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However, the Romans were interested not so much in the ford as in another feature entirely, one that lay close by; for when the Roman engineers saw the two gravel hillocks on the north bank, and the gravel promontory that jutted out into the stream opposite, they came to an immediate and obvious conclusion.

“This is the perfect place for a bridge,” they reported. Downstream, the river grew wider, opening out into a pool. Upstream, the banks were marshy. “But the crossing here is quite narrow,” they pointed out, “and the gravel bed gives us a firm foundation to build on.” Better yet, the tidal flow continued past this point, allowing ships to pass easily up- and downstream on its ebb and flow, and the inlet between the hillocks where the little stream came down was a convenient harbour for smaller vessels. “It’s a natural port,” they concluded.

Tamesis, they called the river, and, Latinizing the existing name, they called the port Londinium.

It was inevitable that, as time went on, this port should increasingly have become the focus of activity on the island. Not only was it the centre of trade, but all the roads radiated from the bridge.

And the Roman roads were the key to everything. Ignoring entirely the ancient system of prehistoric tracks along the ridges, the straight, metalled roads of the Roman engineers struck across the island, joining tribal capitals and administrative centres in an iron framework they were never entirely to lose. From the white cliffs of Dover in the south-eastern peninsula of Kent, up through Canterbury and Rochester, ran the road known as Watling Street. To the east, above the broad opening of the estuary, lay the road to Colchester. Due north, a great road led to Lincoln and on to York; and in the west, past Winchester, a network of roads joined Gloucester, the Roman spa of Bath with its medicinal springs, and the pleasant market towns of the warm southwest.

In the summer of the year 251, the province of Britain was calm, as, for two centuries, it had usually been. True, in the early days a huge revolt led by the British Queen Boudicca had briefly shaken the province; for a long time, too, the proud people of Wales had troubled the west of the island, whilst in the north the wild Picts and Scots had never been subdued. The Emperor Hadrian had even built a great wall from coast to coast to lock them up in their moors and highland fastnesses. More recently, it had also been necessary to build two strong naval forts on the east coast to deal with troublesome Germanic pirates on the seas.

But in the increasingly troubled world of the sprawling empire, where barbarians kept breaking through the frontiers in eastern Europe, where political strife seemed endemic and where that very year no fewer than five emperors had been proclaimed in one place or another, Britain was a haven of peace and modest prosperity. And Londinium was its great emporium.

At this moment, however, young Julius had almost forgotten the awful threat from the law as he considered what the man with the file had just said to him. For although Sextus was his partner and his friend, he could also be dangerous.

Sextus. He was a swarthy, heavy-jowled man in his late twenties. The dark hair on his head was already thin. His face was clean-shaven, or rather plucked, in the Roman manner, except for a pair of thick, curly, muttonchop sideburns, of which he was very proud and which some women, at least, found attractive. These good looks were a little modified by the fact that the middle of his face seemed to have been squeezed together, so that his dark brown eyes looked out as if from under a ledge. His manner was slightly ponderous, and his shoulders appeared to be rather heavier than the gods had originally intended, causing him to stoop over his work and to make a bobbing motion when he walked.

“The girl’s mine. Keep your hands off her.” The warning had come quite suddenly, out of nowhere, whilst they worked in silence. Sextus had not even looked up as he spoke, but there was a flat finality to his voice that told Julius to be cautious. He was surprised, too. How had Sextus guessed?

The older man had often taken young Julius out drinking and introduced him to women, but he had always been a mentor, never a rival. This was something new. It was also full of risk. His partnership with Sextus in their illicit business was the only way Julius could get his hands on the extra money he wanted. It would be foolish to jeopardize that. Sextus knows how to use a knife too, he thought. But even so, he was not sure he was going to obey the order.

Besides, he had already sent the letter.

When women saw Julius, they smiled. People sometimes took him for a sailor; there was a freshness and innocence about him that suggested a young mariner just on shore. “He’s a manly fellow,” the women would laugh.

He was twenty, just under medium height – his legs were a little short for his body – but very strong. His sleeveless tunic revealed a wiry torso hardened by training. Julius was very proud of his body. He was a good gymnast, and down in the port where he worked unloading the boats he had already made a name for himself as a promising boxer. “I’ve never been beaten yet by anyone my size,” he would claim.

“You can knock him down,” the bigger men would say admiringly, “but he just keeps getting up.”

His eyes were blue. His nose, though it started on its downward journey as though it intended to be aquiline, suddenly became flattened just below the bridge. This was not, as might be supposed, the result of boxing. “It just grew that way,” he would cheerfully explain.

Julius was marked, however, by two more striking peculiarities. The first, shared with his father, was that while his head bore a mass of black curls, at the front he had a patch of white hair. The second was that his hands had webbing between the fingers. It did not greatly worry him. Down at the port they affectionately called him “Duck” because of it. Often when he boxed they would cry: “Come on, Duck. Knock him in the water, Duck.” A few wits would even quack when he won.

Above all, it was his personality that the women liked. There was something so merry, so full of life in those blue eyes that looked out so eagerly upon the world. As one young matron was heard to remark: “There’s a nice young apple, just ripe to be plucked.”

Julius’s infatuation had not begun at once. Two months had passed since he and Sextus had first seen the girl. But once seen, she was not easy to forget.

There were all kinds of people in the port of Londinium. Vessels came in bearing olive oil from Spain, wine from Gaul, glassware from the Rhine, and amber from Germanic lands by the eastern, Baltic Sea. There were Celts of all kinds, blond Germans, Latins, Greeks, Jews, and olive-skinned men from the Mediterranean’s southern shores. Slaves in particular might come from anywhere. The Roman toga might be seen beside a costume full of African colour and another bearing Egyptian ornaments. The empire of Rome was cosmopolitan.

