Defender of Rome (12 page)

The talk of love reminded Valerius that she belonged to his father. ‘He had me. He has Olivia.’

‘You were lost to him.’ She said it quietly, making no accusation.

They came to the pool, as he had known they would. He tethered the horse to a tree with enough play on the reins to allow it to drink. For a time there was nothing but silence and the song of the river. They stood a little apart. Ruth was entirely at ease, but Valerius found himself trying to untangle the knot of conflicting feelings she awoke in him. Desire was one, mixed up with the beginnings of a deep, almost brotherly affection, but it was not the strongest. No, the most powerful feeling she inspired in him was a sense of his own inadequacy. She had an almost mystical quality; a disturbing ability to reach deep into his soul. When he was with her he felt ashamed of what he was and what he had done. He wanted to tell her everything: about Nero, Torquatus and Petrus, Maeve and Cearan and the bloody field of Colonia; but somehow the words wouldn’t come.

Ruth saw his confusion, but affected not to notice. Instead, she continued her story. ‘One day we went to the city and he heard a man speak of goodness and love and of another man who sacrificed himself so that all men could be blessed with them. The man came to us and spoke to your father. I do not know what he said but your father wept and asked the man to pray for him.’

‘The man was Petrus?’

‘Yes, Petrus the healer. He who was chosen by Christus and made holy by him.’

‘And was my father healed?’

‘Later, he asked me to take him to meetings and after a time he took the blood and the body of Christus. Then he was healed.’ Valerius felt his gorge rise as he remembered Nero’s chilling warning about drinking the blood of children. She saw his look and her face turned serious. ‘It is not what you think. We only take watered wine and thin bread. But God is pleased to consider it the blood and body of Christus.’

‘Why are you telling me this? You do not know me at all. I may be your enemy and I am certainly a danger to you. I need to find Petrus and I must save my father from the enemies who will hurt him if they can.’

‘Your father has already been saved; that is why I am telling you. When you meet Petrus you will be faced with a choice and only by understanding will you make the correct decision. You think of us as the enemies of Rome and your first instinct is to strike out against us. But what are you defending Rome against? We seek only to spread the word of God and bring peace and harmony to all men, Jew and Gentile. Is that so terrible? Rome can be a hard mistress for a man with a conscience, and many a true Roman has listened to the word of the true God and been converted.’

He listened to her voice and imagined he heard the sound of another speaking. Was this some trick of Petrus to win him over to the cause of Christus? Yet there was an obvious transparency and honesty to Ruth, an inner quality he thought must be what men called goodness, that convinced him she was sincere. He still couldn’t afford to trust her, but surely he could afford to listen to her?

‘It seems I do not know my own father.’

‘Your father is a fine man. When I came, he was stern, but now he knows peace.’

‘You have been good to him,’ Valerius said.

‘I have been as a daughter to him,’ she replied, answering his unspoken question.

‘I don’t understand. I thought you hated me. In the street after the boy spoke—’

‘We are taught not to feel hatred,’ she interrupted gently. ‘Only love, but I feared you would betray your father. I was confused. Then I saw that you, too, were a good man beneath the armour you wear to protect yourself along the path God has chosen for you.’

He opened his mouth to deny it, but before he could speak she glanced across to where the fast water entered the pool. ‘I was baptized in a place like this. But I was young and I have only a slight memory of it.’

Valerius frowned. ‘Baptized? It is not a word I know.’

‘It is one of our rituals. Your father has not yet experienced it. I do not truly understand its purpose, only that to enter the kingdom of God one must have been first immersed in water, and that to be baptized is to be saved. Jesus was baptized by John beneath a waterfall. Some say it is enough to pour water over the supplicant’s head, but Petrus believes that only by covering the entire body is the ceremony complete. Wherever he goes, he seeks out a waterfall.’

‘Can you help me reach Petrus?’

She hesitated, studying his face intently before coming to a decision. ‘I will do what I can, but the final choice must be his,’ she said. ‘When I receive word of our next meeting I will contact you.’ She touched his hand and then she was gone, the blue dress disappearing among the trees by the river. Valerius stood for the time it took to recognize the sensation that threatened to overwhelm him. Loneliness.

Later, on the road back to Rome, he was conscious of a curious mixture of elation and confusion.
He was lost, but now he is found
. He understood now what she had meant by it, but not in the
way
she meant it. A miracle had happened. He’d found something he believed he had lost for ever.

