Emperor: Time’s Tapestry Book One

by Stephen Baxter

  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 were 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.

  He was woken in the dark, by a big hand gently shaking his shoulder. Unthinkingly he turned limp, imagining he was back in the mine. If you fought the dirty men they made it worse for you. But he was still in Banna, and it was Tarcho.

  ‘Come on. Get dressed. I’ve something to show you.’

  Outside the house the fort was a pool of shadows. The only sound was the coughing of a soldier on sentry duty somewhere on the fort walls. The sky was a deep blue-grey, a warning of the dawn, and the light reflected from dew on the cobbles.

  Tarcho led Audax to a watchtower on the wall, and showed him a ladder. ‘Take care,’ Tarcho whispered. But Audax was used to ladders in the pitch dark, and climbed up more easily than Tarcho himself.

  They arrived on the narrow platform at the top of the tower, alone. Up here the air was fresh, crisp with dew, and the customary piss-stink was dissipated by the green smell of growing grass.

  Audax looked out over the countryside. The fort was on an escarpment, and looking south he could see how the land fell away to a deeply cut valley where a river gurgled. A steamy stink rose up; the fort’s bathhouse had been built down there near the water.

  And when he looked east and west, Audax at last saw the Wall itself, built into the outer shell of the fort, striding in great straight-line segments across the country. Where the gathering light in the east caught the curtain’s southern face, the pale stone shone. Buildings and forts studded its length, and Audax could see hearth smoke rising, as if it was one gigantic house.

  It was centuries old, Tarcho said proudly. ‘My own great-great-great-something-grandfather worked on it. He was called Tullio. I know his name, you see, because it is written on stones set in the Wall itself. He came from Germany. And his sons and grandsons have served on the Wall ever since. Here is the Wall, all patched up, still serving its purpose eight, nine, ten generations later, after most of its builders’ names have been forgotten. What men they must have been in those days, that their vision still shapes our age today! What heroes! And one of them was my grandfather.’

  Audax found it impossible to imagine that men had ever built this thing, this Wall. He might as well have been told that men had dug out the valley to the south, or spun the clouds that caught the dawn light overhead.

  ‘Did anybody live here before the Wall?’

  ‘Why, I don’t know. Nobody important, just a few hairy-backs. Two hundred years! Think of that.’

  Lights sparked along the dark line of the wall, splashes of yellow fire flickering and dying.

  Audax was alarmed. ‘What’s that? Is it an attack?’

  ‘No. They are signal beacons. The watch is changing. All along the Wall soldiers are standing down, and they light their beacons to tell their mates that all is well, all is well…’

  They stayed on the watchtower until the sun had risen. Then they descended into the fort and joined the day’s growing bustle.

  XII

  A week after Thalius’s own arrival at Banna, Constantine and his entourage arrived – or some of them; many had stayed behind at Eburacum.

  Constantine immediately ordered a review of the fort’s troops. This took place on a bright, fresh morning, and Thalius and his companions watched from the comfort of a pavilion as guests of Cornelius.

  The soldiers in their centuries drew up in good order outside the fort walls. The centuries’ standar
d-bearers held aloft the emblems of their units, and each held a labarum. A new military standard said to be of Constantine’s own devising, this was a long spear covered in gold, with a transverse bar to give it the shape of the Christian cross. At the summit of the cross was a wreath of gold and precious stones, containing a finely worked chi-rho Christogram.

  The troops made a respectable sight, even though Thalius could see their armour and weaponry were scuffed and much repaired – it was said that some of these bits of kit had been handed down from father to son for generations. Not only that, in the light of day the walls of the fort itself looked frankly dilapidated. The fort and its units had been here for centuries, slowly subsiding into the cold northern mud, while the boundary between the soldiers and the civilian population from which they were recruited grew ever more blurred.

