CHAPTER FIVE
A.D. 41–A.D. 43
T
he
body of the dead King lay in his chamber for three days and after that period, despite the embalmer’s art learned from Persia, had to be buried because of the heat. Three days gave enough time for most of his relatives to travel to the city for their last glimpse of the paramount chief of the Belgic peoples. They came from Gaul, secretly, to avoid Roman suspicion, and even from Ireland—the tall, fair aristocracy of the western world. Only Catuval, the King’s favourite young nephew, did not come. He lay in a stinking Belgian village, on a hide-thong bed from which he was too weak to move, tortured by a fever he had picked up while marauding in Germany. He sent his favourite sword and two deerhounds as a burial offering, and swore by the great stones th
