by Manda Scott
The ghosts already knew this: Macha, Eburovic, the slave-boy Iccius. Surprisingly, each greeted the news with gladness. Cwmfen and Cygfa, standing within earshot in their wagon, quite clearly neither knew nor were glad. It was possible they had not known of the bargain at all. Valerius saw a sudden movement and turned in time to see Cwmfen, who had been silent, clamp a restraining hand on her daughter’s arm. A single harsh word in a foreign tongue slid out across the plain, unnoticed by most. It took Valerius some time to identify it as Ordovician, straight from the battlefield, a command to give ground immediately in the face of the enemy. It could as easily have been meant for Caradoc as Cygfa, or for both.
If Caradoc heard, he gave no sign. White-faced, he opened his mouth to speak and snapped it shut again while Valerius, remembering late his role, made the fiction of translating the emperor’s Latin into the language of his childhood. He struggled over one or two of the words, finding poor representations, but then he could have spoken the words of an infant’s sleeping song and it would not have mattered. All those within hearing understood what had been said.
The time it took gave Caradoc a chance to recover. He no longer smiled. In Eceni, in absolute earnest, he said, “I did the best I could. I have kept my side of our oath.”
Translated, Claudius said, “Indeed. Your friends in the rebel territories, however, do not hold your family’s life as dearly as your own. They would sacrifice them for you.”
“What?”
That needed no translation. Behind them, Narcissus reached a small climax in his descriptions of martial valour: the triumphant entry of the emperor into Camulodunum, borne on the backs of elephants. The emperor smiled and raised a hand to the grateful crowd.
When he could be heard again over the tumult, Claudius said, “If you die, I die. That is their exact declaration. Not only do I die, but my death will mirror yours exactly. I ask you now, and you should know that your family’s well-being hangs on the truth of your answer, can they do this?”
Worlds stopped while Caradoc considered his answer. They could have been alone, two men facing death in different ways. On the rostrum, Claudius the fool was replaced entirely by Claudius the survivor, the excellent, scholarly mind tuned, always, above the need to witness pain in others, or to dominate, to the absolute, unconditional need to preserve his own life.
Opposite him, Caradoc, too, had shed the armours of pretence. Stripped to the bone, he stared at Claudius, the inner workings of his mind laid bare. If he had laughed at the emperor, he did so no longer. If he had disdained his failures as a man and a leader of men, he did not disdain his mind, nor the manifest reach of his power. More clearly even than in the prison, the core of him blazed for all those close enough to see it.
On the wagon behind, Cwmfen and Cygfa stood still as marble, and as white. At the emperor’s side, Agrippina tilted her head and ran a single perfect nail down the side of her cheek. Among the Senate, several men sat more upright. The ghosts crowded close, supporting the warrior in ways he would never know. Valerius, striving wholly to be the instrument of his god, set his teeth and prayed that he not be sick and that the nightmare be taken from him.
“Can they do it?” asked Claudius again. “I asked you once before and you refused to answer. You will tell me now. You have lived among them; you must know it.”
Valerius translated, woodenly. The silence after stretched the limits of endurance. If Caradoc could have gone to his death without answering, he would have done so, that much was clear. His family’s life depended on his answer but he had no indication as to which way Claudius would lean. Eventually, in Ordovician, the language of his own childhood, he said, “They will say that they can. I do not believe it.”
The words drifted out into the golden air and left their own echo. The emperor, the empress and fifty men of the Senate, to whom they meant nothing, turned to the decurion of the cavalry for his translation. The dreamers of the Eceni signed for Valerius, who had once been Bán, to interpret accurately, using wards of binding that would have stopped him dead as a child and forced him to compliance. They bound him no longer. On the contrary, they gave him the first indication of what he could do, what his god required of him; whatever the ghosts of his enemies so badly wanted, he would do its opposite.
In a glorious moment of freedom and perfect clarity, guided by his god and with the promise of vengeance hot in his heart, Valerius translated the two sentences as, “Governor Scapula took ten days dying, each one in pain. In that may be your answer.”
