Emperor

He frowned. 'Look, if you're unhappy we don't have to do this. I'll find some other way to build on Quintus's faith in me.'

'You'd do that for me?'

'Of course. I want us to share the future, 'Pina. But it must be a future we both want…'

She sighed, and lay back. That was the trouble, though: what did she want? In Gaul her friends, while kind, had always looked down on her as a barbarian from a place beyond civilisation. But now there seemed to be no room for her in Brigantia either, where nobody could share the sparking in her mind when she read. There were more practical issues too. In Britain a woman could rise to be the equal of a man-or better. Why, the ruler of her own nation was a woman, Cartimandua. In Rome, though, she could never aspire to be more than somebody's wife-and even if that somebody was as delicious as Cunedda, could it ever be enough?

'I've upset you,' Cunedda said softly. 'I'm sorry. We'll talk of this tomorrow.' He cupped her cheek in his warm hand. 'Can you read the sky, Agrippina? Are the stars the same, where you were born? There.' He picked out one bright star. 'That is the star we call the Dog, because when we first see it, early in the mornings, we know it marks the start of the summer. It is the lead dog of the pack, you see. And in the winter we look for that one'-he pointed again-'for when it rises in the east, we know we must plant the winter wheat. We believe that once a girl was washed up on a beach, perhaps not unlike this one, having swum from a faraway land. In her belly was the seed that would grow to be the first king of the Catuvellaunians. But that first night she was cold and it was dark. She built a fire, and the embers flew up into the air. And that is how the stars were formed.'

'We have similar stories,' she said. 'And we read the sky.'

He ran his hand down her side, thrillingly. 'Tell me about Brigantia.'

She smiled in the dark. 'Brigantia is a huge country that stretches from sea to sea, east to west and north to south. You can ride for days and not come to the end of it. The name means "hilly" in our tongue. I was born in a place called Eburacum, which means "the place of the yew trees". Our holy animal is the boar. And Nectovelin was born in Banna, on a ridge overlooking a river valley that looks as if it has been scooped out with a spoon. It's a beautiful place.'

'And sexy Coventina, this huge goddess Nectovelin jokes about?'

'She is all around, in the landscape. You can see her breasts in the swelling of the hills, her thighs in the deep-cut valleys…' She moved with the stroking of his hand. 'Oh, Cunedda…'

On the dark water, an oar splashed.

IV

Agrippina sat up sharply.

Cunedda was startled. 'What's wrong?'

She pressed her finger to his lips. When she stared out to sea she could see nothing at all. But there it was again, the unmistakable slap of a clumsily handled oar, the clunk of wood striking wood-and a muffled curse, a man's voice.

'I heard that,' said Cunedda, whispering now. 'You have sharp ears.'

A growl from the dark. 'Keep your yapping down.' Nectovelin was a shadow against the night. Agrippina wondered if he had been awake all the time after all.

Cunedda asked nervously, 'You think they are pirates?'

Agrippina said, 'Who else makes landfall in the dark?'

Nectovelin grunted softly. 'Who indeed?'

'What do you mean?'

Cunedda said, 'Whoever it is, we don't want them to know we're here. We should douse the fire.'

'Already done,' Nectovelin said. 'But they'll smell the smoke-'

'Hello!' The small voice came drifting up from the beach. It was Mandubracius, of course. He was carrying a torch, and as he walked down to the sea he was suspended in a bubble of flickering light, a slight, spectral figure.

For a moment there was utter silence from the water. But now came a reply. 'Hello?' A man's voice, heavily accented.

Nectovelin cursed colourfully. 'I thought he was still sleeping. My fault, my fault.'

Cunedda tried to rise. 'We should stop him.'

'No.' Nectovelin held his arm. 'They may just let him go. Better to risk it than to reveal ourselves now.'

Agrippina felt as if a leather rope attached her heart to the little boy walking down the beach. 'He's only a child. He's curious, that's all.'

'Hush,' said Nectovelin, not harshly.

Mandubracius reached the edge of the water. Now, indistinctly, by the flickering light of his torch, Agrippina made out the boat that had landed. It was bigger than she had imagined, flat-bottomed, evidently for ease of landing on the beach. She saw men aboard, faces shining like coins in the torch's dim glow. One of them stepped into the water and spoke to Mandubracius. Gruff laughter rippled around the landing craft. Mandubracius seemed to take fright. He threw down the torch and turned to run.

But the man standing in the water drew a short, blunt sword, and with it he cut down Mandubracius.

Immediately Nectovelin's hand clamped over Agrippina's mouth. There was a sharp word from the boat, perhaps of reprimand. Agrippina thought she heard a name: Marcus Allius. And then the light died at last.

All this in a heartbeat.

'Listen to me,' Nectovelin said, and Agrippina could hear the grief in his own whisper. 'There must be fifty of them in that boat alone, and there will be more boats, hundreds perhaps, landing all around this harbour. If we try to take them on we will die too. Instead we must stay alive, and tell what we saw.' Still Agrippina struggled, but Nectovelin's grip tightened. 'Believe me, I feel as you do. Worse. I am responsible. And I won't rest until I have avenged his death-or given up my life for his. But not now, not tonight.'

Gradually he loosened his grip and uncovered her mouth.

Breathing hard, the sand harsh on her skin, she whispered, 'Very well.'

Cunedda was panting too, eyes wide. He nodded.

'Follow me, then,' Nectovelin said. 'Keep low. Try to leave no track. We'll get the horses, and then-well, we'll see. Come now.'

He began to pick his way across the dune. Agrippina followed, and Cunedda brought up the rear.

Aware of the intense danger they were all in, Agrippina concentrated on following Nectovelin's instructions, trying not to disturb so much as a blade of dry dune grass. But she couldn't rid her head of the images of those few moments when the torch had fallen to the water: the armour that had glistened on the chest of the man with the sword, the helmets of the men arrayed in the boat-and the eagle standard held aloft.

V

From his bench in the rear of the landing craft, Narcissus was able to see the first wave of boats driving onto the beach. Under the stars, there was nothing to be seen of the darkened land beyond, nothing but the swell of a dune or two-that, and what might have been the embers of a solitary fire on the beach.

Around Narcissus the legionaries, stinking of sweat, leather and horses, worked their oars under a centurion's softly spoken commands. The rowers held the boat in its place against the tide, for Vespasian's order had been that the Emperor's secretary was not to be allowed to land until the general judged the beachhead had been made reasonably secure.

The delay was perhaps half an hour-or so it seemed to Narcissus, sitting in the dark and silence. The length of an hour was dependent on the length of a day, twelve hours slicing up the interval from sunrise to sunset. He had read from the memoirs of long-dead Carthaginian explorers that in these northern places the length of the day could be quite different from Rome's, the days longer in summer, shorter in winter. That even time was slippery here added to Narcissus's sense of unreality on this swelling sea, in the dark, surrounded by the grunts of irritably frightened soldiers. He had come a long way from home, he admitted to himself.

Not that he was about to show weakness in front of these men. A lot of them, no more than half-civilised barbarians from Germany and Gaul themselves, were predictably more superstitiously terrified of the Ocean than of anything their half-cousins on the British shore could throw at them. And judging from the retching sounds and the stink of vomit, many of them were having a harder time coping with the sea's gentle swell than Narcissus, who could at least pride himself on a strong stomach.