A Pattern of Blood

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I was in Corinium, as it happens, the night Quintus was attacked. Of course, I had no idea then who he was, or how significant that stabbing would turn out to be. At the time I was simply glad to be safely inside the town walls, and away from the dangers of the open road at night.

I had come to the town looking for my wife — or at least for news of her. It was a pleasure I had been promising myself for months, ever since I had heard that a slave woman called Gwellia had been offered for sale at the market there some time before. Naturally, I couldn’t be sure that it was my Gwellia, nor even that if I found her I would recognise her: after all, it was twenty years since we were seized, separated and sold into slavery. But ever since I had gained my own freedom (and with it the coveted status of Roman citizen), I had never ceased to look for her. I was almost fifty now, an old man, and she was ten years younger. I wondered ruefully if she would recognise this weather-beaten, grey-haired creature as the athletic young Celtic nobleman she had once married.

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