It was greed for corn, for silver, and for our people as slaves that brought Julius Caesar to our shores. Rome, too, was growing her traders sought hides, horses and hounds, tin and lead, jewellery and corn and they found them here in abundance. With time, the tribes grew, each with its own strengths. The ancestors saw that this island of Mona was sacred to all the gods and for untold generations warriors, dreamers and singers from the tribes have come to sit here in this great-house and learn. Belin, the sun, warmed them, and Manannan of the seas gave them fish.

Briga, the three-fold Mother, held them through birth and death, and Nemain, her daughter, who shows her face each night in the moon, gave succour between these two journeys. In the beginning, the gods ruled the land and the ancestor-people lived in their care. This is who you were if we win now, this is who you could be again. Here, tonight, by this fire, you will learn what has come before. I am Luain mac Calma, once of Hibernia, now Elder of Mona, adviser to the Boudica, Bringer of Victory, and I am here to teach you the history of your people.

Finally, thanks to all those who have shared the dream and do so still. Thanks in perpetuity to my agent, Jane Judd, and especially to my editors on both sides of the Atlantic for their care, insight and stamina. Thanks of an entirely different nature to Debs, Naziema, Carol and Chloë who, at various times and in various ways, kept the realities together and to Tony, for friendship, grounding and thoughtful sanity. Thanks to Robin and Aggy for input on caves and for general support in the writing. As ever, there are places where I chose to ignore his advice and any inaccuracies of fact or concept are entirely my responsibility. ‘Douglas’ Arnold, Roman military historian and astronomer, for his unfailingly cheerful reading of the various drafts of this novel and its predecessor and for his insight, honesty and accuracy without him, the writing and research of the Boudican era would have been immeasurably harder and the result far less coherent.

Dreaming the Bull by Manda Scott