XXXI

WE SET OUT jauntily on the second day of our march, filled with well-being, and confident of reaching Sorviodunum by mid-afternoon. The sun, too, began its journey across the new day’s sky bravely, blinding us as we rode directly into its brilliance, but the sky behind us in the west soon filled with banked clouds that outmarched both us and the sun. By mid-morning the brightness had gone from the day, and by noon we were riding through rain squalls that followed each other like yoked oxen, ever more frequently until the rain fell relentlessly and stayed with us all the way to Sorviodunum.

I do not know what we had expected to find in Sorviodunum, but I remember that the town’s dreary dilapidation appalled all of us. It was a town in name alone, in that it was a large concentration of buildings, many of which had been public edifices at one time and more of which had been the homes of townsfolk. Now almost all the buildings were in ruins and the citizens—we used the word reluctantly—ran in terror from our approach. Needless to say, we found no food to purchase. We camped overnight in an overgrown field outside the town and moved on at daybreak.

Fortunately for our spirits, the weather had improved overnight and we were greeted once again by clear skies come daybreak. We made good time from then on, meeting no one on the road, so that, in time, my unease over the deterioration of the once-fine town of Sorviodunum began to dwindle. The weather continued pleasant, with no more of the rain that had fallen on our second day out of Camulod. We skirted the tiny town of Silchester completely, making no attempt to approach it, and eventually came to Pontes, the last remaining town between us and Londinium. Here we found signs of life aplenty, but they were not signs that I responded to with warmth.

As soon as the townspeople saw us approaching, they withdrew behind their walls and barred their gates, refusing us entry. Seeing that they feared our strength, and respecting their fear, I held our men at a distance and approached the walls alone, seeking to speak with someone in authority. That was useless. No one would speak with me, even from the safety of the walls, in spite of every protestation I could offer them. Eventually, seething with anger and frustration, and controlling a very strong urge to provide them with real reason to fear us, I accepted the futility of the situation and led my people away from there as quickly as I could, riding in a black rage that kept my subordinates intent upon not catching my eye and thereby attracting my displeasure.

Only Donuil and Lucanus had the confidence to impose their presence on my bitter mood. Donuil rode in silence, slightly behind me, his horse’s nose level with my right knee, close enough for me to address him should I wish to, yet just far enough removed for me to ignore him, as I chose to. Lucanus, on the other hand, stayed away and allowed me to stew for the space of an hour, but then he cantered forward and demanded my attention.

“Why are you so angry?”

I jerked my head towards him, attempting to wither him with a look, but he would not be intimidated. I looked back at the road ahead and rode on in silence. He spoke again.

“They were afraid.”

That was so obvious that I still did not deign to answer him. He tried again.

“You’re acting as if those people back there had insulted you personally. Is your pride that fragile?" I glanced sideways at him again, silently consigning him to Hades as a persistent nuisance. “Caius!" He was almost laughing. “In God’s name, you’d probably have done the same thing, in their shoes. They’re vulnerable—and terrified.”

Now the anger spilled from my mouth. “Of what?" I jerked my head backwards, indicating the ranks and files behind us. “Do we look like Saxons? Is this an undisciplined rabble, looking for rape and plunder? Did they take me for a marauder, a raiding thief?" I saw immediately from the shock on his face that this response was totally unexpected. He opened his mouth to respond, but I gave him no opportunity. “Damnation, Luke, that’s the third town in four days I’ve had to bypass! We were supposed to eat there tonight—at the very least, we were supposed to reprovision! Our commissary isn’t set up to feed two hundred men and their horses all the way from Camulod to Verulamium. That’s why we are carrying money! It was part of our operational planning to purchase rations along the way. There was never any question of having to be entirely self-sufficient! Had I known—or even suspected—that the towns along our route would be in the condition they are in, or that any of them would close their gates to us, I would have done things very differently.”

“Ah, I see. You’re feeling guilty.”

