Hero of Rome

XXXVII

‘Fire!’

Lunaris pointed to the narrow gap below the door. Valerius looked down and saw a glowing red line along its length and at the same time the room began to fill with choking black smoke. He knew it was something he should have anticipated when it became clear that no amount of battering would defeat the massive temple door. They would have stripped the copper away along with the mask of Claudius to give the flames a better chance to work on the oak. It didn’t matter how thick the wood was. First it would char, then it would glow. Eventually it would burn.

It was only a matter of time.

At the first sign of flames Corvinus’s wife let out a terrified scream and clutched her son tighter to her breast. Like a ripple across a pool, the scream spread panic among the other women, turning the inside of the chamber into a smoke-filled Tartarus inhabited by wailing Furies. Valerius shouted for calm, but his voice was lost in the echoing cacophony of sound. Blinded by fear, Gallus rushed from his place on the floor and began beating at the door and scrabbling desperately at the bar, seeking some way out of this hell. Lunaris reacted first. He knew that if Gallus succeeded they were all dead. He stepped up behind the shopkeeper and smashed the pommel of his sword down on the man’s skull, dropping him like a stone.

‘If anyone else tries to open the door, I’ll kill them,’ he said, and no one disbelieved him.

Gradually, the screams lost their intensity. Gallus’s wife crawled across the floor to her husband and began wailing over him until Numidius and another man dragged his unconscious body back to its position. In the corner, Corvinus whispered urgently to his woman, alternately stroking her hair and his son’s head.

Valerius placed the palm of his hand against the inner surface of the door, attempting to gauge the heat. So far, it was only warm, but that would change. From time to time over the next hours he repeated the exercise. Eventually, it became too hot for him to touch and he ordered an amphora of precious water poured over the wood and under the gap at the base of the doorway, where it hissed and steamed.

Petronius, ignored by the wall, stirred himself and attempted to reassert his authority by protesting at this misuse of their most valuable resource, but Valerius snapped back at him, all protocol forgotten. ‘Don’t be a fool. If this door does not hold, do you think any of us will live long enough to die of thirst?’

At intervals, the besiegers tested to see if the flames had weakened the doors sufficiently, for the ram would begin its work again, but, always, they were forced to return to the fire. At first it seemed those trapped must be suffocated by the fumes or driven into the arms of the enemy. Fortunately, the temple roof was so high that the smoke rose to be lost in the gloom above and apart from the initial terror and some mild discomfort it did no lasting harm. But as the hours passed the heat in their crowded tomb became stifling and there was so little air they lay gasping like fish stranded in a dried-up pond, fighting for each breath. Even Valerius slumped exhausted against the wall by the door, his energy close to spent.

It seemed only minutes before a sharp cry woke him from his stupor. His hand immediately went to his sword, but it was Numidius and the engineer’s eyes were bright with triumph. ‘It’s done,’ he crowed exultantly. ‘The tile is ready to lift.’

Valerius’s fatigue vanished and he felt a resurgence of hope. He followed Numidius to where a little group stood around the loosened tile as if they were attending a burial, with the former builder in pride of place. ‘We thought we’d leave the last bit to you, your honour.’ Thick lines of dust surrounded the marble where it had been chipped away. He could see a distinct gap now, wide enough to take the blade of a knife or a sword. Valerius accepted a dagger from the man who had spoken and knelt, placing the point of the knife deep in the gap and attempting to gain some leverage. When he found it, he placed all his weight on the hilt. The stone rose a hair’s breadth… and the knife blade snapped at the hilt. A massed groan followed the failed attempt, and Valerius looked up to discover he was now surrounded by twenty or thirty anxious faces. ‘Get me two swords,’ he said urgently. ‘We need stronger blades, one to each side.’ This time it was Luca and Messor who did the lifting and the marble tile gradually rose clear, allowing Valerius to push it to one side and reveal the gap below.

The effort was greeted by disbelieving silence.

The opening they had created was eighteen inches square where the tile had fitted, but below it the soot-coated tunnel of the hypocaust flue narrowed by two or three inches. A child might fit into the gap, but no child would ever overcome the terror of slipping into that stygian gloom and where would a child go if it could? Certainly no adult could pass through. Valerius looked down into the darkness and saw a mirror of the despair in his heart.

