A low key buzz of excitement greeted the announcement — the first official confirmation of what had been doing the rounds of the Legion’s mess rooms for the last ten days. Bestia let it run its course before continuing.

‘Now, you ladies will of course be ignorant of our final destination, unlike senior officers such as myself. Suffice to say we’re in for an interesting time. But before you can be let loose outside the base, you’re going to need to know how to build everything from a marching camp right up to bicircumvallations.’

Now he had really lost them, only the handful who were familiar with Caesar’s account of the siege of Alesia had the remotest idea what he was talking about.

‘Ladies, we’re going to start small, since you — barring our war hero there — will have problems grasping the tactical defensive potential of anything larger than a ditch. So we begin with the marching camp.

‘When the Legion manoeuvres through non-hostile territory it excavates a defensive ditch and turf-mounted palisade. Each legionary, and you ladies, will be issued with one pick and one spade. The yellow flags over there need not concern you — they mark out the tent lines for each century. These red flags mark out the boundary defences. You will dig from that line inwards. You will dig a ditch six feet wide and three feet deep — that’s two spades wide by one spade deep — the spoil of which is to be heaped on the inner side of the ditch and then compacted down. Each man digs six feet of ditch, starting with the war hero at the first marker flag. You ladies understand? Then get the equipment issue and get to work.’

Once each man had been issued a pick and spade, for which deductions would be made from their pay, as Cato now knew, and had taken up position along the red-flagged line, Bestia gave the order to dig. A short distance beneath the grass the soil was freezing, if not frozen, and the recruits used their picks to hammer into it with all their might, piling the cold lumps of clay soil immediately beside the ditch. As the morning wore on, the men became oblivious to the chill and sweat poured freely, woollen inner tunics sticking to their backs. Hardened by months of exercise, the recruits nevertheless found the entrenching exhausting, but Bestia allowed them no break from their toils, reminding them that while on the march the Legion would need to make such fortifications every day. Sore hands turned into blistered hands and, when the blisters burst, the palms were rubbed raw by the coarse wood of the wooden handles which would not become smooth through heavy use for some months yet. Cato suffered the agony in tight-lipped silence while those who had joined the Legion from a farming family barely noticed the wood in their calloused hands. As bad luck would have it, Cato was placed immediately next to Pulcher and, while they were out of earshot of the drill instructors, Pulcher resumed his campaign of intimidation.