Emperor: Time’s Tapestry Book One

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘Yes, I know about those,’ Tullio rumbled, looking up from his discussion. ‘Full of nothing but good news. She leaves me to tell him the truth, which always looks bad by comparison.’ He sighed noisily. ‘That wretched woman!’

  Karus said, ‘She’s a difficult friend – but I wouldn’t want her as an enemy.’

  Xander asked, ‘And how is she feeling about her precious Prophecy, now it is failing to come true?’

  Lepidina shrugged. Karus glanced uncomfortably at the soldiers. Brigonius knew that to the Romans prophecies, auguries, divinations and the like were seen as sources of power – and, particularly under an emperor obsessed with his own destiny, you had to be careful. But Severa and her family Prophecy had become the talk of the Wall, and much mocked.

  Annius said in his chirpy way, ‘Funny thing about that Prophecy. It actually says Hadrian would come to Britain and build a Wall, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Not quite,’ Lepidina said, ‘but close enough.’

  ‘I never heard of a prophecy so, so, what’s the word? Specific. Did you, Tull? Usually it’s a business of poking around with leaves and entrails and getting a few portents of doom that could mean anything. This is different. It’s not like the gods are setting us their usual puzzles. It’s more like a man is speaking to us. It’s as if somebody in the future knew what was going to happen, wrote it down and sent it back into the past.’

  Lepidina said, ‘My mother calls him “the Weaver” – or her – the author of the Prophecy.’

  ‘Ah,’ Xander said, intrigued. ‘But is that possible in any of our philosophies? Do we allow even the gods to know the future – or to change the past?’

  Karus said dryly, ‘If the legionaries hadn’t nailed them all to their sacred trees on Mona it would be interesting to ask a druidh such a question. I know they spoke of a continual exchange of spirits between our world and the Other, but each of our spirits is embedded in time. So I think questions of the existence of the future, or meddling with the past, would be meaningless to them.’

  ‘But in Greece,’ said Xander loftily, ‘rather more sophisticated notions have been developed.’

  ‘Here we go,’ Tullio growled. ‘More “sophisticated” horse crap.’ He snapped his fingers to have the boy refill their cups.

  Xander went on, unperturbed, ‘For instance there is the notion of the Eternal Return, in which time is cyclic, and every event is doomed to recur over and again, without limit. This troubled Aristotle, who wondered about causality in a universe in which he existed as much after the fall of Troy as before it. But I suppose you could indeed influence the “past” by ensuring a message about it lasted long enough to reach its recurrence in the “future”…’

  ‘And what about eternity?’ Karus cried, sounding a little drunk. ‘I thought you Greeks had plenty to say about that, Xander.’

  ‘And some Romans,’ Xander said mildly. ‘Eternity: a mode of existence in which all events, past and future, coexist. Lucretius argued that duration is a mere product of the mind, for eternity is the higher reality through which we move, you see, and motion gives the impression of change. But of course Lucretius was merely developing older ideas of the Epicureans. And Plato long ago said that our perception of time is a “moving image of eternity”, again foreshadowing Lucretius—’

  Brigonius struggled to understand this. ‘So eternity is like – like what?’

  Karus said, ‘Brigonius, think of a tapestry. Woven into it are pictures of trees, say, all in their different stages of growth: seeds, saplings, young, mature, old, fallen, decayed away. They are all there all at the same time in the weave, you see. Now, you are an ant running along one thread in the tapestry. And as you run you let your eyes slide over the pictures of the young trees and the old, and you connect them up in your head – and instead of seeing many trees of different ages, you imagine you see only one tree, growing and dying and rotting away. You see? A moving image derived from stasis, passing time derived from eternity.’

  Brigonius frowned. ‘I think I follow.’

  Annius asked, ‘So does all this mean that the future can speak to the past?’

  Karus laughed. ‘If you ask the right question of the right god, perhaps it can! Perhaps time really is a tapestry, its threads all our lives. And somewhere there really is a Weaver, god or man, who sees all, past and future in a glance – and who can, with a few deft plucks, change the pattern of the weave, adjust history, and alter all our lives. But there is always the question of purpose. If the Weaver seeks to perturb history – why, and to what end?’

