The Loyal Centurion

Roman Britain, AD 224. Quintus Valerius and Tiro travel to Eboracum to establish relations with Marius Crescens, the new legate of the Sixth Victrix legion. Saturnalia celebrations are interrupted by a series of deaths, beginning with a murdered girl at Lagentium and extending into the household of the legate. Suspicion falls on the tribune Gaius Laelianus, but the evidence is complicated by military rivalry, missing testimony and the private fears recorded by Crescens’s dead wife, Placidia Septimia.

The pursuit carries Quintus and Tiro from York to Hadrian’s Wall and Vindolanda, then beyond the formal frontier into Pictish territory. Julia remains in Eboracum, where her search for a missing journal exposes another part of the conspiracy. Against winter, hostile soldiers and an uncertain northern landscape, the investigation becomes a military survival story in which an apparent murder case may conceal collusion capable of opening Roman Britain to invasion.