Brigonius and Karus eyed each other suspiciously. Karus was a tall man, as tall as Brigonius, but his belly was heavy and rippled like a sack of water when he walked. His hair was as dark as Brigonius’s, though peppered with grey, and he was clean-shaven where Brigonius was bearded. He had donned a toga for the occasion, albeit a bit grubby and splashed with mud at its hem, but he was clearly every bit as British as Brigonius.

Not only that, Brigonius thought, Karus paid rather too much attention to Lepidina. ‘So this is the delightful daughter whose company you promised in your letters!’

Lepidina was used to male attention, welcome and unwelcome. But Brigonius thought he saw a gleam of calculation in Severa’s eye. He wondered if she used her daughter’s charms as a lure to snare fat old fools like Karus as well as youngsters like himself.

The four of them were to walk to Karus’s home, inside the walled town; the slaves would follow with the luggage. Karus led the way along the crowded road. The town wall loomed over them: twelve feet high, Karus said with mock pride, not counting the parapets, and eight feet thick. The road passed through an immense double gate. Karus said this had once been a triumphal arch, built to celebrate Claudius’s visit here. After Boudicca’s disastrous uprising it had been built into the town’s stout new walls.

Under the gate Brigonius was stopped by a patrol of soldiers who roughly searched his clothing. The Romans had a law that you couldn’t carry a weapon inside any town, and they enforced it, especially where Brittani were concerned. Brigonius submitted; he was used to it. The women watched this little exchange, Severa with a jackdaw’s fascinated stare, Lepidina rather bewildered. Brigonius imagined they had never seen people of their acquaintance treated this way.

Inside the town narrow streets divided the city into blocks of housing Karus called insulae, islands. Every surface was covered with slogans and sketches. To Brigonius the town was cramped and crowded, all straight lines and square angles and a jumble of distracting imagery. It was strange to think that somewhere under all this painted stone and plaster Cunobelin had once held court at the heart of his own empire, a capital now erased from the earth.

Karus’s home was in a side-street. It was a tall, skinny sort of building on a square base, its plastered walls gleaming white, roofed by red tiles. At street level the doors were flung wide to reveal a shop, with a broad counter set out with food: meat, pastries, bits of fruit. Still early in the morning, customers crowded the counter, buying their breakfast. The smell of cooked meat made Brigonius’s mouth water, but he wondered why all these folk had not simply eaten at home.