CHAPTER TEN
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when Caradoc’s horsemen moved into the mourning city of Sorbiodun, the first Roman cavalrymen heading the triumphal procession into Camulodun, their cloaks pulled up against the driving rain, clattered through the high gateway, scattering the scavenging dogs and chickens before them.
The preparations for the entry had started the day before, when a red-crested herald, escorted by a squad of German auxiliaries, had stalked through the main streets during the morning to announce, in four Celtic dialects besides Latin, from a dais in the market-place, that the Emperor himself, Claudius the God, would soon be visiting them; that all arms, including butcher’s knives and trout spears, were to be piled in the public square; and that no man of military age was to occupy a pla
