Emperor

by Stephen Baxter

XX

  Lepidina met him at the fort gate not long after dawn. One of her husband’s slaves had prepared horses for them, and a pack of food and wine. It was a bright October morning, only a few days after the autumn equinox, and unseasonably cold; the horses’ breaths misted in the air and a thick dew glistened on the ground. But the sun was low, the sky a deep blue, and the light was rich, making the cut stone of the fort walls shine.

  And in this setting Lepidina looked wonderful, Brigonius thought helplessly. She wore a sensible leather coat, woollen trousers and heavy sandals. He saw on her neck a medallion he thought he remembered, a fish design done in silver. Her rich strawberry hair, now touched by a little grey, was pulled back from her forehead and tucked under a woollen cap. She didn’t seem to be wearing cosmetics, and the natural pink of her skin glowed. She was still beautiful, but it was no longer the beauty of a girl, he thought. This was the wistful autumn beauty of a woman on the cusp of age.

  She gazed at him with her deep eyes, and turned away, almost girlish. ‘You’re staring. You always were a fool, Brigantius-Brigonius.’ But there was no reproach in her voice.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s just you look so—’

  ‘If you say I look beautiful I’ll punch you. I’ve given birth to three strapping Roman senators-to-be, and a daughter. She is beautiful. I’m a mother.’

  ‘Very well. You look Brigantian, then.’

  That seemed to touch her. ‘I do?’

  ‘You look as if you belong here. As if—’

  ‘As if I belong at your side. Is that what you mean?’

  For a moment, as he looked into her eyes, the world expanded around them, and the fort, the horses, the patient slave, even the mighty Wall, receded to leave them alone in a pocket universe of their own.

  ‘It is still you,’ he said. ‘Inside there. Somehow I can see that.’

  ‘Yes. How much baggage we carry around now! Our sagging bodies, our spouses and children, all our business. And yet we are still here.’

  He was falling in love with her all over again, he thought, Coventina help him! But the moment passed, and Brigonius tugged on his horse’s rein.

  They rode along the line of the Wall, to the east of Banna. Their horses were lively, glad to be working their muscles on this cold morning. They were on the south side of the Wall, so the curtain wall was to their left, the defensive earthwork to their right. They rode into a low sun that glimmered from dew on the churned-up turf of the annexed land. In places you could still see where rows of ploughing had been cut off by the line of the Wall–the last relic of some dispossessed farmer.

  They came to a rise, and Brigonius pulled up his horse. From here they could see the Wall sweep across the country from the western horizon to the east, the bright red bands painted on the curtain wall shining in the low northern light, the sandstone of the mile-forts’ flat faces glowing. The Wall was a man-made thing that cut the natural landscape in two.

  And the vista wasn’t static, not just a thing of stone and turf, but human too. It was still early but there was already traffic to be seen on the rough causeways leading to the nearest mile-fort, and the smoke from its hearths rose into the crisp air. In one section of the curtain a party of legionaries was busy, with a chime of pick on stone and distant calls like gulls’ cries. Even now the Wall was still being built, rebuilt and refurbished, and it always would be.

  Lepidina said, ‘Do you remember how we drove to Rutupiae, all those years ago? My mother told me that the first thing the legionaries did when they landed there was build a wall across that little coastal island, just a rampart of wood and turf to keep out the local barbarians. And now Roman walls have scraped their way across the length of Britain, all the way here, to become…this. How many miles long–seventy, was it?’

  ‘Nearer eighty now,’ Brigonius said. ‘Depending on how you measure it–at either terminus it runs into coastal defences which the fleet crews have been building.’

  ‘Old Xander would have been delighted to see it, if he’d lived.’

  ‘Well, perhaps,’ Brigonius said doubtfully. ‘But look at this.’ He led her a little further, to the nearest of the mile-forts. You could clearly see where two wings of thick curtain protruded from the outer walls of the fort, but they were built into a much thinner cross-section of Wall. ‘We had to make compromises which Xander would have despised. This mile-fort was already built before the Decision. It was meant to join to a thicker curtain, with those stubby wings. But then we decided to reduce the thickness of the Wall, and so the wings don’t fit. There are other messy bits–places where you can see thicker courses of stone overlaid by thinner.’

