Narcissus had come into Camulodunum to prepare for Claudius’s glory. The invasion might have been Plautius’s, but the victory had to be Claudius’s own. So Plautius had loyally stalled his advance to wait for the Emperor.

The imperial party had been preparing to travel even before the first landing. The logistics of the journey had been largely Narcissus’s responsibility, and he liked to complain to Vespasian that it was like mounting another invasion. Unlike his two predecessors this emperor was engagingly free of affectation, gluttony, debauchery and sloth; luxury for him was to be left alone with his library. But an emperor could not be seen to travel without a certain standard of magnificence. Then there were the huge (and hugely expensive) exotic beasts from Africa which Claudius had insisted be brought with him on his conquest of Britain. All this Narcissus had organised: special ships chartered, overnight accommodation set up, a small army of servants and artisans arranged. Much of this was paid for by hapless provincials en route.

At last Claudius had handed over control of Rome to his fellow consul Lucius Vitellius and had set off. He travelled with a section of the Praetorian Guard, and with a number of Romans of high rank, some of them friends and advisers who the Emperor liked to keep close - and, more significantly, enemies whom he needed to keep closer still. He had sailed down the Tiber to Rome’s great port of Ostia, then by ship along the coast to Massilia, and through Gaul, partly overland and partly by boat along the rivers. Thanks to military despatches Narcissus had been kept aware of this caravan’s progress, including alarming reports of a near shipwreck even before they reached Massilia.

Meanwhile Plautius had not been idle. It was a wise commander who ensured that his emperor’s personal victory would be just that. Away from Camulodunum the campaign had been pressing deeper into the island. Vespasian himself had pushed to the west, supported by the fleet tracking his progress along the coast, though the legate had been recalled to take part in the imperial celebrations.

And now it was time to make the final preparations for Claudius’s victory.

‘He’s going to need some kind of audience house straight away,’ Narcissus said. ‘We have a queue of local kings, eleven of them at last count, come here to pledge obedience.’

‘My soldiers are good engineers,’ Vespasian said smoothly. ‘We are prefabricating a suitable dwelling even now; with enough men we can have it built within a day. But it must not be erected before his arrival—’

‘Of course not! You can’t very well put up an audience chamber in a town you haven’t yet conquered; it would make a mockery of the whole thing.’

They were approaching the grandest of the natives’ cowpat-shaped hovels of wood and mud. ‘I thought perhaps here,’ Vespasian said.