‘They have gone now,’ Ferox explained. ‘The real ones at least. We’ – this was the Roman ‘we’, but they all instinctively understood – ‘have suppressed the cult. It used to be organised, the senior druids standing outside the tribes, schooled by twenty years of training. All that is long gone. Some claim to be druids now, but they are little more than magicians and medicine men wandering the lands. Only a few are dangerous.’

‘Here you go again.’ Claudius Super spoke louder than was necessary. ‘Our friend Ferox sees trouble and druids under every bed. They’re gone, as you say, and good riddance to the murderous bastards.’

Claudia Severa’s lips twitched in restrained disapproval, and Ferox noticed Lepidina glare at the man.

‘That sounds like business and this is not the time for that,’ Cerialis told them, before steering the conversation to less sensitive subjects, asking whether there were natural philosophers and if true learning had all begun in the East.

Ferox found it hard to listen, in part because he did not care, but mainly because Fortunata had begun to shift back and forth on the couch, rubbing her round bottom against him. It was difficult to ignore, and even if he found her foolish and vulgar, she was an attractive woman. His body began to respond in spite of his distaste for her. She moved slowly at first, but as time passed the rhythm little by little became faster. All the while she whispered in her husband’s ear, chiding him lightly when he eyed up another slave girl. Still she moved, the silk smooth, almost like a second skin, as her body slid up and down against his.

‘And what do you think about it, centurion?’ Sulpicia Lepidina asked and the room went silent as they turned to look him. Fortunata went still.

Ferox had not the remotest idea of what she meant. ‘I am not a learned man,’ he said, ‘so I would not dare to offer an opinion.’

‘Indeed,’ she said with a knowing expression. Beside her Crispinus looked amused.

‘Well, one learned man is our new consular,’ Vegetus put in, speaking with force for the first time in the dinner. He had the assurance of a man with private information, which he planned to make public. ‘Our Legatus Augusti, Lucius Neratius Marcellus, should arrive in the province before the year is out.’ The imperial freedman spoke with the satisfaction of a man who had just rolled Venus on the dice.

Britannia was one of the major military commands in the empire, given only to senior senators and former consuls to command as provincial legate. The last governor had fallen sick and died in office almost a year ago. Nerva had been too ill to choose a replacement, and it had taken months before his successor made the appointment. The new provincial legate did not appear to be in any hurry to get here.