Emperor

XVIII

Sheltered from view behind Braint's broad back, with everybody watching the Romans as they strutted through Camulodunum, Agrippina examined the leather document wallet.

After a lifetime pressed against Nectovelin's chest, it was scuffed, battered, and stank of Nectovelin's sweat and blood. The document within, carefully folded, was only a single page of cheap-looking parchment, yellowed with age. It was stamped with a broken seal. And just sixteen lines of Latin, she counted quickly, had been transcribed in a neat hand. Could this really be the hand of her grandfather Cunovic, was this his seal?

She read the first lines feverishly:

Ah child! Bound in time's tapestry, and yet you are born free Come, let me sing to you of what there is and what will be, Of all men and all gods, and of the mighty emperors three. Named with a German name, a man will come with eyes of glass Straddling horses large as houses bearing teeth like scimitars…

If these were the words of a god, it was a literate god. The phrasing was elegant, the meter at least functional. She wondered if the transcript contained more information than apparent to a first reading; the Romans were famously fond of word play-compression, acrostics.

But the lines were terse. After the salutation and that mention of 'emperors three', there followed a reference to an emperor who called himself a German, but who had, mysteriously, 'eyes of glass'. The single other detail, about some kind of exotic beast, merely confused her further. Could these opaque hints have something to do with the invasion? After all, what use was a prophecy if it didn't refer to such a calamity as this? But if so, what did it mean?

She scanned on quickly. The further lines hinted at a 'noose of stone'-some kind of huge building project?-and the elevation of an emperor in Brigantia. How could that ever be possible? The last few lines seemed to be given over to poetry, clumsy stuff that might have been translated from another language altogether, about freedom and happiness: unarguable, but not much use. That, though, was clearly the passage that had touched Nectovelin's heart-

'They took Braint.' Cunedda was tense beside her, his right hand seeking a sword that he no longer carried.

Hastily Agrippina tucked the document inside her tunic, hoping Cunedda wouldn't notice she had it. 'What's happening?'

'They seem to be recruiting warriors. Some kind of display for the Emperor. Must they humiliate us? And I think I heard them talking about Cunobelin's House.' He pointed. 'During his first night here the Emperor is to stay in the granary.'

Agrippina understood. Of course a Roman would seek a square floor plan, rejecting the native roundhouses as barbaric.

It was hard to concentrate on mere events, when the Prophecy, the future itself, burned in her hand. She longed for time to think about it, to decipher its enigmas.

'Just imagine,' Cunedda said, 'the Emperor himself, the very head of the empire, is to stay here, just paces from where we are standing. And we can't do a thing about it!'

'Maybe we can,' Agrippina said, suddenly thinking fast. Perhaps it was the Prophecy that fired her mind. 'Cunedda. I have an idea. The granary must have underground storage pits.'

He frowned. 'So?'

'Do you think the Romans know about them? They might not realise the building is a granary at all. If we could sneak in there-

He started to see. 'And then hide in the pits. Let the Emperor come. And then-'

And then, Agrippina thought, they might strike a blow that would send shudders across the whole world. Suddenly hope sparked in her breast.

Cunedda too looked fully alive, for the first time since the battle. 'Agrippina, Braint was right. Maybe it will take a woman to fight the Romans!'

She pressed a finger to his lips. 'Hush. We mustn't chance somebody overhearing. Let's go find Nectovelin. We'll need his help.' And she must sneak the Prophecy back in Nectovelin's pile of clothes before he finished plucking those wretched chickens.

Excited, burning with their secret plan, the two of them rushed hand in hand back to Braint's house.