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Roman Britain, AD 224: Quintus Valerius, imperial investigator, and his British optio, Tiro, are sent to York to strengthen ties with the new legate of the Sixth Victrix legion, Marius Crescens. In the depths of the northern winter, Saturnalia celebrations take over the streets - and a series of seemingly unrelated murders attracts the attention of Valerius.
I have been a lifelong lover of the wonderful Roman Britain books by Rosemary Sutcliff, especially The Eagle of the Ninth. I was aware from archaeology that the bronze bird found in Silchester is now thought to be from a statue of Jupiter, and not the missing legionary eagle featured in Sutcliff’s book, when the Ninth Hispana legion marched north from York into the mists of Scotland, never to be seen again. That started me thinking about my own version of what happened to the missing Ninth and their famous eagle. Was the eagle, perhaps, still in Scotland after all?
At the same time, I began to look more closely at the end of Rome’s final major campaign to conquer Scotland, under Emperor Septimius Severus in AD 211. I’d already alluded to this campaign briefly in my first book, The Governor’s Man. It was only as backstory for my main character, Quintus Valerius, who had fought and been badly injured in that campaign. When I began to research a new story set in Scotland, I discovered that a frustrated and dying Severus is recorded as commanding his troops to commit genocide against the Scottish natives: “the whole people must be wiped out of existence … leaving no trace.”
This had been thought to be Roman hyperbole, until recent archaeology established that the central belt of Scotland was indeed emptied of inhabitants and agriculture suddenly at this time, and had taken generations to recover. I further discovered that the mysterious Picts, who lived in the very far north and are first mentioned in written history towards the end of the third century, may in fact have moved as far south as Tayside earlier than recorded.
But I needed more than could be found in books and archaeological papers. I needed to go to Scotland.
My research
The book is set in the weeks between Saturnalia (the Roman winter solstice festival in late December), and February. So I went with my long-suffering husband and cameraman Peter, to experience for myself January in Scotland. (For those interested in our sufferings, see my Youtube channel for clips of me in near-frozen water meadows, sleet and very cold rain).
We stayed in Edinburgh (Carumabo in the book), and travelled by hire car further north, to research the Severan fortress and fortified harbour at Carpow on Tayside. In my book, I use the native Celtic name Cair Pol, and the Roman name Horrea Classis, meaning “storehouse of the navy”. We were royally entertained by Angus Macintyre, the curator of the excellent community Roman museum at nearby Abernethy, who not only opened his museum to us during closed season, but regaled us with tea and shortbread, and answered my hundreds of questions.
He gave me plenty of background on the early Pictish hill fort of Castlelaw, looming over Abernethy. We travelled on to the Mcmanus Museum in Dundee, which has a superb collection of Pictish inscribed standing stones, as well as some of the best-preserved Roman scale armour anywhere, from Carpow fort.
Jacquie at Abernethy, with Castlelaw behind her
Roman scale armour at Mcmanus Museum
There are plenty of corrupt and greedy Roman provincial governors to be found in the historical records, and I soon had a picture of the fictional one who would feature in my book. It wasn’t hard to come up with reasons why he might cooperate with the new barbarian Pictish chief, and to what lengths he might go if a hard-nosed imperial investigator appeared on the trail of his crimes. But then what would happen to my pair of Roman soldiers, alone and on the wrong side of the Wall in midwinter, on the trail of murder and treason? Would anyone be there to help them?
One aspect of the post-Severan history of Scotland that surprised me was how long some of the settlements the Romans set up during their brief forays into Scotland lasted. Recent archaeology suggests that some of the villages that grew up in the shadows of the Roman forts prospered even when the legions had gone. That included (possibly) a community living in a fortified annexe round Trimontium, at Newstead in the Scottish Borders, who were using Roman coins well into the fourth century. More securely, Carumabo (latterly Cramond, from which Edinburgh later emerged) shows evidence of a continuous post-Roman community, right through to the fifth century. I gratefully seized on the wonderful work disseminated by the Scottish Archaeological Research Framework since 2012. These findings gave me the idea of retired Roman soldiers remaining in Scotland, and their dual-heritage descendants. It was an idea which I was able to use, I hope to considerable effect. Bringing me back full circle to the conundrum of the Eagle of the Ninth. I hope you’ll enjoy my solution!
Jacquie Rogers
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