Emperor (32 page)

Londinium as the capital of the Roman empire! The thought was so breathtaking it silenced them for a moment–and Isolde knew it wasn’t such a terribly implausible idea. After all many of the usurpers of the last few decades before the final British Revolution had tried to set up a separatist empire of the western provinces.

‘But I don’t see what difference any of this talking makes,’ Maria said now. ‘Maybe things could have been different if somebody had done this instead of that–but so what? What’s done is done. The past may have been malleable for those who lived in it, Nennius, but to us it is surely fixed.’

‘Ah, but is it?’ Nennius asked. ‘Have you read what Augustine has said of eternity–in between his diatribes against Pelagius, that is? God is eternal, not time-bound as we are. He is
supreme above time
–I think that was the phrase. And to Him past, present and future coexist in one timeless moment. And if that is so, isn’t it possible that God could intervene in the past as well as in the future?’

Tarcho pulled his moustache. ‘Ah. I think I see where you’re going with this, cousin.’

Nennius nodded. ‘This is why I came here. We must talk of the Prophecy of Nectovelin.’ And he pulled parchments from the leather case on the table before him.

IV

Nennius sketched the history of the Prophecy: how it had been uttered by Nectovelin’s mother during his birth, how it appeared to predict events that occurred during the reigns of Claudius, Hadrian and Constantine. A trace of it had survived, as tattoos on the skin of generations of slaves, all the way down to Audax himself. But apart from that it had been lost to history–perhaps.

‘I have this,’ Nennius said, brandishing one of his documents, a dog-eared scroll. ‘It is a memoir of the Emperor Claudius, who, it seems, actually saw the Prophecy for himself. This book was my father’s, in fact, given to him by Audax, and he left it to me on his death. The Prophecy as Claudius describes it had sixteen lines, and though he doesn’t reproduce it here–he seems to assume his readers would have it available–he summarises most of it well enough to reconstruct.

‘This story of the Prophecy has fascinated me ever since I was a boy and heard it at my grandfather’s knee. It is about emperors, you see, three emperors of Rome who would come to Britain. And it contains a crucial passage on Constantine. From my reading–and what my grandfather told me of the events of his own youth–it implored the reader to kill the Emperor! I believe that the assassination of Constantine was the
purpose
of the Prophecy. All the rest of it, predictions about Claudius’s invasion and the building of the Wall, were included only as proof of the Prophecy’s authenticity. They were there to make those who owned the Prophecy in Constantine’s day take its mandate seriously.

‘But these are only guesses. How I long to know more! I have written down my own reconstruction of the piece–here, somewhere…’ He scrambled in his bag, producing more bits of parchment. ‘But the last few lines are not recoverable from Claudius’s memoir, for he seems uninterested in them. He describes them only as “maunderings on freedom and the rights of peoples”.’

Maria said, ‘You spoke of God having the power to rewrite the past. Are you suggesting God himself ordered our family to kill an emperor?’

Nennius struggled to reply. ‘Surely not God–but if God has such powers, who’s to say that humans won’t be able to emulate Him some day?
What if it was a man
, a man or woman of our time–or even of our own future–who, through the power of prayer, reached back to meddle with the past through the Prophecy? The family legend is of a Weaver, who stands outside the tapestry of time and can pluck at the courses of our lives as if they were mere thread.’

Tarcho said, ‘And if he did, this Weaver–what was the point? Why murder Constantine?’

‘To save Christianity,’ Nennius said briskly. ‘That was clearly the meaning our grandfather and his companions extracted from the surviving acrostic. If Constantine had died then, he could not have corrupted Christianity into an arm of the state–and it would not have become as intolerant as it has. There would have been no persecution of one Christian by another, no hounding of a thinker like Pelagius.’

Tarcho nodded. ‘So Christians of the future tried to have Constantine killed, and their faith restored to a lost purity. Is that what you’re getting at?’

‘Yes,’ Nennius said. ‘Well, perhaps. I don’t know! I am reconstructing events of centuries ago, and the mysterious motives of figures behind them, without even having available the primary evidence, the Prophecy itself.’

Tarcho frowned. ‘It all sounds a bit devilish to me.’

Maria mused, ‘But if you had such power, if you could deflect history–why use it that way? The Church is surviving even where the empire isn’t–like here, in Britain. It’s like a suit of clothes worn over the body of the empire, still standing even though the skeleton within has rotted away. If I could change history, I wouldn’t worry about the Church, for the Church is robust enough to withstand the meddling of a thousand Constantines. I think I would find a way to hurry up the day when Britain returns to Rome.’

