Emperor

Aurelia was unperturbed. Thalius imagined she dealt with bullying men like Cornelius in the course of her working life all the time. 'It's simple. My concern isn't for the fate of empires, still less for the immortal souls of humanity, but for Britain.' She railed about Constantine's excessive taxes, and repeated the rumours she had heard that Constantine had plans to move the capital of the empire permanently to the east. 'Somewhere in Greece, it is said, or Asia Minor, or even Africa. Do you know anything about this?'

The courtier pulled his lip. 'There are always rumours. And there are practical issues involved, not least the defeat of Licinius first. But, yes, there is such talk. Rome will always be the heart of the empire. But Rome isn't terribly convenient as a capitaclass="underline" it is far from the frontier provinces, like Britain, where the energies of the empire have to be concentrated. It is overcrowded, cluttered, difficult in the summer-'

'And,' Aurelia said laconically, 'it is full of potential opponents of the Emperor, from the ever-hungry mob to old families like yours, Cornelius.'

'I won't deny that. Here is the bald truth. The eastern provinces are far richer than the west. Isn't it sensible to place the capital at the economic core of the empire?'

Aurelia said, 'Only if you want the rest to wither away and die, neglected.'

'Well-so here we are, the Christian, the pagan and the ambitious provincial, all united in believing that something must be done. But nothing is going to happen unless we manage to decode the slave child's puzzle-tattoo-eh?'

'There is that, yes,' Thalius said gloomily.

Aurelia sighed and settled back on her couch. 'I've been working on it and have got nowhere, I'm afraid.'

Cornelius said, 'These acrostics are a Christian game, are they not? Like this one on the wall.' He pointed to a cryptogram carefully painted in a corner of the Christ portrait:

ROTAS OPERA TENET AREPO SATOR

Thalius said, 'The fresco painter added it.'

Cornelius bent to see. 'Very clever. Reads the same up and down, forward and back. But so what? The sower Arepo guides the wheels carefully. What is this, some reference to a holy life? Oh, I do hate word puzzles!'

'Perhaps, but there is more in it than that,' Aurelia said. She unfolded herself from her couch, dipped a delicate fingertip in the black of an extinguished candle, knelt down by the acrostic, and with her blackened finger wrote lightly on the wall. 'Do you mind, Thalius? I am sure it will brush off. You see, you can rearrange the letters in the form of a cross, like this.'

P A T E R

PATERNOSTER

O S T E R

Cornelius studied the result. 'A cross for Christ-eh? And it reads Our Father both ways.'

'The first words of the Lord's Prayer,' Thalius said.

Cornelius frowned. 'But you haven't used all the letters.' He compared the cross to the original acrostic, and dabbed his own blackened fingers to pair up the letters in each.

Thalius groaned, 'My housekeeper will disembowel me for this mess!'

Cornelius sat back. 'You made a mistake, Aurelia! You have two As and two Os left over.'

'There's no mistake,' Aurelia said. 'It's yet another layer of meaning, Cornelius, at least for a Christian. A and O, or Alpha and Omega: this symbolises the 'beginning and the end' in the Christian revelation…' Her eyes defocused. 'Oh.'

Thalius took her arm, mildly alarmed. 'Madam, are you all right?'

'No. Yes! I think I have it.'

'Have what?'

'The key to your slave's puzzle, Thalius-and perhaps the key to all our destinies.' She stood up. 'You must take me to the boy-now!'

X

Thalius led the way to the kitchen, where Tarcho was looking after the boy. He was greeted at the door by the warm smell of cooking bread. Inside, Tarcho was pounding vegetables with a mortar and pestle. Audax, standing close by, watched, fascinated. On a whim, Thalius paused, and his guests waited behind him, curious.

Thalius heard Audax say to Tarcho, 'You didn't squash beets when you were a soldier.' He was proving a fast learner, but his Latin was still rudimentary, uncertain, his accent strong, his abused throat gravelly.

'Oh, I did, and more. Soldiers do everything for themselves.'

'Soldiers fight.'

'Well, not all the time! And in between fighting we do other things. We build forts and lay roads and build bridges.'

'And squash beets.'

'We squash beets and lay roads.'

'Do you work in mines?'

'Sometimes.'

Audax pulled a face. 'Why would you work in a mine?'

'Well, you have to, if you're ordered to.'

'A soldier is like a slave, then. You have to do what you're told.'

Tarcho faced the boy. 'No. Never like that. A soldier is free in a way a slave never can be. It's a good life.'

'Why is it so good?'

'Because the emperors need us. The whole of the empire, all of it, the cities and the walls and the forts, is like one vast farmyard designed to feed the army. Why? Because without us it would all collapse in a day. Have you heard of an emperor called Severus?'

'Who?'

'Came to Britain to put down a rising.'

'Carausias?'

'No, long before him. While he was here Severus took the whole of Britain, far to the north of the Wall, then his sons gave it away again. Long story. Anyhow Severus had to sort out a mess, and it was the army that sorted it for him, and Severus knew it. "Feed the soldiers," he told his sons, "and let the rest rot." Or words to that effect. Dead a hundred years, but he was right. And every emperor since has followed his advice.'

'Should I join the army, Tarcho?'

Tarcho looked at the boy, surprised. 'Well, you'd have to be bought out of your slavery…Is that what you want? You'd have to fight for Rome, you know.'

'That wouldn't make me Roman.'

'No, true. But if you aren't Roman, what are you?'

'What I always was. Brigantian.'

So, Thalius heard, fascinated, under the surface of Britannia the old nations survived, if only in the memory of slaves.

Audax said now, 'I want to be like you. I've got the muscles. Look.' He held up an arm, pitifully thin, and bent it to show a bicep like a walnut.

Tarcho grinned, and in a brief and uncharacteristic moment of tenderness, hugged the boy against his own massive chest.

'Sweet to watch them,' Aurelia whispered. 'Like seeing an eight-year-old care for a three-year-old.'

Cornelius murmured, 'I suggest we get on with our business, Thalius.'

Thalius took a breath. 'Very well.' He coughed loudly to announce his presence and walked into the kitchen.

Tarcho stood, surprised, dropping the mortar and pestle. Audax hid behind Tarcho. The kitchen staff were startled, and Thalius waved a hand at them, shooing them out.

Tarcho stepped forward. 'Sir, is there something I can do for you?'

Thalius sighed. 'Not you but your charge, I'm afraid. Audax! Step forward now.'

The slave obeyed without thinking, his head bowed. Tarcho stayed a step behind him.

Thalius bent and whispered, 'I'm sorry about this, lad. You must show your back again. But it won't be for long, and I promise you won't be hurt. Is that all right?'

The boy didn't reply. For all Tarcho's good will the boy's spirit remained a flicker.

Thalius straightened up. 'Turn around and lift your tunic. You know what to do.'

The boy leaned forward to expose the grid of letters he had borne all his life but never seen: PEEO NERR OSRI ACTA

Cornelius, bending stiffly, inspected the boy. 'Tell me again where this thing came from, Thalius?'

Thalius shrugged. 'I have only legends, passed down for generations. The original Prophecy was a poem, sixteen lines long. It was burned at Hadrian's orders. But it contained an acrostic-the first letter of each line, perhaps making up the core of the Prophecy's message-that was remembered and passed on. And then, at some later time, it was encoded into this grid form.'