When people called him ‘pragmatic’, he had learned, it was meant as an insult. He didn’t think of himself as cowardly, or a traitor to his ancient nation. He could see very clearly how the Romans brought unhappiness to many - and misery or death to those who opposed them. It was just that he couldn’t imagine any way of striking at the Romans that would do anybody any good. Surely Matto’s futile gesture proved that. But that didn’t make him feel any better as he stood here and watched an innocent child die on a cross.

The boy’s whimpering quieted and he fell into unconsciousness. As darkness gathered, one of the soldiers who stood at the foot of the cross, taking pity, smashed the boy’s legs with the hilt of his sword, and the boy’s body slumped further. Unable to support himself, he would surely soon be dead of asphyxiation. But his body would hang there until the crows had his flesh.

Brigonius turned and walked back into the camp.

XIX

XIX

The letter from Lepidina was a slip of wood covered in her own rounded, still girlish handwriting. She had returned to Britain from Rome, she said, and would visit the Wall. She said that her mother was coming too - indeed, the purpose of her visit was somehow connected with Severa.

And so Brigonius was going to see Lepidina again. He was shocked to reflect that since the fateful day of the Decision, when before governor Nepos the Wall had been redesigned from end to end, fifteen years had already passed. And Lepidina was no girl now; she was to stay in the fort at Banna with a party led by her husband of fourteen years: Galba Iulius Sabinus, once a pushy young legionary tribune, now a senator.

Brigonius clutched the letter to his heart, wondering what to tell his wife.

On the appointed day he made his way to the fort at Banna. He was passed through the west gate. The double-arched gateway alone, he sometimes thought, was grander than anything seen in Brigantia before the Romans came.