The Eagle and the Raven (70 page)

“Take him out of there and put him to bed,” he ordered the servants, then he walked quickly back into the house, Eurgain striding beside him. When he stood under the shelter of the colonnade he slumped and turned to her sadly. “Llyn is right,” he said. “I should have killed us all as my ancestors would have done, and awakened the conscience of this city.”

“Rome has no conscience,” Eurgain replied. “Rome would have been astonished, and then laughed, and would not have understood. Do not reproach yourself for Llyn’s unhappiness. We have all had to learn to survive.”

“Only Gladys has learned,” he said bitterly, “and I sometimes wonder when I listen to her how deep she has allowed the lesson to go. I have never heard her express such passion as she did last night when she asked Caelte to sing. We all play games, Eurgain, like everyone in the city. Should I blame Llyn for being himself?”

“Are you going to talk to Gladys in the morning?”

“I don’t know. I can’t think. Go to bed, Eurgain.”

She left without a word and he sat suddenly on the floor, his back against a pillar, listening to his servants coax a sick and angry Llyn toward the stairs. I refuse to feel sorry for him, or for myself, Caradoc thought firmly. He must determine not to lie down under the blows of fate. He must learn to fight.

In the morning he told Eurgain and his daughters what had passed between himself and the empress. They were reclining at a table in the triclinium, eating bread and fruit while the early sun blinked lukewarm on Eurgain’s silver dishes and a damp breeze, full of newness and vigor, stirred the hangings beside the windows. Llyn’s couch was empty. He seldom rose to share the first meal of the day with them. They could hear their morning guards outside dismiss the night sentries, and the gardener trundled by, his cart full of spring seedlings. They finished the simple meal in silence, then Caradoc sent out the servants and sat upright. In a few words he told them what Agrippina had said. “Gladys,” he asked his daughter, whose face had begun to flush pink with anger, “did you know what the emperor is planning for you?”

“No. At least, I had heard rumors, but he has said nothing to me about it. Oh the poor old man! Agrippina sits there like a crouching cat, waiting for him to die so that she can spring into his place with Nero in her jaws, and those damn Greeks fawn upon him and suck him dry! Well, I will not cease to visit him. He needs me.”

“He is not a poor old man,” her mother put in gently. “He would not be emperor of Rome if he were, Gladys. I think you must be careful to see him as he is, not as you wish to see him. He is aging, certainly, and plagued with infirmity, but he has a mind as subtle and deep as Agrippina’s. You feel sorry for him, but you should fear him also.”

“I have tried to, but I can’t. He is good to me, and kindly, and we say many things to one another. I comfort him.”

Caradoc and Eurgain exchanged glances. Then Caradoc said, “Gladys, he could not protect you against the empress whether he knows it or not. He might try. He might surround you with soldiers, appoint tasters for your food and women to sleep with you by night and companion you by day, but sooner or later Agrippina would kill you. It is as simple as that. I think she is right when she says that we are blunderers. We have no business being in the palace at all. We are like sheep to be led astray and slaughtered.”

The younger Eurgain looked sharply across at her father, but Gladys had begun to answer him and her gaze dropped back to her plate. “I will refuse an adoption if he asks it,” Gladys said. “I love him, but I have only one father. But how can I refuse to go to him when he sends for me? He will be hurt. His fondness will turn to anger.”

“Not if he really loves you in return,” her mother pointed out. “Tell him that you need more time for your studies. Tell him that your tutor is becoming tired of filling his time in gossip with the steward.” None of them considered telling Claudius the truth. All believed that he was probably well aware of the ambitions nurtured secretly within the hearts of the members of his family, and it did no good to speak them aloud to him.

“He will miss you,” the younger Eurgain said softly. “He looked for Aunt Gladys’s honesty in you, and he found it. Octavia is honest, but timid. She will not give him much affection, out of fear of the empress. Agrippina wants no one close enough to Claudius to turn his affections from Nero.”

“And then there are the Greeks.” The voice was Llyn’s. They turned to greet him and he came into the room, pale and grinning wryly. “I have been listening to you all, standing outside the door to keep the servants ears away. Really, you are all too careless.”