But would he be allowed to keep it?

XVIII

NERO’S INVITATION COULDN’T
have been more inconvenient. At best, it would be an evening of excruciating performances by the Emperor and his latest artist friends, the braying actors and falsetto-voiced singers who jostled each other to inform him how talented he was. At worst? Well, Valerius would find out. The memory of their last meeting was still fresh and the thought of the questing tongue and rank breath turned his stomach. He had spent the last hour with Fabia, in a vain attempt to unravel the mystery of Cornelius Sulla’s disappearance, and had looked forward to an evening at home. The venue, the circus Caligula had built on the Vatican meadows on the far side of the city, could hardly be worse placed. It made a theatrical or musical performance less likely, but with Nero it was impossible to tell. The arena was mainly used for the horse and chariot races the Emperor loved. Perhaps he was planning to hold a chariot race in the dark.

‘Still no sign of Cornelius or the girl,’ Marcus reported as Valerius readied himself to leave.

‘Don’t worry, they’ll turn up. Cornelius will probably make an appearance at the entertainment tonight.’

‘Do you want us to watch your back?’

He shook his head. ‘No. I doubt Rodan will get up to any mischief. Take the others to a tavern for the evening. We’ll meet tomorrow to decide what to do next.’ He saw the scarred gladiator hesitate. ‘What is it?’

Marcus shrugged. ‘Serpentius has offered to stay in the house to make sure your sister is safe.’

‘That’s good of him. He can find a bed in the slave quarters.’

‘That’s what he’s planning. Only I think he’s become a bit sweet on that girl of yours. A pretty little piece.’

Valerius smiled. ‘He’ll find Julia is a little piece with sharp claws if he tries anything on with her. She knows her own mind. The Snake might have his tail chopped off. But I still think it will do no harm to have a man like Serpentius about the house.’

He sent a servant to check if his chair had arrived and walked through to Olivia’s room. Julia sat by the bed where his sister lay as pale as any ghost. The girl gasped when she saw the tall figure silhouetted in the doorway.

‘I’m sorry I scared you,’ he said reassuringly. ‘I came to tell you that Serpentius will be staying tonight to guard you both. He may look an intimidating character, but he has a good heart.’

She nodded. ‘I like him. He makes me giggle. But I sense a darkness in him; he is almost as frightening as you.’

Frightening? He almost laughed at the thought, before he realized how true it was. In many ways he’d become as stern as his father, all the lightness driven from him by his experiences in Britain and the strains of Olivia’s illness. ‘You have no reason to be afraid of me, Julia.’

‘I wanted to tell you.’

‘I’m glad you have. I promise to change.’

‘No, I don’t mean that. I mean about your father.’

The room seemed to go very still. Outside, beyond the shuttered windows, he could hear the sound of voices and knew the chair had arrived, but he ignored it.

‘What about my father?’

‘He made me promise not to say anything. When you asked me if we had visitors, I lied. He has been coming to sit with Olivia once or twice each week since she became ill. I wanted to tell you, but …’

Valerius placed his hand on her shoulder and turned her face to him. He brushed the tears from her cheek with his fingers. ‘Poor Julia, caught between two horrible, frightening men. No wonder you’ve been so sad lately.’ And poor Father, so determined not to appear weak that he couldn’t allow the people he loved to know how much he cared for them. ‘I have to go now. Look after Olivia for me.’ He bent down and kissed her on the forehead.

Four slaves carried the chair and made good time through the centre of the city and across the Pons Vaticanus to the west bank of the Tiber. Trees lined the pathway from the bridge to the circus and, among them, men stacked wood for the bonfires that would light the guests home at the end of the night. To his right, he passed the curious Meta Romuli, the narrow pyramid that marked where Romulus was said to be buried. Ahead loomed the walls of the circus, which was grander, but not greater, than the mighty Maximus on the other side of Rome.

The chair men set him down and he arranged to be picked up by the bridge at the second hour after dark, when Nero’s invitation stipulated the evening would end. An imperial aide conducted him along a narrow, tiled corridor to the far end of the circus. Other guests were arriving, but not as many as he would have expected for an event like this. It was obviously to be a select gathering, and he wondered again why he’d been invited. He noted three former consuls and any number of senators and their wives, most of whom were pleased to look down their noses at him. But a few recognized him as a Hero of Rome and he exchanged bows with the elegant patrician Laecanius Bassus, who had just taken over the consulship from his deadly rival Regulus.

