‘Ah, here we are.’ He dug out a scroll, unrolled it on his desk and ran his thumb along its surface. ‘Um. According to this compendium the year of your birth was unremarkable, hairy man - save for one thing: another birth, of a certain prophet in Judea. The Jews, you know, an excitable people! The villain was crucified in the reign of my uncle Tiberius as I recall, and rightly so. No more than a coincidence, no doubt - though if I were a god composing a prophecy, nothing about it would be coincidental.

‘And what is it we actually have here?’ He held up the parchment, peering down through his lenses. ‘Quite brief, isn’t it?’

Agrippina found herself saying, ‘Only sixteen lines.’

She saw Nectovelin’s shoulders stiffen. In that moment Nectovelin knew for certain she had somehow seen the document herself, against his express wishes. Whatever the outcome today, she feared that she had already destroyed her relationship with a man who had been like a father.

Claudius watched this with interest; he seemed fascinated by the British. ‘Sixteen lines, yes. You’ve evidently read it, girl. But I wonder how well you know it - if your education was only Gallic then perhaps not well at all. There is some subtlety here. Why, there’s even an acrostic.’ He held up the bit of parchment to Agrippina. ‘Look, girl, can you see how the first letters of the lines combine to form a phrase? A - C - O - N ... Perhaps this is the key to the whole thing. The original Sibylline Books featured similar acrostics, as I recall. An intriguing connection.

‘There are some specific predictions here, aren’t there? Of an emperor with a German name ... And I am Germanicus.’ He looked up sharply at Agrippina. ‘Interesting. But what’s this about a noose of stone around the neck of the island?’ He glanced at Vespasian. ‘Does this island have a neck, legate?’

‘Nobody knows, sir.’

‘On we go, cryptic and confusing - baffling, as are all such oracles, or I suppose we wouldn’t value them so highly - ah, and at the end, a few lines about freedom and happiness and so forth. Clumsy poetry, nothing more; I’m surprised the gods saw fit to include it.’ He turned to Nectovelin. ‘You, hairy man - can you read this at all?’ Claudius threw back his head and laughed. ‘So you have a prophecy, uttered by your own mother, in the language of your conquerors - a language you can neither understand nor read! The gods may or may not know the future, but they certainly have a sense of humour.’

‘I don’t need to read it,’ Nectovelin said. ‘I know what it says. That you Romans will be thrown off this island, and I will enjoy doing it.’

Claudius seemed perplexed. ‘Actually it says no such thing.’ He turned to Agrippina. ‘Do you believe this is prophetic?’