The carriage joined the flow towards Rutupiae, the slave guiding Brigonius's horse. As they rolled across the flat coastal plain, it wasn't long before Brigonius caught the first whiffs of salty sea air-and through the awning he glimpsed the gleaming white shoulders of the monument at Rutupiae, a landmark visible for miles around. Meanwhile the air in the carriage was filled with the tickling scent of cosmetics, and the women plied him with a fine light wine and strawberries dipped in ground pepper.
'We heard of your trouble,' Severa said.
'Trouble?'
'The revolt in Brigantia. News of such things reaches Rome, you know!'
'I'd hardly call it a revolt,' Brigonius said. 'It started with a riot outside Vindolanda. Came from a bit of heavy-handedness by a decurion.' In fact the officer had beaten a Brigantian labourer he accused, falsely, of thievery. 'Next thing you know there was trouble all over the place. Some of the lads took the opportunity for a little petty banditry.'
'I thought it was more serious than that,' Severa said.
'Oh, the army had to deploy.' Once roused from its brothels and bath houses the army had, as usual, stamped down with maximum force on the dissidents. Heads were broken, a few villages burned, a gaggle of wives and children taken off into slavery. 'They cleared up the trouble quickly.'
'I don't understand why people even want to fight the army,' Lepidina said. 'I mean, what if they won, somehow? Why, without the army…' She tailed off. Her face was empty, her eyes and mouth wide, like a child's.
Her life had been remarkably sheltered, Brigonius thought. He felt an impulse to protect her-an impulse no doubt deriving from lust, but genuine despite that, he thought.
'Not everybody likes the Romans,' he said gently. 'Their taxes, their forced-labour levies-'
'You must like them,' Lepidina said sharply. 'You sell them your stone.'
'That doesn't mean they're my friends.' He grinned. 'I follow my father. I bleed the Romans white, if I can.'
Severa nodded, apparently approving. 'You learned much from your father?'
'He died a couple of years ago.'
'Yet you still rely on his wisdom, as you wait to accrue your own. A sound strategy. We are all shaped by the past, aren't we, Brigonius? In fact we wouldn't be sitting here now if not for deep historical links we share.'
'In your note you talk of your grandmother, who was a Brigantian but went to Rome.'
'Agrippina, yes. She died before I was born, but my mother told me all about her. Fascinating life! Somebody ought to write it down. And, you see, she knew your great-grandfather, Brigonius, who was called Cunedda-'
'Like my own father.'
'Yes. And his father before him. The story goes that Agrippina and Cunedda knew each other at the time of Claudius's invasion of Britain. Your family were Catuvellaunians, Brigonius. My grandmother's family owned an interest in a quarrying concern. Later in life she passed it to your family-to the son of that first Cunedda. And that is how your family came by their interest in quarrying, and moved to Brigantia to take possession of it. So, you see, in a way you are in my debt, aren't you?'
Brigonius, feeling manipulated, wasn't sure about that.
Lepidina had evidently heard all this before. 'I think they were more than friends,' she said mischievously. 'Agrippina and her Cunedda. Otherwise why make such an extravagant gift? I think they were lovers!' She whispered, her eyes huge, 'What do you think, Brigantius-Brigonius? Does love cross the generations, does love stand outside time?'
She was playing games, of course. But he felt a warm flush inside.
It got noisier. Lepidina ducked and looked out of the awning. 'Rutupiae!' she said. 'We're nearly there.'
III
Soon the carriage could move no further in the crush of traffic. The three passengers clambered out, Brigonius briskly, the women elegantly, and, leaving the unnamed slave with the carriage, they walked.
The air off the sea was fresh, and the sun was bright. The road was packed with people, their vehicles, slaves and animals. Everybody was funnelling towards the coast, where the road ended at the feet of the mighty arch. Children ran excitedly around the legs of the adults, and there was a hum of conversation. Vendors worked the slowly moving crowd, selling bits of meat on skewers, and oysters-a speciality of Rutupiae-and tokens and trinkets to welcome the Emperor, pennants in imperial purple, and miniatures of the grave, bearded face that had become so familiar from his coinage.
With Brigonius and his broad shoulders taking the lead, the three of them made their way through the crush. Brigonius loomed taller than most; perhaps Brigantians ate better than these Roman-owned Cantiaci. His spirits rose to be part of this cheerful mob. He said, 'It feels like a festival.'
'Of course it does,' Severa said. 'That's the whole point. The emperors have always shown themselves to the crowds, at feast days, in the amphitheatres. Now this new Emperor is displaying himself to the provinces-I believe he means to travel from end to end of his empire, as if it were one vast amphitheatre.'
'Why?'
'Well, he comes to unite,' she said. 'Not to conquer like Claudius, or to indulge his vanity like Nero. The consolidator, they call him. Look around, Brigonius. Do you imagine any of these people, even the smallest child, will ever forget the day they saw the Emperor himself in person?'
Brigonius grunted. 'From what I hear, there will be plenty of people who won't forget how much it's costing them to entertain him.'
Severa laughed. 'So young yet so cynical!'
At last they broke out of the crowd. They came to a cordon patrolled by soldiers in dress uniform, with bright red cloaks and colourful plumes on their helmets. Severa spoke to one of the soldiers and passed him a note on a slip of wood; he glanced at it and hurried off to find a superior officer.
From here Brigonius could make out Rutupiae itself. It was a major port, in fact quite a large town. Blocky buildings of stone and wood sprawled around a harbour, and the tiled roof of a very grand mansio, there to host particularly distinguished visitors, gleamed, polished. On the sea ships floated at anchor, perhaps the ships that had transported the Emperor across the ocean from Gaul. Heavy and complex, their sails furled, they looked as if they had been painted on the blue sky.
And in the foreground, dominating everything, that quadruple triumphal arch loomed over the arrow-straight road from the west, its four columns like the legs of a giant. Clad in white marble imported from Italy, with lettering in bronze and its top ornamented with trophies of victory, it shone in the sun, no less than eighty feet high: the gateway to Roman Britain. Brigonius the quarryman wondered how its architect had ensured it would not sink into the soft coastal sand. It must have had deep and massive foundations.
Around the feet of this imposing structure people swarmed, dwarfed. Carpenters erected a stage in the crossroads beneath the arch. There were plenty of soldiers; Brigonius saw legionary pennants, the curling glitter of signal trumpets. It was quite a spectacle.
A decurion approached Severa and beckoned her forward. With some relief Brigonius moved out of the crush of the crowd, and with the women walked towards the stage.
Severa murmured, 'I don't imagine you've been here before, Brigonius. Does it call to something in your blood?'
'I don't understand.'
'It is here that the Romans under Claudius first made their landing in Britain. Of course there was nothing here then, just a bit of beach, no docks-'
Lepidina said, 'And no ugly monument.'
'And,' Severa said, 'it was a landing witnessed by my grandmother, and by your great-grandfather Cunedda. Or so Agrippina always claimed.'
Brigonius was unimpressed. 'Well, there are plenty of Romans swarming here today.'
'An emperor can hardly travel alone. I'm told there are eight thousand troops, and probably as many
