Eboracum was the depot for Legio IX Hispana – or VIIII as the legionaries usually insisted just to show that they were different. The Batavians here at Vindolanda had campaigned alongside the legion when they were first formed and had picked up this affectation.

Vindolanda was built to house the double-strength Batavian cohort, over a thousand men with a fifth of them cavalry when at full strength – which of course, like the rest of the army, they rarely were. It also had space for detachments, some of them large, from other units, and like any base individuals and small parties regularly passed through. Eboracum was ten times bigger than Vindolanda, and Ferox would be the first to admit that it did stink. The military mind was keen on cleanliness. Every base was provided with latrine blocks flushed by a flow of water and sewers to carry the waste away. Yet once it was outside the walls they tended to lose interest. At Eboracum the excrement of thousands emptied into the river and it reeked to high heaven, especially in summer when the water was low. It was the same at most bases. Here at Vindolanda the sewer pipes drained into the pretty little valley on the eastern side beyond the fort. No one complained, and would not have got far if they had tried, and all the while vegetables grew very well on that slope.

‘Too big,’ Vindex said. ‘Just too big.’ Most Brigantes lived on farms or in small villages, with only a few of the more important chieftains maintaining larger holdings. In the old days of the kings and queens it had been different, although even then there were few big towns compared to the tribes of the south. Ferox wondered whether he could ever convince Vindex of how small this was compared to the many great cities in Gaul and how plenty of people liked to live in them – let alone explain that vast, teeming, beautiful and filthy anthill that was Rome. He had only spent a few months there and after all these years the memory had an unreal, dream-like quality. He had no great desire to go back.

They followed the road running just north of the fort, the land gently sloping down. A couple of buildings stood apart from the rest of the canabae. There was a cluster of beggars by the roadside. They tended to get driven away from the houses, so there were usually a few here, even in bad weather. Some were familiar, such as the hunchback with the drooling lip, the one with both hands gone, and the two old women who went everywhere together, one of them blind and the other deaf. All started to call out for money or food, but one voice cut above the others.