Emperor

Mandubracius whooped. 'Catch me if you can!' He ran to the sea, limbs flashing, an explosion of ten-year-old energy. He was so pale he looked like a ghost, barely part of the world at all.

Nectovelin hardly raised his voice. 'Get back here, boy.'

Mandubracius froze immediately. He turned and jogged back.

Cunedda marvelled. 'He's like a well-trained dog.'

Nectovelin said, 'Oh, I train my dogs better than this.'

Mandubracius trotted up, sweating, panting a little, but not resentful.

Nectovelin pointed. 'Here. Put the tent up.'

'I never put a tent up before.'

'Then you need to learn how.'

Mandubracius plucked at the leather sheet. 'But it's hot. We've walked for ever. And it's heavy. Look, I can't even lift it!'

Nectovelin snorted. 'By Coventina's snot-crusted left nostril, I never heard the like. A Roman legionary would have dug out a whole fort in the time you've been standing there like a whelp. Get on with it. I'm going to bathe my feet.' He walked away.

Cunedda said to Mandubracius, 'I'll help you-'

'When he gets stuck,' Agrippina said gently. 'Let him figure it out for himself first. Come. Walk with me to the sea.'

They followed Nectovelin, while Mandubracius struggled to unfold the stiff leather.

II

Nectovelin loosened his sandals to reveal feet that were a mass of hair and fungus-blighted nails. He stepped into the sea, sighing as the cool wavelets broke over his toes. Agrippina kicked off her own sandals to follow. Cunedda was wearing heavier boots and socks, Roman style, and he sat on the damp sand to loosen them.

Then the three of them stood in the sea, side by side like standing stones, facing east towards the grass-covered island, the calm Ocean, and Europe invisibly far beyond.

Cunedda said cautiously, 'I'm surprised at you, Nectovelin.'

'Why so?'

'You held out a Roman soldier as a model to the boy. Suppose he ever had to face a Roman in combat?'

'I build up the Romans in his head. But when Mandubracius sees them for the dour little runts they really are, he will have no fear.'

Agrippina said, 'But it won't happen. The Romans won't be fighting the Catuvellaunians or the Brigantians or anybody else.'

'Caesar did,' said Nectovelin.

Cunedda said, 'And I've heard Caratacus talk of a massing of Roman troops in Gaul, at a coastal town. He and his brother even gathered a few thousand men on the coast in case the Romans crossed. Of course the Romans never came, and it's too late in the season for campaigning now anyhow, and everybody went home. But still-'

'But still, that's all just rumour. The difference with Caesar's time is that now there is all this trade.' She pointed to a shadow on the horizon, a squat heavy-sailed ship. It was a trader from Gaul, probably, a massive ship of nailed timbers, with iron anchors and rawhide sails. 'In Massilia they say that an invasion of Britain would cost the Romans more than it would be worth, because they make so much from customs duties on the trade across the Ocean.'

'Caesar made war here.'

'And the Romans are afraid of the Ocean,' Cunedda said. 'Isn't that so? They would never dare cross the water anyhow.'

'Caesar crossed,' Nectovelin said simply. 'The truth is, nobody wants to believe the legionaries would come again because nowadays everybody sucks on the golden teat of Rome. You're a potter, aren't you, boy?'

'Yes.' Actually Cunedda was much more than that; he ran a thriving business, employing twenty artisans, having made good use of his inheritance.

'And who do you sell your pots to? The Romans?'

'Not just the Romans-'

'Those who ape them. The Trinovantes, the Iceni, the Atrebates. Those who live under their protection. Certainly not to us Brigantians.' Nectovelin jabbed his finger in Cunedda's chest. 'If not for the Romans you wouldn't make a living at all, would you?'

Agrippina said, 'Go easy, old man. Don't forget he's paying your wages.'

Cunedda said, 'Anyway what's wrong with taking money off the Romans? I would have thought you'd approve.'

'Why does it matter to you what I think? You're shagging my cousin, aren't you?'

Cunedda coloured.

Agrippina snapped, 'So you knew all the time?'

Nectovelin tapped his forehead. 'You think I lived to the ripe age of forty-seven without eyes that see, ears that hear? Anyhow Bala told me.'

Agrippina gasped. Bala of the Cantiaci had once been a friend; they had fallen out over Cunedda. 'That malicious bitch, I'll rip her throat out.'

Cunedda laughed. 'Now you do sound like Nectovelin's cousin.'

Nectovelin pinched one nostril and cleared the other, leaving a trail of mucus on his beard that he wiped away with his sleeve. 'And that's why you came to the beach. To get around me.'

Agrippina linked his arm affectionately. 'Oh, don't be difficult, you ridiculous old fraud. You know you've been the nearest thing to a father to me, since my own father died.'

'But you don't need my say-so to spread your legs.'

'Don't be crude! No, but I want you to be part of us, part of our relationship.'

Nectovelin eyed Cunedda. 'There are worse choices you could have made.'

'Thanks,' Cunedda said dryly. 'But I thought you didn't like us Catuvellaunians.'

'It's nothing personal. I don't like any of you soft southerners.' He glared around at the sunlit beach. 'This is the arsehole of Britain. And that's why Caesar shoved his Roman sword up it.'

'And if this is an arsehole,' Cunedda said carefully, 'are you the turd that is passing through, old warrior?'

Nectovelin frowned, and for a dreadful moment Agrippina thought he would take offence. But he winked at Agrippina. 'Nice reply. But I was the wittier, wasn't I?'

'Oh, you're a regular Cicero,' Agrippina said dryly. 'You must have a little bit of Roman in you after all-'

'As did Cassivellaunus once Caesar got hold of him.'

They all managed to laugh at that.

Nectovelin said suddenly, 'But if you hurt her-'

'I won't,' Cunedda said.

'Are you afraid of me, boy?'

'Not you,' Cunedda said bravely. 'Her, yes.'

Nectovelin's stern expression broke up into another laugh, and he clapped Cunedda on the shoulder.

Agrippina walked forward, and the deeper water lapped deliciously against her bare legs. 'Look.' With her pointing finger she sketched the line of the coast. 'This bay would make a good harbour. It's sheltered by that island, and by the shingle banks over there to the south.'

Cunedda said, 'Somebody else has thought of that.' He pointed out a heap of nets, a crowd of seagulls squabbling over fish guts on the beach. 'In fact I don't know why this place isn't teeming with ships.'

'Because it's too new,' Nectovelin said. 'There was a great storm here, a few years back. A sand bar was breached. That island didn't even exist when I was born.'

Cunedda nodded. 'Then the harbour wasn't here in Caesar's time?'

'No. And he didn't land anywhere near here.' Nectovelin described how Caesar had made a tough landing beneath the white chalk cliffs of the south coast.

Agrippina reflected, with the faintest unease, on a titbit of information she had picked up from a trader in Durovernum, the main town of the Cantiaci, the local people. Though the Cantiaci didn't have a name for this new harbour, the Romans did: they called it Rutupiae. In their endless obsessive mapping and surveying, and the low-level spying they carried on through their traders, the Romans had spotted the potential of the place, even if the locals hadn't.

Her eye was distracted by another silhouette on the horizon. Perhaps it was another hide-sailed trading ship from Gaul. There seemed to be a lot of traffic today. But the air was misty, and she couldn't quite make it out.

'Look,' Cunedda said, 'Mandubracius is waving. He's got the tent up!'