Rome: The Emperor's Spy: Rome 1 (64 page)

The fortress of the Second lay with its back to the sea. Cliffs held its southern and western borders with the bowl of the battlefield stretched to north and east.

It was quiet now, all fighting done. Children moved across the bloodied turf, stripping the dead. Warriors made fires at the edges and honed their weapons out of habit, more than need. If a new legion came at Nero’s behest, it would have to land somewhere safe, and this coast was not that.

Valerius said, ‘We’ve set watchfires all along the coast. If a galley tries to land, we’ll know before the first horses hit the water.’

‘Was I thinking aloud?’ Hywell asked.

‘No. But you were looking at your wife and your concern was clear.’

Hywell waved. Aerthen waved back and, after her, Gunovar, three years old now, light of his days and his nights. He wanted to be with them. He made signals that he would join them presently and hoped that it was true.

The two fires either side of the entrance gate to the Fortress had been quenched, which made it possible to enter. Inside, dead men leaked blood and urine and gut-spill onto the earth. Each wound told a story, each starved body a lifetime’s tales. The stench of ordure and old sweat told of the months under siege.

‘There’s no wood,’ Valerius said, turning to look. ‘They’ve burned everything they could take without actually dismantling the fortifications. I wonder what they cooked?’

‘Their horses,’ Hywell said. ‘Some of them defected. They told us.’

‘Did you kill them?’

‘Of course. They knew we would, but it was a faster, more honourable death than if they’d stayed in here and died of hunger.’

The fortress was twenty years old and had been built, layer on layer, like an onion. The outer wall was hollow, containing rooms on three floors. Within it were barracks, stables, feed rooms, harness rooms, workshops, the central headquarters, with parade grounds on three sides, and a locked room on the fourth for legionary pay.

Its doors were barred and locked. In silence, Valerius and Hywell lifted the bars and stood back to let Cunomar kick in the doors. Inside, eight chests gaped open, wide as a dead man’s breath. Every other piece of wood in the room had been torn up to use as firewood.

Hywell said, ‘Where’s the gold? They haven’t left this place in three months so they haven’t spent it.’

‘Buried?’ Cunomar offered. ‘With the Eagle?’

‘Or in the officer’s rooms,’ said Valerius. ‘We must at least look.’

It took longer to break open the doors to the headquarters, and they had to use a broken sword as a lever. Inside was empty and dry. The echoes of men’s prayers hugged the corners, causing the shadows to move. The standards of the centuries were there, and the genius of Nero, stacked in a corner.

‘No Eagle,’ Cunomar said.

Valerius caught Hywell’s arm. ‘Where would you put it, if you had to hide the thing you valued most?’

‘It wouldn’t be in here,’ Hywell said.

Valerius turned on his heel. ‘If I were under siege here, in this fort – and I might have been if things had been different – I would put the Eagle in the Mithraeum if I wanted to hide it. But if I were alive, and wanted to keep it at all costs from the enemy. I would—’

‘The battlements!’ Hywell was already running. ‘I’d take it up to the battlements and, if someone came, I’d throw myself into the sea.’

At the foot of the stairwell, a cluster of dead warriors waited for someone to take them away. Further up, beyond the open door, a tighter knot of legionaries lay in their armour, still warm. Cunomar reached them first. He was rising as Hywell came up, wiping his knife on a dead man’s cloak. One of the fallen had a newly opened throat.

* * *

‘Stop!’

Valerius called out in Latin while Hywell and Cunomar were still on the steps. In Latin. ‘Don’t leap. There is no need. We will send you to Nero with your Eagle.’

‘Will we?’ Cunomar asked, as they stepped up the last few wooden steps onto the high battlements of the fortress, where they looked over the sea. Hywell looked down. He had never felt safe at great height. The waves dashing to their deaths on the rocks below looked tiny, no bigger than a child’s finger, when in life they were the height of a bull. He stepped back from the edge and looked elsewhere.

Valerius was standing just in from the stair head. Opposite him, the Prefect of the Second legion, stood with one knee on the battlements. ‘One step closer and I’ll go,’ he said.

‘You can go if you wish,’ said Cunomar, in perfect Latin, ‘But we just offered you your life, your Eagle and a safe conduct to the Gaulish coast. Might you not wish to ask my uncle his reasons for offering that?’

