‘We found Fortunata, the wife of the imperial freedman Vegetus, my lord.’ Ferox may not have liked her much, or thought about her at all, but the dismissal of her abduction as a small thing fed his anger. The dead slaves did not appear to matter to them at all.

He took a deep breath. One of his tutors at Lugdunum had told him that the divine Augustus used to recite the alphabet in his head whenever he felt rage coming and did not wish to speak words he might regret. Ferox tried it now, and it did not help much. ‘Fortunata is dead, my lord.’

Marcellus sighed. ‘I had little hope. Such murderous hate made mercy of any sort unlikely. The poor thing.’ He shook his head, his voice full of the well-practised sorrow of an orator. ‘All we can hope is that she did not suffer.’

‘It was a grim death, my lord,’ Ferox said, struggling not to shout. ‘A slow one and painful.’

There were murmurs from the assembled officers. This was not how anyone, let alone a centurion, was supposed to address the legate of the province. Crispinus gestured for him to calm down.

‘The poor child.’ Marcellus showed no sign of surprise or offence.

‘They did to her what Boudicca’s men did to the aristocratic ladies they captured.’ There was a gasp of horror from the audience – someone who must have known the stories. ‘She will have screamed as they began to cut her,’ he went on, and took a step towards the small senator. ‘Screamed as they sliced the ends off her breasts. She would only have stopped screaming when they started to sew the pieces of flesh on to her lips. After that she could only have moaned as they took her to the sharpened stake. If you wish I shall draw you a picture.’ At that moment he hated them all, these great men who sat here secure in their power, worse than the crowd in the arena because at least spectators were interested in the fate of the people who died before their eyes.

Marcellus’ skin was deeply tanned, and he had eyes so deep brown that they looked black. His dark hair was slicked down with oil so that not one strand was out of place. He looked up at the centurion as the big man loomed over him and he did not seem at all intimidated. Instead he reached out and patted Ferox on the arm, as a man would calm a horse.

‘This shows us the inhuman cruelty and evil of our enemies,’ the legate said, stepping past Ferox so that his audience could see him once again. ‘It is our duty to our Lord Trajan to defeat his enemies. It is our duty as pious men who fear the gods and the laws of heaven and this world to wash this evil from the earth.