Emperor tt-1

by Stephen Baxter

  Audax said now, 'I want to be like you. I've got the muscles. Look.' He held up an arm, pitifully thin, and bent it to show a bicep like a walnut.

  Tarcho grinned, and in a brief and uncharacteristic moment of tenderness, hugged the boy against his own massive chest.

  'Sweet to watch them,' Aurelia whispered. 'Like seeing an eight-year-old care for a three-year-old.'

  Cornelius murmured, 'I suggest we get on with our business, Thalius.'

  Thalius took a breath. 'Very well.' He coughed loudly to announce his presence and walked into the kitchen.

  Tarcho stood, surprised, dropping the mortar and pestle. Audax hid behind Tarcho. The kitchen staff were startled, and Thalius waved a hand at them, shooing them out.

  Tarcho stepped forward. 'Sir, is there something I can do for you?'

  Thalius sighed. 'Not you but your charge, I'm afraid. Audax! Step forward now.'

  The slave obeyed without thinking, his head bowed. Tarcho stayed a step behind him.

  Thalius bent and whispered, 'I'm sorry about this, lad. You must show your back again. But it won't be for long, and I promise you won't be hurt. Is that all right?'

  The boy didn't reply. For all Tarcho's good will the boy's spirit remained a flicker.

  Thalius straightened up. 'Turn around and lift your tunic. You know what to do.'

  The boy leaned forward to expose the grid of letters he had borne all his life but never seen: PEEO NERR OSRI ACTA

  Cornelius, bending stiffly, inspected the boy. 'Tell me again where this thing came from, Thalius?'

  Thalius shrugged. 'I have only legends, passed down for generations. The original Prophecy was a poem, sixteen lines long. It was burned at Hadrian's orders. But it contained an acrostic-the first letter of each line, perhaps making up the core of the Prophecy's message-that was remembered and passed on. And then, at some later time, it was encoded into this grid form.'

  'Then this mass of scars is all that is left of your famous Prophecy.' Cornelius peered, pointing to the letters with his finger. 'Well, if it's an acrostic it's cleverer than the one on your wall, Thalius. That one made sense whether you read it up or down, back or forth. This one doesn't make sense any which way!'

  'But I think it does,' Aurelia said. Tension shaped her aged, vulpine face, and Thalius wondered how he could ever have found her attractive. She said, 'It is how I visualised it, but now I can see it-here, see the A and O in the lower left, upper right corners. Alpha and omega-remember? This is an acrostic compiled by and for Christians, just like the Pater Noster.'

  But how could that be? Thalius wondered, chilled. For if the old legends were correct the acrostic came from a poem written down in the year of the birth of Christ, when there were no Christians.

  Cornelius said, 'But there is another A, another O-never mind! Can you decipher this jumble?'

  'With the start and end points of the A and O, I think I can, yes.'

  'Then do it, woman!'

  Aurelia paused, staring at the scar for a long breath. Suddenly, quite uncharacteristically, she seemed hesitant. 'First we must be sure we want to know.' She turned away from the boy. 'You Romans have a word for such a moment as this, Cornelius: discrimen, a crucial, life-shaping decision, a choice that might lead to triumph or catastrophe. Even if I can read the Prophecy, should we follow its advice? Constantine's elevation may be the most significant event ever to have occurred in Britannia. Rome is the world's greatest power, and decisions made by emperors cause history to shudder. And now we propose to deflect an emperor from his mighty path. History's Weaver may want this, but do we? Are we sure? Cornelius?'

  Cornelius considered. 'If left unchecked this emperor will dissipate the very strengths that have made Rome strong. Rome must rediscover itself-and if Constantine is the man to lead that revival I will be happy. But he must be shown the way. And you, madam?'

  'I am concerned for Britain. We are being taxed to death. And if the heart of the empire is moved east, the west could wither. Yes, he must be deflected before his course is set. I'm sure. And you, Thalius? Will you follow the Prophecy?'

  Thalius, heart thumping, tried to think it through.

  The others forever took a partial view, it seemed to him. The fact was the world was a different place from the arena in which Rome had achieved its first dazzling successes. Now there was no room to expand, and from the heart of Asia whole peoples were on the march, fleeing drought and famine.

