Saviour of Rome

XVII

When Valerius returned to his lodgings he found Zeno, Severus’s atriensis, awaiting him.

‘My master wished you to know we have discovered where your friend Petronius was staying,’ the doorkeeper said. ‘It is in a district favoured by lawyers and the like in the north of the city. I am to take you to the house if that is your wish, or we could wait until morning?’

There was still more than an hour till dusk so Valerius said he’d accompany the man immediately.

As they walked through the streets shopkeepers were closing their shutters and clearing their stalls. Valerius would have expected Zeno, servant to an important man in the city, to be well known to the tradespeople. Instead, men and women turned away as he passed, as if to make eye contact was to become tainted. He tried to make conversation, but the atriensis wouldn’t be drawn either on his opinion of Asturica, or how long he’d worked for his master.

‘This is it,’ he said, when they came to a green door in an impressive block of town houses. ‘According to his servant he rode from the city with another man on the kalends of August and never returned.’

‘May I speak to the servant?’

Zeno’s face froze in a tight smile. ‘I am afraid he has left the area.’

Whatever else you are good at, my friend, Valerius mused silently, you are a very poor liar. ‘Do you have a key?’ he said. ‘I won’t learn much staring at the door.’

‘Of course.’ The servant reached inside his tunic to retrieve a large key on a leather cord and used it to open the door. They stepped into the entrance hall and walked through to the atrium, with the usual opening in the roof and a rain pool in the centre of the tiled floor. Small bedrooms opened out from the atrium, the interiors hidden behind curtained doorways. Valerius checked both. They were empty of any signs of occupation.

‘As you can see the new occupant has yet to take up residence,’ Zeno explained.

‘What happened to his belongings?’

‘The servant,’ the atriensis shrugged. ‘He was owed wages.’

They moved through to a room split to create a dining area and an office. Oddly, it contained no writing desk though the far wall was lined with niches for scroll cases.

‘His papers? He had an office. He must have had papers.’

‘I … I don’t know, sir.’

The unnatural level of cleanliness struck Valerius as odd in the heat of summer with the wind bringing in dust through every open window, but somehow it had been achieved. The room was so clean even the slightest blemish caught his eye. He bent to look closely at something in the crack between two tiles.

‘Sir?’

Valerius took out his knife and scraped a little of the substance away with the point. ‘What do you think this is?’

Zeno looked utterly bewildered. ‘Dirt, perhaps ink or some kind of pigment?’

Valerius studied the dark smudge. ‘Perhaps.’

They went from the kitchen via a rear door out into the garden, where a blackened patch of earth answered Valerius’s question about the fate of Petronius’s papers. He walked around the perimeter and stopped beside a patch of slightly disturbed soil by the wall.

‘I’ve seen enough, thank you, Zeno.’

He could almost feel the other man’s relief as he locked the door of the house behind them.

‘I’m sorry, sir, but it is my master’s belief that your friend has been killed by bandits and his body hidden.’

Valerius shook his head sadly. ‘You’re probably right. I’ll make my own way back to the house.’ Zeno was about to protest, but the Roman forestalled him. ‘Leave me, Zeno, I wish to remember Marcus as he was.’

Zeno left with a tight nod. Valerius waited till he disappeared from sight then walked towards the darkened entrance of the alley that adjoined the town house. Once in the shade he counted his steps till he guessed he was opposite the disturbed patch of earth on the far side of the wall. A few cracks and areas of missing mortar would make it simple enough for a man to scale the wall. And the tell-tale scratches from the hobnails on a caliga sandal told him someone had done so quite recently.

Marcus Petronius was dead all right. But he hadn’t been killed by bandits. Gaius Valerius Verrens knew what dried blood looked like. Marcus had been murdered in the house, or injured there before being taken elsewhere and killed.

Abilio, the decurio in charge of the Vardulli contingent, put a finger to his right nostril and snorted out a glob of grit and snot from the left, then repeated the exercise in reverse. Naturally the commander of the Parthian convoy escort had stationed the strangers at the rear, where they ate the dust of everyone ahead. Worse, they had to curb their spirited cavalry horses to the plodding pace of the oxen, continuously hauling at the bridle and trying to stay awake in the saddle. If Abilio had been in charge, he’d have had his men ranging the flanks where they could do some good, checking any potential ambush places. But he wasn’t, so he had to grit his teeth and take it like the rest.

He licked his cracked lips and spat. He supposed it didn’t matter too much. The terrain was as flat as a table top with only an occasional tree or farmstead to break the monotony. Not much chance of being ambushed when you could see a rider approaching from ten miles away. He supposed it accounted for the relaxed manner of the Parthians, who laughed and called to each other in their outlandish language. Abilio could see that it made his men uneasy, and he understood why. There’d been times when he’d caught the bearded troopers staring with their hooded, dark eyes and he’d swear they were laughing at him.

He was surprised when the prefect of the auxiliaries dropped back and reined in beside him.

‘Escort duty can be deadly dull, can it not,’ Claudius Harpocration smiled. ‘Especially out here where there is nothing to see and a man has so much time to think he could drive himself mad.’

‘Your men seem to be cheerful enough,’ Abilio pointed out.

‘Those troopers are excited because they’ve been given leave in Tarraco until the next supply train. After a year in a dusty hellhole like Legio, Tarraco is a paradise on earth for them. Perhaps your men will show them some of the better places to visit?’ Abilio smiled politely but said nothing. ‘The civilian who arrived at Legio with you. I wasn’t certain at first, but I think I recognized him from somewhere. Perhaps I was wrong. The man I’m thinking of would have been an officer.’

‘No,’ Abilio decided it would do no harm to show a little cooperation, ‘you may be right. It would depend on where you served. His name is Verrens, Gaius Valerius Verrens. He won the Corona Aurea in Britannia with the Twentieth, was with Corbulo in Armenia, fought with the First Adiutrix at Bedriacum and commanded the Seventh Galbiana at Cremona …’

‘Yes, that might be it,’ Harpocration nodded. ‘We accompanied the Seventh to Rome with Emperor Galba, of blessed memory …’

‘Blessed memory,’ Abilio muttered the automatic reply. ‘Our man is a proper hero. You’d certainly remember him if you’d seen the wooden hand.’ He was staring straight ahead so he missed the flash of consternation that crossed the Parthian’s face. ‘The right hand. He seems to be a little wary of showing it, because he kept it under his cloak a lot of the time.’

‘Now I have him.’ Harpocration quickly recovered his false smile. ‘I remember the wooden hand. When we return I will introduce myself and we can talk about old campaigns. We will reach the river soon,’ he nodded ahead. ‘No point in going further when there’s fresh water and reasonable grazing at hand. I will send a squadron ahead to prepare a campsite.’

‘The Vardulli will be happy to take the first watch,’ Abilio offered.

‘Not at all, my friend,’ Harpocration said. ‘Your men have been eating dust all day. In any case, you are our guests,’ he said over his shoulder as he rode ahead. ‘You should let them bathe and wash their clothes, have some food and get a decent night’s rest. There will be plenty of opportunity to stand guard before we reach Tarraco.’

That night Abilio unrolled his blanket among his men and slept the sleep of the truly exhausted. Much later his mind registered a soft shuffling sound and his eyes snapped open. As his hand sought the hilt of his sword he became aware of shadowy silhouettes against the stars. He opened his mouth to cry a warning, but before he could make a sound a horny palm clamped itself over his mouth and his sword hand was pinned. A glint of light gave him warning of what was to come and he tried to scream as he felt the sting of the blade across his throat. The last thing he saw before he drowned in his own blood were Claudius Harpocration’s pitiless obsidian eyes staring down at him.