the Brigantes,’ the Briton said. Valerius heard Aenid snort derisively behind them. ‘She came late to the ceremony but was among the first to recognize the benefits of Roman rule.’
‘She is a traitor.’ Maeve’s voice came from the doorway and seemed unnaturally loud in the small room.
‘My wife is not the only lady who does not know her place,’ he said mildly. ‘You should attend your father, child.’ Valerius saw Maeve’s nostrils flare at the word child, but Cearan’s authority was strong enough to overcome her anger. With a last lightning flash of her eyes she turned and swept from the room again, with Aenid at her heels. Valerius felt cheated.
‘Now I truly ask your forgiveness, and your forbearance.’ Cearan frowned and glanced towards Numidius, but the engineer was still oblivious of anything around him. ‘It would go ill with Lucullus if it were known in Colonia that his daughter had used that word in connection with Cartimandua. None is held in higher honour by the Romans than she, though, since I count you my friend, and a very special Roman, I will say that her reputation among her countrymen is less savoury. Maeve is young, and the young, at least among our people, like to have their voices heard, even if what they say is occasionally foolish or hurtful.’
He turned back to the painting. ‘Our world changed that day, but some of us still do not recognize the reality. I have often wondered why my cousin should wish to have a depiction of his people’s greatest shame on his wall. He says that it is a fine painting by a fine artist, and there is some merit in that. But I think the truth is that he needs to remind himself each day that the life he once knew no longer exists, and that he must don his Roman clothes and step into his Roman shoes and take his place in Colonia as a Roman, because there is no other path open to him.’
With a nod, Cearan went to join his wife. Valerius reluctantly walked out into the night and waited as his horse was brought from the stables. He stood beside the animal for a moment, enjoying the cool night air. The light of a full moon bathed the countryside in silver and in the distance he heard the mournful screech of a hunting owl.
‘We believe the owl is a messenger from the goddess.’ She was part hidden in the shadow of the doorway where she must have waited until the servant was gone. ‘To encounter one can be a good omen — or a bad.’ Her voice had a honeyed quality; the angry outburst of a few minutes earlier might never have happened.
‘It sounds very much like a message from our gods,’ he replied, thinking of the augury by the temple steps. ‘The signs can be good or bad but they are never clear. Sometimes you have to decide for yourself.’
He felt her smile. He wished she would come into the light.
‘I have been told to apologize for my behaviour.’ Now the voice was a parody of a small girl’s and the words held a slight tremor. It had a strangely unsettling effect on him. ‘You are my father’s guest and he feels I have insulted you in some way. I did not intend to. My uncle tells me I must learn to control my tongue.’
‘Your uncle is a good man.’
A slight hesitation. ‘Yes, but sometimes he is too honest.’
Now it was Valerius’s turn to smile. ‘Can a man be too honest?’
‘Oh, yes. Because all honesty comes at a price.’ The girl’s voice was gone and it was said with a woman’s certainty. ‘One day Cearan may find it too high.’
‘May I see you again?’ He wasn’t even sure that he had spoken the words; certainly he hadn’t formed them in his head. But they must have been said because she let out an audible gasp of surprise. When he looked at the doorway it was empty, but he sensed she was still there, in the shadow. He waited and almost a minute passed.
‘It would cause… complications.’ The whisper came out of the darkness. ‘But…’
‘But?’
Another long pause made him think she had gone.
‘But if you truly wish it, you will find a way.’
The ride back to Colonia seemed much shorter. At one point a ghostly shape crossed his path a few hundred yards ahead. He decided it wasn’t an owl.
XII
The last rays of the dying sun caught the roof of the ramshackle Temple of Juno Moneta, which shared the summit of the Capitoline half a mile away across the Forum with the much grander house of Jupiter Capitolinus. For once, Lucius Annaeus Seneca agreed with his Emperor’s view of the ruinous state of much of central Rome. Still, this was hardly the time to raise the subject.
‘And Britain?’ he asked.
‘Britain?’ The pale eyes were a shadowy curtain for whatever was happening behind them. The cherubic face tilted slightly to indicate puzzlement. A hint of a smile touched lips the shape of a cupid’s bow, but there was the faintest air of petulance which carried a warning. Seneca smiled back.
‘Our island province is the final subject of the day, Caesar, surely you haven’t forgotten?’ The smile stayed in place but Seneca noted the eyes appeared to harden. He had played this game many times, but the boy — strange that he still thought of him as a boy even though he was almost twenty-two years old — was an emperor now, and playing games with emperors, however familiar, could be like playing touch with a viper. Agrippina, the boy’s mother, had forgotten that simple rule and he had made her pay the price after one of the most ludicrous, botched assassination attempts ever devised. When his collapsing boat failed to do the job, the Emperor’s hirelings had resorted to the simple and much more effective expedient of stabbing her to death.
‘Remind us.’ Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, known as Nero, nodded for Seneca to continue. No offence had been taken.
‘Conquered by your respected stepfather, a feat for which Rome awarded him a triumph in recognition of his military prowess.’ The curtain lifted for a second as Nero attempted to reconcile the vision of weak-minded, doddering old Claudius with the victorious general, hailed imperator twenty-two times, whom the arch on the Via Flaminia commemorated. ‘Your rule is imposed by four legions: the Twentieth and the Second in the west, soon to be joined by the Fourteenth, and the Ninth to the north, to which they have yet to bring Rome’s bounty.’
‘And the east?’
Seneca paused. This was more dangerous ground. ‘Pacified. The conquered tribes accept your rule without question. The Colonia which Emperor Claudius founded on the fortress of the Trinovantes thrives and its people prosper. It is an example to all Britain. The temple dedicated to the cult of your divine stepfather is a masterpiece worthy of Rome itself, but…’ he hesitated in deference to the delicate decision he was placing before the boy, ‘there is, of course, the question of whether it might be rededicated.’
‘I will think on it. Continue.’
‘Your new port of Londinium continues to grow…’ Seneca allowed his voice to drop to a low murmur as he listed the virtues of the province. This was another part of the game. He had found that a combination of pace and pitch could mesmerize the boy and he could let his mind drift on to other subjects while his tongue rolled off the facts and figures he had learned by rote in a few short hours earlier that day. It was, he thought, a singular talent, but one he would never boast of, unlike those other talents for which he, and the world, must be for ever thankful: his genius for oratory; his subtlety of argument; the way he could turn a simple subject upside down and inside out and find a satisfactory conclusion that would have eluded any other man. Today his thoughts turned to Claudius. There too had lain a sort of genius. A genius for survival. Yet at the end he accepted death as meekly as a sacrificial lamb in the Temple of Fortuna. Not only accepted it, but embraced it. Claudius had known Agrippina’s purpose, Seneca was certain of it. So why, when it would have been so simple to plead fatigue or insist another took the first bite, had he supped the fatal portion with such enthusiasm? Was this a case of a life so well lived that the man who lived it had recognised his time? Surely not. Proximity to Claudius and the nest of serpents he called his advisers had been almost as dangerous as proximity to Caligula of reviled memory. Between them the pair had cost him nine years of his life; nine long years of heat and wind and dust spent in exile on Corsica. A small twinge — part guilt, part annoyance — reminded him of his own complicity and he struggled to suppress it. It was a sensation he had felt often over the years. How could a man so… astute? Yes, astute: one must be accurate with words… how could such a man succumb to a momentary folly, or perhaps not so momentary, which would endanger not only his career, but his very existence? But self-analysis, like self-pity, could be corrosive and he forced himself to