Caradoc’s gaze was grounded in stone. Dubornos grunted as if punched in the chest and clamped his teeth on his tongue. Cygfa, standing beside her mother on the wagon, hissed a stream of invective in withering Ordovician. The ghosts fled, chittering.
Claudius turned to his decurion. “You brought us the news of our governor’s death and yet did not tell us this. Is it true?”
Valerius bowed, light-headed as if with wine or the promise of combat. He balanced on the edge of a precipice and a step the wrong way would see him slowly dead. He said, “Excellency, it is. Those of my command who travelled with me can confirm it. The legate of the Twentieth legion sent a written report and my orders were not to speak beyond that unless directly asked by yourself or another in high command. I have not been so asked. I believe the legate saw no point in disturbing your excellency with unnecessary detail.”
“I see. We will consider this at a later date.” Returning to Caradoc, the emperor said, “You knew before word reached me of Scapula’s death and now you know the detail before it is openly told. How can you do this?”
“The gods may speak to any man in a time of need.” It was Dubornos who said it, in Latin, out of turn, in the presence of the emperor and interrupting the man who was ostensibly his king. Caradoc stared at him fixedly but said nothing.
The emperor nodded. More was at stake now than protocol and he could not further condemn one already sentenced to die. Valerius heard a man he despised take risks to protect him and regretted it. The ghosts addressed Dubornos in whispers and he listened, nodding.
Speaking to Caradoc, Claudius said, “Our life is threatened. This cannot be allowed. Your family will pay the price for your failure. You alone will live as Vercingetorix did, held in confinement in perpetuity as hostage for my life. The rest will die over the coming days.”
Caradoc had recovered himself. In Latin, he cast his voice beyond the emperor to reach the listening Senate.
“And so Imperial Claudius is brought down by the might of barbarian soothsayers and bards? I had thought better of you than that. And that an oath between kings was binding.”
It was a naked incitement to murder, the act of a man who preferred any death to life. Valerius, listening, heard his efforts unravel and saw for the first time that the ghosts, perhaps, had known him better than he had believed.
His mother was staring at him, her lips pursed in thought. In his mind he said, I am not your instrument, now or ever. If Caradoc wishes to die, I will not be his saviour. She raised her brows and smiled and the skin crawled on his spine.
On the podium of the tribunal, Caradoc’s words were absorbed with due regard by the emperor and the men of the Senate but it was Agrippina who responded first, waving amused dismissal. She no longer smiled for Caradoc, but for Claudius, whose death would put her sixteen-year-old son on the throne. No-one doubted who would rule in truth if that came to pass. Several on the Senate saw the possibility stepping closer.
“The barbarian is bold,” she said. “I have rarely heard a man plead so eloquently for his own death. Clearly he seeks to persuade you to its opposite. The strength of his plea is proof of his true desires. I say, instead, you should let him have what he purports to crave. Kill him as you have decreed. We will sacrifice to Mars Ultor and again to Jupiter and see if his soothsayers are a match for our gods.”
“And yet we may regret at leisure what we have committed in haste.” Seated, with his chin on his hands and the crown of laur
els on his brow, Claudius was another Augustus, epitome of wisdom and arbiter of reasoned justice. “This man is a warrior and king of his people. It is long known that among the barbarians, the king will sacrifice himself for the greater good. It may be that he knows the dreamers’ power and believes his death will aid them. For such a reason, he would seek his own death.”
Narcissus, freedman and minister of state, completed his announcements to the crowd. Entering the conversation as if by right, he said, “If there is any such risk, it must not be taken. The man may be spared without harm to your self or standing.”
The freedman set himself in opposition, once again, to the empress. Those amongst the Senate, tuned to the internecine warfare of the court, saw a parting of ways and a need to take sides. Nods of agreement began slowly and were taken up, or not, by those with most or least to lose.
Agrippina frowned, decorously. One would have had to be watching very closely to know if she noted those who supported Narcissus amongst the Senate. “We have a victory procession,” she said. “Triumphal distinctions have been voted for Ostorius Scapula. We do him and ourselves no honour if we do not demonstrate the magnitude of our victory. The crosses must not remain empty.”
