Two cloaked figures slip from the forest and approach the imposing villa, its stone walls the colour of honey. A wiry woman, with her teenage daughter. Mum brisk, girl hesitant.

I alight and watch, pretend I’m just pecking the spring grass. Here in Britannia our kind are considered bad omens. A pity. Sometimes I wish I was in Southeast Asia, where we’re hailed as good luck.

They enter the walled garden, with its stone-built fishpond and octagonal shrine. I follow. Mum kneels before Livia, mistress of the house, a Romanised Briton in an ankle-length pleated silk robe. Mum pleads for her daughter to be given a job. Their village is a collection of rough wooden huts, its inhabitants bowed by long days on the villa’s farmland.

The girl gives me a stare, and I catch a flicker of her thoughts. I know you, clever magpie. You see into the past, the present, and the future. You can read my mind. She’s descended from druids and knows about magic.

The pair are beckoned inside. Through the girl’s eyes I see the formal dining rooms, the beautifully painted walls and the intricate mosaic floors. I feel the warmth from the underfloor heating system.

She’s given a job helping in the stoke room, maintaining the fire, ensuring that heat flows to the baths and other rooms.

Each day I greet the girl with a Chak-chak-chak as she arrives for work at dawn and returns home at nightfall. Sometimes she smiles and throws me berries or grains.

One warm summer evening, Aurelian, the villa’s owner, blocks her path through the woods.

I watch from a willow branch.

‘Lie with me, Vella,’ he demands.

Vella freezes.

I sense her feelings of fear and loathing. She’s in love with a village boy.

‘No,’ she says. ‘I’m already promised to –’

‘What? To a Briton?’

A purse appears in his hand.

‘I’ll give you this if you sleep with me.’

Silver glitters.

Vella swings out her arm, sending a cascade of coins flying. She flees into the darkness.

‘You’ll regret this,’ Aurelian whispers, then creeps home.

I swoop down. The arrogant face of Emperor Tacitus glares up at me from the scattered silver. Arrogant Roman. I think with satisfaction of the future: how in seven hundred years the villa ruins will provide material for monks building Bradwell Abbey. How, when the Abbey is dissolved much of the stone will be used locally. How, one day, the fishpond will be just a pit of dry leaves that kids will play in …

In subtly humiliating ways, Aurelian makes Vella’s life miserable. Livia grows suspicious, piles extra tasks on her.

‘Help me, bird,’ she whispers. ‘I pray for the gods to punish him, but nothing happens.’

I convene a mischief on Blue Ridge hilltop, near the ancient burial ground.

‘Tsssk,’ we hiss, and come to a decision.

Aurelian never returns from a trip to Lactodurum. He’s found on Watling Steet. Death unexplained. Eyes pecked out.