Saviour of Rome [Gaius Valerius Verrens 7] (46 page)

Serpentius had taught Valerius that footwork was as important to a swordsman as the blade in his hand. Now Valerius put all the gruelling hours of practice into effect. He spun clear in a pirouette that positioned him for a savage backhand. If it had landed perfectly the blow would have taken the top off Harpocration’s skull as if it was an egg. The Parthian managed to sway out of killing range, but the point of the sword scored a bloody line across his eyes.

The Parthian reeled away shrieking as he realized he was blinded. He clawed at his face with his left hand, but he still had the presence of mind to retain his sword in the right. He staggered backwards sweeping the blade from side to side in a desperate bid to survive. Valerius disarmed him with an almost casual flick of the sword point and kicked him in the chest so he fell on his back. For a moment he stood over his enemy, breathing hard, staring down at the ruined features of the man who had planned to torture him to death.

In that moment it occurred to him that a life condemned to eternal darkness was what Harpocration deserved. But that was not Gaius Valerius Verrens’ way. He lifted the sword and plunged the point into Harpocration’s throat with enough force to sever his spine. Blood spurted the length of the blade and the Parthian jerked and flopped like a stranded fish before going still.

Looking down at the dead man, Valerius felt terribly weary, weary unto death. Then he remembered Serpentius.

The Spaniard lay on his back a dozen paces away with Tito kneeling at his side. The younger man had his head bowed as if he was listening. Valerius approached them and Tito looked up, his hatchet face a rictus of anguish and his cheeks wet with tears. Shaking his head, he rose slowly to his feet and walked away.

Valerius took his place, wincing at the dark stain on the Spaniard’s tunic; he’d never felt such helplessness and despair. He reached to pull the torn cloth aside but Serpentius’s hand came up and his fingers gripped Valerius’s wrist so fiercely the Roman thought they would tear the flesh.

‘No point.’ The former gladiator managed to open his eyes. ‘I’ve
killed enough people to know when I’m dead. My sword?’

Valerius reached for the fallen blade and placed it in his friend’s hand. ‘Hold on,’ Valerius whispered. ‘Pliny will send his personal
medicus
.’ Serpentius closed his eyes and gave a grunt that might have been a laugh. Valerius had always thought of the Spaniard as a big man; now he realized that his size was an illusion created by his strength and his speed and his presence. He bit back the sob that filled his chest and turned it into a cough.

Serpentius’s eyes opened again and he stared at Valerius’s face as if memorizing it. ‘Cold.’ The word was so indistinct Valerius almost missed it. The Spaniard let out a long sigh and Valerius had a moment of panic-stricken terror, but the grey eyes brightened a little and the gravel voice rallied. ‘You saved me.’ A desperate urgency filled Serpentius’s words. ‘And you freed me. But I was never so free as when I fought by your side.’ His voice faded and he sounded almost puzzled. His final words emerged as one long sigh. ‘I’m going home.’

Slowly, the iron grip slackened and the lifeless fingers fell away. When Valerius could bear to look the Spaniard’s grey eyes had already dulled. Gaius Valerius Verrens knelt over the body of Serpentius of Avala, a prince of his tribe, a slave, a gladiator and a friend, and wept.

The Valerius books are works of historical fiction, but I take great pride in ensuring that the historical foundation for the novels is as sound and accurate as I can make it. Most are based on recorded events, such as the Boudiccan rebellion, the Year of the Four Emperors and the Siege of Jerusalem.
Saviour of Rome
is different. There’s no historical evidence for the large-scale theft of Roman gold mined in northern Spain in
AD
72, or a potential rebellion in the province aimed at destabilizing and replacing Vespasian. Yet the conditions existed for just that scenario.

As the historian Suetonius makes clear, the Emperor Titus Flavius Vespasian faced a financial crisis in the earliest period of his reign, and this despite the vast amount of gold booty taken from the Temple of Jerusalem – the evidence of some of it still visible on the Arch of Titus in Rome. Partly that will have been the result of the depredations of the Year of the Four Emperors – the civil war that raged in the western part of the Empire in
AD
69 – when tax revenues would have been drastically reduced and farming yields cut. Devastated communities required to be rebuilt; Vespasian’s son Domitian famously handed out money to pay for the rebuilding of Cremona, which had been razed to the ground by his father’s troops under Marcus Antonius Primus. There was also the expensive matter of reconstructing the Temple of Jupiter
on the Capitoline Hill, burned down, by accident or design, when the Emperor’s brother and Flavian loyalists took refuge there from the troops of Aulus Vitellius. Worse, the profligate spending of Emperor Nero, whose death by suicide ignited the civil war, had left the Empire close to bankruptcy. Silver and gold coins minted during the latter years of his rule contained up to fifteen per cent less bullion than their face value suggested. Vespasian needed money to pay his troops and the Praetorian Guard, or he wouldn’t be Emperor for long, for regular handouts of bread to keep the mob happy, and to build the great monuments, like the amphitheatre that people would come to know as the Colosseum, without which his reign would be regarded as irrelevant. He needed the Spanish goldfields producing at full capacity.

Yet the war, and the Batavian revolt on the Rhine frontier which paralleled it, had left Hispania denuded of troops. A few cohorts of legionaries were scattered across the country to provide security for the mines, the storehouses, and the convoys that carried the gold on the first leg of its journey to the Treasury in Rome. Vespasian had shown he wasn’t impressed by the Rhine legions by disbanding two and refusing to re-establish others that had been wiped out. He couldn’t trust those which had followed Vitellius, and the two generals who had won him the Empire were now deadly rivals with ambitions of their own.

One person he did trust was Gaius Plinius Secundus, better known to history as the naturalist, historian and all-round polymath, Pliny the Elder. Pliny’s writings show he undoubtedly spent time in Spain, probably during the period Valerius is there, and it’s believed he was governor of Hispania Tarraconensis. He amassed an encyclopedic knowledge of the country’s plant and animal life, its geology, and the tribes and sub-tribes who inhabited its various regions, including Asturia. More importantly for me, he also left behind a wonderfully detailed treatise on Roman gold-mining techniques in Spain, and the terrible conditions the miners endured, which is well worth reading.

It was more difficult to find the detail that would allow me to paint an accurate picture of Serpentius’s people, but they’ve left enigmatic clues in the wonderful gold work they produced before the Romans came,
and the remains of the stone
castros
– small defended settlements – that litter the hills of Asturia. What is clear is that in the aftermath of the Cantabrian Wars, when Augustus was forced to send no less than eight legions against them, the survivors were driven from their homes and forced to live in Roman-ruled settlements where they could provide labour for the mines that would provide the Empire’s gold.

The best evidence for what happened next, and the incredible destructive power of
ruina montium
, is provided by the World Heritage Site at Las Medulas. Great swathes of the mountains have been quite literally torn apart in the search for gold, to leave a stunning, almost Martian vista. The effect is awe-inspiring and if you’re in the area it shouldn’t be missed.

As Pliny says, an emperor’s favour is not to be disdained, but being an intimate of the Imperial family seems to have brought Valerius nothing but trouble. Yet Vespasian, pragmatic, self-deprecating, efficient and decisive, was exactly what Rome needed after Nero and the upheaval of civil war. He was ably assisted by his son, Titus, and, possibly, by Titus’s brother Domitian, whose reputation I probably do no favours in these books. But every hero needs a nemesis, and I doubt Domitian is finished with Valerius yet.

Britannia awaits, rekindling long forgotten memories and providing further opportunities for glory with the campaigns of Julius Agricola … but the ghosts of the past are stirring.