'Anyway, who in their right minds would make a coffin out of lead?' she gasped.
'You're right.' I gave in sheepishly and we were friends again.
But the Romans did.
You know, sometimes events gang up on you. Even if you decide against doing a thing, circumstances can force you to do it in the end. Ever had that sensation? The last time I'd had the same feeling somebody'd got themselves killed and the blood had splashed on me. For the rest of Henry's time we played on the divan. I'd invented this game where I make my hands into hollow shapes and Henry tries to find the way in.
I shivered. Janie looked at me a bit oddly. She switched the fire on, saying it was getting chilly. Henry began to snore, about an octave deeper than his belches.
'He sleeps for an hour now, till Eleanor comes,' I said. 'You'd better go just before she calls.' I didn't want my women customers believing the cottage was a den of vice.
I lay back and watched the ceiling.
I've been assuming up to now you know the facts, but maybe I'd better slip them in here. If you're a bag of nerves you should skip this bit. It gives me nightmares even yet, and I read it first as a lad at school.
Once upon a time our peaceful old land was still and quiet. All was tranquil. Farmers farmed. Cattle hung about the way they do. Folk didn't fight much. Fields, little towns, neat forests and houses, Thursday markets. Your actual average peace. Then one day an anchor splashed in the Medway, to the surprise of all.
The Romans had landed.
The legions, with Claudius the God Emperor bored stiff on his best war elephant, paraded down our High Street after dusting over the Trinovantes, boss tribe in those days. Our town was called Colonia, capital of the new colony of Britain under Governor-General Gaius Suetonius Paulinus.
It would have all gone smoothly, if only the Druids had not got up his Roman nose.
They skulked over to Anglesey, off the coast of Wales, almost as if Rome could be ignored. Well, you can imagine. Suetonius was peeved and set off after them, leaving (here it comes) Britain in the hands of tax gatherers. Usual, but unwise, because Claudius was a real big spender and had left millions for the tribal kings as a gesture of goodwill. The politicians showed up and pinched the money. Sound familiar? They had a ball - especially the night they raped the daughters of a certain lady called Boadicea.
Now Boadicea was no local barmaid. She happened to be the Queen of the Iceni, a tough mob. Breasts seethed in the Iceni kingdom. And, remember, Suetonius was away in Anglesey with his legions, a detail the arrogant conquerors forgot.
It was all suddenly too much for the bewildered British tribes. One dark day the terrible Iceni rose. The whole of eastern England smouldered as the Roman settlements were annihilated crunch by savage crunch. The famous Ninth Legion strolled out from Lincoln innocently intending to chastise the local rabble, a shovel to stop an avalanche. The thousands of legionaries died in a macabre lunatic battle in the dank forests. St Albans was obliterated in a single evening's holocaust. The outposts and the river stations were snuffed as Boadicea's grim blue-painted hordes churned southwards, until only the brand new Roman city of Colonia was left. Catus the Procurator skipped to Gaul in a flash, promising legions which never came. Politicians.
There was nothing left but the smouldering forests, the waiting city, and silence. Then the spooks began. The statue of Victory tumbling to the ground and swivelling its sightless stone eyes ominously away from Rome. Omens multiplied. Rivers ran red. Air burned. Statues wailed in temples. I won't go on if you don't mind. You get the picture.
Finally, one gruesome dark wet dawn Boadicea's warmen erupted from the forests, coming at a low fast run in their tens of thousands. The Temple of Jupiter, with the Roman populace crammed inside, was burned. The rest were slaughtered in the streets.
The city was razed. Boadicea jauntily crucified seventy thousand people, Roman and Briton alike, and nobody survived. It's called patriotism.
In the nick of time Suetonius miraculously returned to evacuate London, shoving everybody south of the Thames while Boadicea burned London and everywhere else she could think of. See what I mean, about women never giving up. Naturally, Rome being Rome, Suetonius made a comeback and the British Queen took poison after her great defeat, woman to the last.
I'd always accepted the story at its face value, but now I couldn't help wondering about something which had never struck me before.
Hadn't Suetonius been a long time coming back?
Nowadays our locals say to newcomers, 'Don't dig below the ash, will you? The ash is so good for the roses. And there's bits of bone, too. Calcium and phosphorus. We're quite famous for our roses hereabouts.' It's such good advice to gardeners.
I don't do any gardening.
Janie went in the nick of time. Eleanor collected Henry, now awake and singing with his foot in his mouth. I'm really proud of that trick, but Janie said they all do it. I waved from the front door.
I cleared up and got the map. The Isle of Anglesey is about half a mile from the Welsh coast. Thomas Telford even flung a bridge over the narrow Menai Straits. (Incidentally, Telford's engraved designs are worth far more nowadays than the paper they're printed on. They're hardly impressionistic but give me first choice of any you get.) One old historian, Polydore Vergil, always said Suetonius invaded the Isle of Man, but he was an erratic Italian everybody said was a nut anyway. There is even a belief that Suetonius had with him the famous Gemini Legion, but that must be wrong as well.
Augustus Caesar once received a delegation from a far country and is reputed to have whispered behind his hand to an aide: 'Are they worth conquering?' The country happened to be Ceylon, Sri Lanka, which for size could dwarf Rome any day of the week. The point is that the ancient Romans were distinctly cool. And one of the coolest was Suetonius, that dour, unsmiling, decisive and superb soldier whose tactical judgement, however grim, was unswervingly accurate.
As the evening drew on I tried to light a fire but the bloody wood was wet. I switched on the electric again instead. The birds outside had shut up. Only the robin was left on a low apple branch. My hedgehogs were milling about for nothing, rolling from side to side like fat brown shoppers.
Had the might of Rome been paralysed by a stretch of water you can spit over? Was Suetonius held up by a few
