Defender of Rome

XXVII

‘Find Sextus and Felix. I want to know the names or descriptions of everyone Lucina has met since they started following her. Between them they shouldn’t have missed anyone.’

Marcus nodded. ‘She’s not talking?’

‘I doubt if she’ll ever talk again,’ Valerius said wearily. He described Lucina’s ordeal at the hands of Rodan. ‘Watch out for him. I have a feeling they’re much closer to us than we think.’

Like a conjuror, Serpentius produced a long dagger from his belt. ‘I hope he comes close enough just the once.’

Valerius shook his head. ‘There may come a time for that, but this is not it. If we can discover how he knows so much about us, we can use it against him now. Killing him won’t solve anything. Torquatus will just find some other executioner.’

‘What good is a list of the people she’s met?’ Marcus said. ‘We can’t follow them all and the chances of any of them being involved with the Christus sect are slim. Look at the trouble she took to hide her association with Cornelius — much good it did the poor bastards. Do you get the feeling that every time we get close to anyone they suddenly die on us?’

Privately, Valerius agreed. Too often he had felt he was one step ahead of his enemies only to discover that he was actually one step behind. Was it possible that someone in his household was a spy? Or even one of these men he had come to trust with his life? He met Serpentius’s fierce wolf’s eyes and dismissed the thought as quickly as it had appeared.

‘All I know is that whatever information Lucina had is now in Torquatus’s hands and we have to do something. I don’t understand why, but this has turned into a race and he doesn’t want us to get to Petrus first. We’ll meet later at the house.’

That evening, before he looked in on Olivia, Valerius placed an oil lamp in the window above the front door. The change in his sister astonished him. Julia held her hand as she sat up in bed. The young slave lowered her eyes. ‘I wanted to surprise you, master. I hope I was right. She has been like this since your father left this morning.’

‘Father?’

‘He had business in town, he said. But he spent more than an hour with Olivia.’

‘I knew he was here, because I could hear his words and they comforted me.’ Olivia’s voice sounded weary, but she held out her other hand to Valerius. ‘When he had gone, I opened my eyes and everything was so much brighter than I remembered. Julia brought me a cushion and I was able to sit up. I have eaten some fruit, Valerius. You should be proud of me.’

‘I am,’ he said. But he was prouder still that she had somehow found the strength to fight the thing that threatened to destroy her.

‘Now, tell me about your latest case!’ she said brightly.

He thought about the water theft for the first time in a month. Old Honorius would be foaming at the mouth. ‘It would bore you back to sleep,’ he said. ‘But fortunately I have put it aside for a while. Lately, I have been working for the State.’

‘Is that why you are so tired?’ she asked as Julia crept from the room.

He smiled. ‘No, it is running after my baby sister that makes me tired.’

‘Then I must make sure you do not have to for much longer.’ They both knew the sentence had a dual meaning, but Valerius chose to ignore it. Olivia continued. ‘Julia tells me you have a new companion. She says he is “dark, saturnine and dangerous” but her voice makes him seem kind. I think she likes him.’

Valerius nodded. ‘I think she does.’

‘She said you have been travelling. If you cannot tell me of your work, you must tell me of your adventures.’ She lay back on the cushion and closed her eyes.

He took Olivia on the journey through Moesia: the harsh, jagged mountains, wind-whipped gorges and unfordable rivers and the proud, savage people who struggled to survive there. He didn’t mention ambush or betrayal, but made her smile with his tales of the trip north on the legate’s trireme and Vitellius’s host of earthy stories and irrepressible optimism. Still with her eyes closed, she said quietly: ‘How fortunate you are to be a man, Valerius.’

It was something he’d never considered. Of course he was a man, and she was a woman. How else would it be?

She must have felt his confusion, because she smiled. ‘A man is free to travel where he wishes, to buy what he likes and to drink when he wants to. A woman must ask permission to do all these things. Do you understand?’

He laughed. ‘I think a woman, at least this woman, has had too much time to think.’

‘So,’ she said, and a catch in her voice told him he had offended her. ‘A woman must even ask permission to think?’

‘I meant-’

‘I know what you meant, Brother, and that you meant well. Many of my sisters would agree with you, but…’ she hesitated, for so long he thought she had gone back to sleep, ‘but I have been thinking. Thinking of my life. And of death. Death seems so eternal, my life so short, and so…’ she struggled to find the word, ‘valueless. If I had a child, it might have been different.’ Valerius squeezed her hand and she opened her eyes. He knew that one of the reasons she had turned down Lucius’s choice of husband had been the unlikelihood that he could father a child.

‘There is still time,’ he assured her, knowing that there was not.

‘No. It will not happen,’ she said, her voice grave. ‘I visited the Good Goddess before I became ill and it is not my fate. You see, Valerius? I am only part woman. Part Roman woman. A Roman woman belongs to her father, then her husband, whom she cannot choose herself. Father could have put me away or had me killed, because I would not do his bidding. She is worth less than a slave, because a Roman woman cannot work as a slave works. She must sew and entertain, but she must never labour. I have never cooked a meal or cleaned a room.’

