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By Root 512 0

stands, spanning the Tyne at the point where the Cor Burn runs into it from the north. There is a mill there, and the bridge's timbers groan all day under the loads of grain. Below the mill is a wharf where shallow-draught barges can tie up. The Cor is little more than a stream, relying on its steep tumble of water to drive the mill wheel, but the great River Tyne is wide and fast, flowing here over bright shingle between its gracious banks of trees. Its valley is broad and fertile, full of fruit trees standing deep in growing corn. From this flowery and winding tract of green the land rises toward the north to rolling moorland, where, under the windy stretches of sky, sudden blue lakes wink in the sun. In winter it is a bleak country, where wolves and wild men roam the heights, and come sometimes over-close to the houses; but in summer it is a lovely land, with forests full of deer, and fleets of swans sailing the waters. The air over the moors sparkles with bird-song, and the valleys are alive with skimming swallows and the bright flash of kingfishers. And along the edge of the whinstone runs the Great Wall of the Emperor Hadrian, rising and dipping as the rock rises and dips. It commands the country from its long cliff-top, so that from any point of it fold upon fold of blue distance fades away east or westward, till the eye loses the land in the misty edge of the sky.

It was not country I had known before. I had come this way, as I had told Arthur, because I had a call to make. One of my father's secretaries, whom I had known first in Brittany and thereafter in Winchester and Caerleon, had come north after Ambrosius' death, to retirement of a sort here in Northumbria. The pension he received from my father had let him buy a holding near Vindolanda, in a sheltered spot beside the Agricolan Road, with a couple of strong slaves to work it. There he had settled, growing rare plants in his favoured garden, and writing, so I had been told, a history of the times he had lived through. His name was Blaise.

We lodged in the old part of the town, at a tavern within the purlieus of the original fortress. Beltane, with sudden, immovable obstinacy, had refused to pay the toll extracted at the bridge, so we crossed at the ford some half-mile downstream, then turned along the river past the forge, coming into the town by its old east gate.

Night was falling when we got there, so we put up at the first tavern we found. This was a respectable place not far from the main market square. Late though the hour was, there was still plenty of coming and going. Servants were gossiping at the cistern while they filled their water jars; through the laughter and talk came the cool splash of a fountain; in some house nearby a woman was singing a weaving-song. Beltane was in high glee at the prospects for trading on the morrow, and in fact started business that same night, when the tavern filled up after supper-time. I did not stay to see how he did. Ulfin reported a bath house still in commission near the old west wall, so I spent the evening there and then retired, refreshed, to bed.

Next morning Ulfin and I breakfasted together in the shade of the huge plane tree which grew beside the inn. It promised to be a hot day.

Early as we were, Beltane and the boy were before us. The goldsmith had already set up his stall in a strategic place near the cistern; which meant merely that he, or rather Ninian, had spread some rush matting on the ground, and on that had laid out such gauds as might appeal to the eyes and purses of ordinary folk. The fine work was carefully hidden away in the lining of the bags.

Beltane was in his element, talking incessantly to any passerby who paused even for a moment to look at the goods: a complete lesson in jewelcraft was given away, so to speak, with every piece. The boy, as usual, was silent. He patiently rearranged the items that had been handled and carelessly dropped back on the matting, and he took the money, or sometimes exchange-goods such as food or cloth. Betweentimes he sat cross-legged, stitching at the