  None of them had an answer to this.

  Tullio made an obvious and kindly effort to include Lepidina. ‘What of your Christian god, lady? What does He have to say about time and destiny?’

  Lepidina said mildly, ‘Jesus was God made human. What He had to say to us concerns the way we live our lives. The way we think about each other. He had nothing to say about philosophies of time.’

  Karus said, ‘Ah, but if I understand your mythology right, Jesus’s own life was time-bound, unlike the gods of the past, and it marked a great disjunction in history. He was the God made man, and in His life and His murder He redeemed mankind.’

  Xander raised his eyebrows. ‘So Jesus is an intervening god, like the gods of Olympus of old. I thought we were done with them! And He was murdered? How?’

  ‘By the Romans,’ Lepidina said. ‘The governor of Judea had Him put down as a rebel.’

  Tullio said gruffly, ‘I knew a man, who knew a man, who knew your Christ.’

  Lepidina’s eyes widened. ‘You did?’

  ‘This fellow I’m talking about was a veteran, retired, when I was starting out myself. I was eighteen or so. I met him in Pannonia. And he told me about a veteran he had met when he was young, in Africa. This chap had been a centurion, and he was on duty that day in Judea, when your Christ was crucified. The lads showed Him mercy, he said. As He was dying on the cross, one of them gave Him soldiers’ wine.’ He raised his cup. ‘Just like this.’

  They sat gravely, reflecting on this.

  Karus murmured, ‘“Whilst God-as-babe has birth…”’

  ‘From the Prophecy,’ Brigonius said.

  ‘Yes. Lepidina, I’ve often wondered about the meaning of that phrase. Even if you accept that Severa is right that the text of those lines is about Hadrian and the Wall, that phrase doesn’t fit. You have always said the Prophecy is bound up with your young faith because of the coincidence of the birth dates of your ancestor and your Christ. I wonder if that line is telling us something of a great conflict to come, between your young god and the old. But if so, what is the Prophecy guiding us to do? What does the Weaver want?—’

  There was a crash, and a smell of smoke. Tullio dropped his cup of wine and ran out of the tent.

  XV

  The camp was plunged into chaos. Soldiers were running everywhere, fumbling with weapons and armour, some of them only half-dressed. And from one corner of the camp a plume of smoke was rising.

  Xander stared about, bewildered. ‘What has happened? What should we do?’

  ‘Stand still,’ Brigonius said firmly. He took Lepidina’s arm. Her face was closed up and he couldn’t tell what she was thinking or feeling. This wasn’t the place for her, he told himself angrily. ‘Stay with me,’ he said. ‘The camp is obviously under attack. We’re in the safest place, right here. Just let the soldiers do their jobs.’

  Karus shook his head, clearly reeling from the wine. ‘I’d like to know how they managed to torch the camp. What did they use, a catapult?’

  Tullio approached them and glared at Brigonius. ‘You. You’re a Brigantian. Are you going to give me any trouble?’

  ‘No.’

  Tullio pressed him: ‘What are you then? On this night when many of your countrymen will have their bellies slit open by Roman stabbing swords, are you a traitor to your kind?’

  The question struck at Brigonius’s heart. But he said, ‘No. But I am no fool either. This i
sn’t the way to deal with the Romans; this can’t work.’

  ‘And what is the right way to “deal” with Rome?’

  ‘On your own terms. By skinning you of every sesterce.’

  Tullio inspected him closely. ‘Very well. Stay close to me or Annius; it’s likely to be a long night. And keep these people under control.’ Then he turned away, dismissing Brigonius and his party.

  A junior officer ran up. ‘Sir, we’re under attack!’

  ‘Well, I can see that,’ Tullio snapped. He drew his stabbing sword and turned to face the north. ‘Perhaps those northerners are taking their chance before the Wall is built. Get me a signaller and tell him—’

  ‘Sir.’ The officer, no older than twenty-five, was distressed, out of his depth. ‘They aren’t coming from the north.’

  ‘Then where?’

  ‘From the south, sir. The south!’

  Tullio gaped. ‘The south? Which side of this cursed Wall are the barbarians supposed to be on? And how did they set fire to my camp?’

