She considered carefully. If anybody could restore order in this confused, collapsed landscape it was surely Artorius—a man full of dreams, but a man with the power and realism, it seemed, to make those dreams come true. For a moment, there on the busy plateau, it seemed to her that in this man, this Artorius, she had found a rock on which she might at last build a safe future for herself and her family—that there might come a time when she could rest.

“I am—hopeful.” And so she was, tentatively.

He seemed moved; apparently her good opinion really was of value to him. He grabbed her hand; his palm was dry and warm. “Work with me, Regina. I need your strength.”

But then there was a cry from the bottom of the slope, where the men had been digging out the clogged-up defense ditches. “Riothamus! You might want to see this, sir . . .”

Artorius clambered quickly down the zigzag path to the base of the ditch.

The men had found a jumble of bones. Many were broken, some charred. The men picked through this unwelcome trove carefully. There were many skulls—surely more than a hundred.

When Artorius clambered out, his face had a hardness she had not seen before. In one hand he cradled the skull of a child, in the other a handful of coins, just slivers of metal, stuck together from their immersion in the soil. “You see, Regina—from the bones it’s hard to tell men from women, young from old. But you can always tell if it’s a child. And at least this one did not suffer in the fire. See the crater in the back of the skull—inflicted by a legionary’s sword hilt, perhaps . . .”

“The fire?”

“There was some kind of building down there.” He pointed. “We’ve found the stumps of posts. The people were gathered up and crammed inside, and then it was torched.”

“Who would do such a thing?”

“Who do you imagine?” He held out his handful of coins. One of them bore the name of the Emperor Nero. “Was it not during the reign of Nero that Boudicca led her rebellion against Roman rule? It seems that reprisals were fierce.” He hefted the child’s skull. “This little warrior must truly have terrified the mighty Roman army.”

“Artorius—”

“Enough.” Holding the skull, he walked back down the hill and began issuing commands.