Helena Justina continued to drive fast. Her husband probably divorced her to save his skin. However, I was never really frightened. She handled the pony cart well. She had the proper combination of patience and courage. The horse trusted her entirely; after a few miles so did I. It was fifty miles to Glevum, so that was just as well.

We stopped a couple of times. She let me slide out. The first time I was sick, though it had nothing to do with her driving. She left me to rest, while she spoke in a low voice to one of the soldiers, then before we set off again she brought me some sweetened wine from a flask. Her steadying grip stayed on my shoulder. At the strange touch of a woman’s hand I began to sweat.

“We can stop down the road at a mansio if you want.” She was matter-of-fact, though watching me closely.

I shook my head without speaking. I wanted to go on. I preferred to die in a military fort where they would bury me with a headstone over my urn, rather than in a roadhouse where I would be pitched into a trench with a ton of broken winejars and their run-over tabby cat. It struck me there might be a reason why Helena Justina whipped along at such a cracking pace: she did not want to be stuck in the wilderness with my corpse. I thanked Jove for her ruthless good sense. I did not want my corpse to be stuck with her in any case.

She read my mind, or more likely my sick face.

“Don’t worry, Falco, I’ll bury you properly!”

XXIX

I thought I was back at the mines.

No. Another world. I had left the mines, though they will never quite leave me.

I was lying on a high, hard bed in a small square room at a legionary hospital. Unhurried footsteps sometimes paced the long corridor round the courtyard at the back of their administration block. I recognized the evil reek of antiseptic turpentine. I felt the reassuring pressure of neat, firm bandaging. I was warm. I was clean. I was resting in tranquillity in a quiet, caring place.

Yet I was terrified.

What had woken me was a trumpet on the ramparts, sounding the night watch. A fort, I could cope with a fort. I heard the spiteful squawk of sea gulls. Must be Glevum. Glevum stood on the Estuary. She had done it then. For hours now I had been asleep in the Second Augusta’s big new headquarters base. The Second. I belonged to them; I was home.

I wanted to cry.

“Thinks he’s back on army service,” said the dryly amused voice of the procurator Flavius.