Defender of Rome

XXXIV

The chamber stank of damp and the steps under his bare feet felt as slippery as if they were coated with ice. He had to grip tight with his single hand until his toes found and secured each foothold, whilst holding the bundled cloak in the crook of his right arm. At least he had the comfort of the circle of light above him and the anxious faces of Marcus and Serpentius that almost filled it. He reached the bottom of the channel, identified by thick, oily weed between his toes. The fear was more palpable now, as if someone was gripping his legs and pulling him downwards. He filled his head with Olivia’s face and fought the feeling with all his strength. Carefully, he manoeuvred so that he was facing in the direction of the villa, before dropping to his knees. There was just enough space left to allow him to wriggle his legs backward into the opposite section of the tunnel. His nose was two inches from the brick face of the shaft and still he couldn’t bring himself to break free from that life-giving circle of light. For a moment he felt a wave of claustrophobic terror and his bladder filled with ice water. Rope. Serpentius had been right, he should have waited. With rope he could have tied a line round himself and they would be able to pull him back if he became jammed. If he went without rope he might be trapped down here for ever. He could go back.

Coward. He heard the word Ruth had never spoken ringing in his head. He closed his eyes. ‘I call on Messor and the spirits of Colonia to aid me.’ The whispered words sounded hollow in his ears, but the very act of saying them had the effect of the herb-infused ale the Britons drank before a battle. He felt warmth again, and his courage returned. He lowered his head and inched his shoulders forward into the pitch black of the tunnel mouth.

It was tight. Very tight. He had to hunch his shoulders to avoid being wedged against the ragged masonry. But was it tight enough to give him a reason to turn back? He wriggled to make himself more comfortable. How far? Maybe seventy paces to the villa. And what then? But he knew there was no use thinking about what then, because that could drive a man mad. What then meant the channel narrowing to a tiny pipe, or diving deep underground where a man would die screaming with no hope of ever being heard. He felt for the hilt of the knife to make sure it was still attached. If…? Don’t think. Just go.

At first, he tried to use his hands to haul himself along, but the walnut of his right could gain little purchase on the weed-covered stone and he made slow progress. Eventually he discovered that by pushing the bundle of his cloak forward, then digging his elbows into the walls and wriggling as if he were a snake, he was able to create a rhythm that gained him a few precious inches at a time. The tunnel roof was so low he felt it pressing down on his back and he suddenly realized that there truly was no going back. From nowhere the raw acid of panic filled his throat and poured like liquid fire into his chest. His head roared. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move. His limbs thrashed helplessly in the confined space and he knew that if he didn’t stop now he would truly go mad. Think. His mind screamed the word. Think. His brain frantically clawed for some memory that would save him. A face. No, faces meant people and people died. Faces meant Ruth and Maeve and Cornelius and Publius Sulla and the girl whose baby he had promised to save. Faces meant people he had failed. Suddenly he was in a battle line, his shield tight against the next man’s, a sword firm in his hand. Death was all around him, but it meant nothing here, for this was the brotherhood of the warrior. The brotherhood of the shadow. And, in the shadow, he felt calm return. He was still trapped in a dark, airless tomb, but he was Valerius again, a Hero of Rome. He gritted his teeth, rammed his elbows into the walls and edged another six inches.

Time and space meant nothing in the dark. Even the urgency to save his father and Olivia was diminished to a distant white spot at the entrance to a half-forgotten world, where light and air and life actually existed. All that mattered was effort and motion. Push the bundle, dig in the elbows, squirm, push. He was chilled to the bone, but the sweat coursed from his brow into his eyes. He imagined a galley slave hauling interminably at massive oars, the muscles of his arms fiery bars of glowing iron, knowing that his agony could only ever end in death. Push the bundle, dig in the elbows, squirm, push again. Something whirled and danced in the dust storm that was his brain and men came from the darkness to greet him. Legionaries who would tear a man’s throat out with their teeth and then share a bloody wineskin with you. Men you could despise for their depravity and love for their loyalty. Lunaris, who had stood beside him to the very end at Colonia. Laughing Zama, who had taken a returned Roman pilum in the eye in Boudicca’s last battle. Even Crespo, who had hated him more than any man before or since, yet had earned his respect for his fearless savagery in a fight. Not so tough now, pretty boy. Soldiers. And from each of them he took a soldier’s strength and a soldier’s ability to endure, an ability he had all but forgotten. Push, dig, squirm, push.