“No! Dammit, why should I feel guilty? There was no way I could have known this would happen.”

“Correct, except that, as Commander, it’s your responsibility to anticipate things like that. Isn’t that so?”

It was one thing for me to berate myself for my shortsightedness. It was quite another to have to hear about it from a subordinate. I had to bite back a surge of petulance before my good sense reasserted itself and I was able to identify the tone of his voice as being sympathetic. I looked at him again.

“Yes,” I answered. “It is.”

“Horse turds, Commander.” I blinked in surprise and he kneed his mount closer to mine. “You can no more be held responsible for those towns than you can for failing to anticipate the situation in Londinium.”

“What situation in Londinium?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, any more than you can be expected to. I haven’t been there in thirty years.”

I felt the anger swell up in me again, born this time of his apparent frivolity. “Damn you, Luke, this is no matter for foolery. We are seriously short of provisions.”

“I’m being completely serious, Caius. We may fare no better at Londinium than we have elsewhere.”

“I doubt it,” I snapped. “But first we have to reach the place, if we don’t all starve first. We’ll reprovision there and buy enough to carry us to Verulamium. As you yourself pointed out, it’s the administrative centre of Britain!”

Now, however, Lucanus shook his head. “No. That’s what I told you the day before yesterday. But I’ve been thinking since then about everything I said to you that day, and I now admit I was probably talking nonsense. My heart, not my head, was ruling my thoughts. I think now we’ll find you were the one whose guess was more accurate. Londinium by now will be just a town like any of the others we have seen—bigger, but probably no better off. In spite of what I might like to believe, you were right and the past days have proved it. Britain is no longer an Imperial Province, Caius, and Londinium’s no longer Roman.”

I stared at him. “What are you hinting at, Luke?”

“I’m not hinting, I’m simply restating the fact you brought home to me the other day. It has been twenty years since the last Romans left. Londinium will no longer be the Londinium I knew. You’ve never been there, and I haven’t seen it since the armies left, but twenty years can bring a lot of changes.

“The engineers are all gone, long ago, as are the magistrates and governors. Now, as a physician, I have had to ask myself who has been running the water and sewage systems for the past two decades? Who’s been collecting taxes to maintain the public works? If I allowed my imagination free rein, I could frighten both of us with thoughts of plague and pestilence.” He paused, and when he resumed, his voice was lower, more introspective. “I think both of us may have been expecting great things of Londinium, Caius, in different ways, and I think we are both due for a grievous disappointment.”

I heard hoofbeats approaching quickly from the rear. It was a messenger from the First Squadron to remind me that the men had not dismounted in almost four hours. I grunted acknowledgement and sent him back to his commander with word to rest, feed the troops and water the horses.

As the column halted and began to dismount, I nodded to Lucanus to accompany me and rode off the road. The fields surrounding Pontes had been few in number, small and ill maintained, and had petered out within a mile of the town. Since then, we had been riding through dense forest that hemmed us in tightly on both sides. The broad, cleared ditches that had originally protected the roadsides had long since disappeared without trace. Now the space they had occupied was choked with thick shrubs, bushes and mature trees. For the past half-mile, however, the trees had begun to thin out, and now we were flanked on both sides by a large, grassy clearing, strewn with the charred remnants of an old forest fire. I aimed my horse towards a pile of boulders about fifty paces from the roadside, and there we dismounted and climbed up to sit on the rocks.

When Lucanus had made himself comfortable beside me, we shared a drink from my water bottle. I watched him as he drank. “Were you serious about plague?”

He grunted and shook his head, lowering the flask. “No, of course not. I was simply being an alarmist. It’s a pessimism born of my profession. We have absolutely no reason to suspect any such thing.”

I was disconcerted, nonetheless, and his denial did not reassure me. I cleared my throat, hoping to clear my mind with it, and continued. “Well, let’s suppose you’re right and Londinium’s a mess. What can we do?”

