Emperor

XII

The climax of Hadrian's visit to Eburacum was the twenty-fourth of June, a day of religious celebration for soldiers wherever they were posted across the empire. After this Hadrian would ride north and ceremonially install the first foundation stone of the great Wall which would soon divide the island of Britain in two.

Brigonius had been forced to learn a lot about the habits of his sole customer, the Roman army. A soldier's religious life was complicated. To begin with he brought along his own gods. A German here in Britain, for instance, celebrated his feast of Matronalia on the first of March. He would also be expected to pay respect to any local deities. The soldiers seemed to like Brigantia's own Coventina, and thanks to the army's mobility she was gaining adherents even overseas, in Gaul and Germany. But the soldiers' statues of her, crudely made, were alien in the eyes of the Brigantians, who found Coventina in the hills and the streams and in the wind, and did not recognise these busty Romanised cartoons.

The centre of a soldier's religious life, however, was a calendar based on feasts of the traditional Roman deities, principal city days, the anniversaries of the emperors, and dates associated with his unit itself. And of all the feasts on the calendar none was more significant than today, the twenty-fourth of June, the feast of Fors Fortuna, a popular goddess among the troops.

Brigonius had hoped to spend the day in the company of Lepidina. He wasn't sure what Severa's plans would be now, and how much more time he and Lepidina would have together. But as the day's festivities began Lepidina was nowhere to be found.

Then Severa herself peremptorily requisitioned him as an escort. Beside Severa, her face set as hard as Roman concrete, Brigonius found himself trailing the Emperor as he toured the troops.

Accompanied by his courtiers, Hadrian walked slowly from barracks block to training field, and inspected displays of infantry field manoeuvres and formation riding by cavalry units. It was a festival day, and the imperial party grew raucous on wine and British beer. Brigonius had a policy of staying sober around Romans, but Severa seemed determined to ply him with drink, and he saw no point in defying her. As the ale filled him even her company seemed less than icy.

Hadrian drank his share, but he remained focused on the part he was playing. He was good at detail; Brigonius heard him sympathise with one unit of mixed cavalry and infantry that it was harder for them to put on a spectacular display than for a dedicated cavalry unit with their larger numbers of horse. Each man seemed to grow in his presence, and Brigonius could see why he was so loved by his troops.

It wasn't a bad life, Brigonius was coming to think, to be a soldier of Rome. You received regular pay and reasonable food. You had camaraderie in the barracks, and there was always the civilian town outside your fort, with its shops and inns and brothels and temples, where you might find a little relief, or a companion who could one day become a wife. The barracks could be rife with lice, and the town with diseases. But you could get rid of the lice in the bath house, and if you got sick you could go to the hospital-the army ran the only professional hospitals in the world. You might go through your whole twenty-five-year career with only two or three campaigning seasons, and perhaps without seeing any fighting at all. You were almost certainly better off than the Brittunculi or other half-civilised provincials beyond the walls of your fort…And every so often an emperor came to visit.

Many of the troops had grown beards, in defiance of the usual Roman custom, imitating Hadrian's coin images. This amused Severa. 'Look at them. The Emperor's beard is more famous than he is!'

At noon the Emperor and his retinue, with Brigonius and Severa in tow, retired to the fortress's headquarters. Today the largest reception room in the block had been decked out as a shrine to many gods, and the party settled down to a long afternoon of eating, drinking and fortune-telling. At the inception of his mighty project Hadrian was seeking good auguries. Since dawn his philosophers had been inspecting the sky, looking for unusual clouds and the flight of birds with auspicious patterns. Now animals were put to death on charcoal braziers, entrails were prodded, statues venerated and libations poured, as scholars worked their way through scrolls of prophecies and interpretations.

Only the sinister freedman Primigenius sat aloof from it all, as always watching, watching.

With Severa at his side like a gaoler, Brigonius had nothing to do but drink. The chanting of the philosophers and the thickness of the air, cloudy with incense, made him feel as if he were floating out of his body. He tried to strike up conversation with Severa. 'Romans are always superstitious, aren't they?'

'None more than Hadrian,' she said. 'But it's not surprising. He is a soldier who has to come to terms with the prospect of becoming a god after he dies-indeed in Egypt they worship him already. How would that feel, Brigonius? Can you even imagine it? Wouldn't you be fascinated by past and future, if you felt you might some day transcend time itself?'

This kind of philosophising baffled Brigonius at the best of times; now the words flew around in his head. 'Superstitious or not, he's still a soldier. And you can see he still has the touch with his men.' He spotted Prefect Tullio sitting close to Governor Nepos. Tullio was silent, his face like thunder. 'But there's one soldier whose life doesn't seem to have been improved by the Emperor's visit.'

'Oh, things have gone slightly awry for our friend the prefect,' Severa said with silky satisfaction. 'He's still in his post. But he's lost a few of his privileges. His wife and kids have been kicked out of the fortress for a start.'

'Why?'

She inspected her fingers, long, perfectly manicured. 'Because of this solution you cooked up between you and your drinking pals. A Wall that is half stone, half turf.'

Brigonius knew how unhappy she had been with the deal, not least because it violated the terms of her Prophecy. 'Not quite half-'

'Shut up,' she said without emotion. 'I had no choice but to accept it. But it took me some effort to sell it to the Emperor-or, more specifically, the freedman Primigenius. I had to promise some favours.'

He asked uneasily, 'What favours?'

'And even then I found it necessary to shift some of the responsibility. I'm happy to say that it is our oafish Germanic friend Tullio who is taking the blame for fouling up the estimates for the Wall, not me, not Xander.'

Brigonius, his head full of beer fumes and smoke, felt as if he was about to pass out. 'That's unfair on Tullio. He's only trying to do his duty. And you have made an unnecessary enemy. That's a bad habit, Severa.'

'Of course it is unfair, which makes it all the sweeter. That'll teach him to call me "love".'

Something in her tone alarmed Brigonius, but he seemed unable to sit up. 'These favours you promised-'

Her face loomed before his eyes. 'You aren't completely incapable yet, are you, little Briton? The poison I've had dropped in your ale will soon grip you completely, though.'

'Poison?'

'Oh, it won't harm you. It will just be that for a sunset and a sunrise you won't be able to impose your will on your own body.' She ran a fingertip down his chest. 'How awful for you. But never mind, there is somebody else who will be able to make good use of your fine body while you're gone. You've guessed, have you? You're the favour, you see, to sweeten the deal you forced me to make. It's not my choice at all, oh no, it's simply a consequence of your own actions. You see that, don't you?'

Suddenly Brigonius remembered the way Hadrian had looked at him. Anger and fear flooded him, but still he couldn't move; he lolled on his couch, a helpless doll, his limbs heavy as logs. 'What have you done-have you promised me to Hadrian?'

Another face loomed over him now: pale skin, black eyes, lips like a wound.

Severa was whispering in his ear. 'Oh, not the Emperor-you aren't pretty or young enough for him-but Primigenius, who wields the power I needed. He has issues with our proposal, you know, for he has his own pet architect he hoped to promote. And then there is simple jealousy, of one bed-warmer for another. Primigenius lusts for you, yet hates you at the same time, for he knows you caught the Emperor's eye, if only briefly. Isn't that a paradox? Won't it add spice to the night you're about to spend together?' She came closer still; he could feel her breath on his ear, smell the spices on her tongue. 'And after he's split you open, o Brittunculus, my daughter will never touch you again.'

That red mouth descended towards him, but he couldn't move, couldn't struggle, couldn't even cry out.