The host and guests walked through a corridor opening on one side to the little square ornamental garden and Ferox caught the scent of flowers on what was now a pleasantly warm evening for the time of year. It always amused him that the Romans insisted on building their houses this way, so perfect for giving shade from the hot Mediterranean sun – something less of a worry here in the north. Flavius Cerialis and his family lived like the gentry of an Italian town, even though they were thousands of miles away and the prefect had not a drop of Italian blood in him. He was a Batavian, like the soldiers he commanded, for the old treaty with the tribe stated that they should serve in units commanded by their own aristocrats.

Crispinus was the only real Roman in this Italian house as they gathered for a quintessentially Roman dinner party. Aelius Brocchus, prefect of the ala stationed at Coria, was slim, hawk-nosed, with thick black hair and piercing dark eyes, and was a long way from his home at Gades in Baetica. It would not have surprised Ferox to learn that the man had Carthaginian as well as Iberian ancestors. Neither could he help wondering whether either he or Cerialis had ever visited Rome. Claudius Super had been there, and liked telling people about it, as had Ferox and the remaining guest, Titus Flavius Vegetus, a very short, very fat Bithynian who had been a slave of the imperial household until given his freedom a few years earlier. Then and now he worked for the procurator, and had clearly done well out of it, with large rings on each of his stubby fingers.