Hero of Rome

XXIII

By the time Valerius rode up to Lucullus’s villa it was past midday. He’d been surprised by the message from the Trinovante but the opportunity to see Maeve banished all thoughts of tiredness. And he had another urgent reason to talk to her. He had made his decision on the long ride back from Venta: he loved her too much to leave her behind. They would be married and he would take her to Rome. He had thought long and hard about the effect the marriage must have on his career and the impact on his relationship with his father. The old man might even disinherit him. But someone who had faced death in a shield wall was old enough to make his own decisions. If he couldn’t survive on his legal work, he could take up a commission in an auxiliary unit. All that mattered was that they would be together.

The white-walled building was clearly visible from some distance and it was just a feeling at first, but a soldier’s feeling he’d learned not to ignore. The fields stood empty when they should have been full of workers either ploughing or planting. There should be smoke from the villa kitchen, but there was none. Now he noticed the open door that would normally be shut. He rode forward with his hand on his sword, allowing the horse to make its own pace. In front of the house he slid from the saddle and stood for a moment, absorbing an almost breathless stillness that made him reluctant to breathe himself.

‘Maeve?’ His voice echoed from the walls. The darkened doorway suddenly seemed very dangerous. Carefully, he drew his gladius and walked towards it. A sharp snap made him flinch and he looked down to see shards of a broken pot beneath his feet. He recognized it as Lucullus’s favourite bowl from Gaul, the red clay one with the gladiators fighting below the rim. Here membered discussing the design with Lucullus; the Briton’s eagerness to be a Roman had been tempered by an inability to comprehend a society which delighted in making two men fight to the death. The inner door lay ajar by only a few inches and Valerius carefully used the point of the sword to push it open and give him a view into the next room. Empty. No, it was more than empty. The place had been stripped. All Lucullus’s fine busts and statues were gone. The bare end walls puzzled him until he realized what was missing. They’d even cut the paintings of Claudius from the plaster, leaving jagged-edged cavities as the only reminder of their existence.

‘Maeve?’ He heard the nervousness in his voice. Please. Not that. ‘Lucullus?’ He moved through the villa, methodically searching each room and in each finding the same story. Until he reached Lucullus’s bathhouse.

Lucullus had always been a tidy man. Even the second set of accounts he kept hidden from the tax collectors was maintained in the fussy, meticulous Latin handwriting he took such pride in, each column of figures straighter than any temple pillar. Clearly he had wished to give whoever found him as little extra work as possible because he had opened his veins while he sat comfortably in the warm water of his bath. Now he lay back, impossibly white in an obscene sea of dark, vinous red, quite dead. Strangely, his face was fixed in a dreamy expression which seemed to hint he had not found his passing too unpleasant after all the harshness that preceded it.

Valerius shook his head wearily. He was far from unfamiliar with death, but he struggled to equate this lifeless milk-white corpse with the jolly little man whose restless mind had leapt from one hopeless moneymaking scheme to the next with the unrepressed vigour of a meadow full of grasshoppers. What had made him do it? And where was Maeve?

The sharp crack as a foot stepped on another of the pot shards in the courtyard alerted him to a new danger. He moved swiftly back through the house and reached the inner door just as a hooded figure entered the room. At first his mind cried out Maeve! but he realized the frame was too small. He placed the point of his sword at the intruder’s back and was rewarded with a squeal of fear from Catia, Maeve’s maid.

‘What happened here?’ he demanded. ‘Where is your mistress?’

‘She is gone,’ the grey-haired woman cried. ‘They took her. They took everything. I hid in the apple store or they would have taken me as well. I-’

‘Who took her? When?’ he interrupted. When was more important than who but he needed all the information he could glean.

‘The soldiers. They were led by the tall one and had carts. Four. They took everything. They took Docca.’ She broke down, sobbing uncontrollably. Docca must be her husband, but Valerius didn’t have time for sympathy. He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her roughly.

‘When, and which direction did they take?’

‘Three hours ago. The Londinium road.’

