“Or had their throats slit by barbarians. We’ll never know, will we? The people in the towns actually wrote to the Emperor himself and asked for help. This was only a few years ago. But by then, so it is said, Rome itself had been sacked by the barbarians. Honorius wrote back saying that the British must defend themselves as best they could . . .”

Aetius was worried about Regina’s future. That was why he lectured her about politics and history and wars. He thought it was important to equip her for the challenges of her life.

And Aetius was obviously worried about his own future, too. If you completed twenty years’ military service you could become one of the honestiores—the top folk in society. A career as a soldier was a way for a common man to retire to a nice house in the town or even a villa. But there was no obvious successor to Aetius, here in his station on the Wall, and he had no contact with the diocese’s central command. If he stepped down, the troops would fall apart; he knew that. And besides there was nowhere for him to retire to. He had to hang on.

“Look,” he would say, “this nonsense in Gaul has to stop. Rome is already back on its feet, and when he gets the chance the Emperor will reassert his authority here.”

“And things will get back to normal.”

“Britain has been lost to the Empire before—oh, yes, many times—and each time won back. So it will be this time, I’m sure.” And when that happened, at last, when the tax collectors returned and the coins started to circulate once more—when the soldiers were properly paid and equipped and there was a secure place for him to retire—Aetius could allow his own career to end.

As it turned out, however, for Aetius it was all going to end much sooner than that. And far from everything returning to normal, Regina would have to suffer another great disruption.

After her humiliation before the soldiers, Regina fled to Cartumandua.

Carta was cooking a haunch of pork wrapped in straw. She had hung a big iron cauldron from a tripod and was using tongs to load in fire-hot rocks from the hearth; they sizzled as they hit the water. Her house was a wooden shack, built in the rectangular Roman way. The “kitchen” was just a space around a hearth built in a stone-lined pit, around which you would squat on the ground.

When Regina came bursting in, weeping, Carta dropped the tongs and ran to meet her.

“Carta, oh Carta, it was awful!”

Carta held Regina’s face to her none-too-clean woolen smock, and let her weep. “Hush, hush, child.” She stroked Regina’s hair as she had when Regina was a pampered child of the villa, and Cartumandua a young girl slave.