Brigonius grunted. ‘From what I hear, there will be plenty of people who won’t forget how much it’s costing them to entertain him.’

Severa laughed. ‘So young yet so cynical!’

At last they broke out of the crowd. They came to a cordon patrolled by soldiers in dress uniform, with bright red cloaks and colourful plumes on their helmets. Severa spoke to one of the soldiers and passed him a note on a slip of wood; he glanced at it and hurried off to find a superior officer.

From here Brigonius could make out Rutupiae itself. It was a major port, in fact quite a large town. Blocky buildings of stone and wood sprawled around a harbour, and the tiled roof of a very grand mansio, there to host particularly distinguished visitors, gleamed, polished. On the sea ships floated at anchor, perhaps the ships that had transported the Emperor across the ocean from Gaul. Heavy and complex, their sails furled, they looked as if they had been painted on the blue sky.

And in the foreground, dominating everything, that quadruple triumphal arch loomed over the arrow-straight road from the west, its four columns like the legs of a giant. Clad in white marble imported from Italy, with lettering in bronze and its top ornamented with trophies of victory, it shone in the sun, no less than eighty feet high: the gateway to Roman Britain. Brigonius the quarryman wondered how its architect had ensured it would not sink into the soft coastal sand. It must have had deep and massive foundations.

Around the feet of this imposing structure people swarmed, dwarfed. Carpenters erected a stage in the crossroads beneath the arch. There were plenty of soldiers; Brigonius saw legionary pennants, the curling glitter of signal trumpets. It was quite a spectacle.

A decurion approached Severa and beckoned her forward. With some relief Brigonius moved out of the crush of the crowd, and with the women walked towards the stage.

Severa murmured, ‘I don’t imagine you’ve been here before, Brigonius. Does it call to something in your blood?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘It is here that the Romans under Claudius first made their landing in Britain. Of course there was nothing here then, just a bit of beach, no docks—’

Lepidina said, ‘And no ugly monument.’

‘And,’ Severa said, ‘it was a landing witnessed by my grandmother, and by your great-grandfather Cunedda. Or so Agrippina always claimed.’

Brigonius was unimpressed. ‘Well, there are plenty of Romans swarming here today.’

‘An emperor can hardly travel alone. I’m told there are eight thousand troops, and probably as many administrators - clerks and accountants and lawyers - the imperial government travels with his person. And then there are all the cooks and cleaners and doctors and vets, and poets and musicians and architects and actors. The court is a mobile city. No wonder the provincials bleat about the expense! ...’