Valerius released her and she slumped to the floor. Three hours and perhaps an hour to catch up with them if he rode hard. There was still a chance. Whoever had taken Maeve could only move as fast as the carts carrying their booty. That meant two miles in an hour at most, so eight miles. He tried to visualize the road, looking for somewhere he could intercept the convoy. But he would need help.

He lifted the woman to her feet. ‘Listen to me, Catia. You must go to the soldiers’ camp at Colonia. Ask for Julius, the centurion. This is what you must tell him.’

He chose a place where the Londinium road crossed a narrow river about ten miles west of Colonia and concealed himself in a copse of nearby beech trees to wait. He’d avoided the road, but ridden hard across open country until he was certain he’d overtaken his quarry. Now all he could do was wait. And hope.

The truth was that he had very little idea what would happen next. It seemed clear that the raid on Lucullus’s villa had something to do with the Trinovante’s business dealings, but what had prompted the drastic step and Lucullus’s even more drastic reaction was a mystery. All he knew for certain was that he must get Maeve back. Catia had said the man leading the raiders was a legionary, which meant that Valerius almost certainly outranked him. In that case, he would use his authority to have Maeve and the other prisoners freed. It might take some argument but it should be possible. On the other hand, the expedition could be a piece of private enterprise by one of Lucullus’s business rivals, or a partner he had cheated, who had hired the soldiers as enforcers to get their money back. When he turned it over in his mind this seemed less likely. They might show they had some legal right over Lucullus’s slaves, but not his daughter, and kidnap was a capital offence to be tried before the governor or his deputy.

If it came to it, he would fight for her. But he couldn’t fight alone.

As the minutes passed, the heavy silence mocked him. Nothing but the rustle of the trees, and they whispered that his quarry must have taken another road. After half an hour the horse twitched restlessly beneath him and he sensed its urge to move on, but moments later the creak of an unsprung ox cart brought him the warning he’d strained for. The urge to launch himself towards the sound was overwhelming, but he willed himself to stay motionless. Only when he could hear voices did he urge the mare forward and sweep her round to face them.

The leader reined in sharply at the sight of the unexpected apparition blocking the road. He had just reached the crossing, with four riders at his back, and behind them Lucullus’s slaves walked disconsolately among the ox carts. A further six legionaries who had been marching in the rear recognized the threat and double-timed past the convoy to join the vanguard, leaving two to make sure the slaves didn’t run.

Valerius scanned the carts for Maeve and was rewarded by a flash of chestnut-brown behind the second wagon. She had her head bowed and was partially obscured by the horseman in front of him. He wanted to shout out to let her know he’d come for her, but realized that drawing attention to her might place her in more danger. He bit his lip and waited, allowing the tribune’s uniform and his bearing to announce his authority. Thus far he’d ignored the leader of the soldiers.

‘You!’ The voice reverberated with disbelief and Valerius’s heart sank as he recognized it.

Crespo.

But all he could do was play the part he had created for himself — and buy time. This confrontation was all about power and rank and a legionary’s natural inclination to obey a command. He injected his words with a touch of parade-ground authority. ‘Centurion Crespo, you have exceeded your orders. Release the prisoners and I’ll escort them back to Colonia. Any dispute over the ownership of the slaves will be settled in the courts.’

Crespo stared back at him, gimlet eyes glittering. He remembered the stinking awfulness of waking up on a Londinium dung heap, and the humiliation he had endured in the hut at the Silurian hill fort. This man had been responsible for both. Unfortunately, he was also a tribune of Rome, which meant Crespo had to curb his natural inclination towards violent retribution. Yet something wasn’t right here.

‘You seem to be all on your own, pretty boy. I wonder whose orders you have… if you have any at all,’ he said thoughtfully.

Valerius ignored the insult. ‘I don’t need orders, Crespo. This uniform carries the governor’s authority and flouting that authority will see you hung from a cross.’

Crespo nudged his mount forward and reached towards the belt at his waist. Valerius’s right hand shadowed the move, hovering over his sword hilt. The Sicilian laughed and carefully retrieved the scroll bearing his mandate.

