Emperor Page 2

Nectovelin kept up his unblinking stare a heartbeat more, and Cunovic was willing to be the one to look away first. The three of them moved apart, and the tension eased.

  In awkward silence the three of them turned to face the house. One of a dozen surrounded by a straggling ditch, in the dark its conical profile was low, almost shapeless. But you had to understand the detail. Its big support posts came from trees marked out for their purpose since they were saplings, so securely fixed and well balanced that no central prop was needed. That big open inner space was set out, according to ancient custom, to reflect the cycles of days and seasons. The single doorway faced south-east, towards the rising sun at the equinox. As you walked around the house, following the track of the sunlight through the day, you passed from the morning side of the house to the left, where children played, cloth was woven and grain was ground, to the night side, where food was prepared and people slept. Even now Brica lay on her hide pallet just to the left of the doorway, for this was the place of birth, while the oldest of her grandmothers sat at the right of the door, ready to walk out into the deeper cold of death.

  In Cunovic’s experience, stuck-up southern types trying to ape the Romans imagined that such houses were nothing but great middens, heaped up by men with minds like children. They were quite wrong. Brigantians could build any shape they liked. Most of their barns and grain stores were rectangular, for convenience, and sometimes they built of stone, just like the Romans. But they preferred to build their homes round and of living wood, to reflect their minds, the cycles of their lives, and their embedded goddess.

  All this swirled around in Cunovic’s head. He was proud of his house and his contribution to it: a Brigantian house of the old style, partly paid for with new money. This place was where he came from; he would always be Brigantian.

  But as a trader of dogs, horses and leather he had to deal not just with thuggish southern kings but with sophisticates from the Mediterranean, the very heart of the huge and mysterious Roman world. He’d had to learn to be a different way. Nectovelin’s was a world of family and loyalty into which you were tied with bonds of iron, from birth to death. Cunovic moved in a much looser world, a world where he could do anything he liked, as long as he made money at it. He had learned to cope with this. But before proud old men like his grandfather, he sometimes felt as if he was being torn in two.

  The door flap rustled heavily, leaking a little more torch light, and Cunovic could hear Brica’s screams and the obsessive chanting of the druidh.

  Ban stamped on the ground, jerky, restless. ‘It’s going badly. It’s been too long.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ Cunovic said. ‘Leave it to the women.’

  Nectovelin growled, ‘Maybe it’s the prattling of that priest. Who could concentrate with that yammering in your ear, even on pushing out a pup?’

  When Cunovic had been a boy the priests were there to advise you on the cycle of the seasons, or on diseases of cattle or wheat–all lore passed down through generations, lore it was said it took a novice no less than twenty years of his life to memorise on Mona. In recent years things had changed. Cunovic had heard that the Romans were expelling the priesthood from Gaul, declaring it a conspiracy against the interests of their empire. So the priests went around stirring up feelings against the Romans. Besides, Nectovelin always said that the druidh with their foreign notions only served to come between the people and their gods. Who needed a priest when the goddess was visible in the landscape all around you?

  But Cunovic couldn’t resist teasing the old man. ‘If he’s in the way, grandfather, throw him out. It’s your house.’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ Ban said hastily. ‘It’s said you’ll be cursed if you throw out a druidh.’

  ‘Whether it’s true or not,’ Nectovelin said, ‘enough people believe it to cause upset. Don’t worry, grandson. We’ll stomach the priest as we stomach that Roman piss-wine your brother brings home. And we’ll get on with what’s important–caring for your boy.’ His scarred face was creased by a grudging smile. ‘Brica told me you’re planning to call him after me.’

  ‘Well, you’re seventy years old to the day, grandfather. What other choice could there be?’

  ‘Then let’s hope he grows up like me–strong, and with the chance to break a few of those big Roman noses, for I know he is born to fight.’

  Cunovic said, ‘And if it’s a girl and she’s anything like you, Nectovelin, she’ll be even more terrifying.’

  They laughed together.

  Then Brica screamed, a noise that pierced the still night air. And she began to gabble, a high-pitched, rapid speech whose strangeness froze Cunovic’s blood.

