Emperor

XXI

Three days later Galba Iulius Sabinus convened what he called a 'necessary meeting' on the matter of Claudia Severa.

Brigonius wanted nothing to do with it. He would have preferred Severa to pass through Brigantia and on again without his ever seeing her. But to his dismay he found he was summoned to the 'meeting'-and at the behest of Severa herself.

The meeting was held in the fort's office of sign-bearers. The little room, cluttered with records of soldiers' pay and savings and other military incidentals, was cramped, awkward. Oil lamps had been set out on the low tables to dispel the gloom of the poky room, and their sooty smoke flavoured the air. Small statues of Antinous, beautiful boy and lover of Hadrian, filled alcoves on the walls.

Brigonius found himself a place on a couch next to the prefect's aides. Severa wasn't here; she was late.

The prefect of Banna, Tullio's successor, was here with some of his aides, as was Primigenius, the shadow-thin freedman. Sabinus was the only man in a toga. He looked as if he never appeared in public without one these days.

Lepidina attended, apparently as reluctantly as Brigonius. She was dressed in what he thought of as her Roman 'uniform' of fine clothes, cosmetics and sculpted hair. The sturdy Brigantian woman he had glimpsed during that morning ride along the Wall might never have existed. She was at Sabinus's side, of course; she belonged there. But she smiled at Brigonius.

As they waited for the accused to show up Brigonius listened to the soldiers gossiping about dice games. The principals in the case, himself and Sabinus, Primigenius and Lepidina, were no more talkative than the many statues of Antinous.

Brigonius understood the game to be played out today. He knew from his own dealings with Roman law that all emperors were suspicious of rival centres of power. That included private enterprises such as his own partnership, the quarry business, whose operations were tightly controlled by contract law, and watched over by the provincial procurator. And this emperor in particular had an obsession with foretelling. In the harshness of his latter reign, consulting prophecies had become a sign of unhealthy ambition; it was said that Hadrian had had one of his own young relatives put to death for such a transgression.

You could see all this as a symptom of the Emperor's own decay, he thought. Just like all these statues of Antinous.

After two decades Hadrian would leave behind much to be admired. He had rebuilt his empire. Brigonius knew farmers who spoke admiringly of another of Hadrian's projects, lesser known than the Wall if no less mighty in scale: after his visit to Britain he had had drained much of the fenland in the east of the island, in the old homeland of the Iceni, opening up hundreds of miles of wholly new land for cultivation.

But as Hadrian had aged his contradictory characteristics had become ever more pronounced. He had always been drawn to the east rather than the west, even though his own family had come from Iberia. In lands where he was already worshipped as a god, perhaps he began to conceive of himself as a monarch as aloof as the pharaohs had once been. Good Romans muttered that this went against the spirit of their enterprising city and its roots in the noisy democracies of Greece. And more practically, if the centre of the empire moved eastward, Brigonius mused, what would become of Britain, its most western extremity?

It had been the death of one of the Emperor's favourites, the beautiful youth called Antinous, which many believed to have been the turning point of his reign. Antinous had drowned in the Nile, during one of Hadrian's trips to Egypt. The death seemed to have unbalanced Hadrian. Suddenly you saw dedications to his lost Antinous appearing everywhere, in frescoes, mosaics and statues, on vases and on coins, in miniatures and in mimes. You couldn't escape his beautiful face even here, in this soldiers' corner of Britain.

It was said that Hadrian, always obsessed by his own death and subsequent immortality, was trying to create a god in the person of Antinous. It was ironic that, as Lepidina had said long ago, if Hadrian had only turned to the one mystery cult he had always rejected-Christianity-he might have found the theological solace that he sought, and on learning of a god made man in Jesus, he might not have needed to soothe his own pain by turning a man into a god.

But none of that justified the savagery of Hadrian's latter years. In the east the Jews had risen again, once more challenging the very identity of the empire, and this supposedly tolerant, inclusive Emperor had put them down every bit as brutally as the conqueror Trajan. This harshness had trickled down into every corner of life-and even here, at the very edge of the empire, it was this harshness that was now to be turned on Claudia Severa.

At last Severa entered the room, and the desultory conversations died.

Sabinus rose and bowed. 'Claudia Severa. Welcome.'

