The image was so absurd it made Lepidina laugh prettily. Brigonius tried not to look at her.

Brigonius knew that the Wall-building project was actually running to schedule, somewhat to everybody’s surprise. But Tullio was genuinely concerned about this issue of the useless mile-forts.

Tullio’s slave, a boy aged maybe fourteen, approached Brigonius with a wine cup. Brigonius accepted it and said, ‘Thanks.’

The boy looked surprised to be noticed at all. He said, ‘Enjoy it, sir,’ and resumed his station.

Brigonius watched him go and sipped his drink; it was soldiers’ wine, strong, filthy stuff. The boy’s tongue was British, Brigantian. His litter-name was Similis. Brigonius wondered what Matto would have thought if he could have seen his cousin now, being served wine by the British slave of a German officer in the pay of the Roman army, as he worked on a Wall which was meant to secure the servitude of the north of Britain for ever.

And he looked at Lepidina. He couldn’t help it.

She was sitting quietly, head down, her hands folded around a half-empty cup of blood-red wine. A year under her mother’s thumb in northern forts had not been good for this city girl, and there was no sign of the bright spirit she had shown during that first visit to Camulodunum. She was a bird in a cage of stone.

Karus seemed aware of the glum silence between them. As the conversation about the practicalities of mile-forts ran down, the lawyer lumbered across to Lepidina, sat down, and let the slave boy fill his cup. ‘So,’ he said, ‘how’s your marvellous mother? I don’t see so much of her these days.’

‘Nor do I,’ Lepidina said. ‘She’s too busy writing letters to the governor.’

‘Yes, I know about those,’ Tullio rumbled, looking up from his discussion. ‘Full of nothing but good news. She leaves me to tell him the truth, which always looks bad by comparison.’ He sighed noisily. ‘That wretched woman!’

Karus said, ‘She’s a difficult friend - but I wouldn’t want her as an enemy.’

Xander asked, ‘And how is she feeling about her precious Prophecy, now it is failing to come true?’

Lepidina shrugged. Karus glanced uncomfortably at the soldiers. Brigonius knew that to the Romans prophecies, auguries, divinations and the like were seen as sources of power - and, particularly under an emperor obsessed with his own destiny, you had to be careful. But Severa and her family Prophecy had become the talk of the Wall, and much mocked.

Annius said in his chirpy way, ‘Funny thing about that Prophecy. It actually says Hadrian would come to Britain and build a Wall, doesn’t it?’

‘Not quite,’ Lepidina said, ‘but close enough.’