‘I will try.’

He looked up into Messor’s youthful, determined features. Was it possible? The young legionary quickly stripped off his uniform to reveal the skinny, iron-muscled physique that had led his comrades to nickname him after the silver fish they caught from the wharfs at Ostia and Neapolis and Paestum. If he could get his shoulders inside the entrance, there was a chance. But Valerius studied the gap again and felt a wave of claustrophobic panic. What if the tunnel narrowed at some point?

He shook his head. ‘I can’t order you to go, Pipefish.’

Messor steadily returned his gaze. ‘I would still like to try, sir,’ he repeated, and Valerius wondered at the courage it took to say those words.

Still he hesitated. But if the boy could reach Roman territory… ‘Very well,’ he said.

As Messor crouched over the intimidating black square Valerius passed on the information Numidius had given him. ‘You’ll eventually reach a small room at the rear of the temple podium where the fire pit is. It is probably two full hours till dark, and if you make it before then you must wait.’ Messor nodded in understanding, eyes bright in the boyish face. Valerius handed him a small tight-wrapped bag, the contents of which had been persuaded from one of the trapped Britons. ‘Celtic clothing and a dagger. There will be many thousands of the rebels still out there, but in the darkness you should be able to pass among them freely. Pick up a weapon if you can, it will make you less conspicuous, but do not risk discovery. Make for the gate. That is where you will be in most danger, but once you are through it you should head north — not west, north — until you reach the far side of the ridge. Only then can you make for Londinium or Verulamium. The country must be thick with Roman cavalry patrols by now, and with luck you will run into one within a few hours. Tell them they must hurry. Colonia holds, but it cannot hold for much longer.’

He scoured his mind for anything that would help the boy. Messor sat with his legs over the edge of the hole. It seemed impossible that even his slim body could fit into the constricted space below.

‘Wait! Lunaris, the olive oil.’ The thick, viscous oil would help protect Messor’s body from the abrasive sides of the tunnel and perhaps ease his way through the shaft.

The young legionary waited until his comrade had covered every inch of his skin with the liquid, and when he looked up Valerius could see him struggling to conquer his fear. He met the boy’s eyes and nodded. ‘May Fortuna guide you,’ he said. Messor slipped forward into the darkness.

At once it seemed the attempt would be futile, for his shoulders became wedged between the two surfaces. The chamber held its collective breath, but with a wriggle Messor was gone, slipping away like a pale, gleaming eel until finally the soles of his feet disappeared. They waited what seemed an eternity for the inevitable shouts when he became trapped, the screams for help as he fought the implacable force that held him, which would turn to shuddering gasps as his strength ran out. Each of them endured the awful reality of being buried alive in the suffocating darkness below the Temple of Claudius. But the shouts never came, and as the hours passed they allowed themselves to feel something they believed had deserted them for ever. Hope.

Valerius ordered a ration of the precious water distributed before the remaining contents of the amphora were poured over the door and the bar, which had turned dark with the intense heat. The state of the doors increasingly worried him. They must be badly weakened by now by the twin onslaught of fire and the relentless hammering from the battering ram. But perhaps Claudius watched over them after all.

Barely had the thought formed in his mind when the priest Agrippa appeared at his side. He had faded markedly in the past two days and in the pale light of the oil lamp his face took on an unearthly opaque quality and his eyes burned fever bright.

‘The god came to me in a vision,’ he announced in a voice quavering with exaltation. ‘He advised me that the time has come to appease him for our presence in his house. Only by making a sacrifice of great value will we be released from our torment and the rebel horde wiped clean from the precinct of this temple.’

‘We don’t have anything of value,’ Valerius pointed out wearily. ‘Not unless Corvinus has something hidden under his cloak.’ The goldsmith raised his head at the sound of his name and speared a venomous look in the direction of the doorway.

‘We have food and water,’ the priest insisted, failing to heed the warning in Valerius’s voice. ‘What could be more valuable in our perilous position?’