He replaced the stopper in the flask and handed it back to me. “About what? Provisions? Nothing we can do, except try to forage elsewhere. There’s still game in the forests and fish in the streams, and the horses can still graze.”

“And what about the remainder of our journey? If there’s no food available in Londinium, then things might well be the same in Verulamium, too. This whole adventure could be a fiasco. Our objective is to demonstrate our strength and presence. If all the towns are abandoned, or closed to us, our time and effort will be wasted. Should we abort now? Turn around and go home?”

He thought about that for some time, mulling over the pros and cons as I was doing. Finally he shook his head. “I would say no. Bear in mind the word was sent out that the debate would be held in Verulamium. It would seem reasonable that arrangements have been made there to house the people coming from all over to attend.” He paused. “In the final analysis, we will know nothing about Londinium until we arrive there.”

He dug a small pouch out of the scrip by his side and tipped some shelled hazelnuts into his palm before offering the pouch to me. I shook a few into my hand and began popping them into my mouth, one at a time. The silence between us stretched, each of us engrossed in his own thoughts. I looked at the troopers who had dismounted all around us. They had filled every inch of space in the clearing, it seemed, and were sitting, lying or walking around, according to preference, all trying to rid themselves of saddle soreness. Most of them were very young. If I were leading them into a wasteland … if Lucanus were correct and Londinium lay empty or, God forbid, filled with pestilence, many of them might not return home, and the responsibility would be mine. Luke had dropped the thought of plague into my head, and now I could not ignore it. I had recognized his reference to public works and the difficulty of maintaining them; stagnant waters, particularly in congested urban areas, bred plague and pestilence. My mind conjured a vision of bleak, lightless streets littered with swollen corpses. Committing my men to die in battle, should the need arise, would cost me not a moment’s discomfort. But the thought of leading them like sheep into a filthy, plague-ridden town, to die in agony and filth and squalour, with no more dignity than rabid rats, appalled me. And suddenly my mind was made up.

“So be it. We’ll bypass Londinium and go directly to Verulamium.”

Lucanus shook his head briefly, his face twisted in doubt. “I don’t know, Caius. That might not be feasible, or even possible.”

“Why not, in God’s name?" I had not expected opposition in this. “Of course it’s possible. We’ll simply do it, and it will be done.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “If you say so, but I think you’ve lost sight of some impediments to what you’re proposing … Our horses, and the river, the Thamis.”

I blinked at him, completely unable to decipher his meaning. “What about the river? We’ll ford the damn river.”

“Perhaps …" His entire demeanour indicated the world of scepticism he had managed to inject into that single word, but I bit my tongue, holding myself in check because I could see that he had more to add. “We crossed it two days ago, when it was narrow. Now we’re on the wrong side of it and it’s four times the size it was; I suspect we’ll find it’s now too broad to swim across and too deep to ford. We will have to bridge it and the only bridge I know of near these parts is at Londinium.”

“Hmm.” I had no response to that and had to think for a moment. “What about a ferry?”

He shook his head again. “We have two hundred men and two hundred horses, and wagons. A ferry might carry two of our big wagons at a time, with their teams, but I’d be surprised … Anyway, even the ferries are all close to, or in, Londinium. The Thamis at Londinium is a big river, Caius, probably bigger than you’ve ever seen.”

“Damnation!" I rose to my feet. “Then we return to Camulod, today.” I glanced up at the sky. “And damnation again, it’s already too late. We’ll stay here for the remainder of the day and night and turn homeward in the morning.”

Lucanus was now gazing at me in wide-eyed consternation. “What has brought this about, in the name of God? Am I to believe you are being serious? We are to turn homeward, less than half-way to our destination? Why, Caius?”

I was furious, and even as I reacted to his natural question, I found myself aware that my rage was irrational. “Why?" I almost spat the word. “You ask me why? You’re the one who pointed out the danger of plague, Lucanus. I will not expose my men to any plague.”

