He could smell the trail.
Gold? People? He didn't know which. The people who had lived here, at the end, he guessed. Whenever that was. It would be either side of the year 400; give or take ten, twenty, fifty years? To hell with it: say, three-fifty to four-fifty or, more hopefully, 380 to 420. Difficult to say.
What sort of people were they, these people? Farmers? Villa owners? Whatever that might mean. People. Ordinary people. People like you and me. (If the you was anybody, it was Jane waiting back at home; his better, and critical, self. Or it could be Broderick.) Ordinary people. People with families, friends, colleagues, associates. acquaintances, neighbours. Who is my neighbour? Good question.
All life was here. The whole web of life. The whole social network. An ecosytem. He laughed. Imagine the occupants of the villa-farm using Facebook and mobile phones, or Twitter! Hey! What would the equivalent be in 417 AD?
He smiled. He stretched himself backwards into the grass to soak up more of the July sunshine. Hey! Just imagine.
Yes. It smelled of gold and people; and something else. There was the smell of something fishy. Something not at all Roman nor Saxon but something twenty-first century.
