I, Gregorius Caecilius Cornutos .... No! After all this time the name is too strange. It has been three quarters of a century since my full name had any meaning. Tiberius slaughtered or enslaved every other member of my family - so I am the last Caecilian .... and the gens Cornutos was small in any case, my father the most influential member. Whatever remains of that clan is totally undistinguished - I am certain of that, for there was a time when I paid for information - a time when I still felt Roman and had a longing for others of my kind.

But I am not a Roman. I was born of a patrician family but half Egyptian, and my lady mother very different from the stodgy Roman matrons of our circle. At her insistence, (if you knew the Roman way it would amaze you), I was sent to Alexandria as I reached manhood - for my education. It was unheard of! A noble Roman raised by Greeks ! At the age of fourteen I thought little of it, age has revealed the wonder of that strange circumstance.

And when full grown - yet again the fates took me up and seemingly misplaced me. In Britain !

The instrument of fate was Tiberius, so old and mad by then that he had my family excised from history and reached out to Alexandria for me. Was that sane ? No, but clearly it revealed the hand of a god with a purpose in mind.

So here I sit in sunlight much weaker than Alexandria or even Rome, looking out across my city of Windubro to the rough hills that face it over the river. The little Dove slides down from those heights and crashes into the Trent almost opposite the city and the two together provide us with civilised sanitation, fish, power and transport. Windubro was the first, there are larger more splendid cities connected by our roads, waterways and railroads, but it is my favourite and I no longer have to govern this island and the Confederation we are nurturing on the Rhine, my sons have accepted that task. I sit in the sun and remember. You should see me here, shawl about my shoulders, padded with cushions, fussed about and coddled, titbits presented to my lips, cups of well watered wine carefully placed in my hands - although perhaps you should not, it would destroy the image of King Gregory conqueror of the Romans.

I am ninety three years old, my sight is failing, my hand shakes and so my words are taken down by a native Briton, grandson of an illiterate Brigantean. Were I not here, had I and Lucius not landed on the dreary shore of Camulodunon in the first year of Caligula’s reign, then all of Britain would now be a Roman province and this bright eyed youth would be employed in feeding the fires of a nobleman’s bathhouse, or some such. But I did land; Lucius and I and the Celts who were despatched with us to the edges of Cunoval’s Kingdom did build this city and now all Britain as far as the Picti is British - the Kingdom of Camelod. It is a larger estate that I hand to my sons than my father would have handed to me. They rule it well and they have the ambition to make it larger. I wish them well of their ambition, but for me... I only have the desire to set down my history before my voice stills forever.

Once that is done I can lie back. These last seven years have been lonely since dear Myrcal died and for ten years before that we were the sole survivors of the early years, she and I...

I have my family of course, hordes of lively little monsters, but they know nothing of the days I remember. There are no old cronies to pore with me over battle plans drawn in the dust with walking sticks, or chortle over what we did to poor Drusus on the eve of his wedding.

I’ll shout it out, "IT’S BLOODY BORING BEING THE LAST ONE!"

That’s better.

...................... I remember the first sight I had of Britain.............

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