IV

THEY WERE A hunting party, laid on by Cerialis as entertainment for the visiting Crispinus, and even if they were only armed with boar spears, knives and a few swords, the band of twenty-eight riders and a dozen hounds had looked formidable and deterred the raiders.

‘We saw the beacon,’ Cerialis explained, ‘so without hesitation rushed towards the road in case my wife was at risk.’ He had sent a couple of riders to follow the British horsemen, while everyone else waited to see what they should do. Sulpicia Lepidina and her freedwoman, the little dark-haired girl, and a couple of slaves carrying bundles had gone off into the shelter of the wood.

‘I am glad you did, sir,’ Ferox told him. ‘You saved us.’ It was several hours after noon, with a few glimpses of blue between the slow-moving grey clouds.

‘As I said before,’ Cerialis said, patting him on the shoulder, ‘it is I who am grateful to you for saving my most precious possession.’ His smile was ready and full, yet Ferox could not help thinking that the man was acting, playing the part of the honest, brave and honourable man, and very aware of his audience. Still, educated Romans often seemed that way to Ferox, all of them soaked in rhetoric since youth so that they rarely sounded natural. It mattered to them to be seen to act in the way expected of a member of the equestrian order.

Some of that audience was less enthusiastic. Caius Claudius Super was the regionarius based at Luguvallium, the big base on the Western Road, tasked with the superversion of junior men like Ferox. He was from Legio VIIII Hispana, an equestrian directly commissioned into the army, and in Ferox’s opinion had all the intelligence of a cowpat. ‘If we had come any later then you would have been gutted by that big barbarian,’ he said.

Ferox wondered whether the man was disappointed. Most equestrians who served in the army were like Cerialis, starting as prefect in command of an auxiliary infantry cohort and then holding a series of more important posts. Only those without the wealth or influence to follow that career joined as legionary centurions, and they always reminded their fellow officers of their superior social status. Claudius Super was worse than most, even if it was clear his family had barely scraped together the property needed to be registered as equites in the census. He was from Etruria, and openly disdained everyone and everything outside Italy. He did not care for any barbarians, despised the Brittunculi in general and the ‘little Britons’ of the north in particular as undisciplined, unreliable, untrustworthy, lazy and drunken. Ferox knew that Claudius Super considered that he was typical native of Britannia.

‘It was not going well for me,’ Ferox admitted.