“Good, wonderful! I am delighted to hear that, although I already knew it and I would be the last man to expect you to do otherwise.” His words and tone, delivered calmly in the face of my unreasoning antagonism, brought me up short like a tight-reined horse. I stared at him, feeling my anger drain away to be replaced by a mild confusion.

“Then what are you saying? If you agree with me, why were you so dismayed at the thought of returning home?”

Lucanus sighed and indicated the place on the rock where I had been sitting moments before. “Sit down, and let me see if I can tell you.” When I was seated by his side again, he handed me the bag of shelled nuts. “Here, shake some of those straight into your mouth, but be careful. There could be a stone among them that might break a tooth.”

I shook some nuts into my palm, instead, but I was staring at him in bewilderment, and having seen the blank incomprehension in my eyes, he smiled and shook his head, taking the bag of nuts from me and closing it carefully before dropping it into his scrip. “Caius,” he said. “I did not say there is plague in Londinium. I merely raised the possibility, in order to alert you to a potential danger that you might not otherwise have considered. In exactly the same manner, I warned you of the possibility of finding a stone among those nuts, and what did you do then?" I shook my head, still not seeing his meaning. “You shook the nuts into your palm, did you not? That way you could examine each of them before you ate it. But the important thing is that you did not refuse to eat the nuts. You recognized the possibility of cracking a tooth, and took steps to circumvent it. The plague matter is the same thing. We do not know there is plague in Londinium. The idea is sheer conjecture on my part, though based on probabilities. We simply recognize the possibility; but it is illogical to cancel our expedition on the mere possibility of something going wrong. Carried to its conclusion, that means none of us might ever venture to leave Camulod again.”

I nodded, beginning to see, but he had not yet finished. “There’s nothing wrong with fearing contagion, Caius. That is natural and human and the mere thought of plague is repugnant to everyone. But when I heard you decide so quickly to abandon this venture on the fear of possibly encountering a plague, I grew concerned. Hence the dismay you saw. By tomorrow, you would have thought the matter through and reconsidered. I’m sure of that. But in the meantime, you might have done yourself and all of us a disservice, by appearing to vacillate. That we do not need. You have been upset these past few days, frustrated by the way things have gone since we left home, and you’ve been brooding—overmuch, I believe—about the responsibility you bear, the burden of leadership. I saw you contemplating something I thought you would regret, and I spoke up. If I was wrong, I ask your indulgence for reacting as a friend.”

I sucked in a great breath and blew it out noisily through loose lips, like a horse. “Luke,” I said, “if anyone needs indulgences for bad behaviour, I’m the one. You must forgive me, my friend.” I sat for several more moments, looking about me at my men.

“Very well, here’s my … revised decision.” I looked around me again, this time at the trees that hemmed us in. “As soon as we get out of this forest, if we ever do, I want to get off the road. We’ll travel overland. That will allow us to hunt as we travel, so we can feed the men. If we come across any farms that look even remotely prosperous, we’ll buy grain for the horses, otherwise they can graze as we move.

“When we approach Londinium, we will stop and make camp. Then I myself will go into the town—”

“With a suitably armed escort.”

“Right, with a small party, to check conditions for myself before we lead the men in. I’ll try to find out what’s happening in Verulamium … somebody should know … and when I think the way is clear, I’ll send word back for you to bring in the remainder of the party. We’ll get to the other side of the river as quickly as possible, and strike north immediately for Verulamium.”

He had begun to shake his head while I was speaking.

“What’s wrong now?”

“Won’t work.”

I stared at him. “What d’you mean, it won’t work?”

“Well, most of it will, but I’ll be with you in Londinium, since I’m the only physician you have, and I presume your purpose in going in there in advance of the main party is to find out if there’s plague there.”

“You think I won’t be able to smell it, if there is?”

He made a face. “That’s not what’s worrying me. You might not recognize it if it isn’t virulent.”

That sobered me. “Would you?”

