Claudius

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 the route hoping for a glimpse of the barbarian in the imperial carriage. And they had given him a travelling companion. Was this part of the insult to a defeated enemy, to be awarded a jailer who had barely begun to shave? The soldier seemed absurdly young for the legionary officer’s uniform he wore; fresh-faced and pink-cheeked, and staring with a frank curiosity that might have been annoying but for the intelligent humour in the pale eyes.

‘I am interested to know what lies ahead.’

The young man blinked, surprised that his exotic prisoner had command of Latin. He looked thoughtful for a moment, the eyes moving from Caratacus’s face to his chains. No harm in answering a question from the condemned man.

‘Gnaeus Julius Labienus, tribune, at your service,’ he said politely. ‘There is to be a parade, from the Campus Martius to the Emperor’s palace upon the Palatine Hill.’

The word Palatine stirred another memory of the long-ago conversation. A hill. One of how many? Six, or was it seven? ‘And I am to be part of this parade?’

‘You are to be the object of it. Its purpose. A thousand captured warriors will be your vanguard, and the trophies taken from you — the gold and the silver, the arms and the standards — will be piled high so all can see the wealth the Emperor has won for Rome.’ Caratacus suppressed a wry smile. He was a king, and kings understood the need to justify wars, but he wondered where this enormous treasure had come from. Arms he had lost in plenty — crude swords made in forest clearings and spear points forged in mountain caves — but the only gold he owned was at his neck and he knew nothing of standards save the eagles he had sought to wrest from the legions. Labienus continued. ‘There will be a fine turnout. Your fame precedes you. The fame of a mighty warrior who never surrendered and won the respect of our commanders and of our Emperor.’

‘And at the end?’

The young Roman studied the man opposite him on the padded bench seat of the carriage and felt an unexpected pang of regret. Perhaps in his mid-forties, the tale of his capture and the long ordeal of his captivity were etched deep in the lines of his face, but his eyes told a different story. The man might have been defeated, but the spirit and the will still burned strong. Tall and severe, greying hair to his shoulders and his moustaches drooping below his chin, Caratacus wore his chains like a badge of honour. Labienus felt an involuntary shiver as he imagined meeting the Briton in battle. Everything about him could be encapsulated in a single word. Pride.

‘At the end your fame will be greater than at any time before.’

Caratacus nodded. ‘May we draw back the curtains? I have travelled far to see this Rome.’

At first, it was a ghost city that danced in the shimmering midday heat. Nothing had prepared him for the scale of it. Mountains he had seen, and great forests, but these were creations of the gods. His imagination could barely accept that men had made this vast escarpment of stone that stretched from one horizon to the other and shone in the sunlight as if it were encrusted with gemstones. Soon they came to the first buildings lining the roadway: pillared and pitch-roofed constructions of golden stone with marble statues staring down from their summits. Each was different in its own way, in either design or scale. Some were small, smaller even than the roundhouses of his homeland, but others were vast, more temple than home. One thing puzzled him. ‘I see no entrances. Do you Romans spirit yourselves in and out of your houses?’

Labienus smiled. ‘Oh, these are not houses. They are graves: the tombs of our forefathers. The greater the man, the greater the memorial.’

They soon reached an area where the true houses rose like cliffs tight on either side of the carriage, and what little space was left between was filled with clamouring crowds so that their progress slowed to a walk. The apartment blocks were so high they shut out the sunlight and Caratacus’s mood darkened with the deepening shadow. For a moment he felt the helplessness and rage of a bear trapped in a pit, and he had to restrain the urge to launch himself across the carriage at young Labienus. One twist of the chains and the tribune’s neck would have snapped like a chicken’s. But the impulse was gone as quickly as it had come and the carriage emerged once again into the sunlight. They crossed a broad river, a sluggish, unwholesome stream that gave off the stench of raw ordure and rotting meat, and the carriage came to a halt. Labienus turned to him. ‘We have arrived.’

When he emerged from the carriage he found himself at the centre of a vast open space encircled by buildings and dominated by the curve of a structure so huge he could see only a small part of it. In front of the buildings an enormous crowd of Romans had gathered and now they stirred as they caught the first glimpse of the rebel commander who had fought the legions to a standstill. He closed his ears to their insults and concentrated on his surroundings. To his front, stretching away towards a wide gap in the wall of stone, a broad column of cowed figures stood motionless, save for a dozen or so at the rear who straightened as they recognized him. As he stared at them, a chained arm was raised in salute and a single word echoed from the marble and the granite and the brick.

‘Caratacus!’

He saw heads rise at the shout, and a murmur ran through the column of slaves as the name was repeated again and again and again, ever louder, until the word turned the space into a great cauldron of sound that made his hair stand on end and his skin prickle with sheer joy.

‘Caratacus!’

