To Love Again - Bertrice Small [63]
After spending several days with his daughter, the magistrate took his horse and rode across the fields to the Drusus Corinium estate. The rubble of the burned villa had been cleared away, and a timber and stone hall was being raised over the marble floor that ran from the entry through the atrium and into the dining room of the old building. The wings of the villa where the sleeping chambers, baths, and kitchen had been located were not to be restored. It would be a far simpler and more practical lifestyle that Cailin would have to accustom herself to, Anthony Porcius realized, and he sighed.
All over Britain others were being forced to do the same thing in order to survive. The age of gracious living as embodied by the elegance and the lavish lifestyles of their Roman ancestors had drawn to a close. In order to continue on, people would have to learn to make do. Although, he realized, some would make do better than others. He smiled to himself. It was not really so bad. Cailin and Wulf had good lands, each other, and the hope of many children. In the end, when all else was stripped away, that was what was important.
The young couple greeted him politely. They showed him the new graves of Cailin’s family. A marble cutter had been sent for from Corinium, and would make a memorial to the family using marble from the villa’s wings. The new hall would not be a great one to begin with, but eventually, Wulf told their guest, they would build a larger and far grander hall. Even so, there would be a room called a solar located above part of the main hall that would offer them some privacy. The fire pits would be lined in brick; the roof expertly thatched with neatly woven, tight smoke holes.
“I have been able to salvage some items from the old kitchen,” Cailin told the magistrate proudly. “The pots and the Samianware did not burn. With cleaning I believe they will be usable again.”
“But what will you do for other household items and furnishings?” he asked her. “Perhaps Antonia has some things she does not need, and would send them over to you,” he said doubtfully.
“I want nothing from your daughter,” Cailin said proudly. “The Dobunni will give us what we need. Berikos owes me my dower rights, and Ceara will see he gives them to me.”
“And I am capable of carpentry, for all my military calling,” Wulf joined in. “Then, too, there will be some among our slaves who are capable of like tasks. It will simply take time, and time is the one commodity with which we are most generously blessed, Anthony Porcius.”
“You will not be able to do much more with the hall until the harvest is in,” the older man replied. “The coming summer months you must spend attending to your fields, which are already planted and greening. Your harvest will be your most important asset. You will need a barn or two.”
“I agree,” Wulf said, “but there will be those who cannot work in the fields, and there will be rainy days when the fields cannot be worked. We will manage to finish what must be finished before winter.”
They returned to Berikos’s hill fort for Beltane and the wedding of Nuala and Bodvoc. Eppilus was already chieftain of the hill Dobunni. It had not, however, been necessary to depose Berikos. He had been spared that indignity. Several days after Cailin, Wulf, and his men had departed to revenge her family, her grandfather had suffered a series of seizures that left the old man paralyzed from the waist down. His speech was also affected. Only Ceara and Maeve could really understand what he was trying to communicate.
Consequently, the Dobunni men had not had to remove him from his high office. A physically impaired man could not rule his fellow men. As far as everyone was concerned, the gods had taken care of the matter, and Berikos had been retired, albeit forcibly, with honor. The old man, however, was still filled with venom, most of which was now directed at Brigit.
“She has left him,” Ceara told Cailin in a rather satisfied tone. “No sooner had his condition been ascertained, and the fact