All of this activity, which to a great extent is known only from the archaeological remains, makes clear the Romans’ intention to occupy this region more or less permanently, but in the late eighties AD priorities changed. The Emperor Domitian, faced with serious trouble on the Danube, withdrew Legio II Adiutrix from Britain and did not replace it. It is probable that substantial numbers of auxiliaries were withdrawn at the same time, so that the provincial garrison was cut by at least a quarter. Inchtuthil and many of the other bases were abandoned, and the same thing happened a little later to the remaining sites and the Gask ridgeline. No Roman base was maintained north of the Forth-Clyde line, and soon the northernmost outpost was at Trimontium or Newstead.
Several forts were maintained or built close to what would one day become the line of Hadrian’s Wall. A couple of years after our story, a proper road running between Carlisle and Corbridge was constructed and more forts and smaller outposts added. Today the road is known by its medieval name, the Stanegate or ‘stone road’, and archaeologists continue to debate its composition and purpose. By about AD 106 Newstead was abandoned in another withdrawal. Our paltry literary sources make no mention of any of this, so it left to us to guess from the archaeology just what was going on.
A novelist has more freedom, and once again I have done my best to reconstruct these years for our purposes in a way that never conflicts with any hard evidence. At the very least I hope that these stories tell of things that could have happened. Something made the Romans station significant numbers of troops in this area at the end of the first century AD, and then made them increase these numbers and develop the deployment along the Stanegate just a few years later. All of the forts mentioned in the story existed and were occupied in AD 98. Syracuse is an invention, but typical of the many small outposts set up by the Roman army as needed. I see it as a predecessor to the excavated sites at Haltwhistle Burn and Throp, which were built alongside the Stanegate, although these were stone structures and larger than the fictional Syracuse. In the late first century AD most of the structures built by the army in Britain were in turf and timber. Some sites were being rebuilt in stone, and in the second century this became ever more common.
One of very many mysteries surrounding Hadrian’s Wall are the defences along the Cumbrian coast. These were part of the initial design of the Wall and consisted of towers and fortlets matching closely to those on the line of the Wall itself and at similar intervals. Many perch on the cliffs just above beaches and all are very close to the sea. All that is missing is a linear barrier like the Wall itself. We have no evidence explaining why this line of outposts and forts was felt necessary. Later in the second century AD many parts of the system were abandoned, but forts – and just possibly some towers and fortlets – remained in use throughout the life of the Roman province. The most obvious explanation of all this effort is that there was a threat from the sea. Later, this either diminished or was dealt with by other means, allowing the coast to be secured by fewer troops.
Alauna (modern Maryport) now boasts an excellent museum (www.senhousemuseum.co.uk) with a particularly fine collection of inscriptions. The fort visible today and most of the collection date to after our story. There are hints of Trajanic activity on the site, but little is really known. The alignment of the later fort with the road suggests that an earlier base was built in a slightly different position. At Aballava (Burgh by Sands) there was a Roman watchtower on high ground overlooking the lowest fords on the River Solway. At some point in Trajan’s reign, this was demolished and a fort for an entire auxiliary unit built on the site. Around the same time, another Roman base was constructed on lower ground to the west. Little is known about it, but it is claimed that timber structures were discovered, suggesting at least semi-permanent occupation and not simply a marching camp used for a few nights or weeks. In my imagination, this is the base used for the legate’s manoeuvres and then kept in occupation for some time afterwards following the raid in our story and the ongoing threat of attacks from the sea.
Hibernia, the Highlands and Islands
Much of the action in this story takes place well outside the province of Britannia, but because of the sources for the history and society of these regions I have been deliberately vague about precise locations. Hibernia/Ireland was never occupied by Rome. Merchants from the Roman Empire were regular visitors there, and there was a fair bit of diplomatic activity. An exiled Hibernian prince came to Agricola asking that the Romans restore him to power by force, but the governor decided not to intervene. There is no clear evidence for Roman troops ever being sent to Ireland. However, a diplomatic escort of the sort imagined in the book would be most unlikely to leave any trace so we need not worry too much about that. Such things did occur elsewhere beyond Rome’s frontiers, so it is not implausible in itself.
In recent decades far more Iron Age sites have been discovered in Ireland, but it is fair to say that we still know a good deal less than we should like about life there during this period. There are echoes of it in later literature, most notably the Ulster Cycle with its chariot-riding heroes, but it is very hard to say how much real history lies in the stories. The ‘Place of Kings’ in the story is inspired by Tara in County Meath, which, like Navan Fort in Armagh, figures in the later poetry. It is a huge complex of monuments, some very ancient even in the Iron Age, and how it was used and by whom is hard to reconstruct. I have taken tribal names from the Greek Geographer Ptolemy, but it is hard to say how accurate his information was.
The same is true of all our literary sources for the Highlands and islands of Scotland. The tower that Ferox and the others take and hold is one of those remarkable dry-stone buildings often known as brochs, of which some of the most splendid are on Shetland. The name came from Norse and goes back to a time when it was thought that these were forts built by the Vikings. Now it is clear that they were much earlier, and part of a wider style of building that appeared in islands and on the western coast of Scotland and occasionally further afield. In some cases it is hard to tell from the existing remains whether the structure was originally lower, forming what archaeologists would call a complex roundhouse. In either case these were buildings for more than a single family, and were strong statements of power. Yet they do not seem designed primarily for defence, and there is a good deal about them that we simply do not understand.
The island occupied by the pirates is fictional, although there are examples of broch-towers built out on islands in lakes. Similarly the idea of a woman warrior teaching young heroes how to fight comes from the Irish poems, which seems to place it all somewhere off the coast of Scotland. The historian in me considers it unlikely; we might remember Greek heroes supposedly going off to be instructed by a centaur, so such romantic invention is a feature of other heroic myths. The novelist is quite happy to take a good story and use it, at least as long as it cannot be proven to be nonsense.