Sword of Rome (7 page)

She shook her head. ‘I will be safe enough. I have a protector who will provide me with guards.’ She saw his look as the alternative meanings of the word ‘protector’ registered and gave a bitter laugh. ‘No, Valerius, he would not dare. He was part of the escort General Vespasian provided from Alexandria. Now he follows me around like a devoted puppy, but sometimes … sometimes I see a look in his eyes that troubles me. When this is over I will send the puppy away with his tail between his legs.’

‘And who is this … protector?’

This time the laugh was genuine. ‘Surely you’re not jealous, Valerius? That was in another lifetime. He is seventeen, just a boy.’ He could have reminded her she was the same age when she had become his lover, but he doubted she would see the irony. They talked for a while longer, tiptoeing around the subject that linked them like one of the shackles binding the prisoners in Nero’s death cells beneath the Palatine. It was not his place to raise it, and when Domitia declined the opportunity he sensed the interview was at an end. They rose together, somehow coming closer than either intended. He could smell the scent of the perfumed oils on her body, and something more subtle below it.

‘Was that the only reason you came, Valerius, to warn me?’ She said it lightly enough, but the words made his head spin. When he spoke he seemed to have pebbles in his throat.

‘No. I wanted to see you again, for one last time.’

There was a moment – a long moment – when he wondered if she wanted him to take her in his arms and kiss her. He wanted it, and he knew she knew he wanted it. But neither moved. Eventually, her face twisted in a grimace that might have been pain or regret and she reached out her right hand to place something in his left. He looked down at the blue Caesar stone polished by the touch of Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo’s fingers.

The whispered words were so faint that, afterwards, he wondered if he had heard them at all.

‘Restore his honour, my Hero of Rome. Finish it.’

Later, the only thing Valerius would recall clearly of that night was the walk from the Aventine to the Clivus Palatinus where he found Serpentius waiting. The rest was like being at the centre of someone else’s dream. An impossible drama played out in an alternative world.

‘You know what to do?’

The Spaniard nodded. ‘We have all the exits covered, including one or two only Tigellinus knew about.’

‘If he comes out, you follow him and send word to me,’ Valerius warned him. ‘There’s to be no trouble in the city. It’s unlikely the mob will support him, but we can’t afford to take the chance. His marines are still loyal. If they’re drawn into a fight with the Praetorians there will be a massacre.’

‘So this is what it’s like to make history?’ Serpentius shivered despite the warmth of the evening. ‘It feels as if the gods are blowing on the hot coals of a dying fire. Will it make a difference?’

Valerius thought of all the years of opportunity squandered under Nero’s rule. The thousands of dead souls now crying for revenge. Had it been any different under Claudius? Or Caligula? Or Tiberius? ‘I hope so.’

The Spaniard straightened. ‘Then that has to be enough.’

Valerius took a deep breath and walked swiftly to the gate, where the palace guards stepped aside without acknowledging his presence.

‘Nero has abandoned the Golden House,’ Tigellinus had said at their most recent meeting. ‘He feels safer on the Palatine, surrounded by people he can trust. No one will stand in your way. He has been told an officer will report the latest situation. Phaon, his freedman, and a few of his slaves will not abandon him, but neither will they oppose you.’

The receiving room was as Valerius remembered it, vast and intimidating, with the great marble statue of Laocoön and his sons being tormented by pythons dominating the left of the chamber and bathed in light as he opened the double doors. Only the right side of the room, around the golden throne set atop a dozen stairs, was properly lit, as if the throne’s owner wished to remain blinded to the reality that lay beyond the reach of the lamps. The throne was empty.

Valerius stepped inside, closing the door behind him, and stood in the darkness, listening. At first there was nothing apart from the soft swish of a fan attempting to stir life into the thick, heat-heavy air. Then he heard it, a low muttering from the far side of the room, beyond the open windows that led to the balcony. He focused on the sound and walked towards it, placing each step to minimize the noise of his nailed sandals on the marble floor. Gradually the words became clearer.

‘I am lonely, Mother.’ The voice of a young man, soft and pleading. ‘Why did you desert me? All I ever wanted was to please you.’

‘Please me?’ Another voice, this time high-pitched, a woman’s. ‘Why, you murdered me, ungrateful child, stabbed me on the shore; hard stones in my back and my blood mingling with the salty sea.’

Valerius shivered as he listened.

‘Not me, Mother. Some fool who overstepped his orders. You deserved so much better than that tawdry end.’