‘My instructions, tribune. Centurion Crespo is ordered to secure any or all of the property of Lucullus, augustalis of Colonia, on the instructions of the procurator, Catus Decianus. I think you’ll find that includes his slaves. If you don’t have something official countermanding my order, I’ll ask you to step aside and I’ll be on my way.’ The thin lips twitched in a humourless smile and his voice fell to a whisper. ‘And we’ll have our reckoning another time. Because, believe me, pretty boy, there will be a reckoning.’

‘His property doesn’t include his daughter.’ Valerius said it loudly enough for the men at Crespo’s back to hear. If he could plant a seed of doubt there was a chance. Crespo’s style of leadership was unlikely to have made him popular and if the soldiers who followed him could be swayed… But Crespo was a predator, with a predator’s instinct for any weakness. Something in the way Valerius spoke awoke the wolf in him. He heard it howl and the smile transformed into a grin of anticipation.

‘His daughter. So that’s it. You didn’t come all this way to round up a few dirty old slaves, did you, pretty boy? You came for the priest’s daughter. Full of surprises, you are. Here was me thinking you only liked boys. Vettius, bring the Celt bitch up here.’

One of the riders turned and rode to the second cart, where he untied the rope holding Maeve and used it to pull her, stumbling, to the flank of Crespo’s horse. Valerius felt raw anger flare within him when he saw the bruise on her cheek and the half-shut eye. He reached for the rope but Crespo flicked it away from him.

‘Not so fast, pretty boy.’ He leaned forward and swept Maeve effortlessly on to the saddle in front of him. ‘What’s she worth to you?’

Valerius froze. He understood that Crespo was trying to goad him into a fight. The other soldiers edged closer and their hard eyes never left him. If he reacted now against odds of a dozen or so to one he might take a few of them with him, but probably not Crespo. And if he died, Crespo couldn’t afford any witnesses to the murder of a Roman tribune, so Maeve would die too.

‘What’s she worth?’ the centurion repeated. As his captive struggled in his arms he ran his hands over her shoulders, breasts and legs. ‘Not bad. I think I might have her for myself tonight. And after I’ve had her Vettius and his Mules can have her too. Then she’ll only be fit for the dogs, so maybe we’ll give her back to you.’

Valerius went cold and his mind moved beyond anger to that place where only Crespo’s blood would pay for the indignities Maeve was suffering. Her eyes pleaded with him to act. His heart told him to launch himself across the gap and ram his sword point beneath Crespo’s chin and up into his brain. His head said wait.

Thunder filled his ears and he wondered if it was the thunder the British champions heard when they threw themselves against the Roman shields. Perhaps the thunder of Taranis that sent them to a warrior’s death without fear of what waited beyond. But it was only the thunder of twenty galloping horses.

Valerius didn’t look round. He heard the ragged snorts of mounts that had been ridden hard and knew that behind him was now lined up a troop of Bela’s Thracian cavalry wing. Crespo’s expression didn’t change but the men around him backed away from the long cavalry spears.

‘Five hundred denarii.’

Crespo frowned.

‘I’ll give you five hundred denarii,’ Valerius repeated. ‘Take it, or we take her and you get nothing.’

He saw Crespo’s eyes counting the spears behind him. Maeve sat very still with her head bowed and he couldn’t read what was in her eyes. Eventually the centurion gave a sharp laugh. He knew he’d been outmanoeuvred but saw no sense in crying over it. There’d be another time. He allowed her to slip to the ground. ‘You heard him, five hundred denarii for the British slut,’ he shouted. ‘If he doesn’t pay, his honour is mine and I will bury it in my latrine where it belongs. March, you lazy bastards. We’ve wasted enough time here.’

Once the little convoy had moved out of sight Valerius dismounted and helped Maeve to her feet. She stood motionless as he cut the rope from her wrists, revealing a glistening band of bloody flesh. Her eyes had the unseeing stare so familiar in legionaries who had fought one battle too many.

On the way back to Colonia she sat on the saddle in front of him and at one point her body began to shake uncontrollably. She was still shaking when they reached the townhouse her father had once owned. He knew he should tell her about Lucullus’s death but feared the news would break her already fragile link with reality. Falco’s wife was waiting for them and she cleaned and bandaged Maeve’s wounds before putting her in Valerius’s bed.

While she slept, he sent word to Cearan — and waited.