Avenger of Rome

XLVI

Tiberius had been mumbling incoherently to himself, but now as his executioners picked up their axe handles he began to shout, the strength in his voice growing with every word.

‘I name Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo a traitor to Rome and his Emperor. I name Marcus Ulpius Traianus a traitor to Rome and his Emperor. I name Gaius Valerius…’

Valerius winced as the first wooden baton smashed into Tiberius’s face, pulverizing his already broken nose and smashing teeth and bone in a spray of bright blood. It was a tentative prelude to what was to come; a half-struck, panicked swipe that sought Corbulo’s approval and was intended to silence rather than maim. The decurion of the guard, a tall wiry Cantabrian with wolf’s eyes in a feral child’s face, was a decurion no more, and he more than any of them was determined to exact his revenge. He snarled at the man who had struck first to step back and organized the former guards into a circle. In the pause that followed, a soft, throaty murmur of anticipation or dread emerged from the surrounding soldiers but it was swiftly stifled by the growls of the centurions. The Cantabrian brought his axe handle round in a sweeping arc that landed across Tiberius’s left shin with the sharp crack of a branch snapping in the wind.

The agony as the bone snapped made Tiberius give out a full-blooded shriek. He had resolved to be brave; to die with honour. But the coldness of Corbulo’s words and the knowledge that whatever torment he suffered would have no end had unmanned him. His leg felt as if someone had pushed a red hot poker into an arrow wound. In his mind he cried out for his father, but he knew he would find no comfort there. When the next blow came, and then the next, his whole body dissolved into a mass of pain. His mind retreated from the horror that was being done to his flesh, but there was no escape even there. He felt himself broken one piece at a time and cried out for the stray blow that would end his agony. But the batons rose and fell, never landing a hit that might give him the oblivion he pleaded for. A hundred swords stabbed his chest as his ribs snapped one by one. His legs were smashed until they hung loose like sacks of blood and bone. He noted from somewhere above the brutalized body that was his own a sharp-edged sliver of white which appeared from an arm already broken in four or five places. Still the executioners kept up their terrible relentless rhythm.

A child’s voice cried out. ‘No more. Please, no more.’

From a dozen paces away, Valerius bit his lip until he could taste blood.

It is easy to beat a man to death, but to beat a man to within an inch of death when your own life depends on it is more difficult. The guards swung until the sweat ran off them in rivers and they could barely hold the slippery axe handles. Gradually, it became obvious they were cushioning their blows and avoiding areas of the dying man’s body where a slightly overzealous swing could result in his, and their, early demise.

‘Stop.’ Corbulo called a halt as Tiberius’s head slumped forward. The executioners stepped back, breathing hard and casting fearful eyes towards their commander. Accompanied by his physician, Corbulo walked forward to stand before the dying man. He took Tiberius’s chin in his fingers and lifted it to look into the smashed, unrecognizable face. A thick streamer of clotted blood fell on to his hand and he flicked it away in disgust.

‘Revive him.’

Gaius Spurinna had served Corbulo for ten years and had seen enough horror to last him a lifetime, but he hesitated to touch the obscenely hanging sack of battered flesh and broken bone that twenty minutes earlier had been a young man. ‘Revive him,’ Corbulo snapped again. Reluctantly, the physician reached towards Tiberius’s shattered pelvis where two broken bones could be made to grind together, and as the condemned man gave a little shriek of agony, followed by an animal howl, the general addressed his former guards.

‘You may think me cruel. You may think he has suffered enough. But the sentence must be carried out exactly as I ordered. Now continue, and the first man to hold back a blow will join him.’

So the pick handles rose and fell and the screams resumed until Tiberius Claudius Crescens, tribune of Rome, hovered somewhere between the living and the dead, and even Gaius Spurinna’s reluctant ministrations could not revive him. Another man would have long since succumbed to his injuries, but there was a core of molten iron at the heart of the young tribune which would not be extinguished.

‘Enough.’

Corbulo marched from the square and the legions were dismissed, the dust from their marching feet wreathing the execution frame, until only Valerius was left staring at the man who had been his friend. He heard someone come to his side.

‘Poor bastard. You should have killed him when you had the chance.’

Valerius didn’t take his eyes from the broken horror that was now Tiberius, but he shook his head.

‘It would have been cleaner, Serpentius, but then you or I might have been hanging there instead.’ He heard the Spaniard’s grunt of surprise. ‘That was the plan all along. Tiberius has always been Nero’s man, Nero or Tigellinus. All this, the command and the investigation I was supposed to carry out into Corbulo’s headquarters, was nothing but a cover. My job was to bring Tiberius here and place him in a position where he could get within a sword swing of Corbulo. You and I were decoys to divert attention from him as he did his work and to be sacrificed when we were no longer needed. If he had succeeded in smothering the general last night no one would have been looking for Tiberius Claudius Crescens, the lowly tribune. They would have come for us.’

‘He was a good soldier.’

‘He was a professional assassin, so he should be. Growing up with that bastard of a father would have been the perfect training. His whole life was lived as a lie. The only thing I don’t understand is why he didn’t kill me.’

Serpentius turned to him, surprised that he didn’t know. ‘Because you were his friend.’

It was still three hours until sundown. Valerius stayed another hour. He was about to leave when Tiberius began calling out to his father in a tortured, almost indiscernible whimper. He listened to the young man appeal for love, beg not to be beaten and promise not to fail again. Then it changed.

‘Mother?’

He winced. He had never before heard Tiberius mention his mother.

‘Mother, please don’t leave me.’

‘Why don’t you die?’ Valerius whispered.

‘Mother. I’m thirsty. Water.’

He came to a decision. ‘Get me some water and a cloth.’

When Serpentius returned Valerius was still staring at the hanging figure between the two guards Corbulo had set. He took the cloth and with his left hand stuffed it into the fist of his right. Then he picked up the pitcher and approached the frame.

‘No one is allowed near him, tribune. General’s orders,’ warned the senior of the guards, a veteran centurion of the Tenth.

Valerius shrugged. ‘Rather you than me when you try to explain to the general how you let him die of thirst before the deadline.’

He turned to walk away, but he knew he had planted a seed of indecision.

‘Wait.’

He stopped.

‘All right, give him some water.’

Valerius had the pitcher in his left hand and he poured it over the cloth in the walnut fist, saturating it with water. When he was satisfied he used the damp cloth to moisten Tiberius’s lips.

Through his pain, Tiberius somehow sensed the human contact. The feel of the liquid on his smashed lips took him back to the desert where he had suffered and almost died for his friends. For a moment he was back there, and out of the glare walked the long dead woman who had provided the only warmth of his childhood. She had come to take him home.

‘Thank you, Mother.’

Valerius brought his left hand to the younger man’s cheek in what appeared to be a caress. Neither of the guards saw the narrow, needle-pointed knife that he pushed up into the hollow below the younger man’s right ear and into his brain. Valerius felt Tiberius stiffen and blood flowed warm over his hand to drip on to the already gore-stained sand below. At last, the life force left Tiberius Claudius Crescens, tribune of the Tenth, and, freed of his pain, his body sagged into the arms of the man who had been his friend.