‘And Seneca, who was your friend, was that also a mistake?’

‘I miss Seneca.’

‘And Britannicus?’

‘Did I ever make you proud, Mother?’

‘What mother would not have been proud of a son like you? Each time you sang, you sang for me. Every triumph, you dedicated to me.’

‘Mother?’

‘Yes, Caesar?’

‘What must I do?’

The shrill voice was replaced by an urgent hiss. ‘Run, Lucius. You must run and never stop.’

‘There is nowhere to run.’ Valerius’s voice had all the finality of a marble tomb closing. He stepped from the shadows and the stocky figure on the balcony froze, silhouetted against the dying light, his eyes bulging, pale with fright. All the blazing glory and deadly threat that had made him the object of awe and fear was gone now. Where there had been an Emperor, now there was only a man.

‘You?’

‘Yes, Caesar.’

‘You should be dead.’

‘I come with a message from Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo.’ Even in the gloom Valerius saw that pallid flesh grow paler. ‘He bears you no ill will, despite the calumnies you heaped upon him. He seeks no revenge, though I, for one, would not hesitate to avenge him. All he asks is that you act with the nobility of your line. It is finished. Today the Senate decreed that you should be scourged to death. You have seen men scourged; backs bared to the bone and flesh in tatters. Could you stand the kiss of leather and iron? And even if you escaped that, what fate awaits a man forsaken by his people? Fight and you will lose. They will tear you apart for the horror you brought upon them. Run, and they will find you, wherever you flee.’

‘Alexandria …’

‘Vespasian will send you back.’ Valerius kept his voice hard and unflinching; the voice of a judge passing sentence. ‘Africa? The governor is loyal, but how long can he protect you? The rest have already deserted you. You are an Emperor without an Empire. There is only one way.’ Valerius reached beneath his cloak and drew his sword from its scabbard. It was the cavalry sword Corbulo had given him so long ago. He remembered the long, eagle’s face, the comforting certainty; the dying breath.

Nero saw the sword and ran shrieking from the room.

The road was familiar, the old Via Salaria that led out to Valerius’s family estate at Fidenae, but he did not need to travel that far. Serpentius was waiting by a gateway with a troop of Praetorian cavalry and he recognized the entrance to the villa owned by Nero’s freedman.

‘He came here with Phaon and four others. Slaves, we think,’ the Spaniard informed him. ‘The place is surrounded. There’s no way out.’

Valerius nodded. He reached into the pouch at his belt and his fingers settled on the small blue stone Domitia had placed in his hand. Corbulo’s master piece in Caesar’s Tower. He picked it out and weighed it for a few moments before disappearing into the darkness of the walled garden. Serpentius heard a short squeal of terror and the horses shuffled nervously at the sound. The screech of an owl made his fingers automatically form the sign against evil before the sound of voices left him oblivious to all else.

‘Will you never leave me alone?’

‘I will follow you to the ends of the Empire if need be. You have too much blood on your hands.’

‘So it must be now?’

‘Yes, it must be now.’ Was it some night creature or the soft hiss of a sword being drawn?

‘Here?’

‘No, here would be better.’

‘Will it hurt?’

‘Only for a moment.’

‘I cannot.’

‘You must.’

A sharp cry followed by soft, pitiful sobbing. ‘See, I cannot. Help me, my Hero of Rome.’

‘For Rome.’

The words were followed by a prolonged wistful sigh; the kind of sigh a great actor might make before leaving the stage for the final time. A shadowy figure reappeared, stooping to wipe something on the long grass. The Spaniard went to stand at his friend’s side. ‘So it is finished?’

Valerius looked to the north, where the wolves of the Rhenus were gathering. He remembered the limitless ambition in Otho’s eyes. Galba’s bony hands shaking as they unrolled Vespasian’s scroll. How long would those hands be able to keep their grip on the Empire’s reins? A peal of thunder broke the silence and lightning flashed over the distant hills. All the ingredients for mischief and the gods were already stirring the cauldron. ‘What if this is just the beginning?’

At first it went well. Galba, typically, did not move until official word of his acclamation by the Senate reached him in early July at Clunia, in the north of Hispania. Only when he had the sealed leather scroll in his hand did he don the purple cloak and begin his march. Another man would have hurried to Rome before someone stepped in and tore the prize from him, but the Emperor-elect was a patrician who took the trappings of his new status seriously. With the recently constituted Legio VII Galbiana, a barely trained rabble of Spanish peasants under Roman centurions and officers, in the van, he made his stately way across southern Gaul, while Otho cursed at his side. All this Valerius would discover later, along with more sinister intelligence of which he was about to receive forewarning.