  One of Constantine’s projects was to cement reforms of the army begun under Diocletian, reforms which reflected the military reality of the age. The old distinction between legions and auxiliary units was abandoned. Now the army was divided between a mobile field force, and static units of border troops, like the units here at Banna. There was a new military hierarchy, of dukes and counts – like the Duke of the Britains stationed at Eburacum, and a Count of the Saxon Shore who controlled coastal forts like Rutupiae. Once the governors had been commanders-in-chief of their provinces’ armies, but now the dukes and counts were independent of the governors – indeed their remit generally spanned more than one province. This was another example of the emperors’ continuing strategy to fragment power and so limit the challenge of any one rival.

  Thalius understood the military logic, he believed. You held off the barbarians at the border, and if they did get through you allowed them to penetrate deep into a fortified country, while bringing your mobile forces to bear. Even the walled towns were a part of the system, in a sense. But it was in the nature of stasis to decay, and frontier units like this tended to lose their shape and discipline. Thalius had heard lurid rumours of corruption, of commanding officers drawing pay for long-dead soldiers. It was just as well that the Emperor had come by to give the place a sprucing-up.

  And this was a big day for these soldiers, a chance to break up the lifelong tedium of frontier duty with a display before the Emperor himself. Everybody knew that Constantine was here looking for units he could detach for his looming war with Licinius, Emperor of the east. Having grown up at their fort, with families of their own and roots generations deep, many of the soldiers here probably couldn’t even imagine how it would be to serve under an emperor on a long campaign in a foreign land. But they were still Roman soldiers, and beneath those hand-me-down armour plates, hearts must have been beating with anticipation.

  At last the Emperor himself rode by, a burly, powerful man, accompanied by his generals and aides. They all wore expensive, brightly coloured parade armour, including elaborate helmets with carved carapaces and bejewelled masks. The soldiers stood proud before their Emperor’s inspection.

  Cornelius, ever the traditionalist, murmured a commentary in Thalius’s ear. ‘Quite a mixture of symbolism – don’t you think? Here you have a Roman army with its roots, let us not forget, in the citizen-farmer communities of Latium. But see the Emperor and his cronies in their fancy parade armour. I’ve heard travellers to Egypt and Persia say that the more centralised the society the more you see the flaunting of such symbols of rank…’

  Aurelia hissed, ‘Oh, do shut up, Cornelius, you bore. It’s less than an hour before our audience with the Emperor.’

  ‘Since I arranged the audience,’ Cornelius said stiffly, ‘I’m well aware of it.’

  ‘Is the boy ready?’

  Thalius glanced across at Tarcho and Audax, who sat in the pavilion a few rows behind the others. The old soldier was looking reasonably smart in his own polished armour, though he obviously longed to be out on the field with the troops. Audax had been washed, dressed in a smart new tunic, his hair trimmed and combed. He still looked thin and pale, though, much younger than his years – he was still the sun-starved worm Thalius had found in Dolaucothi. And yet he was the key to everything.

  ‘He’s ready,’ Thalius said to Aurelia.

  ‘All right,’ Cornelius said. ‘Let’s go over it one more time. I will lead you in, Thalius, with the boy. I’ve managed to interest the Emperor in the Prophecy etched on the boy’s back. He is fascinated by such things, in his credulous soldier’s way. Then I will call you forward, madam—’

  Thalius said, ‘And with Aurelia’s help I will show him how to read the acrostic.’

  ‘A prophecy of his own murder,’ Cornelius said with a cold grin, just softly enough not to be overheard, loudly enough to make Thalius fear that he had been.

  ‘Then I will present our testament.’ Thalius tapped his tunic, within which he had tucked the ten pages of parchment on which he had written out a fair copy of the final agreed text: Honest Advice Humbly Offered by Concerned Citizens.

  Now they were so close he felt his confidence growing stronger. It was an extraordinary thing they were attempting, to change an emperor’s mind in such a profound way, and Thalius had barely slept for the last two nights. But though the Emperor feared no human, he did fear God, and perhaps he would take the Prophecy as the warning they intended, and be receptive to the logic of their missive.