Severa was dressed plainly, in a simple turquoise robe and head scarf. Now in her late fifties she had aged well, Brigonius thought, though her hair, pulled back from her face, was a helmet of silver-grey. But her eyes were just as dead and cold as he remembered.

He was surprised when, without speaking, Severa crossed the room and came to sit beside him.

Brigonius looked into his own heart, and found that on seeing this woman for the first time in sixteen years his anger burned more fiercely than ever. 'Why did you call me, Claudia Severa?'

She raised dyed eyebrows. 'Why did you come?'

'Do you imagine I am your friend?'

'No. I have few friends. But I need someone to support me today. You have no reason to love me, Brigonius, I know that. But I have dealt with you on business matters these last two decades and I know you to be an honest man.' Even now she was arrogant, faintly mocking.

'I would not see even you sit alone in a time of trial, Claudia Severa. But don't read any more into it than that.'

'I wouldn't dream of it.'

Sabinus cleared his throat. 'Perhaps we should start-'

'Start what?' Severa snapped, immediately on the attack. 'Is this a court, Iulius Sabinus?'

Primigenius stood up, cadaver-thin. 'I believe we are all hoping to avoid the necessity of a trial, madam. But there is unpleasantness to be dealt with nevertheless.'

Severa snorted. 'I wonder if you can speak one word truthfully, you snake.'

Sabinus snapped, 'Let's get this over.'

From a table before him Primigenius picked up a battered leather wallet. 'Do you recognise this?' He opened it and withdrew a document. It was a parchment, worn with age. It bore only a few lines, Brigonius could see, written out in an awkward hand.

He did not need Lepidina's gasp to tell him what it was.

Severa asked menacingly, 'How did you get that?' She turned and swept her glare around the room. 'Which of you is the frumentarius who rummaged through an old woman's belongings?' There was an uncomfortable silence. The frumentarii were one of Hadrian's more unwelcome and un-Roman innovations, a secret police force he used against rivals and enemies.

When nobody answered Sabinus said sternly, 'Madam, what is important now is not how this document was obtained but what it contains.'

'It is a prophecy,' Primigenius said. He paraded it around the room as if displaying it to a court. 'It has been in the lady's family for generations. It was in her possession long before the Emperor came to Britain. And, look here.' He read out the crucial lines, about the little Greek, the noose of stone. 'This lady believed herself in possession of a prophecy which foretold the Emperor's decision to build the Wall. And she resolved she was going to use it to make herself rich.' He pointed an accusing finger at Severa. 'Tell us this document is a forgery, madam, a clumsy fake.'

Brigonius saw that in fact this was a way out for Severa; if she denied the Prophecy was genuine then she would be portrayed as a foolish old woman who merely got lucky, and she might, might walk out of here without a severe punishment. But she would not do this; Primigenius evidently knew her and her pride well.

Severa said coolly, 'Get to the point, you ridiculous snake. What is it you are accusing me of?'

'Why, of keeping from the Emperor what is rightfully his,' Primigenius said, as if it were obvious. 'If you believed this document had truly prophetic powers you should have given it up at once. The Emperor's advisers might have made use of it to advance the cause of the empire, and of the Emperor himself. Instead you kept its secret to yourself, didn't you? And you hoped to use it to amass wealth for yourself-wealth that should be the Emperor's.'

Severa turned away from Primigenius, as if in disgust, and addressed Sabinus. 'Son-in-law, you are a senator now. Can you not think for yourself? Can't you see what is happening here? All this business of secrets and lies, of jealousy and theft-it is the paranoia of the Emperor writ large, as if we were all living inside his head!'

Lepidina had her eyes downcast. She had never reminded Brigonius more of the subdued girl of the days of her visit to the north. 'Mother, I don't imagine that insulting the Emperor is going to help your case.'

'What case?' Severa shouted. 'I ask you again, Sabinus-am I on trial here?'

'Enough,' Primigenius said sharply. 'I take it you don't deny the charge I have made against you.' Without giving her a chance to answer he turned to Sabinus. 'Senator, I suggest we cut this short and proceed to the matter of her repentance.'

Severa snapped, 'And what is this repentance? More euphemisms?'

Sabinus said heavily, 'Madam, it is this or a full trial. This or the penalty of the state. This or the Emperor's wrath.'

She glared at him, but fell silent. Sabinus nodded to Primigenius.

