Saviour of Rome

XXV

‘Well?’

‘It was as you said,’ Tito told his father as he dismounted from his pony. ‘They have weakened the guard on the convoys from the mines to Asturica Augusta.’

‘To draw us in and destroy us.’

The younger man nodded. ‘The hook-noses had left their tracks all over the hills north and south of the road. There are hundreds of them. A half-cohort of legionaries too, camped in a gully, but on the alert.’ Serpentius noticed he had something bundled behind his saddle. Tito untied it and hefted it from the horse’s back. It was obviously of great weight and he dropped it at Serpentius’s feet. ‘A gift,’ he said solemnly, ‘from one warrior to another.’

‘Where did you get this?’ Serpentius studied the tight-knit mail shirt, noting the brighter patches where it had been repaired and the places where the rings had been forced together by the impact of a blow. Men had fought and died in this relic. Still, it was of good quality. But what was this? Tito was watching him as he inspected it. ‘I said, where did you get this,?’ Serpentius demanded with more urgency.

‘There was a man. He was being hunted by the hook-noses. A Roman … I wasn’t sure what to do, but there was something about him.’ He shrugged, unable to fully explain his actions. ‘I decided to help. He gave me the mail in thanks. Did I do wrong?’

Serpentius ignored the question and fingered one of the mail’s leather straps where it had been repaired. ‘What was he like, this Roman?’

‘Tall, lean and dark, with a scar on his cheek, here,’ he ran a finger down the left side of his face from eye to lip.

‘No, what was he like?’

Tito searched for the correct words. ‘Not frightened. Angry. Fierce. He looked down upon his enemies like a hawk waiting to strike, but they were too many and well armed.’ The young man stared at his father as his thoughts converged on a conclusion. ‘Menacing. He reminded me of you.’

Serpentius shook his head and his expression took on a faraway look. ‘And was there some mark – other than the scar – that would identify him?’

‘His right hand was made of wood.’

Tito watched his father’s face for a reaction, but Serpentius had long ago learned to keep his emotions to himself. Inside, his mind was racing. Valerius here? But how? And more important, why? Their last meeting had been in Jerusalem with Serpentius lying face down on a bed with an open sword wound in his back, delirious from pain and fever. He had only the vaguest memory of their parting, but he was certain there had been a mention of Rome and Tabitha, the Judaean princess who had stolen Valerius’s heart. A marriage? Why then would he leave his new bride to come to the seething snake pit of Asturica?

Gaius Valerius Verrens was a dangerous man, almost as dangerous as Serpentius himself. Yes, they had been friends, but time and circumstance could erode the strongest of friendships. Valerius was a Roman and in Serpentius’s experience most Romans were the most pragmatic of creatures, willing to sacrifice whatever it took as a means to an end.

Someone had been stealing gold the Romans claimed as their own, though it came from the earth Asturians had hunted, ploughed and lived upon for a thousand generations. Someone had decided Serpentius made a convenient scapegoat for the banditry and murder. He’d been meant to die deep in the mine at the hands of Cyclops. And there his crimes would have died with him, leaving the true perpetrators to find new, more subtle avenues to satisfy their avarice. Now he was on the loose, a hunted beast in the mountains he had once called home. That same someone knew exactly how dangerous he was, both as a warrior and as a threat to the conspiracy. The Parthian auxiliaries were scouring the hills for him, but how much more appropriate to send a friend, equally dangerous – a sword masked by a smile – to draw him out?

Yet the Serpentius who had ridden at Valerius’s side struggled with this logic. Honour and loyalty were Gaius Valerius Verrens’ code. A code not just to live by, but to die for. Serpentius had been his slave, his tentmate and his friend. He couldn’t believe a man like Valerius would betray that friendship.

Unless it was in the greater interests of Rome.

It came to him in a tumble of half-formed memories. At one of their meetings Petronius had let slip that the man he reported to was the most important official in Hispania Tarraconensis. Just after he arrived in Asturica, Serpentius had heard a whisper that a man called Gaius Plinius Secundus had been appointed proconsul of the province. Plinius Secundus had been one of the few men prepared to speak for Valerius at his trial for treason after the death of Vitellius. Serpentius remembered him as a man of patent honesty and intelligence. When Pliny’s eyes and ears in the north ceased to function what would be more natural than that he call on the man most capable of replacing them: Valerius.

‘You did the right thing,’ Serpentius told his son.

His father’s praise seemed to make Tito grow a little taller, but he was still wary. ‘Is this man’s presence enough to make you change your plans?’

