Enemy of Rome

I

Western Pannonia, August, AD 69

‘You are sentenced to death.’

The verdict sent a jolt through Gaius Valerius Verrens as if he’d been drenched in ice melt. All the air seemed to be sucked from the sweltering tent and the three officers facing him behind the rickety campaign table shimmered like a desert mirage. In the centre, Vedius Aquila, commander of the Thirteenth legion, continued to outline the prisoner’s crimes. Valerius could see his lips moving, but their meaning was lost in the void between. This couldn’t be happening.

The civil war that had torn the Roman Empire apart since the death of Servius Sulpicius Galba almost nine months earlier should have been over. Galba’s murderer, Otho, was dead, his army defeated on the damp plain between Cremona and Bedriacum by forces loyal to the governor of Germania, Aulus Vitellius. Now Vitellius sat on a golden throne wearing an Emperor’s cloak and an Emperor’s laurels, his position confirmed by the Senate and people of Rome. Division, deception and the betrayal of old loyalties are the very stuff of civil war. Valerius Verrens counted Vitellius as his friend, but he’d fought for Otho at Bedriacum, as deputy commander of the First Adiutrix legion. He’d watched the First fight like champions, but its cohorts had been annihilated when the army’s left wing collapsed. An eagle was won, but the First’s eagle had been lost, and the loss of an eagle was the loss of a legion’s pride, its honour and its soul. Valerius somehow escaped the final massacre, only to discover that another man now disputed Vitellius’s claim to the throne. That man was Titus Flavius Vespasian, proconsul of Judaea, whose Egyptian and Syrian legions, preceded by a vanguard from Moesia and Pannonia, were now marching on northern Italia.

After Bedriacum, Valerius, branded a traitor to Rome, fled east to join Vespasian’s forces. Bearded, stinking and looking more like a one-handed goatherd than a holder of the Corona Aurea, he’d been arrested as a deserter by the first soldiers he’d encountered. When Aquila had recognized him, Valerius believed his ordeal was over. Instead, it was just beginning.

‘… you are stripped of your honours, your rank and your possessions. Be thankful that I give you a soldier’s death, rather than the coward’s you deserve.’

‘It is not true. I-’

‘Silence.’ Valerius clamped his lower lip between his teeth and drew himself up to his full height as Aquila continued. ‘You will be taken from this place and paraded before the leading cohorts of this army to your execution.’

Strong hands pinned Valerius’s arms to his sides, but he shrugged them away. ‘There is no need to bind me,’ he snapped. ‘I am not afraid to die like a soldier.’ He met Aquila’s stare, and the men holding him relaxed as the legate nodded. Valerius continued to hold his gaze. ‘This is wrong, general. I hope you can live with it.’

The narrow, almost skeletal features froze, but Aquila’s expression remained implacable. ‘Take him away,’ he said tersely.

They emerged into the sunshine, and the summer heat of Pannonia struck Valerius like a blacksmith’s hammer. He blinked as his eyes struggled to adapt to the change from gloom to searing brightness. When they cleared he wondered how it was that, when a man’s life could be counted in moments, every image seemed so sharp, every colour so vivid, deep and intense. He hesitated, taking a deep breath, but a hand shoved him roughly in the back and sent him staggering towards the open square, where two thousand men waited to see him die. His left hand instinctively went to his throat, but the gold charm had been taken when he was captured. At least they had dressed him in a clean tunic and allowed him to shave, so men could see him for what he was: a knight of Rome. A member of the senatorial class that had ruled long before Augustus proclaimed himself Emperor. More important, they had left him the carved wooden fist that was as much part of him as the original, now a pile of mouldering bones lying in the burned-out ruins of a British villa.

That memory strengthened his resolve and he raised his eyes so as not to miss a moment of what was to come. This was meant to be a humiliation — the shaming of a coward and a deserter. Yet he felt their gaze on him and he knew they were seeing a soldier. A tall man, his gaunt features scarred by battle and more wounds hidden beneath the crow-dark hair; eyes filled with defiance burning from a face marked by sorrow and loss. Gaius Valerius Verrens was not afraid to die. He had faced death many times: in the smoke-filled darkness of the Temple of Claudius; on the dusty golden plains of Armenia; and, more recently, on the blood-soaked sands of the arena at Cremona, where another man’s sword had carved him open. He had known triumph and defeat. He could face disaster. But he would not feel shame.

The four guards steered him up the first leg of the square and he recognized the roaring lion symbol of the Seventh Claudia on the line of shields. Campaign-hardened faces stared out at him from beneath polished iron helmets, their expressions varying from tense to bored. These men were veterans; they had better things to do than stand in the sun and watch a stranger die. A few showed sympathy, and some of the younger eyes glittered with anticipation. These would be the newer recruits, soldiers who had not yet witnessed the lake of blood a man couldn’t avoid during a lifetime marching behind the eagle. Valerius was surprised at how little he felt on this day of his death. A hollow emptiness inside. A slight numbness of the mind. A tickle at the neck in anticipation of …

He pushed the thought to the back of his mind and concentrated on the faces of all the friends who had preceded him on this journey: Falco, commander of the Colonia militia, who sacrificed himself and his men to delay Boudicca a few more hours; Maeve, the Trinovante girl who had loved, then betrayed him; Lunaris, defender to the last at the door of the Temple of Claudius, and Messor who risked his life in vain in the tunnels below. Marcus, the old lanista, who led his gladiator cohort to its death at Bedriacum, and Juva, the big Nubian who captured an eagle there. All gone. All sacrificed to Mars. Why should Gaius Valerius Verrens be any different?