The air was thick now, almost solid in his throat, and he found it ever more difficult to breathe. He stopped for a moment to rest. He was glad, if gladness was an emotion permitted to a man buried alive, that he had declined Serpentius’s offer of lamp and rope. The one would have killed him and the other made a coward of him. The flame of the lamp would have eaten the air; he had heard of it from slaves who had served in the deep mines. First the light dimmed, then vanished, then the men started to die. As he realized the significance of that thought a split second of panic returned like a lightning bolt through his brain. The air couldn’t reach his mouth and nose from the shaft because his body was blocking the tunnel. But there should be air from ahead, because if there was not, it meant there was no way out. If he had had a rope around his waist at that moment, he would have tugged on it for dear life and screamed to be hauled back to the shaft. But he didn’t have a rope. So he endured and pushed, dug and squirmed.

He tried to concentrate his waning mind on what he would do when he reached the outlet — kind Jupiter, let there be an outlet — but it was impossible to know what to expect. A simple drop from the level of the inlet channel? Something more elaborate and therefore more dangerous? What if there was a grille? They would be wondering by now what had happened to the water and he prayed that they wouldn’t simply call off their meeting. No, they wouldn’t do that. First they would investigate. Petrus would not gather his people at so great a risk only to abandon this most sacred of rites at the first sign of a problem. For the first time he realized there was a possibility they might kill him. He didn’t think Petrus was that kind of man, but who knew about the others? Christus had led a band of rebels. There would still be men among his followers who had fought. Well, he would give them Rodan to fight; that was where the greater danger lay. That’s what he would do, and while they were fighting the bastard he would escape with Lucius and Olivia. As long as there was an outlet.

Back on the surface Marcus and Serpentius had watched, horrified, as Valerius disappeared into the narrow shaft the way a man might make the first steps on his journey to Hades. Now they tried to work out what to do next.

‘We can’t just walk away and leave him in there. What if he’s stuck?’ Serpentius demanded.

Marcus studied the black hole in the earth. ‘And what if he is? Are you going to go in after him? I’ll face anything, man or beast, in the light of the sun, but I wouldn’t go in there for all the gold in Mars Ultor.’

Serpentius had faced death many times in the arena and lived to spit in its face. He had known fear — although he would never admit it to anyone — but when he stared into the mouth of the shaft it was like looking into his own grave. ‘We should never have let him go down.’

‘How could we have stopped him? Did you see his eyes? Valerius is like a gladiator who has had one fight too many and goes out on to the sand seeking death. He would have gone down that shaft even if it was filled with fire.’

The Spaniard smiled sadly and shook his head. ‘He isn’t looking for death, old man, he’s challenging it. Your friend Valerius will die some day, but he will die fighting for his last breath and screaming defiance in death’s face.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ The veteran gave the inspection hole a final glance. ‘He’s beyond our help now. All we can do is come up with a diversion and pray that he lives long enough to need it.’

Serpentius nodded agreement. Thinking about the diversion would stop him thinking about the poor bastard stuck down in that black tomb. He pulled the dagger from his belt and held it up to check the edge. He didn’t notice when it caught the sun.

A mile away, in the water tower on the Cespian Hill, a man noticed two flashes of light.

Valerius knew he must be close to the end of the channel. He didn’t have any evidence for the assumption, only the knowledge that he was nearing the last of his strength and if he wasn’t near the end he was going to die. No one who hadn’t experienced it could comprehend the strength-sapping toll of being able only to move a few muscles at a time for what seemed like hours on end. In reality it could only have been minutes, but if his strength ran out now he knew he was finished.

