In the morning, there was no sign of her mother. Not that that was so unusual after a party. Servants and slaves moved to and fro, emptying lamps and cleaning away pots and sweeping floors. They looked tired; it had been a long night for them, too. The day was hot, much more sultry than yesterday, and Regina wondered if a storm was going to break.

Regina ate the breakfast of fruit and oats brought to her by Carta. There would be no schooling today, as a treat for her mother’s birthday. Carta, who seemed just as pale as yesterday, tried to distract Regina with games. But today her terra-cotta dolls and little animals of carved jet seemed childish and failed to engage her attention. Carta found a wooden ball, but they could find no third to make up a game of trigon, and throwing the ball back and forth between the two of them was dull. Besides, it was too hot for such exercise.

Bored, restless, Regina roamed, trailed by a weary Cartumandua. She didn’t find her mother, or Aetius, but at length she came across her father. He was in the living room, surrounded by his papyrus rolls and clay tablets. He was talking to a tenant, a thickset bearded man wearing a dun-colored tunic and breeches. Regina peered through an unglazed window; Marcus didn’t notice her.

Marcus looked as pale as Carta, and, hunched over his columns of figures, more strained than ever. Midsummer was the end of the rent year, and it was time for Marcus to collect the rent he was due for his land, as well as the Emperor’s taxes. But things weren’t going well.

The farmer said in his thick brogue, “We haven’t seen the Emperor’s man for a year or more—probably two.”

Marcus said doggedly, “I have kept the tax you paid me and will render it up duly at the next visit. Even if the system is sometimes—ah, inefficient—you must pay your taxes, Trwyth. As I must. You understand, don’t you? If we don’t pay our taxes, the Emperor can’t pay his soldiers. And then where would we be? The barbarians—the bacaudae—the Saxons who raid the coasts—”

“I’m no callow boy, Marcus Apollinaris,” the farmer growled, “and you show me no respect by treating me like one. And we haven’t seen a soldier for nearly as long, either. None save that grizzle-haired father of your wife.”

“You must not speak to me this way, Trwyth.” Regina could see her father was shaking.

Trwyth laughed. “I can speak to you any way I want. Who’s to stop me—you?” He had a small sack of coins in his hand; he hefted it and slipped it back into a pocket of his breeches. “I think I’ll keep this, rather than let you add it to your hoard.”