Britain in winter. It was already October; I would be lucky to get there before the sea passages closed. Britain in winter. I had been there, so I knew how bad it was. The fine mist that tangles sticky as fish glue in your hair; the cold that leaps straight into your shoulders and knees; the sea fogs and hill blizzards; the dreadful dark months when dawn and evening seem hardly separate.

It did not matter. None of that mattered to me. The more uncivilized the better. Nothing mattered any more.

PART II

Britain

WINTER, AD 70–71

XX

If you ever want to go there, I advise you not to bother.

If you simply cannot avoid it, you will find the province of Britain out beyond civilization in the realms of the North Wind. If your mapskin has grown ragged at the edges you will have lost it, in which case so much the better is all I can say. Getting away from Britain must be the reason why old Boreas keeps blowing his fat cheeks out, tearing off south.

My cover ran that Camillus Verus had despatched me to bring home his daughter Helena Justina from the visit to her aunt. Actually he appeared to be more fond of his youngest sister, the British aunt. When we spoke, he had murmured, “Falco, escort my daughter if she agrees, but I leave you to decide the details with Helena herself.”

From the way he said it, I deduced the young woman had a mind of her own. He sounded so uncertain I asked him bluntly, “Will she disregard your advice? Is your daughter a difficult customer?”

“She has had an unhappy marriage!” her father exclaimed defensively.

“I’m sorry to hear it, sir.” I was too wrapped up in my own grief for Sosia to want to involve myself in other people’s problems, but perhaps personal misery made me more compassionate.

“The divorce was for the best,” he said briefly, making it plain that his noble daughter’s private life was not for discussion with the likes of me.

I had made a mistake; he was fond of Helena, but looked honestly afraid of her—though even in those days, before I achieved it myself, I thought fathering a girl might make any man crack. From the moment the leering midwives place that crinkled red scrap between your hands and demand that you pronounce a name for it, a lifetime of panic drops on you like a blight…

I had coped with headstrong females before. I assumed that a few firm words from me would bring this Helena under control.

I went to Britain overland. Although I hated myself, I could never send anyone the whole distance by sea, between the Pillars of Hercules and out into the wild Atlantic round Lusitania and Tarraconensian Spain. Crossing direct from Gaul is bad enough.