Emperor

XVIII

It took another month for the final act of the rebellion's aftermath to play itself out.

The execution was to take place outside the camp at Banna. Everybody within half a day's walk of the place was summoned to attend, as were the leaders of the civitas.

At the appointed hour Brigonius walked out of the camp. He joined a dismal gathering, a hundred people or so, men, women and children, gathered around the cross on the ground. The August day was unusually warm: it was a Roman heat, Karus said, a heavy heat that flattened your lust and puddled your thinking, the heat of the conquerors.

To Brigonius's surprise, Severa joined him, with Karus. 'I wasn't expecting you two. I didn't know you had a taste for such a spectacle.'

'I certainly don't,' Karus said, his face grey. 'I see it as duty, of a grim sort. It is sometimes my role to argue for the death penalty. I think I should remind myself from time to time what that entails.'

Severa was expressionless, wrapped in a white cloak. 'As for me, I thought I should drain the dregs of a foolish disturbance which did so much damage to my ambitions. I thought that my daughter might be here, however. After all she worships a god who died in such a manner. You'd think she would see this as part of her theological education.'

'You're too hard on the girl,' Karus murmured. 'This isn't the place for her, you know. You're crushing her spirit.'

'I know my own daughter, I think.'

Karus regarded her. 'Once I admired you. I lusted after you-I'm sure you knew it. And your mind astonished me; your gaze pierced centuries. But perhaps your aloofness from history has leached you of your humanity, Severa. Perhaps you have something of the Weaver's manipulative coldness in your heart…' But his words tailed away, and Severa's glare held only contempt for this man who had been her closest ally.

As for Brigonius, he had nothing to say to Severa. Somehow the company of this vicious, thrusting woman felt appropriate on this awful day.

There was a disturbance. Brigonius turned to see a detail of soldiers dragging a prisoner out of the camp. They towered over him; he was only a boy. Brigonius and his companions had to step back to allow the party through. For a moment the boy's glance met Brigonius's. It was Similis, Tullio's British slave. The boy seemed to recognise Brigonius, who had once thanked him for bringing him a drink. Then the moment was lost, the link between their souls broken.

The soldiers briskly pushed the boy to the ground. They strapped his arms to his cross. Then they laid one foot over the other, and to pin both feet to the cross upright, drove a long iron nail through them. The sound was extraordinary, like a skewer driven into a side of pork. The boy stayed silent; he panted hard, panicky. Brigonius had heard that there was comparatively little pain associated with the nailing, oddly. With a grunting effort the soldiers raised the cross, and pushed its base into a hole in the ground. As the cross was jolted into position, Brigonius thought he heard the flesh in the boy's feet tear. Now the screaming began.

'Oh, have mercy!' Karus said, but it was a whisper, too quiet for the soldiers to hear.

Severa said bleakly, 'Mercy? The suffering is necessary. Not for him and the crime he committed, but for us, so we will not transgress in future.'

'But he didn't commit a crime,' Karus blustered. 'That's what's so monstrously unfair about it!'

The boy's guilt or otherwise didn't matter, Brigonius knew. Severa was right about that. The rebellion had been broken up, its leaders punished. But for the soldiers at Banna one loose thread had remained. Nobody had been found who had supported Matto in his strike at the very heart of their camp, nobody who had ordered him to do it, nobody who had helped him. The soldiers couldn't bear the idea that one individual acting alone could have penetrated so far into a base they thought of as secure. So somebody had to be blamed, a conspiracy concocted. And there, conveniently, was a Brigantian boy serving the prefect himself. Some whispered he had been seen at the gate when Matto arrived, or at the headquarters building before it was torched, or-

'All lies,' Karus moaned. An empathetic man for a lawyer, Brigonius thought; he felt the boy's agony himself. 'All rumours, misunderstandings-a will to see blame where none exists!'

Brigonius put a hand on his shoulder. 'For once Severa is right. His suffering is necessary; it is closure. Let's just be grateful it isn't one of us.'

Karus spat on the ground, an uncharacteristically crude gesture. 'Sometimes you are too pragmatic, Brigonius. This may be necessary but it isn't for me.' He stalked off, and Severa, her face unreadable, followed.

Blood dripped steadily from Similis's feet. If he let himself hang from his arms, so sparing his torn feet, he couldn't breathe. But if he tried to raise himself on his feet so he could get some air, the tearing got worse. So he jerked and struggled, shifting his weight from one source of pain to another, his movements minute but agonised.

As the boy fought to stay alive, one by one the crowd drifted away. Brigonius felt he ought to stay, though he wasn't sure why.

When people called him 'pragmatic', he had learned, it was meant as an insult. He didn't think of himself as cowardly, or a traitor to his ancient nation. He could see very clearly how the Romans brought unhappiness to many-and misery or death to those who opposed them. It was just that he couldn't imagine any way of striking at the Romans that would do anybody any good. Surely Matto's futile gesture proved that. But that didn't make him feel any better as he stood here and watched an innocent child die on a cross.

The boy's whimpering quieted and he fell into unconsciousness. As darkness gathered, one of the soldiers who stood at the foot of the cross, taking pity, smashed the boy's legs with the hilt of his sword, and the boy's body slumped further. Unable to support himself, he would surely soon be dead of asphyxiation. But his body would hang there until the crows had his flesh.

Brigonius turned and walked back into the camp.