‘It’s not meant for me,’ the centurion told then, ‘so it cannot harm me.’ He hoped that he was right. ‘Get me a sack.’

The red-headed doll must be Cerialis, and that would fit with the attack on his wife, even though Ferox could not understand why the couple were singled out. He pulled the little figure off, ripping it to get it past the broad head of the nail. On the arm was a tiny scroll of papyrus, covered on both sides with writing in Greek characters, although many of the words did not make sense. ‘Barbaso Barbasoch Barbasoch,’ it began and looked a lot like magic, some spell or curse presumably meant to strike the prefect of the Batavians.

‘I thought they did not read and write up here,’ Crispinus said, his face almost as grey as his hair.

‘They don’t.’ Ferox tore the doll to pieces and flung them in the air, and then spun around his arms held high. ‘The spell is broken!’ he yelled. Vindex touched the wheel of Taranis to his lips. The centurion used his knife to prise the second nail loose. Vindex helped him and they freed the head and put it in the sack so that they could treat the remains with honour when the force stopped for the night.

The main column would not have to see this grim message, but Ferox had little doubt that word would spread like wildfire and worry the men. He was known to be a strange man and a Briton, so perhaps his little charade of dispelling the curse would help.

Late in the afternoon the cloud thinned and they saw the sun for the first time that day as it set in magnificent splendour. Mounted Selgovae hovered around them, keeping well away as the column closed up and laid out the camp. They had stopped an hour earlier than usual and did their best to dig in the stony soil; in the end they had to be content with a ditch not much more than a foot deep. The wall was better, with a base of turves, some piled earth, built up with stones pulled out of the soil, gathered off the ground and ripped from the cattle pens around a cluster of round houses. They built just three entrances, for the fourth wall lay alongside the stream, and in each of the openings the left-hand wall curved out in front of the gateway. It meant any attacker would have to swerve to come in, all the while exposing their unshielded right side.