Nennius nodded sagely. ‘Of course. Britain has always been part of the Roman world. It is only a matter of time—’

Tarcho snapped, ‘No. It’s different now. Rome is the last of a line of antique empires that go back to Alexander. But the world has changed, and Rome has had its day. If the Caesars ever do come back they won’t be welcomed.’ He eyed Nennius. ‘You know, you should stay here, cousin. Here in Brigantia. Our family has been many things, soldiers, stonemasons and scholars. But at heart we have always been Brigantians.’

Nennius frowned. ‘But Aeneas of Troy came to Britain and—’

Tarcho waved a hand. ‘Forget that garbage. Here in the north, we haven’t forgotten who we are. Our grandfather Audax grew up a slave, yet he remembered he was a Brigantian. And now the Romans have gone we’re in a position to restore Brigantia to her old power. Think of that. Why not an empire of the Brigantians this time–and with us at the top? Why, we could take on the Caesars themselves.’ His eyes gleamed.

Isolde wondered what the Duke of the Britains and the Eburacum government would have to say about such an ambition. And Nennius looked confused. Isolde knew that exiled Britons in Rome boasted that they were descended from Trojans who had fled the Greek siege, and that such groupings as ‘Brigantians’ were just artificial labels, imposed by the Romans for their administrative usefulness.

Was the future to resemble the past, then? Would Rome return, as Maria seemed to hope? Or, if they ever existed, could Tarcho’s old erased nations really be reborn? And what of all the Saxons milling around in the south? They weren’t going to disappear. She had a feeling that the future would be much more complicated than either Maria or Tarcho imagined, or hoped for–complicated, and bloodier—

That was when she felt the first contraction. She bit her lip and bent forward, clutching her belly.

Maria leaned forward. ‘Isolde! Are you all right?’

Typically, Nennius didn’t even notice his daughter’s difficulty, and nor did Tarcho. ‘We must talk of my purpose here,’ Nennius said. ‘My grandfather told me about the Prophecy. He had decided our family must remember the truth about itself. But the Prophecy, of course, was lost.
Or was it
?

‘I simply couldn’t believe no copy exists! Claudius hints of a copy placed among the ancient Sibylline oracles. I looked there–but Stilicho, Honorius’s Vandal general, had the oracles destroyed decades ago.’

‘And so,’ Tarcho said, ‘you wrote to me.’

Nennius sat up on his couch, intent. ‘I know what meticulous record-keepers you army types have always been, Tarcho. It was here that the Prophecy’s original was, supposedly, destroyed. But, I wondered, couldn’t a copy of it have survived
here
, deep in some old vault? Wouldn’t the tidy, indeed superstitious, mind of a soldier have ensured that much? And so I wrote to you, and asked you to search in advance of my visit–and, well, here I am. Come now, cousin, stop teasing me! Tell me if you found what I asked you to look for.’

Another contraction. Through her pain, Isolde clung to Maria at her side. Maria murmured comforting words.

Tarcho, evidently growing bored, shrugged. He reached inside his tunic and drew out a battered slip of wood. ‘You were right. Somebody did make a copy, from memory at least–a pagan, probably, too superstitious to risk offending the gods by destroying their words; you’re right about that too. Here.’ He flipped it to Nennius. ‘Probably all a forgery anyhow, or a hoax.’

Nennius grabbed the slip and unfolded it tenderly.

Another surge of pain, and there was liquid between Isolde’s thighs. Now she did cry out. Maria, with calm competence, felt between Isolde’s legs. ‘Your waters have broken. Oh, by Jesus, I think I can feel its head.’

‘It can’t be. It’s too early,’ Isolde gasped.

Maria rolled up her sleeves and made Isolde lie down on the couch. ‘They make their own time, dear.’ She turned to a waiting servant. ‘You, fetch my sister. And get some clean water and cloths.’

The servant hurried from the room.

Even now Nennius was more concerned about his precious Prophecy than about his daughter. He read, ‘ “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”…Sixteen lines–the alpha-omega acrostic–it’s all here–oh, Tarcho, I think it’s genuine all right! And here are the lines about Claudius, and Hadrian–the “little Greek”, hah, I knew what it meant, I was nearly right in my reconstruction. This reference to a “God-as-babe” must refer to the birth of Christianity, for the faith was finding its feet in Hadrian’s time.

‘Oh, and here are the lines that must refer to Constantine. “Emerging first in Brigantia, exalted later then in Rome! / Prostrate before a slavish god, at last he is revealed divine, / Embrace imperial will make dead marble of the Church’s shrine”…Yes, yes! Wasn’t Constantine proclaimed at Eburacum? Wasn’t Christianity always called a cult of slaves? Didn’t he have himself deified after his death, despite his conversion to Christ? And a church turned into dead marble–yes, surely that refers to Constantine’s institutionalising of the faith. It speaks the truth! I knew it. I knew it all along, that the Prophecy was real, that it was truthful. If only Thalius and his plotters could have seen this document in full! How might history have been deflected?’

