He turned to his brother with his hand on the jewelled hilt of his sword. Togodumnus glared at him for a few long seconds, but recognized a deadly intent in Caratacus’s eyes. He calculated his chances. ‘Keep him then, but the rest burn.’
Axes chopped at the slim branches holding Rufus within the wicker figure and willing hands bent them aside, creating just enough space for him to fall clear, but not enough to allow another captive to follow. Barely understanding what was happening, he was dragged naked before Caratacus with the pitiful pleas of the men he left behind torturing his ears. He didn’t dare look back for fear that what he would see would unman him.
‘You are Rufus, keeper of the monster?’
Rufus realized his face was covered in dried blood from the wound he received when he was struck down in the forest, and that his hair was wild and matted. He must be barely recognizable to this man he had met only once. ‘Yes, lord,’ he replied, his voice shaking with emotion. He knew a single wrong word could put him back in the wicker cage. ‘I am the keeper of Bersheba, the Emperor’s elephant.’
‘And you have met this Claudius, whom we owe nothing, but who would have us pay homage to him?’
‘Yes, lord.’
‘Then truly, Rufus, you are among the fortunate.’ Caratacus unpinned his heavy green cloak and shrugged it from his shoulders, then draped it over Rufus’s nakedness. In the same movement he turned the young slave towards the sacrifice. ‘See how fortunate you are.’
For the first time Rufus looked upon the full horror of the Wicker Man. Taller than five men standing upon each other’s shoulders, it dominated everything on the bare hilltop where they stood. It was constructed from a framework of branches and its shape was that of a broad-chested male, his gender instantly apparent from the crude sexual organ protruding from between his legs, each of which was filled to overflowing with tinder-dry straw and branches. The head was a featureless ball, but the blank, pitiless face only made it all the more terrifying. Thrown haphazardly together within the chest cavity was a writhing mass of naked human figures. He could see Paullus, who had shown so little mercy to the village elder, now pleading for it with the last of his strength. Agrippa would be there in that pale jumble of limbs, Agrippa who had seemed too gentle to be a soldier, but who had participated so willingly in Paullus’s atrocity. The interpreter. Slaves he had called his friends. He glimpsed Veleda, the British woman who had led them to the cache of stores, and the two elders captured with her. Presumably they had been tainted by their contact with the Romans. Some of them screamed, some of them, like Paullus, pleaded, others appeared to be shocked into silence. The more fortunate were unconscious or dead, smothered by the weight of flesh above them.
Nuada looked to Caratacus and the Briton nodded. Taranis received his sacrifice.
Rufus’s eyes recorded every detail. As the flames licked the lower layers of bodies he saw mouths opening wider than any human mouth should be capable of, the bulging, disbelieving eyes, and the arms stretching out for assistance from the Roman gods who had forsaken them. Strangely, now, he heard not a sound. Perhaps his mind was protecting him from something that would ultimately destroy him. He felt twin streams of tears on his cheeks as the flames did their work. The gold and green gorse bushes burned quickly, the wood less fiercely. Quite soon the only movement within the giant wicker frame was of blackened corpses contorting and shrivelling in the intense heat at the golden heart of the inferno. The terrified faces of individuals were replaced by a wall of grinning skulls, white teeth stark against charred flesh, which demanded to know why he deserved life when they did not. He had no answer.
‘Enough.’ Rufus felt Caratacus’s hand pulling at his shoulder, but he found he could not move. Somehow he knew that if his eyes broke contact with the flames he would be sucked into that whirling vortex of fire from which he should never have been allowed to escape. Only when the Wicker Man crumpled in on himself, taking with him his banquet of roasted flesh and scorched bone, was the spell broken. ‘Come,’ the Catuvellauni leader ordered. Rufus allowed himself to be guided between the lines of cold, staring faces towards the thatched huts hidden in the woods below. After a few steps an involuntary shudder racked his body and he vomited a fountain of bile on to the grass, staining the fine cloak in the process.
