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'Valerius Maxentius! Are you all right?'
He was surprised at the strength of the woman as she lifted him up and rolled him over onto his side. He nodded.
'Come on then!' she ordered. 'Before you freeze.'
She drew one of his arms across her shoulder and half supported him up the beach towards a shallow ravine lined with the black forms of stunted trees. There, in the shelter of a fallen trunk, the two children crouched in the sodden mass of the prefect's cloak.
'Underneath. All of you.'
She joined them, and all four huddled as tightly together as they could within the wet folds, shivering violently as the storm raged on and snow settled about them. Looking out towards the headland, Maxentius could see no sign of the trireme. It was as if his flagship had never been, so completely had it been obliterated. No one else seemed to have survived. No one.
A sudden scrabbling of shingle caught his ear above the howling wind. For a moment he thought he must have imagined it. Then the sound came again, and this time he swore he could hear voices as well.
'There's other survivors!' He smiled at the woman, easing himself to his knees. 'Over here! Over here!' he called.
A dark figure appeared round the corner of the ravine opening. Then another.
'Here!' The prefect waved. 'Over here!'
The figures were still for a moment, then one of them called out, but the sense of his words was lost on the wind. He raised a spear and signalled to unseen others.
'Valerius, be quiet!' ordered the woman.
But it was too late. They had been seen, and more men joined the first two. Cautiously they approached the shivering Romans. By the loom of the snow on the ground, their features slowly became visible as they came nearer.
'Mummy,' the girl whispered. 'Who are they?'
'Hush, Julia!'
When the men were only a few paces away, a distant burst of lightning lit up the sky. In its pale glow the men were briefly revealed. Above their crudely cut fur cloaks, wildly spiked hair billowed in the wind. Beneath, fierce eyes blazed out of heavily tattooed faces. For a moment neither they nor the Romans moved or said a word. Then the little boy could take no more and a thin scream of blind terror split the air.
Chapter Two
'I'm sure it was around here,' muttered Centurion Macro, glancing down a dark alley leading up from the Camulodunum quayside. 'Any ideas?'
The other three exchanged a glance as they stamped their feet in the snow. Beside Cato – Macro's young optio – stood two young women, natives from the Iceni tribe, wrapped warmly in splendid winter cloaks with fur trims. They had been raised by fathers who had long anticipated the day when the Caesars would extend the limits of their empire into Britain. The girls had been taught Latin from an early age, by an educated slave imported from Gaul. As a consequence their Latin had a lilting accent, an effect Cato found quite pleasing to the ear.
'Look here,' the oldest girl protested. 'You said you'd take us to a snug little alehouse. I'm not going to spend the night walking up and down freezing streets until you find exactly the one you're looking for. We go in the next one we come across, agreed?' She looked round at her friend and Cato, fierce eyes demanding their assent. Both nodded at once.
'It must be down this one,' Macro responded quickly. 'Yes, I remember now. This is the place.'
'It had better be. Or you're taking us home.'
'Fair enough.' Macro raised a hand to placate her. 'Let's go.'
With the centurion leading the way, the small band softly crunched up the narrow alley, hemmed in on both sides by the dark huts and houses of the Trinovantes townspeople. Snow had been falling all day and had only stopped shortly after dusk. Camulodunum and the surrounding landscape lay under a thick blanket of gleaming white and most people were indoors huddled around smoky fires. Only the more hardy of the town's youngsters joined the Roman soldiers looking for dives where they might enjoy a night's drinking, raucous singing and, with a little luck, a bit of fighting. The soldiers, armed with purses bulging with coins, wandered into town from the vast encampment stretching out just beyond the main gate of Camulodunum. Four legions – over twenty thousand men – were sitting the winter out in crude timber and turf huts, impatiently waiting for spring to arrive so that the campaign to conquer the island could be renewed.
It had been an especially harsh winter and the legionaries, shut up in their camp and made to live on an unrelieved diet of barley and winter vegetable stew, were restless. Particularly since the general had advanced them a portion of the donative paid to the army by Emperor Claudius. This bonus was given to celebrate the defeat of the British commander, Caratacus, and the fall of his capital at Camulodunum. The townspeople, mostly engaged in some form of trade or other, had quickly recovered from the shock of defeat and taken advantage of the opportunity to fleece the legionaries camping on their doorstep. A number of alehouses had opened up to provide the legionaries with a range of local brews, as well as wine shipped in from the continent by those merchants prepared to risk their ships in the winter seas in return for premium prices.
The townsfolk who were not making money out of their new masters looked on in distaste as the drunken foreigners staggered home from the alehouses, singing at the tops of their voices, and spewing noisily in the streets. Eventually, the town's elders had had enough and sent a deputation to General Plautius. They politely requested that, in the interests of the new bonds of alliance that had been forged between the Romans and the Trinovantes, it might be a good thing if the legionaries were no longer allowed into the town. Sympathetic as he was to the need to preserve good relations with the locals, the general also knew that he would be risking a mutiny if he denied his soldiers an outlet for the tensions that always accompanied the long months spent in winter quarters. Accordingly, a compromise was reached, and the numbers of passes issued to soldiers rationed. As a result, the soldiers were even more determined to go on a wild bender each time they were allowed into the town.
'Here we are!' said Macro triumphantly. 'I told you it was here.'
They were standing outside the small studded door of a stone-built store shed. A shuttered window pierced the wall a few paces further up the alley. A warm red glow lined the rim of the shutters and they could hear the cheerful hubbub of loud conversation within.
'At least it should be warm,' the younger girl said quietly. 'What do you think, Boudica?'
'I think it had better be,' her cousin replied, and reached for the door latch. 'Come on then.'
Horrified at the prospect of being preceded into a drinking place by a woman, Macro clumsily thrust himself between the woman and the door.
'Er, please allow me.' He smiled, attempting to affect some ma
'Put the wood in the hole!' someone shouted. 'Before we all fucking freeze.'
'Watch it!' Macro shouted back angrily. 'There are ladies present!'
A chorus of hoots sounded from the other customers.
'We already know!' A legionary nearby laughed as he goosed a passing bar woman carrying an armful of empty pitchers. She yelped, and spun round to deliver a stinging blow before skipping off to the counter at the far end of the alehouse. The legionary rubbed his glowing cheek and laughed again.