224 AD: Imperial Investigator Quintus Valerius is summoned from Rome to Britannia by his old companion-in-arms, Governor Gaius Trebonius. Trebonius wants Quintus to investigate fraud at the silver mines he is overseeing. But on his journey to Somerset in the south-west of the isle, Quintus hears rumours of a Druid uprising. And when he encounters his scorned ex-lover, he suspects she may have something to do with it. When Quintus finally reaches the mines, he finds himself under attack. He realises a dark conspiracy could be behind the fraud. And the stakes are raised when a potential witness is murdered.
Thank you, Tony, for inviting me back to your blog. I was last here in 2023, when I wrote about the history behind my third Roman mystery, The Loyal Centurion. Since then I’ve moved to Sapere Books, who have signed me up with enough relaunches and new books to keep me busy for a long time! Suffice it to say that my Quintus Valerius mysteries are coming out this autumn and winter, with brilliant new covers and add-ons like maps, cast lists (helpful with all those Latin names), place names, glossaries and reader notes. The Governor’s Man is on pre-order now, followed by The Carnelian Phoenix on 20 November. The Loyal Centurion follows in the New Year.
Since last appearing here, I’ve written a new mystery for Quintus and his fellow sleuths set in Aquae Sulis, the Roman spa resort and religious centre of Bath. The Bath Curse came out of my enduring fascination with the famous lead curse tablets found in the Sacred Spring at Bath. They were dedicated to the British-Roman goddess Sulis Minerva, renowned for her healing, wisdom and help in a just war.
Gilt-bronze head of the goddess Sulis Minerva,
a monumental artifact from Roman Britain
Anyone wanting justice, or simply with a major grudge, could come here to make a sacrifice to the goddess, and have their particular beef inscribed by a clerk onto a thin lead sheet. The justice sought would take the form of retribution dealt out by the all-powerful Sulis Minerva. The curse tablets were folded or rolled up, and thrown into the steaming sacred spring.
Roman curse tablet (defixio) discovered at the King's Bath
in Bath, England (Aquae Sulis).
Poor Docilianus – I doubt he ever got his warm wool coat back, despite his fervent prayers. But Aquae Sulis wasn’t just about healing and worship. By the Severan period (AD 220s, when my books are set), it was a popular spa resort not unlike the Bath of Jane Austen’s day. People came to Bath from all over the western Roman Empire, to holiday, relax, gossip, drink the waters, meet a potential partner, even gamble. If you’ve visited Bath yourself, you’ll know how splendid the Great Bath is. It’s unique in Britain both for its grand size and the natural flow of waters, heated by geothermal forces to a steady 46 degrees C, and pumping out over a million litres a day.
We don’t know much about the visitors who travelled here to take the highly-mineralised waters, but I imagine that the steady influx of wealthy visitors to this tiny city might tempt the unscrupulous – and the downright criminal – to prey on them. A sort of Las Vegas-cum-Monte Carlo, perhaps?
As well as The Bath Curse (to be published in 2027), I’ve begun a new companion series. Same time period as the Quintus Valerius books (early third century), still in Roman Britannia, but the Otto Cornelius series has action centred around the wonderful city of Viroconium Cornoviorum. Nowadays Wroxeter Roman city lies under fields around seven miles south-east of Shrewsbury, where English Heritage care for this fourth-largest of Britain’s Roman cities. It was built as the capital for the Cornovii tribe, whose lands stretched from Staffs to the Mersey, and well into modern Wales. That makes it the most north-westerly of Rome’s cities – and what a city it was!
We are very fortunate that Viroconium survived in some form or another long after the end of the Roman period. It is thought that a possible plague drove the remaining inhabitants away to a better defended site – hence mediaeval Shrewsbury. The old city remained untouched, under a cover of soil and grass. Eventually Victorian antiquaries took an interest in the astonishing remains of what we now know to be a large gym hall, or baths basilica. Since then, modern techniques of geophysics and aerial photography have revealed in detail the layout of a wealthy, bustling city of some 15 000 people, spread over 73 hectares.
Even this remote city would have had a mix of people from many parts of the Roman empire. I’ve taken advantage of this, to create as my main character a German-Romano-British officer, Prefect Otto Cornelius, pushed into early retirement from the XXth legion in Chester. Needless to say, these also being mystery novels, he soon stumbles across murder and theft. The Silver Mirror and The Amber Goddess are both written, while The Salt Road is under way. All to be published in 2027/2028.
Artist’s impression of the baths complex at Wroxeter
Last year I finally travelled to Pompeii and Herculaneum. I know, it’s shameful being a Roman historical novelist who’s never been to the best-preserved Roman towns of the lot.
I came, I saw, I was vanquished. It was a very emotional week for me. When I’d finished crying, I wrote my own story of the people found by archaeologists on the beach at Herculaneum, waiting in vain for rescue by Pliny’s navy.
And now that’s been published too. I’ve situated the story as a prequel to the Quintus Valerius series, an introductory novelette featuring a noble ancestor of Quintus. Tribune Flavius Valerius was definitely in the wrong place, at the wrong time. My homage to those left on the beach at Herculaneum is titled after a quote from the only eye-witness account of the Vesuvian eruption of AD 79: A Night Blacker and Darker. It’s available now, in paperback and for Kindle.
Thank you, Tony. I hope you’ll invite me back to your wonderful blog next year, when I’ll have more Roman history to share.
Jacquie Rogers
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