settlement as the site for a permanent base from which he would conquer the rest of the island, but Claudius had his own plans for the place. One day, the gods willing, it would be a city of stone — a monument to his victories.
The invasion of Britain had been a triumph of war and it would win him his own triumph when he returned to Rome. His messengers had already carried news of their Emperor’s glory to the capital. His rivals, Gallus, Galba, Asiaticus and the rest, had seethed and grumbled when they discovered word of the victory would reach home months before they would. They still had doubts, of course; Narcissus’s subterfuge had been too enormous, too blatant, to go entirely undetected. They would gossip and sneer at him among their own kind, but too late to do him any damage.
He shivered. The truth was that he was glad to be free of this island, with its damp and its fogs, its alien gods and its dangerous barbarian inhabitants. Each night he dreamed of the day he had led his legions into battle on the Emperor’s elephant and in the mornings he woke up sweating in fear. How could he have been such a fool? How could he have allowed his enthusiasm and his emotions to carry him on a surge of super-heated blood into the very heart of danger? He didn’t want to be brave. He wanted to be alive.
And he was alive — alive and returning home. To Rome. But here too was a contradiction. For in Rome Valeria Messalina awaited, and, no doubt, further tales of Valeria Messalina’s wrongdoings. There was a reckoning to be had there, but it was a reckoning he did not wish to face. He had already decided he would delay it until after his triumph. Let her enjoy her day in the sun when he was carried from the Campus Martius at the head of his soldiers, and on the Capitol where he would sacrifice to Jupiter in thanks for his victories. He let his imagination take him there. The cheering crowds and the chariot with its matched white horses, the great temple looming above him on its squat hill, the laurel crown above his head and the slave whispering again and again in his ear, ‘ Memento mori — Remember thou art mortal.’
Something flared on a hill inland and to the north of the river mouth. A fire of some sort. A party of woodworkers or some wicked barbarian rite? It didn’t matter. His time in Britain was past and he intended never to return. The soldiers and the bureaucrats could have it now. He had been on the island for all of sixteen days.
The little group on the hill stood mesmerized by the flames clawing their way into the bruised purple of the evening sky from Britte’s funeral pyre. Rufus tried not to see the cloth-wrapped bundle in the centre turn black and disintegrate as the west wind whipped the flames through the carefully stacked cords of pitch-soaked timber. A Gaulish trooper of her tribe had performed the rites as best he could, but for Rufus it was enough that she should know he was here, and had attempted to fulfil her wishes. When it was done, he would gather the ashes and, if the wind was still fair, let it carry what they contained of Britte to the land of her birth. Some instinct told him that she — or what she had been — was already gone.
A small hand gripped his, and he looked down to see Gaius staring into the fire with troubled eyes. They waited until the sky above and the far-off sea below were dusted with gold by the light of a harvest moon. When the last timbers of the pyre crashed down, sending a flurry of sparks into the heavens, Rufus finally turned away and led his son back down the hill. To a new life, in a conquered land, among a conquered people.
Epilogue
Summer AD 51
Caratacus looked down upon the battlefield from his refuge among the rocks and watched his family being led away through the heaped bodies that had once been the combined might of the Silures, the Ordovices and the Catuvellauni. Eight long years he had resisted the Romans. Eight years of pain and death, of heroism and epic endurance. Eight years of mistrust and betrayal. Now the last battle was fought, the last of his strength gone. Three warriors, all that survived of his personal guard, rode with him, and, but for them, he would have been down there among Britain’s bravest and its best, his life gone, but his honour intact. He sighed and closed his eyes. He was so tired, tired unto death. It was over… unless?
Two days later four ragged figures rode on horses more dead than alive through the gates of the Brigante capital at Isurium. Curious onlookers lined the dirt avenue between the huts to follow their progress but made no move either to welcome or to impede them. Caratacus saw that their coming had been expected. A small group of richly dressed figures waited in the centre of the main gathering place.
He reined his pony to a halt and slid painfully from its back, almost staggering as his feet touched the hard- packed earth. A hand reached out to steady him, but he shrugged it away. He no longer had a kingdom, but he still had his dignity. Alone, he approached the Brigante court, feeling filthy and unkempt, oblivious of the noble figure he cut. Among the small group he recognized her husband, Venutius, and Brigitha, but he only had eyes for the slender, dark-haired figure in the green gown who stepped from their ranks to meet him.
He stopped three paces in front of her and dropped to his knees, in the same movement drawing his sword from its scabbard. He heard gasps of alarm and the sound of other swords singing free. Felt the moment she shook her head and her bodyguards relaxed. He bowed his head and held out both hands palm upwards with the slim blade of the sword balanced upon them. It was his battle sword, scarred and grooved; the last token of his honour.
‘Caratacus of the Catuvellauni begs aid and succour from Queen Cartimandua of the Brigantes. This is his gift to her and the pledge of his allegiance.’
The words fell into the silence, and it seemed an age before she replied. ‘Cartimandua of the Brigantes also has a gift for Caratacus of the Catuvellauni.’
He felt the sword being lifted from his hands to be replaced by the weight of the heavy iron shackles her bodyguards secured over each wrist. He closed his eyes for a moment. Why, when he should feel betrayed, did he only experience a sense of blessed relief?
He raised his head to accept her scorn, but her face was blank. She bent forward and nimble fingers worked where his cloak was pinned at his shoulder. When she straightened she held the brooch that had secured it. He saw her eyes shine as she recognized the boar symbol and the ruby stone. If he’d known she coveted it so much he would gladly have given it to her.
He had expected death, would almost have welcomed it; instead he was confined in the royal household, shackled, but kindly treated, though they kept him apart. At the end of the third week she appeared at the doorway of the room where he was being held. She looked extraordinarily beautiful and he wondered if she had made an extra effort on this day of all days.
‘You are to be reunited with your family,’ she said, but the tremble in her voice did not match the sentiment of her words. He understood why when she stepped aside and another, larger figure filled the doorway. Caratacus closed his eyes, but not before he recognized the blood-red tunic and the shining plate armour, the unwarlike little sword that had done so much to destroy his hopes.
They docked two months later in stifling heat at a busy port where small multi-coloured boats scuttled like water beetles among the larger ships, unloading cargoes that smelled and looked like nothing he had ever encountered. Once ashore, they dressed him in fine clothes in the British style, exchanged his iron fetters for gold and placed a torc of the same precious metal at his neck. He almost laughed. Did a man have to be well dressed to die in Rome?
He knew he should be fearful; did not all men fear death, even kings? And to die in an alien land so far from home… But there was a comfort, if the Romans kept their word, in that he would soon be reunited with Medb. And then there was curiosity. He had always been a curious man, eager to discover and understand what others thought mundane and uninteresting. By the end, he had understood the Romans. True, he had not been able to defeat them, but he had made them pay dearly for their forays and raids into the mountain fastness he had made his own. Yet skirmishes and ambushes were not battles and it was battles that won wars. The minds of her commanders had been clear to him, but he had never been able to defeat Rome’s soldiers. Now he was curious about Rome. He remembered his conversation, so long ago, with the keeper of the great beast that had accompanied the invasion force. Even then he had felt a flutter of excitement at the descriptions of buildings as tall as mountains, palaces of pure gold and homes fit for gods. Now, in the twilight hour of his life, he would see the reality of it.
They sent fifty men to guard him; fifty of the Emperor’s elite, in unfamiliar dark tunics and breastplates embossed with silver. All this for a single vanquished enemy who was no more a threat than the women who lined
