It was a holiday in Rome. The streets were filled with bakers and butchers and builders, muck movers and moneylenders and metalworkers, soldiers and sewer men and swineherds, cowherds and cooks and crooks, potters and pedlars and even priests.
They came like an invading army, bubbling along in a loud and swirling stream towards the Circus Maximus and the chariot races.
There were snarling race fans with their green, red, blue or white ribbons. There were grand men in togas, who sniffed at the stinking mob while slaves flapped fans and pushed beggars out of the way and back to the gutters.
Then there was me … Deri the Brave, the young Celtic warrior. And there was the girl. The ugly, raven-haired, sour-faced, spoilt brat they call Livia.
She squawked in her whining way, “That beggar woman trod on my toe!”
“So?” I shrugged.
“So, Father sent you along to protect me.” Her too-fat face turned red and she roared, “You are a slave, you uncaring Celt. You do as I say.”
“I do as your father, my master, says,” I argued.
“And my father told you that today you would protect me. So protect me.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Take your stick and beat that woman who trampled on my toe!”
“Which woman?” I asked.
The crowd had swirled on and the figures and faces had shifted like shapes in the clouds on a windy day.
We had clouds like that back in Britannia. I would lie on my back and watch them change. I would see animals and monsters come and melt away.
Here in Rome, they had endless days of clear, blue sky.
In Britannia, we had fields and forests of fifty shades of green, morning skies of lemon and amber, and evening skies of scarlet and pink. Britannia had the colours of the rainbow. Rome had the colours of mud.
“Ha!” limp-haired Livia jeered. “Call yourself a warrior! What warrior sheds tears because a girl shouts at him?”
If a tear ran down my face, it was not because of Livia. It was the memory of Britannia that was hurting my heart.
I brushed it away. The slave collar burned my neck and I longed to be free of it.
One day my life will change, I thought. I know it will.