Eventually, a crowd of close to a hundred gathered in the grand hall which opened out on to the imperial and senatorial boxes. Valerius accepted a cup of wine and retired to a corner where he wouldn’t need to make polite conversation with people he didn’t know. He’d been standing there for a few minutes when he detected a sweet scent in the air and felt a malevolent presence at his side.

‘I’m surprised you are not showing off your trophy, my hero. Surely this would be just the occasion to impress people with the Gold Crown of Valour?’ Rodan wore a broad smile and made no attempt to disguise the mockery in his voice. His ego, never buried too deep, was as inflated as a startled puffer fish. Rodan was pleased with himself and that didn’t bode well for someone.

Valerius ignored him and Rodan nodded absently. ‘The Emperor and lord Torquatus are grateful for your efforts.’

A simple statement which contained no overt threat. So why did it carry the chill of a dagger point rattling across a skeleton’s ribs?

Before Valerius could react a fanfare sounded, and Nero, in a toga of imperial purple and with a gold laurel wreath clinging to his sparse hair, descended the broad staircase with Poppaea Augusta at his side. He smiled benevolently at all around him, but his wife’s face displayed nothing but coldness and indifference. She might have been walking through an empty corridor for all the attention she paid to her surroundings. Valerius knew Fabia enjoyed Poppaea’s company, but he felt an instinctive dislike for the Emperor’s wife. She created a barrier around herself that was as impenetrable as a legionary
testudo
and her eyes hinted at a capacity for petty cruelty. She glanced towards him and he noted a flash of recognition before the emotionless mask returned. Suddenly the room felt a much more dangerous place. Servants appeared with golden platters of food and the aristocrats fell like carrion birds on dishes of roasted song thrush, delicately fried tongue of lark and flamingo, and white-fleshed moray eel. As the wine flowed, the atmosphere became more intense and expectant, and the chamber filled with heat and noise. Valerius slipped away from Rodan and found his senses swamped by a sea of scarlet faces, bulging, intense eyes and ceaseless, self-important conversation. He allowed his mind to return to the pool with Ruth and it was a few moments before he realized the room had gone quiet and Nero was speaking. He was talking about Christus.

‘… the weak and the gullible follow a charlatan cast out by his own people; the so-called Son of God brought to earth. A common criminal tried and found guilty under Roman law at the instigation of a Judaean council too timid to bring him to justice themselves.

‘And now they are among us, yes, perhaps even among us here, burrowing into the very foundations of the Empire like rock-worms eating away at the stones upon which Rome is built. These followers of the man Christus would tear down our temples and cast out our gods, but I … will … not … allow … it. They believe they are hidden from us, but our eyes are upon them. The man they revere claimed he could perform miracles, and they believed him. He promised them eternal life, but to achieve this eternal life they must first be willing to experience death.
I
rule Rome and
I
, not this Christus, will grant them their wish.’

At his final words the great doors at the far end of the room were thrown open and Nero and Poppaea led the way out to the viewing platform which looked along the length of the circus. Valerius held back, but Rodan appeared beside him and took his arm. ‘Oh no, my hero,’ he said cheerfully. ‘The Emperor has ordered a special place set aside for you. Think of this as a lesson as much as an entertainment.’

Reluctantly, Valerius allowed himself to be led to the front of the great curved balcony that dominated the western end of the arena. The soft, ethereal haze that heralded dusk was settling over the city, but it would not be dark for another hour. Ahead of him the circus stretched away for five hundred paces, a narrow oval of hard-packed sand split by a central spine with a turning post at each end and an enormous carved stone obelisk in the centre. To his right was the lavish imperial box where Nero whispered into Poppaea’s ear. Away to his left were the seven bronzed dolphins of the lap counter. Tiered stands overlooked every yard of the circuit and the track on either side of the spine appeared so narrow it was difficult to imagine four- and six-horse chariot teams overtaking each other, but Valerius had seen the Reds and the Greens matched wheel to wheel at the corner. Today the spectators were to be treated to a different spectacle.

The near end of the circus, between the closest turning post and the curved platform, had been turned into a separate arena by a twelve-foot fence of metal bars. As he watched, Praetorian guards herded a huddle of terrified prisoners into the centre of the open space. There must have been close to twenty of them, more men than women.

‘Only six or seven of them are followers of the Judaean,’ Rodan whispered. ‘The rest are condemned criminals, but it is the example that matters, don’t you think? Do you see anyone you recognize?’

