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Catuvellaunians had been busy building an empire of their own.
    The Catuvellaunians still boasted of their ‘victory’ over Julius Caesar, even though in fact Cassivellaunus had won no more than a stand-off with the overstretched Romans. Before he left Britain for good, Caesar had insisted on the Catuvellaunians respecting their neighbours the Trinovantes, who had been friendly to Caesar. Well, that hadn’t worked; before long, with brazen cheek, the Catuvellaunians had actually taken the Trinovantes’ base of Camulodunum as their own capital.
    Then had followed the decades-long reign of Cassivellaunus’s grandson Cunobelin, when the Catuvellaunians had been content to sit on their little empire. Agrippina had the impression that Cunobelin had been a wise and pragmatic ruler, able to balance the competing forces of internal pride within his nation with the constant danger represented by Roman might–and all the while growing rich on lucrative trade with Rome.
    But then Cunobelin had died. His empire had devolved to the control of two of his many sons, Caratacus and Togodumnus–both in fact uncles of Cunedda, though they weren’t much older than he was. To them Caesar’s incursion was beyond living memory. And under them the Catuvellaunians had gone in for aggressive expansion.
    During the ensuing raids and petty wars Nectovelin had risen quickly, and found a place in the princes’ councils.
    As his personal wealth grew Nectovelin brought some of his own family down from Brigantia to help him spend it. But he hadn’t always been pleased with the results, such as when Agrippina’s mother had accepted an offer to let her young daughter, like two of Cunobelin’s younger sons, be educated in the empire. The Romans claimed this strengthened links between the peoples, but harder heads described it as ‘hostage taking’. Still, Agrippina’s mother had seen the benefits of a Roman education. She had even given her daughter a Roman name.
    So Agrippina had spent three years of her life in Massilia on the southern coast of Gaul, cramming Latin, learning to read and write, absorbing rhetoric and grammar and the other elements of a Roman education, and soaking up Mediterranean light. It had left her transformed in every way, she knew. And yet she had had no hesitation in coming home when the time was up.
    ‘I went to Massilia against Nectovelin’s wishes,’ Agrippina said. ‘But I wouldn’t have been here in the south without him. I wouldn’t have met you . And none of it would have come about without the Prophecy.’
    Cunedda shook his head. ‘A strange story. How dramatic it must have been, that moment–the painful labour, the attending women, the brothers, the brooding grandfather–and then the drama of the spouting Latin words! And that one moment, lost in the past, has echoed throughout Nectovelin’s life.’
    This romantic musing reminded Agrippina of why she had fallen so firmly in love with Cunedda in the first place. She curled up her fingers and gently scratched the palm of his hand. ‘But even though it shaped his life, Nectovelin can’t read his own Prophecy.’
    ‘You could read it for him.’
    ‘I offered once. He pretended not to hear. He hates my Roman reading. I may as well have waved an eagle standard in his face.’ She suppressed a sigh. She had debated this many times with her cousin. ‘Words give you such power. If he could read he would be the equal of any Roman, the equal of the Emperor Claudius himself.’
    He looked up at her, the stars reflected in his eyes. ‘Dear ’Pina. A head full of words, and dreams!’
    ‘Dreams?’
    ‘We need to speak about the future. Our future.’ He hesitated. “Pina–Claudius Quintus has offered me a position in Gaul.’
    This sudden, unexpected news turned her cold. She knew that Quintus was one of Cunedda’s principal contacts for his pottery business.
    ‘Quintus is expanding,’ Cunedda said, uncertain what she was thinking. ‘He likes my