‘It’s possible,’ the Spaniard said thoughtfully. ‘But it depends why he’s here in Asturica. Perhaps the Parthians were trying to kill him, but there is always the possibility they only wanted us to think that. Whatever we decide he must be watched. I want to know his movements, who he meets, where and when. You were right. He is a dangerous man, probably the most dangerous I have ever known.’

‘So you do know him?’ Tito’s voice held a hint of irritation: why not just say it?

‘I was his slave-’

Tito gave a snort of disgust. ‘Then I should have killed him-’

‘-but he gave me my freedom and I became his friend.’

‘There is no friendship between us and them.’

‘Nevertheless, it is true. He saved my life, more than once, and I his.’

‘Then you owe him nothing.’

Serpentius laughed at his son’s certainty. ‘There are no debts between friends,’ he corrected.

‘I still think I should have killed him.’

The Spaniard smiled. ‘You couldn’t kill me. What makes you think you could kill a man who won the Gold Crown of Valour. A Hero of Rome who fought his way from the northern fastness of Britannia to the desert wastes of Africa and Armenia. A man who broke a legionary battle line and opened the way for his men to take their eagle?’

For a moment Tito looked almost impressed. He understood that to take a legion’s eagle, the standard placed in its care by the Emperor himself, was to take its soul and bring dishonour to every man who allowed it to happen. The look vanished as quickly as it appeared. ‘Just stories,’ he said. ‘Campfire tales that turn men into giants.’

‘Not stories,’ Serpentius shook his head. ‘I was with him every step of the way when he broke that line.’

‘You sound as if you admire him.’

‘He is a certain kind of Roman.’ The older man seemed to look inside himself. ‘I learned to hate the Romans. Oh, how I learned to hate them, as they howled at me to take the next life or spill the next blood. I hated them as they laughed at the agonies of a man crawling through the sand with his guts trailing behind him. Or a gladiator staring at the stumps of his wrists and his life pouring out of his veins. Let us be entertained, they would cry, and I would lust to be among them with a sword in my hand, hunting them like chickens and sending their heads flying.’ He sighed, a deep, aching sigh as if it pained him to admit what followed. ‘Yet there is another type of Roman, rare as a phoenix egg. Stern and unyielding, but brave to the point of foolishness. A Roman prepared to purchase the burned-out shell of a gladiator to save him from certain death in the arena. To treat him like a man. To give him his freedom and to offer an Asturian outcast his friendship. Valerius is that kind of Roman, Tito, the kind that allows you to understand how they could conquer the world and then rule it when they were done. Titus, the Emperor’s son, is another. But with a harder edge. Fail him and you will end up hanging from a cross. There is no hatred or malice in Valerius. He thinks he can kill without conscience, but the shades of the men who die by his sword weigh heavily on his mind.’

‘Then he is a fool.’

‘No, just a man. Leave me now, I must think. He is to be watched, but make sure our friends in Asturica keep their distance. I want names,’ he repeated. ‘I want to know who he meets. Only then will I know why he is here.’

‘What if-?’

Serpentius’s voice hardened. ‘If he cannot keep himself alive he is not the Valerius I knew. Now go.’

Left alone in the home he had shared with his wife Serpentius’s shoulders slumped. He studied the walls of grey stone with their niches and shelves, the hearth in the centre of the floor with the smoke swirling up into the roof space, and the bed – not their bed, but similar to the one they’d once shared. Once this house had been vibrant and alive, filled with the sound of a woman’s laughter, a child’s hungry cries, and the contented silence of a man who wanted nothing more than what he had. Now it was sterile and soulless. Just an empty space. The very thought of it had sustained him through the long years of exile. So why did he feel a stranger here? A tear ran down his grizzled cheek, the first suggestion of weakness in many months.

Was he still the Serpentius Valerius had known?

He lifted his hand to his shaved head and his fingers explored the depression the width of his thumb just behind his right ear. Explored, but did not probe. Titus’s medicus had warned him against interfering with the wound, suffered as he’d tried to save the Emperor Vitellius’s son during the sack of Rome. He no longer experienced what Alexandros had called his absences. The medicus had drilled into his skull to release the fluid that had gathered there. Serpentius had been under the influence of distilled poppy during the operation, but Alexandros took great pleasure in describing every detail of the procedure. The medicus had laughed as he’d explained how even a slight blow near the wound would certainly result in the Spaniard’s death.

Then there was the panic that had unmanned him in those early moments after he’d regained consciousness in the mine. If Valerius had come to Asturica Augusta for the reason he hoped, was he even capable of providing the help he would need?

And was the Roman truly aware of the danger he faced?