Even so, the girl was unusual. She was two years older than Julius, and almost as tall. Her skin was pale, her hair yellow, but instead of being long and piled with pins like the other girls, it grew in tight curls close to her head. This and her slightly broadened nose indicated her dark-skinned ancestry. Her grandmother had been brought as a slave to Gaul from the African province of Numidia. She had small, very white teeth, rather uneven. Her eyes were blue, shaped like large, rounded almonds, and they had a strange, smoky quality. When she walked, her slim body had a wonderful, rhythmic grace denied to the other women of the port. They maliciously said her husband had bought her in Gaul, but nobody really knew. Her name was Martina.

She had been sixteen when the master mariner had decided to marry her. He had been fifty, a widower with grown children of his own. He had moved from Gaul to Londinium the previous year.

Julius had seen the mariner. He was a large, powerful man, strange to look at. His head was completely devoid of hair, and a profuse network of tiny broken veins all over his body and face made his skin look blue, as if tattooed. He and the girl lived on the south bank of the river, in one of the little houses strung out along the roads that led from the bridge towards the southern coast.

The trade of the port was busy. Despite his age, the mariner was active and often away in Gaul or visiting the ports by the great River Rhine. He was away now.

Julius had reason to be hopeful. Sextus was quite successful with women. He had been married, but the girl had died and he seemed in no great hurry to marry again. In his slightly patronizing way he had told Julius that he meant to have the mariner’s young wife, and Julius had thought no more about it. Sextus had found out about the mariner’s sailings and discovered how to get into his house at night unobserved. He liked to plan his seductions like a military operation. The girl, however, was hesitating. “The fun of the chase,” Sextus had remarked, and continued his campaign.

So it had surprised Julius when, parting from himself and Sextus by the bridge one day, the girl had squeezed his hand. The very next day, down at the quay, she had gently but deliberately brushed him as she walked past. Soon after, she had remarked casually: “Every girl likes to get a present.” Though she had said it to Sextus, she had glanced at him, Julius was sure of it.

But he had had no money that day, and Sextus had given her some sweetmeats. A few days later, when Julius had tried to speak to her alone, she had smiled but walked away, and after that ignored him.

It was then that his infatuation began. He started to think about Martina. As he unloaded the boats, her smoky eyes seemed to hover in the rigging. In his mind’s eye, he saw her rhythmic walk and it appeared infinitely seductive to him. He knew that Sextus was closing in on her, but the mariner had been at home until recently and he was almost sure his friend had not succeeded with her yet. He imagined himself instead of Sextus slipping into her house under cover of darkness. And the more he brooded, the more this infatuation developed a life of its own. That wonderful musky scent – was it something she put on, or did it emanate naturally from her body? Her feet had seemed a little large to him at first, but now he found them sensual. He longed to feel her short hair, to take her head in his hands. And more than anything, he thought of that long, lean, flowing body. Yes, he would like to discover that.

“But would you want her if she didn’t run away? That’s the question to ask yourself about a woman.” Julius had never mentioned the girl to his parents, but this was the remark his father had suddenly made the other day. “I can see some woman’s leading you a dance,” he had continued. “I hope she’s worth it.” Julius had laughed. He didn’t know. But he meant to find out.

And Sextus’s warning? It was not in his nature to make cold calculations. Julius was too full of life to weigh the risks of all his actions. Besides, he was an incurable optimist. It’ll all work out, he decided.

The fat girl sat by the street corner. She did not want to sit there, but they had told her she must. She had brought two folding stools with her, upon which she had slowly let herself down. They had given her a loaf of bread, some cheese and a bag of figs. Now she sat, placidly enough, in the warm sun. A little dust had collected on her. By her feet, a litter of crumbs and fig skins suggested that she had consumed the bread and cheese and five of the figs.

She was eighteen, but had already grown to a size that would have been impressive in an older woman. Her first two chins were well developed and a third was taking its place beneath them. Her mouth was wide and turned down at the sides, where a little juice from the figs had gathered. She sat with her legs apart, her dress falling loosely over her bosom.

It always seemed to Julius that there was something mysterious about people who were very fat. How did they come to be that way? Why were they usually so content to remain so? To such a fit young fellow it seemed very strange. Indeed, when he looked at the fat girl he occasionally used to wonder whether behind her massive passivity, there might lurk a secret rage. Or could the mystery be deeper yet? At times it was almost as though, knowing something about the universe that was hidden from the rest of mankind, the fat girl was content. To sit, eat, and wait. In expectation of what? Who knew? Yet perhaps the greatest mystery of all was this: how did the fat girl come to be his sister?

For sister she was. From the age of about nine, though, she had gradually grown bigger and bigger, retreating from the busy world of sports and games that Julius and his friends enjoyed in a way that baffled her family. “I don’t know how she got like that,” his father would say in puzzlement. Though round and rubicund now, he had never been fat; nor had Julius’s mother. “My father always said he had an aunt that was very big,” he would remark. “Maybe the girl gets it from there.” Wherever it came from, it was clear that her condition was there to stay. She and Julius had had little to say to each other as the years progressed; indeed, she seldom spoke to anyone, though she was amenable enough to do things like keep watch without asking questions, as long as she was given something to eat.

Now, therefore, as the afternoon wore slowly on, she sat eyeing the empty street and dipping into the bag from time to time to draw out another fig.