Jack Whyte - The Skystone

My response was emphatic. "There's no perhaps in my mind, Caius. Your resistance to the temptation is what I would have wagered on. But that's not what's at issue here, is it? What do you expect to happen?" He shook his head. "I don't know. But nothing good has happened for a long time. If my soldiers were willing to make me emperor, then it stands to reason that other soldiers will elect other emperors from among their officers. God knows there's no lack of precedent. "

"But... " I stopped.

"But what?"

"Well, even if that happens, I can't see any danger to the Roman State itself. I know armies have elected emperors before. It was the Praetorians who put Claudius on the throne, although they did it as a mockery — they had no idea that they were doing a great thing for the Empire. There have been mutinies and even civil wars, but the Empire has always survived. And I don't see how a civil war in Rome could have much effect on us here in Britain. "

"It probably wouldn't, " Caius responded. "Not a civil war. But my fear is of invasion, not civil war. The point I was trying to make before I digressed is that there is no spirit left in the legions. The soldiers no longer care about Rome. There are barbarian peoples everywhere who are bitterly hungry for survival, Publius. For escape from their barren homelands to some place where life will be easier. Where they won't freeze in their thousands every winter. Where their children won't starve. And they all see the Empire as their Promised Land. Mark my words, Publius, one day, and probably soon, the hordes are going to penetrate the heartlands of the Empire, and when that happens, it will be too late to save Rome. But the first effect of the invasions will be panic. And the armies, every legion, will be called back from the frontiers to defend the city and the Campana. " I stood up and walked over to the glowing brazier, holding my hands out to its heat. When I heard Britannicus put his misgivings into words so clearly, it upset me. I didn't really want to continue this conversation, and yet I felt I had to.

"You think this is going to happen soon?"

"Too soon, Publius. Yes, I do. There is already talk among the rank and file in Britain that the legions want to elect an emperor here. "

"Here in Britain?" The thought came as a complete and unpleasant surprise to me. "Do you think they will?"

"Who knows? They might. There are some men serving here in Britain right now who are ambitious enough to make the attempt. "

"You think so? Who, for instance?"

"Oh, I've heard a few names. Magnus Maximus, for one. "

"Who is he?"

He looked at me in amazement. "Who is... ? My God, Publius, you really are out of touch! He is the blue-eyed wonder of all the legions. His men think he can walk on water. I'd put my money on him, if anyone's going to be in the running. "

"You'd give him your support?"

He smiled tightly at the dismay in my tone. "I didn't say that. I said that if anyone is likely to try for the Empire here in Britain, I'd wager it would be him. "

"So you wouldn't support him?"

"Never. The man's a politician. He is totally ruthless and completely self-centred. He makes a business of being beloved of his troops because he needs their support, but if they ever put him in power they had better look to their futures. "

"Could he win the Empire if he were elected?"

Britannicus shook his head dubiously. "It's one thing to be emperor in Britain, but to go to Rome, get rid of the western emperor and then take over the eastern Empire too? That would be a major undertaking. He would be setting himself against every vested interest in the Empire except his own troops. He'd be opposed by every other military commander in every other part of the Empire who dreams the same dreams of grandeur. "

I was becoming depressed. "God, Caius! You make everything sound hopeless. When do you expect the legions to be withdrawn to guard against this threat of invasion?"

"Next month. Next year. Ten years from now. Twenty. I really have no idea. But I do believe that it's bound to happen sooner or later. "

"And what do we do then?"

"Nothing, Publius. We do nothing. " His smile was genuine. "We remain here in Britain, right here on this villa, and enjoy our old age, watching our children grow up around us, minding our own business and living our own lives here in this beautiful land. "

I couldn't help grinning in return. "Undisturbed?"

"Why not? If we make our preparations in advance. "

"You mean by isolating the villa and fortifying it. "

"Yes, more or less. We will need the capacity to defend ourselves. " I shook my head. "You frighten me, Caius, even though I'm smiling. Why do we always seem to get into these discussions late at night? I had intended taking you over to the smithy tomorrow. I have some things to show you. But it's almost tomorrow already. "

Caius stretched and yawned as though I had reminded him. "You're right, my friend, " he muttered. "It's too late to be solving the problems of Empire. Far too late, in every way. Let's get to bed. " We rose and took a lamp each, and I blew out the one remaining. I undressed slowly, savouring the remembered sensations of Luceiia's kisses. I knew I could go to her now, but the mere fact of Caius's presence in the house deterred me. That would be disloyalty to him, although perhaps in my mind only. Still, that was reason enough.

Thank all the ancient gods that Luceiia could read me like a book. She scurried into my bed before I was undressed.

XXII

Caius had been home for a full two weeks before I came to realize that he was a fraud. In truth, he was a harmless fraud, deluding himself more than anyone else, but an undoubted fraud he was, and I loved him the more for it. I realized long afterwards that I had been aware of his false pretences for years, but they were so much a part of the man that I had accepted them without question and almost without recognition. His falseness lay in that he called himself a Roman and he liked to think of himself as embodying all of the virtues of Rome in the days of its true greatness. To tell the truth; he did embody those virtues, but Caius Britannicus was also a Briton, both by birth and by conviction. He was born in Britain as the culmination of a chain of events that began with the first of his ancestors to be named Britannicus, and he was the first-born of the third generation of his family to be born and bred here. In all his wanderings as a soldier of the Empire, he liked to say, he had seen no place, no country, that could be compared to this land for beauty or pleasantness of climate, or for the stability, strength and simplicity of its people.

It was growing dark outside on the night I made my discovery, and Diomede's people had lit the lamps and piled the braziers high against the winter chill, even though the day had been unseasonably beautiful. Caius was in a restless mood that evening, and he was prowling around, looking for something to distract him. He found it in the shape of a codex that lay on one of my tables. It was a simple enough book, roughly bound, but it was something new. I watched him as he picked it up and examined it closely. The front surface bore an intricate rendering of complex Celtic scrollwork, and I watched him open the book at random and find more of the same. No words at all, just a collection of drawings, all obviously done by the same hand.

"Well, what do you think?" I asked him.

"This is marvellous!" he said, examining the way the individual sheets were fastened together. "Did the priest do this? Andros?"

"Yes, " I told him. "He did. Told me he got tired of carrying awkward bundles of parchment all over the place. He saw you carrying a codex one day, asked me to show him some more, and then he began to make his own. Not bad, eh? He cut all his parchments to the same size, and now he says his life is ten times more simple. "