Helena Justina produced a cloak, which I vaguely recalled had been mine in another existence. Decent dark green garment with a stout metal toggle: I must have been a lad of taste and style. Somehow I clambered into the pony cart.

“Nice rig!” I told Helena, struggling to sound more like myself. Then since she was a woman, I offered like a good boy, “Want me to drive?”

“No,” she said. Some people might have said “No, thanks.” Still, I could barely stick upright on the seat as it was.

She organized herself before she deigned to speak again. “If you had charge of a vehicle would you let me drive yours?”

“No,” I agreed.

“You wouldn’t trust a woman; well, I won’t trust a man.”

“Fair enough,” I said. Quite right; most men are wicked on wheels.

The pony set off jauntily and we soon left the settlement behind. Helena Justina, as you might expect, surged away in front; her small but stalwart mounted escort jingled meekly in the rear.

“Tell me if I go too fast and frighten you,” she challenged me, gazing straight ahead.

“You drive too fast—but you don’t frighten me!” She had turned down a byway. “This isn’t right—take the road east over the uplands, lady, will you?”

“No. We have soldiers; there’s no need to stay on the frontier. We need to go north. You have your friend Vitalis to thank for being rescued today. Last time he saw you he told Uncle Gaius you ought to be withdrawn whether you had completed your work or not. I volunteered to fetch you—better camouflage. Besides, I felt guilty about your grey-haired mother…” Since I could not remember discussing my mother, I let her rattle on. “Uncle Gaius has that man Triferus under arrest at Glevum—”

Unused to explanations, my brain balked at so many facts. “I see. North, eh?”

Conversation seemed a pointless effort. Let someone else take charge. This cart was a pretty toy; too fragile to bear four ingots’ weight. We might at a pinch have organized something with the soldiers’ ponies—but I was too exhausted to care. Still, I must have shifted restlessly. She slowed the cart.

“What have you been up to on the moor? Falco! Tell me the truth.”

“I hid four stolen ingots under a cairn.”

“Evidence?” she demanded.

“If you like.”

She must have drawn her own conclusions, for she whipped up the poor pony until it flew along. Her eyes flashed.

“You mean, a nice little pension for you!”

We left them behind. For all I know my four ingots are still there.