  ‘I can answer that, sir.’ A tough-looking centurion approached. His face was streaked with ash, and he carried something in his hand, something that dangled and dripped a dark fluid. ‘He was inside the camp. He had business here; he’d been here before. We’d no reason to suspect him. But he was carrying a bottle of oil which he lit and—’

  ‘Who, man? Who did this?’

  The centurion glared at Brigonius. ‘This is yours, I believe.’ He raised his arm. The thing in his hand was a human head, severed at the neck, from which blood still oozed. The face was obscured by a thick black beard. The centurion dumped the wet thing on the floor.

  Brigonius flinched but stood his ground, while Lepidina cowered behind him. ‘Matto,’ Brigonius breathed. ‘Oh, you fool.’

  Tullio glared. ‘Recriminations later. For now let’s get control of the situation. You,’ he told the centurion. ‘Take charge of what’s going on inside the camp. Put that fire out before it does any more damage.’ The centurion ran off. ‘Annius, you come with me. What are those signallers doing up in that tower, sucking each other off? I need to find out what’s happening in the country…’ He stalked off, bristling, angry, competent.

  Karus was staring at the severed head. ‘I knew this man.’

  ‘He was my cousin,’ Brigonius said grimly. ‘He worked for me, at the quarry.’

  ‘What was in his mind, Brigonius? He must have known he could not survive a lone attack on a Roman camp.’

  ‘But death didn’t matter to him,’ Xander said quietly. ‘The Romans have encountered such suicide killers before – and know they are hard to deal with. As Tacitus has written, “The man who is prepared to die will always be your master.”’

  The commands flowing from Tullio soon had their effect. Soldiers swarmed around the camp, preparing weapons and armour. Meanwhile others gathered around the fire. They hauled a cart laden with a heavy tank of water. Two beefy infantrymen began to work a two-handed lever, and water was forced out of a nozzle. The cart was hastily swivelled so that the fire engine’s spouting water was aimed at the burning tents.

  XVI

  The light faded, the long day dwindling into night. Brigonius and his party huddled with Tullio’s staff in the prefect’s tent.

  Beyond the camp the country was wild. Brigonius heard shouts, screams, and there was a prevailing stink of smoke. The soldiers prowled around their watch posts, peering out into the dangerous dark.

  To Brigonius’s surprise, Tullio didn’t send his forces out immediately to meet the enemy. During the night the sentries passed only despatch riders. On the old signal tower flags were raised and beacons lit, and across the turbulent countryside more pinpricks of fire lit up in response, as the mass mind of the army channelled and absorbed information about what was happening.

  It soon became clear that the uprising had been coordinated. There had been strikes all along the line of the Wall, most of them rash suicide raids. And at the same time there had been a general rising in the countryside, with tax officials and councillors, many of them Brigantian themselves, abused, attacked, their homes ransacked. The most serious rising was to the west of Banna, where a pack of young men had torched the still-incomplete turf wall, kicked in the defensive ditch, and generally made a mess of the Romans’ new frontier.

  Through the night Tullio sat in his improvised command post, poring over maps and lists of detachment names and numbers on hastily set-out tables. Records, charts, lists, information, information: even as the countryside boiled like a disturbed ant hill, communication, patience, thinking was the key to the Roman response. Sitting here Brigonius saw how very wrong Matto had been to resist the Romans’ literacy, for it was the army’s key weapon. Through words and numbers on paper Roman commanders were able to transmit their commands unambiguously across hundreds of miles, and the bloody lessons of the past were stored without error or distortion, forever.

  While Tullio and his staff worked, the Brigantian slave boy brought them food and more soldiers’ wine. Brigonius wondered what was going on in the head of the boy, what he understood of the uprising. Where was his family – north of here, south? But families, even names, were irrelevant, once you were a slave; you had no past, no future, no purpose but that which your master assigned you. Even your children were slaves, and given litter names by your master: ‘First-born’ (Primigenius) perhaps, or ‘Similar’, or ‘Runt’. But on a night like this, Brigonius thought, even the most docile slave must feel something stirring in his heart.