He felt it before he heard it. A rumbling in his lower belly and a compression in his ears that made him wonder if the tunnel was about to collapse. Then the noise, like muted thunder, and a pressure from behind like a gathering storm. Desperately he began to wriggle forward, real fear giving him new strength. He didn’t know what was behind him, but he knew whatever it was meant danger and the only way to escape it was to go forward. The pressure built around his legs until it was something almost physical, and the thunder grew ever louder. A powerful wind whistled in the gaps left between his body and the tunnel walls. At last, he understood what was coming and the knowledge turned fear to outright, gut-wrenching terror. This was death. He scrabbled desperately at the tunnel walls, anything to advance him by a few more inches, but he knew it was pointless. There was no escape from the flood.

The shock as the freezing water smashed into his lower body paralysed him. In a heartbeat it was all around, surging in powerful jets past his shoulders and head with a force that would have knocked a cow off its feet. He screamed with the despair of defeat and closed his eyes and waited for the end. But although the water continued to pour past him above and below it didn’t immediately cover him and he found he could continue to breathe. Slowly his mind informed him that his body blocked most of the pipe and was acting as a dam. The force was so great it even pushed him along a few inches. He began to haul his way forward, the water gushing past his face in frothing spurts, and he found he could move faster. All he had to do was stay alive and pray.

But disaster lay a few feet ahead.

When the water channel had been pushed into the hill more than two hundred years earlier, slaves had chipped their way through every foot of the unyielding rock from either side, and from the centre, where the inspection shaft had been sunk. The surveyors did their work so well that the diggers from each section met exactly where they had predicted — almost. When the tunnellers from the baths side met the tunnel from the centre, they found that they were slightly off line and compensated by making the final twenty feet slightly wider than had been specified. It was only a few inches, but when Valerius met the joining place he started to drown.

In a second the water was all around him. He became one with the flood and entirely at its command. His mouth and nose filled and he began to first choke, then suffocate. He held his breath until it felt as if his chest was about to explode before finally giving in to the inevitable. The darkness all around crept into his body and his bones, an inner darkness that he knew preceded death. Suddenly it didn’t matter any more. He was free of responsibility, free of pain, free of life. The last time he had felt like this had been in the final moments of the temple. This time there would be no escape, and in a way he was glad.

He felt himself floating as the gods carried him off to whatever Otherworld the Fates had prepared for him. Then he wasn’t floating, but falling, and a second later the euphoria was knocked out of him as he smashed into something solid and his eyes snapped open to see a bright light. He lay on his back spluttering as a cascade of water battered his chest. Gradually, he realized he was lying in some kind of pool.

He knew he should get up, but his head didn’t seem to be connected to his body. And there was something else. Something he had to do. For a moment his mind continued to whirl, then everything came back in a burst of clarity. The cascade meant he was in the baptism chamber. He struggled to his knees and turned.

A ring of astonished faces stared back at him. He recognized a lawyer from the Basilica Julia and his plump little wife among the ten or so men, women and children his unorthodox arrival had scared into a frozen tableau of terrified eyes and gaping mouths. The room had been prepared for the ceremony, but they must still have been waiting for Petrus, the ultimate survivor. He saw with relief that there was no sign of his father or Olivia. An oil lamp flickered in one corner and the scent of some kind of burned spice hung heavy in the air. On a table in one corner a loaf of rough peasant bread lay beside a seven-branched candelabrum and an overturned flagon of wine which had stained the stone floor beneath blood red. The walls were windowless and bare, apart from a single device painted on the white plaster above the oil lamp. It was another of the pieces of symbolism the Christians were so fond of, a large X cut by a vertical stroke with a small half circle attached to the top:

The symbol stirred a memory in him and he recalled seeing it once before. It was the same as the one that had been scratched on the chest where Petrus kept his healing powders. This must have been part of the old baths complex, possibly a holding tank before the water was distributed to the caldarium and tepidarium. When the villa had been built it had been kept as a storeroom. At some point the outlet had been stopped up, but the owner, no doubt one of Petrus’s Christian converts, had re-opened it and somehow they had gained access to the water tower on the Cespian and restored the supply.

