Claudia, attended by her maid Callista, prepared for bed, sure that she would not sleep. She would lie looking at the ceiling and wonder, for the thousandth time, about the small russet-haired boy, her love-child by the Celtic chieftain Brennos, that Aulus and Cholon had taken from her just after his birth and exposed. Where was a mystery; she only knew that he had left on horseback and not returned till dawn the next day. Lying in darkness she would envisage gloomy woods and hungry predators, feeding on the small, still living, screaming carcass, waking dreams that were nightmares and her mind would always turn to the charm she had put around the baby’s foot in the hope that someone would find him and, realising he had at least one rich and concerned parent, raise him to manhood.

Solid gold, shaped like an eagle in flight, with the wings picked out in subtle engraving, it had once hung around the neck of the only man she had ever truly loved; the boy’s father, Brennos.

CHAPTER TWO

Piscius Dabo did not like Aquila and he did not like having to provide a roof over his head, especially since he was forced daily to admit that the boy, whom he had attempted to tame, had fought him to a standstill. No blows had been exchanged: the fisticuffs had occurred between his own children, especially his eldest son Annius, though for very much the same reason: Aquila’s refusal to toil in the fields. Annius, who had already put on his manly gown, was a good two years older than Aquila, but there was no difference in their height and build, nor in their willingness to fight each other. So it was a fair match, until Dabo’s other children intervened, ganging up on Aquila and overpowering him by numbers.