Avenger of Rome (44 page)

Valerius spent the next hour with Serpentius explaining the general’s arrangements while he bathed, dressed in a fresh tunic and shaved. He and Domitia would travel as man and wife, with Serpentius as their servant. ‘We’ll be merchants, reasonably well off, but not rich enough to attract attention, and we travel light. The lady may be accompanied
by
her slave girl, but she can take enough baggage only for a single pack horse; tell her I suggest money and jewels, anything that is small, portable and valuable. She can replace her wardrobe in Alexandria.’

The Spaniard winced. ‘Tell her?’

‘All right, I’ll tell her myself. Mucianus will track us down and it’s possible that even Vespasian won’t be able to protect us. We have to be prepared for that. We may have to run again.’ He sent Serpentius into the city to buy appropriate clothes and food for the sea voyage. Then he went back to Corbulo.

Domitia was leaving the general’s room when he reached it. She was clutching a piece of parchment, but as he held out a hand to her she looked at him with a mixture of anguish and disbelief and he was forced to watch her retreating back as she fled to her quarters.

He found Corbulo at his desk, dressed in a senator’s toga with its broad purple stripe. The general’s eyes were fixed on the
gladius
that lay on the worn desktop as if the gleaming iron had hypnotized him. At first Valerius thought it was a simple soldier’s sword, with a leather-wrapped wooden grip and an iron blade the length of a man’s forearm. Then he noticed the familiar silver pommel with the Medusa head. The triangular point was bright from recent sharpening. Still, for all its pedigree it was the weapon that had won Rome control of the world. A killing weapon.

Corbulo saw his look. ‘Yes. A sword that has never been dishonoured. Is it not fitting?’ He closed his eyes. ‘I can remember the first man I killed. A tribesman on the Rhenus who objected to my cohort burning his village. It seems a long time ago. A lifetime.’ His voice was flat and arid, like the desert wind hissing across a billion grains of sand. ‘You understand why I have brought you here?’

The atmosphere in the room was suffocating, the last moments before a thunderstorm; the very air crackled with energy. Valerius found he had lost the capacity for speech, but the choked sound that emerged from his throat was confirmation enough.

‘I will not die like some geriatric in a warm bath. But I do not wish to die alone.’ Corbulo looked up sharply. ‘It is not fear. I have come to value your … companionship. A soldier’s companionship.’

He moved to pick up the sword, but it was as if it had just emerged from a furnace and his hands recoiled from the heat. Valerius noticed them shaking and looked away, but a whispered word brought him back to the man at the desk.

‘Failure.’ Rome’s greatest general raised his eyes to meet his gaze and the bleakness there tore Valerius’s heart. ‘I have been a failure. A dozen battles, a thousand skirmishes, ten thousand dead, and for what? A general has his day in the sun. An Emperor bathes in his glory. Nothing. The same terms we had been offered by the Armenians and the Parthians ten years ago. The only true victory was the last battle against Vologases and Nero intends to wipe … it … from … history. No honours for the brave, living or dead, just a sandy grave and a secret order that no man who fought at Cepha should ever be allowed to return to Rome.’ His features contorted as if he could already feel the iron in his heart. ‘A failure and a coward. I was too afraid to lose my honour to do what was right. A Corbulo does not have the luxury of choice? A Corbulo is only a man and every man has a choice.’

‘It is not too late.’ Valerius was never sure whether he spoke the words, but, in any case, Corbulo ignored them.

‘They would have followed me, but I failed them. I should have stood before my legions and accepted their acclamation and marched on Rome. You were right. Vespasian would have covered my rear, the eagles would have flocked to my standard and I would have been Emperor before Nero ended his final performance in Greece.’

‘It is not too late.’

Corbulo looked up and said, ‘It is time.’ Now the hand that picked up the
gladius
was steady. He moved to a padded couch by the window, where he lay back, his eyes fixed on the ornate ceiling. Valerius could hear birds singing. He wanted to scream at them to stop.

‘Strange how the world has never seemed so bright.’ The general laid the sword aside and pulled back the folds of the toga to reveal a pale expanse of skin. ‘Here?’

‘No,’ Valerius said gently, pulling the folds lower. ‘Here.’

Corbulo picked up the sword again and placed the point against his stomach, just below the breastbone, and angled it up towards his heart.
Valerius
turned his head, not wanting to see. He waited, but nothing happened for a few moments until the silence was broken by a whisper.

‘I am not sure whether I have the strength.’

Valerius took a deep breath and turned to find Corbulo’s eyes on him. He shook his head. Do not ask it.

