For example, I will tie the farmsteads to the central authority by renting them cattle. Perhaps other taxes can be levied.”

“ The central authority. You mean yourself.”

He shook his head. “As soon as I can I will submit myself for election as a magistrate.” He used the Latin word, duumvirs. She guffawed, but he insisted, “I am serious. I tell you I am no warlord, Regina — or if I am it will not be forever.

“With order will come prosperity. We must make pottery — a decent kiln or two. And coins. I will start a mint. I have already begun the process of establishing an ironworks here. It is under the direction of my good friend Myrddin — you must meet him — a crusty old buffoon, but he knows the ancient wisdom that survived beyond the reach of the Romans, to the west of here. A marvelous man — so knowledgeable is he, some call him a wizard — my aim is to empty his head before he dies.”

“And your third priority—”

“To return the diocese of Britain, or as much of it as I command, to the Emperor. Only that way can the farthest future be assured. Even if I have to go to Gaul, I will do it.”

“How laudable,” she said dryly. “But you have chosen to come here, to reoccupy this centuries-old fort, rather than to go back to Durnovaria, say.”

“The town is dead. Its walls, even if restored, are feeble, its drains and water pipes clogged — and the system on which it relied has vanished. I mean the money, the flow of goods. We cannot buy metalwork from Germany or pottery from Spain anymore, Regina. We must live as our ancestors did.”

“And so we are abandoning the Romans’ towns and villas, and are creeping back to the old ways, the earthworks of our ancestors. How strange. How — wistful. You know, ever since I was a little girl, bit by bit, I have fallen away from the light, and into the darkness of this new, bleak time, where I recognize nothing.”

He studied her seriously, his dark eyes grave. “I do understand, you know,” he said gently. “I am no illiterate savage. I want what you want. Order, prosperity, peace. But I accept the times as they are; I accept what I must do to achieve those ends. I have told you my dreams, and my ambitions. Now tell me what you are thinking, Regina — tell me what you think of me.”

She considered carefully. If anybody could restore order in this confused, collapsed landscape it was surely Artorius — a man full of dreams, but a man with the power and realism, it seemed, to make those dreams come true. For a moment, there on the busy plateau, it seemed to her that in this man, this Artorius, she had found a rock on which she might at last build a safe future for herself and her family — that there might come a time when she could rest.

“I am — hopeful.” And so she was, tentatively.

He seemed moved; apparently her good opinion really was of value to him. He grabbed her hand; his palm was dry and warm. “Work with me, Regina. I need your strength.”

But then there was a cry from the bottom of the slope, where the men had been digging out the clogged- up defense ditches. “ Riothamus! You might want to see this, sir …”

Artorius clambered quickly down the zigzag path to the base of the ditch.

The men had found a jumble of bones. Many were broken, some charred. The men picked through this unwelcome trove carefully. There were many skulls — surely more than a hundred.

When Artorius clambered out, his face had a hardness she had not seen before. In one hand he cradled the skull of a child, in the other a handful of coins, just slivers of metal, stuck together from their immersion in the soil. “You see, Regina — from the bones it’s hard to tell men from women, young from old. But you can always tell if it’s a child. And at least this one did not suffer in the fire. See the crater in the back of the skull — inflicted by a legionary’s sword hilt, perhaps …”

“The fire?”

“There was some kind of building down there.” He pointed. “We’ve found the stumps of posts. The people were gathered up and crammed inside, and then it was torched.”

“Who would do such a thing?”

“Who do you imagine?” He held out his handful of coins. One of them bore the name of the Emperor Nero. “Was it not during the reign of Nero that Boudicca led her rebellion against Roman rule? It seems that reprisals were fierce.” He hefted the child’s skull. “This little warrior must truly have terrified the mighty Roman army.”

“Artorius—”

“Enough.” Holding the skull, he walked back down the hill and began issuing commands.

For the rest of that day and most of the next, a large proportion of Artorius’s scarce resource was devoted to digging out a new mass grave and transporting the broken and burned bones to it. The burial was done in the style of the Celtae. Three pigs were slaughtered and their carcasses thrown on the bones, to provide sustenance for the journey to the Otherworld. For each skull a beaker or cup was placed in the grave, so that the dead could drink from the great cauldrons in the Otherworld’s banqueting halls.

As the grave was filled in, Artorius’s iron-making genius Myrddin led prayers. He was a small, wild- eyed man with a mass of gray-black beard, and his arms were covered with puckered smelting scars. His voice was thin, his western accent heavy: “Death comes at last and lays cold hands upon me …”

For the rest of that year the fields around the dunon were to be prepared for sowing the following spring, and provisions like dried and salted meat were laid up for the winter.

Life continued to be harsh, with hard labor for all but the very smallest children. But Artorius had insisted they make time for such measures as the digging of proper latrines as one of the first priorities — and so they were spared the plague of fever that swept the countryside in late summer. And long before the season turned it was clear to all that they had amassed enough food to see them through the winter, even if some of it had been taken by force by Artorius’s soldiers. Regina could not deny the energy Artorius brought to his task, the great sense of loyalty and industry he instilled in others — including herself, she admitted — nor the great strides the new community had made by the autumn.

But Artorius was changing.

Artorius announced that from henceforth they would follow the old calendar of the Celtae, rather than that of the Romans. This was marked out by four main feasts: Imbolc at the end of the winter, when the ewes lactated for their lambs; Beltane in early summer, when the cattle would be driven between purifying fires to open grazing; Lughnasa at the start of harvesting; and Samhain in early autumn — the start of the new year for the Celtae, a time when the old gave way to the new, and the world could be overrun by the forces of magic. The next full year, beginning that Samhain, would be the first in which Artorius’s new kingdom would begin to find its feet, and Artorius announced that the Samhain would be marked by a mighty feast.

Regina listened to all this with some disquiet. But she kept her counsel.

Similarly she said nothing when Artorius began to abandon his old, much-repaired Roman armor and dress for a more traditional costume. He wore brightly colored braccae and cloaks, and when the weather turned colder a birrus, the hooded cloak that had always been associated with Britain. The effect was completed when he began to wear a handsome golden torc around his neck, looted by one of his officers from a Saxon raiding party. Though Regina spent much time in his company discussing practical matters, she never heard him refer back to his talk of starting a mint, or styling himself a magistrate.