“You are a fine one to talk!” Gladys retorted. “I know what happened last night. The whole city was subjected to your insults.”

He flopped down on his couch. Caradoc pushed bread to him but he shook his head. “I think you should all insist that Gladys be adopted by Claudius,” he announced. “She would move into the palace and before long be betrothed to sweet little Britannicus, that paragon of all Roman virtues. I will court Octavia, and together we will do away with Nero. Sooner or later, probably sooner, Claudius will die. Now where does that leave us?”

The younger Eurgain smiled. “It leaves us in control of the Roman Empire.”

“Exactly.” Llyn picked up a bunch of grapes, sniffed them, and put them back. “Without Nero, Agrippina would be a broken branch. What a delirious thought! The House Catuvellaun, ricons of Rome!”

“What would you do?” Caradoc asked him, amused, and slowly the blithe, teasing light went out of his eyes.

“I would withdraw the legions from Albion and Gaul, set fire to this city, and go home.”

Silence reigned. Then Eurgain spoke. “Llyn is right about the Greeks,” she said evenly. “You see them only as feasters and parasites, Gladys, but most of them are powerful and capable men, doing more than their share of governing. Claudius relies on them, and often with good reason. They hate you already, for they are continually probing the future. They see what Llyn sees. Even if Agrippina softened toward you, they would not.”

Gladys flung down her napkin and rose. “You are right,” she said loudly. “And I am sometimes deathly afraid of that city within a city on top of the hill. I will try to explain to Claudius why I can come to him no more.”

“Explain to him today, Gladys,” Caradoc warned, and she nodded, thin-lipped, and left them.

Llyn yawned. “I suppose you want me to tell you today that I have mended my ways,” he said to his father. “But I can only say that perhaps I will think about the words you hammered home with your fist. Do you realize that you were just my age, Ricon, when I was born to you?”

“Yes, Llyn,” Caradoc answered him gently. “I know. But that was my life. You must live your own.”

“Platitudes!” he snorted. The two women rose.

“You will have a chance to think about it very deeply, Llyn,” his mother said. “We are going to spend this summer on the Silvanus estate.”

“Oh,” said Llyn. “With or without the emperor’s permission?” He got up and shouldered past them, and they listened to the echo of his angry feet rebound on the pillars of the atrium.

Claudius stood still and watched her come swinging to him under the trees, the long, healthy stride of a country girl undisguised by the graceful folds of her red tunic. She had changed since the day when she faced him for the first time, he reflected, but she would change no more. He knew that also. The heart of her was as solid and innocent today as it had been then, though it had been overlaid by fear and awe. It was that heart which drew him, called forth in him the young boy who fifty years before had been shy and innocent, a lover of books, a dreamer. He had thought that youth was dead but then she had come, with her fearless smiles, and something in him had reached out to her. They had told him that the barbarian women were all killers, that she had blood on her hands, but for once he had not believed it. Of the mother certainly, and the elder sister probably, but not of Gladys. She had been trained, in their savage way, to kill, but somehow he knew that her sword had remained clean. He had blood on his own hands, plenty of it, and it distressed him no more than the thought that his wife’s fingers were also red. But the young, insecure, unloved child who had grown to be the most powerful man in the world held out to this fresh girl a hand as eager and pure as her own.

She met his welcoming smile with a broad grin of her own, and on coming up to him she kissed him. “Emperor,” she said. “I am wearing the emeralds again, isn’t that foolish? But I like them so much. How good the gardens smell this morning, after the rain! I cannot bear the heat of summer.” She took his arm and they strolled along the path, his court behind and before. “I have only an hour, little one,” he said, “But you will stay and eat with me tonight? Gladys, I want you to come to Capri with me this year when Rome gets too hot to bear. Bring your family if you like.” She did not let go of him, but he felt her grip tighten. “I can’t,” she replied, and in her voice he detected regret mixed with something else. Fear? “My uncle has invited us to his summer home. I expect father will soon request permission from you to go.”

“Well, I will refuse. You can all come to Capri this year. The sea air will do you good.” His stutter had become more pronounced and he stopped walking in order to wipe his mouth. Gladys let go his arm. He was upset today, and she knew that she should attempt to calm him before incipient irritability turned to anger, but there were things to say that could only annoy him further. She swallowed, her throat dry.

