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Chapters (76)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. I
  4. II
  5. III
  6. I - INVADER AD 43-70
  7. I
  8. II
  9. III
  10. IV
  11. V
  12. VI
  13. VII
  14. VIII
  15. IX
  16. X
  17. XI
  18. XII
  19. XIII
  20. XIV
  21. XV
  22. XVI
  23. XVII
  24. XVIII
  25. XIX
  26. XX
  27. XXI
  28. XXII
  29. XXIII
  30. XXIV
  31. XXV
  32. XXVI
  33. II - BUILDER AD 122-138
  34. I
  35. II
  36. III
  37. IV
  38. V
  39. VI
  40. VII
  41. VIII
  42. IX
  43. X
  44. XI
  45. XII
  46. XIII
  47. XIV
  48. XV
  49. XVI
  50. XVII
  51. XVIII
  52. XIX
  53. XX
  54. XXI
  55. III - EMPEROR AD 314—337
  56. I
  57. II
  58. III
  59. IV
  60. V
  61. VI
  62. VII
  63. VIII
  64. IX
  65. X
  66. XI
  67. XII
  68. XIII
  69. XIV
  70. XV
  71. EPILOGUE
  72. I
  73. II
  74. III
  75. IV
  76. Afterword

Severa sneered and turned away. Even now she retained her composure. ‘Primigenius, you will not win, whatever you do to me. You are a slave, the son of a slave. I am more than that; my family is more. Our future is secured whatever you do to me, for we have the Prophecy.’

The freedman grinned. ‘Oh, this old thing?’ He held the Prophecy casually, waving it in the air - and he wafted it over the naked flame of a lamp. ‘But your grandchildren will have no need of prophecies. As slaves they will never make a decision for themselves again. Besides, in a generation or two your descendants will be illiterate. Whatever is not written down cannot survive.’ He began to feed the Prophecy into the flame. ‘And the last vestige of this dreadful old curse will be gone for ever.’

Brigonius saw how the burning Prophecy’s flame lit up the horrified eyes of Lepidina. And Severa’s face showed grief, guilt, and fear - fear of a future now forever unknown.

III - EMPEROR AD 314—337

III

005

EMPEROR AD 314—337

I

I

The gold mine at Dolaucothi was a wilderness of quarries and shafts and crude shacks, its air thick with dust and acrid smoke. It was the sheer extent of the digging that was so overwhelming. The ripped-up ground covered square miles. There must have been thousands of toiling workers here, all of them filthy, bent and dressed in rags, and even more of them tunnelling like moles underground.

Thalius was a man of letters, based in Camulodunum. He had had no idea such places as this existed; the mine, stranded in the untamed country of the west, struck him as a vision of the Christian Hell that not even the most inventive court theologian could have conjured up. And as the mine overseer, a plump little man called Volisios, escorted him through the workings, Thalius was very glad of the scented cloth he pressed over his nose, and of the massive presence of old soldier Tarcho at his side.

But somewhere among the wretches here, Thalius believed, was the boy he had come to find: a slave and the son of slaves, yet a distant cousin of Thalius’s, and a boy who might hold the key to past and future.

‘This is the only gold mine in all the Britains,’ overseer Volisios boasted. ‘You can see we work open-cast and by tunnelling underground. That’s where the boy is, down in the deep shafts. I’ll take you down there in a moment.’

‘I can’t wait,’ growled Tarcho.

Thalius pointed to the wall of a fort, situated on a rise a way away from the churned-up ground of the mine itself. ‘You have the army close by, I see.’

‘To deter brigands and barbarians,’ Volisios said.

‘And perhaps to keep your own workers in order?’