Valerius was suddenly death sick of priests and temples and gods. If Agrippa was right it was Rome’s gods who had failed to stand before Boudicca and her gods and had allowed them to be trapped in this dreadful place. He had always had at least a little faith in the gods, but now with death six inches away behind that oak door he doubted his faith had been repaid. Perhaps their lives were the price that must be paid for using Claudius to fleece men like Lucullus of their fortunes. He had a sudden thought. ‘I won’t give up our bread and water for Claudius, because where he is they have all the food they need. But if you insist I will make a sacrifice of something even more valuable.’

Agrippa looked around him at the sparseness of their cramped surroundings. ‘I see nothing else of great value,’ he said, frowning.

‘What could be of greater value to Claudius than you, priest?’ Valerius drew his sword slowly from its scabbard, where the polished blade glinted in the glow from the fire, and extended it until the point was an inch from Agrippa’s throat. He raised his voice, so everyone in the chamber could hear it. ‘I give you a choice. We can sacrifice our food and our water, or we can sacrifice the priest here, who will no doubt go willingly to his god if it will ensure the survival of his fellow men. Food or the priest?’

‘Priest,’ urged the weary chorus from the floor. Valerius noticed that the loudest call came from young Fabius, the augur.

‘Well?’

For a long moment Agrippa stared at the sword as if it were a snake about to strike. ‘Perhaps a sacrifice is no longer necessary,’ he said in a choked voice and returned to his place on legs that were a little more unsteady than before.

The priest had barely departed when Valerius heard his name called from the far end of the chamber. Petronius. Didn’t he have enough to concern him without the quaestor ’s intervention? ‘Keep testing the door,’ he ordered the legionary on guard. ‘At the first sign of charring, use two amphorae to damp it down.’

He made his way through the prone bodies, wondering what Petronius wanted. Their position here posed an inherent difficulty and one he would have expected to raise itself before now. As the senior military officer he commanded the defence of Colonia, and therefore the temple. But Petronius was the senior civil presence, and his position gave him a certain amount of authority, even in this situation. As quaestor he would have been entitled to demand control of the food and water supplies. True, he had put up surprisingly little fight when Valerius insisted on using the water to damp the door, but still, this summons — for that was what it was — undoubtedly meant trouble.

Petronius looked more careworn than normal but had made himself as comfortable as possible in his straitened circumstances. While inches separated everyone else in the chamber from his neighbour, the quaestor had created a small outpost using the chests containing Colonia’s official records which gave him and his companion not only room to move, but the relative luxury of something to sit upon. On closer inspection the girl was even younger than Valerius had imagined, probably somewhere in her mid-teens, with haunting dark eyes and a body on the brink of womanhood. He realized he recognized her. It was the girl from Lucullus’s funeral.

The gnawed end of a chicken bone protruded from beneath the hem of Petronius’s cloak, a sign not only of a degree of preparation but also that the ‘records’, or at least some of them, were not all they appeared.

‘How may I be of service to you, quaestor?’ he asked warily.

The answer came as a surprise. ‘Come now, my boy, I think we might be a little less formal. I thought you might appreciate somewhere to rest awhile.’ Petronius indicated one of the boxes.

Valerius was tempted to turn down the offer, but it seemed genuine enough and it would have been bad manners to refuse. When he’d made himself comfortable he said: ‘Now tell me the true reason you wanted me.’

Petronius smiled. ‘I underestimated you, Valerius. I believed you were another of those haughty young aristocrats merely using the legion as a stepping stone to greater things.’ He raised a hand. ‘Do not be insulted; after all, I was one myself. But I saw you and your men fight against impossible odds today and you are a true soldier; a warrior and a leader. It was a remarkable action which cost our rebel queen dear. I doubt she will rest until she burns you out of your lair.’

‘The Ninth-’

‘That is why I called you,’ Petronius interrupted. ‘The papers in these chests could be very valuable to her. Intelligence sources and lists of friends of Rome, some of whom are not what the Britons believe. They would be in great danger if the boxes survive and we are taken. Of course, if the Ninth legion is truly coming to our rescue, I need not be concerned.’ There was a question in the last statement, but Valerius looked at the girl and hesitated.

‘I have no secrets from Mena,’ the quaestor assured him. ‘She is the reason I am here.’ He saw Valerius’s startled look and gave a tired smile. ‘I met her mother four months before I was due to return to Rome following the invasion. She was a Trinovante; Lucullus’s sister, in fact. When we found she was with child, I discovered to my surprise that I had a greater duty.’

