beneath the white chalk cliffs of the south coast.
Agrippina reflected, with the faintest unease, on a titbit of information she had picked up from a trader in Durovernum, the main town of the Cantiaci, the local people. Though the Cantiaci didn't have a name for this new harbour, the Romans did: they called it Rutupiae. In their endless obsessive mapping and surveying, and the low- level spying they carried on through their traders, the Romans had spotted the potential of the place, even if the locals hadn't.
Her eye was distracted by another silhouette on the horizon. Perhaps it was another hide-sailed trading ship from Gaul. There seemed to be a lot of traffic today. But the air was misty, and she couldn't quite make it out.
'Look,' Cunedda said, 'Mandubracius is waving. He's got the tent up!'
At that moment the shapeless black mound the boy had erected subsided to the sand.
Nectovelin harrumphed. 'He's done his best. Let's go rescue him.' He led the way out of the sea and up the beach.
III
The four of them spent the day playing games, talking, eating, drinking. It was near midsummer, and the light faded only slowly from the sky. Nectovelin even grudgingly accepted some of the Roman wine Cunedda had brought.
Agrippina was glad Mandubracius was here. He was a good-hearted child, full of affection, who wanted nothing more than for everybody to have a good time. In fact she wondered if, unconsciously, she had planned it this way, to have Mandubracius around when she faced Nectovelin over her relationship with Cunedda, as a way to lighten the mood.
First Mandubracius and then Nectovelin succumbed to tiredness, and retired to the tent.
Cunedda and Agrippina walked a little way away from the light of the fire. They brought some spare clothing to spread out on the cool sand, and lay side by side, peering up at the slow unveiling of the stars, while the sea lapped softly.
Cunedda took her hand. 'Do you think he's really asleep? I've heard that old soldiers never sleep.'
'You make fun of him, but he really is a warrior. After all his birth was attended by a Prophecy!'
'Really? Tell me,' Cunedda said, intrigued.
So Agrippina told him how Nectovelin's mother had supposedly started babbling during her difficult labour. 'Brica never explained how come she spouted Latin, for she died in childbirth-although the baby, Nectovelin, survived.' Her grandfather Cunovic had written out a fair copy of the 'Prophecy' on parchment, and had given it to Nectovelin as he grew older.
'I love stories like this,' Cunedda said. 'What did it say?'
'Well, I don't know for sure. Something about the Romans, something about freedom, a lot that made no sense at all. Cunovic had a theory about it, that it was a scrying of some kind, poured into Nectovelin's mother's head by a god, or perhaps by a wizard of the future meddling with the past. A 'Weaver', Cunovic called him. He was rather frightened of the Prophecy, I think. He dared not destroy the copy he had made, but he was happy to pass it on to Nectovelin…I'm told Nectovelin has carried it around all his life, even though he can't read it!'
'And yet it shaped him.'
'Yes. Because of the Prophecy Nectovelin believes he is destined to be a warrior, destined to fight Romans- just as his own great-grandfather fought Caesar. It probably hasn't helped that that great-grandfather gave him his name too.
'But for most of his life he has been a warrior without a war to fight. In Brigantia there is only a little cattle rustling, and a warrior can't get his teeth into that! And he certainly never fit in as a farmer. He was always moody and aggressive. 'Like living with a thunderstorm in the house,' my mother used to say. He never had children, you know-lovers, but never children. And so, when he heard that you young Catuvellaunians were becoming adventurous-even though he was in his thirties by then-he came down here for a bit of fighting. Cracking a few Trinovantian skulls suited him. But he's still restless. You can see it in him…'
Since the days of Cassivellaunus, while the Romans brooded across the Ocean, the Catuvellaunians had been busy building an empire of their own.
The Catuvellaunians still boasted of their 'victory' over Julius Caesar, even though in fact Cassivellaunus had won no more than a stand-off with the overstretched Romans. Before he left Britain for good, Caesar had insisted on the Catuvellaunians respecting their neighbours the Trinovantes, who had been friendly to Caesar. Well, that hadn't worked; before long, with brazen cheek, the Catuvellaunians had actually taken the Trinovantes' base of Camulodunum as their own capital.
Then had followed the decades-long reign of Cassivellaunus's grandson Cunobelin, when the Catuvellaunians had been content to sit on their little empire. Agrippina had the impression that Cunobelin had been a wise and pragmatic ruler, able to balance the competing forces of internal pride within his nation with the constant danger represented by Roman might-and all the while growing rich on lucrative trade with Rome.
But then Cunobelin had died. His empire had devolved to the control of two of his many sons, Caratacus and Togodumnus-both in fact uncles of Cunedda, though they weren't much older than he was. To them Caesar's incursion was beyond living memory. And under them the Catuvellaunians had gone in for aggressive expansion.
During the ensuing raids and petty wars Nectovelin had risen quickly, and found a place in the princes' councils.
As his personal wealth grew Nectovelin brought some of his own family down from Brigantia to help him spend it. But he hadn't always been pleased with the results, such as when Agrippina's mother had accepted an offer to let her young daughter, like two of Cunobelin's younger sons, be educated in the empire. The Romans claimed this strengthened links between the peoples, but harder heads described it as 'hostage taking'. Still, Agrippina's mother had seen the benefits of a Roman education. She had even given her daughter a Roman name.
So Agrippina had spent three years of her life in Massilia on the southern coast of Gaul, cramming Latin, learning to read and write, absorbing rhetoric and grammar and the other elements of a Roman education, and soaking up Mediterranean light. It had left her transformed in every way, she knew. And yet she had had no hesitation in coming home when the time was up.
'I went to Massilia against Nectovelin's wishes,' Agrippina said. 'But I wouldn't have been here in the south without him. I wouldn't have met you. And none of it would have come about without the Prophecy.'
Cunedda shook his head. 'A strange story. How dramatic it must have been, that moment-the painful labour, the attending women, the brothers, the brooding grandfather-and then the drama of the spouting Latin words! And that one moment, lost in the past, has echoed throughout Nectovelin's life.'
This romantic musing reminded Agrippina of why she had fallen so firmly in love with Cunedda in the first place. She curled up her fingers and gently scratched the palm of his hand. 'But even though it shaped his life, Nectovelin can't read his own Prophecy.'
'You could read it for him.'
'I offered once. He pretended not to hear. He hates my Roman reading. I may as well have waved an eagle standard in his face.' She suppressed a sigh. She had debated this many times with her cousin. 'Words give you such power. If he could read he would be the equal of any Roman, the equal of the Emperor Claudius himself.'
He looked up at her, the stars reflected in his eyes. 'Dear 'Pina. A head full of words, and dreams!'
'Dreams?'
'We need to speak about the future. Our future.' He hesitated. 'Pina-Claudius Quintus has offered me a position in Gaul.'
This sudden, unexpected news turned her cold. She knew that Quintus was one of Cunedda's principal contacts for his pottery business.
'Quintus is expanding,' Cunedda said, uncertain what she was thinking. 'He likes my work. He'll be a partner in the new concern, but it will be my business, just as here.'
'And you didn't bother to tell me any of this?'
