Caveat Emptor (36 page)

A
UTHOR
’
S
N
OTE

Verulamium’s theater was finally built about twenty years after this story is set, and its remains can still be seen. The site of the Great Hall lies just across the road, but its foundations are buried deep beneath Saint Michael’s Church, and with them the putative location of the strong room. Sadly, no details of the town Council’s business—unruly or otherwise—survive. The more respectable of the proceedings here are based on bronze tablets recording the constitution of the Roman town of Irni in Seville.

Anyone who shares my delight in obscure facts will be pleased to know that there really was a crackdown on abuses of the transport system in the early years of Hadrian’s reign, including a survey of British milestones, although the name of the procurator who would have been in charge of them is not known. Nor is the location of his office, but it seemed reasonable to place such an important man in one of the grandest buildings in town.

A couple of good books for anyone wanting more detailed background are:

Verulamium: The Roman City of St Albans
by Rosalind Niblett

The Coinage of Roman Britain
by Richard Reece.

Many readers will already have had the pleasure of visiting Verulamium Museum and park, the British Museum, and the Museum of London. For those who cannot make the trip, all have good Web sites, and at the time of writing, the Museum of London’s Online Collections include a fascinating microsite exploring Roman London at:
http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/English/Collections/OnlineResources/Londinium/
.

Finally, for anyone lucky enough to stumble across something our ancestors left behind, or who wants to see what others have found,
www.finds.org.uk
is the place to look.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

Heartfelt thanks to a veritable army of agents and editors, especially Peta Nightingale, Araminta Whitley, George Lucas, Benjamin Adams, Mari Evans, Kate Burke, Stefanie Bierwerth, and Marlene Tungseth.

For their generous advice and recommendation of sources on Roman coinage and Roman law, I am very grateful to Sam Moorhead, FSA British Museum, and Dr. Paul du Plessis. For help with the history of their respective towns, I am indebted to David Thorold, Keeper of Archaeology at Verulamium Museum, St. Albans Museum Service, and Jenny Hall, Senior Roman Curator, Museum of London.

Fellow scribes Carol Barac, Caroline Davis, Chris Allen, Guy Russell, Jan Lovell, Kathy Barbour, and Maria Murphy all slogged through several drafts of the early chapters, and Andy and Stephen Downie nobly read the whole manuscript.

Caro Ramsay kindly saved me from my own ignorance at one point, but all remaining errors, misinterpretations, inventions, and barefaced lies in the preceding pages are my own work.

A N
OTE ON THE
A
UTHOR

Ruth Downie is the author of the
New York Times
best-selling
Medicus
,
Terra Incognita
, and most recently,
Persona Non Grata
. A part-time librarian, she is married with two sons and lives in Milton Keynes, England.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Persona Non Grata

Terra Incognita

Medicus

Copyright © 2011 by Ruth Downie

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Downie, Ruth, 1955—
Caveat emptor : a novel of the Roman Empire / Ruth Downie. — 1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-59691-608-1 (hardback)
1. Physicians—Rome—Fiction. 2. Romans—Great Britain—Fiction. 3. Treasure troves—Fiction. 4. Great Britain—History—Roman period, 55 B.C.-449 A.D.—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6104.O94C38 2011
823’.92—dc22
2010034525

First published by Bloomsbury USA in 2011
This e-book edition published in 2011

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Penguin UK under the name Ruso and the River of Darkness.

E-book ISBN: 978-1-60819-592-3

www.bloomsburyusa.com