A moment of unnatural silence was followed by a clamour as they all started speaking at once. Valerius pushed himself to his feet and picked up the sodden bundle of his clothing, hauling the tunic over his head and wondering why he should be concerned about his nakedness when they were all likely to die in the next twenty minutes. Meanwhile, the flow from the inlet above him slowed to a trickle. Serpentius and Marcus must have heard the thunder of the water from the inspection shaft and signalled for it to be cut off again. By now they probably thought he was dead. But that wasn’t important — all that mattered was to get these people out of here. ‘Quiet.’ He used the soldier’s voice that had once cowed a legionary parade ground. ‘You are all in danger, but I’m here to help you. I need everyone to stay calm.’ The cries dropped to a subdued murmur. ‘Whose house is this?’

A wiry, balding man raised a hand. At his side, a woman clutched a half-grown girl who stared at Valerius’s wooden hand. His was another familiar face. Valerius searched his brain for a name. Probus? No, Pudens. That was it. Aulus Pudens, who had made a fortune supplying the arenas. A merchant notorious for cheating his suppliers and as unlikely a Christian as any man in Rome.

‘I’m leaving you in charge. Which way to the house?’

Pudens hesitated. For a moment it looked as if he was about to protest, but his wife whispered something in his ear. He pointed to what looked like an alcove in the far wall and pushed his daughter forward. ‘Praxedes will show you. Through there. It leads to a corridor.’

Valerius picked up his cloak and followed the girl. ‘This way,’ she said. She had long blonde hair and a sweet voice, made sweeter by the little whistle that punctuated her words through the gap in her front teeth. She explained what had happened. ‘Someone said the soldiers were here. We were praying to our Lord Jesus for salvation when you popped out of the pipe like a giant water vole. Everyone screamed, even Daddy. But I thought it was funny. Why is your hand made of wood?’

She led him to a door which took them through a storeroom into the villa. He left her playing with a doll and dashed upstairs where he could look across the square to where Marcus and Serpentius should be waiting for his signal. He dropped beside a window and opened the shutter just a crack.

And saw disaster.

Marcus had said the Praetorians had a guard on every corner. That had been an hour ago. Now the open area in front of the house was flooded with soldiers. A small army. It had never been a very good plan. Now it was exposed as a hopeless one. Rodan had the Christians in a sardine net. It was only a matter of time before he lost patience and sent his men to storm the villa.

Valerius slumped down by the window and closed his eyes. What had he got himself into? Think! There had to be a way out. He remembered the building as he had seen it from above. Could he climb the cliff? It was possible, but not with the fools he had left down in the baptism chamber. The idea burrowed into his brain like a tapeworm. Leave them then. What did they mean to him? He’d come for his father and Olivia. He wasn’t responsible for a rabble of sheep who hadn’t the wit to save themselves. Yes, he felt sorry for them, but that didn’t make him their keeper.

He heard a shuffling noise and looked up to find Praxedes standing a few feet away holding the doll out so he could see it. ‘This is my sister. Her name is Olivia.’

He shook his head at the madness of the world. When the gods called the tune there was really no option but to dance along. He reached out and took the little wooden figure with its black wool hair. ‘Does your father have any rope?’

By the time he got back to the baptism room the men had recovered some of their nerve. Valerius studied the wall of belligerent faces. He knew he had to take control, but he waited long enough for Praxedes to whisper to her father. The bald man frowned, but with a puzzled glance at Valerius he followed the girl from the room.

