Sword of Rome (17 page)

Laco glared at him. ‘If there was, I’m sure you would know better than I. Some foolishness about a new house and meeting the builders. A new slight to the Emperor that I will be sure to report. The man never did have any manners.’

Valerius thanked him equally tersely and considered what he’d been told. If Otho had bought a new house it was the first he’d heard of it, and given his precarious financial position it seemed an unlikely tale. On the other hand, it could be something perfectly innocent that Otho didn’t want to air in public. Yet every instinct told him something wasn’t right. Careful not to be noticed, he slipped away from the temple to the guardhouse at the top of the Clivus Palatinus where he had arranged to meet Serpentius. He found the Spaniard sitting in the shade of a cypress tree talking to Juva, the big Nubian from the naval militia. His quarry was about to be swallowed by the crowd on the Via Sacra; there was no time for pleasantries. ‘I want you to follow Otho. I need to know who he meets and where he goes.’

Serpentius was on his way before Valerius had finished speaking. Juva started after him, then called out as Valerius turned to go back up the hill. ‘There is something you should know. The militia has been summoned to the Praetorian barracks. Someone came this morning with an order releasing us from arrest.’

Juva disappeared after the Spaniard, leaving Valerius with another puzzle. Galba had rescinded his order to send the sailors and marines directly back to their base at Misenum and agreed to reconsider their case. But why would he order them to the Praetorian barracks, where a single word could reignite the violence of the Milvian Bridge? The only way he would find out was by asking Vinius or Laco, and that would have to wait until after the ceremony.

He started back towards the Temple of Jupiter with a growing feeling that his world was about to fall apart.

Serpentius slipped so easily through the crowds awaiting the outcome of the divination that Juva had trouble staying with him. Only the Nubian’s great height allowed him to keep the Spaniard in sight till he caught up. Otho remained fifty paces ahead with Onomastus and two of his lictors as they passed the House of the Vestals and the Regia.

‘If we end up in the open, drop back,’ the gladiator muttered from the side of his mouth. ‘You’re a bit too conspicuous for this kind of work. Following people is an art.’

Juva shrugged. ‘I thought I might be some help if you got into trouble, old man.’

‘If I wasn’t on business, I’d cut your balls off and make you eat them for saying that. Maybe later.’

‘You could try,’ Juva growled. The big man continued to watch Otho’s progress. ‘He’s turned left. Do you think he’s going to the rostrum?’

Serpentius glanced up at the black man. ‘Maybe you are good for something after all.’

He increased his pace. They were in the very heart of the Forum, in the shadow of the Capitoline Hill, with the great bulk of the
tabularium
off to their right and the Rostrum Julium with its captured ships’ beaks to their left. Serpentius expected Otho to carry on towards the law courts in the Basilica Julia, which would be crowded with lawyers,
prosecutors, jurors, the guilty and the not quite guilty, but the former governor of Lusitania stopped by the ‘golden milestone’ in front of the Temple of Saturn. Serpentius noticed immediately what another man would not. A group of around twenty men dressed in cloaks stood by the temple steps and their wary, tense faces and the way they carried themselves marked them immediately as soldiers. As he drew closer he recognized Mevius Pudens, a tribune of the Guard, at their forefront.

‘Trouble,’ he whispered to Juva. ‘You watch our backs.’

He edged nearer as Pudens and another of the waiting men approached Otho and began a short, animated conversation. He heard the words ‘late’ and ‘hurry’. But Otho seemed paralysed. He waved an incredulous hand at the group by the steps as if he couldn’t believe how few they were.

‘There is no turning back now,’ Pudens declared, and to prove it he swept back his cloak and drew his sword. ‘Hail Caesar.’ The shout was clearly a signal, because more swords appeared and the cry was taken up in twenty throats. Someone brought forward a
sella
and Otho was bundled into the chair before it was picked up by four stout Praetorians and carried off past the astonished faces of senators who had emerged from the Curia to discover what the commotion was.

For a moment, Serpentius couldn’t believe what he was seeing, but in a crisis the Spaniard’s mind was as swift as his actions. He turned to Juva. ‘Find master Valerius and tell him exactly what has happened. They’re heading for the Castra Praetoria and he should meet me there when he can.’

