Or not so strangely, he thought. When he arrived the evening before, joy was too tumultuous for him to pay close heed to his surroundings. Notified in advance, Marcus had had a feast prepared for his soldier son. The food was local, fish and meat and dried garden truck, but seasoned with such things as pepper and cloves, scarce these days, while the wines were from Burdigala and Narbonensis, not a mediocre Britannic vineyard. If the tableware was of poor quality and the attendant an untrained yokel, talk between the two men made up amply for that. When it turned to Gaius’s older brother it grew evasive – Lucius was ‘studying in Aquae Sulis; you know what a bookish sort he’s always been, not like you, you rascal’ – but then the news quickly came that his youngest sister Camilla had married an able farmer, Antonia and Faustina continued happy in their own homes, and another grandchild was on the way. And his old nurse Docca had earlier hugged him in arms crippled by rheumatism, and he learned that three or four more of those who had been dear to him in boyhood were still above ground.
