and Narcissus shivered in Agrippina's grasp.
Claudius whispered, 'Well, in that case, what happens next all depends on you, Agrippina. If you will let me, I will spare you. Not through mercy-because you intrigue me, you and your lover.'
'And if I allow you to let me live, will you spare Nectovelin?' The bargaining sounded strange to Agrippina's own ears.
Nectovelin turned to face Agrippina. 'You've betrayed me once today already, child. Don't do it again.'
Vespasian, too, was outraged. 'Sir, you can't listen to this!'
Claudius was composed. 'How amusing that both captor and captive should reject a peaceful solution!'
Somehow Agrippina was in control of the situation. 'Let Nectovelin go,' she said. And in her own tongue she said to Nectovelin: 'I'm sorry.'
'Disarm him and throw him out, legate.'
'Sir-'
'He's broken already. He's no threat to us. And now we'll have to decide what to do with you two children-if you will first stop giving my secretary that unwelcome shave.'
With Nectovelin ejected, Agrippina released Narcissus. He stumbled away from her with a look of murderous hatred, massaging his throat and fingering his cut cheek.
Cunedda, freed, approached Agrippina. 'How could you do that to Nectovelin?'
'I saved his life.'
'But he lost his honour. And the Prophecy-'
'He never understood the Prophecy. Claudius was right. There are times when being able to read is a great advantage. Cunedda, the Prophecy talks of three emperors. Claudius is only the first. So we can't defeat him-not if the Prophecy contains any truth. For the Romans will be here for a long, long time.'
He rubbed his upper arm, bruised from a soldier's grasp. 'And Mandubracius?'
She flinched. 'I haven't forgotten. I will avenge my brother. I'll just have to find another way. There's one thing I've learned today above all else, Cunedda. This is a long game we're playing.'
Rufrius Pollio, commander of the Praetorian Guard, approached them. His sword was sheathed, but his look was venomous-but then he was in significant trouble for allowing assassins to come so close to the Emperor. 'Time to go,' he said in Latin.
Agrippina blurted, 'Emperor-'
Claudius turned.
'I must believe the Prophecy is truthful, for its predictions have come to pass. But there is a detail I don't understand.'
Claudius frowned. 'What detail?'
'That you would come to Britain accompanied by exotic beasts-horses big as houses, teeth like scimitars…'
Claudius stared at her. Then he turned to the commander of his guard. 'Rufrius Pollio, will you open that curtain?'
The soldier did so, to reveal a rectangle of deep blue evening sky. And, through the window, Agrippina saw a shadow moving by: massive yet graceful, a great head nodding. Perhaps distracted by the light from the tent the head turned, and a startlingly human eye peered at her. A trunk was raised, and tusks flashed.
Claudius said gravely, 'Some of this little poem of yours could be no more than sensible guesswork. Rome was bound to come here under one emperor or another. But it's hard to see who but the gods could have foreseen them, isn't it?'
Agrippina felt as if the world had come to pieces, and was reassembling in a different shape entirely.
XXII
When the burly soldiers bundled Nectovelin out into the dark, the commotion disturbed the animals in their hastily erected compound. They stomped back and forth, rumbling, their massive bulks like clouds shifting against the darkling sky.
They weren't happy. They were from different families, for the African traders who had sold them to the Romans had been unconcerned about such niceties. They had not enjoyed the sea crossings and the overland journey through Gaul any more than most of the Emperor's companions had. Now they were confined in this strange, cold place, and, missing their siblings and mothers, they growled and jostled restlessly.
But they had served Claudius's purpose, in striking awe into the people of this island. After all, since the glaciers had sullenly drawn back and the last mammoths died, these were the first elephants to have set foot in Britain in ten thousand years.
XXIII
Claudius left Britain after only sixteen days. And he took Agrippina and Cunedda with him, all the way back to Rome.
On the Palatine Hill, where the emperors since Augustus had been building their palaces, Agrippina and Cunedda wandered in silence under ceilings as tall as the sky, and across floors of marble as flat as lakes, all drenched in dense Mediterranean light. Claudius had talked of Rome as a system that worked on timescales that transcended human lifetimes. For more than half a millennium already the wealth of Europe, Asia and Africa had drained here, as water drains through a funnel. And the result was visible all around them in the marble-plated hills of Rome.
Though they remained under nominal guard, Claudius seemed keen to keep Cunedda and Agrippina within his household. He even assigned them tutors. They were his two Brittunculi, he said, apparently without malice. Later Agrippina learned that he had brought Gauls home too, and showed a similar interest in that relatively new province. They were treated like pets, Agrippina thought, but there were worse attitudes for a conqueror.
A month after the Emperor's return to Rome Agrippina was brought to Claudius to find him busily engaged in preparations for his triumph, scheduled for the following year. 'There's so much to do,' he told her, fussing over heaps of correspondence. 'So many details to organise! And it's hard to delegate. Even Narcissus, whom I value dearly, is a Greek, and understands little of the tradition, not to say the archaism, with which Rome runs its affairs.
'And I am also busy composing the dedicatory inscription for my triumphal arches.' He showed her a rough outline. 'You can see half of it is taken up by my own formal names, pah! But I have chosen the words carefully, I think. I mention the formal submission of eleven kings. The invasion was carried out without loss of honour to Rome, for it was a response to the breaking of treaties by British princes-it was, you know! Roman wars are always legal. And here I show that Roman rule is now extended to the barbarians across the sea.' Barbari Transoceanum.
'Where will your arches be?'
'The Senate has awarded me three-in Rome, and on the coast of the Ocean, perhaps where Plautius made his first landing, and perhaps one in Cunobelin's capital.'
Agrippina said boldly, 'There will be few celebrations in Britain.'
'Why so?'
'Your invasion was brutal. You care nothing for our culture, our identity. You want only the wealth you can extract.'
Claudius sat back and pursed his lips. 'So we are bandits. Violent robbers. But that is the way of things. On your island, you Britons have fallen behind the march of Europe. We have literacy; we have law; we have records; we have a political system which does not depend on the idiosyncrasies of its leader-at least not entirely. For all the undoubted qualities of your culture, in this new world Britain is an anachronism. And in the collision of an advanced culture with a lesser, only one outcome is possible.