  The Romans were not technical innovators, but, Thalius believed, they were social innovators. They had already put themselves through one vast transformation, when the pressures of running their huge acquisitions had become too great for the fraught political processes of a republic, and the emperors had been hatched. Now in response to the pressures of a new age, Constantine was attempting a still more drastic metamorphosis as he tried to weld a conglomeration of differently developed provinces into a single nation, tightly controlled under one man's authority, and bound together by the theological cement of Christianity. It seemed to Thalius that Constantine might be hailed by future generations as truly great, as a genius of his kind.

  But what of Christianity? If, in preserving Rome, the Church was corrupted or destroyed, Thalius concluded sadly, the loss to mankind would be greater even than if Rome fell. So what was to be done?

  He closed his eyes in brief prayer, seeking guidance. If only Constantine could see the effect of his policies on his subjects, perhaps he could use consent, not force, to unite the empire around a new set of goals to meet the challenges of the age-rebuild the empire as a truly Christian nation-and all fifty, sixty million of its citizens could move forward together. A letter, he thought: yes, a letter signed by a spectrum of concerned but good-hearted individuals-a letter backed by the mysterious authority of the Prophecy-that might encourage the Emperor to clarify his own thinking on many issues. Perhaps it could be circulated to other concerned groups. A petition, then. Standing there, eyes closed, he imagined how he might draft the first paragraph-he would need advice on the honorific to be used when addressing a modern emperor-

  'Falling asleep, Thalius?' Cornelius's voice was sardonic.

  Thalius's eyes snapped open.

  Aurelia was watching him, her face impassive. 'What are you thinking, Thalius?'

  Irritated, defensive, he said, 'I am thinking that even Constantine's actions are trivial compared to the greater forces that shape our age. I am thinking that perhaps we are simply distracting ourselves from the uncertainty of the future with a word game.'

  'Perhaps that's so,' Cornelius said, apparently not offended. 'And perhaps we aren't as shallow as you seem to believe, Thalius. Whatever you say we are faced with a decision. What will you do?'

  Thalius, embarrassed by his outburst, took a deep breath. 'I am with you.' He glanced at Aurelia. 'Read the Prophecy.'

  Aurelia stepped towards the boy, who, with the dogged, choice-free patience of a born slave, continued to wait, back bent, tunic pulled over his head. With surprising tenderness Aurelia touched his shoulder. 'I'm sorry, child. It will be over in a moment.' And with one manicured fingertip she began to trace the acrostic. PEEO NERR OSRI ACTA

  'From A to O, alpha to omega-bottom left to upper right, for by your tradition God is always to be found on the right hand side, am I correct, Thalius? This is a path to God, then, the true route for the pious. But it is a long and tangled path. How do we proceed? I believe these diagonal letters are a clue: C, O, and then up to the N…C-O-N referring to Constantine perhaps? And then I suppose we follow the diagonal back down again-S, T-and then to the corner-A, and work our way back up the long diagonal…'

  Thalius held his breath as the trail of her finger, working back and forth along the diagonals of the square, picked out words: A* CONSTARE* PERIRE* O

  'From alpha to omega,' he read. 'To stand firm. To die.'

  Cornelius straightened up and snorted. 'Is that it? It's not even a sentence. A nice motto for you pious types, I suppose. Hold true in dea
th and you will be led to God. Fine. But it's no use to us, is it?'

  Aurelia said, 'Look again, you fool. There are layers of meaning. Can you not see it? Constare-Constantine-perire…'

  And in that moment Thalius saw the meaning of the message. The scrap of text was three hundred years old, yet it was quite specific, and it went to the heart of his own modern dilemma like an arrow from a bow.

  If the true Church was to survive, Constantine had to die.

  The slave boy was beginning to tremble.

  XI

  After Audax was sold to Thalius, he had been brought all the way across the country to the coast at a place called Rutupiae. Then he was taken through an immense city and across a huge river, through mile after mile of a green land of farms and canals and ditches, and at last to another city, Camulodunum. Now he was bundled into Thalius's cart once again to be hauled off to what Tarcho called 'the Wall'.

