“Well?” you say behind me. “What happened next, Ma?”
And I know I can’t leave. Because I know that as I stood looking up at the lighthouse, I would be missing, to the very bone, everything about Britain. I would miss the cool rain in the air, the soft change of the light. I would miss your laughter as you play outside, and your father grumbling to himself as he struggles with some leaky window frame or warped wheel rim he’s trying to fix. He’s always trying to make this place better, for me and for you. When I came here, it was built of wood. He turned it into stone for me. He even laid a mosaic floor, so I could close my eyes and pretend I was barefoot at home. Not that it worked. Mosaics here are always cold and damp.
“Next,” I say, swallowing down my sadness. “Next, we set out for Britain. We travelled over the sea to Spain, then up through Gaul. It was a long way. The Emperor was in such pain that he could not travel in a carriage; he had to be carried in a litter the whole way. It was a long, dusty journey and when we got to the coast, and we could tell ourselves we saw the shores of Britain ahead of us, we were so happy because we thought that it was nearly the end of our journey. The Classis Britannica was there, the fleet that ferried soldiers over the short gap of sea to Britain, and we thought we couldn’t be safer.”
“But then there was the storm,” you say.
“Yes, then there was the storm.” Even now it is hard to think of it without feeling sick.
“When my grandmother drowned.”
“Yes. When we got to Britain, we were not a family any more – we were like an arch when one stone falls down and the rest tumble after it.”
“Was there no grave for my grandmother?” you ask. You look serious – you know how important it is to be remembered.
“We put up a memorial. For all I know it is still there – in the port, at Londinium.”
London was larger than I expected, more Roman than I expected. We stood on the deck and watched as the long stone walls slid into view. The eagle standards, symbol of the Empire, flew above everything. The sludgy river carried us past banks where wooden houses and fishing boats huddled. Children with strange, reddened skins ran and played on the bank, shouting to each other in the odd, bird-like languages of British tribes. But as we docked we heard the sound of Latin, mixed with Punic and Gaulish and other, stranger languages. It was not so different from Leptis Magna, after all. It was a Roman city, with all the things a Roman city should have. There was a lighthouse and a temple to Jupiter, and further in we could see the forum and the basilica. Of course, it was not Rome. It was more built of wood than of stone, but you felt you were in the Empire. It was only the heavy grey cloud above and the sense that there was damp everywhere, unseen, in the air, that troubled me. My woollen cloak already felt water-logged. The cloud pressed down on my spirits. Where was the sun?
“There is the Emperor’s ship,” my father said, pointing to the great mast that towered over all the other ships.
The imperial family were nowhere in sight, but I could tell by the glint on gilded eagle standards where they must be. The soldiers were thickest there, like a moving forest of iron.
The sailors threw down the gangplank. I tugged my woollen cloak tighter around me. I turned to look for my mother and just like the sun, she wasn’t there. Despite the lurch in my stomach, I walked down the gangplank with my father and, just like that, we were in Britain. I was not expecting to have to get used to being on land again. My legs wobbled and I almost fell. My father caught me. I could see in his face he was worried about me.
“We will get a litter for you,” he told me, “and a maid.” He glanced around, trying like me, to make sense of where we were. Although the huge, busy, bustling port was reassuringly Roman, we saw a host of exotic tribesmen, with pale skins and long blond or reddish hair, striding here and there. Barbarians! I thought, fascinated. Some of them had blue eyes, which I found disturbing – no eye should be so pale.
The captain of our ship was speaking to a centurion with a narrow, bronzed face and one eye missing, puckered into a scar. The centurion glanced towards us now and then as they spoke. Then he walked over to us, removed his helmet and nodded to my father.
“Ave! I am Marcus Caecilius Naso, one of the Emperor’s personal guards. I have been sent by the Emperor to act as your escort. No doubt you will wish to rest after your long journey.”
“Thanks to the Emperor,” my father replied gratefully. “Please show us somewhere my daughter can rest. I must replenish the stores of medicines I lost in the wreck – and I must also sacrifice to the gods in memory of my poor wife.”
“Of course,” Marcus said, looking sympathetic. “Follow me.”
As we walked, Marcus asked: “Do you have any questions?” It was directed at my father, but also at me, in a polite sort of way.
I looked around us at the bustling port. I should have questions, I thought. I should have all kinds of intelligent, insightful questions. I should be interested in the barbarian ways, in the peoples of Britain and the
