She pointed. “There’s a town! Is it Durnovaria?”
Aetius snorted. “We’ve come a little farther than that. Haven’t you been counting the waystones? We passed twenty-three — not a bad pace after a slow start. That is Calleva Atrebatum.”
“Aren’t we going to stay there? … What’s this place? Is it a villa?”
It was no villa but one of the mansiones, a way station designed to support the messengers of the Imperial Post. It was here, Aetius said, that they would spend the night, for it was safe enough, and he would “swim to Hades before I give over any more ‘gate tax’ to any more swindling landowners in any more towns.”
The station turned out to be comfortable enough. It even had a small bathhouse, where Aetius retired with a pitcher of wine and a plate of oysters, bought for a price that made him groan out loud.
After a day spent largely sitting on a wooden board, Regina was too full of energy to sleep. And so, after she had eaten, despite the lateness of the hour, she, Macco, and Carta played trigon, a complicated three- person game of catch-the-ball. Regina ran and laughed, burning up her energy, and her voice echoed from the station’s plaster walls. Macco stayed as silent as ever, but his smile was broad.
The next day Aetius was again up and ready to go not long after dawn. It didn’t take long to reload the carriage, and soon the four of them were on the road again — though not before Aetius sniffed the air and inspected the clouds and the trees and the birds, seeking omens for their journey.
They continued to head steadily east. The road ran straight and true, unchanging, the way markers sliding past one by one. But the landscape changed slowly, becoming more hilly, and some of the plowed-up fields gleamed white with chalk.
Some of the villas looked abandoned, though, even burned out. On one farm, close to the road, Regina recognized a vineyard, rows of vines set out on a south-facing hillside. But though the vines were green and heavy they looked untended, and the nearby buildings were broken down. Aetius did not comment on the abandoned vineyard, and Regina thought nothing of it. If she had, she would have said that things must always have been this way. She did want to go see if there were any grapes, but Aetius ignored her pleas.
That night they again stayed in a way station.
And the next morning, soon after the start, when they passed over the crest of a hill, Regina glimpsed Londinium itself. The town was a marvelous gray-green sprawl of buildings contained within a far-flung wall. A shining river ran through it. Smoke rose everywhere, thin threads that spiraled to the sky. Regina thought she saw a ship on the river, a green-sailed boat that sparkled in the low morning sun, but she couldn’t be sure.
“Are we going on a ship?”
“No — child, I told you already. We aren’t stopping in Londinium. We’re going on. Don’t you listen?” Aetius seemed to be getting angry. But Carta put her hand on Regina’s shoulder, and he subsided.
They turned their backs on Londinium, heading north. Regina looked back at the city as it receded. “I’ll go there one day,” she said. “I’ll go far beyond it, too! I’ll go all the way to Rome!”
Aetius grimaced, and hugged her with his massive arm.
For Regina, after the city, this third day turned out to be the most difficult so far. The sky lidded over with gray cloud, and although the sun was gone the temperature rose steadily. They were all soon sweating uncomfortably, and they had to stop frequently to allow the horses to drink.
Aetius, apparently trying to compensate for the absence of Regina’s tutors, chose this difficult day to lecture her on the essentials of Roman Britain.
Britain was a diocese within the Praetorian Prefecture of Gaul. So the vicarius, the governor of Britain, reported to the prefect of Gaul, who reported to the Emperor. Similarly there was a hierarchy of towns, from the lesser market towns, up through the local and provincial capitals, to Londinium, the capital of the diocese.
The most important activity of the central administration was the collection of taxation and the spending of government funds. Most of the tax money came from the countryside, because that was where most people lived. Landlords, like Regina’s father, collected the Emperor’s taxes from his tenants, along with his own rent. The tax revenue paid the salaries of the army and the sailors of the British fleet, who kept Britain safe from the barbarians who would otherwise swarm from the north and across the sea.
People grumbled about the taxes they had to pay. But most of the money collected came back into circulation. And the fact was the vast volumes of foodstuffs, animals, clothing, metalwork, pottery, and other goods bought by the government to supply the army and its other agencies was central to the working of the economy …
Aetius struggled to explain: “It’s like a wheel, Regina. It goes around and around, a great wheel of money and goods, taxing and spending, keeping everyone safe and wealthy. But if a wheel comes off its hub—”
“We’d fall over.”
“Exactly. Everything would fall over. Now then, when my old chum Constantius took us soldiers away for his adventure in Europe, some people in the towns decided they didn’t need to pay his taxes anymore, and threw out his collectors and officials, and said they would collect the money for themselves and keep it for their own towns, rather than give it all to some distant Emperor they never saw. But while people will pay up for an Emperor, especially if he has an army to collect for him, they’re a lot less willing to pay some fat fool of a local landowner …”
Regina was a bright child, and capable of understanding a great deal. But at seven she was an experienced enough student to know that while Aetius might be a fine soldier he was no teacher. He was boring.
And as the day wore on and the heat continued to stifle, Regina got more and more uncomfortable. It had been days now since she had seen her mother. Aetius never mentioned Julia, and Regina was wary of asking. She missed her mother even so, and wondered where she was. She grew withdrawn, sullen.
Eventually Aetius relented and let Regina sit in the back with Carta. They tried to play ludus latrunculorum — “soldiers,” a fast-moving game a little like chess played only with rooks — but the rattling of the carriage knocked the colored glass counters away from their squares. So they settled for par impar, a simple game of odds and evens, played with pebbles held in the hand.
That night they stayed at yet another way station. The next day they made another early start, but Regina found it increasingly hard to sit still.
Things came to a head when, about midday, the weather abruptly broke, and an immense storm lashed down from a gray lid of sky. Aetius insisted they kept going, but soon they were all soaked through. Regina was cold and frightened; she had never been exposed to such elemental rage before.
When the storm finally let up she pushed away from Aetius and jumped down from the carriage. “I won’t go any farther! I want to go home, right now! Turn around and take me home! I command you!”
Aetius was angry, placating, demanding, but he got nowhere; and when his will broke against her seven- year-old stubbornness, he stomped around the road, fists bunched.
Cartumandua, with some courage, intervened. Soaked herself, she clambered down to the road surface and brushed at Regina’s hair, calming her down. She said to Aetius, “Sir, you can’t speak to her as if she’s one of your legionaries. And you can’t expect her to sit there day after day on that wooden bench and listen to you lecture about procurators and prefects.”