Cunedda was twenty-four, just a year older than Agrippina. Where she was pale he was dark, his hair rich black, his eyes deep brown. Today he wore a sleeveless woollen tunic, and his flesh was turning a tantalising honey brown in the summer sun, quite different to her own pale skin and streaked strawberry-blonde hair. She thought that Cunedda had something of the look of the Mediterranean about him, of the smooth-spoken boys who had pursued her so hard and so fruitlessly while she grew up in Massilia. And he was a prince of the Catuvellaunian royal line, a grandson of dead king Cunobelin, which made him still more intriguing to her.

She could smell the salt sweat on his bare skin, and she longed to hold him. But she could not; not now. They walked on.

Cunedda said, ‘Look at old Nectovelin tramping along. He’s like a tree uprooted from the forest.’

‘He walks like a warrior,’ she said. ‘Which is all he’s ever been.’

‘He has the family colour, that red hair going grey. He really is your cousin?’

‘In a way. My grandfather, Cunovic, was brother to his father, Ban.’

‘He hardly looks the type for a nice day on the beach!’

Agrippina shrugged. ‘It was his idea. Any chance to let him get to know you, Cun! In fact he’s in charge today, as much as anybody is ...’

Cunedda was in this part of the world for trade, to promote his pottery business, but also as an envoy to the Cantiaci from the Catuvellaunian court at Camulodunum, north of the great estuary. Brigantian Nectovelin had been appointed as his bodyguard for the day.

It wasn’t terribly unusual to find Brigantians here in the south working for the Catuvellaunians, who had been the dominant power in this corner of the island since before the Roman invasion ninety years ago, when long-dead Cassivellaunus had faced down Caesar himself. It was Nectovelin’s service for Cunedda’s family which had brought Cunedda into Agrippina’s life in the first place.

And today, Agrippina hoped, she would be able to make Nectovelin accept that Cunedda was here to stay.

They came over the breast of the dunes and faced the sea, a pale blue blanket under the heavy sun. It looked almost Mediterranean to Agrippina, who had seen that central sea for herself, but this was the Ocean, a tide-swollen beast much feared by the superstitious Romans. A low island lay on the breast of the sea a few miles off-shore.

‘That’s close enough to the water for us,’ Nectovelin growled. ‘He dumped the heavy tent on the sand. Agrippina saw how the sweat on his back, trapped by the tent, had turned his tunic black.

Mandubracius whooped. ‘Catch me if you can!’ He ran to the sea, limbs flashing, an explosion of ten-year-old energy. He was so pale he looked like a ghost, barely part of the world at all.