Slaves stood in every corner, bearing trays of food and drink. All very young, with their hair dyed blond and piled up on their heads, the barefoot slaves shivered in their skimpy clothing.

Given Karus’s regular complaints about how expensive land now was in the town, Brigonius deduced that Verecundus’s spread was a sign of old wealth; his ancestors must have got here first. And indeed it turned out that Verecundus’s grandfather had been a soldier who had come over to Britain in the first wave of Claudius’s invasion. On retirement after twenty-five years’ service Verecundus’s ancestor had chosen to settle here, in a colony of veterans planted as a kind of military reserve in unstable territory. But though Verecundus’s house was grand in Brigonius’s eyes, it wasn’t terribly ostentatious, Karus told him. Perhaps something of Verecundus’s austere military ancestry lingered in his blood.

Brigonius was relieved to find the two rooms Severa’s party had been allocated. Severa and her daughter were sharing one room, while the other was shared by Brigonius, Karus and Severa’s architect, Xander. But there was no space for Brigonius. Xander, a small, fat, fussy Greek, was assembling an elaborate architectural model with the help of a hapless slave who seemed able to do nothing right, and the floor was covered by green-painted plaster hills, blue-ribbon rivers, and toy-like forts and turrets. When Brigonius nearly wiped out a fortress by stepping on it, Xander chased him out in a flurry of Greek.

So Brigonius made his way to the room shared by Severa and her daughter. Furnished with two couches and a variety of low tables and cupboards, the room was strewn with clothes. Severa wasn’t there - but Lepidina sat with her back to the door, facing a mirror. Brigonius, holding his breath, stood and watched.

Lepidina had opened her tunic and pushed it back so her shoulders were bare, and her hair was roughly tied up. She was applying cream to her face, scooping it up from a tin jar with her fingers and smoothing it onto her cheeks. With her clothing disarrayed, and her loose-limbed movements as she quietly massaged her flesh, she had an air of abandonment.

Of course she knew he was there. ‘You may as well come in, Brigonius, and have a proper look.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’ She ducked so she could see him in her mirror, and smiled. ‘I’m getting myself ready to be seen, after all.’ She patted a couch beside her dressing table, and he sat down. ‘I suppose all this seems terribly exotic to a rough-hewn barbarian like you. Decadent!’