There are references to children in the households of commanders, and Cerialis appears to have had at least three. However, no letter specifically names Sulpicia Lepidina as their mother, so that I was able to make them offspring from an earlier marriage even though this is pure fiction. Shoes found associated with the praetorium from this period are of such high quality that they surely belong to the prefect’s family. This suggests that there were two boys and a girl, the older boy’s shoes wearing out in a strange pattern that may well indicate some physical disability, albeit one that did not prevent him from walking. Among the shoes likely to have belonged to Sulpicia Lepidina is one slipper that would not be out of place in a shop window today. On the whole the footwear from Vindolanda consists of enclosed shoes rather than the sandals we automatically associate with the Romans. Judging from finds of similar styles elsewhere, patterns in footwear changed throughout the empire every couple of decades. It is also clear than the majority of people owned more than one pair – something rare until the modern era.

Tribes and Druids

Iron Age Britain was occupied by many different tribes and other groups, many of them only ever mentioned in Roman sources. It is likely that Roman and Greek observers misunderstood many aspects of the indigenous population’s sense of identity, but we have little more to go on. All of the groups mentioned in the book lived in the areas described, and as far as we can tell all shared a version of the same language. These days, some archaeologists are reluctant to use terms like Celtic or to assume that this linguistic group shared a common culture, and therefore that traits described in Gaul or elsewhere were also likely in Britain. This approach can be too dogmatic, and as a novelist I have drawn upon evidence from other regions as well as cultures from other lands and other periods to create a picture of the tribes. I have done my best to make sure that none of this material conflicts with what we do know.