Emperor (15 page)

VI

Lepidina led the two men down the stairs to the counter of the restaurant beneath Karus’s home. After being so subdued on the road, she seemed in her element now they were in a town.

‘Let’s leave my mother plenty of time for her “nap”,’ she said heavily.

Karus frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, come on, Karus! You know what a gambler she is. Within the hour she’ll be slipping out to find a bookmaker, and arguing about the odds on the next chariot race. She thinks I don’t know about it. But I don’t say anything, not as long as she keeps winning…Brigonius, you want to know how we eat? Oh, I have no money. Karus—’

With an elaborate sigh he produced some coins for her, and she turned to the counter.

Brigonius and Karus stood stiffly side by side. Then, as one, they turned to each other.

‘Look, Karus—’

‘Brigonius, I didn’t mean—’

They laughed, broke off, and Karus started again. ‘It looks as if we’re going to be working together, perhaps for years if all goes well. So we shouldn’t let a gorgeous but silly girl lead us both around like two stallions on heat. I mean, it’s not to say that I wouldn’t–if she chose–to tell you the truth I think I prefer the mother, now I’ve met her–that proud bust of hers, and the way she walks -’ He stumbled to a halt. ‘Isn’t she marvellous?’

‘We should keep love and work apart,’ Brigonius said firmly.

‘Or at least we can try,’ Karus murmured.

Lepidina returned with a handful of food. ‘Here,’ she said, handing some of it to Brigonius. ‘You see? You don’t have to cook for yourself, you buy!’

The food turned out to be a patty of ground pork, stuffed in the middle of a slab of bread. The meat was well-cooked and flavoured with onions. Brigonius took a bite. ‘Might be better if it was beef.’

Karus said around a mouthful, ‘Oh, Romans don’t much like beef. Or mutton. Barbarian foods, they say.’

‘The soldiers at Vindolanda eat plenty of it.’

‘They’re probably all provincials themselves.’

Already Brigonius had finished his meal. ‘Is that it?’

‘I’ll buy you more later. Come on, let’s go to the forum and do some shopping.’ Lepidina took his hand–then, judiciously, Karus’s too–and they walked along the street.

The roads were paved, with gutters running down either side; the stonework was good, Brigonius noted. Along with the people animals thronged the streets–chickens, pigs, and many dogs. This was still a town for farmers. Most of the buildings were wattle and daub, like Karus’s apartment building, though one or two of the grander houses were built in stone. Most buildings were one-storey private houses, but some had their fronts opened out, like Karus’s restaurant, to reveal workshops where pottery was thrown, iron worked, glass poured, cloth woven.

Some of the images on the walls were there to show you what kind of workshop or store this was: cartoon potters turned their wheels, women displayed gaudy jewellery, and the taverns were marked by fat, merry drinkers. Even the brothels had their insignia, stick figures in remarkably inventive postures that Brigonius tried not to stare at. The lettering on the walls sometimes told you who lived here or what they did. Some of it, rougher carvings, was more casual, prayers, insults, curses. And some of it, lauding the Reds, Blues and Yellows, baffled Brigonius altogether. Karus said it was to do with support of the main teams of charioteers in the races. The various factions worshipped their heroes and loathed each other, and rioted on race nights.

Outside one store stood a large pot into which a burly man was noisily pissing; steam rose up from the pot’s neck.

Karus watched Brigonius’s expression with amusement. ‘This is a fuller’s; he will use the urine he collects from passers-by to fix his dye. I don’t cook in my apartment, and neither do I piss.’

Brigonius grunted, unimpressed. ‘And who collects your shit?’

Karus grinned. ‘Funny you should ask that.’

They came to a locked door fronting an enclosed hall. Karus produced a low-denomination coin and dropped it into a slot. He pulled levers on the lock mechanism until the coin was swallowed up, and with a satisfying clunk the lock came free.

Karus opened the door to reveal a latrine. Over two rows of holes in the floor people sat on wooden benches, men, women and children alike. Some read letters on bits of wood, others talked, some gambled over dice on the floor between them. One man was bending over to wipe his arse with a bit of sponge on a stick. There was a predictable stink, but it wasn’t as bad as Brigonius might have thought–and then he heard a gurgle of water coming from beneath the holes.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘A stream runs beneath to take the shit away. Cunning.’

Karus shrugged. ‘More likely the water is piped here from the river to the north. Public water supply, you see. You’d have to ask an engineer; I’m no expert.’