Valerius froze. What did he mean? He frantically studied the men and women, but they were massed so close together it was difficult to identify individuals. Then he caught sight of a hank of silver hair and a slim, familiar figure. He half rose, but a sharp prick at his ribs stopped him. He looked down to find Rodan holding a small dagger he’d taken from the folds of his tunic.

‘No heroics today. We have more work to do, you and I.’

Valerius knew Rodan wouldn’t dare kill him without Nero’s sanction and he was ready to leap on to the sand to his father’s rescue. But, when he looked again, he had a clearer view of the silver-haired man. It wasn’t Lucius, but a much older person. Rodan grinned at him and he reluctantly resumed his place beside the Praetorian, his heart numb with dread.

Nero stood to address the captives, his querulous tones ringing around the empty circus.

‘You worship one god to the exclusion of all others. Where is your god today? Let him show me a single sign that he loves you and I will spare every one of you.’ He paused, studying the sky like a bad actor in a Greek tragedy. ‘You see, there is no sign, and there will be none because your god only exists in your own minds, which have been warped by those who lead you. The man you follow claimed to be the son of that false god, but he was a mere deceiver who dazzled simple country dwellers with crude conjuring tricks. He rebelled against Rome and was a traitor to his own people. He promised to save you, yet he could not even save himself. He offered you eternal life and you believed him.’ He waved his hand with a flourish and a door swung open in the opposite side of the arena. His plump, perspiring face hardened and Valerius had never seen anything so pitiless. ‘I grant you your wish.’

A lion roared, a thundering growl that seemed to shake the very stones of the circus and was quickly joined by the throat-tearing cough of a leopard. The beasts, five lions and two of the spotted cats, must have been starved for days because they didn’t hesitate as they burst into the light towards the little group huddled in the centre. A collective cry that tore Valerius’s heart rose from the captives and now the herd instinct that had held them together was broken by sheer terror. They splintered in every direction, a few sinking to the ground and raising their arms in supplication, but most fleeing in mindless panic, pleading for mercy they knew would not be forthcoming.

The old man Valerius had mistaken for his father died on his knees as a lioness tore his screaming head from his shoulders with a single twist of her enormous jaws. Blood sprayed bright across the sand. A muscular giant with a red face and heat-scarred arms faced up to a charging leopard, his features set in a determined scowl, but even a blacksmith’s strength counted for nothing against a big cat’s power. He went down under her weight and her rear legs stripped out his guts in a dozen frenzied sweeps as he howled in disbelief at the outrage done to his body. The wild beasts killed and killed again and the surviving prisoners clawed at the walls and the bars. All except one.

Cornelius’s girl.

The dark-haired figure hadn’t been visible among the huddle of prisoners, but now Valerius saw her running for her life, crying out for the laughing guards to take the cloth-wrapped bundle she held in her arms. A few paces away a lioness tracked her progress, the glowing yellow eyes never leaving her prey. The girl knew she was doomed, but she refused to give up. She ran on round the inner wall until some instinct brought her to the point where Valerius now stood hard against the balcony. Helplessly, she looked up at him, much too young, the face he recognized from the brothel turned ugly by fear. Among the cries of ecstasy and gasps of horror around him, he heard her shouted plea. ‘Please, sir, take my baby. If not me, at least save my child.’ Terror made her voice brittle and the words came out in a rush. With shaking hands she held the tiny bundle high, so Valerius could see the small dark eyes and pink, grizzling features. ‘Please!’

The big cat covered the ground in three enormous bounds, but the girl was driven by the speed of despair. In the very moment the lioness struck, she launched the baby upwards with every ounce of her remaining strength. Valerius saw it come, a featureless mass, the swaddling wrap fluttering loosely around it. The girl’s dying screams filled his ears as he stretched as far as he could reach with his left hand. He felt his fingers close on the coarse brown cloth and for a single heartbeat the baby’s weight was in his control. Relief washed through him as he drew the bundle towards the wall. But he had reckoned without the blood-hungry gods of the arena and they would not be denied. Slowly, the blanket began to unravel, uncoiling one relentless fold at a time from the doll-like figure it protected. Frantically he reached out with his other hand, but the lifeless wooden fist could find no grip on the child’s arm. A voice screamed inside his head as the soft thud of the child’s body on the sand was instantly followed by the snarls of two cats fighting over a morsel of prey.