Xander spoke in Greek, and Brigonius picked up only a little of what he had to say. He began with a general discourse on the problems of imperial frontiers, with references to historical events all the way back to the wars between the successors of Alexander the Great. Meanwhile his precious model sat on the floor beside him, tantalisingly covered.

Karus had warned Brigonius it would be like this. ‘The Romans love speeches,’ he said.

Understanding barely one word in four, Brigonius found his attention wandering. Among the soldiers and learned men of the court of the soldier-emperor there were a few women. One of them, beautiful but sullen-looking, must be Hadrian’s wife, Sabina, said to have been trapped into a loveless marriage by her great-uncle Trajan to his favoured heir, Hadrian. One older woman was surely the famed Plotina, wife of the dead Trajan. Brigonius wondered what tensions lay beneath the rather cold façade of this imperial family.

Though Hadrian listened, he seemed restless, unfocused, even bored. Brigonius knew that Hadrian thought of himself as a scholar. To him, in an empire which contained Greece and Egypt and Mesopotamia, an empire like a huge museum of civilisations, Britain must seem dull indeed.

For an instant Hadrian’s gaze locked on Brigonius himself. Perhaps there was a flicker of recognition in the Emperor’s eye; perhaps he remembered him from the speech at Rutupiae. Now he inspected Brigonius more carefully, his neck, his torso, his bare legs.

Brigonius, his blood still hot from the hour he had spent with Lepidina, turned away. Here was something else everybody knew about Hadrian. In Brigantia homosexual affairs weren’t unknown, but they were unusual. Among the Romans they were more commonplace - but it wasn’t Hadrian’s sexuality but his ardour that drew comment. A serious man wasn’t supposed to lavish too much energy on his bedwarmers.

And now Brigonius noticed the gaze of Primigenius was on him too, that deadly white face, the black-rimmed eyes, the lips scarlet as a wound. Was it possible this raddled ex-slave was jealous? Brigonius suppressed a shudder.

At last Xander got to the point. His slaves whipped aside the cloth that covered his model. The courtiers all leaned forward to see the painted hills, the shining ribbon-rivers and the finely worked forts and turrets. The exquisite detail evoked childlike pleasure in their heavily made-up faces.