‘Wouldn’t know about that. I’ve only been to his dun once, to buy hounds and some bears to sell to the circuses down south. Only really dealt with one of his men. He was tough but fair and we both did well out of it.’

‘It’s just that we have heard stories of druids,’ the tribune insisted.

‘There’re always stories, but in my line you don’t pry,’ the merchant said.

‘Pity. It would have been most useful for us to learn more.’ The young aristocrat had just been shaved by a slave and was rubbing his smooth chin with considerable pleasure. ‘Well-informed men can be so helpful, which of course obliges us to be helpful in return.’

‘Sorry, my lord, I cannot tell what I do not know.’

Liar, thought Ferox, and suspected that the man judged friendship with the two financial officials more valuable in the long run than the fleeting gains to come from helping a young officer who would only be in the province for a year or so. Presumably the procurator’s men would prefer to keep his friendship something only they enjoyed.

‘I truly am sorry, my lord. If there is any other way that I can help, you have only to ask, for the gratitude of so great a man as yourself is a prize above all others. Perhaps there is something you cannot get here in the wilds. There are few things I cannot obtain in time, and would happily give them as a gift.’

‘What did they want in trade?’ Ferox asked softly.

A brief chink of light showed from behind the curtain before it was tied closed again.

‘Tincommius, I mean,’ the centurion went on. ‘I doubt you paid him in coin.’

‘Oh, this and that, you know – the usual trinkets, some silver vessels and plenty of wine. The Britons like their wine, although quantity matters more than the quality. They are just barbarians.’

‘Flavius Ferox is a Briton from the south,’ Crispinus said with smooth and courteous malice.

‘I meant no offence,’ the Treviran replied. Ferox could sense the man’s relief at the change of subject, and was sure that he had been up to no good, selling something that he ought not to the ambitious tribal leader. Weapons perhaps, or the iron to forge blades – or just information.

‘Slippery fellow, that,’ Secundus said when the trader and the two officials left some time later. ‘Cannot say I really trust the others either.’

‘Taking more than is due in tax?’ Crispinus asked.