Later, when Regina thought back, it seemed to her that the incident of the mass grave had been a turning point for Artorius: after that something hard and cold and old emerged in him, slowly becoming dominant. Or perhaps it was just the ambience of the ancient place they had come to reinhabit, their return to this old place of earth and blood, as if the age of the Roman peace had been nothing but a glittering dream.

Certainly, after that day, there had been no more talk of turning his country over to the emperors.

But none of it mattered, she told herself, so long as she and Brica were safe. The family: that was her only priority. Every night, as she lay down to sleep in the corner of the hilltop roundhouse she shared with Brica and several other senior women, she stared at her matres, carefully preserved across all these years, the three worn little statues perhaps older than this piled-up fortress itself, and said a kind of prayer to them — not to preserve her life, for she knew that was her own responsibility — but to grant her guidance.

On the evening of the Samhain, it felt like autumn for the first time, Regina thought. There was a hint of frost in the air, and her head was filled with the smoky scent of dying leaves. As she prepared to enter Artorius’s hall, she lingered in the open, oddly regretful to leave the last of the daylight behind — the last of another summer, now her forty-first. But it was Artorius’s feast, and she had no time for such reflections. With a sigh she entered his great hall.

The hall was already crowded, the torches of hay and sheep fat burned brightly on the walls, and she was bombarded by heat and light, smoke and noise.

Though even now there was much work to be done on it, she had to admit the hall’s magnificence. The centerpiece was a hearth, a great circle of scavenged Roman stone, on which a huge fire was blazing. The fire cast light and heat around the hall’s single vast room, and filled the noisy air with smoke. From an iron tripod twice the height of a man, a cauldron had been suspended, and she could smell the rich scents of stew — pork and mutton flavored with wild garlic, from the smell of it.

Already Artorius’s men were lining up to take their share of the meat. Artorius himself served it up, yanking joints out of the simmering broth with iron hooks. There was a constant jockeying for position among the subordinates, and there was nothing subtle about the way Artorius fished for the best cuts of meat to reward his favorites. He fumbled one serving, dropping the meat on the floor, and two of his soldiers began to fight over the honor of whom it had been intended for. The others didn’t try to separate them, but gathered around and roared them on.

Old Carausias was beside Regina.

She said, “What a display — grown men, squabbling over bits of meat.”

He shook his head. “But with such contests his lieutenants are working out their status — who is closer to the sun.”

“How savage.”

Carausias shrugged. “It’s a shame your grandfather isn’t here. I’m sure the legionaries in their barracks behaved much the same way. Anyway it’s their night, not ours.”

When the soldiers had had their share of the food, the other men and the women were allowed to approach the cauldron. Regina herself took only a little of the broth, and drank sparingly of her cup of wheat beer.

When Artorius took his place on the floor at the center of a circle of his men, the storytelling began. One soldier after another got to his feet, generally unsteadily, to boast how he — or perhaps a dead comrade — had bested two or three or five savage Saxons, each taller than a normal human being and equipped with three swords apiece. They all drank steadily, at first from a communal cup carried by a servant who moved to the right around the circle, and then, as the evening got rowdier, from their own vessels. It had been a heroic labor for the little community to produce the vast vats of wheat beer that would be consumed this night.

Then the iron maker Myrddin got to his feet and began a long and complex tale about giants who lived in magical islands across the ocean, far to the west of Britain: “There are thrice fifty distant isles / In the ocean to the west of us / Larger than Ireland twice / Is each of them, or thrice …”

“All true, all true,” murmured Carausias. He belched, and Regina realized that he was getting as drunk as any of Artorius’s soldiers.

As the beer continued to flow, the talk and horseplay became more raucous, and some of the soldiers and younger men started mock-fighting and wrestling. Regina sat stoically in her corner beside a dozing Carausias, wondering how much of this she could endure.

There was a touch on her shoulder. Startled, she looked up.

Artorius was beside her. She could smell the beer on his breath, but unlike his men he was not drunk. “You are quiet,” he said.

“You should go back to your men.”

He smiled, glancing back. “I don’t think they need me anymore tonight. But you … I know what you are thinking.”

“You do?”

“You are remembering your mother. The parties she gave, in the villa. The glittering folk who would come, the expensive preparations she would make. You’ve told me as much. And now you must put up with this.”

“I don’t mean to judge.”

He shook his head. “We are all prisoners of our past. But the present is all we have. Those men wrestling over their beer are as rough as sand — but they will give their lives for me, and for you. We must make the best of the times we live in, what we have, the people around us.”

“You’re wise.”

He laughed. “No. Just a survivor, like you.” He took her hand with an odd gentleness. “Listen to me,” he said intensely. “That old fool Myrddin is full of legends … He says I must become Dagda for these people.”

“Dagda?”

“The Good God — but the most humble of gods. All that you promise to do, I will do myself alone … But Dagda needs a Morrigan, his great queen. And at Samhain,” he whispered, “the time of reconciliation, the god of the tribe and the goddess of the earth come together, so that the opposing forces, of life and death, dark and light, good and evil, are balanced once more.”

“What are you suggesting, Artorius? … We fight, you and I. We are in constant conflict.”

“But life itself results from the interplay of opposing forces. That’s the point.”

“You foolish man. I am old, and no goddess. Find yourself a younger woman.”

“But none of them has your strength — not even your daughter, beautiful though she is. You, you are my Morrigan, my Regina, my queen.” He cupped her cheek and leaned close to her, his breath flavored with the meat and the beer, his eyes bright.

She looked into her heart. There was no affection there, not even lust. There was only calculation: If I do this, will it increase my chances of keeping Brica alive another day? Only calculation — but that was enough.

She stood, and let him lead her out of the hall. She looked back once to see Carausias’s eyes on her, rheumy, but a mirror of her own coldness.