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Chapters (76)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. I
  4. II
  5. III
  6. I - INVADER AD 43-70
  7. I
  8. II
  9. III
  10. IV
  11. V
  12. VI
  13. VII
  14. VIII
  15. IX
  16. X
  17. XI
  18. XII
  19. XIII
  20. XIV
  21. XV
  22. XVI
  23. XVII
  24. XVIII
  25. XIX
  26. XX
  27. XXI
  28. XXII
  29. XXIII
  30. XXIV
  31. XXV
  32. XXVI
  33. II - BUILDER AD 122-138
  34. I
  35. II
  36. III
  37. IV
  38. V
  39. VI
  40. VII
  41. VIII
  42. IX
  43. X
  44. XI
  45. XII
  46. XIII
  47. XIV
  48. XV
  49. XVI
  50. XVII
  51. XVIII
  52. XIX
  53. XX
  54. XXI
  55. III - EMPEROR AD 314—337
  56. I
  57. II
  58. III
  59. IV
  60. V
  61. VI
  62. VII
  63. VIII
  64. IX
  65. X
  66. XI
  67. XII
  68. XIII
  69. XIV
  70. XV
  71. EPILOGUE
  72. I
  73. II
  74. III
  75. IV
  76. Afterword

Claudius stared at her. Then he turned to the commander of his guard. ‘Rufrius Pollio, will you open that curtain?’

The soldier did so, to reveal a rectangle of deep blue evening sky. And, through the window, Agrippina saw a shadow moving by: massive yet graceful, a great head nodding. Perhaps distracted by the light from the tent the head turned, and a startlingly human eye peered at her. A trunk was raised, and tusks flashed.

Claudius said gravely, ‘Some of this little poem of yours could be no more than sensible guesswork. Rome was bound to come here under one emperor or another. But it’s hard to see who but the gods could have foreseen them, isn’t it?’

Agrippina felt as if the world had come to pieces, and was reassembling in a different shape entirely.

XXII

XXII

When the burly soldiers bundled Nectovelin out into the dark, the commotion disturbed the animals in their hastily erected compound. They stomped back and forth, rumbling, their massive bulks like clouds shifting against the darkling sky.

They weren’t happy. They were from different families, for the African traders who had sold them to the Romans had been unconcerned about such niceties. They had not enjoyed the sea crossings and the overland journey through Gaul any more than most of the Emperor’s companions had. Now they were confined in this strange, cold place, and, missing their siblings and mothers, they growled and jostled restlessly.

But they had served Claudius’s purpose, in striking awe into the people of this island. After all, since the glaciers had sullenly drawn back and the last mammoths died, these were the first elephants to have set foot in Britain in ten thousand years.

XXIII

XXIII

Claudius left Britain after only sixteen days. And he took Agrippina and Cunedda with him, all the way back to Rome.

On the Palatine Hill, where the emperors since Augustus had been building their palaces, Agrippina and Cunedda wandered in silence under ceilings as tall as the sky, and across floors of marble as flat as lakes, all drenched in dense Mediterranean light. Claudius had talked of Rome as a system that worked on timescales that transcended human lifetimes. For more than half a millennium already the wealth of Europe, Asia and Africa had drained here, as water drains through a funnel. And the result was visible all around them in the marble-plated hills of Rome.

Though they remained under nominal guard, Claudius seemed keen to keep Cunedda and Agrippina within his household. He even assigned them tutors. They were his two Brittunculi, he said, apparently without malice. Later Agrippina learned that he had brought Gauls home too, and showed a similar interest in that relatively new province. They were treated like pets, Agrippina thought, but there were worse attitudes for a conqueror.