gasps of alarm and the
sound of other swords singing free. Felt the moment she shook her head and her bodyguards relaxed. He bowed his head and held out both hands palm upwards with the slim blade of the sword balanced upon them. It was his battle sword, scarred and grooved; the last token of his honour.
‘Caratacus of the Catuvellauni begs aid and succour from Queen Cartimandua of the Brigantes. This is his gift to her and the pledge of his allegiance.’
The words fell into the silence, and it seemed an age before she replied. ‘Cartimandua of the Brigantes also has a gift for Caratacus of the Catuvellauni.’
He felt the sword being lifted from his hands to be replaced by the weight of the heavy iron shackles her bodyguards secured over each wrist. He closed his eyes for a moment. Why, when he should feel betrayed, did he only experience a sense of blessed relief?
He raised his head to accept her scorn, but her face was blank. She bent forward and nimble fingers worked where his cloak was pinned at his shoulder. When she straightened she held the brooch that had secured it. He saw her eyes shine as she recognized the boar symbol and the ruby stone. If he’d known she coveted it so much he would gladly have given it to her.
He had expected death, would almost have welcomed it; instead he was confined in the royal household, shackled, but kindly treated, though they kept him apart. At the end of the third week she appeared at the doorway of the room where he was being held. She looked extraordinarily beautiful and he wondered if she had made an extra effort on this day of all days.
‘You are to be reunited with your family,’ she said, but the tremble in her voice did not match the sentiment of her words. He understood why when she stepped aside and another, larger figure filled the doorway. Caratacus closed his eyes, but not before he recognized the blood-red tunic and the shining plate armour, the unwarlike little sword that had done so much to destroy his hopes.
They docked two months later in stifling heat at a busy port where small multi-coloured boats scuttled like water beetles among the larger ships, unloading cargoes that smelled and looked like nothing he had ever encountered. Once ashore, they dressed him in fine clothes in the British style, exchanged his iron fetters for gold and placed a torc of the same precious metal at his neck. He almost laughed. Did a man have to be well dressed to die in Rome?
He knew he should be fearful; did not all men fear death, even kings? And to die in an alien land so far from home… But there was a comfort, if the Romans kept their word, in that he would soon be reunited with Medb. And then there was curiosity. He had always been a curious man, eager to discover and understand what others thought mundane and uninteresting. By the end, he had understood the Romans. True, he had not been able to defeat them, but he had made them pay dearly for their forays and raids into the mountain fastness he had made his own. Yet skirmishes and ambushes were not battles and it was battles that won wars. The minds of her commanders had been clear to him, but he had never been able to defeat Rome’s soldiers. Now he was curious about Rome. He remembered his conversation, so long ago, with the keeper of the great beast that had accompanied the invasion force. Even then he had felt a flutter of excitement at the descriptions of buildings as tall as mountains, palaces of pure gold and homes fit for gods. Now, in the twilight hour of his life, he would see the reality of it.
They sent fifty men to guard him; fifty of the Emperor’s elite, in unfamiliar dark tunics and breastplates embossed with silver. All this for a single vanquished enemy who was no more a threat than the women who lined the route hoping for a glimpse of the barbarian in the imperial carriage. And they had given him a travelling companion. Was this part of the insult to a defeated enemy, to be awarded a jailer who had barely begun to shave? The soldier seemed absurdly young for the legionary officer’s uniform he wore; fresh-faced and pink-cheeked, and staring with a frank curiosity that might have been annoying but for the intelligent humour in the pale eyes.
‘I am interested to know what lies ahead.’
The young man blinked, surprised that his exotic prisoner had command of Latin. He looked thoughtful for a moment, the eyes moving from Caratacus’s face to his chains. No harm in answering a question from the condemned man.
‘Gnaeus Julius Labienus, tribune, at your service,’ he said politely. ‘There is to be a parade, from the Campus Martius to the Emperor’s palace upon the Palatine Hill.’
The word Palatine stirred another memory of the long-ago conversation. A hill. One of how many? Six, or was it seven? ‘And I am to be part of this parade?’
‘You are to be the object of it. Its purpose. A thousand captured warriors will be your vanguard, and the trophies taken from you — the gold and the silver, the arms and the standards — will be piled high so all can see the wealth the Emperor has won for Rome.’ Caratacus suppressed a wry smile. He was a king, and kings understood the need to justify wars, but he wondered where this enormous treasure had come from. Arms he had lost in plenty — crude swords made in forest clearings and spear points forged in mountain caves — but the only gold he owned was at his neck and he knew nothing of standards save the eagles he had sought to wrest from the legions. Labienus continued. ‘There will be a fine turnout. Your fame precedes you. The fame of a mighty warrior who never surrendered and won the respect of our commanders and of our Emperor.’
‘And at the end?’
