Ten days later, Cato and Macro were sitting on a rough wooden bench opposite the merchant ship that would carry them, and the legate, across the sea to the port of Gesoriacum on the Gaulish coast. The Ajax was tied alongside the wharf at Rutupiae. Dressed in simple tunics, they sat in the shade and watched the captain shouting at the porters that were unloading his cargo of wine from the hold. The slaves had been doing their best to crack one of the amphorae and get a free drink. The captain, however, had carried such cargoes many times before and was threatening to have the skin off the back of the first man who damaged ajar. His voice was hoarse from competing with the shrill cries of the gulls that swirled over the harbour, scavenging.

It had been well over a year since they had last visited the invasion port. Cato had been the optio in Macro’s century at the time; a self-conscious and anxious creature who doubted he would live long enough to see the winter. Rutupiae had been a vast supply depot, constantly replenished with food, equipment and men throughout the first season of campaigning. Hundreds of ships had filled the narrow channel leading out to the open sea, waiting their turn to berth at the wharf. There were thousands of slaves labouring to unload the supplies that would keep the voracious Roman war machine grinding forwards.

Since then an advance base had been constructed well up the Tamesis, where Emperor Claudius had joined his army before it swung north and east to defeat Caratacus before the walls of his capital at Camulodunum. Rutupiae was only of minor significance to the military effort now. There was already a large civilian population and a settlement, sprawled back from the wharf. Warehouses had replaced the depot’s stockade and they backed on to a makeshift forum where merchants and bankers mixed amongst the stalls of traders, who had arrived from Gaul to take advantage of the new market for the empire’s goods.

‘It’s hard to believe all this has happened so quickly,’ said Cato.

‘Ain’t progress wonderful?’ Macro grinned. ‘Give it a few more years and it’ll look as if Rome has always been here. Might have been a nice place to retire.’

‘Seriously?’

Macro thought about it for a moment. ‘No. The climate’s shit and the drink’s piss. Give me a tidy little farm in Campania any day. Got an uncle with a small vineyard near Herculanium. Now that’s the kind of retirement for me. Quiet spot by the sea where the biggest danger to life and limb is a bad oyster.’