Emperor

IX

Severa introduced herself and her party. Then she handed the floor to Xander. The little Greek stood fearlessly, Brigonius thought, fearless as only the representative of an older culture could be before a junior, regardless of such incidentals as global power.

Xander spoke in Greek, and Brigonius picked up only a little of what he had to say. He began with a general discourse on the problems of imperial frontiers, with references to historical events all the way back to the wars between the successors of Alexander the Great. Meanwhile his precious model sat on the floor beside him, tantalisingly covered.

Karus had warned Brigonius it would be like this. 'The Romans love speeches,' he said.

Understanding barely one word in four, Brigonius found his attention wandering. Among the soldiers and learned men of the court of the soldier-emperor there were a few women. One of them, beautiful but sullen-looking, must be Hadrian's wife, Sabina, said to have been trapped into a loveless marriage by her great-uncle Trajan to his favoured heir, Hadrian. One older woman was surely the famed Plotina, wife of the dead Trajan. Brigonius wondered what tensions lay beneath the rather cold facade of this imperial family.

Though Hadrian listened, he seemed restless, unfocused, even bored. Brigonius knew that Hadrian thought of himself as a scholar. To him, in an empire which contained Greece and Egypt and Mesopotamia, an empire like a huge museum of civilisations, Britain must seem dull indeed.

For an instant Hadrian's gaze locked on Brigonius himself. Perhaps there was a flicker of recognition in the Emperor's eye; perhaps he remembered him from the speech at Rutupiae. Now he inspected Brigonius more carefully, his neck, his torso, his bare legs.

Brigonius, his blood still hot from the hour he had spent with Lepidina, turned away. Here was something else everybody knew about Hadrian. In Brigantia homosexual affairs weren't unknown, but they were unusual. Among the Romans they were more commonplace-but it wasn't Hadrian's sexuality but his ardour that drew comment. A serious man wasn't supposed to lavish too much energy on his bed-warmers.

And now Brigonius noticed the gaze of Primigenius was on him too, that deadly white face, the black-rimmed eyes, the lips scarlet as a wound. Was it possible this raddled ex-slave was jealous? Brigonius suppressed a shudder.

At last Xander got to the point. His slaves whipped aside the cloth that covered his model. The courtiers all leaned forward to see the painted hills, the shining ribbon-rivers and the finely worked forts and turrets. The exquisite detail evoked childlike pleasure in their heavily made-up faces.

Xander described the route he proposed. His mighty Wall would be rooted in the east, at the site of a small fort called Segedunum. It would cross the river Tinea, and then climb to the west following the high ground. Hilltops and a natural escarpment of basalt crags would be incorporated into the new frontier. 'It will seem to all,' Xander pronounced, 'as if the Wall has sprung out of the very rock itself!' Beyond this point would be a further river crossing, and then the Wall would take a less dramatic course through more broken country, finally crossing a plain and approaching its destination at the west coast. The total length would be some seventy-one miles, said the architect, every foot of which would be dominated by a stone curtain fifteen feet high. Not only that, earthworks before the northern face of the Wall would give further protection. The Wall would be punctuated by small fortresses, one every mile, and broken further by turrets, two between each pair of mile-forts, to provide signal points and massing positions. There would be gates in each of the mile-forts so that the Wall could be made as permeable or as closed as local commanders desired.

There could be no doubt that the Wall would be a magnificent piece of engineering, and Brigonius could see that Hadrian and several of his courtiers were immediately taken by Xander, his beautiful model, and his compelling vision. But others raised objections.

The first to speak was Aulus Platorius Nepos, Britain's new governor. He pointed out some of the practicalities of building this monument. Under Hadrian in Britain there were three legions and sixty-five auxiliary units, some fifty-three thousand men in all. All three legions would be devoted to building the Wall-say fifteen thousand men. Nepos swept a hand over the model. 'But all of this must be completed in three years, no more. My question to you is-are you sure of your calculations? Is this feasible in the time with the available manpower?'

Brigonius thought he understood why three years; a governor's term was usually no longer, and Nepos would surely want to see the Wall finished during his tenure. But Xander seemed shocked to hear this time limit; his mouth opened and closed. Recovering, he stood his ground and spoke clearly. 'We Greeks are famous for our arithmetic skills. I can assure you, sir, my calculations are sound.'

The next attack on the proposal came from a legate, the commander of one of the three legions currently stationed in Britain. He spoke of the border control that had already been set up under Trajan, along a line a few miles south of the proposed wall. Here, well-established forts, including Vindolanda, and connected by a good road, already served as a base for a rapid and flexible response to any trouble. Wouldn't it be better to reinforce that existing barrier rather than to start afresh?

Xander was no military man, and he was fortunate that the question got bogged down in discussions among Hadrian's own advisers, who plunged into an evidently ongoing argument about whether a purpose-planned barrier would provide a better long-term solution to the problem of the northern frontier. Hadrian let this discussion run for a while, but no conclusion was reached.

The final objection was raised, diffidently, by an older man, a seasoned soldier who had served in the north. He carefully pointed out that the proposed Wall would cut right through the homeland of the Brigantians. 'Now, the Brigantian nobles, the survivors anyhow, are powerful figures in the local government,' he said. 'They may not take kindly to having their fields sliced in two.'

But nobody among the courtiers took the objections of provincials very seriously.

Hadrian leaned forward, and everybody fell silent. He spoke in convoluted Greek, and Karus translated in whispers for Brigonius. 'He likes the idea. It is a bold statement. But he is a practical man who counts his sesterces. He built a barrier of turf and wood along the Rhine; would that not be adequate here? After all the threat from the northern British is not as severe as that from the Germans beyond the Rhine.'

It was the crucial objection, and Severa stood. Among the courtiers eyebrows were raised at a woman's intervention, but they let her speak. 'A wall of wood and grass will do for a German-but it would never have done for a Greek.' And she spoke of spectacular long walls the Greeks had built centuries ago, connecting places Brigonius had never heard of: from Athens to the Piraeus, and across narrow isthmuses such as at Corinth. 'The Wall will be in the best Greek tradition,' Severa said, 'but in its mile after mile of shining impenetrable stone it will be a truly Roman statement.' Xander who had whispered all this to her, looked pleased.

Hadrian looked impressed.

Karus's eyes were moist. He whispered to Brigonius, 'That mind, that fire-that heaving chest! Isn't she marvellous?'

The Emperor was tiring of business. The courtiers sat back, and to a burst of music a troupe of dancers, jugglers and acrobats exploded into the room.

Nepos approached Xander and clapped him on the back, a bold soldier's gesture that made the little architect flinch. He said in Latin, 'When I was governor of Thrace my province included such a wall, at Gallipoli. Six centuries old, the historians told me, and still standing today.' He turned back to the Emperor. 'You will indeed be building in a grand tradition, Little Greek!'

Hadrian smiled.

But that phrase of Nepos's-'little Greek'-shocked Severa. 'What did he call him?'

Nepos had used a Latin word: 'Graeculus', Greekling, Little Greek. 'It's just a nickname from Hadrian's childhood,' Karus said. 'He always had a passion for all things Greek, even then…'

Severa turned to her daughter, who looked as startled as her mother. 'Rome's great son has come to earth…A little Greek his name will be…A little Greek! That's what the prophecy says, mother. Oh, my eyes! It's coming true, it really is…'

The Emperor and his courtiers continued to chat with fascination over Xander's model, all unaware of the metaphysical shock among those who had proposed it.

And when Brigonius looked up he met the cold eyes of Primigenius. The freedman did not seem happy at this turn of events, not one bit.