Enemy of Rome (35 page)

The Spaniard’s dark eyes swept the area around them, taking in the little groups of Praetorians covering every junction. Rome was already a city under siege. ‘He’d be stupid not to be.’

They reached the Vicus Longus and Valerius brought the bullock cart to a creaking halt.

‘I still think this is a bad idea,’ Serpentius muttered as he bent to tie the pig’s tether to the body of the cart.

‘Somebody has to sell the estate produce,’ Valerius shrugged. ‘And you’ll get a better price than I will. You know what to do?’

‘Oh yes,’ the Spaniard said sourly. ‘First I sell the pig …’ He saw Valerius’s look. ‘All right. I check out the house up by the Temple of Diana on the Aventine for word of the lady Domitia. If I don’t find out anything there, I seek you out at the villa of your old mate Gaius Plinius Secundus.’

Valerius nodded. ‘It’s up on the Esquiline, not far from the Fountain of Orpheus.’ If anyone knew what was happening in Rome, it would be Pliny. He’d been surprised when Titus had mentioned his old friend’s name as they’d discussed possible contacts in Rome. But Pliny had acted for Vespasian in some dispute with the Empress Agrippina in Claudius’s time and they were still friends. Titus stressed there were no guarantees that Plinius would help them, but he believed the lawyer favoured Vespasian over Vitellius. Valerius’s first instinct had been to search for Domitia himself, but he knew it would have condemned him as selfish and immature in her eyes. She retained her father’s sense of duty and honour. What was the love of two people when balanced against the thousands or tens of thousands of lives that might be saved if he could only persuade the Emperor to stand down? ‘Before I approach Vitellius I need to know how things stand on the Palatine and in the Senate. Things may have changed since Cerialis was here last.’

‘Just be careful.’ Serpentius looked around as the street began to fill up with people going about their business. ‘I’ve found that the older we get the more difficult it is to stay alive.’

With just a hint of a salute the Spaniard was gone, the cart disappearing in a crowd heading down towards the pig market outside the Porta Salutaris. Valerius hesitated for a moment, shook his head ruefully and took the left fork towards Subura, down through the shallow valley between the Quirinal and Viminal hills. The persistent rain ran down his neck, making him shiver. He pulled up his hood and hugged his cloak tighter about him, dodging the nameless filth that flowed from the narrow alleyways into the gutters. It felt strange to be walking these familiar streets in another man’s clothes. Each corner he rounded carried the threat of meeting someone he knew, or who knew him, and he instinctively pulled the hood close to hide his features. All it would take was a single shout. The chances of talking his way out of trouble were low and it would have been suicide to try to smuggle even a fruit knife past the guards.

But the hood had its disadvantages. A less wary man on such a mission might have ignored the rain and kept it back. Then, he might have noticed the similarly clad figure who slipped from a doorway and followed in his footsteps. Civil war breeds spies and informers the way a shaggy dog breeds fleas in summer. The spy couldn’t even tell you who he worked for. He suspected it was the prefect of the Praetorian Guard, because his contacts had changed with each change of regime, even the subtle changes within changes that few people would notice. Then again, perhaps he was in the pay of the
vigiles
, the city police, which would make his ultimate paymaster Titus Flavius Sabinus, brother of the man whose forces were even now marching on Rome. But that was no concern of his. All that mattered was that he got paid and his family was fed. It would have surprised him to know that he was actually employed by a small group of clerks in the Palatium. They were pragmatic men who’d long ago recognized that knowledge was the currency of survival and whose network of agents kept them informed of any potential upheavals in their ordered lives. It had seen them through five changes of Emperor and would see them through many more.

Not that any of this mattered to the spy. He was a good spy. Not young or old. Not tall or short. Just ordinary. This was his city and you could see a hundred dull, bovine faces like his on any Roman street. It made him invisible.