  ‘I see. It’s all rather untidy.’

  ‘That’s soldiers for you,’ Brigonius said. ‘Their work is solid and fast, but it’s always functional rather than elegant.’

  ‘Perhaps, but look around you! This is more than a wall, Brigonius. It is like one immense town that stretches eighty miles from coast to coast. I live in Rome itself and have never seen anything like it–I daresay there is nothing like it in all the world. But here it is in Britain, and you built it, Brigonius. And even when Rome is gone–oh, don’t argue, our Emperor, who rules the wreckage of vanished empires himself, has a profound sense of the mortality of all things–even when the Romans are forgotten this Wall’s mighty ruins will strike awe.’

  He said impulsively, ‘You know, you remind me of your mother.’

  She shot him a look of suspicion. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  He held up his hands. ‘Only her best qualities. When we first rode up from Rutupiae together–do you remember? She spoke to me, and it was as if I was seeing my own country through her eyes. So it is now with you.’

  She pursed her lips. ‘I think you’re trying to compliment me.’

  He sighed. ‘But that woman keeps coming between us, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, she does. Shall we ride on?’

  They walked their horses further along the line of the Wall, and the sun rose steadily into the sky. Brigonius talked of his wife, his boys; she spoke of her own children who were growing up in such unimaginably different circumstances. And they spoke of old times, of Karus, long retired to Camulodunum–‘I’ve had enough of history,’ he had protested, ‘all I want is life!’–and old Tullio, who had completed his twenty-five years in the army, filled a sprawling farm with a brood of red-haired grandchildren, continued to use his own mighty cock as a reference-point in every conversation, and died peacefully in his bed.

  They halted on another bit of high ground, overlooking still more of the Wall as it marched on out of sight.

  ‘You told me before that it felt as if I still belonged at your side.’

  ‘You said it for me,’ he reminded her gently.

  ‘You thought it, though.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘And do you still think so now?’

  He said honestly, ‘I don’t know. Too much has happened.’

  ‘Yes. For us to be together the tapestry of time would have to be unpicked and woven again–wouldn’t it? Perhaps if I had stayed in Brigantia all those years ago, rather than leaving with my mother. Or if you had given up all this to come with me to Rome.’

  He shrugged. ‘What’s the point of speculating that way? You can’t change history.’

  ‘No. But, Brigonius–what if you could? For that is what my mother believes is the meaning of the Prophecy.’

  In the intervening years he had all but forgotten Severa’s mysterious document. ‘That old bit of spookiness. Does it still exist?’

  ‘Yes. And in a way it has been fulfilled, or so my mother believes. There are three lines relevant to our century, she thinks.’

  Relevant to our century. Despite the gathering warmth of the day Brigonius shivered. ‘Are there words relevant to other centuries, then?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘I always did argue with my mother about whether the Prophecy was more than just a tool for her to further her ambit
ions. Once her plans imploded she started to think about that. And she has decided the Prophecy is a warning from the future, that a Weaver of history has sent it back in order to influence our times–which to him would be the past.’

  ‘And what do you think?’

  ‘I still believe it all has something to do with Christ. Remember, the Prophecy was delivered at the birth of my forefather Nectovelin, who, it happened, was born in the same year as Jesus of Judea. I think the Prophecy actually has some connection to the destiny of Christianity, and this business of conquering provinces and building walls is all incidental. My mother denies this, though; she’s nothing if not a loyalist to the gods of Rome. We’ve always argued about Jesus…But it’s not the future outcome of the Prophecy that concerns me now but its present.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The Prophecy is the issue of my mother’s supposed sedition. The Emperor’s court have always been suspicious of the Prophecy. Now she has been accused of subversion. And where better to investigate the case than here, where the Prophecy originated?’

  ‘So that’s why Sabinus was sent here.’ They sat for a moment, with the Wall splayed brightly across the countryside around them. Brigonius said sadly, ‘You know, here we are talking of mothers and emperors, of walls and prophecies. We aren’t talking about us.’