They walked on. They passed a baths–unfinished, but in use, and quite unmistakable to Brigonius from its musty, boggy smell, just like the soldiers’ baths at Vindolanda.

They reached the marketplace. Lepidina, with a squeal of excitement, begged more money from Karus. Soon she was working her way through stalls heaped with jewellery and little bottles of perfume and hair oil. The men walked on.

Once more Brigonius felt overwhelmed. Compared to the rough-and-ready market that had grown up outside the Vindolanda fort there was a bewildering array of goods for sale here: cosmetics of all sorts in little glass jars and bottles, silver and copper pins and brooches, plates and bowls and tiles, stalls heaped with shoes of stitched leather. There were bakers and vendors of broiled meat, and the heat of their ovens turned the air ferociously hot. There were even moneylenders, bankers and lawyers–and many, many bookmakers.

Shoppers thronged. There were plenty of Catuvellaunians, of course. But Brigonius saw Germans and Gauls of the kind the army was full of, and still more exotic types with very pale skin, or very dark, who sold wines and spices for exorbitant prices. They were traders from perhaps far across the empire or even beyond, come here to this corner of Britain to sell their wares. Everyone seemed confident here, happily buying and selling, all of them at home in a place where they knew the rules, all save Brigonius.

And beggars crowded around every stall, silently pleading for change. There were no beggars in Banna; people looked after their own. Brigonius wondered what old Cunobelin would have thought of what had become of his descendants.

More public buildings surrounded the forum. Karus led Brigonius to a great hall whose unfinished walls rose above the heads of the shoppers. They walked through a colonnade of pillars and over a stone floor that was, as yet, unroofed. Brigonius saw that the floor was weather-stained; evidently the building had been in this half-finished state for some time.

‘This will be the basilica,’ Karus said. ‘The great folk of the town will run their local government from here–they will collect the taxes for one thing, and bundle them all off down to Londinium for the procurator to count up.’ The construction of the building was proceeding only as the funds became available, so was taking a long time. ‘Still, this is the task of our generation. Our fathers set out the town. Now we must build it.’

Brigonius frowned. ‘I think I imagined the Emperor would pay for all this.’

Karus pursed his lips. ‘Not a bit of it. We enjoy the fruits of Roman civilisation but we must pay for it ourselves. Which we do, of course, gladly. You know, Brigonius, if you’re to become a rich man you’ll have to learn about how to handle your wealth. To begin with you must
have
wealth–the more the better. From wealth flows power and status; with wealth you are a source of patronage. Second, you mustn’t flaunt your wealth. Oh, spend it, yes; make sure people know you have it–but in a restrained way. And you must be sure you invest your wealth in projects for the public good, like this basilica. Paradoxical, isn’t it? But Romans are paradoxical folk, in many ways.’

The lawyer seemed to have opened up to Brigonius during this brief walk. ‘You know, Brigonius, I’m not much of one for reflection. Live for the day, I say, for yesterday is irrelevant, and tomorrow may never come! But one thing I’ve enjoyed about Severa’s correspondence is her sense of perspective–of history. Just think, a hundred years ago there was no city like this, no building remotely like this roofless basilica, not anywhere in Britain. They’ve all sprung up like mushrooms. My grandfather was a hunter. He wore moleskins on his feet, stuffed with bird feathers. Now look at me, his grandson! I’m a lawyer. I go to work in an office in a block several storeys high, with windows of glass. I buy my food from vendors, my coins operate locks on latrines–and stamped on every coin is an uplifting message from the Emperor himself. Somehow the Prophecy has enabled Severa to
see
all this, to see these great changes, as if she is standing outside history altogether.’

But Brigonius pulled on his beard, unconvinced. He thought of his northern home, where the people herded their cattle just as they had always done–as indeed the mass of people even in the south still scraped at the soil. This heaped-up wonder of stone and commerce was a fragile, light confection, he thought, built on the extraction of wealth from farmers to whose lives the Roman presence hardly made any difference at all.

‘And if it all should end, as fast as it has arisen–what then?’

Karus grinned. ‘Then I’d be in trouble. I’m not my grandfather–I couldn’t make myself a pair of shoes! But it’s not going to end, is it? Severa’s Prophecy ensures us of that.’

‘Karus, this business of Severa and the stone wall–she is a gambler, you know, just as Lepidina says.’

‘I know. But in the game to come the Prophecy is her loaded die, I think.’