Fortunately for the new Emperor, the man most likely to usurp his position, Verginius Rufus, had been among the first to accept his elevation, before retiring with his Rhenus legions to Moguntiacum. Rufus kept his command, for the moment, but Fonteius Capito, governor of Germania Inferior, had not been so fortunate. Unable to make up his mind whether to support the new Emperor, he had been accused of treason and executed by two of his own officers. It helped that most Romans perceived Galba as a great statesman; also that he was old, and therefore unlikely to be around for long. Since he had no
living children there would be no Galbanian dynasty, but a judiciously chosen heir in whose selection they might have some say. Valerius had a feeling they would be disappointed.

Throughout July, the tension eased from the city like air escaping from an overblown goatskin, but by August, with the heat bouncing from Rome’s walls like a furnace and the Senate acting like rabbits at the mercy of an imaginary weasel, the populace became increasingly impatient. And none more so than the naval legion.

‘They should have sent them back to Misenum,’ Serpentius said balefully as he and Valerius passed another tavern brawl involving men in blue tunics. Having spent the two months since Nero’s death kicking their heels and waiting for something positive to happen, the two men were as frustrated as anyone else in Rome. Even the Spaniard found the relentless heat and dust of summer oppressive, and the Tiber, never the most sweet-smelling of streams, filled the whole city with the reek of an open sewer.

‘The Senate is frightened to make a decision,’ Valerius pointed out. Normally the senators would have left the city in August for their holiday homes at Baiae, Neapolis and Oplontis, but with the advent of a new regime none had dared. ‘Any decision. An Emperor ordered the marine legion’s creation and now only an Emperor can decide their future. They are neither one thing nor the other, and, worse, they are frightened. When Nero called, they volunteered, to stop one man. Galba. That man is now their Emperor and Emperors are not known for tolerance or mercy. Their future is uncertain at best and painful at worst.’

‘Then why don’t they run?’

‘If they run, it will prove their treason and Galba will hunt them down, as Crassus hunted down Spartacus. Their greatest strength is in their unity and a display of their loyalty. If they can convince Galba they are worthy of his trust and he has the sense to accept it, perhaps we will yet see them march behind an eagle.’

‘Aye,’ Serpentius spat. ‘And perhaps one day when I back the Greens they will win.’

It was towards the end of the month, and still with no sign of Galba, that Valerius decided to visit his sister Olivia at the family estate at Fidenae, to the north of the city. Conveniently, it also allowed him to meet another obligation.

They could hear the laughter from the wayside tavern long before they reached it. A single bullock cart stood in the yard, alongside six horses being fed and watered by a stable boy. Valerius reined in beside them and left Serpentius to see to their mounts.

A large man in a formal toga sat at a table heavy with a dozen dishes, telling a story Valerius had heard before about an African tyrant and his performing elephant.

‘It got to the end of the tightrope, wobbled for a moment with a look of extreme displeasure on its sad features … fell off and landed on his head. You’ve never seen such a mess. They had to clean the old man off the floor with a bucket and brush. His wife rushed in, screaming, “Is he hurt?” The elephant handler carefully looked his beast over and replied, “No, he seems fine.”’

The man’s six companions roared with laughter and the storyteller beamed. His smile grew wider when he noticed Valerius at the door.

‘Enter the ghost of Achilles.’ Aulus Vitellius raised a silver cup that was certainly not from the inn’s stock. ‘Gentlemen, I give you a true warrior. May I introduce Gaius Valerius Verrens, Hero of Rome and special envoy to our lord and master, the Caesar of the South. Valerius, my aides, Lucius, Gavo, Octavius and … the rest.’ Valerius met the frank stares and nodded a greeting. Vitellius’s reference to his work for Galba proved he trusted his aides, but he had always been trusting. Perhaps too trusting. Today, though it was barely midday, he was at his loquacious best. ‘Landlord! This calls for more food and more wine. A toast, to one Aulus Vitellius, the newly appointed governor of Germania Inferior, may his legions be victorious, may he prosper among the barbarians, and may his creditors wither on the vine, be swallowed by blackbirds and shat out like the manure they are to do some good for a change.’ Someone passed Valerius a cup and he joined in the toast, laughing with the rest.