He nodded. “Yes, absolutely, now that I’m ready and watching for it.”

“Fine. So you’ll be with me.” I paused, then continued with heavy sarcasm, “Is there any other part of my plan that won’t work?”

He smiled and shook his head again. “No, it sounds reasonable and straightforward.”

“Ah! Thank you for that, then.”

He grinned.

About ten miles further on, we emerged from the forest. We had been on a gradual but definite gradient for five miles by that point, and the trees petered out quite abruptly, giving way to high, rolling moorland. We had not seen another living soul since leaving Pontes. I gave the signal to leave the road, and we swung north-east, making good time over hard, grassy ground for the rest of the day.

We stopped late in the afternoon and made camp in a lush, grass-filled meadow by the side of a clear, fast-flowing brook. I had sent out a hunting party earlier to range ahead of us, and they had fared well, bringing back three fair-sized deer and a huge wild pig. The commissary people set about their business immediately, and soon the smells of roasting meat filled the air and set everyone’s stomach juices churning in anticipation of the feast.

The following morning, the weather held fine, sunny with only occasional showers, and again we made good progress. Donuil was a huddled clump of misery as he was each morning, his long body still unused to riding great distances every day. He swayed wordlessly on his horse’s back as he followed close behind me, and I took care to require no errands of him before noon, knowing that as the day progressed, he would regain control of his loosening muscles and begin to improve visibly. It happened every day, and each day the recuperative process took up slightly less time.

By early afternoon he was talking again, his usual, cheerful banter, and I had started to believe there might be a real chance of making a horseman of him after all. We were riding together at the head of the column, enjoying an unusually long spell of sunshine between squalls, when Donuil, whose eyes were far keener than anyone else’s in the group, picked up a movement on the ridge far ahead of us.

“Someone coming, Commander.” He nodded towards the movement he had seen. “Straight ahead. Must be some of our scouts.”

“How many?" I could see nothing but I did not doubt him.

He screwed up his eyes, concentrating, and it was several moments before he answered, “One. It’s Orvic.”

I glanced at him, irrationally irritated by this evidence of his amazing visual superiority.

“Damnation, Donuil, how can you know that? I can’t even see him moving yet!”

He smiled, his eyes still on the approaching figure. “It is Orvic, Commander, and his hounds. That’s why I thought at first there might be more than one man.”

I saw them then, the tall, long-haired, long-legged Cambrian Celt with his golden torc around his neck, and his three great wolfhounds ranging around him. He was a distant kinsman of mine, a nephew of my grandfather, Ullic Pendragon. Orvic was a man unique even among his unique clan, for he was renowned as both fighter and hunter, yet even more famed for his skills as a bard and as a breeder of wolfhounds. He had decided that he would ride with us to Verulamium to attend the debate. He was no Christian and had no interest in the theology to be debated, but he had never visited that part of the country and he had thought it fitting that we should allow him to escort us.

When he rode up, we exchanged greetings and then waited for him to tell us why he had come back. I had long since accepted the futility of trying to rush Orvic in anything, but he came to the point with surprising swiftness, speaking directly to me. “Where are you going?”

I raised my eyebrows at his tone, but answered him directly. “To Londinium, to see what’s happening. Why?”

“Forget it. You have no need to see what’s happening there.”

I frowned. “How can you know that?”

His frown matched mine. “Because I’ve been there. Believe what I tell you.”

I glanced around me at my five companions. They were all watching Orvic closely, no suggestion of doubt visible on any of their faces. I turned back to the big Celt. “What’s wrong there? Is it inhabited?”

“Inhabited? Aye, it’s inhabited, ’course it is, but it’s no place for you or your people.”

“Why not?”

“Pestilence of some kind. It’s not what I’d call rampant yet, but it’s there. There doesn’t seem to be wholesale death, but whatever it is, it’s created chaos in the town. There’s fighting everywhere, and nobody seems to know who’s in charge, or who’s fighting who. There seem to be four, perhaps five separate factions and there’s more corpses in the streets from the violence than from the sickness. The forum’s a slaughterhouse and the basilica’s on fire, along with a good portion of the rest or the town.”