Claudius nodded, pleasantly. “The brother will die, and the men who fought against us. The people’s desire to see blood will be assuaged and yet, at the same time, they will be reminded that their emperor is not without mercy. It is a good combination. Thus did Scipio win the favour of the people by his release of Syphax. Narcissus can provide a speech for Caratacus in which he throws himself on our mercy and we—”
“No.”
It was not said forcefully but, still, the Senate jerked back as if struck. Two of the Urban Guard stepped forward, their hands on their weapons.
Claudius directed his attention at Caradoc. “Your life will be spared. You are not in a position to argue.”
“Am I not?” The grey eyes scoured him. Valerius knew that look. “You have killed countless hundreds of your enemies but have you ever yet tried to keep a man alive against his will? To make him eat and drink as much as a body requires to live into long life? I promise you, our death, yours and mine, will be as lengthy as flesh can make it.”
The emperor said, “Once, in my audience room, you implied doubt that your dreamers could reach me. Did you then lie?”
“Yes. I believed it would protect my family. I retract it. The governor’s death is proof of their powers. If they can reach him, guarded by the legions, what is there to keep them from you?”
“I see.” The emperor spent full days in the law courts, acting as judge. It showed in him now, as he weighed actions, motives and consequences towards judgement. “You would go lying to your own death but resort to truth only when your family is threatened. Am I then to believe that you value your brother’s life above your own?”
“And those of the warriors, yes. I will not live to see another man die in my stead.”
“How very noble.” The empress sneered. The expression, if not the sound, was repeated here and there amongst the ranks of the Senate. “Let them all die,” she said again. “Xenophon and the horse-guards together will see you come to no harm from it. You are the emperor. You have no need to be cowed by a barbarian.”
She spoke as a mother to a recalcitrant child, demanding obedience. Breaths were drawn among the Senate, audibly.
With excruciating slowness, Claudius turned. He leaned a long moment on his elbow, the better to look to his left. Fifty men of good birth and high standing stared rigidly ahead for all the aching time it took their emperor fully to face the woman who was his niece and yet professed to love him. When he spoke, his words were widely spaced and each one a weapon.
“Nor by my wife,” he said distinctly.
The words fell one by one into dead air. Narcissus smiled in triumph. Agrippina’s eyes blazed. She opened her mouth to speak and closed it again, finding discretion at last. The men of the Senate discovered new places to look that were away from their emperor and his wife. Valerius swayed and had to hold himself upright. His heart hung lifeless in his chest. His mother smiled at him and he turned away, tasting ashes on his tongue. Caradoc and Dubornos, each thinking himself unseen, made with the fingers of the left hand the sign of thanks to the gods. Cwmfen wept silently in her wagon. Cygfa, smiling her hate, bent to Cunomar and kissed him.
Fringed around them all, the gathered ghosts of the Eceni dead raised a cacophony of silent celebration. A wren spiralled high in the clear sky, singing.
IV
AUTUMN AD 54
CHAPTER 23
Julius Valerius, decurion, disembarked from the merchant ship Isis at the harbour of Ostia, eighteen miles west of Rome. He arrived after nightfall on the twenty-fifth day of September in the fourteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Claudius. That he did not fall to his knees and kiss the sea-stained wood of the dock in thanks for a safe landing was a testament both to the benevolence of the one god and to the presence of Severus, centurion of the Urban Guard, who had come to escort him to the palace. Mithras had never required the obsequities demanded by other deities and the centurion had made it plain from the moment of first greeting that time was short and not to be wasted. Nevertheless, Valerius stood for a moment holding the mooring rope and let the land support him while the swimming nausea of the sea receded.
He had never been good on water and an ocean crossing made so soon after the equinoctial gales was an invitation to hell for the duration of the voyage, if not some considerable time thereafter. Valerius had known as much when he first received the message to take ship and travel to Rome but the seal had been imperial and no decurion who cared for his career would use poor weather and the risk of shipwreck as an excuse to refuse his emperor’s summons. It might have been more reasonable to claim that no master in his right mind would set sail at such a time save that the Isis rode at anchor on the Thames and the decurion had been given three turnings of the tide to set his affairs in order, find a fast horse, and reach her. Because he cared more for his career than for anything in his life except his god, Valerius had been aboard before the second tide was fully out, carrying a flagon of wine but no food in order that the nightmare might pass quickly, or seem to.