When they were gone, the young Roman called for silence. There was no point in shirking the truth. ‘This is an illegal gathering of a sect proscribed by the Emperor and if you do not do what I say you will all die.’ He met each of their eyes in turn as he spoke. ‘Have you any idea of the fate Nero has in store for you? There are a hundred Praetorian guards out there waiting. It would be better to throw yourselves on to their swords.’

‘We are not frightened to die for our beliefs.’ It was the lawyer. Of course it would be the lawyer.

‘I watched Cornelius Sulla burn.’ Valerius saw the man go pale. ‘Are you prepared to watch your wives burn, or your daughters? No? Then follow my orders without question if you want them to live.’

All eyes turned to Aulus Pudens as he returned to the room carrying several coils of rope. Praxedes had shown Valerius the thousands of fathoms her father imported from Gaul for the Circus Maximus, where it was used to haul in the great sails deployed to keep the sun off the customers.

‘I need as many sections of rope spliced together as it takes to make three hundred feet. Clear that table and bring it across here.’ Valerius looked up at the black hole which had almost claimed his life. He’d discarded the idea of climbing the cliff and then using the rope to pull the others up, because the climb would have to be made in full view of the Praetorians, who would simply send a patrol to meet them at the top. That left only one option.

He pointed at the outlet. ‘This is the way I came in and this is the way we will all leave.’ He heard a man gasp and a woman’s scream was stifled by her husband’s hand across her mouth. ‘All of us. I will lead, with the rope, and when I shout, each of you will follow me into the tunnel in turn, holding the rope. It is dark and it is frightening, but it is passable and you must call on your God to banish your fears.’

‘No, I can’t. I can’t. I’ll stick.’ The whimper came from the lawyer’s buxom wife. Valerius’s decision had been made easier by the fact that, whether through abstinence or good fortune, most of the Christian adults seemed to be as thin as skinned rabbits. He went to stand beside the woman who, though a little plump, barely reached his shoulder. ‘See how large I am compared to you, lady. If I can fit, you would go through twice.’ He gave her a reassuring smile and patted her husband’s shoulder. ‘Help her. She will need your support. There is an exit midway through the hill. Just thirty paces away.’ The distance was at least double that, but he told the lie boldly and nobody challenged it. ‘Once I reach it, I will begin to pull you through. You will be able to push with your feet and your hands, and I will need all the help I can get, but do not lose your grip on the rope. With your God’s help, you will only be in the tunnel for two or three minutes. Now.’ This was the moment of truth, the moment that decided whether they lived or died. ‘Who will be first behind me?’

No one would meet his eyes, and as the seconds passed he knew he’d failed.

‘I will.’ Praxedes broke the silence. ‘As long as I can bring Olivia.’

Valerius could have kissed her. ‘Thank you, lady. You are as brave as you are beautiful. We will wrap Olivia in your hand.’ He looked towards her father. ‘Tie a loop to her waist and set her in the tunnel after you have counted to fifty. When I’ve reached the exit shaft, I will pull her in a short way, so that you can follow.’ He turned to the others. ‘When Pudens shouts, I will haul them both along, so the next person can follow, then the next. The slippery weed in the tunnel will help me, but you must also use your strength.’ He saw eyes drifting to the damp shaft, and sensed the reluctance growing. ‘If you stay here you will certainly die. If you have courage — and faith — you will live.’

‘Wait!’ Valerius’s heart sank at the call from Praxedes’ father, but Pudens only raised his arms and called on their God to protect them. When he had finished they all looked towards the young man with the wooden hand. ‘We are ready.’

Valerius went to where the table had been placed below the outlet. He stripped off his tunic and tied the rope around his midriff. Just for a second a voice screamed in his head not to go, but with a grunt he hauled himself into the stinking blackness. It was only when he was inside, with the damp stone pressing in around him like the walls of a tomb, that he wondered why none of them had asked what would happen if the flow resumed. He supposed it was because the answer was obvious.