“How did you find all this information? Were you inside the town itself?”

“Aye, and outside it, looking in.”

Lucanus spoke up. “Then you may be carrying the sickness.”

Orvic looked at him, then back to me. I could have sworn he was on the point of smiling. “Aye, I might. But I doubt it. I didn’t get close enough to anyone to catch anything except words, except for one fellow, and he was outside the town.”

“And?”

“And that’s all. He was healthy as a horse and bleeding like a sow. He was a mercenary, from my part of the country, if you can believe it. I didn’t know him, though. He’d fallen off the wall—been thrown off, really. I sewed up a gash in his thigh and splinted the bone, and he was happy to talk to me. Told me he started out years ago working for the Grain Merchants Guild, but that’s long gone, ten years ago or more, and he ended up with a gang of ex-soldiers who looked after their own interests and nobody else’s. There’s no organized authority in the town. Basilica’s been deserted for years, except for squatters. Town council stopped functioning more than five years ago and the so-called better class of citizens are all either dead or they’ve moved away. I told you, it’s chaos—a rats’ nest. A good place to stay well clear of.”

My horse reared at a fly bite, taking me by surprise and almost throwing me, and I wrestled him back under control, sawing on the bit and venting some of my frustration on the poor beast. By the time I spoke again, I had my feelings as tightly under control as the horse.

“We have no choice.” My voice was stony. “We have to go in to cross the bridge.”

“Find another way, Merlyn.” He looked me straight in the eye. “There’s nothing but heartache in there for you.”

“Nonsense! We have two hundred men. We’ll carve our way through if we have to.”

Orvic hawked and spat, an eloquent statement of disdain. “You might take them in, but you won’t take ’em all out again. You’ve got wagons, provisions and horses, and all of them make you fine targets. Streets are narrow and the roofs are high. It’s less than a mile from the north wall to the river and the bridge, but you’ll never make the transit. As soon as you approach the gates, even before you enter, all those warring bastards in there will unite against you. They’ll block every street junction, then line every rooftop and cut you to pieces from above. Your men will have no room to manoeuvre, or even to dodge the missiles. And then they’ll barricade the entrance to the bridge against you. Believe me, Caius Merlyn, the bridge is not available to you for crossing the river.”

“Damnation! Then what do you suggest? Should we sprout wings and fly?”

“Aye, if you can.” He grinned as he said the words, but there was no trace of humour in his eyes. “But it might be more realistic to skirt the city to the east, upriver, and find a ferry or a ford.”

“And what if we find neither? Do you know where there are any?”

He jerked his head. “No, but you’ll find one or the other, sooner or later. People do cross over without having to go through Londinium. What will it cost you? A day? Two days at the most, and you’ll keep your troops alive and healthy. Increase your speed and your daily travel for the next two days after that and you’ll make up the time you’ve lost.”

What he said made sense. There had to be either a ford or a ferry not too far upstream. I decided to accept his evaluation of the Londinium situation, and signalled the dismount, giving my men the chance to relax and stretch their legs. Then, with Orvic’s assistance, we spent the next hour discussing ways and means of circumventing the town and its dangerous bridge.

That night, after our plans had all been made, I wondered at myself. I have never been good at taking advice. An analyst of advice I was, certainly, in that I always took pains to consider—and occasionally defer to—the opinions and viewpoints of those around me. I usually chose, however, to cleave to my own judgment, trusting my own instinctual responses to the responsibilities I alone bore. That, I had learned from my father. His credo on leadership had been simple: a leader—any leader—bears full and final responsibility for the welfare of the people he leads. In success, he might be magnanimous in the sharing of credit, but in failure, the fault, the responsibility and the consequences are his alone to bear. On that phase of our expedition, however, I had accepted advice twice, from two subordinates, without any reservations, on two consecutive days. On each occasion that advice had run contrary to what I myself would normally have chosen to do, and upon it I had based decisions that I would not normally have made. In the light of what happened afterward, and aided by years of hindsight, I find it impossible not to believe I was under the influence—mystical or supernatural—of powers over which I had no control.