That word duty again. Valerius found himself torn between admiration and contempt for Petronius. It was difficult to believe that behind the cold and calculating bureaucrat was a lover who had given up his career so that he could be a father to a native girl. Yet this was the same Petronius who had deprived Falco of the arms he so desperately needed.

‘Destroy them,’ he said quietly. ‘Destroy the papers.’

For a moment Petronius’s face lost its urbane certainty. ‘Your legionary?’

‘If he escaped, Messor will ensure the story of Colonia’s last stand is known, but beyond that… The door may last until morning, or it may not. Even if he reaches the Ninth I doubt they will be able to fight their way to us in time.’

Petronius smiled sadly at his daughter, and reached for her hand. ‘Thank you,’ he said, but Valerius wasn’t sure who the words were intended for. He stood up and walked back to his place beside the door, where the base was now clearly glowing.

‘Water,’ he ordered, more brusquely than he had intended. His admission to Petronius was the first time he had allowed himself to acknowledge that all hope was gone.

It must have been close to midnight when the fire outside the door was doused. Valerius saw the tense, white faces as everyone in the chamber waited for the first crash of the battering ram and prayed the seasoned oak would hold once more. But the crash didn’t come. Instead, a few moments later they heard the sharper rap of a heavy hammer accompanied by a scream that froze the blood of every man, woman and child in the Temple of Claudius. When Valerius put his ear to the door he heard the sound of muffled laughter and a rasping, agonized breathing. The hammer struck again, followed by the scream, and he had to take a step back because he feared the agony of the tortured soul on the other side of the oak would unman him.

Messor. Poor brave Pipefish, who had endured the suffocating hell of the hypocaust only to be taken when he must have been almost clear.

The second scream was replaced by the child-like pleading of a man tested beyond endurance. The pleas drew Valerius back to the door but he could think of no words of solace, nothing that would reach beyond the barrier of pain to the young soldier he had sent to his death. What could he say? That he wished he could take his place? That he wished it was he who prayed for his mother, and to be released from his agony? He leaned his head against the solid comfort of the wood and prayed in his turn for Messor’s easy death. When the smoke began billowing into the chamber and the glow beneath the door resumed he knew beyond a doubt that the gods no longer existed, not for him, not for Messor, not for anyone inside this temple to a false god. That was when they realized that the first screams hadn’t really been screams at all.

In the hours that followed, the walls of the chamber seemed to close in and conditions became even more intolerable. The very air, thick with smoke and the stench of roasting flesh, involuntary shit, days-old sweat, and the unique, rancid scent of human fear, grated on the throat as if it were something solid. The latrine area had long since overflowed and those sunk deepest in the lethargy that accompanies lost hope were content to lie in their own waste with their children sobbing beside them. The certainty of death affected people in different ways. Many simply succumbed to despair, but for others, Valerius among them, it had a curiously liberating effect. Ordinary concerns were no longer of consequence. When he thought of Rome and his father and the cousin who would inherit everything that should be his, it was in the abstract, as if he were a third party looking in on all the pointless drama. Even Maeve had faded to a vague, beautiful memory; a kind of comforting presence who would see him safely to the other side.

Petronius had brought writing materials along with his papers and Valerius spent two hours composing a report of Colonia’s defence and the courage of the city’s militia, of Lunaris’s unflinching bravery, Paulus’s heroics and Messor’s final sacrifice. When he completed the final line, he read it over: We live on in the hope of rescue and in the knowledge that the Temple of Claudius must be defended to the last breath. He shook his head. It hardly captured the moment, but by now the words were blurring together and his exhausted mind demanded only rest. He wrapped the scroll tight around his knife, crawled to the hole in the floor and threw it as far into the recesses as possible. When he’d completed the task he puzzled over the rebel attack on the rear of the compound that had broken the defence. It should have been impossible, but plainly was not. He thought he understood how it happened, but not why. But it didn’t matter now. Nothing did.

Maeve’s face swam into his mind as he slumped into a delirious sleep and he woke trembling, uncertain of the hour or even where he was. Eventually, parched-mouthed and with a pounding head, he roused himself enough to order Lunaris to issue a ration of water, but the legionary shook his head. The last amphora was empty.