His eyes drifted to a cloudless blue sky marred only by three black specks circling lazily over the distant hills. The sound of buzzing insects filled the air and the occasional chink of metal on metal drew a hissed rebuke from a centurion. A new shield, and another lion, but this time with the rays of the sun shining from its maned head. The symbol of the Thirteenth, who had fought on the right flank at Bedriacum, led by the man who had condemned him. Vedius Aquila believed he had been betrayed, not defeated, and these men were desperate for another chance to show they could fight. Their commander had been reprieved, but their most senior centurions were executed in the aftermath of the battle on the orders of Vitellius. Aquila felt the shame of Bedriacum more deeply than any man, and he blamed the First Adiutrix for breaking. The First’s legate had died in the battle, but not before Valerius’s unorthodox tactics had gained him the enemy eagle captured by Juva. They might have won the day if he’d been supported. But Aquila, an old-fashioned commander, blamed Valerius’s impetuous tricks for the defeat, and believed he had abandoned his men. That wasn’t true, but it didn’t matter now.

As he walked barefoot through the dried grass the stems crunched beneath his feet and the sandy soil was almost painfully hot between his toes. For the first time he noticed the bare-chested soldier waiting patiently in the centre of the square leaning on a long cavalry spatha. A burst of energy surged through him and he felt the men beside him tense and move closer as they sensed it. He almost smiled at the thought that they believed he might attempt escape, but he felt betrayed by his body’s reaction. Why feel fear at the sight of a sword? He had sent more men than he could count to the Otherworld with point and edge. Better to die in battle, but no soldier should flinch at the sight of the blade that would kill him. Another turn and he was marching along a wall of shields painted with the emblem of a red bull. Seventh Galbiana, then, the legion Galba had formed in Spain, that had accompanied him on his fateful, and ultimately fatal, march to Rome. In the centre he recognized a face beneath a centurion’s distinctive helmet, with its transverse plume of scarlet horsehair. He tried to place the man, whose serious eyes followed every step of his walk of doom. Then it came to him. An attack on a British hill fort in the months before the Boudiccan rising. A young optio who had sweated beside him in a testudo during the assault. Yes. Atilius Verus; he would recognize that eagle’s beak of a nose anywhere. The man must have been one of the centurions transferred to the Seventh to stiffen the backbone of raw Spanish recruits. Their eyes met and something indefinable made Valerius smile. The faint breath of fear that had stayed with him since the first sight of the sword faded. Verus straightened and nodded approvingly in a show of respect as good as any salute.

A final turn and he was walking in a dream towards the man at the centre of the square. For the first time, the movement brought a reaction from the three cohorts of soldiers brought here to witness the execution of Gaius Valerius Verrens. Just a soft rustle as two thousand men shifted uneasily, but proof that not every legionary here supported the condemnation of a Hero of Rome. He took a deep breath and concentrated on his executioner. A big man, with curiously sensitive eyes but powerful shoulders and the muscles of an athlete or a wrestler. Stripped to the waist, his brick-red face and forearms contrasted sharply with the fish-belly white of his torso. A legionary seldom removed his tunic, except to sleep or bathe. Valerius remembered a man condemned by his general for daring to work naked apart from his sword, and the incongruity of it made him laugh.

The executioner’s face hardened at the unlikely sound. This wasn’t what he expected from his victims. A simple man, born and raised on an Etrurian pig farm, he was only doing his job, and he liked the proceedings to pass with dignity for all concerned. Valerius nodded gravely in greeting and the peasant face relaxed as the man returned it. The escort moved away.

‘Kneel, facing in that direction.’ The soldier pointed towards the men of the Thirteenth.

Valerius obeyed, wincing as his bare knees sank into the burning sand. He sensed the man moving into position behind him. Suddenly his throat felt as dry as an Egyptian salt pan and he would have given anything for a last drink of cool water to send him on his way. In contrast, his whole body felt liquid and sweat started to pour down his face. He told himself it was not fear, but a natural reaction to his situation. He prayed there would be no others.

‘Steady, lad. I’ve done this a hundred times.’ The voice was surprisingly soothing and Valerius was reminded of a sacrifice where the young victimarius had whispered into the bull’s ear right up until the last moment. ‘Just keep your head up and you won’t feel a thing. Good lad.’

Valerius closed his eyes. He felt the soft, experimental touch of the blade on the back of his neck before it lifted for the last time. His father’s face swam into his mind, inspiring a sudden burst of panic as he realized his sister Olivia would be all alone now. He imagined the man behind choosing the perfect spot between two vertebrae, his muscles rippling as the sword rose. He gulped a final breath. A silence like no other filled his world.

‘Hold!’ The sharp command was accompanied by the thunder of hooves. ‘I said hold,’ a voice accustomed to authority snapped a second time.

Valerius heard a murmur of confusion run through the massed ranks in the square, instantly silenced by the snarl of centurions and optiones. He sensed the moment the executioner took a step back, heard Aquila’s outraged tones in the distance. ‘What is the meaning of this?’

The owner of the first voice didn’t reply immediately. Instead, Valerius heard the sound of a single horse approaching and felt a shadow fall over him. ‘You can open your eyes now.’

Warily, Valerius did as the speaker suggested. His head swam as he looked up to see a travel-stained young man in a simple tunic gazing quizzically down at him from the saddle of a fine milk-white stallion. Only the scarlet band at his waist identified him as a legionary legate, and the equal in authority of any man here; perhaps superior. He sighed. ‘Trouble follows you around the way a seasoned bitch attracts every dog in town. Get up, man.’ He grinned. ‘There’s no need to kneel to me. At least not yet.’

‘Titus?’