The young Roman studied the man opposite him on the padded bench seat of the carriage and felt an unexpected pang of regret. Perhaps in his mid-forties, the tale of his capture and the long ordeal of his captivity were etched deep in the lines of his face, but his eyes told a different story. The man might have been defeated, but the spirit and the will still burned strong. Tall and severe, greying hair to his shoulders and his moustaches drooping below his chin, Caratacus wore his chains like a badge of honour. Labienus felt an involuntary shiver as he imagined meeting the Briton in battle. Everything about him could be encapsulated in a single word. Pride.
‘At the end your fame will be greater than at any time before.’
Caratacus nodded. ‘May we draw back the curtains? I have travelled far to see this Rome.’
At first, it was a ghost city that danced in the shimmering midday heat. Nothing had prepared him for the scale of it. Mountains he had seen, and great forests, but these were creations of the gods. His imagination could barely accept that men had made this vast escarpment of stone that stretched from one horizon to the other and shone in the sunlight as if it were encrusted with gemstones. Soon they came to the first buildings lining the roadway: pillared and pitch-roofed constructions of golden stone with marble statues staring down from their summits. Each was different in its own way, in either design or scale. Some were small, smaller even than the roundhouses of his homeland, but others were vast, more temple than home. One thing puzzled him. ‘I see no entrances. Do you Romans spirit yourselves in and out of your houses?’
Labienus smiled. ‘Oh, these are not houses. They are graves: the tombs of our forefathers. The greater the man, the greater the memorial.’
They soon reached an area where the true houses rose like cliffs tight on either side of the carriage, and what little space was left between was filled with clamouring crowds so that their progress slowed to a walk. The apartment blocks were so high they shut out the sunlight and Caratacus’s mood darkened with the deepening shadow. For a moment he felt the helplessness and rage of a bear trapped in a pit, and he had to restrain the urge to launch himself across the carriage at young Labienus. One twist of the chains and the tribune’s neck would have snapped like a chicken’s. But the impulse was gone as quickly as it had come and the carriage emerged once again into the sunlight. They crossed a broad river, a sluggish, unwholesome stream that gave off the stench of raw ordure and rotting meat, and the carriage came to a halt. Labienus turned to him. ‘We have arrived.’
When he emerged from the carriage he found himself at the centre of a vast open space encircled by buildings and dominated by the curve of a structure so huge
he could see only a small part of it. In front of the buildings an enormous crowd of Romans had gathered and now they stirred as they caught the first glimpse of the rebel commander who had fought the legions to a standstill. He closed his ears to their insults and concentrated on his surroundings. To his front, stretching away towards a wide gap in the wall of stone, a broad column of cowed figures stood motionless, save for a dozen or so at the rear who straightened as they recognized him. As he stared at them, a chained arm was raised in salute and a single word echoed from the marble and the granite and the brick.
‘Caratacus!’
He saw heads rise at the shout, and a murmur ran through the column of slaves as the name was repeated again and again and again, ever louder, until the word turned the space into a great cauldron of sound that made his hair stand on end and his skin prickle with sheer joy.
‘Caratacus!’
A weaker man would have wept, but he was not yet that man. Not even when Labienus appeared at his side leading a slight, dark-haired figure by her chains and he held his Medb in his arms again for what might be the final time. Not when they took her away from him and linked his golden chains to the rear of a gilded chariot drawn by two milk-white mares. Not even when the chariot jerked into movement and he was drawn like a common criminal between rows of jeering faces along a broad avenue lined with more members of the Emperor’s dark-tunicked guard. It was a few minutes before he realized with disbelief that the crowd wasn’t jeering; that the words they shouted were not insults but encouragement. He held his head high and looked to neither right nor left, able to stride out steadily behind the chariot as it advanced at walking pace. What strange people these Romans were, bringing him to this place, where the only gardens were gardens of stone, and the only forest where a man might hunt was a forest of marble pillars, not to debase him, but to hail him as if he were their own Emperor. A mountain appeared before him, a mountain topped by an enormous multi-pillared, marbled edifice he felt certain must be Claudius’s palace, but the procession skirted it and passed through thronging narrow streets to a second long avenue, dominated, to the right, by a second mountain. His feet stumbled on cobbled paving and he was surrounded by extravagant structures that outshone everything that had gone before, but he only had eyes for the mountain — because it wasn’t a mountain at all. Could men truly have made this? At first glance, it was a single structure, walls and columns, great arched windows, soaring frontages that made his head spin, and statues wrought of gold and silver that might come to life at any moment, they were so human in form. As his mind grappled with its complexity it turned into not a single building but many, placed one on top of the other or locked in close embrace, so that the one appeared to be supporting the next. For the first time he came close to losing his composure. How could he have believed he could defeat a people capable of creating this?
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