Each market-day morning he made it his business to be at the corner of the Alta Semita and the Vicus Longus. The guards at the Porta Collina might change, but the spy was ever present. As always, he searched for something that didn’t fit. Something a little different. A mannerism that changed from one day to the next. Someone in more of a hurry than usual. Today’s sighting had been so obvious that at first he’d wondered if someone was trying to trick him. The spy had an excellent eye for faces. He knew everyone who came down this road at this time of this day. Sometimes faces would alternate, sometimes they would disappear for a few days. He’d never seen these faces before. A whip-thin, dangerous-looking character who walked with a stoop, but inexplicably straightened after he’d tied the pig to the cart. And the other, the one with the scarred face, who cultivated an air of peasant servility until he spoke to the first man, when his manner changed completely. Actors playing a part, was the spy’s first thought, and the spy knew all about acting a part. After that it was just a question of which to follow. They made the decision easy for him. No one went on a clandestine mission leading a bullock cart and trailing a pig.

He kept pace with the figure in front, never letting him get far enough ahead to be out of sight, or have the opportunity to dodge into one of the narrow alleyways that honeycombed this district. He favoured the shadows beneath the shop awnings, sometimes on one side of the street and sometimes on the other. The way the other man varied his pace and stopped occasionally only made him smile because it confirmed his initial suspicions. Someone who also knew his business. Someone valuable. He meant the man no harm. He would follow him until he had his meeting, and, depending on the circumstances, perhaps to another rendezvous. After that what he needed was a fixed point of reference, or perhaps to get a signal to one of the patrols with whom he occasionally worked. They’d keep the man under guard until he’d made his report. Then it was up to them. Whoever they were.

He was so focused on his target that he had no warning of the arm that whipped out and dragged him into the alleyway. Not that it mattered, because he knew what was going to happen as soon as he felt the iron talons hooking into his flesh. Such a pity, he thought as he felt the sting of the knife across his throat and heard the roaring sound of his own death in his ears; he had been a good spy.

Serpentius wiped the curved knife on the man’s cloak and walked quickly away. The instinct that something wasn’t right was buried so deep that he’d almost missed it. He’d left the cart with a beggar with the promise of a denarius if it was there when he came back, and that he’d find him and cut out his heart if it wasn’t. He’d known Valerius’s route and the spy hadn’t been difficult to spot. He wasn’t a very good spy, after all. A good spy would have looked behind him.

Pliny’s house on the Esquiline Hill was an impressive three-storey affair that spoke of many years of inherited wealth and many more of benign neglect. The door was guarded, if guarded was the correct term, by a genial, slightly malodorous straw-haired creature as tall as Valerius, but broad as a two-horse cart in the shoulders. No doubt a retired veteran of Pliny’s German auxiliary unit. With a grin that displayed teeth like a row of toppled standing stones the guard asked him his business before ambling inside to inform his master.

Valerius glanced around the small square to see if he could identify his watcher. He’d sensed the man’s presence a few minutes after he’d left Serpentius and been perplexed when he’d disappeared. The square was enclosed by lime-washed walls, and over-loud vendors shouted their wares from every side. At one corner a pustuled beggar pleaded for a crust, but his eyes never stopped searching for a carelessly stowed purse. On another, attendant slaves waited for their masters in any blessed shelter they could find. Slowly, the minutes passed and he wondered if the servant, or more likely Pliny, had forgotten him. He sat down in the shelter of an orange tree and allowed his mind to wander.

He woke with a sharp cry of alarm. In the dream, his remaining hand had been hacked off by a fiery-breathed figure from the Otherworld who seemed to be a mixture of Vitellius and the Christus god. He flexed his fingers to make sure they were still in place and smiled. Fool. It was just a nightmare. Only then did he notice Gaius Plinius Secundus. Tall and thin, with a strong, dark-jawed face and bright inquisitive eyes, the former soldier stood over him with a quizzical smile and his writing block in his hand.

‘You looked so peaceful that I didn’t like to disturb you, and when you began to talk to yourself I thought it was a phenomenon worth studying. I hope you don’t mind?’

Valerius raised himself to his feet, attempting to rub the dirt from his tunic. He was grateful the other man had decided not to notice his diminished circumstances or mention the other reason a former military tribune might turn up at the house dressed as a farm servant. ‘I hope I didn’t disappoint you. I was only dreaming.’

Pliny’s eyes took on a distant look. ‘Dreams can be most interesting. I like to try to interpret them, but I’ve never been particularly successful. I could try with yours if you’d allow me to?’

Valerius shook his head. ‘No, Pliny. I don’t think that would be very productive for either of us.’

