XXXVIIAs they rode south of Viroconium, the Cymry sang, for they would soon be home again and would have done, at least for a time, with this chafing business of riding on hard saddles from dawn till dusk, eating and drinking on the move and setting a full watch each night.
One of the company, a man originally from Aquae Sulis, and not a cavalryman by upbringing, as most of them were, kept his immediate companions in a high good humour by his songs and stories. He told one story of an old merchant of Aquae Sulis who had married a young wife, a lively young thing with a taste for lads of her own age and not altogether satisfied with the bargain she had made. This lass, he said, driven at last to the extremity of entertaining a n***o slave who worked in a granary three streets away, was sur
