When they emerged into the light again, they were inside the town—but Regina’s first impression was of green. Away from the road almost every bit of land was farmed, given over to orchards and vegetable gardens. Animals wandered: sheep, goats, chickens, even a pig rooting at a broken bit of the roadway. People bustled, adults and children walking or running everywhere, all of them dressed in simple woolen tunics and cloaks. There was a strong stink of animals, of cooking food, and a more powerful stench underlying it all, the stench of sewage.

It wasn’t like a town at all. It was a slice of countryside, cut out by the wall. But here and there grander structures—arches, columns—loomed out of the green, and threads of smoke lifted to the sky.

Under Severus’s direction the cart nudged forward cautiously through the crowd.

Carta murmured to Regina, “Well, we have arrived. Do you know where you are?” When Regina didn’t answer, she said, “Do you even care?”

“Verulamium,” Regina snapped. “I’m not stupid.”

Carta smiled. “But I would call it Verlamion. This was the town of the Catuvellauni, my people. In the days when we battled Caesar himself, under our great king Cymbeline . . .”

“I know all that. So you’ve come home.”

“Yes.” Carta leaned and faced her. “But it is my home,” she said. “I am no slave now.”

“Am I to be your slave, Cartumandua?”

“No. But you are a guest here. You will remember that.”

Regina turned away, not wanting to be with Carta, not wanting to be here in Verulamium, not wanting to be anywhere. But even she was impressed when the cart pulled up at a grand town house, set at the corner of two intersecting streets. A central courtyard was bordered by an open cloister lined by slim columns. In the courtyard itself was a small hut that might have been a porter’s lodge, but it was boarded up. There were some signs of dilapidation, but the white-painted walls and the red-tiled roofs were mostly intact.

Three people came out of the buildings. An older man and a woman were similarly dressed, in plain woolen tunics, but the younger man wore brighter colors. The woman, it turned out, was a servant, called Marina. She helped Severus remove the horses’ harness, and led them away to a small stable outside the main compound.

“Marina is a servant, but not a slave,” Carta murmured in Regina’s ear. “Remember that.”