  Tarcho tried to explain where he was going, with maps sketched in the dirt with sticks. Audax didn't understand what a map was in the first place, and north, south, east and west were all the same to him.

  And he didn't want to leave Thalius's house in Camulodunum, because of the food. He had been fed in the kitchen, with the slaves and servants, and sometimes Tarcho joined him. It was better food than he had had in his life. Sometimes he was given so much that he stopped being hungry, so much food he couldn't finish it. Tarcho promised that Audax would never go hungry, he could always share Tarcho's bread.

  But whether he understood or not, of course, whether he wanted to go or not, he had no choice about making the journey.

  And now they had new people to travel with, and that was another problem for Audax. The lady Aurelia rode with them, and sometimes Ulpius Cornelius too. The three of them, Thalius, Cornelius and Aurelia, would huddle in the back of the cart, whispering.

  Audax, utterly dependent on their goodwill, was acutely sensitive to their moods. Thalius, overweight, fussy, clumsy, was a good man. Audax couldn't imagine him harming anybody on purpose. But he was vague. When he turned his attention on you, you could bask in his kindness, but then he would turn away, his head full of thinking, and he would forget you even existed. Thalius was all right, but he wasn't to be relied on.

  As for Aurelia, she was an old woman with the body of a girl. Caked in creams, she trailed a cloud of stinks that made Audax's nose itch. She hadn't been unkind to him, that time when she had touched the tattoo on his back. But to her Audax was just a slave, no more than a bit of furniture, and just as easily disposed of. Audax understood this very well.

  It was an attitude Ulpius Cornelius shared too. But sometimes Cornelius looked at Audax with a searching stare. Perhaps Cornelius was a 'dirty man', as the boys in the mine had called the men, slaves and overseers alike, who had used them. Perhaps he was working out how he could get Audax alone, or dreaming of what he would do if he could. But he made no approach to Audax. Tarcho was careful not to let Audax out of his sight.

  All this discomfort was dwarfed by a deeper dread.

  Audax had spent almost all his life in the mines, shut up in the dark. Before Thalius and Tarcho came he had had only broken memories of the wider world, relics of when he was very small. Now he was stuck out in the open, and he hated the vast pulsing of day and night. It seemed unnatural, somehow out of control.

  Thalius ambitiously tried to explain to Audax the difference between 'finitude' and 'infinity'. Audax's deep confusion came from a life spent in the enclosed and finite, and now he was stranded in a world of openness without end. Audax dimly grasped these ideas. But he thought it just went to show that Thalius had never been a slave. Slaves understood infinity, even if they had no words for it, for slaves faced a lifetime of labour, of an utter lack of choice, without end. Servitude was infinity.

  The one element in this huge open world of the outside that he felt drawn to was the sun. When the sky was clear the warmth of that great lamp in the sky sank deep into his bones and drew up his blood. Thalius gently explained to him that it was the sun that gave life to all things on earth, and that some people worshipped it as a god. Some believed it was a form of Thalius's own god, the Christ, who had also been a man. The sun reminded Audax of Tarcho, in his strength, his warmth, his patience. Audax imagined Thalius's Christ as a huge bearded soldier in the sky who smelled of sour German cabbage.

  They stayed a couple of nights at a place called Eburacum. This was a city of massive walls and towers strung along a riverfront, looking down on the civilian town that huddled around it. A huge building loomed out of the centre of the town, visible for miles around. It was the Roman military headquarters, Tarcho said.

  Founded as a legionary headquarters Eburacum had always been an important place. One emperor had died here: Severus, a century ago, after his campaigns in the Highlands, and after making Eburacum capital of one of his two British provinces. Since then the fortress and its walls had been rebuilt, massively. And another emperor had been created here, in Constantine, who had been proclaimed in that imposing headquarters building. Now Eburacum was the base of the military commander of the north, the Duke of the Britains.

  But Thalius didn't like the place. 'With its aloofness and arrogance and monumental military architecture,' he said, 'it prefigures in stone the haughtiness of the absolute monarchy of the future.' Audax didn't think even Tarcho knew what he was talking about.

