“Exactly. Everything would fall over. Now then, when my old chum Constantius took us soldiers away for his adventure in Europe, some people in the towns decided they didn’t need to pay his taxes anymore, and threw out his collectors and officials, and said they would collect the money for themselves and keep it for their own towns, rather than give it all to some distant Emperor they never saw. But while people will pay up for an Emperor, especially if he has an army to collect for him, they’re a lot less willing to pay some fat fool of a local landowner . . .”

Regina was a bright child, and capable of understanding a great deal. But at seven she was an experienced enough student to know that while Aetius might be a fine soldier he was no teacher. He was boring.

And as the day wore on and the heat continued to stifle, Regina got more and more uncomfortable. It had been days now since she had seen her mother. Aetius never mentioned Julia, and Regina was wary of asking. She missed her mother even so, and wondered where she was. She grew withdrawn, sullen.

Eventually Aetius relented and let Regina sit in the back with Carta. They tried to play ludus latrunculorum—“soldiers,” a fast-moving game a little like chess played only with rooks—but the rattling of the carriage knocked the colored glass counters away from their squares. So they settled for par impar, a simple game of odds and evens, played with pebbles held in the hand.

That night they stayed at yet another way station. The next day they made another early start, but Regina found it increasingly hard to sit still.

Things came to a head when, about midday, the weather abruptly broke, and an immense storm lashed down from a gray lid of sky. Aetius insisted they kept going, but soon they were all soaked through. Regina was cold and frightened; she had never been exposed to such elemental rage before.

When the storm finally let up she pushed away from Aetius and jumped down from the carriage. “I won’t go any farther! I want to go home, right now! Turn around and take me home! I command you!”

Aetius was angry, placating, demanding, but he got nowhere; and when his will broke against her seven-year-old stubbornness, he stomped around the road, fists bunched.

Cartumandua, with some courage, intervened. Soaked herself, she clambered down to the road surface and brushed at Regina’s hair, calming her down. She said to Aetius, “Sir, you can’t speak to her as if she’s one of your legionaries. And you can’t expect her to sit there day after day on that wooden bench and listen to you lecture about procurators and prefects.”

“She needs discipline—”

“It’s not natural. You need to give her time.”

“But every heartbeat we stand here in the road is wasted time.”