This time he had the benefit of familiarity and he made good progress once he got back into the rhythm that had carried him to the chamber. He had one moment of minor panic when the walls closed in where the tunnel narrowed, but it passed quickly. True, every time he pushed himself along another few inches he thought he could hear the distant thunder of water coming to swamp him, but the rope barely hindered him and in a few minutes he saw the light of the exit shaft ahead. He felt a tug on the rope and realized Praxedes was telling him to pull her along. He hauled six feet of line into a coil and moved on, stopping to repeat the manoeuvre when he heard the shout from her father. The rest would have to wait until he reached the shaft. He only hoped he had the strength to pull them all. With a few feet to go, he froze at the sound of voices. Had Rodan sent a patrol to the hill after all? If he carried on they would arrest him. Worse, they might replace the stone cap and trap him in here with the others.

‘Keep that bloody knife in your belt.’ He recognized the gruff, welcome tones of Marcus and he could have wept.

‘What difference does it make? He’s drowned anyway, or he would have signalled,’ Serpentius replied. ‘We didn’t stop the water quickly enough. Nobody could survive for that long.’

‘You’ll be dead if you don’t help me out of here, you idle Spanish bastard,’ Valerius shouted, his words magnified and made ghostly by the shaft.

The call was followed by the long silence of two men pondering a voice from the Otherworld.

‘Hello?’ Valerius had never heard Serpentius sound frightened. He clambered up, blinking, into the sunlight. Marcus stood back from the shaft eyeing him warily. Serpentius was a yard further away and looked ready to run for his life.

‘Are you going to help me,’ Valerius said, ‘or must I wait until Rodan does?’

With a shout, the two men ran forward and pulled him out to lie gasping by the shaft entrance.

‘We thought…’

He waved them away, untying the rope from his waist. ‘We’ve no time for happy reunions. Haul on this line, but gently now, and I promise you a catch the like of which you’ve never seen before.’

They stared at him and he knew how mad he appeared, but he didn’t care.

‘Pull,’ he said. ‘We have souls to save.’

Praxedes was first, her golden head appearing in the bottom of the shaft. Valerius descended a few steps to help her, but she refused to come out until he had rescued Olivia first. She was followed by her father and mother, and then, one after the other, the Christians emerged filthy and bewildered to fall on their knees and give thanks to their God. The lawyer’s wife was second to last, her eyes tight shut, and finally her husband’s face appeared.

Some thanked him, most just gave him wary glances before they set off towards their homes. Pudens was last to go. ‘I have nothing now,’ he said, running his hand through his daughter’s hair. ‘Except my life and my family. For them I thank you.’ Valerius asked him if he had somewhere to stay and he said he did. Praxedes gave him a gap-toothed smile and the little family walked down the hill hand in hand.

‘May your God protect you,’ Valerius whispered. He turned to find Marcus and Serpentius looking at him as if he had just come back from the dead, which, in a way, he had.

‘What now?’ Marcus asked respectfully.

‘First Serpentius can steal me some clothes, then we go back to work.’

An hour later they set off back towards the Forum. Valerius noticed a crowd lined up outside one of the government buildings behind the Senate House. ‘What’s going on?’

Marcus spoke to a vendor at a nearby fruit stall and returned with the information. ‘It’s some kind of census. Posters have gone up all over the city ordering the Judaeans and a few of the other provincial groups to register with the state or they’ll lose their rights to stay in Rome.’

Valerius closed his eyes. Time was running through his fingers. How long had it been? Six days and he was still no closer to the Rock than he had been on that first morning. He looked at the long line of men, women and children. If he didn’t succeed these people would all die. He had asked Pudens for information about Petrus, but the villa owner had sworn on his family’s life that he didn’t know where he could be found. Others organized the baptism ritual. Petrus came and carried out the ceremony, then he left. Today the location of the ritual had been betrayed. But by whom?

‘Are you feeling all right?’ Marcus looked at him as if he’d grown an extra eye.

Valerius shook his head wearily. How could he have taken so long to make the connection? ‘Today I’ve been buried alive and almost drowned, but I’ve just realized that the worst is still to come.’