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questioned. And of the two, the second would be the surer and simpler method.’
    Flavius spoke in a dead-level voice that somehow gave all the more desperate earnestness to his words. ‘Caesar, I beg you to listen to us. We were no more than a spear-throw from our men, it was more than half light, and neither of us is blind. We could not have been mistaken. If indeed the other man was not Allectus, then it must be that for some purpose of our own we deliberately bear false witness against him. Do you accuse us of that?’
    Allectus himself answered first, with the quickness of anger. ‘That is assuredly the most likely explanation of your behaviour. What you yourself have to gain by this I cannot imagine—it may be that your cousin has influenced you in some way—but as for our Junior Surgeon,’ he turned to Carausius, ‘I remember that when first he was posted here, you yourself, Caesar, were not too sure of his good faith. This is surely some plot of Maximian’s, to cast doubt and suspicion between the Emperor of Britain and the man who, however unworthily, serves him to the best of his ability as chief minister.’
    Justin stepped forward, his hands clenched at his sides.
    ‘That is a foul lie,’ he said, for once without a trace of his stutter. ‘And you know it, Allectus; none better.’
    ‘Will you grant me also a space to speak?’ Carausius said quietly, and silence fell like a blight on the lamplit chamber. He looked round at all three of them, taking his time.
    ‘I remember my doubts, Allectus. I remember also that the dawn-light can be uncertain, and that there are in Rutupiae more tall, fair-haired men than one.—They will all be questioned in due course.—I believe that this has been an honest mistake.’ He turned his attention to the two young men. ‘However, I, Carausius, do not tolerate such mistakes, and I have no further use for the men who make them. Tomorrow you will receive fresh postings; and it may be that life on the Wall will keep you better occupied and save your over-active fancies from leading you into such mistakes again.’ He picked up the scroll that he had been studying when they first entered. ‘You may go now. I have no more to say.’
    For one instant neither of the two made any move. Then Flavius drew himself rigidly to attention, and saluted. ‘It is as Caesar commands,’ he said, and opened the door and walked stiffly out.
    Justin followed him, carefully closing the door at his back. On the far side of it, he heard Allectus’s voice beginning, ‘Caesar is too lenient—’ and the rest was lost.
    ‘Come to my sleeping-cell,’ Flavius demanded, as they crossed the parade-ground under the great pharos.
    ‘I will come by and by,’ Justin said dully. ‘There are men needing me in the hospital. I must see to them first.’
    Tomorrow they would be no affair of his, those men; but tonight he was the surgeon on duty, and it was not until he had made his round of the men in his care, that he went to join Flavius.
    Flavius was sitting on the edge of his cot, staring straight before him; his red hair ruffled like the feathers of a bird with the wind behind it, his face, in the light of the wall lamp overhead, drawn and white and angry. He looked up as Justin entered, and jerked his head towards the clothes-chest.
    Justin sat down, his arms across his knees, and for a while they looked at each other in silence. Then Flavius said, ‘Well, so that is that.’
    Justin nodded, and the silence settled again.
    And again it was Flavius who broke it. ‘I’d have staked all I possess that the Emperor would have given us a fair hearing,’ he said moodily.
    ‘I suppose coming out of a clear sky, it would be hard to believe that someone you trusted could betray you,’ Justin said.
    ‘Not for Carausius,’ Flavius returned with certainty. ‘He is not the blindly trusting kind.’
    Justin said, ‘If the Sea Witch puts in again to pick up that Saxon, maybe our galleys will get