‘No,’ the surgeon replied firmly. ‘I will send word to you when he is in a fit state to talk.’ He paused to look at them. ‘I do not know your faces. You must be new appointments to the Jackals.’

Cato nodded. ‘Senior Tribune Cato and First Spear Centurion Macro.’

‘Senior tribune?’ The surgeon looked surprised, then bowed his head. ‘My apologies, sir. I took you for a more junior officer.’

Macro stifled a smile.

Cato ignored him as he confronted the surgeon. ‘And you are?’

‘Chief Surgeon Archaelus, sir.’

‘Look here, Archaelus, I must speak with your patient. Urgently.’

‘I appreciate that, sir, but it is my professional view that it would be detrimental to his recovery, his survival even, if he is put under any further distress.’

Cato had exhausted his cordiality, and hardened his tone. ‘I have no time for this. I order you to let me see the patient. At once.’

As chief surgeon, Archaelus carried the notional rank of centurion and was outranked by the legion’s senior tribune. An order had been given and there was little he could do but obey. He bowed his head reluctantly. ‘If you’d follow me, sir.’

He turned and led them through the pavilion’s colonnade and into the more sheltered part of the structure where the priests had held their banquets in the years when Karnak was at the height of its influence. Unlike much of the rest of the temple complex, the walls were covered with painted symbols. Overhead the ceiling was dark blue and covered with five-pointed representations of stars in yellow. Linen screens had been erected around the most severe cases in the hospital, and they kept out the worst of the hot wind and dust.

‘Here is your man.’ Archaelus indicated a man laying naked, except for his loincloth, on a low cot in the middle of the pavilion’s banquet hall. One of the orderlies sat beside the patient, gently daubing an ointment on to the sunburned flesh. Cato could see the blisters on the legionary’s face. He had lighter skin than most of the other men and Cato guessed that he must be Alexandrian. As well as the burns on his face and limbs, the man’s thighs were bandaged and there was a dressing on the side of his chest. Beneath the blisters and ointment on his face, it was clear that the soldier was strikingly handsome with fine bones beneath his skin.

‘What’s his name?’ asked Cato.

‘Optio Carausius.’

Cato looked round, saw a stool, and drew it across to the side of the cot. He sat down and leaned closer to the optio. The man’s breathing was light and ragged and his brow was creased. Perspiration pricked out in the hairline and his dark hair was plastered to his scalp in thick dark ringlets.

‘He has a fever,’ Cato observed.