Standing on the solid planking of the dock with his guts lurching to the rhythm of the sea, he was grateful for the wine. More than the nausea, it clouded his memory of Rome, so that he could greet Severus with equanimity, recalling their time served as part of Caligula’s army on the Rhine while avoiding any memory of the day they had together shepherded a blighted victory procession up the via Tiburtina or of the fiasco that came afterwards on the broad plain in front of the Praetorian camp.
Valerius had put over two years of dedicated effort, of prayer, hard work and the judicious use of wine, into banishing the ghosts that had plagued him that day. He did not intend to let them return simply because the emperor had need of him in Rome.
Presently, his guts began to settle and his mind to clear. Small details that he had missed on first landing became plain. Severus was darkly cloaked and he waited in that concealed part of the harbour where both the quayside lamps and the lighthouse failed to cast light. His horse bore no marks that would identify it as a mount of the Guard. The spare gelding whose rein he held was outstanding in its ordinariness; a solid brown with no splash of white on face or legs. Valerius had ridden a horse like this once before in his early days on the Rhine when it had been important to blend in with the background and not be noticed. Then, it had been the emperor who was dangerous. Now, it seemed less likely to be so.
His legs had begun to trust the land. He stepped away from the circle of light. The dark held an honesty that the orange blaze of the lighthouse had not. Severus watched him carefully. The man had been a solid soldier on the Rhine, hard enough to be a good leader without crushing the spirits of those who served under him. Age had granted him dignity and white hair but no fresh scars. None of this suggested he was a man who
might break his first and strongest oath to serve his emperor in all things or die in the attempt. Still, he was not branded for Mithras and so lacked the added certainty of brotherhood, and the word in Britannia was that Agrippina owned the Praetorians in their entirety. It was not safe to assume that she did not own the Urban Guard as well, or a substantial portion of it.
Valerius’ orders had stated that he should come unarmed. His dagger and his cavalry sword were safely bound in his pack. On impulse, as he left the ship, he had picked up a filleting knife owned by the cabin boy and he held it now in the curved palm of his right hand. Scale-slime slipped between his fingers as he moved his grip to the midpoint of the haft, ready to throw or to stab. With a prayer to the god, he asked, “Whom do you serve?”
“The emperor,” said Severus. “To the grave and beyond.” He did not say whose grave, but it was not the centurion’s death that was daily rumoured in Camulodunum, nor his wife who was said to rule the palace and the empire from her boudoir.
“Good. And I also.” Valerius reached down to adjust his boot and let the knife slide unseen through a gap between the planks of the dock. The small splash of its falling was lost in the wash of the tide. “The sea is out of me,” he said. “I am safe to ride. Perhaps we should go?”
Severus nodded. “With all speed,” he said. His eyes marked the space through which the knife had dropped.
They rode fast and hard and kept to the via Ostiensis until they reached the main gate into Rome where two men of the Guard let them through as if expected. In the city, they took the quieter streets, avoiding the main thoroughfares with their parties of drunken youths and too many wakeful eyes who might know a centurion by name and ask questions concerning the identity of the man he escorted.
Valerius had spent half a month in Rome on his last, ill-fated visit and believed he had come to know it. Riding through, he found it little changed and was surprised. The rumours in Britannia had been of a city slumping to ruin along with its emperor. It had been easy to imagine the insidious beginnings of decay overlaying the memories of slave-crowded streets and bright sun and constant noise. He had forgotten the quieter Rome of night, away from the taverns and whorehouses, where citizens retired at dusk and rose at dawn and slept at peace in between. Riding behind Severus, he came to remember the reassuring calm of streets lit by starlight where the only sound was the soft hoofbeats of two horses and the smells were of night and old buildings and not at all unpleasant after the racking salt and sick of the voyage.
