Free Cast Not the Day by Paul Waters

glass, stoppered with a cap of white silver; the bishop, after consideration and prayer, decided the scandal could be forgotten and, shortly after, at the time of a Christian holy day, amid much celebration in the household from which I was excluded, Albinus was made a Reader.
    Uncle Balbus was still away in the north, and so heard none of it. Each morning I attended his office, and most afternoons I went walking with Sericus, out across the bridge, to the open smallholdings and plantations to the south and east.
    Now that our past lives were lost to us, we both missed the open spaces – the silent paths, and woodlands, and towering skies. Although, in London, I was surrounded by noise and people and activity, yet I perceived for the first time that there is no worse solitude than the company of strangers.
    Whatever Sericus felt, he did not speak of it. Since the news of my father’s death he no longer talked of the past; and when we walked together he spoke only of small, seemingly insignificant things – the birds and animals, the farmsteads and hamlets along the way – like a man who treads carefully on the surface of a frozen lake, lest the ice should crack and the chill waters engulf him.
    But one day soon after, in the midst of winter, our minds were wrenched from these concerns.
    We were making our way back to the city, following a farm track, when up ahead, where the track joined the high road, we saw a crowd gathering – carters, men with mules, foot-travellers.
    ‘Run ahead and see what it is,’ said Sericus. ‘If there is trouble, we will go by another way.’
    I sprinted off. The men had gathered at the crossroads, beside an old shrine. There was a stone watering trough, and leaning beside it a lone soldier, holding forth to the rest. His body and scarlet cloak were mud-spattered; clearly he had travelled far, through bad terrain.
    He stooped to splash his face and neck at the trough. A young farm-lad stood beside him, holding his helmet for him while he washed, looking grave and full of moment. I knew the boy by sight – he belonged to the nearby villa – and seeing me he gave a grim nod of acknowledgement.
    ‘What news?’ I asked, stepping up.
    He answered in British, the language of the land.
    ‘The Saxons is what. They have landed at Richbor-ough. The man here says the fort has fallen.’
    Others were pressing round, coming along the path from the hamlet beside the villa. A red-faced man in a farrier’s apron cried, ‘That cannot be! Who ever heard of Saxons coming in winter, or taking fortresses? They are no more than raiders and cattle-thieves.’
    ‘Believe what you want, friend,’ said the soldier. ‘I know only what I saw, and what I got from the men on the road, retreating from Richborough. I was on my way there myself, for a tour of duty.’ He gave a bleak laugh, adding, ‘No need for that now.’
    The farrier laughed, and with a mocking look asked, ‘Did they bring siege-engines in their longboats then?’
    ‘You think I am here to joke with you? If you want to find out how the fortress was taken, go and ask the men who should have been guarding it – the ones who decided to spend the day fishing in the river instead. Even fortresses fall, when no one is minded to defend them. It seems our men caught a bigger fish than they expected.’
    Sericus, who had come up beside me, asked if word had reached the city yet. The soldier said the others of his troop had gone ahead to inform the Council. ‘As for me, I’m going the other way . . . My father has a farm on the Medway, and no one else will think to warn him. Word is that raiders have landed all along the coast, even as far as Dover.’
    ‘It is no more than hearsay,’ shouted the farrier, who all this time had been grumbling and murmuring at the back. ‘There have been rumours of Saxons all year. This will come to nothing, like all the others.’
    The soldier looked at him. ‘You know a lot, for a stay-at-home. Well I hope