‘I do not think you are made of the stuff of war,’ Caratacus said gently. He led the way to the largest of the huts, which was set some way back from the others. It was clear this rough camp was only a temporary home to the British war leaders, but Caratacus’s hut was nevertheless sumptuously furnished in the British fashion. The walls were hung with the thick fur of a bear and numerous beaver, fox and wolf pelts. The floor was covered with fresh rushes mixed with herbs which filled the interior of the hut with their sweet fragrance when they were crushed underfoot. At the far end, opposite the doorway, a frame had been set up on which hung the shields and standards of the British tribes. Caratacus’s charging boar, the bull’s head of the Regni, the galloping horse of the Iceni, and the crossed spears of the Dobunni were all there, though Rufus recognized them only as brightly coloured symbols of power. To one side, a child played on a rug of washed sheepskin, watched by a smiling, olive-skinned woman with the first silver of age dusting her hair. The boy reminded Rufus of Gaius and he struggled to stifle a sob. The woman looked up in surprise at the sound and her eyes widened when she saw the blood-stained, dishevelled figure wearing her husband’s cloak.
Caratacus smiled an apology to his wife. ‘Take Tasciovanus to see the ponies, Medb, and send Idres with a basin of water.’
The Briton took his place on a wooden chair in front of the banners and invited Rufus to sit at a nearby bench. They waited in silence until a girl of about thirteen arrived with the basin and without a word began to bathe the dried blood from Rufus’s hair. He winced as she touched the raw flesh of a wound just behind his right ear. He reached up and gingerly felt a large bump. ‘It is not mortal,’ Caratacus assured him. ‘We will have it dressed later. Nuada has much skill in these matters. He has stitched me up many a time.’
‘Nuada?’
‘You have met him. The Druid.’ Rufus paled. ‘Do not judge him on what you saw today. He has his place in our society, as your priests do in yours, and carries his burdens as we all do.’ He waved the girl from the hut. ‘Now tell me about the Emperor Claudius.’
XII
‘You seem distracted, husband. You should not let affairs of state burden you so.’
Claudius looked up from the plan he had been attempting to study and smiled benevolently at his wife. I am an actor, he thought, a player who shelters behind a dozen stage masks, or perhaps a coward hiding behind a dozen curtains. He seemed to have been hiding all his life. Hiding from small bullies who ridiculed his limp and his stutter and thought they would be doing Augustus a favour by drowning him in the latrine at the villa in Lugdunum. Hiding from Asinius, that disgusting brute, who had thought it a worthwhile experiment to determine whether a sound beating each day would cure a boy of the disorders that made his mother — his own mother — brand him a ‘monster’. Guardian, he called himself, and tutor. The man was a muleteer. Eventually he had hidden in taverns and places of the most ill repute, trying desperately to rid himself of the knowledge that he was worthless; hardly a human being at all.
Only much later did he discover that a man’s worth did not have to be measured by his prowess at the games or in the bedchamber, nor by the soundness of his limbs or the prettiness of his looks. It was the soundness of his mind that mattered. By then his nephew Gaius, called Caligula, had appointed him consul and given him the power that had been his right, but had been withheld from him all his life. For that alone he had Rome’s most reviled citizen to thank. Yet the elevation had placed him in deadly peril. In the palace of Caligula every man’s hand had been against him. He remembered Protogenes, he of the basilisk eyes and the coldest of hearts, and the way he had measured him an inch at a time, as if he was preparing a cor
pse for the tomb. So he had hidden again, this time behind a facade of drunkenness and senility, and endured the humiliations and contempt. And waited.
‘I am a l-l-little t-tired, my sweet. You have b-been k-keeping your C–C-Claudius up t-too late and his people suffer for it.’
She was too good for him, he knew that. But he could not let her go. He would not let her go. He smiled at her again, and this time the smile was not a lie, but the plain truth. He loved her.
She returned the smile with one of her own, her dark eyes glittering in the light of the perfumed oil lamps, and his heart fluttered and his stomach contracted as if he were some beardless boy in the thrall of his first real woman. Woman? She was a goddess. Valeria Messalina. The most wonderful thing that had happened to him in a life measured by the tidemarks of fear and pain and suppressed rage.
