Emperor

'You talk about power,' Thalius said uneasily. 'The power to do what?'

'To see where our charismatic soldier-emperor is leading us. And,' she said more coldly, 'the power to do something about it.'

Thalius flinched, but he forced himself to believe that there were no spies from the imperial court in his own home. 'What is it you don't like about Constantine?'

'That's simply answered,' she said. 'I don't like his taxes.' And, just as Cornelius had complained long and loud about Constantine's policies at the heart of the imperial government, so now Aurelia railed about the effect of the Emperor's decrees on her own position.

'You don't appear bankrupt,' Thalius broke in gently.

'No, but I soon will be at this rate! Thalius, I know you're a man of business, and in a curia, as I am. What an onerous chore it is-don't you think? Why, do you know that some criminals and evaders have actually had curia responsibilities thrust upon them as a punishment? And if you default you are beaten up by the governor's thugs. I know it happens, I've seen it! It's not surprising everybody is getting out of town if they can-as you do, Thalius, and don't deny it.'

Thalius sighed. 'I pay my dues,' he said. So he did, but he knew that what she said was true. The worst tax by common consent was the chrysargyron, the 'gold-and-silver' levy imposed on manufacturers and merchants, from owners of the great pottery factories right down to the humblest cobbler. Like farmers of marginal lands, small merchants were being squeezed 'until their bones cracked', Aurelia said. 'In fact literally! You must have seen it, Thalius. How the collectors summon the people from the town and country to the forum-how even children are forced to give evidence against their parents.'

'I have seen such things,' Thalius said stoically. He was well aware too of the shocking corruption that was rife in every level of the system, making it even more of a burden.

She put down her wine cup and leaned forward, her face intent. 'You have already decided I am a selfish old woman who is solely concerned about the contents of her own purse. Don't bother denying it, it's plain enough on your face. But I hope you'll see that my imagination goes beyond my own welfare. I believe that Constantine's taxes will, in the long run, lead to the ruin of us all, and I don't exaggerate. And if the system falls, I fall with it. So I'm concerned. Call it enlightened self-interest.'

It was a hard argument to refute, and Thalius had heard it rehearsed many times before. But just as in his talks with Cornelius he wondered if Aurelia had ever considered that the Emperor, crushed by rising military costs and with no other revenue sources, might have no other choice but to tax his citizens until they bled white. 'Is there any other way?'

'There may be. Do you know how my husband died? Of course you don't. He fought with Carausias. And his father fought under Postumus, the Gallic Emperor, twenty-five years before Carausias. Twice in living memory these islands have broken from Rome. Why not again? Why must Britain pay for Rome? Why must we pay for the upkeep of the Emperor's court-you've seen it, Thalius-and his bureaucracy and his extravagances and his building programme, his endless churches, churches, churches? And now there are rumours that Constantine is planning to build a new capital even farther away, in the east somewhere. Why should we pay for that? That's what I'm asking.'

'And so,' he said carefully, 'would you oppose Constantine?'

'Ah,' she said. She smiled and leaned back languidly, quite unreasonably erotic. 'That's the question-and that's where your Prophecy comes in. I'm no gambler, Thalius.'

'You will oppose Constantine if you think you are sure to win. You want the reassurance of the Prophecy.'

'Isn't that your own game plan? And,' she added earnestly, 'is it true that your Prophecy speaks of freedom? Was this unknown seer, the Weaver of time's tapestry, promising the liberation of the western provinces from Constantine's oppression?'

Thalius recalled Cornelius, whose dream of freedom was the freedom to be a traditional Roman; for this British woman it was the freedom to be loose of the centre, to be British-Roman, not Roman. But surely these were fantasies imposed on tantalising phrases in a document that was, after all, lost.

'I wouldn't know about freedom,' he said dryly. 'Or the Weaver's intentions. Even the name "Weaver" is only a word that has come down from my own ancestor, as it has to you, a fragment of speculation. We know nothing about him, or her, if he even exists.'

She leaned forward. 'Well, now we understand each other, won't you bring me your slave with the tattooed hide?'

Thalius was hugely reluctant. Ever since he had met Cornelius he felt he had been taking one step after another along a very dangerous path indeed. And yet what choice did he have about it, even now?

He turned to his housekeeper, and called for the boy.

IX

Two days later in the afternoon, Thalius invited Cornelius and Aurelia to his townhouse in Camulodunum. Thalius had arranged for his triclinium, his dining room, to be stocked with food, wine and water, so they need not be disturbed by service. He insisted his guests leave their attendants outside; he sent them off to the kitchen where they would be fed and watered. And he strictly ordered his housekeeper to keep everybody out of the room until he, Thalius, gave instructions otherwise-and that was to include the housekeeper himself.

Cornelius mocked him. 'Oh, Thalius! You are a conspirator after all!'

'No, I am not,' Thalius said coolly. 'But this is an age of spies. I want nobody in the room with us who I don't know and trust.'

Aurelia smiled coldly. 'But you don't know us-and if you trust us you are a fool.'

'But we are already locked together in complicity,' Thalius said. 'You will not betray me for to do so would be to betray yourself. Enlightened self-interest-was that your phrase, madam?'

Cornelius said, 'And the boy, the slave on whom the destiny of an empire pivots?'

'I have sent him to the kitchen with Tarcho-and, incidentally, I have instructed Tarcho to guard the boy as he has guarded me these last eight years.'

Aurelia said, 'Why have you invited us, Thalius? What do you want to achieve today? Have you thought it through that far?'

Cornelius rumbled, 'I doubt if any of us has.'

Thalius said, 'We appear to have a common interest. We may uncover a common goal. Let's leave it at that for now.'

That seemed to satisfy them. For a while, in the closed and locked room, sipping diluted wine, they were silent.

Claudia Brigonia Aurelia lay on her couch. She seemed effortlessly in control, utterly superior. Thalius was sure that the soft crossing of her ankles, the way the drapery of her dress fell about her hips and thighs and hung away from her breasts-none of it was accidental but the product of a lifetime of self-training. With such simple tools she must effortlessly dominate the men around her, even now she was growing old. He thought too of what she had told him of an unrequited love affair between their ancestors, centuries ago. Was it possible that such unsatisfied lusts could send echoes down the generations? But that was a very un-Christian thought, he decided.

Aside from her sexuality he sensed she was a natural snob, and had the manner to go with it; before her judgemental gaze he felt unreasonably ill at ease in his own home. Though her family was no better off than Thalius's, she did have an ancestry she could trace back to the Claudian conquest, the date at which British history began-but she spoke of legends of royal blood even before that. Perhaps her ancestor was a princess of Troy, for the British race was supposed to have been founded by Trojans, who, fleeing the war with the Greeks, had brought the chariots that had met Caesar. It was only as an adult that Thalius had come to challenge this imported Mediterranean legend-and to wonder what true history had been lost, what old remembered wisdom dissipated, when the ancient British nations had been obliterated by Rome.