For the tour, the garrison of Pontes supplied and manned one of the slim boats used for patrolling the river. Hadrian and Ephippus stayed in the stern, so that they could direct the helmsman to take them where they wanted to go. Piso hovered nearby, while an equestrian tribune and the two more surprising guests went up by the prow. Most of the rowers were more interested in them than anyone else, and Hadrian could see them twisting their heads at every opportunity to peer back over their shoulders. That was when they had effort to spare, because often the views he wanted meant rowing hard against the current. They muttered, as soldiers will, each time he had the helmsman turn about and head back upstream under yet another of the great arches. As far as he was concerned it was worth it.

‘Quite beautiful,’ Hadrian said softly as they came out into the open air again. He had to admit that Apollodorus had done a good job.

‘Not bad,’ Piso smirked, mistaking his meaning and instead staring at the two ladies standing in the prow, the wind rippling their dresses and outlining their figures. Hadrian’s senatorial tribune could be both vulgar and tiresomely direct. He tended to frown when he was thinking, head slightly bowed, so that he almost stared up as he fixed his gaze on whomever he was addressing at the time. Perhaps Piso believed this made him appear earnest, but the impression was of a halfwit, although Hadrian was coming to believe that it was a false one. Now he was almost leering at the women as blatantly as the soldiers, whenever they got a chance.

They were both married to officers, on the way to join their husbands and would travel with Hadrian on the first stage of his journey beyond the river. Apart from his own escort, there were several hundred troops marching with them on their way to garrisons, so they had asked to come with him and he had been happy to grant the request. The older of the two, Sulpicia Lepidina, was a senator’s daughter, so a clarissima femina, even if she had married a mere equestrian. Her own family was impoverished, from a mixture of excess and poor management, which did much to explain the choice of husband, who had money if not high birth, and was by all accounts a decent enough fellow, well thought of by the emperor – at least when Trajan remembered to think of him at all. Lepidina’s uncle by marriage was Neratius Marcellus, just coming to the end of his term as governor of Britannia, and his brother was in charge of Pannonia. There were six hundred or so senators, and Hadrian always felt that it was like living in some rustic village, where everyone knew each other, and husbands were the neighbours’ cousins or brothers, wives their sisters, and all old kindnesses were remembered just as long as the old squabbles. Doing a favour was always wise, as long as it did not come at too high a price, and he had willingly granted the request when the ladies called on him, having arranged the matter with a courteous letter. When to his surprise they asked to accompany him on his trip on the river, Hadrian readily assented again. Curiosity was impressive in a woman, if not carried to excess.