‘It is l-late. You should retire, my l-love. Your b-b-beauty shines at its b-b-brightest after a p-proper night’s rest.’
She rose from her place near the window in one graceful movement, stretched her arms and yawned. Then she came to him and stood by the couch where he was working.
‘Darling Claudius,’ she said, running her slim fingers through his thinning hair and caressing the nape of his neck. ‘You care for me so much.’ She bent close to kiss him on the cheek and the scent of her perfume made his head spin. He watched her walk from the room, the half-moons of her perfectly shaped buttocks shivering rhythmically beneath the azure silk of her gown. She half turned and smiled a farewell. She knew he was watching. Knew he liked to watch. Liked him watching.
When she had left the room he stared at the doorway for a long moment before giving a long, drawn-out sigh. I wonder who will share her bed tonight.
He shook his head to clear it of that melancholy thought and stared blankly at the plan again. It was the first inklings of his scheme to turn the swamp around the little harbour at Ostia into a port that would be a wonder of the world and the engine of Rome’s future prosperity. But he could not concentrate. What was it she had said? Distracted? Of course he was distracted. He should have heard something by now. What was Plautius thinking? The invasion of Britain. Narcissus had made it seem such a fine enterprise, assured him of the swift defeat of a rabble of disorganized natives and at the same time the fame of outmatching the deeds of his ancestors. The answer to all their problems. Why did it now feel like a leaden weight round his neck or the heavy blade of a headsman’s axe? He was by nature a cautious man. Yes, he needed a triumph, needed it the way a dying man needs his next breath, but now he could see that defeat, or even the wrong kind of victory, would be the end of him. Verica, that arrogant Celtic oaf, had given them the pretext for the invasion. Did he really believe the Emperor of Rome would gather an army from the four corners of the Empire so that he could wear a crown of tin and call himself the king of some barbarian hamlet? Yet Narcissus had seen his potential; had found the right lawyers who would declare his claim legitimate and his usurpers the enemy of Rome. Verica had promised them a mighty treasure in return: the mineral riches of the Durotriges and the Silures, pearls from the western shores, furs from the north, and slaves, thousands of slaves, from among the Catuvellauni he hated and feared. But why did Rome need to fight for such baubles when it had ready access to them, and more, through trade? No, plunder was not the objective. Not plunder. Glory.
He had provided Plautius with a great army, more men than the general would ever need to subdue the semi-civilized portion of the island they required for Narcissus’s subterfuge. Four legions — the unstoppable champions of an Empire. Surely Plautius must have defeated the British tribes by now? He was ready. Had been ready for weeks. It only required that single performance in the Senate, perhaps the most important performance of his life. He must stand up before his enemies and persuade them, against their better judgement, of the righteousness of his cause. Was the actor up to the challenge? Would the mask hold in place? He expected to feel the knife-twist of fear, but all he experienced was the warm glow of expectation.
‘Tell me again about Rome. Is it true a man would take an entire day to walk from one wall to the other? And that the buildings are like our mountains?’
Rufus tried to keep his eyes open. It had been like this for hour after relentless hour. Caratacus was insatiable in his quest for knowledge. The answer to one question would give birth to a dozen more, and they a dozen more in their turn. He felt as if his head had been squeezed until every crumb of information lay on the small table they had taken their meal upon what seemed like hours earlier. He nodded, although he suspected the Briton knew a great deal more about the imperial capital than he gave away. ‘It is true.’
‘And the hill where the Emperor has his palace? The Palatine?’ He ran the word Palatine around his mouth as if he were testing it for poison.
Rufus nodded again.
‘If he has all this, accepts tribute from so many great cities — Carthage, you said; I have heard of this Carthage — and is the overlord of so many peoples, what does he want with us poor Britons? Everything he would wish from us we would be happy to give him, for a reasonable price. Why does he send four of his mighty legions to lay Caratacus low?’ The warrior stared at Rufus from under low brows, and the young Roman realized he wouldn’t escape with a one-word answer.
