‘Enough.’ Rufus felt Caratacus’s hand pulling at his shoulder, but he found he could not move. Somehow he knew that if his eyes broke contact with the flames he would be sucked into that whirling vortex of fire from which he should never have been allowed to escape. Only when the Wicker Man crumpled in on himself, taking with him his banquet of roasted flesh and scorched bone, was the spell broken. ‘Come,’ the Catuvellauni leader ordered. Rufus allowed himself to be guided between the lines of cold, staring faces towards the thatched huts hidden in the woods below. After a few steps an involuntary shudder racked his body and he vomited a fountain of bile on to the grass, staining the fine cloak in the process.
‘I do not think you are made of the stuff of war,’ Caratacus said gently. He led the way to the largest of the huts, which was set some way back from the others. It was clear this rough camp was only a temporary home to the British war leaders, but Caratacus’s hut was nevertheless sumptuously furnished in the British fashion. The walls were hung with the thick fur of a bear and numerous beaver, fox and wolf pelts. The floor was covered with fresh rushes mixed with herbs which filled the interior of the hut with their sweet fragrance when they were crushed underfoot. At the far end, opposite the doorway, a frame had been set up on which hung the shields and standards of the British tribes. Caratacus’s charging boar, the bull’s head of the Regni, the galloping horse of the Iceni, and the crossed spears of the Dobunni were all there, though Rufus recognized them only as brightly coloured symbols of power. To one side, a child played on a rug of washed sheepskin, watched by a smiling, olive-skinned woman with the first silver of age dusting her hair. The boy reminded Rufus of Gaius and he struggled to stifle a sob. The woman looked up in surprise at the sound and her eyes widened when she saw the blood-stained, dishevelled figure wearing her husband’s cloak.
Caratacus smiled an apology to his wife. ‘Take Tasciovanus to see the ponies, Medb, and send Idres with a basin of water.’
The Briton took his place on a wooden chair in front of the banners and invited Rufus to sit at a nearby bench. They waited in silence until a girl of about thirteen arrived with the basin and without a word began to bathe the dried blood from Rufus’s hair. He winced as she touched the raw flesh of a wound just behind his right ear. He reached up and gingerly felt a large bump. ‘It is not mortal,’ Caratacus assured him. ‘We will have it dressed later. Nuada has much skill in these matters. He has stitched me up many a time.’
‘Nuada?’
‘You have met him. The Druid.’ Rufus paled. ‘Do not judge him on what you saw today. He has his place in our society, as your priests do in yours, and carries his burdens as we all do.’ He waved the girl from the hut. ‘Now tell me about the Emperor Claudius.’
XII
‘You seem distracted, husband. You should not let affairs of state burden you so.’
Claudius looked up from the plan he had been attempting to study and smiled benevolently at his wife. I am an actor, he thought, a player who shelters behind a dozen stage masks, or perhaps a coward hiding behind a dozen curtains. He seemed to have been hiding all his life. Hiding from small bullies who ridiculed his limp and his stutter and thought they would be doing Augustus a favour by drowning him in the latrine at the villa in Lugdunum. Hiding from Asinius, that disgusting brute, who had thought it a worthwhile experiment to determine whether a sound beating each day would cure a boy of the disorders that made his mother — his own mother — brand him a ‘monster’. Guardian, he called himself, and tutor. The man was a muleteer. Eventually he had hidden in taverns and places of the most ill repute, trying desperately to rid himself of the knowledge that he was worthless; hardly a human being at all.
Only much later did he discover that a man’s worth did not have to be measured by his prowess at the games or in the bedchamber, nor by the soundness of his limbs or the prettiness of his looks. It was the soundness of his mind that mattered. By then his nephew Gaius, called Caligula, had appointed him consul and given him the power that had been his right, but had been withheld from him all his life. For that alone he had Rome’s most reviled citizen to thank. Yet the elevation had placed him in deadly peril. In the palace of Caligula every man’s hand had been against him. He remembered Protogenes, he of the basilisk eyes and the coldest of hearts, and the way he had measured him an inch at a time, as if he was preparing a corpse for the tomb. So he had hidden again, this time behind a facade of drunkenness and senility, and endured the humiliations and contempt. And waited.
‘I am a l-l-little t-tired, my sweet. You have b-been k-keeping your C–C-Claudius up t-too late and his people suffer for it.’
She was too good for him, he knew that. But he could not let her go. He would not let her go. He smiled at her again, and this time the smile was not a lie, but the plain truth. He loved her.
She returned the smile with one of her own, her dark eyes glittering in the light of the perfumed oil lamps, and his heart fluttered and his stomach contracted as if he were some beardless boy in the thrall of his first real woman. Woman? She was a goddess. Valeria Messalina. The most wonderful thing that had happened to him in a life measured by the tidemarks of fear and pain and suppressed rage.
‘It is l-late. You should retire, my l-love. Your b-b-beauty shines at its b-b-brightest after a p-proper night’s rest.’
She rose from her place near the window in one graceful movement, stretched her arms and yawned. Then she came to him and stood by the couch where he was working.
‘Darling Claudius,’ she said, running her slim fingers through his thinning hair and caressing the nape of his neck. ‘You care for me so much.’ She bent close to kiss him on the cheek and the scent of her perfume made his head spin. He watched her walk from the room, the half-moons of her perfectly shaped buttocks shivering rhythmically beneath the azure silk of her gown. She half turned and smiled a farewell. She knew he was watching. Knew he liked to watch. Liked him watching.
When she had left the room he stared at the doorway for a long moment before giving a long, drawn-out sigh. I wonder who will share her bed tonight.
He shook his head to clear it of that melancholy thought and stared blankly at the plan again. It was the first inklings of his scheme to turn the swamp around the little harbour at Ostia into a port that would be a wonder of the world and the engine of Rome’s future prosperity. But he could not concentrate. What was it she had said? Distracted? Of course he was distracted. He should have heard something by now. What was Plautius thinking? The invasion of Britain. Narcissus had made it seem such a fine enterprise, assured him of the swift defeat of a rabble of disorganized natives and at the same time the fame of outmatching the deeds of his ancestors. The answer to all their problems. Why did it now feel like a leaden weight round his neck or the heavy blade of a headsman’s axe? He was by nature a cautious man. Yes, he needed a triumph, needed it the way a dying man needs his next breath, but now he could see that defeat, or even the wrong kind of victory, would be the end of him. Verica, that arrogant Celtic oaf, had given them the pretext for the invasion. Did he really believe the Emperor of Rome would gather an army from the four corners of the Empire so that he could wear a crown of tin and call himself the king of some barbarian hamlet? Yet Narcissus had seen his potential; had found the right lawyers who would declare his claim legitimate and his usurpers the enemy of Rome. Verica had promised them a mighty treasure in return: the mineral riches of the Durotriges and the Silures, pearls from the western shores, furs from the north, and slaves, thousands of slaves, from among the Catuvellauni he hated and feared. But why did Rome need to fight for such baubles when it had ready access to them, and more, through trade? No, plunder was not the objective. Not plunder. Glory.