  Ban cried out and ran back to the house. Cunovic ran with him, and Nectovelin lumbered after them both.

  III

  Inside the house Brica lay on her hide pallet. The circle of women, clearly exhausted themselves after the long labour, sat back, helpless.

  The paleness of Brica’s face contrasted vividly with the crimson splash between her legs, as if all her life force were draining away there. But Cunovic saw a small head, smeared with grey fluid and still misshapen from its passage through the birth canal. The baby, its body still inside Brica, was supported by the strong hand of Sula, its grandmother. Like its mother it looked very pale, and it had hair, a reddish thatch.

  And Brica, her eyes fluttering as the druidh’s had done as he prayed, was gabbling out that rapid speech. The women were distressed; some of them covered their ears to keep out the noise. Even the priest had stumbled back into the shadows of the house, his eyes wide.

  Cunovic stared, entranced. The speech was indistinct and very fast, an ugly barking–but he could make out words, he was sure.

  Sula, cradling her grandson’s head, looked up at Ban in weary despair. ‘Oh, Ban, the baby is weak, his heart flutters like a bird’s, and still he won’t come. She’s growing too tired to push.’ She had to speak up to make herself heard over Brica’s noise.

  ‘Then you must cut her,’ Ban said.

  ‘We were ready to,’ Sula said. ‘But then she started this chattering, and we can’t think, none of us!’

  Nectovelin growled. With two strides he closed on the druidh, grabbed a big handful of the priest’s robe and hauled him close. ‘You! Is this your doing? Are these curse words she utters?’

  ‘No, no! On my mother’s life!’ The druidh was thin, pale, balding, perhaps forty, and he trembled in Nectovelin’s huge grasp.

  ‘Nectovelin!’ Cunovic spoke sharply enough to make his grandfather turn. ‘That will do no good. It’s nothing to do with him. Let him be.’

  ‘And how do you know that?’

  ‘Because I recognise what she is saying. Those aren’t the words of gods–not our gods, anyhow.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Latin. She’s speaking Latin.’

  There was a silence, broken only by Brica’s continued chattering.

  Nectovelin released the druidh’s robe. The druidh slumped to the ground, shamed. Nectovelin said heavily, ‘How can this be? Who knows Latin here?’

  ‘Nobody but me,’ Cunovic said, ‘save for a few words picked up from me or the traders.’ And certainly not Brica, who, always a quiet girl, had probably ventured no more than a day’s walk from her birthplace her entire life.

  ‘Then what does this mean?’

  ‘I’ve no idea…’

  Cunovic started to hear what Brica was saying, to make out the words. It was only a few lines, like doggerel poetry, repeated over and over. It occurred to him someone ought to write this down. He ought, as the only literate member of the family. He found his bag, dug out a tablet and stylus, and began to scribble. The children watched him, wide-eyed; the letters appearing on the wax must seem like magic to them.

  Nectovelin glared and turned on Ban. ‘With a birth like this, with his mother gabbling Latin, his life is already blighted. Call him what you want, Ban. He will be no warrior.’

  Something seemed to snap in
Ban. He yelled, ‘You arrogant old man! Must you think of yourself even at a time like this? I have no time for you and your antique war. Caesar is long dead, just as you will be soon, and you and your bragging will be forgotten!’

  For a desperate heartbeat Cunovic thought the giant Nectovelin might strike down his grandson, even in this dreadful moment. But Nectovelin merely stared down Ban, contempt hardening his scarred face, and he walked out of the house.

  ‘We must cut her,’ Sula said, wearily practical amid the mysteries of Brica’s gabbling and the posturing of the men. ‘Ban is right. We must free the baby before they both die.’ The other women nodded and moved closer.

  Sula raised a flint blade. This gift of the earth was the traditional tool for such desperate moments, and its carefully worked edge was sharper than the best Brigantian iron, or even Roman steel, Cunovic knew. As the stone blade bit into her flesh, Brica screamed. Ban bit his lip; he knew the risks of the moment.

  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 b
oots 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 just 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?’