  ‘But there isn’t really an us to talk about, is there?’

  ‘No,’ he said hotly. ‘But I will always—’

  She leaned from her horse and pressed a finger to his lips. ‘It’s better not said.’

  He nodded. ‘We should return. The day is advancing.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He spurred his horse, and the two of them trotted side by side back to Banna to resume the business of the day, the business of their bifurcated lives.

  XXI

  Three days later Galba Iulius Sabinus convened what he called a ‘necessary meeting’ on the matter of Claudia Severa.

  Brigonius wanted nothing to do with it. He would have preferred Severa to pass through Brigantia and on again without his ever seeing her. But to his dismay he found he was summoned to the ‘meeting’–and at the behest of Severa herself.

  The meeting was held in the fort’s office of sign-bearers. The little room, cluttered with records of soldiers’ pay and savings and other military incidentals, was cramped, awkward. Oil lamps had been set out on the low tables to dispel the gloom of the poky room, and their sooty smoke flavoured the air. Small statues of Antinous, beautiful boy and lover of Hadrian, filled alcoves on the walls.

  Brigonius found himself a place on a couch next to the prefect’s aides. Severa wasn’t here; she was late.

  The prefect of Banna, Tullio’s successor, was here with some of his aides, as was Primigenius, the shadow-thin freedman. Sabinus was the only man in a toga. He looked as if he never appeared in public without one these days.

  Lepidina attended, apparently as reluctantly as Brigonius. She was dressed in what he thought of as her Roman ‘uniform’ of fine clothes, cosmetics and sculpted hair. The sturdy Brigantian woman he had glimpsed during that morning ride along the Wall might never have existed. She was at Sabinus’s side, of course; she belonged there. But she smiled at Brigonius.

  As they waited for the accused to show up Brigonius listened to the soldiers gossiping about dice games. The principals in the case, himself and Sabinus, Primigenius and Lepidina, were no more talkative than the many statues of Antinous.

  Brigonius understood the game to be played out today. He knew from his own dealings with Roman law that all emperors were suspicious of rival centres of power. That included private enterprises such as his own partnership, the quarry business, whose operations were tightly controlled by contract law, and watched over by the provincial procurator. And this emperor in particular had an obsession with foretelling. In the harshness of his latter reign, consulting prophecies had become a sign of unhealthy ambition; it was said that Hadrian had had one of his own young relatives put to death for such a transgression.

  You could see all this as a symptom of the Emperor’s own decay, he thought. Just like all these statues of Antinous.

  After two decades Hadrian would leave behind much to be admired. He had rebuilt his empire. Brigonius knew farmers who spoke admiringly of another of Hadrian’s projects, lesser known than the Wall if no less mighty in scale: after his visit to Britain he had had drained much of the fenland in the east of the island, in the old homeland of the Iceni, opening up hundreds of miles of wholly new land for cultivation.

  But as Hadrian had aged his contradictory characteristics had become ever more pronounced. He had always been drawn to the east rather than the west, even though his own family had come from Iberia. In lands where he was already worshipped as a god, perhaps he began to conceive of himself as a monarch as aloof as the pharaohs had once been. Good Romans muttered that this went against the spirit of their enterprising city and its roots in the noisy democracies of Greece. And more practically, if the centre of the empire moved eastward, Brigonius mused, what would become of Britain, its most western extremity?

  It had been the death of one of the Emperor’s favourites, the beautiful youth called Antinous, which many believed to have been the turning point of his reign. Antinous had drowned in the Nile, during one of Hadrian’s trips to Egypt. The death seemed to have unbalanced Hadrian. Suddenly you saw dedications to his lost Antinous appearing everywhere, in frescoes, mosaics and statues, on vases and on coins, in miniatures and in mimes. You couldn’t escape his beautiful face even here, in this soldiers’ corner of Britain.

  It was said that Hadrian, always obsessed by his own death and subsequent immortality, was trying to create a god in the person of Antinous. It was ironic that, as Lepidina had said long ago, if Hadrian had only turned to the one mystery cult he had always rejected–Christianity–he might have found the theological solace that he sought, and on learning of a god made man in Jesus, he might not have needed to soothe his own pain by turning a man into a god.

