I could feel that this place was sacred to the gods, but I was too tired to feel fear. I sat on the stones, dozing in and out of sleep. After some time, I noticed there were metal sheets in the water. Some glinted like gold. I could read some of the Latin as the water flowed over them. ‘Cure my son who cannot walk, goddess!’ and ‘I give thanks to the goddess who made me see again.’
I looked up and saw that all around the spring, tucked into niches and in clefts in the stone, were little models of hands, ears, feet, eyes and other parts of the body. This must be a healing spring, I thought. And then, all at once, I realised this must be the spring where I was meant to meet my father.
The gods had helped me find my way here. I could do nothing now but wait. So I did.
The water danced in the stone bowl and birds fluttered in the trees. Now and then snow slid from a branch and landed with a soft thump in the clearing. The light was ghostly.
I did not know if it had been minutes, or hours, before finally the bushes parted before me. A white horse stepped through the undergrowth. The rider on its back wore the birrus Britannicus. He looked at me from under his snow-laden hood. It was Arcturus.
I said nothing; I was used to dreams by now. They were sent by the gods. It did not seem surprising that I should have another one, in this sacred place.
“Why have you been running from me, you fool?” he said, getting down from the horse and coming towards me. His feet crunched in the snow and dead leaves. “You could have been killed, rambling over the hills like that!”
I smiled at him dreamily. True enough, dreams sent from the gods did not usually call you a fool, but after all, I was just a girl. I probably got the dreams with rougher, less elegant language.
Arcturus picked me up and carried me to the horse. He continued complaining as he tried to seat me on it, finally wedging me in front of him. I started to think that this horse smelled, and sounded, very real. Then it lifted its tail and delivered a stream of hot urine, melting the snow beneath it. I woke up. No dream horse sent from the gods did that.
“Arcturus?!” I croaked.
“Who else? I have been following you for three days. Every time I got close you went off the road.”
“I heard hoofbeats, I thought the soldiers—”
“No one is following you,” he interrupted.
“My father?”
“Dead. I am sorry.”
His words were blunt, but I was glad he had told me the truth. I had half-guessed it anyway. For good or ill, Avitoria was a liar. She must have known I would not leave without my father. She had told a lie to save my life. My father must have guessed this would happen; that was why he had sent me away with Arcturus – to protect me.
“Who killed him?” I whispered.
“Caracalla. He slaughtered all his father’s friends before the Emperor was cold. Thirty men and more must be dead,” he added bitterly.
“Geta?” It had not really sunk in yet that my father was dead.
“Not yet. The army likes him. Caracalla, Geta and Julia Domna have set off for Rome already. They want to be back at the heart of the Empire, to make sure no one tries to steal their power. Abandoning Britain, once again.”
We rode up out of the small valley and slowly made our way, by hidden paths that were much older than the Roman roads, to Arcturus’s farm.
“No one will betray you there,” he told me as we rode. “My father has lived under several emperors – he knows what they are like.”
When I first looked down on the farm from the hill, a blanket of snow lay over everything. The farm was almost invisible under it, tucked into the earth. It looked like somewhere animals lived: a place to huddle, a den or a nest, a refuge. Only the bare trees and the bare walls poked out like bones.
But when the moon rose, the hills were like silver, just as Arcturus had promised.
“And that was how you came home?” you ask.
Home, I think. I halt the pony and look down at the farmstead beneath us. Is this home?
Perhaps it is, now.
*
It did not feel like home at first. Not even close.
There was straw on the floor, not mosaics, and it was often stuffy with the smell of some sick animal or other brought in to recover. It was a busy place. As well as Arcturus’s younger sister and brother, there were men and women who came in sometimes to help with the harvest and to herd the animals. Some were from the British tribes, but others were Gaulish, Belgae, Greek and Syrian. It was not a Roman villa, and it was not even our home in Leptis Magna. But it was a happy home, with plenty of laughter, and everyone, citizen or slave, ate at the same table.
Arcturus’s father was a grizzled old centurion with twinkling eyes. I saw something of Marcus in him. His eyes did all the talking, for he never wasted a word. It took some getting used to. His wife, though, was magnificent. Tall, with long grey hair that still glinted golden in some lights, she wore a golden torc around her neck and was every inch a Brigante princess. And she rode. For British women, it turned out, rode horses. The day I saw her come galloping across the fields on her strong pony, her hair flying wild in the wind, was the day I thought that maybe there might be something in Britannia I wanted.
As I regained strength, I