  Then he noticed Cornelius and Aurelia sharing a look he could not read. It reminded Thalius he was not in control of this situation. His confidence evaporated like dew, and a dread of possibilities he could not envisage gnawed at his stomach.

  XIII

  Being presented to the Emperor didn’t feel like an honour to Audax.

  It felt like the time he had been hauled up before overseer Volisios because he had cut his hand in a tired fall in a quartz seam, making himself useless for days. It had never even occurred to him to try to explain that he had been kept without sleep for two nights by a gang of dirty men. After yelling at him for a while the overseer had shown him the row of crosses where the bird-pecked remnants of slaves dangled, Audax’s destination if he made any more mistakes, and then had handed him over to a burly brute for a whipping.

  That was how this felt today, as Thalius and Aurelia led him into the elaborate shrine-like room where the Emperor sat on his throne. The room was filled with light that dazzled from the Emperor’s clothes and jewelled crown. Audax recognised some of the people with the Emperor. On his right hand side was Helen, his mother, almost as fancily dressed as her son. To the Emperor’s left was Cornelius, his eyes on Audax but murmuring to the Emperor. And beyond them were hard-eyed soldiers, their hands on the hilts of their stabbing swords, watching every movement.

  He was brought to within a pace of the Emperor, close enough to touch him. Constantine was terrifying. Audax thought he could feel heat radiating from him. He had spent a lifetime suppressing the instinct to resist, but Audax couldn’t help but pull back. But then Constantine caught his eye and smiled at him. Suddenly he seemed human, and Audax’s dread subsided, just a little.

  Thalius and Aurelia, he nervously, she with smooth confidence, began to describe Audax’s scarring and how it had come about. Audax could understand a little of their Latin talk, of a family history, a rich woman who sold her descendants into slavery…Constantine listened with an expression of faint boredom. Audax imagined him listening to hundreds of people every day, each of them with a story they needed him to hear.

  Then came the revelation of the scar itself. Aurelia turned the boy around and had him lift his tunic over his head. Audax waited, his head swathed in his tunic, smelling his own sweat, hearing the muffled voices of the adults as they discussed the one thing about him that made him interesting to them. An acrostic…Christian elements, the alpha and the omega…encrypted words. He felt a warm, heavy finger tracing across his back, perhaps the Emperor’s own, and his gruff voice teasing out the words: Constare, perire.

  The boy was straightened up, his tunic flopped down, and he was turne
d around to face the Emperor. Audax saw that one of the guards had drawn his sword. Everybody understood the true meaning of the two words. Suddenly the tension in the room was enormous, and Audax, at its focus, was very afraid.

  It was Helena who spoke next. Are you threatening my son? Is he to die today?

  Thalius spoke rapidly, clearly terrified; he hadn’t anticipated this reaction. Nobody will die…Not a threat…We bring you the Prophecy in good faith, we did not make it…We hope you will take it as guidance for a better future for all of us…We bring you a letter…He fumbled beneath his toga for his document, and the guards glared at him even more intently.

  And while they were distracted Audax discovered a knife in his hand, a fine, polished blade. It had been put there by Aurelia. As he looked down on the blade, her cold fingers closed around Audax’s hand, and the knife.

  And she pushed Audax, stretching his arm, and the blade was thrust forward. Audax saw all this as if watching from outside his own body. It had been beaten into him across a lifetime that when an adult pulled you around you didn’t resist, not so much as a muscle. So it was his hand that held the knife, but Aurelia’s strength that shoved it through layers of cloth, a briefly resisting skin, and then into a wet warmth beyond.

  Even as the knife pierced the Emperor’s chest, Aurelia screamed, ‘No! The slave is a rogue! Help me hold him back, oh help me!’ When the knife was embedded to its hilt, Aurelia fell back with a cry.

  For a heartbeat all was still. Audax and Constantine were locked together, the knife hilt still in the slave’s hand, the blade in the Emperor’s chest. Constantine’s mouth gaped, with strings of spittle stretched between his lips. Audax’s hand felt small, pressed against the huge warmth of the Emperor’s body.