‘No!’ Boudica said fiercely. ‘No. Your hear me? We have to get him out of here.’

Cato turned to Lady Pomponia. ‘We can’t leave. Not without you and your children.’

‘Optio,’ Lady Pomponia said gently, ‘take your centurion, and my children, and go now. Before the Druids come back.’

‘No.’ Cato shook his head. ‘We all go.’

She raised her chained foot. ‘I can’t. But you must get my children away. I beg you. There’s nothing you can do for me. Save them.’

Cato forced himself to look into her face and saw the desperate pleading in her eyes.

‘We have to go, Cato,’ Boudica muttered at his side. ‘We must go. The Druid that got away will fetch the others. There’s no time. We have to go.’

Cato’s heart sank into a pit of black despair. Boudica was right. Short of hacking off Lady Pomponia’s foot, there was no way she could be released before the Druids returned in strength.

‘You could make it easier for me,’ said Lady Pomponia, with a cautious nod in the direction of her children. ‘But get them away from here first.’

Cato’s blood chilled in his veins. ‘You’re not serious?’

‘Of course I am. It’s that or be burned alive.’

‘No… I can’t do it.’

‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘I beg you. For pity’s sake.’

‘We go!’ Prasutagus interrupted loudly. ‘They come! Quick, quick!’

Instinctively Cato drew his sword, and lowered the tip towards Lady Pomponia’s chest. She clenched her eyes.

Boudica knocked the blade down. ‘Not in front of the children! Let me get them mounted first.’

But it was too late. The boy had grasped what was going on, and his eyes widened in horror. Before Boudica or Cato could react, he had scrambled into the back of the wagon and threw his arms tightly round his mother. Boudica grabbed the arm of Pomponia’s daughter before she could follow her brother.

‘Leave her alone!’ he screamed, tears coursing down his dirty cheeks. ‘Don’t touch her! I won’t let you hurt my mummy!’

Cato lowered his sword, muttering, ‘I can’t do this.’

‘You have to,’ Lady Pomponia hissed over the head of her son. ‘Take him, now!’

‘No!’ the boy screamed, and he locked his hands tightly about her arm. ‘I won’t leave you, Mummy! Please, Mummy, please don’t make me go!’

Above the boy’s crying, Cato heard another sound: faint shouts from the direction of the hill fort. The Druid who had escaped the ambush must have reached his comrades. There was very little time.

‘I won’t do it,’ Cato said firmly. ‘I promise I will find another way’

‘What other way?’ Lady Pomponia wailed, finally losing her patrician self-control. ‘They’re going to burn me alive!’

‘No they’re not. I swear it. On my life. I will set you free. I swear it.’

Lady Pomponia shook her head hopelessly.