  Travelling further north still they passed through more hilly country. The sky was huge and full of immense clouds. Somehow Audax found this wilder, more rugged landscape less intimidating than the crowded hills of the south. Thalius gently pointed out that this country was Brigantia, Audax's home. But none of Audax's ancestors had seen home for generations.

  Tarcho grew more animated. He pointed out forts and camps and watchtowers that were part of a 'deep defence system', he said, reaching far back into the countryside south of the line of the Wall itself. And the land was studded by big blocks of greenery at the crowns of the hills and in the valleys. They were managed forests, planted especially to provide the Wall with timber for its baths and ovens. While the Wall was here to defend the country from the savages in the north, the country had to feed the Wall. Audax began to think of the Wall as a great ravenous beast, sucking the blood from a cowering land.

  They arrived at last at a place called Banna, where there was a fort.

  Before it reached the fort itself the road snaked through a patch of farmland owned by the fort-the 'soldiers' meadow', Tarcho called it-and the party crossed over a ditch clogged with weeds and stinking rubbish.

  Then they passed through a kind of town, sprawling east and west along the road outside the fort walls. The roads were more like sheep tracks than Roman roads. The place was noisy, smelly, crowded. Some of the buildings were quite smart and built to square plans, but the rest were just shacks. Many of them had open fronts, and Audax peered into shops where metal was worked or cuts of meat were piled high. There were soldiers, dressed in military belts or bits of armour like Tarcho's. But there were plenty of women, and children ran everywhere, getting in the way of the horses. Audax liked it better than Camulodunum. It seemed a cheerful place. But Tarcho hurried him past the soldiers' taverns, gambling dens and brothels.

  At last they approached a stone wall. This was the fort itself. The buildings of the scrubby town outside lapped right up to the wall. At the fort gate they had to pay a charge, and the carriage was searched for weapons.

  Inside the fort Audax was overwhelmed by a stink of blood and smoke and piss. Tarcho told him it was always like this; the soldiers used their own urine to cure leather for their armour and harness gear. Though Aurelia and Cornelius pressed bits of perfumed cloth to their noses, Tarcho opened his chest and sniffed in the foul air through his big, black, snot-crusted nostrils. 'Home! Nothing like it.'

  The buildings, of stone, mudbrick and wood, were a bit more orderly than outside, the narrow cobbled streets between them straighter. But you could see the buildings we
re old and much repaired. Audax thought two big buildings with two storeys and sparkling tiled roofs must be palaces. Tarcho said they were granaries, where the soldiers stored enough grain to feed them for weeks, in case the barbarians ever attacked. There were more soldiers, including a few who lounged at their posts on the walls. The troops here were a thousand-strong cohort of Dacian origin, Tarcho said, called 'Hadrian's Own'. But nowadays most of the soldiers, locally recruited, were British, not Dacian.

  Aurelia, her cloak over her arm to keep it off the muddy ground, looked around at the shabby fort with disdain. 'So this is what has become of the mighty Roman legions!'

  'There were never any legions posted here, madam,' Tarcho said. 'In fact strictly speaking there are no more legions nowadays…'

  She shuddered. 'By Jupiter I wish I'd never come here. If this is all that stands between me and the barbarian hordes of the Highlands I'll never sleep soundly again.'

  The party split up. Thalius, Aurelia and Cornelius were taken to the fort commander's quarters, a grand old stone building. Tarcho took Audax to a much smaller house of mudbrick and thatch, one of a block. The house belonged to a soldier, an old family friend of Tarcho's, and it was no barracks, as in former times, but a home. Tarcho's friend lived here with his wife, two young sons and a whole pack of eager dogs. Audax didn't know what to make of the noisy bedlam, and the dogs, used to control the slaves in the mine, terrified him. But Tarcho had a quiet word with the soldier's wife, and she made a fuss of Audax and fed him bread and beef, and Tarcho showed him her husband's curving Dacian sword, a falx, and he began to feel better.

  That night, in a small cot in the corner of a room he and Tarcho shared with the soldiers' sons, Audax slept well. He felt safe, encased by the walls of the house, and then by the walls of the fort, all of it watched over by soldiers like Tarcho. He thought that Thalius would have said it was a cosy piece of finitude sliced out of an infinite and troubling world.