They emerged from the incomplete building and walked on past a large semicircular theatre, and came to a broad square paved with stone. And here rose up the grandest building of all. Clad in shining marble it was a temple built in the Roman fashion, with a double colonnade and a terracotta roof. A flight of steps led up to an open interior where Brigonius glimpsed a mighty statue of bronze, many times life-size.

He stood and stared, astounded by the temple’s scale. Even its base, a mighty slab of concrete poured into the sandy earth, was stupendous, surely unmatched by anything that had existed in Britain before the Romans.

‘This is the Temple of Claudius, built to honour the deified Emperor.’ Karus shook his head. ‘Astonishing, isn’t it? I’ve grown up with it, but even now it astounds me. In fact it’s talked of even in Rome, where they’ve seen everything.’

Brigonius thought of the wealth and labour this huge structure must have sucked up. ‘I’m surprised this could be afforded.’

‘Well, perhaps it couldn’t,’ Karus murmured. ‘The Romans don’t make you any richer, after all; they just tax you. The Temple always caused great resentment. Boudicca came here and burned it to the ground–along with the veterans and their families who had sheltered inside. When she was put down they built the walls around the town, and the Temple was reconstructed, bigger and better and more expensive than ever. But it was built on ash, and charred pots and burned bones. Makes you think.’

Lepidina came running up. She showed off a new necklace and a comb for her mother’s hair, and both men made appreciative noises. ‘So what do you think of Camulodunum, Brigonius?’

Brigonius peered up at the Temple’s cold, beautiful lines. How could this be a holy place? His ancestors had lived close to the earth, and the divine had been an integral part of an ancient way of life. To them wood was alive, stone was dead. The stone town that was rising here was like a vast tomb.

He looked into Lepidina’s excited, sparkling eyes, his feelings deep and confused, regretting that he couldn’t share her joy. He merely said, ‘It’ll look good when it’s finished.’

The lawyer turned away. Perhaps Karus detected his true mood.

Lepidina impulsively ruffled Brigonius’s beard. ‘If you’re living in a Roman town you have to look like a Roman. I found a barber in the middle of the forum.’

Brigonius held back. ‘Not my beard. You’re not taking my beard.’

Lepidina pouted. ‘Your hair, then. That mane could do with a good shearing. The barber is good; he knows the latest fashions.’

‘How do you know
that
?’

Lepidina held up a coin, imprinted with a picture of the Emperor and his coiffed hair. ‘How do you think? Come
on
.’ She dragged Brigonius back towards the forum. Like a hound submitting to the feeble pull of a puppy, Brigonius followed.

VII

A day after the arrival of Hadrian’s caravan at Camulodunum, Severa and her tame architect were to present their case for a stone wall across the northern boundary of the province. It would be in the course of a grand meal to be hosted by one of Camulodunum’s wealthier citizens, Marcus Claudius Verecundus. It took Severa only days to win Verecundus’s confidence and set this up. ‘She really is a charmer, and so good at getting her foot in the door,’ Karus said admiringly. ‘Isn’t she marvellous?’

Brigonius had no idea what to expect of this occasion. He had met plenty of Romans, but in his line of work, selling his cut stone, he dealt only with soldiers. Hadrian ruled the world, and was worshipped as a god by millions of people; surely nothing about dealing with such a being was going to be normal.

On the day of the meal Brigonius arrived early at Verecundus’s home. Planted square in the centre of the town, it was a sprawling complex of buildings. Brigonius wandered, somewhat bemused, awkward in his clean tunic. Other guests circulated, citizens all, mostly dressed in the Roman style. Brigonius exchanged wary nods, but he felt he was making few friends.

The heart of the house was an atrium, an open area flagged by stone but set with beds of flowers. There were benches to sit on, statues and wall carvings to admire, and even a small fountain to gawp at. Brigonius, always fascinated by stonework, architecture and engineering, was impressed to learn that the fountain ran purely from the pressure of the water supplied by the town’s public system.

The atrium was enclosed on three sides by a colonnade of slim pillars, and beyond that were the main buildings. Inside, the space was divided up in the usual Roman way into square rooms with different purposes, from reception rooms set out with low couches and tables, offices crammed with scrolls and tablets, and a grand kitchen with a huge hearth over which pots and kettles were suspended on chains. There was even a small bath house, with a boiler under the heated floor.

Slaves stood in every corner, bearing trays of food and drink. All very young, with their hair dyed blond and piled up on their heads, the barefoot slaves shivered in their skimpy clothing.