  The long night wore on. Karus drank himself to sleep on a soldier’s blanket. Xander, a nervous man surprisingly stoical in the face of a real crisis, wrapped himself in his cloak and sat quietly, eyes wide. Lepidina curled up against Brigonius, and Brigonius welcomed this echo of their brief love, though he knew she wanted no more than comfort. As for himself he could not sleep.

  The sun was rising when at last the bugles sang. Brigonius left his companions sleeping, letting Lepidina slide off onto a blanket, and went out to see.

  Units of soldiers were forming up, preparing to march out to meet the enemy. Brigonius overheard Tullio and his aides reviewing their information and giving commands to the junior officers. The Romans had delayed their response until they could assemble a sufficient countering force with detachments of the auxiliary units from Banna, other nearby camps, and the forts behind the Wall line. The legionary detachments assigned to Wall construction work were also gathering their weapons, but they were falling back, while other detachments from the legionary fortress at Eburacum, better prepared, were moving forward. The auxiliaries would do the brunt of the fighting while the legions would be kept in reserve, for no large-scale pitched battle was expected…

  And so on. This was how the system was supposed to work. Thanks to its fast communications, detailed record keeping and flexible deployment the army, never numerically strong, was able to deploy rapidly and efficiently, focusing its energies exactly where they were needed most. The army itself was a high technology, Brigonius saw, honed and perfected over centuries of conquest.

  Meanwhile the soldiers were individually preparing. Brigonius had worked with Roman soldiers for years. While they could sneer at the Brittunculi they had been posted to govern, they had come to seem disarmingly ordinary to him: ordinary fellows doing a job of work, wanting nothing but food, sleep and an occasional shag. But now he saw these men for what they were. In armour that fit like a second skin, wielding weapons with the casual intimacy of a lover’s touch, they were barely human at all, he thought; they were slabs of muscles intent only on killing. And as they formed up in their tight disciplined units they seemed more formidable yet. Brigonius’s heart felt heavy as he thought of the force that would face them, a rabble of disaffected Brigantian farm-boys stirred up by hotheads like Matto, armed with rusty weapons their grandfathers had been hiding in grain pits since the days of Cartimandua.

  XVII

  A month after the insurrection had been put do
wn, Governor Nepos travelled from Londinium to assess the damage for himself.

  Nepos toured the forts and rode the length of the Wall, and spoke to his senior commanders, including Tullio. He returned to Eburacum for a few days to preside over the trials of the suspected ringleaders of the rising. And he announced, in the even-handed way of wiser Romans, that he would consider compensation for farmers who had lost significant chunks of land – always providing they could prove they hadn’t taken part in the uprising themselves.

  Then he came to Banna, where he ordered a review. Tullio, Annius and their staff were called in, as were senior officers from the forts, a couple of tribunes from each of the three legions, and the architect, Xander, with his sponsor Severa, and Brigonius and other local suppliers.

  The meeting was fractious from the start. Nepos demanded of Tullio, ‘How could this happen, prefect?’

  ‘We had some failures of intelligence,’ Tullio admitted, ‘which have been put right. A failure of security too which has been tightened.’ Brigonius could testify to that; he had the bruises inflicted by gatekeeping soldiers to prove it. ‘But,’ Tullio went on, ‘we just didn’t anticipate the way the attack unfolded. The Wall is designed to deal with attacks from the north, not the south!’

  Nepos shook his head. ‘I still find it hard to believe. This has implications for everything we are doing here. If this were to happen again—’

  ‘It won’t,’ Severa said quickly. ‘Governor, this was a bit of restlessness by unhappy Brigantian farmers. Once your more lenient policies are accepted—’

  Nepos glared at her until she was silent. ‘Madam, to my mind we are building for centuries. Perhaps Brigantia will be quiet for a season or two. But in time a new generation of young bulls will rise up who will imagine their grandfathers didn’t go far enough – I’ve seen it all before. We must plan for all contingencies.’

  A young man in brightly polished dress uniform stood and took the floor. ‘And that isn’t all we have to think about.’ He bowed to the governor. ‘Sir, my name is Galba Iulius Sabinus. I am a tribune of the sixth; my legate at Eburacum sent you his report on the new military dispositions.’