It was hot enough inside the house for Nectovelin to have stripped to the waist; his tunic and cloak were heaped up against the wall behind him. Agrippina’s eye was caught by a slim leather folder among his effects. It looked like the kind of document case she had seen in Gaul carried by lawyers or moneylenders. She could only think of one document a Brigantian warrior like Nectovelin might carry in such a case.

Cunedda had brought her here to see the weaponry, for much of it was Roman. ‘We managed to pinch all these pieces from a heap outside their fort. The Romans went out onto the battlefield after they routed us. They stripped the bodies of their fallen before taking them away.’

Nectovelin grunted. ‘They reclaim the equipment of their dead for repair and reuse. Nothing if not thrifty, these Romans.’

Cunedda said, ‘Look, Agrippina.’ He picked up shaped strips of iron.

‘A legionary’s armour,’ Nectovelin growled. ‘They call these plates lorica segmentata. The most advanced armour anybody knows about - twice as good as chain mail, and half as light.’

‘See, it’s shaped to your body,’ Cunedda said. ‘These bits go over your chest, these your shoulders and these over your upper back.’ The armour was damaged, and some of it was bloodstained, but Cunedda was able to show her how a legionary would join the strips together with metal hooks to make a flexible covering. ‘You can even bend down to clean your toes while wearing it. Even their shields aren’t simple.’ He picked up a fragment of a broken Roman shield, a section of a half-cylinder. Where it had been broken Agrippina could see layers of thin wood. ‘You see? They take the wooden plates, bend them into shape, then glue them together. Not only that, they lay the grain of the layers across each other, to give the whole greater strength.’

‘Strength maybe,’ Nectovelin said, ‘but in the end that didn’t protect this shield’s owner out on the field.’

Agrippina asked, ‘Any news of Caratacus?’

‘Only that he flees ever west,’ Nectovelin said. ‘It’s said he’s hoping to find refuge among the Silures, or even the Ordovices.’

Agrippina asked sceptically, ‘Would strangers of the west fight for a failed prince of the east?’

‘It’s possible,’ Nectovelin snapped. ‘At least Caratacus stood up to the Romans. At least he didn’t just give up. People admire that, I think.’

Cunedda asked, ‘And his brother—’

‘As far as we know Togodumnus is dead,’ Nectovelin said. ‘Although the battle was so confused it’s hard to say for sure. There is a rumour the Romans displayed his head.’ He shook his head. ‘He shouldn’t have turned his back on the gods of the river.’