Emperor

'Ah, but is it?' Ne

Tarcho pulled his moustache. 'Ah. I think I see where you're going with this, cousin.'

Ne

IV

Ne

'I have this,' Ne

'This story of the Prophecy has fascinated me ever since I was a boy and heard it at my grandfather's knee. It is about emperors, you see, three emperors of Rome who would come to Britain. And it contains a crucial passage on Constantine. From my reading-and what my grandfather told me of the events of his own youth-it implored the reader to kill the Emperor! I believe that the assassination of Constantine was the purpose of the Prophecy. All the rest of it, predictions about Claudius's invasion and the building of the Wall, were included only as proof of the Prophecy's authenticity. They were there to make those who owned the Prophecy in Constantine's day take its mandate seriously.

'But these are only guesses. How I long to know more! I have written down my own reconstruction of the piece-here, somewhere…' He scrambled in his bag, producing more bits of parchment. 'But the last few lines are not recoverable from Claudius's memoir, for he seems uninterested in them. He describes them only as "maunderings on freedom and the rights of peoples".'

Maria said, 'You spoke of God having the power to rewrite the past. Are you suggesting God himself ordered our family to kill an emperor?'

Ne

Tarcho said, 'And if he did, this Weaver-what was the point? Why murder Constantine?'

'To save Christianity,' Ne

Tarcho nodded. 'So Christians of the future tried to have Constantine killed, and their faith restored to a lost purity. Is that what you're getting at?'

'Yes,' Ne

Tarcho frowned. 'It all sounds a bit devilish to me.'

Maria mused, 'But if you had such power, if you could deflect history-why use it that way? The Church is surviving even where the empire isn't-like here, in Britain. It's like a suit of clothes worn over the body of the empire, still standing even though the skeleton within has rotted away. If I could change history, I wouldn't worry about the Church, for the Church is robust enough to withstand the meddling of a thousand Constantines. I think I would find a way to hurry up the day when Britain returns to Rome.'

Ne

Tarcho snapped, 'No. It's different now. Rome is the last of a line of antique empires that go back to Alexander. But the world has changed, and Rome has had its day. If the Caesars ever do come back they won't be welcomed.' He eyed Ne

Ne

Tarcho waved a hand. 'Forget that garbage. Here in the north, we haven't forgotten who we are. Our grandfather Audax grew up a slave, yet he remembered he was a Brigantian. And now the Romans have gone we're in a position to restore Brigantia to her old power. Think of that. Why not an empire of the Brigantians this time-and with us at the top? Why, we could take on the Caesars themselves.' His eyes gleamed.

Isolde wondered what the Duke of the Britains and the Eburacum government would have to say about such an ambition. And Ne

Was the future to resemble the past, then? Would Rome return, as Maria seemed to hope? Or, if they ever existed, could Tarcho's old erased nations really be reborn? And what of all the Saxons milling around in the south? They weren't going to disappear. She had a feeling that the future would be much more complicated than either Maria or Tarcho imagined, or hoped for-complicated, and bloodier-

That was when she felt the first contraction. She bit her lip and bent forward, clutching her belly.

Maria leaned forward. 'Isolde! Are you all right?'

Typically, Ne

'I simply couldn't believe no copy exists! Claudius hints of a copy placed among the ancient Sibylline oracles. I looked there-but Stilicho, Honorius's Vandal general, had the oracles destroyed decades ago.'

'And so,' Tarcho said, 'you wrote to me.'

Ne

Another contraction. Through her pain, Isolde clung to Maria at her side. Maria murmured comforting words.

Tarcho, evidently growing bored, shrugged. He reached inside his tunic and drew out a battered slip of wood. 'You were right. Somebody did make a copy, from memory at least-a pagan, probably, too superstitious to risk offending the gods by destroying their words; you're right about that too. Here.' He flipped it to Ne