Without looking back, he hurried off after the cheering Praetorians and their burden. Otho had recovered sufficient poise to wave and smile fixedly at the mystified bystanders as the little procession passed. Within minutes Serpentius noticed a curious phenomenon. The incident had begun with fewer than thirty men – barely enough to start a riot, never mind a rebellion – but by the time they crossed the Vicus Longus that number had doubled, and more were joining all the time. A few brandished swords, but more followed with quiet determination, out of curiosity and self-preservation; what was happening here could affect them and their families and the more they knew the safer they
would be. They emerged from the Subura to be joined by a new influx, among whom Serpentius recognized a few with the broad shoulders and blue tunics that marked the sailors and marines of the disgraced naval militia.

As they stumbled through the streets after the raised chair, rumours danced through the crowd like mini-wildfires; stories and half-truths bouncing from man to man, adding to the confusion and changing shape and meaning as they went. Serpentius could hear the voices around him.

‘What’s happening?’ someone demanded.

A big man in a smith’s leather apron replied. ‘They say there’s a new Emperor.’

‘What happened to the last one, the old man?’

The smith shrugged. ‘He must be dead.’

‘The Emperor’s dead?’ The lawyer marching to Serpentius’s right sounded sceptical, but the cry was taken up by the man next to him and the reverberations rippled out like rings from a stone thrown into a pool.

‘The Emperor’s dead.’

‘Hail Caesar!’

‘Who is it?’

‘The new Emperor.’

‘But who?’

‘Must be the boy he adopted,’ the smith said. ‘The rich one. Maybe he’s going to hand out some of his cash.’

The man next to him grinned. ‘In that case I don’t care who he is. Hail Caesar.’

As they approached the Castra Praetoria, Serpentius pushed and snarled his way forward until he was marching to the left of the chair. When he looked up he saw a curious mixture of terror and elation on Otho’s face. The patrician’s skin was the colour of a long-dead fish’s belly and sweat ran down his cheeks, but his eyes glowed with an almost mystical light, as if the creature inside was experiencing a different event from the vessel that held it.

‘Hail Caesar!’ The refrain was taken up by a crowd now several
hundred strong and they swept through the gates into the barracks as the tribune on duty watched helplessly. Serpentius could only look on in admiration. Otho had taken Rome’s most powerful citadel without the loss of a man or a drop of blood. The question was: could he keep it?

The sacrifice of the second bull had just been completed. This time Umbricius declared the omens favourable, as well he might. One attempt to shape Imperial policy was permissible; a second could be fatal. In any case, the Emperor was paying for the bulls. The unfortunate animal had been cut up into small portions, for the gods, and larger parts which would be cooked and eaten later at the sacrificial feast, with the best cuts naturally going to Galba and his favourites. Valerius experienced his usual reaction to the scent of roasting meat: an unlikely mix of hunger and nausea occasioned by the memory of Messor, the young legionary who had been nailed to the door of the Temple of Claudius and burned to death within feet of those trapped inside. He was thinking about how to take his leave when he noticed the tall figure arguing with the guards at the temple gate.

‘Juva,’ he called. The two guards recognized the one-handed man in the formal toga and moved aside. Valerius stepped close to the Nubian, so their conversation couldn’t be overheard. ‘What’s going on?’

Juva explained what he had seen, making no attempt to interpret it, but stressing Serpentius’s plea for urgency. Valerius felt the blood drain from his face. It was starting. He glanced across to where Galba was completing the final rituals of the sacrifice. Was he aware of what was happening? No, of course not. He could see from the complacent faces of Vinius and Laco that nothing was amiss. A moment’s hesitation, almost of pain, but there could be only one decision. Otho was a friend, but Corbulo had taught Valerius that honour and duty were obligations that must always rise above friendship. He nodded to Juva to stay where he was and made his way towards the consul and the Praetorian prefect, forcing himself not to hurry and trying to work out what to say without starting a panic. The fate of Rome might depend on the next few moments.

Laco’s expression transformed into a snarl as he approached, but Vinius read the seriousness in his face. ‘What is it?’

Valerius took them aside. ‘A section of the Guard have proclaimed Marcus Salvius Otho Emperor. They are carrying him to the Castra Praetoria and may already be there.’

‘Impossible,’ spluttered the Praetorian commander. ‘I would have known.’

