It took them several hours and barely a word was said as they all took turns working. It was almost sunset by the time they returned to Vindolanda and still no one spoke. Ferox tried not to imagine the freedwoman’s screams, for she would not have lost consciousness for some time.

The fort was busier than when they had left, with working parties labouring away so that there was already little trace of the previous night’s festivities. A long convoy of ox carts and pack mules was going through the main gate, so they went around through the canabae to find another way in. Sentries at the western gateway, the porta principalis sinistra, challenged them, accepted the password and then saluted with fervent precision, and Ferox had the sense of children caught out in mischief and now hoping to make amends. He began to understand when he saw the soldiers standing guard in front of the principia. Twenty of them were horsemen in highly polished scale armour and plumed helmets. Their shields were mixed – oval, hexagonal and rectangular side by side – and carried the symbols of half a dozen different units. They had on matching dark blue cloaks and this marked them as the governor’s singulares, his bodyguard of picked cavalrymen drawn from the best of the army in the province. Alongside them stood a similar number of Batavians, who for all their size could not match the splendour of the governor’s men.

‘You’re to go in straightaway, sir,’ the optio in charge of the Batavians told Ferox as soon as he rode up. ‘Provincial legate’s orders,’ he added, evidently relishing the prestige of their visitor. As Ferox went into the headquarters, a soldier led him to the room normally used as a classroom. Inside were Cerialis, Rufinus, Claudius Super and the Tribune Flaccus as well as a dozen senior officers he did not know. An even greater surprise sat near the back.

‘Glad you are back,’ Crispinus whispered as Ferox took the camp chair beside him.

‘Surprised to see you, my lord.’

The young aristocrat grinned. His face was dirty, the grime giving it lines so that in his tiredness he looked twice his real age, and more like a man who ought to have grey hair.

‘If you do not mind me saying, sir, you look terrible.’

‘Better than the horses I rode, I can tell you. I’ve killed two getting here.’ There was a pride in his voice that the centurion disliked. ‘Only got here an hour ago. Didn’t expect such exalted company.’

‘Then why did you hurry?’

‘Thought you might need my help.’