Valerius shook his head. ‘You are not a Roman woman, you are a Roman lady. You have slaves to cook and clean, and that is the way it is meant to be. You do entertain and you do manage our household. If it had not been for you, half of my clients would-’

She puffed out her cheeks and let out an exasperated explosion of breath. ‘Julia manages the household, as she has always done. I am as much an ornament as that vulgar Crown of Gold you are so proud of.’ She smiled to take away any offence. ‘I only wish I had been given the opportunity to win it.’

‘Win your battle and you will have it,’ he said, and meant it. ‘My little sister is as brave as Boudicca and as hardy as any legionary centurion, and she makes me proud. Get well again and it will mean more to me than any honour.’

She lay back and he could see she was fading again, but she had the strength for one last whisper that he wasn’t sure he’d heard properly. ‘I almost forgot. Who was the terrible man who was here while you were away?’

When he was certain she was asleep he unhooked the boar amulet from his neck and fastened it gently round hers. If his own gods could not help her, perhaps Maeve’s could.

It was only as he left that he realized what had been nagging at him. Olivia’s recovery had been so rapid, so unexpected and so brief that it was almost as if she had been given another measure of the healer’s wondrous draught.

The gladiators arrived as the plum-tinged sky of dusk gave way to the inky blue darkness of the Roman summer night. Valerius had stationed a servant by the garden door to let them into the house and another in an alley at the end of the street to check for any followers. They waited until the man reported everything clear before they went indoors.

Valerius had debated whether to tell his companions about Nero’s threat, but he had decided it was a burden he must carry alone. It would make no difference to their efforts or to the outcome. Six couches were set out around the central pool of the atrium and he allowed the others to awkwardly take their places before he lay down himself. He ordered a slave to send wine and Serpentius’s eyes lit up. ‘But not until we have completed our business.’ The Spaniard’s face fell, but came alive again when it was Julia who set the flagon and six cups on a table by the doorway.

It was almost an hour before Valerius was satisfied with the list produced by Felix and Sextus. Several names were duplicated, or at least it seemed so because the spelling was similar, a number were only vague descriptions of people who could also have been on the other man’s list, and Sextus seemed confused as to what constituted a chance meeting.

‘How many seconds would I have to count for it to be an encounter? Would they have to exchange words? Sometimes her chair would stop next to someone, but it was impossible to tell if anything was said because I had to keep my distance.’

In the end they came up with a list of twenty. It included one consul, two, possibly three former legionary officers who had served with her husband, and a number of merchants, including one who owned most of the bakeries in the north of the city.

‘The consul might be promising?’ Marcus ventured.

Valerius shook his head. ‘Petronius Lurco has just been elected a pontifex of the Temple of Neptune. Christus only allows his followers to worship one god. You said she singled him out, Felix?’

‘That’s right. Hailed him in the middle of the Clivus Argentarius. He looked proper put out.’

‘She knew she was being followed. For years she lived like a recluse, avoiding contact with anyone, only ever leaving her house in a covered chair. Suddenly she is approaching people she barely knows and scaring them half to death in the street. She was trying to lay a false scent. We need to look for someone she didn’t want us to know she was talking to.’

Serpentius shrugged. ‘That could be anyone she passed on the street close enough to exchange two words with. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people.’

‘True,’ Valerius agreed. ‘But this list is all we’ve got. We have to start somewhere.’

‘What about the soldiers?’ Heracles suggested. ‘Publius was a soldier.’

‘I think we’re wasting our time,’ the Spaniard grunted. ‘Use the Emperor’s money to hire people to search every street for more fish signs.’

‘And tell the whole of Rome what we’re looking for? Petrus would burrow so deep we’d never find him.’

Marcus frowned and took the list from Valerius’s hand.

‘What is it?’

‘I just remembered something. You said she avoided contact with everyone? The merchants on this list are all suppliers to the household or her husband’s estates. She got her servants to pay them, but then insisted that each of them approach her chair to thank her personally. Why would she do that if she didn’t want to meet people?’

Intrigued, Valerius retrieved the list from him. ‘Wine sellers, butchers, bakers and builders. Mere plebeians. The old Lucina would have despised them all, even the rich ones. Yet she went out of her way to exchange words with them. That is interesting, but there are how many — ten — and any or all of them could be involved. We need something else.’

They broke up another hour later without making further progress. Valerius acknowledged that Serpentius’s suggestion had some merit, but it was without much hope that he dispatched the Spaniard and Heracles to search the surrounding streets next day for any signs related to Christus. Marcus, Felix and Sextus would check out the premises of each of the merchants on the list. It was like trying to pin down smoke, but at least they were taking action.

He went to sleep that night with the nagging feeling that he had missed something.