  But none of that justified the savagery of Hadrian’s latter years. In the east the Jews had risen again, once more challenging the very identity of the empire, and this supposedly tolerant, inclusive Emperor had put them down every bit as brutally as the conqueror Trajan. This harshness had trickled down into every corner of life–and even here, at the very edge of the empire, it was this harshness that was now to be turned on Claudia Severa.

  At last Severa entered the room, and the desultory conversations died.

  Sabinus rose and bowed. ‘Claudia Severa. Welcome.’

  Severa was dressed plainly, in a simple turquoise robe and head scarf. Now in her late fifties she had aged well, Brigonius thought, though her hair, pulled back from her face, was a helmet of silver-grey. But her eyes were just as dead and cold as he remembered.

  He was surprised when, without speaking, Severa crossed the room and came to sit beside him.

  Brigonius looked into his own heart, and found that on seeing this woman for the first time in sixteen years his anger burned more fiercely than ever. ‘Why did you call me, Claudia Severa?’

  She raised dyed eyebrows. ‘Why did you come?’

  ‘Do you imagine I am your friend?’

  ‘No. I have few friends. But I need someone to support me today. You have no reason to love me, Brigonius, I know that. But I have dealt with you on business matters these last two decades and I know you to be an honest man.’ Even now she was arrogant, faintly mocking.

  ‘I would not see even you sit alone in a time of trial, Claudia Severa. But don’t read any more into it than that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’

  Sabinus cleared his throat. ‘Perhaps we should start—’

  ‘Start what?’ Severa snapped, immediately on the attack. ‘Is this a court, Iulius Sabinus?’

  Primigenius stood up, cadaver-thin. ‘I believe we are all hoping to avoid the necessity of a trial, madam. But there is unpleasantness to be deal
t with nevertheless.’

  Severa snorted. ‘I wonder if you can speak one word truthfully, you snake.’

  Sabinus snapped, ‘Let’s get this over.’

  From a table before him Primigenius picked up a battered leather wallet. ‘Do you recognise this?’ He opened it and withdrew a document. It was a parchment, worn with age. It bore only a few lines, Brigonius could see, written out in an awkward hand.

  He did not need Lepidina’s gasp to tell him what it was.

  Severa asked menacingly, ‘How did you get that?’ She turned and swept her glare around the room. ‘Which of you is the frumentarius who rummaged through an old woman’s belongings?’ There was an uncomfortable silence. The frumentarii were one of Hadrian’s more unwelcome and un-Roman innovations, a secret police force he used against rivals and enemies.

  When nobody answered Sabinus said sternly, ‘Madam, what is important now is not how this document was obtained but what it contains.’

  ‘It is a prophecy,’ Primigenius said. He paraded it around the room as if displaying it to a court. ‘It has been in the lady’s family for generations. It was in her possession long before the Emperor came to Britain. And, look here.’ He read out the crucial lines, about the little Greek, the noose of stone. ‘This lady believed herself in possession of a prophecy which foretold the Emperor’s decision to build the Wall. And she resolved she was going to use it to make herself rich.’ He pointed an accusing finger at Severa. ‘Tell us this document is a forgery, madam, a clumsy fake.’

  Brigonius saw that in fact this was a way out for Severa; if she denied the Prophecy was genuine then she would be portrayed as a foolish old woman who merely got lucky, and she might, might walk out of here without a severe punishment. But she would not do this; Primigenius evidently knew her and her pride well.

  Severa said coolly, ‘Get to the point, you ridiculous snake. What is it you are accusing me of?’

  ‘Why, of keeping from the Emperor what is rightfully his,’ Primigenius said, as if it were obvious. ‘If you believed this document had truly prophetic powers you should have given it up at once. The Emperor’s advisers might have made use of it to advance the cause of the empire, and of the Emperor himself. Instead you kept its secret to yourself, didn’t you? And you hoped to use it to amass wealth for yourself–wealth that should be the Emperor’s.’