“Please don’t do that, Emperor. If you refuse us permission to go to Plautius’s house we will stay in the city, but I cannot come with you.” The regret was still there but that something else had sharpened her words and seeped over her face. It was fear, he knew it now. They had drawn level with a stone seat facing down an avenue of white, naked statues flanked by fruit trees and he sat, motioning her to a place beside him.

“Why not?” he half-shouted, showering her with spittle. She whitened, but the hands lying in her red lap did not stir.

“Because I am falling behind in my studies and my tutor is not pleased,” she answered equably. “My father wishes me to spend more time attending to my duties.”

“You have no husband, therefore few duties!” he said loudly, “and as for your studies, bring your tutor with you. You will not defy me, Gladys.”

She looked at him for a long time, excuses flitting quickly through her mind, plausible lies, then she dismissed them all. “It is very hard to have two fathers,” she said with a smile. “It seems that I cannot please both at once, but I have an idea. Come with us to the Silvanus estate, Emperor, just you alone, and thus I need defy no one. We will have a wonderful summer. I can read to you, and we can walk together in the hills, and Caelte will teach you my tongue and sing for you.”

Laughter exploded from Claudius’s entourage but the emperor did not share in it. He stared at her, his gaze intensifying, and she stared back smiling, a knot of terror in her chest. Then he leaned back, squinted up at the sun, and a tiny quirk came and went on his mouth.

“Gladys,” he said. “I have no doubt that certain rumors have come to your ears, and you and your family have discussed them with gravity, and your father has ordered you to tell me that you can no longer come to me. I want the truth from you. No evasions. In return I will give you my thoughts.”

The knot pulled tighter and Gladys could not breathe. Claudius saw her distress but made no move to help her. The listeners whispered among themselves. Then Gladys called up her Catuvellaun pride and took his hand.

“It is a matter of survival, dear Emperor,” she said. “If you take me for your daughter, I will not live long. You must know this. Are you so selfish? Let there be no obligations between us, let us owe nothing to one another, so that I may go on living.”

There was a breathless hush. His hand curled around hers as warmly as ever, but he no longer looked at her. His eyes were fixed on the pergola at the end of the avenue, a glimmer of white stone. Then suddenly he sneezed, withdrew his hand, and stood up. Astounded, she heard him change the subject, and the pain in her chest grew so acute that she wanted to go away and lie face down in the grass.

“I have a mind to tear up these gardens,” he remarked, “and sink piles into the hill and extend the whole out over the lip. The view would be improved, don’t you think?” Slowly they all straggled after him. He ignored Gladys until they had paced the full length of the avenue, then he turned to her, drawing her away from the others.

“Go home,” he said to her shortly. “But I expect to see you back here tonight. And I have not yet made up my mind about the summer.”

“Emperor,” she replied, close to tears. “If you did not want the truth you should not have asked for it. You did not need to ask, for you knew it already. You are omnipotent, but not omnipresent.”

“Men have died for less. You know that, don’t you?”

“I am sorry. Give me leave to go, Claudius.”

“Go.”

She walked away from him blindly, came out from the shade of the trees into sunlight that beat up from the flagstones of the terrace in a jubilant dazzle, and her litter-bearers strolled toward her. But before she reached them Britannicus ran out from the gloom of the entrance hall, his dogs dancing with him.

“Gladys! Are you going home so soon? I am going to the market to watch the slave auctions. Come with me. We can go to the arena later.”

“No.” She did not look at him. She got onto her litter, twitching the curtains closed, but they were parted again immediately and she found his pert face thrust close to her own.

“Well, at least give me a kiss.”

She regarded him coldly. “Someone should give you a whipping, Britannicus.”

He flushed. “Upstart!” he shouted, and she pushed him away, lying back with her eyes squeezed shut as her slaves lifted her and set off down the steps. Save me, she thought, panic-stricken. I am in deep waters, over my head, and they will hold me under until I drown. The litter was stuffy and hot but she did not open the curtains. When she was set down gently outside her own home she could hardly summon the strength to alight and walk between the pillars, a tunnel of drafty chillness, and into the sunny peristyle below.