He leaned his back against the grey stone that looked down over the sea and folded his arms. In the language of the Eceni, he said to Valerius, ‘What do you plan?’

Possibly it was the language that pushed the Prefect, or simply that the Prefect could not face returning to Rome as the last of his legion. Whichever, he spoke his last word to his god and, in that same breath, abandoned the battlement and threw himself on his upended sword.

‘No!’ Three men said it, in three languages. Cunomar reached the Prefect first and slid his own knife up, into the man’s heart. Death came faster like that than the ragged, imperfect sword wound that had opened the liver, but not his chest.

They were quiet after. Valerius sat a while, holding the dead man’s hand with his eyes closed, his lips moving in a prayer to Mithras that Hywell knew without hearing the words.

Cunomar bit his lip and looked down at the crashing sea below; the Eagle was already gone beyond reach and the coast was too treacherous for swimmers to try for it.

Hywell moved away, softly, to the small stone hut set back from the battlements where the message birds were kept. He was not one of those who could see a spirit leave this life and move to the next, but he knew when it was happening, and the closeness of this, the intensity, brought him to a decision.

‘The Prefect was not only here to throw the Eagle out of our reach, he was trying to send a message-dove to Rome,’ he said, presently.

With the other two watching, he reached for the pouch at the dead man’s belt and lifted from it the small quill and the block of ink and the tiny cylinders that were the tools of his trade. ‘There are three birds left in the loft,’ he said. ‘Two are pied black and white, from the Emperor’s dovecote. One is the colour of red sandstone. That one goes to the spymaster, Seneca.’

‘Seneca?’ Valerius’ gaze met Cunomar’s over Hywell’s shoulder. ‘I thought you might know how he could be reached.’

Cunomar smiled, and shrugged, as one who had just lost a substantial wager. His amber gaze studied Hywell with a fresh intensity. ‘So if we wished to send a message to Rome, who should we send it to, and what should it say?’

To the Emperor Nero from the Boudica: greetings. Your legions are defeated. Britannia is no longer a province of Rome. We hold the Eagles of the Second, Ninth, Fourteenth and Twentieth legions. Do not attempt their rescue unless you wish to lose more
.

Hywell released the pied dove. It rose fast, startled by the unfamiliar touch and turned south across the water. Its wings clapped a staccato tattoo and it was gone, fast as an arrow.

Valerius held out the fine-pared quill to Hywell. ‘I have written to Nero. Would you care to write to your spy-master?’

Hywell looked at his feet, at the sea, at the two men, armed, waiting. He thought of Aerthen, and Graine and how much he wanted to live. He thought of running, and unthought it; the bear-warriors of the Eceni were the best runners in the land and Cunomar led them: he was best of the best. He said, ‘How did you know?’

‘I branded you for Mithras. Did you think I would forget?’

‘I had prayed that you would.’

‘I might have done, but then I burned the brand away less than six months after it was done, so that you could join the tribes, as if you were one of them. It was dark then, and you were looking away. Did you know it was me?’

Hywell closed his eyes. ‘No.’

‘Pain does that, sometimes,’ Valerius said. ‘It robs a man of knowledge he might need. And it was dark.’

‘Am I to die?’

‘You might if one of you doesn’t tell me exactly what has just happened,’ Cunomar said, from his other side. ‘Who is this man?’

‘I knew him as the Leopard,’ Valerius said. ‘He was one of Seneca’s foremost agents, sent to spy on the southwestern tribes. He lived with us in Camulodunum for six months, learning the languages of Britain. In that time, he came to follow Mithras, but we had to burn the brand away when he left us.’ He turned to Hywell. In Latin, he said, ‘What did you tell the Dumnonii when they found you?’

In the language of Britain, Hywell answered, ‘That I had been held down by four Roman cavalrymen and a fifth had poured fire on my chest. It is always best to tell the truth.’

Cunomar blinked. ‘You’re Roman?’

Hywell shrugged. It was easier now that the truth was out to look him in the eye. ‘My father was an archer in Judea, my mother was a Gaulish slave. I don’t have Roman citizenship, but I spied for years for Rome. So yes, in terms of your question, I was Roman.’

‘And now you are a Dumnoni warrior,’ Valerius said, helpfully, against Cunomar’s amber glare.

