Thalius scanned it quickly. It was from one Claudia Brigonia Aurelia, a widow of Eburacum-and it concerned prophecies about Constantine. Thalius handed it back hastily, chilled.
Cornelius seemed to enjoy his discomfiture. 'Aurelia's family, it seems, has its own legends about prophecies and emperors. Was some ancestor of hers tangled up in the complicated stories you have told me?'
'How does she know about me?'
'Through me,' Cornelius said smugly. 'I'm a thorough man, Thalius. I told you I confirmed the existence of your Prophecy through hints in the archives. But in following it up I drew extensively on contacts in Britain. And it happened that I caught the attention of this lady Aurelia, and sparked her interest.'
' "Sparked her interest"? What does that mean, Cornelius? What does she want?'
'Why, I've no idea, not specifically. But, like you-and me-it seems she has concerns about the direction in which the Emperor is taking us all.' He grinned coldly. 'I don't think she had ever heard of you, Thalius. And yet it seems you have another member of your conspiratorial cabal.'
As from the beginning of his dealings with Cornelius, Thalius had the feeling that events were spinning out of his control. 'I don't have a conspiracy, and I don't want a cabal!'
'Then the Emperor has nothing to fear,' Cornelius said smoothly. 'And nor do you.'
It seemed to Thalius that what Cornelius really wanted of him was an ear in which to pour complaints about his own grievances. Not that those grievances weren't extensive, for somebody of Cornelius's patrician background. 'Constantine's butchery of authority and tradition has reached all the way to the heart of imperial government,' Cornelius complained, 'in fact, into his own court…'
Constantine had created a whole new layer of aristocracy, called the 'Order of Imperial Companions'. His council, the consistorium, was drawn from this group. Many of the Companions were the gaudy bishops who made Thalius so uncomfortable. And by establishing the Companions Constantine had excluded the old senatorial and equestrian classes. Cornelius's family, senators since republican days, had been largely disenfranchised, and Cornelius's own position in court was precarious.
Cornelius fumed. 'Not only has Constantine violated centuries of tradition, he has casually upturned checks and balances within an imperial system that has been evolving since the days of Augustus…' But Thalius was sure that Cornelius's concerns were not about the welfare of the empire but his own ambitions.
And it struck Thalius that Cornelius, for all his sophistication and power, was so obsessed with court intrigues and his own ambitions that he simply could not see the deeper truths of his age. After all, within Thalius's own lifetime the empire had nearly collapsed altogether. You could complain about Constantine's reforms, as Thalius did himself, but was it possible that the Emperor actually had no real choice in how he acted, if he was to hold the empire together?
VIII
The caravan at last approached the bristling walls of Camulodunum. The lead carriages came to a gate in the west wall which had once, curiously, been a triumphal arch before being incorporated into the wall, and was now mostly blocked up. Here the caravan broke up.
Thalius, happy to see the back of Ulpius Cornelius for a while, led his own companions to the townhouse he owned just a short walk from the forum. It had actually been some months since Thalius had been back to the city. Even though he had grown up here, and his affairs were closely bound up with the city, he much preferred his country estate half a day's ride out of town. Now, as he walked through a grubby, decayed town crowded with hawkers, chancers, beggars and prostitutes all drawn to the tawdry gleam of a soldier-emperor's court, Thalius was reminded why.
The grand old Temple of Claudius still stood, however, rising out of a sea of vacant lots, rotting houses, tatty public buildings and filth-strewn streets. As they passed the colonnade Thalius peered inside to see the great statue of the wily old fox, lit up by candles and lamps, his arm still raised in victory as it had been for three hundred years. But a small Christian chapel had been set up within this temple to a long-dead emperor, whose exploits had been forgotten by almost everybody who passed by this way.
Thalius was relieved to reach his own modest but well-maintained townhouse. He was too old for travelling, he thought, too old to be dealing with complicated and poisonous individuals like Ulpius Cornelius. At least within the walls of his house he could be in control of things for a while, and find some peace.
So he was dismayed to find he had a visitor, waiting for him in the living room. Sitting beneath his most expensive tapestry, a scene of a colonnaded courtyard under a bright Mediterranean sun, she was sipping watered-down wine served to her by the elderly freedman Thalius employed as a housekeeper.
She stood as Thalius approached. She was a woman of about sixty, Thalius judged, well-dressed and poised. Her cheekbones were high, her chin well-defined. Her complexion was dark, and she wore her grey-streaked black hair swept back from her face. She was unafraid of showing her age, then. She was immediately intimidating, with something of Ulpius Cornelius's air of cold command.
And she was remarkably attractive. Despite her age, there was something sensual about her, even animal, and she seemed to use the fumes of her scents as a weapon to confuse him.
Thalius, still grimy from the road, felt inadequate in his own home. He was weakened by the helpless attraction he felt for her, which she must perceive, and had no doubt calculated to inspire. Suddenly his life had become even more complicated, he thought tiredly.
'I think you know who I am, sir.' Her voice was husky.
'You must be Claudia Brigonia Aurelia. Your correspondence with Ulpius Cornelius-'
'What a helpful man he is.' She gazed at Audax, her eyes rheumy but bright. 'And this must be the mysterious slave boy.' She reached out a bony hand.
Audax cowered behind the massive form of Tarcho.
'You're frightening him.'
She looked puzzled. 'Cornelius warned me about your sentimentality. You're a Christian, aren't you? A faith of soldiers and slaves, so they say.'
'Madam, what is it you want here?'
'Why, the same thing you do, I believe. To know the future.' And she eyed the cringing boy as if wishing she could simply flay him and take his marked hide away with her.
Thalius sent the boy off with Tarcho, and ordered the housekeeper to bring more wine and plates of light food. As social routines cut in, Aurelia calmed. But she watched Thalius constantly, as an owl watches a mouse.
She told him something of herself. Born and raised in Eburacum, she had been widowed young. She had inherited her husband's business interests, and had run them herself ever since, evidently not needing the shadow of a man to win herself a place in society. Her husband's interests were an old family business of quarries in the north country, which supplied stone to army installations, including the Wall itself. And it was in the north country that the paths of their families had once crossed, she said.
'It's all family legend,' she purred. 'Tittle-tattle. But the legend is that my husband's remote grandfather, one Brigonius, was the lover of your remote grandmother, Lepidina. But they never married, and had no offspring.'
'And this was when?'
'Two centuries ago. At the time of the famous visit of Emperor Hadrian,' she said, sipping her wine. 'And that is how the Prophecy of Nectovelin entered the mythology of my family. I grew up fascinated by the tale. A Prophecy all one's own. Think of the power! So when I came across Ulpius Cornelius and his not-very-discreet inquiries I was fascinated.' She glanced somewhat dismissively at his expensive tapestry. 'It was a thread, I thought, a loose thread in time's tapestry that I couldn't resist tugging. And when I did it led me to you, and here we are.'