‘You idiot,’ Vinius sneered. ‘You wouldn’t notice a rebellion if it started under your fat belly. The Emperor must be told.’ He rushed off towards the altar, but was forced to wait while Umbricius made the final prayer to Apollo for an auspicious start to the new year. When he was able to whisper the news, Valerius saw Galba’s face go grey and he seemed to shrink inside his toga.

The Emperor hurried across to join Valerius and Laco, with Vinius in his wake. He called Icelus and Piso across to join them and asked Valerius to repeat exactly what he had been told.

‘So.’ A relieved sigh escaped his lips. ‘There are only a few of them?’

‘I was told twenty or thirty, but they are on their way to the Castra Praetoria.’

‘The Guard will not allow the usurper entry,’ Laco said confidently.

‘How can you be sure?’ Vinius demanded. ‘It is the Guard who are taking him there.’

‘A few rotten apples.’

‘It was a few rotten apples who brought down Nero,’ the consul reminded him.

‘What must we do?’ Galba sounded exactly what he was, a confused old man.

Valerius listened in frustration to the dithering. By now the crowd of senators, priests and visiting provincial dignitaries had noticed what was happening and a rumble of unease ran though them. Eventually he could take no more. ‘Act,’ he urged the three men. ‘Act now. Gather the palace cohort and march on the Praetorian barracks. If there are only a few of them, they won’t fight. Guarantee them their lives and you can still negotiate a settlement. Offer Otho the option of exile.’

‘And if there are many?’

‘If there are many you have enough men to lay siege to the barracks. Bottle them up inside and give their blood a chance to cool. You buy time and an opportunity to negotiate. If Otho had the support of the whole Guard they would be here now, not at the camp. He can’t have gathered all ten thousand of them or Laco would know about it. They’ll still be about their normal duties outside the city. I doubt if there can be more than four thousand men at the Castra Praetoria.’

‘But how can we be certain of the palace cohort’s loyalty?’ Laco demanded.

‘Because they are here and not there.’

‘I will talk to them.’

Valerius blinked at Piso’s unexpected intervention. ‘This is a time to act, not talk,’ he said forcefully. But Galba had already leapt at the opportunity to delay a decision that might force him to declare war on his own Praetorian Guard. Valerius used the interval to send a message to Juva to go back to Serpentius for the latest news. While he fumed, Laco paraded the officers and men of the palace guard outside the temple gates and Galba and Vinius discussed the possibility of drafting in the other troops in the city.

‘What about the urban cohorts and the
vigiles
?’

‘Policemen and firemen,’ the Emperor said dismissively. ‘Their loyalty lies with whoever pays them, which is currently Titus Flavius Sabinus. They have never rebelled in Rome’s history, but neither will they face the Praetorians.’

Vinius thought for a few moments. ‘The naval militia are in their barracks. If we guarantee them their eagle, they will follow you.’

Galba brightened, but Valerius stepped forward before he could speak. ‘Someone has called the naval militia to the Praetorian barracks. Otho is no fool. If they’ve obeyed the summons, he may already have taken their oath.’

The Emperor froze. For the first time it seemed he realized the true peril he faced. Now was the time to take action. Any action. To delay could be fatal. But suddenly Piso rushed to the temple steps and started addressing the assembled soldiers and the opportunity was gone.

Valerius’s frustration grew with every word the young man spoke.
Around him, the cream of Rome’s aristocracy stood waiting for some sign of leadership. Beyond the temple walls he could hear the rumble of growing discontent and demands for information from the mob who had gathered to hear the now forgotten result of the divination. Piso’s lanky figure towered over the massed ranks of Praetorians as he harangued them in a powerful voice about the choice between honour and shame. They stood at the crossroads of history, he said. They could save the Empire’s reputation and that of their corps by supporting Galba, and expunge the deeds of a few deserters. Otho had condemned himself by his own words and actions. The guardsmen listened with blank faces. Only when he hinted at finally paying the gift they had been offered seven months earlier did he get a reaction. The Praetorians pointed out that if they’d got the money in the first place the Emperor would not be in this position today. At the end, there was no cheering, only a sullen, leaden silence and Galba dismissed them to their barracks because he couldn’t trust them to march on their brethren.