When all was done it was she who took the initiative. ‘I am ready to ride, if we are ready to depart?’

One of the huntsmen brought an unsaddled mare. The lady patted her head, spoke softly to her and then sprang up. ‘It is easier like this,’ Sulpicia Lepidina told them, beckoning to the freedwoman to come up behind her. She needed help, bunching her dress up so that she could sit astride, clasping her mistress as bidden. Two of the slaves were made to dismount and stay with the men in charge of the pack, so that their horses could be given to Vindex and Ferox.

They set out and soon met one of the riders that Cerialis had sent out earlier, who told them that the barbarians had fled and that there were Roman cavalry on the road coming from the east, so not Batavians from Vindolanda.

‘If my lads weren’t there first then I’ll have words to say to the duty decurion,’ Cerialis said cheerfully.

Keeping to the open fields, they climbed by a gentle route and soon encountered a patrol of cavalrymen with green shields and fur on their helmets – Batavians out from Vindolanda. Cerialis welcomed their commander by name, heard his report and then ordered them to fall in as escorts.

‘You may wish to return to Vindolanda, my lady,’ Cerialis said to his wife. ‘I ought to take a look at the place of the ambush, but there is no need for you to see such things.’

‘I was there, my lord. I have already seen much. Thank you for your concern, but it is safer if we stay together.’

‘The barbarians have gone.’

‘And we were assured that there was no great risk on the road,’ the prefect’s wife told him. Ferox wondered at the relationship between them. He guessed that Cerialis was a few years younger than his wife and perhaps that explained his willingness to defer to her. She was right to be cautious. He would expect raiders to flee once soldiers began to chase them, but this band had already done things that surprised him. On the other hand, he hoped that they would stop her from going too close. She may have seen some of the fighting, but that was not the same thing as looking in the cold light at the aftermath of a skirmish. The dead were rarely pretty.

By the time they reached the place they had met with more Batavian troopers, as well as a detachment of forty riders from the ala at Coria. Another party of legionaries with a mule convoy were at the ambush site, clearing up, so that there was little to see save rows of bodies neatly arranged, the dead Batavians covered with blankets.