‘I am. I have a Dumnoni wife and a daughter who knows me as her Dumnoni father. When the revolt began, I could have walked into the fortress and told the Legate of the Second everything I knew. I did not. When Paulinus marched his men south and your scouts were following him, sending word to us, I could have told them what was happening and the legionaries of the Second could have marched out to meet him: he might not have lost his last two centuries then. I did not. I am Hywell of the white scar. The Leopard is gone.’

‘But will you write to Seneca now? Will you tell him what he needs to know to help him become Emperor?’

He could have wept, for relief, for joy greater than any the god had brought him. In this company, it would have been acceptable. He bit his lip and shook his head, and found words that said enough. ‘I will try.’

To the spymaster Seneca, from the Leopard, greetings. Britain is lost. Your wealth is not. The Eceni have no use for gold, except to give it to the gods. Of the twenty-six million sestertii you lost here, eight tenths might be returned to you – if you provide the means. If, in addition, you undertake that Rome shall never again send her legions against us, trade might resume to the benefit of both Britain and Rome
.

‘Is that it?’ Cunomar was reading the first unencoded draft. Hywell wrapped the second in a cylinder of ivory and bound it to the leg of a bird the muted red of soft sandstone. ‘You haven’t said he should make himself Emperor.’

‘If I did and someone else read it, Seneca would die. But only the Emperor can give an undertaking not to send the legions anywhere. Seneca knows that and he knows that I know it. And with twenty million sesterces in his hand, with Nero facing the loss of four legions, he can take the throne. If I were a betting man, I’d say Nero will be dead by his own hand before the winter.’

‘You said that Seneca should not send his legions against “us”. Will he know now, that you are … not who you were?’

‘That is the first thing he will know, and the most dangerous. He thought of himself as my father. It will not be an easy loss.’

The rock-red message-dove winked one ice-blue eye. Hywell held it a moment more, counting the heartbeats against his fingers, before he raised both his hands and opened them, letting it go.

‘What now?’ he said to Valerius. ‘We won’t have an answer this side of the full moon. Maybe not next.’

‘Now we must gather the warriors and march again. Cogidubnos holds the lands of the Belgae east of here, where the legions first landed. He was reared in Rome. He thinks of himself as Roman. There was a time when Britain was big enough for those who loved Rome and those who hated her and those who simply didn’t care, but that time is over; his people need a new ruler. To a similar end, Ardacos has gone north with half a thousand warriors, to rid us of Cartimandua who was Rome’s whore in the north. We shall do the same in the south.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Hywell said, ‘If I may?’

‘You would be welcome. But should someone not stay here and wait for a dove to return with Seneca’s answer?’

‘Seneca is Rome’s spymaster. If it matters to him, he’ll get us word. We don’t have to stay here waiting.’

From the Emperor Seneca to his son, the Leopard, Greetings. A ship named The Sun Horse has lately sailed from Gaul to Mona bearing the father of the bear. If that same ship were to return with an investment, we would have an accord. There is much that could be traded to our advantage, and Rome does not need to extend her northern boundaries if those boundaries are not themselves under threat
.

‘The father of the bear?’ Hywell stood alone with Valerius on the southern shore, at a place where an island of white cliffs lay within site of the headland. The last warmth of summer lifted up off the sea. Cormorants fished from the rocks below. Gulls mewed overhead. The late autumn air smelled of frost, and life, and hope.

Valerius said, ‘Cunomar’s father. His name is Caradoc. Cartimandua betrayed him to Rome. He escaped death, but he was injured and chose not to return to the warriors less than whole. He has been sheltering in Gaul ever since. A man named Luain mac Calma took ship to bring him home as soon as we knew the land was secure.’ He took Hywell’s note and read it again. ‘
If those boundaries are not themselves under threat
. Will Seneca keep the peace if we keep it?’

‘As long as he can levy taxes on trade, he will keep the peace. It’s not in his interests to wage expensive wars.’

‘What if Gaul and the Belgae see Britain free and seek the same for themselves?’

‘Seneca needs to be well rooted in his power before he can give up land. If Gaul would have her freedom, she would do well to wait – ah, I think the bear himself has found his prey.’

There, in the red-blood sunset, stood Cunomar, with his spear held aloft. At its top, lolled a human head, with fresh wounds to the crown. ‘Cogidubnos is dead.’ Hywell said it to hear it spoken, rather than because there was doubt. ‘After Cartimandua’s death, he called himself the last Roman in Britain.’