The freedman produced a wax tablet. 'I have had your finances investigated, Claudia Severa. Thanks to this Prophecy of yours you have made yourself wealthy. I am not vindictive; none of us is. I propose that it will be a sufficient act of redemption for you to pledge all you have earned to the Emperor.'

'All I have earned?'

Primigenius read out a quick summary of his estimation, and then gave a total: 'In excess of one million sesterces.'

There was a startled silence. It was a total, Brigonius knew, equivalent to the property requirement of a senator in Rome.

'Your estimate is excessive,' Severa said.

'Well, you would say that, wouldn't you?' Primigenius tapped his wax tablet with a manicured forefinger. 'But it's all here.'

'Whatever is true,' Sabinus said, 'if you can pay this sum to the imperial treasury, mother-in-law, then no more will be said.'

'I cannot,' she said. 'Even if I had earned all that I could not, for much of it is spent.'

'On luxuries?' Primigenius scoffed.

'On my children,' Severa said.

At that word Lepidina looked up, shocked. Brigonius had thought she was an only child; evidently Lepidina had thought so too. What was this mention of children?…

Primigenius was closing in for the kill, and his words, delivered steadily, were relentless. 'Then from this moment on you are a debtor, madam. And you can't cover your debts, can you? You know the law. You will have to sell everything you own. But even that will not be enough, will it? You will have to sell yourself. You will end your days a slave. For that is the law.'

Lepidina shuddered, and Brigonius knew that if not for her own marriage she would have shared her mother's fate.

But Severa was not defeated yet. 'This has nothing to do with the Emperor, does it? This is all because I out-manoeuvred you over the building of the Wall all those years ago, Primigenius. Have you waited this long for revenge? Do you have a list of victims you score off one by one as the years go by?'

' "Children",' Lepidina said slowly. 'You said "children" '.' She looked up at her mother with grave eyes.

Severa took a breath. 'All right. I have a son. A marriage before your father, Lepidina. He was a fool, a drunkard, he got himself killed in a brawl. The son he left me isn't much better. But he is your half-brother, and he has children of his own. My grandchildren. I support them, Lepidina. And if I can't do that any more-'

Primigenius eyed Lepidina. 'Are these grandchildren pretty? They may fetch a better price than a leathery old boot like you.'

Lepidina said coldly, 'You have always manipulated me. You have used me to further your own ends. Now I learn you have lied to me, all my life.'

Severa said, 'Lepidina, regardless of the past, help me now.'

Lepidina turned away.

Primigenius tutted softly. 'More enemies, Severa. Even among your own blood?'

Severa turned to Brigonius. 'You are a decent man. Help me.'

Brigonius recoiled. But he reminded himself that beneath her hard skin there beat a human heart-and she was Lepidina's mother. He said to the freedman, 'She may hold assets your list does not cover, Primigenius. She has invested in my own partnership, for instance.'

Sabinus leaned forward. 'Perhaps you're unfamiliar with the finer points of Roman law, Brigonius.' He seemed pleased to be able to put this old lover of Lepidina's in his place. 'If one is in debt one cannot sell on shares. So her holding in your partnership, and any others, is worthless to her. Do you understand, Brigonius? Do you have anything else to say?'

Even now Severa was unable to look Brigonius in the eye.

And as Brigonius hesitated Primigenius leered at him. 'Don't let her sell you to me again, Brittunculus. Once was enough.'

Brigonius stared at Primigenius and promised himself that he would, some day, somehow, take his own revenge on the freedman. He said, 'You always did make unnecessary enemies, Claudia Severa. It is a character flaw.'

Severa sneered and turned away. Even now she retained her composure. 'Primigenius, you will not win, whatever you do to me. You are a slave, the son of a slave. I am more than that; my family is more. Our future is secured whatever you do to me, for we have the Prophecy.'

The freedman grinned. 'Oh, this old thing?' He held the Prophecy casually, waving it in the air-and he wafted it over the naked flame of a lamp. 'But your grandchildren will have no need of prophecies. As slaves they will never make a decision for themselves again. Besides, in a generation or two your descendants will be illiterate. Whatever is not written down cannot survive.' He began to feed the Prophecy into the flame. 'And the last vestige of this dreadful old curse will be gone for ever.'

Brigonius saw how the burning Prophecy's flame lit up the horrified eyes of Lepidina. And Severa's face showed grief, guilt, and fear-fear of a future now forever unknown.