‘Better not linger,’ she said. ‘So you must all let him go until later!’ With some reluctance, the children broke free.

Ferox stood up, brushing himself down and glad that Philo could not see. He looked at Lepidina, her hair gleaming in the sunlight and wearing one of the pale blue dresses she favoured. ‘What do you think are my chances?’ he asked.

The clarissima femina held up her right arm, thumb outstretched and wavering like the president at the games deciding the fate of a fallen gladiator and trying to gauge the crowd’s mood. After a moment she spread fingers and thumb wide and smiled. ‘What do you think?’

Ferox did not know, so with a mock scowl back at the children to make them giggle, he walked to the far side, under the veranda and found the room. Two low stools were in it as well as a little round table, and he was not sure whether or not this was an encouraging sign. This was one of the better decorated rooms, although the painter shared the obsession with fauns and nymphs and the rooftops of distant towns.

The note passed to him by Philo that morning had said the fifth hour of the day and he knew that he was a little early, so he sat on one of the stools, finding it too low for comfort. There were two doors in this room, one leading to the garden and the other to a corridor and he guessed that she would come that way. He also guessed that she would be late and make him wait, so he waited and wondered whether being treated in this way was another unexpected aspect of commanding a garrison. After a long while, he stood up, and studied the paintings as there was nothing else to do. He had never looked that closely before, and noticed for the first time that wherever there was a nymph or group of such beauties exercising, playing or bathing, they were always watched from cover by a satyr, just visible from his horns or hoof as he hid behind a bush, tree or wall.

She came from the garden and at first he did not turn, wondering whether she would cough or speak, but she did not. Was this a test? He waited and the silence stretched on and on. The Silures raised a boy to cherish silence, but he doubted that his grandfather and the other elders had ever anticipated a situation like this one. Probably they would despise him for creating it.

‘You know,’ Ferox said at last and started to turn, ‘I’d never noticed…’ He stopped.

Claudia Enica stood like the statue of a goddess. Memory is a fragile thing, often vague, and if he had known that she was beautiful that was not the same as seeing her just a few feet away. Her dress was green silk, shimmering in the light of the open door behind her and just hinting at the elegant lines of her legs and body. She liked green, feeling it set off the vivid red of her hair, which today was piled high and dotted with tiny pearls in what was no doubt her own adaptation of a current fashion. It suited her, as did the rouge on her lips and the gentle make-up. This was Claudia, the Roman lady, well educated, teasing and dignified as an equestrian should be. At other times this same woman became Enica, granddaughter of Cartimandua, the witch queen of the Brigantes, surrounded with the same awe. That person was wilder, a warrior trained to a high pitch, who killed readily if she felt the need and was as out of place at a sophisticated dinner party as a tiger.