Isolde barely heard any of this. Her world contracted to the inside of her head, the heaving of her lungs, and the pulsing contractions of her belly.

Maria murmured in her ear, ‘Don’t worry, love. We’ll fetch the army doctor. He’s the son of a doctor too. I told you you’re in good hands…’

Somehow Isolde found the words slippery, wriggling from her grasp like fish in a stream. What were words beside the bloody reality of pain? But even as ocean-deep agony washed down her body, she felt impelled to speak. She turned her head, opened her mouth–but the words that poured from her lips were harsh and unrecognisable, even to her. She tried again, but only more alien words came.

Tarcho turned, curious now. ‘What’s she saying?’

‘I don’t know.’ Maria frowned, concerned. ‘It isn’t Latin–is it? Or any British tongue.’

‘I think it’s German,’ Tarcho said. ‘Saxon maybe. Or Angle-ish. Why would a girl like that learn to speak Saxon?’

But I never have
, Isolde thought, locked inside her own head. She tried again to speak but more of the repetitive gibberish, this Saxon, poured from her mouth.

‘I know what this means,’ Maria breathed, her face flushed. ‘It’s happening again.’

Tarcho asked, ‘What is?’

‘The Prophecy! You heard how Nennius described it. This is just as at the birth of Nectovelin–oh, get a stylus, you fool, and write it down!’

Tarcho stared. Then he disappeared from Isolde’s view.

Isolde longed for her father to come to her, but he was still poring over his document. ‘And the Prophecy’s final lines–at last!—’

The pain intensified even further. Maria yelled, ‘It’s coming!’

Nennius read, ‘ “Remember this: We hold these truths self-evident to be—” ’

‘The baby’s head–I can see it’

Even now, even as she pulsed with pain, Isolde helplessly gabbled Saxon.

‘Why is she speaking Saxon?’ Tarcho growled. ‘The future is Brigantian, not Saxon!’

‘That may not be up to you,’ Maria said. ‘Now shut up, you fool, and help me.’

‘ “I say to you that all men are created equal, free / Rights inalienable assuréd by the Maker’s attribute / Endowed with Life and Liberty and Happiness’s pursuit…” ’ Nennius sounded baffled. ‘Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? What does it mean? If these are the words of the Weaver, what dream of his is this? Oh, what does it mean?’

The pain squeezed Isolde like a vast fist, and her baby fell into Maria’s arms.

Afterword

I’m deeply grateful to Adam Roberts for his expert assistance with the Prophecy of Nectovelin, and for an invaluable reading of the book at manuscript stage. I’m also grateful to my agent Robert Kirby and editor Simon Spanton for even more than usually wise suggestions regarding the concept of this project.

As new archaeological evidence comes to light and written evidence re-evaluated, our understanding of Britannia is changing all the time. See for instance Alan Bowman’s
Life and Letters on the Roman Frontier
(British Museum Press, 2003) on the remarkable ‘Vindolanda letters’, a mass of correspondence some of which was discovered as recently as the 1990s. A comprehensive recent reference is
A Companion to Roman Britain
ed. Malcolm Todd (Blackwell, 2004). I used the
Companion
as my guide in my choice among variant spellings of names. The best map of Roman Britain remains the Ordnance Survey’s
Historical Map and Guide
(fifth edition) which I used as reference for variously spelled place names not mentioned in Todd’s
Companion
. (For clarity I have not used pre-invasion versions of Latinised place names: Camulodunon for Camulodunum, for instance.)

A good if somewhat dated reference on the Claudian invasion is
The Roman Invasion of Britain
by Graham Webster (Routledge, 1993). A good reference on the life of Constantine is Michael Grant’s
The Emperor Constantine
(Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993). New interpretations of Britannia’s fall include Ken Dark’s
Britain and the End of the Roman Empire
(Tempus, 2000) and Neil Faulkner’s
The Decline and Fall of Roman Britain
(Tempus, 2000).

Regarding places, a recent reference on Richborough (Rutupiae) is Stephen Johnson’s
Richborough and Reculver
(English Heritage, 1997), and on York (Eburacum) Patrick Ottaway’s
Roman York
(Tempus, 2004). A magnificent new statue outside York Minster, on the site of the headquarters of the Roman fortress, commemorates Constantine’s elevation there. A recent reference on Colchester (Camulodunum) is Philip Crummy’s
City of Victory
(Colchester Archaeological Trust, 1997). The circus at Colchester is a recent discovery, not yet published at time of writing. A recent reference on Birdoswald (Banna) is
Birdoswald Roman Fort
by Tony Wilmott (Tempus, 2001), and the standard reference on the Wall is
Hadrian’s Wall
by David Breeze and Brian Dobson (Penguin, 2000). But there is no substitute for visiting these wonderful places.

Any errors or inaccuracies are of course my sole responsibility.

Stephen Baxter
Northumberland
June 2005