Read Online Emperor by Stephen Baxter - Free Book Online Page A

rain.
    But Romans built in straight lines, and the new military road would cut through this landscape of circles, rude as a sword slash. Roman roads ran straight for long stretches because they were designed to support army marches, and as long as they had a good surface and sound drainage and weren’t too steep for a soldier loaded with his kit, the roads could be laid across almost any landscape.
    Narcissus knew that such stupendous rectilinearity was itself an oppressive marker of Roman dominance. This was a land beyond the Ocean, a land at the very edge of the Roman mind, beyond which lay madness. But here was the army to impose order on chaos.
    That was the theory. But, he reflected, this ‘chaos’ was a place of neat little fields and farmhouses. He murmured, ‘We are here to civilise the moon. But there is a civilisation here already!’
    ‘Peaceful, too,’ Vespasian murmured. ‘Those low walls are for keeping out sheep, not men.’
    ‘Caesar wrote of waves of invaders from the continent. It’s true you see pots from Germany and brooches from Gaul. That doesn’t mean the potters and jewellers came over in force! Julius wanted to make Britain seem the wilder place, I suppose, and his own deeds the greater by association. Yet I should have anticipated this,’ he said. ‘After all it is deliberate policy to cultivate our neighbours.’
    In return for high-quality goods from the empire, raw materials were imported from Britain: minerals, wheat, leather, minerals, hunting dogs–and, increasingly in the last few decades, slaves, though as Narcissus could testify from his personal experience Britons made for testy servants. The empire made a fat profit on such trade, trinkets exchanged for huge volumes of raw materials. Narcissus, a thoughtful man, considered this pattern probably inevitable when an advanced culture dealt with a more primitive one. And all of this served the longer term goals of the empire. Roman material culture was an invaluable tool for manipulating local elites, and friendly native rulers provided an inexpensive buffer against more remote barbarians.
    ‘So we have tamed these southern Britons. I just didn’t expect to see it had gone this far.’ Narcissus felt somehow irritated by the landscape’s lack of strangeness.
    ‘Perhaps it has gone further than you think,’ Vespasian said. He produced a coin, roughly cut and stamped. ‘This was part of a hoard, a tribute for Aulus Plautius from the ruler of a local mud-heap. The coin was issued by the king of the Atrebates, in fact–our friend Verica. Yes, the British strike their own coins! Or at least some of them do.’
    Narcissus took the coin. ‘It’s gold.’
    ‘Yes. Used for tribute, it seems, not for commerce, for it has too high a value. Even these half-civilised Britons don’t get the point of a currency, it seems.
    ‘But we still know little of what lies beyond this south-east corner. We believe there are more than twenty tribes out there, of which we have made serious contact with only a handful. No doubt there are plenty of hairy-arsed fellows out there in the hills who have never even heard of a Roman.’
    Still Narcissus felt faintly uneasy. ‘But this is a land with its own story. You can see that, just by looking from here. And now here we are to wipe it all away. You know, when you occupy a country you take on the responsibility for its people, perhaps millions of them, for all their hopes and dreams. I sometimes wonder if Rome knows the gravity of what it is doing.’
    Vespasian looked at Narcissus curiously. ‘You aren’t feeling a prick of conscience, are you, secretary?’
    ‘Every thoughtful man has a conscience.’
    ‘The Britons are farmers, but nothing more. You can buy a woman with a handful of glass beads, and her husband with a mirror so he can comb his scraggly beard–but he will be frightened by the barbarian looking back out at him! We must be like parents with these child-like people. Firm but