London Read Free Page A

himself. The pattern of swirling lines and the inlaid precious stones represented the finest of the wondrous Celtic metalwork for which the island was famed. It was the most important gift the island people could make to the gods.
    With a single, sweeping gesture, the druid hurled the shield high over the water. Flashing, it made an arc through the air before falling into the gleaming path laid down by the sun across the water. The little crowd let out a sigh as the river silently took its offering and moved on.
    But as the old druid watched, something strange occurred. Instead of sinking out of sight, the bronze shield remained suspended just below the surface of the clear water, its metal face glinting in the light. At first the old man was astonished, until it occurred to him that the reason was very simple. The metal was beaten very thin. It was backed with a light wood. Until the wood became waterlogged, the ceremonial shield was destined to remain hovering there, covered only by a film of water.
    Something else was happening too. While the dawn silently approached, the tide had turned. The current was now flowing not downriver, but upriver, from the estuary to a point several miles further upstream from Londinos. Slowly, therefore, beneath the cold, translucent wave, the shield was moving up the stream, as though being gently pulled by some invisible hand towards the island’s interior.
    The old man watched and wondered what it meant. Did it portend good or evil, in face of the terrible threat?
    The threat came from Rome. Its name was Julius Caesar.
    Several folk had made the island of Britain their home in the thousands of years since the ice’s great retreat. Hunters, simple farmers, the makers of stone temples like Stonehenge, and, in more recent centuries, tribes who belonged to the great Celtic culture of north-west Europe. With its bardic poetry and song, its rich and echoing folklore, its astonishing and fantastic metalwork, the life of the islanders was rich. They dwelt in stout round timbered huts with warm thatched roofs. Their larger settlements were surrounded by palisades or rings of high earthwork walls. They farmed barley and oats, kept cattle, drank ale and heady mead distilled from honey. Behind the soft northern mists, their island remained a place apart.
    True, for many generations, traders from the sunlit Mediterranean world had ventured to the island, bringing luxuries from the south in exchange for furs, slaves and the island’s famous hunting dogs. In recent generations, a lively trade had developed through a harbour on the southern coast where another river descended from the ancient abandoned temple of Stonehenge. But although British chiefs liked, occasionally, to obtain wine, or silks, or Roman gold, the world from which these luxuries came was still far over the horizon and only vaguely apprehended.
    But then the classical world produced one of the greatest adventurers that history has ever known.
    Julius Caesar desired to rule Rome. To do so, he needed conquests. Just recently he had swept northwards all the way to the English Channel and established the huge new Roman province of Gaul. Now he had turned his eyes to this mist-shrouded island of the north.
    Last year, he had come. With a modest force, mainly infantry, Caesar himself had disembarked below the white cliffs of Britain’s south-eastern shore. The British chieftains had been warned; but even so, it was an awesome thing to behold the disciplined Roman troops. The Celtic warriors were brave, though. Swooping down with horses and chariots they managed to catch the Romans off guard several times. A storm damaged Caesar’s fleet. After a series of skirmishes and manoeuvres in the coastal region, Caesar and his troops left, and the chieftains were triumphant. The gods had given them victory. When exiles warned them “That was only a reconnoitre”, most Britons did not believe it.
    But then news had begun to filter across. A new