CHAPTER THREE
A.D. 38–A.D. 40
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winter turned out to be the hardest the Catuvellauni had know since they came to Britain. Some new arrivals, seeing the misery brought by the snow and incessant winds, assumed that the island must always be like that and so took sail with the Veneti trading fleet back to Gaul, glad to be in a country where there were stone houses and fuel for all. It was so cold, even in the south, that shepherds were found dead in their huts, while their sheep, buried in drifts, died standing three deep on each other’s red backs, fighting for air.
The iron-workers of the south-east, mainly independent Cantii, refused to burn their fuel in the furnaces, hoping to keep it to warm themselves and their families, and in the end the King was forced to send guards who wo
