The Price of Freedom by Rosemary Rowe

Author:Rosemary Rowe [Rosemary Rowe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2017-08-29T04:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

Not entirely empty. There was still a little pile of bedding straw in what had been the stall, and even the remains of what looked like oats half-eaten in the manger at the back. And above us, on a sort of gallery, a lumpy palliasse – with a folded blanket still on top of it – showed where the missing Aureax had once slept (with one eye half-open to watch the horse, no doubt). Of the carriage and animal there was no sign at all.

Loftus looked enquiringly at me. ‘Is that all, citizen?’

‘Not quite,’ I told him. ‘I take it that the large door opposite was designed to let the vehicle directly out onto the street?’

‘Onto the rear alley,’ he corrected. ‘Though we’re only a few paces from the market square – and so to the main road that you came on earlier, which leads down to the bridge. There is not much the other way.’

I stared at him as the implication dawned on me. ‘There is another way? An east gate to the town?’ Surely the solution to the missing carriage could not be so simple? I shook my head at my own stupidity.

Even Loftus was regarding me with undisguised surprise. ‘Certainly, citizen. Forgive me, but don’t most towns have at least two entranceways?’

Of course they did, though it was not altogether a ridiculous conclusion to have drawn. Celts didn’t, in general, live in towns until the Romans came, but they did build defensive enclosure-fortresses, where whole tribes might repair in case of an attack, protected by palisades, of course, and sometimes walls and ditches much like the ones around this town – but always with a single gate because that is so much easier to defend. ‘I was misinformed,’ I said, with what dignity I could. ‘A woman told me Uudum was the last place on the road.’

Loftus nodded. ‘The military road, no doubt she meant. And that’s true, of course.’

On reflection, that was exactly what she’d said. But I had no time to acknowledge this before the steward added, with a smile, ‘But there’s another ancient trackway leading through the hills, still passable by ox-carts, pedestrians and mules. I travelled to Corinium and back that way, the day I took the other servants to be sold.’

‘Corinium is reachable from here?’ I was surprised again. It is not far from Glevum, half a day at most, but we seemed to have travelled many miles to reach this lonely place. It was hard to credit that we were still so close to home.

But it seemed that was the case. ‘Fourteen or fifteen thousand paces, possibly? The old road is difficult but not impossible. Too far to walk, of course. My master arranged for us to travel on a pair of mule-carts which set off before dawn – a farmer and his brother who were going to Corinium market to buy geese in any case. It took three or four hours to get there, I suppose, with so much weight

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