Given Karus’s regular complaints about how expensive land now was in the town, Brigonius deduced that Verecundus’s spread was a sign of old wealth; his ancestors must have got here first. And indeed it turned out that Verecundus’s grandfather had been a soldier who had come over to Britain in the first wave of Claudius’s invasion. On retirement after twenty-five years’ service Verecundus’s ancestor had chosen to settle here, in a colony of veterans planted as a kind of military reserve in unstable territory. But though Verecundus’s house was grand in Brigonius’s eyes, it wasn’t terribly ostentatious, Karus told him. Perhaps something of Verecundus’s austere military ancestry lingered in his blood.

Brigonius was relieved to find the two rooms Severa’s party had been allocated. Severa and her daughter were sharing one room, while the other was shared by Brigonius, Karus and Severa’s architect, Xander. But there was no space for Brigonius. Xander, a small, fat, fussy Greek, was assembling an elaborate architectural model with the help of a hapless slave who seemed able to do nothing right, and the floor was covered by green-painted plaster hills, blue-ribbon rivers, and toy-like forts and turrets. When Brigonius nearly wiped out a fortress by stepping on it, Xander chased him out in a flurry of Greek.

So Brigonius made his way to the room shared by Severa and her daughter. Furnished with two couches and a variety of low tables and cupboards, the room was strewn with clothes. Severa wasn’t there–but Lepidina sat with her back to the door, facing a mirror. Brigonius, holding his breath, stood and watched.

Lepidina had opened her tunic and pushed it back so her shoulders were bare, and her hair was roughly tied up. She was applying cream to her face, scooping it up from a tin jar with her fingers and smoothing it onto her cheeks. With her clothing disarrayed, and her loose-limbed movements as she quietly massaged her flesh, she had an air of abandonment.

Of course she knew he was there. ‘You may as well come in, Brigonius, and have a proper look.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’ She ducked so she could see him in her mirror, and smiled. ‘I’m getting myself ready to be seen, after all.’ She patted a couch beside her dressing table, and he sat down. ‘I suppose all this seems terribly exotic to a rough-hewn barbarian like you. Decadent!’

He glanced over her grooming kit, touching bronze tweezers, nail cleaners and nail files, a toothpick, an ear scoop. This was a kit for travelling; the tools had holes so they could be looped onto a carrying ring. There was a range of pots, but not terribly many: tins of white cream, rouge, powders black as coal, and glass bottles of scent. ‘This isn’t so much,’ he said. ‘I’ve met hairy-arsed Roman soldiers with more stuff.’

‘This travel kit was my great-grandmother’s, Agrippina’s. It is very well made and it still works perfectly well.’

Again she struck him as deeply sensible, under her flighty surface. It only added to her appeal for him.

‘Here.’ She dug out a little of the white cream and raised her fingers to his face to rub the cream into his cheek. ‘How does that feel?’

‘It’s pleasant.’ So it was. The cream was smooth, and cold at first, but soon warmed on his skin, and as she rubbed it in further he felt a powdery, gritty texture. ‘What’s it made of?’

She shrugged. ‘Animal fat, I think. Starch. And some complicated compound of tin.’

‘Tin? I thought Roman ladies used lead on their faces.’

‘Oh, that’s very old-fashioned. Lead’s poisonous–didn’t you know?’

She continued to rub cream into his cheek, and he relished the warmth of her touch, the close sweetness of her breath on his face. But he pulled back. ‘Perhaps that’s enough.’

‘Oh, but this is just the start. This is a foundation cream which will make my skin glow like a marble statue. Then I’ll apply rouge and mascara–this is burned rose petals, see?–to highlight my cheeks and eyes. I will whiten my teeth with powdered pumice, and sprinkle my neck with perfume–this one is my favourite, myrrh mixed with spices.’

He took her hand in his, silencing her. The bones of her fingers felt fragile, like a baby bird’s, and her skin was pale against his. Compared to his earthy darkness she was like a ghost, he thought.

She leaned a little closer to him; her face, a perfect oval, filled his vision, and her lips brushed his. ‘I bet you don’t even shave your chest, do you, Brigantius-Brigonius?’

He hesitated for one heartbeat. If she was toying with him, tormenting a clumsy barbarian, he was about to be humiliated. But it was worth the risk. He slid his hand around her waist. ‘Why don’t you find out?’

She came at him like a wave breaking, and their mouths locked.