Defender of Rome

VIII

Valerius arrived at the ludus to find the gladiators lounging in the shade of the barracks, sipping at goatskins of tepid water and gossiping. They’d rest for another two hours until the heat went out of the sun and they returned to their relentless training. He approached one group and asked where Marcus could be found. A heavily built fighter jerked his head towards the doorway and Valerius entered to find the scarred veteran muttering over a piece of scroll filled with figures.

‘Things are a little slow,’ the old gladiator said without looking up. ‘Too many recitals by the songbird on the hill and not enough blood and guts. Someone should remind him that he’s allowed a bet.’

Valerius smiled at the veiled reference to the Emperor, whose dedication to the finer arts was not always appreciated in a city coarsened by three hundred years of more down to earth entertainment. Nero had famously banned gladiators from fighting in the arena at Pompeii over the small matter of a few deaths in a riot involving rival supporters. There had even been a rumour that he planned to stop opponents fighting to the death altogether. Valerius shook his head at the thought. He might as well try to ban the chariot races that were his obsession. ‘I always thought you appreciated music, what with all the practice you get in the Green Horse.’

Marcus grunted. ‘That’s only for the ladies. And to what do we owe this honour, lord Valerius? Come for another sparring match with Serpentius, or have you finally decided to take up an honourable profession?’

‘I’m looking for some hired help.’ Valerius pulled the chain with the golden ring from his cloak and placed it on the table. ‘Two or three men who know how to look after themselves and can keep their mouths shut.’

Marcus gave a low whistle when he recognized the ring. ‘Interesting. And dangerous?’

‘Worth good money to whoever signs on, though.’ Valerius had already decided to fund the men from his own purse. He suspected it would be more secure if Torquatus remained unaware of the type of help he was hiring.

‘Do you have anybody in mind?’

‘I wondered if you might be interested in a change of scenery.’ Valerius shrugged. ‘We’ll need someone to carry the rations.’

‘Someone to hold your hand, you mean,’ Marcus growled. ‘Anybody else?’

‘I thought I’d leave it up to you. You’ll be their leader.’

‘How many?’

‘Four, for a start. If we need more we know where to come. I’ll compensate the lanista and fund clothes and weapons. Good quality, no auxilary rubbish. Three meals a day and a roof over their heads. In return I’ll expect military discipline and no chasing women until I say they can.’ He mentioned a sum of money for Marcus and a third of that for his men.

The gladiator chuckled. ‘For that much, who do you want us to kill?’

‘Nobody, I hope,’ but even as he said it Valerius had a suspicion it wasn’t going to be true. ‘Call it legal research. Just a little snooping around.’

On the short walk from the ludus to the Basilica Julia he took time in the shade by Pompey’s theatre, stopping off as always to read the inscription on the great marble-faced arch dedicated to Germanicus Caesar. Germanicus was the father of Caligula and the man who, but for his untimely death, would have been Emperor in his stead. In his heart lay the true glory of Rome, unsullied by corruption or dishonour. Germanicus, whom men hailed as the noblest of Romans, had been Valerius’s hero since boyhood, and Valerius made a habit of saying a prayer to his shade whenever he passed beneath the monument with its golden chariot.

Duty done, he doubled back towards the Forum. His pulse always beat a little faster when he entered the hallowed ground between the imperial palaces on the Palatine and the great Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline summit. Here was Rome’s beating heart. Here he was at the centre of the world. All around him were tributes to the men who had made Rome great: emperors and generals, consuls and senators, some whose deeds were long forgotten, but whose names would live on for ever in this sacred place. A pair of giant triumphal arches commemorated the victories of Augustus and Tiberius. On the Rostra Julia the great orators still made their pronouncements above the beaks of ships captured a century before at Actium, beside the frozen stone figures of Scipio and Sulla and Caesar and Pompey. Here was the little shrine to Venus Cloacina, goddess of the sewers, and, along the Via Sacra, fluted pillars topped by the golden figures of Mars and Jupiter, Venus and Minerva. And, in simple contrast to the man-worked grandeur all around, the little group of olive and fig and grapevine which marked nature’s most precious gifts to Rome.

Other men would say that the heart of the heart was the Curia, where the Senate sat, but for Valerius it would always be the Basilica Julia. Already, though it was only early afternoon, slaves and servants were making their way to the shops and stalls on the margins of its pillared aisles. He knew the lawyers would be slower to return from the midday meal with their families and took his time. He had three cases outstanding which needed dealing with before he could begin Nero’s mission. They couldn’t be more different: an inheritance dispute he was defending before the Court of the Hundred; a complicated civil case involving the demolition of a semi-derelict apartment block on the other side of the Pons Aemilius that would take some delicate negotiation; and, by far the most pressing, an accusation of water theft which he was due to prosecute for the water commissioner. Fortune favoured him when he noticed Quintus Fuscus, a lawyer he knew, a dozen yards ahead on the Vicus Jugarius. Valerius explained his dilemma, but not the reason for it. ‘I can put off the building case and I owe the water commissioner some kind of explanation, but I need someone to take the inheritance suit off my hands.’

The case was the most lucrative of the three and Fuscus’s face lit up. ‘I’d be delighted to oversee it; I haven’t tried a case before the centumviri for years. It will be a pleasure.’

Valerius thanked him and walked on to his next meeting.

‘This is most unusual,’ Commissioner Honorius complained. ‘The case is ready to present and all parties are available.’

‘If you wish to find another prosecutor I will be happy to withdraw,’ Valerius assured him.

‘No, no. It’s just that I believe you underestimate the importance of this case. The theft of water from Rome’s aqueducts has always been a most serious offence and is on the increase. The time is right for an example to be made.’

Valerius made his apologies and agreed to speak to the representative of the accused, a builder with interests all over the city who was alleged to have tapped into one of the main aqueducts feeding the capital to supply his brickworks.

By now the Forum hummed with activity. The avenues were thronged with senators, each with his guard of bullies and drifting cloud of clients; with lawyers and their clerks and the crowds of gawpers who had come to see them win or lose; with money changers, soothsayers, shoppers and worshippers, men offering themselves for work, and the beggars, blinded and maimed, who reminded Valerius of the ache in his missing arm. It was as he fought his way east along the Via Nova past the House of the Vestals that he felt someone brush against him. His first thought was that he was being robbed, but then he realized that something had been placed in his left hand.

He looked down and discovered he was holding a torn piece of scroll.