‘Another time, then.’ Pliny took the rebuff cheerfully. ‘Fascinating, though, how the dream manifests itself in the physical reaction of the subject. Your hand, for instance, was twitching in a manner that I’ve only ever seen in one that had been cut off during a battle …’ He froze with a horrified stare at the stump of Valerius’s right wrist. ‘Oh, dear. I’m so sorry, my boy. I’d completely forgotten. You will never be able to forgive me, I’m sure. Please, if you can still bear my company, come inside.’

Valerius smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘If I was to make an enemy of everyone who forgot I left my hand in Britannia, Pliny, I wouldn’t have any friends left.’

Valerius knew he must choose his moment well. Pliny devoured time the way a lion devoured its prey. Always on the move, always thinking, always taking notes on the little wax tablets he kept in his sleeve. A man who habitually lived a few moments in the future and occasionally forgot he needed to deal with the concerns of the present. Despite the age difference, the two men had always got on well as a result of their shared experiences in the legions. Valerius had served in Britannia, and Pliny, who was fourteen years the elder, had commanded auxiliary units for a decade in Germany. By rights, Pliny should have been enjoying a profitable procuratorship in some faraway province, but the gossips said he preferred not to attract the attention of the unpredictable Nero. Instead, he’d busied himself with unspectacular cases in the basilica. Plainly, he’d decided to maintain a similar low profile during the short reigns of Galba and Otho. By the time Vitellius had taken the throne Pliny’s old friend Vespasian had already been hailed Emperor by his troops. Safer for the moment to stay at home with his library of several hundred books and his modest law practice.

‘What did you think of the treatise I sent you on the cavalry’s use of spears? I’m still not sure I’m right about the proper grip when closing with a mounted enemy.’

‘I could see nothing out of place, Pliny,’ Valerius assured him as they embraced. It had been more than two years and he was surprised the lawyer remembered. ‘Although I know a few Thracian cavalrymen who would dispute the priority you give to mounted archers.’

Pliny led the way through a maze of corridors. At first glance, the interior of the house was a mirror of Pliny’s mind: chaotic, cluttered, ungovernable and filled with pointless rubbish. But delve a little deeper and order might be discerned amongst the chaos. The scrolls piled three deep on a table in the reception area, for instance. Now that Valerius looked he could see each was labelled with its place of origin: Alexandria, Antioch, Athens and Atlantis. A bust of Aristotle weighed down one of the philosopher’s own works. Pliny saw his glance and beamed. ‘One of his lesser known pieces on zoology, and below it Zuma, for the African beasts. Ah,’ his eyes found another treasure, ‘I know you’ll find this interesting. Herodotus, a first edition, and Thucydides, a little battered but still serviceable. Do you still have your copy?’

Valerius shook his head with a smile. ‘No, I left it in Britannia.’ The truth was that it had burned with the rest of Colonia as he’d watched from the compound of the besieged Temple of Claudius.

‘One day I hope to read and catalogue them all; bring the whole world together: history, geography, botany, zoology and geology in one single book of many volumes.’ The lawyer sighed wistfully. ‘But sometimes it seems such an enormous undertaking.’

As they walked deeper into the house, Pliny showed off his treasures. ‘Of course, this place once belonged to the poet Pedo,’ he said proudly. He pointed to a faded wall painting of a fleet of ships on a dull blue strip that seemed to represent a river. ‘A depiction of your hero, Germanicus, on his way to the northern ocean. Pedo recorded the voyage in one of his works, though it wasn’t one of his best.’

Valerius picked up an oddly shaped piece of ivory, black with age, which lay haphazardly on top of a cabinet, but Pliny quickly retrieved it and placed it reverently back in position.

‘The horn of a monoceros, a quadruped which exists only in farthest India.’ He frowned. ‘For some reason our only examples have come from the ocean, in fishermen’s nets, or washed upon the shore, so perhaps they also have the capacity to breathe underwater?’

Skulls and skeletons, stuffed animals – some familiar, some outlandish – strangely shaped fish made of stone and the bones of some gigantic animal, greater even than the mighty elephant. And in pride of place an onyx box which Pliny opened reverently, but bade him not to touch for his life.