‘Would you deny me the mercy you showed my assassin?’

He didn’t answer because there was no answer.

‘Place your hand over mine.’ In a dream he sat on the edge of the couch and wrapped his fingers around the shaking hands that held the sword hilt. They were bony and cold, an old man’s hands. Instinctively, Valerius adjusted the angle of the sword a little and Corbulo muttered a quiet ‘thank you’. ‘On the count of three.’

Valerius looked into his general’s face and saw a mixture of gratitude and apprehension. Sweat dimpled his brow, but there was no fear. He had followed this man to the very heart of war and he would have followed him to the grave if he had only asked.

‘One.’

He closed his eyes and took a breath.

‘Two.’

The hands beneath his fingers tightened their grip.

‘THREE.’

With all their combined strength they forced the sword into Corbulo’s resisting body. Valerius felt the moment the point sliced through the outer layers of flesh and into the sucking grip of the muscles just below the surface, then the moment of freedom before it found the beating heart. Corbulo gasped and let out a long agonized groan as the iron entered the very centre of his being. His whole body shuddered, but still the hands beneath Valerius’s fingers forced the sword ever deeper into the pulsing muscle that held his soul. The shuddering intensified, and then, with a final sigh, he was free. It happened so quickly, that irreversible journey from life to death, that Valerius barely registered it. A towering beacon extinguished for ever in a single moment. Rome’s greatest general, her greatest hope, was gone, sacrificed on the altar of her Emperor’s paranoia.

He tried to stand, but his shaking legs wouldn’t hold him, so he sat,
motionless
, filled with a terrible emptiness. His mind screamed at him that time was running out; he must get to the galley with Domitia before Mucianus or one of his agents learned of Corbulo’s death. Still his body would not obey. He was conscious of the still figure at his side, but he couldn’t accept it for what it was. The mighty intellect. The indomitable character. Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo had seemed indestructible. It didn’t seem possible that he was dead. In that moment he made a promise to himself that was more binding than any oath. If he had to travel to the ends of the earth or walk through fire, if it made him a traitor to Rome or an outcast of the Empire, he would avenge this man. Somehow, Nero would die. When the room eventually stilled and he was able to rise, he discovered that his fingers were still locked around the dead hands on the sword hilt. He used the wooden fist of his right to prise them free and walked towards the door knowing what it was to be old.

As he reached it, a thought occurred to him and he turned to the cabinet holding Caesar’s Tower. He studied the pieces for a few moments, his mind automatically memorizing their positions. When he was satisfied, he picked up the small blue token Corbulo had favoured and tucked it into the pouch at his belt.

Historical Note

If Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo did fight a last battle, it has indeed been erased from history. Yet, as
AD
66 drew to a close, all the elements were in place for it to happen. With his brother Tiridates in Rome embracing Nero’s dubious friendship, King Vologases of Parthia had one final opportunity to gain what he had struggled for more than a decade to achieve. The bulk of Roman forces in the east were entangled in a savage and bloody rebellion in Judaea that had forced Corbulo to strip the Syrian frontier of the legions which defended it. The road to Tigranocerta and Artaxata was open.

The question I set out to answer in this book was why Nero, at a time when he was beset by conspiracies and with Judaea in flames, should have ordered his most loyal and respected general to commit suicide. There are suggestions in the histories that Corbulo had been implicated by his son-in-law in one of the plots against the Emperor, but this seems to be backed up by little in the way of evidence and certainly not enough to condemn him. Nevertheless, Nero gave the order, even though he must have known that by doing so he not only weakened his armies in Syria, Cappadocia and Judaea, but also risked turning the legions against him. If Corbulo wasn’t safe, who among his commanders was? Corbulo was, above all, a fighting general; his campaigns in Armenia are textbook examples of a soldier at the peak of his powers. Unfortunately those campaigns took place over several years and before Valerius would have been available to witness them. I
needed
a battle which encapsulated Corbulo the man and the soldier, and, let’s be honest, an opportunity for Valerius to do what he does best. Fight.

The Cepha gap exists, though not by that name, and provided the perfect place for an outnumbered army to stop a superior Parthian invasion force in its tracks. Tragically, the road which leads to it from the Tigris crossing at Hasankeyf will soon, along with the city and the many historical sites associated with it, be submerged by a new and controversial dam project. Titus Flavius Vespasian, the future Emperor, probably did not reach Egypt to take over the Judaean campaign until later in
AD
67, although his son Titus was there. History records that Corbulo travelled to Greece before he died, but for narrative reasons I have him take his life in Antioch and I hope I’ll be forgiven for that rewriting of history.

Glossary