Thirst affected the old and the young most of all. For hours, Numidius rocked back and forth on his haunches, moaning pathetically, accompanied by a wailing of babes in arms that cut the air like a knife-edge scraped on a brick. Sometime in the night Corvinus’s wife capitulated to the cumulative torture of her baby’s cries and held him so tight to her breast that the child suffocated. When she discovered the boy was dead she stood in the middle of the room, still holding his lifeless body, and howled like a wolf. Eventually, Corvinus took her gently by the arm and, speaking soothingly to her, ushered her to a dark corner where he cut her throat, then lay down beside the still warm corpses, opened his wrists and slowly bled to death.

Valerius watched the tragic drama unfold and was surprised how little it affected him. Perhaps his mind had been overwhelmed by all that had gone before and all that was undoubtedly to come. Could a man’s stock of emotions be used up in the way he had seen a brave man run out of courage? Corvinus might have been his friend; he remembered how proud the armourer had been of the golden boar amulet he had produced for Maeve, and the good grace with which he gave Lunaris his lesson in humility. He had never truly believed the goldsmith was a coward. Corvinus had betrayed the men he had served with for half a lifetime to protect his wife and child. But did that make him a better man or a worse?

‘Valerius!’ He pushed himself to his feet to answer Lunaris’s call. A large area in the centre of the door glowed bright red in the dark and flames had begun eating through the gap between the two oak panels. The bar which had saved them for so long was charred black. One blow from the ram would clearly smash it in two.

‘Ready yourselves,’ he said solemnly.

Lunaris’s eyes shone from his blackened face like twin beacons, red-rimmed and raw from his constant vigil. But Valerius saw something in them — not a message, not a belief. A quality? — he would never have understood if he didn’t know it was mirrored in his own. The ability to die without regret: to savour those final moments as a warrior, in the knowledge that you were surrounded by other warriors. He remembered a piece of graffiti he’d once seen on the walls of a gladiator school — A sword in my hand and a friend by my side — and for the first time realized its true meaning.

‘It could have been different,’ he said. ‘You could have been a hero on Mona and I could be drinking wine in Rome.’

Lunaris looked into the orange-tainted darkness around him. ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way.’

Valerius took a deep breath to stifle the thing welling up inside him and nodded to Lunaris to rouse the surviving legionaries. He stripped off his armour and laid it carefully beside his helmet. The others followed suit. No protection on earth would save them now. They would fight to the end, but better a fatal wound and a quick death than being captured by Boudicca’s rebels. Messor’s screams still rang in their ears and not one among them intended to share his fate. Like them all, Valerius had considered killing himself to ensure it didn’t happen. But he was a soldier, and soldiers didn’t die like sheep, and now, as he stood among them, he knew he had made the right choice. He lined them up in two ranks and made a play of tugging at sword belts and chiding them for their unwashed uniforms. As he did, he took each of them by the hand and their lean, savage faces grinned back at him, teeth shining in the darkness, and he felt the pride well up inside him.

‘It has been an honour to serve with you,’ he said.

They cheered him: a hoarse ‘hurrah’ from throats cracked with thirst that echoed from the walls of the chamber and startled the civilians lying in their subdued huddles. He felt a boiling surge of emotion and he loved them for it. The anticipation of battle beat like a giant drum on his ears. If a man had to die he could not die in better company. A figure stepped to his side and he turned to find Petronius with a naked sword in his hand, the blade bright with blood.

‘I could not let them take her,’ he choked, and Valerius nodded.

The door exploded inward in a shower of sparks and flame followed instantly by a howling wave of warriors. Valerius killed the first man with a single thrust but the sword blades and the spear points were too many to resist and they came at him from every angle in a flurry of bright metal. He heard Petronius’s death cry at his side as a blade hammered his ribs. Roaring with pain and mad with fear and rage he smashed his sword hilt into a screaming, wild-eyed face. The blow left his right side open and, as he backswung in an attempt to parry a blur of metal that hacked at his eyes, he knew he was an instant too slow. A lightning flash of brilliant colours exploded in his head and he felt himself tumbling into the darkness. Death reached out to him and he welcomed it. The last thing he remembered was a face from his worst nightmares.