‘He believes Prince Verica has been wronged and has guaranteed him the return of his kingdom,’ he said, repeating what Verica had told him. ‘If you would only agree to this, I am sure the legions would withdraw. I think the legates wish nothing more than a speedy return to Rome, and Aulus Plautius knows it.’ He tried to inject as much sincerity into his expression as he could manage, given that he didn’t believe a word of what he was saying.
‘Pah,’ Caratacus spat. ‘Verica! I would not make Verica the king of a dog kennel, and neither would your Claudius. I know this now. The man you have described to me is not a fool, and only a fool would believe Verica worthy of a throne. Your Emperor may be crippled in body, but he knows how to wield power, and to survive. There is more to this than Verica. Why did Claudius send this Aulus Plautius to do his fighting for him?’
Rufus frowned, trying to remember whether they had gone down this path before, but there had been so many different paths he couldn’t tell. He shook his head. ‘Emperor Claudius is a great man, but he is no warrior. I could not imagine him on campaign.’
‘Then why has the Emperor sent his elephant, his most treasured possession, on this perilous mission?’ the British king demanded triumphantly.
Rufus opened his mouth to reply. He’d been asking himself the same question for the last month and he was no nearer an answer now than when he started. Caratacus noticed the slight hesitation and gave him a calculating look. ‘Enough for now. I will think on it and we will discuss it further in the morning. I wish to know more about these invincible legions of yours. I have had a hut prepared for you and a sleeping mat. You will be guarded there, but it is for your own safety. Rome has no friends in this place.’ He called out and two burly warriors armed with long spears appeared in the doorway.
Rufus went to them, but before they left the hut, he turned to Caratacus. ‘Why did you burn those prisoners? You do not seem a cruel man.’
The king looked at him for several long seconds. ‘Do your people not send messengers to the gods?’
‘No, I do not believe so.’
‘My people do, and we have never needed the wisdom of the gods more than we do now.’
‘Am I to burn, then?’
Caratacus’s eyes were in shadow, so Rufus could not see the message in them. The long hesitation again. ‘We shall see.’
Rufus struggled to find sleep. Whenever he closed his eyes his mind filled with flames, and in the flames writhing, twisting shapes that might have been human. Instead he lay awake and used the time to go over his discussion with the king, attempting to divine some overall purpose or pattern to the remorseless probing. Initially, Caratacus had confined his questioning to Bersheba
, her role in the campaign, and Rufus’s part in preparing her for it. On the first point, Rufus had been able to supply limited information, for beyond parading her for the morale of the troops there seemed no good reason for her being here. On the second, he cheerfully expounded on the intricacies of looking after his enormous charge, her habits and her moods, the gentle, almost motherly compassion that was her most dominant characteristic, and the deep intelligence that confounded any who witnessed it. Staring into the dark, he wondered how she was faring without him. Was Britte managing in his absence?
Later, the Catuvellauni had moved to the subject of the legions. What were their strengths; did they have any weaknesses? How had they defeated Togodumnus’s ambush force with such savage ease? Their tactics?
Rufus supplied what information he could, suppressing an unease that sometimes made him squirm in his seat. He knew he was guilty of betraying his comrades, but the alternative was too terrible to contemplate. He was a slave. No one was paying him to suffer and die for Rome. There would be no land or pension for Rufus, the elephant keeper, at the end of his service. He wanted only to get back to his family, and the only way to ensure that was to give Caratacus what he wanted.
When he was satisfied he knew as much as Rufus about the column’s forces, the Briton turned to the subject of Claudius. What kind of man was he? How long had he been in power? Did his people fear him? Love him? Respect him? Then he threw Rufus off balance by switching back to the legions. Did their short swords not make them vulnerable? After all, look at his own sword. He drew the blade of polished iron from its richly decorated bronze scabbard with a threatening metallic swish. This, he explained, was merely a decorative toy he wore on ceremonial occasions to impress uncultured brutes like Bodvoc. It had been made by a Gaulish craftsman who had visited Camulodunum five years before and was counted the finest in all Britain. But look, it easily outreached the little — what did he call them? Gladius? — the little gladius, it was heavier and had a fine edge; surely in open battle it must prevail?
Claudius r-2 Page 9