A weaker man would have wept, but he was not yet that man. Not even when Labienus appeared at his side leading a slight, dark-haired figure by her chains and he held his Medb in his arms again for what might be the final time. Not when they took her away from him and linked his golden chains to the rear of a gilded chariot drawn by two milk-white mares. Not even when the chariot jerked into movement and he was drawn like a common criminal between rows of jeering faces along a broad avenue lined with more members of the Emperor’s dark-tunicked guard. It was a few minutes before he realized with disbelief that the crowd wasn’t jeering; that the words they shouted were not insults but encouragement. He held his head high and looked to neither right nor left, able to stride out steadily behind the chariot as it advanced at walking pace. What strange people these Romans were, bringing him to this place, where the only gardens were gardens of stone, and the only forest where a man might hunt was a forest of marble pillars, not to debase him, but to hail him as if he were their own Emperor. A mountain appeared before him, a mountain topped by an enormous multi-pillared, marbled edifice he felt certain must be Claudius’s palace, but the procession skirted it and passed through thronging narrow streets to a second long avenue, dominated, to the right, by a second mountain. His feet stumbled on cobbled paving and he was surrounded by extravagant structures that outshone everything that had gone before, but he only had eyes for the mountain — because it wasn’t a mountain at all. Could men truly have made this? At first glance, it was a single structure, walls and columns, great arched windows, soaring frontages that made his head spin, and statues wrought of gold and silver that might come to life at any moment, they were so human in form. As his mind grappled with its complexity it turned into not a single building but many, placed one on top of the other or locked in close embrace, so that the one appeared to be supporting the next. For the first time he came close to losing his composure. How could he have believed he could defeat a people capable of creating this?

The column of prisoners disappeared over a low rise at the end of the avenue, Medb with it, but the chariot came to a halt at the foot of a roadway leading towards the great palaces that towered above. Caratacus allowed himself a bitter smile. He had quite forgotten why he was here. Soon. With the gods’ will it would be quick. If not? He was Caratacus of the Catuvellauni; let them do what they would. A phalanx of Praetorians closed in around him and an officer took his chains and led him upwards. To the Emperor.

Claudius sat on a golden throne beneath a broad canopy on the balcony overlooking the forum. The palace, like the throne, had once been Caligula’s and it had taken years to uncover all its secrets. Even now, he was certain, old bones waited to be discovered in their unlikely resting places. His heart was still fluttering with excitement from the moments earlier when he had watched the tall, noble figure being paraded below him. Every available vantage point in the forum was packed with faces looking upward for the moment when conqueror met conquered. When Emperor met king. The moment when his conquest of Britain was finally complete after all the long years.

‘You say he speaks Latin well?’

‘So I believe, Caesar,’ Narcissus confirmed. He felt Agrippina’s eyes boring into him. Would the woman never let him be? He had been right. Claudius should never have married her. She came with too much baggage, including her brat of a son. And spite. He remembered looking down upon Valeria Messalina’s twitching body; the beautiful face swollen to ugliness by the poison she had been forced to take. He wished the face had been Agrippina’s. The thought made him smile. He saw her eyes widen and he realized Caratacus must have been brought in. She had always had an eye for a man. He turned and confirmed what he had been told. The British king was taller by a head than the Praetorians who surrounded him. Somehow, he managed to convey the impression that the guard was his to command and the balcony his to dispose of as he willed.

Caratacus in his turn studied the figure on the golden throne; small and sickly pale but with bright, intelligent eyes, almost lost in his white toga with the broad purple stripe. A laurel wreath of gold rested on his thinning hair. So this was his nemesis; the man who had sent the legions to his country with their blood and their iron and their fire. The man who had enslaved half the tribes of Britain and corrupted the rest. And, yes, he acknowledged, the man who had defeated him and was about to kill him. He allowed his gaze to rove over the others in the little group. A tall, bald man with dark eyes and an inscrutable expression. A plump woman who studied him hungrily, and a boy, who must be her son, with the coldest eyes he had ever seen.

‘You may kneel and seek my forgiveness.’

Caratacus understood the imperial command, but he stared back as if the words had never been spoken. The Druids had told the story of Vercingetorix, the Gaul, who had knelt before a Caesar and whose reward was the strangling rope. They could strangle him if they wished, but he would not kneel. He heard the song of a dozen iron swords being drawn and he waited, stone-faced, for his fate.

Claudius stared at him, realization dawning as he studied the stern, unyielding figure in the golden chains. This giant of a man, this warrior, this king, was a reflection of his glory. No. More than that. He magnified it a thousand times. He had intended a public execution; an example to all that the only reward for any man who stood against Rome was a painful death. But it could not be. Caratacus of Britain would live, he decided — a wolf in a gilded cage. But first the formalities must be followed.

‘Caratacus, enemy of Rome, you have forfeited your life a hundred times by your actions. You are guilty of sedition and rebellion, and, by association, of common murder, rape and the torture of innocents. By your actions you brought war, death, famine and sorrow to your people.’ The words rang out, sharp and clear, and Caratacus knew they were aimed, not at him, but at the crowd below. This was the justification for his execution, though he could deny or defend every word of it. Claudius continued: ‘Yet you fought hard and you fought well and, though your cause was unworthy, you fought with honour and valour and won the respect even of your foes. At the end, mighty Rome brought you low, and now you are brought before me, defeated, but not subdued; for you are a king, and a king prefers death before dishonour. Death is your right and is your due. As is your right of reply.’ The Emperor gestured graciously towards the balcony edge.

Caratacus recognized the moment he was meant to plead for his life, but there was no honour in pleading and he was certain no purpose would be achieved by it. He would not make some self-serving address that these Romans could use to tarnish his memory. But there was one thing. He turned and looked out beyond the gawping multitude among the marble-columned temples below and over the endless sea of terracotta that sheltered the countless thousands of his enemies.

‘Why, when you have all this, did you need our poor huts?’ he asked.

The Latin was slow and unnatural, but the voice was strong and the words were understood. Claudius’s face froze. Narcissus blinked. The tang of fresh grass on a diamond-bright British morning filled his nostrils. He saw again the sea of dead, snarling faces on the day of the ambush. An Emperor, who was a god, on a great golden beast. He wondered what had become of the young man and his elephant.