the first time, but it's only there that you'll understand what's happening to the empire.'
'l am an old man, Savia.'
'And I'm an old woman. But not too old to search for new things.' She pauses, embarrassed to admit all her motives. 'I want to go north and tell them more about the Christ. They sense his wisdom. It might put an end to their feuds and cruelties.'
'You're going to preach your faith? You-'I am about to say slave, but I check my tongue-'a woman?'
'Yes. And I want to go with you.' She is saying what I already know, and still it comes as a thrill. Who has wanted to go with me anywhere before? Who has not dreaded my arrival and been relieved by my departure?
'It will be as a freed woman, not a slave,' I say thickly. 'Caratacus gave you your freedom up there. So will I.'
'I know.' She expected this manumission all along, I realize. She knew these stories of freedom would infect me.
'And what is it that you think I'll find up there?' I ask her.
'Yourself.'
No, no, it is impossible. The north! I must make my report to the emperor.
Yet not until I am ready. Not until I understand.
I realize I've made this decision long ago, made it somewhere in the course of these interviews and the course of my travels, made it because of the weary rot of the imperial court I represent.
Where is she now, this Valeria? What tower does she watch from? What has she seen? What is she learning? What does she think?
A senator's daughter!
We go north, starting tomorrow.
We go to find what she found.
EPILOGUE
Thirty-nine years after the battle of the Wall, on the last day of the Year of Our Lord 406, the Rhine River froze solid during the coldest winter in memory. Hundreds of thousands of waiting Vandals, Alans, Suevi, and Burgundians emerged from the forests of Germania and marched across the ice into Gaul.
A thin and dispirited Roman and Frankish army mustered to meet them but was easily brushed aside. With that, the world was open to pillage.
Some of the barbarian invaders claimed new lands in Gaul. Others struck south toward Italy, Spain, and Africa. In 410, the Gothic warlord Alaric sacked Rome. It was the first conquest of the city in eight centuries.
In that same year as the sacking, the province of Britannia sent an urgent plea to the emperor Honorius to seek military assistance against barbarian invasion.
The inheritor of Caesar replied that the island would have to look to itself.
No other communication from the empire was ever received.
HISTORICAL NOTE
Hadrian's Wall is a work of fiction based on real events. There was a 'Great Barbarian Uprising' in a.d. 367 that convulsed northern Britain, though the details of this war are obscure. There was a famed cavalry called the Petriana. There was a great tidal mixing of migrating tribes, religious faiths, new ideas, and old dissatisfactions in both Roman Britain and the empire as a whole in the fourth century, a prelude to the storm that would break in the fifth century. Above all there was Hadrian's Wall, today one of the most evocative ruins of Rome's imperial glory. Some have declared that a walk along its length is the greatest hike in Britain.
Despite the fame of what is today a World Heritage Site, many of the most basic questions about Hadrian's Wall remain unanswered. Because it has been mined for building stone for more than a millennium, all that remains in most places are its foundations. While its thickness of six to ten feet can be deduced from the surviving stone stump, its height can only be estimated. Most authorities believe- based on the angle of fragmentary steps found at one spot, the wall's necessary height at another place to join a bridge top, and so on- that the Wall averaged about thirteen to fifteen feet high, its dimensions likely varying with location and terrain. This would not have included any protective crenellations that soldiers could have stood behind, which would have added several feet more to its imposing appearance from the Celtic side. This is only an estimate, however. While there are re-creations of the Wall's gates and towers in the English city of Newcastle, and numerous speculative drawings, they represent only educated guesses. They are based on Roman architecture elsewhere in the empire and a couple of crude depictions of the Wall found on a Roman bowl and cup uncovered by archaeologists. Simply put, we moderns don't know exactly what the Wall looked like or how it changed over its three centuries of use. The whitewashing of the structure described in this novel is based on the findings of a lime paint on some stones, but whether Hadrian's Wall was truly painted for its entire length-Roman construction was often colorfully painted-remains a matter of speculation for historians. We do know its western half began as a turf wall that was later mostly replaced with stone.
There is no written record of an actual assault on the Wall, though it certainly could have happened. As barrier and landmark, it undoubtedly figured in periodic conflicts such as the a.d. 367 uprising, since any invading army would have had to cross it. There is little evidence, however, of the kind of fire or destruction that might have accompanied an Alamo-like attack. Did the Wall deter all assault? Was it so easily pierced that invaders left no mark? Or has time erased all evidence of past battles?
Above all, experts are uncertain how the wall functioned. It seems impossible that the estimated five thousand Roman soldiers who permanently manned the Wall-stretched out for eighty Roman miles, or seventy- three modern miles-could have hoped to defeat a determined attack at any one point. They were simply spread too thin. What was the Wall's purpose, then? Simply to mark civilization's boundary in an emphatic way? To control trade and immigration, like the Iron Curtain of our recent times? To collect tariffs and taxes by funneling travelers through gates? Or was the Wall and its forts a mixture of all these things, a barrier that was both physical and psychological? The only thing we can surmise with confidence is that to a certain extent it worked at protecting Roman Britannia from raid and invasion and at sustaining different cultures south and north. The historic division between England and Scotland (Britannia and Caledonia in this book) was set by this Wall.
It is unlikely the Romans would have referred to the fortification as 'Hadrian's' Wall. We don't know what name they gave it. Still, modern-day attribution to that energetic, gifted, eccentric, generous, ruthless, rugged, and sensual emperor is accurate. The Wall was started during Hadrian's reign, after he visited the province of Britannia, and a scene much like that of the prologue may indeed have occurred. Remains of a fifty-room wooden 'palace' have been found at the Roman fort of Vindolanda that date from Hadrian's visit to Britain, and archaeologists think it may have been constructed for his entourage. We can only guess at what the emperor said or ordered, however: the only specific line in ancient literature that refers to the Wall's construction is a much later fourth century imperial history by Aelius Spartianus that states, 'Having reformed the army (in Gaul) in the manner of a monarch, Hadrian set out for Britain. There he corrected many faults and was the first to build a wall, eighty miles long, to separate the Romans from the barbarians.'
This is not the only ancient writing I relied on. Many of the Roman aphorisms in this novel are taken from history. The poem of Florus in the prologue is close to one that has actually come down to us from antiquity. So is Clodius's poem from the emperor Julian, about the dubious merits of British beer.
The Romans were aware of the great civilizations of India and China far to the east, trading with both: Valeria's silk gown would have originated in China and is based on the fact that Rome imported such luxuries. Historians thus believe it is possible that Hadrian would have heard of the Great Wall of China, which had taken continuous shape about three centuries before Hadrian's Wall was started. Did China's wall inspire his idea to protect the Roman Empire behind permanent fortifications? We don't know.
One of the challenges of this novel was to convey the prejudices Romans had toward the world outside their