Publius Varrus wrote prolifically towards the end of his life, setting down his recollections of all that had happened to him since he met my grandfather, Caius Britannicus. It used to amuse me that, each time he was faced with the task of describing some event or occurrence that he did not fully understand, Uncle Varrus would resort to the assertion that he was not a superstitious man, but …

At this point in my tale, I understand fully, for the first time, how Publius Varrus felt at such times. I, too, am not a superstitious man, but I believe that journey to Verulamium was fated to take place. And I also believe that the only reason it took place was to bring about a series of meetings that would not—could not—otherwise have occurred.

Orvic had been right about the cross-river traffic upstream from Londinium. Less than a day’s march upriver from the town—a progress greatly hampered by our wagons and the lack of a road—we arrived, unsighted and unchallenged, at a regular crossing point. A deeply rutted track led us alongside the great river to where the thick growth of willows and scrub lining the bank had been cleared to accommodate a primitive ferry. This device, no more than a large, floating platform, was anchored and operated by a system of ropes and pulleys, all firmly fastened to two massive oak trees, one on each side of the river. When we arrived, the ferry lay on the opposite side from us, untended, and it had obviously been there for some time, for the river had receded in the hot weather and the craft lay high and dry on the mud of the riverbank. We couldn’t move it at all, from where we were, although we put as many men on the pulley ropes as we could. The river itself was wide and muddy at the crossing, flowing slowly and placidly with no visible eddies and no indication of strong currents. One of our younger squadron leaders, claiming the ability to swim like a fish, volunteered to swim across and test the current and the depth of the stream. He came to his feet in midstream, with his head clear of the water, and called to us that there was no current to speak of.

A dozen men and horses followed him to prise the ferry free of its muddy berth, and in less than two hours, our entire force had crossed over safely and easily, the wagons on the ferry and the troopers on horseback. We camped that night close by the riverbank, screened from the other side by the fringe of thick willows.

The following day, we set out westward, following the track leading from the ferry. The track soon petered out, however, completely overgrown, and after that our pace slowed to a crawl as we travelled through heavily forested, trackless land. The trees were mainly great oaks, ash and beeches, so that there was little undergrowth to hamper our passage, and we would have been able to make good time had it not been for our heavy wagons. Their huge wheels sank into the soft forest floor almost to the axles, and their immense width made them difficult to manoeuvre among the trees, while the dead trees and boughs that littered the ground often blocked their passage completely, so that our troopers spent as much time on foot as they did on horseback, labouring like slaves to remove the worst of the obstacles and free the wheels.

Late in the afternoon, towards sunset, we emerged without warning on the verge of the great Roman road leading north-westward from Londinium to Verulamium. There was no fresh meat for our fires that night. The noise of two hundred horsemen and heavy wagons crashing through the forest had banished all the wildlife for miles around. The trees that lined the road closely on both sides were much younger than the forest giants beneath which we had been travelling all day. They were tall and thin, much faster growing than the huge, stately oak, elm and beech trees of the deeper woods, but their outflung branches had already met far overhead, turning the road into a green, leaf-roofed tunnel.

The first milestone we came to told us we were thirteen miles north-west of Londinium. Two miles further on, just as I was beginning to worry about finding a suitable campsite, we emerged into an open meadow with a clear, gurgling stream and a covering of new saplings growing among the charred remnants of another old forest fire. The sun set minutes before we reached the spot, and by the time we had set up our encampment it was almost fully dark, thanks to the high trees on all sides of us.

We ate by the light of the cooking fires, and I decided to allow the men to rest the following day, while I myself went hunting with our Celtic bowmen.