They had come to Londinium because the development of Artorius’s ambitions had continued, despite all Regina’s subtle discouragement. He seemed determined to mount an assault on Gaul, and then, perhaps, to march on Rome itself, to try for the purple as had Constantius and so many other British leaders before him.

It was a challenging ambition. Britain was far from united, the Saxons far from subdued. And for all his successes Artorius commanded only a fraction of the number of troops he would need for such an adventure, and would have to rely on allies. But, fired by a dozen victories over the Saxons, Artorius was determined. And so he was coming to Londinium for a council of British chiefs, magistrates, kings, and warlords, to see if he could shape a common intent. Regina was disturbed by this. The disaster that had followed Constantius’s withdrawal of Britain’s forces, she thought, should be obvious to everybody, and not an adventure to be emulated. But she was here, ostensibly supporting Artorius, in fact wary, uncertain of her own future.

The party reached the river, close to the site of another fort at the eastern corner of the wall. Londinium had once sprawled across both north and south banks of this great east-flowing river. In latter days, though, the settlement on the south side had declined. Today, to the south of the river there was nothing to be seen but farmsteads, low buildings, meandering cattle, threads of smoke. But a bridge still spanned the river, from north to south. It was an impressive sight, a series of broad semicircular arches, its roadway high enough to allow the passage of oceangoing ships.

Brica stared at the bridge openmouthed. She was muttering, “Lud, Lud …”

Regina touched her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

Brica turned, her pretty eyes blank. “It’s the bridge. It’s as if the river has been tamed, the mighty river itself. But this is the dun of Lud, the god of the water …”

“The Romans took to calling the city Augusta,” said Regina dryly. “It never caught on. But if there are such legends buried in a mere name, perhaps they were wise to try …”

She was disturbed. She didn’t want her daughter’s soul to be so primitive that she was astonished at the sight of a mere bridge. At least Regina remembered the villas and the towns as they had been. What next — would Brica’s daughter in turn cower from thunderstorms, fearing the anger of the sky gods?

I must get her away from that place, the dunon, Regina thought with renewed determination. And I must save her from Galba, and his mind like a sink of stupidity and superstition.

Artorius had negotiated the use of a town house for himself, Regina and her daughter, and others of his party. The town house was the home of a particularly wealthy negotiatore called Ceawlin. A grossly fat man of about fifty, Ceawlin was of Welsh origin, but he spoke fluent Latin and Greek. Having risen to the top of Londinium society, such as it was, he seemed determined to expand his business interests on the continent, and had become one of Artorius’s most significant backers.

But he troubled Regina. He clearly dismissed her as unimportant, a mere woman. In her presence he would let slip the mask of smiling beneficence he kept up before Artorius — and Regina saw the greed and calculation in his fat-choked eyes. His motivation was his own wealth and power, she saw immediately, and Artorius, this barbarian soldier-king, was no more than a means to an end.

While Regina was to be admitted to Artorius’s councils, Brica was expected to stay with Ceawlin and his household. But she was unhappy — and loathed Ceawlin on sight. “They laugh at me,” she groused. “These pretty children and their vapid mother. They laugh at the way I speak, and the clothes I wear, and the way I do my hair. But I bet not one of them could strangle a chicken or gut a pig. And that Ceawlin makes my skin crawl; he stinks of piss, and he stands so close…”

Once Regina herself had been like Ceawlin’s spoiled daughters, she thought, and would have laughed just as much at a girl from an old hill fort. She embraced her sturdy, bronzed daughter. “I’m proud of you,” she said. “And anyhow it won’t be for long.” She was sure that was true — she was becoming convinced she was nearing an end game with Artorius — though she didn’t yet know how that end game would play out.

And at the same time she faced another problem.

It had become obvious to both Brica and Galba that Regina opposed their union. Regina was so powerful that Galba and his family did not dare stand up to her, and Brica herself had so far stopped short of open rebellion. But Regina knew that could not last forever. Just as Artorius’s ambitions were overweening, so Brica’s frustration, as the years flowed steadily by, was becoming overpowering.

In both areas of Regina’s life a crisis was approaching, then. She had no clear idea how she would handle these twin issues — not yet. But this Londinium trip would surely be useful. It would let her gauge the seriousness of Artorius’s ambitions; and it would buy her a little time by taking Brica away from Galba for a while.

And perhaps, in Britain’s greatest city, other opportunities would open up. Before setting out, with no clear intention in mind, she had taken the three matres, her deepest symbol of family, carefully wrapped them in her softest cloth, and lodged them in her luggage.

Artorius held his war council in Ceawlin’s reception room. It was a large, well-appointed chamber, but it was crowded, for it held no less than ten petty kings and their advisers.

Regina quickly got to know a few of these ambitious warlords. Aside from Ceawlin, two struck her as significant.

One was a very young man, barely twenty it seemed, who called himself Ambrosius Aurelianus. In his shining body armor he was a slab of muscle and determination, and it seemed to Regina that he would follow Artorius wherever he asked — and perhaps, on Artorius’s inevitable death, take up Chalybs and wield that mighty sword himself against the Saxon hordes.

The other was a thin, intense man called Arvandus. He was actually an official of the Roman Empire, a prefect in the troubled, half-dislocated province of Gaul. But his ambition was clearly to rule not in the Emperor’s name but in his own right. Regina fretted that because he had already betrayed one ruler, in the Emperor, he would likely have few qualms in betraying another.

Artorius, in his zeal and passion, seemed to have no idea that such complexities might be brewing among his nominal followers, that these men were not like the loyal soldiers with whom he had fought side by side, but men with their own goals and ambitions, even their own dreams: In Artorius’s blindness Regina felt she saw his destiny clearly shaped.

They spent much time discussing the tactical situation across the country. Information was patchy, the situation complex. Though the Saxons were unified in their hostility to the British and the Roman legacy, they were not a politically coordinated force, and their advances were opportunistic and scattered. Meanwhile the British response was equally fragmentary.

“But what is sure,” said Artorius grimly, “is that there isn’t a blade of grass east of Londinium that isn’t now in Saxon hands. And time is short …”

He described the Saxons’ destruction of the town of Calleva Atrebatum. They had not just slaughtered or driven off the population, not just plundered and burned down the remaining buildings; the Saxons had also hurled blocks of building stone down the wells, so the site of the town could never be reoccupied. It was an erasure, systematic and deliberate.