IT is 396, and the structures that Roman Britain has relied on for safety for 400 years are crumbling.

On his Welsh estate, Gaius Rusticelius Armoricus and his people tend the fields as their ancestors have done for a hundred years, while his wife, Corotica, runs the household and keeps a motherly eye on the estate’s network of workers and families. The world is changing. As Rome retreats, and Irish raiders threaten from the West, Armoricus takes in refugees and considers pledging faith to an Irish prince, in exchange for protection.

The author makes you care about a range of vividly drawn characters: Ria, Corotica’s teenage maid, stunned by the murder of her first love; shepherd Bagan overwhelmed by the murder of his son, Drichan; the would-be hermit sent by his eminently sensible bishop to minister to the villa folk; and even Aurelius, Armoricus’s educated, supercilious son, who finally abandons his dreams of escape and learns to love the land as his father and grandfather do.

The book works on so many levels: it is a fast-paced and unpredictable story with moments of suspense and terror, replete with details: plaster crumbles, mosaics disintegrate in the disused bath house, a character turns redder than the wine in his cup, cobnuts replace imported almonds in the honey cakes, and a long-ago child has scrawled “I hate Virgil” on a scuffed scroll of the Aeneid. The landscape is so beautifully described as to be almost another character.

The author examines vocation and how it can change with circumstances. You find yourself thinking about the nature of belief, as so many good people still follow the old gods and cling to the old stories. Most important, it is a hymn to community and the different ways in which the love people have for one another binds it together.

Fiona Hook is a writer and EFL teacher.

Tillers of the Soil
Mark Clavier
Sacristy Press £14.99
(978-1-78959-404-1)
Church Times Bookshop £13.49