For the rest of that day and most of the next, a large proportion of Artorius’s scarce resource was devoted to digging out a new mass grave and transporting the broken and burned bones to it. The burial was done in the style of the Celtae. Three pigs were slaughtered and their carcasses thrown on the bones, to provide sustenance for the journey to the Otherworld. For each skull a beaker or cup was placed in the grave, so that the dead could drink from the great cauldrons in the Otherworld’s banqueting halls.

As the grave was filled in, Artorius’s iron-making genius Myrddin led prayers. He was a small, wild-eyed man with a mass of gray-black beard, and his arms were covered with puckered smelting scars. His voice was thin, his western accent heavy: “Death comes at last and lays cold hands upon me . . .”

For the rest of that year the fields around the dunon were to be prepared for sowing the following spring, and provisions like dried and salted meat were laid up for the winter.

Life continued to be harsh, with hard labor for all but the very smallest children. But Artorius had insisted they make time for such measures as the digging of proper latrines as one of the first priorities—and so they were spared the plague of fever that swept the countryside in late summer. And long before the season turned it was clear to all that they had amassed enough food to see them through the winter, even if some of it had been taken by force by Artorius’s soldiers. Regina could not deny the energy Artorius brought to his task, the great sense of loyalty and industry he instilled in others—including herself, she admitted—nor the great strides the new community had made by the autumn.

But Artorius was changing.

Artorius announced that from henceforth they would follow the old calendar of the Celtae, rather than that of the Romans. This was marked out by four main feasts: Imbolc at the end of the winter, when the ewes lactated for their lambs; Beltane in early summer, when the cattle would be driven between purifying fires to open grazing; Lughnasa at the start of harvesting; and Samhain in early autumn—the start of the new year for the Celtae, a time when the old gave way to the new, and the world could be overrun by the forces of magic. The next full year, beginning that Samhain, would be the first in which Artorius’s new kingdom would begin to find its feet, and Artorius announced that the Samhain would be marked by a mighty feast.

Regina listened to all this with some disquiet. But she kept her counsel.