Saviour of Rome

XXXI

Valerius said his farewells in the gateway of Saco’s brickworks where he’d been held, reflecting that his departure might have been very different had the ‘interview’ taken a less cordial turn. They arranged to meet again in a week unless either came up with new information of value. Most of Saco’s contacts with Petronius had been through the secretary, Claudius. Saco promised to have Claudius make subtle enquiries to try to discover the engineer’s movements during the final week of his life.

When Valerius stepped into the open he realized it must be close to mid afternoon, yet he could swear he’d been in the cellar for no more than an hour. A wave of fatigue, more mental than physical, swept over him and his throat felt as dry as the dusty street under his feet. He stepped beneath the awning of a pavement bar to order a cup of wine. He forced himself to concentrate. It had all happened too quickly. The threat of a painful death and relief at his survival had made him stupid. He should have asked a dozen more questions. Probed deeper into Saco’s business relationships with the men who were now his enemies. Discovered more detail about his relationship with Petronius and enquired further about the mysterious helper who’d disappeared soon after the engineer’s death.

Saco’s sudden change of heart still puzzled him. From potential torturer to prospective ally in less time than it took to down a cup of wine. Yes, Valerius had been able to supply the answers the builder wanted to hear, but there had been an element of desperation in his desire to accept them as truth. To the experienced inquisitor it was clear Saco had all but determined the outcome from the start, and the tools and the brazier were little more than theatre.

A familiar figure appeared at the end of the street. Valerius watched Saco’s aide, Claudius, march down the cobbled thoroughfare with the purposeful air and intense focus of a man late for an important meeting. On the face of it a lowly secretary, yet, in the glow of the coals, Valerius had seen something more visceral. Something more familiar in a soldier than a man who wielded a stylus. Claudius had wanted to see blood spill and smell the stink of burning flesh. If Saco had decided to inflict pain he couldn’t have found a better instrument. And what did that information add to the portrait of his new ally forming in Valerius’s mind?

It was clear he could disregard what Severus had said about Saco. If the man was a known threat to the conspiracy it was in the duovir’s interest to tarnish the name of his enemy. So, Saco the benefactor. Saco, the successful businessman. Yet Saco claimed the sums involved in his bribery were relatively small, which, if true, gave at least a hint that the scale of the contracts he was bidding for were of similar nature. So where did the vast sums come from that had funded the baths and the city library? The obvious answer was that Saco had been lying. Rather than being peripheral to Asturica’s corruption he was up to his neck in it, right up till the point when he’d felt the noose begin to tighten. That would explain why he was so ready to accept Valerius as Petronius’s replacement. If – when – the conspiracy was finally uncovered, Severus, Fronton and the rest would implicate him in what had gone before. Without the Emperor’s protection Saco would face the same bloody retribution. Saco needed Valerius, just as much – perhaps more – than Valerius needed him.

Yet an ally driven by self-interest was just as valuable as one driven by principle.

Valerius paid for his wine and continued back to his lodgings. His route took him past the Severus villa. By chance his arrival coincided with the duovir’s exit at the heart of a swarm of clients on the way to preside over some tribunal or case. On impulse Valerius slowed and changed direction. By the time Severus and his entourage moved out of sight the one-handed Roman was approaching the villa entrance.

He knocked on the great wooden door and waited, uncertain of his reception, or even why he was taking this chance. All he knew was that he couldn’t wait a week for Saco or Melanius to make progress. His lawyer’s training counselled patience, but sometimes a case needed a touch of the whip. Sometimes you just had to shake the bushes and see what came out.

Zeno, Severus’s atriensis, answered the knock and greeted Valerius with a look that was far from welcoming.

‘My master is out.’ He made to close the door, but Valerius put his left hand to it.

‘I am here to see the lady Calpurnia.’

He saw a flare of consternation in the other man’s eyes that confirmed his mistress was at home.

‘What is your business with her?’

‘No business of a servant with ideas above his station.’ Zeno flinched as if he’d been slapped. ‘All you have to do is announce me.’ Valerius pushed harder and stepped inside.

Zeno gave him a look of hatred, but led the way through to the room with the bear mosaic. Valerius waited while the servant went to fetch his mistress. His absence was followed a few moments later by the sound of raised voices from the interior of the house before Calpurnia appeared, eyes glittering dangerously and with a look on her face Valerius hadn’t seen before.

‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded without preamble.

Valerius smiled. Even in a simple white stola Calpurnia Severa was striking, and the pink flush of anger in her cheeks made her more so. ‘I confess you gave the impression I had a standing invitation to visit you.’

‘Do not patronize me, Gaius Valerius Verrens,’ she snapped. ‘That would be a great mistake. If you wish to speak to my husband he is not here.’

‘No,’ Valerius assured her. ‘It is you I came to see, and not just for the obvious pleasure of your company. When we last met you asked certain questions and made certain observations. Since then I’ve had time to consider their implications and I wonder if you are truly aware of the situation in which you find yourself …’

‘I should have Zeno throw you out on the street.’

‘You could have him try,’ Valerius agreed.

‘Yes,’ a wry smile flickered momentarily across her lips. ‘But we have more than one servant.’

Valerius allowed his voice to harden a little. ‘I came here because I decided I could be of some service to you after all. It’s possible I may be able to save you much pain. Possibly even save your life.’

A snort of derision, but she didn’t storm from the room or fly at him with her long nails. ‘You think you know me, Gaius Valerius Verrens. Because I am a woman you have the presumption to treat me as if I am weak and powerless. Yet you are much mistaken.’ Her tone changed and her words emerged like lashes of the whip, each stinging more than the one that had gone before. ‘My family owned a small cloth-making enterprise in Carthago Nova, but my father was a drunkard and we would have been destitute if my mother and I hadn’t taken control. By the time I was fifteen I was running the business. Five years later I had expanded it tenfold. Severus didn’t marry me for my beauty, or even the promise of this body. He married me because of my ability, my intelligence and my strength of will. It was I who encouraged him to join the ordo, and who gave him the ambition to become a duovir and made him a power in Asturica Augusta.’

‘Then you know, or at least suspect, what Severus is involved in.’ Valerius waved his wooden fist to encompass the room, with its sumptuous wall hangings and marble statuary. ‘You undoubtedly benefit from the proceeds. Perhaps you approve. I like to think that you do not, but maybe it excites you to be part of something illicit?’ He waited for her to interrupt, or deny, but she just stared at him. ‘But have you considered what it means to even share a house with Severus? Innocent or guilty, your silence and proximity implicates you in what he has been doing. If Severus and his friends are arrested, the first thing the governor will do is confiscate their property. At best, you will be left destitute, at worst, you will lose your liberty or your life.’

In the long silence that followed the only sound was the whistle of the light breeze through a gap in the outer door. Calpurnia’s face betrayed nothing, but he noticed the fingers of her right hand were twisted in the folds of her stola. To stop them shaking? But with anger or from fear? After what seemed an eternity, she said: ‘Your words are like the ravings of a deranged soothsayer, but I’m curious. If there was any truth in them what would you have me do?’

Valerius knew the question held a trap, but he had no alternative but to plunge on. ‘There must be things you know that would help someone charged with investigating this matter. You will have seen who comes and goes from this house. Overheard conversations. You know the names of the men he has power over, and perhaps those who have power over him.’

‘You would have me betray my husband?’

Her voice held a contemptuous edge that irritated him beyond constraint. The words were out before he could stop them. ‘You seemed happy enough to betray him when you visited me the other day.’

The look on her face told him instantly that he’d gone too far. Fury seemed to make her grow and he could see she was only just holding herself in check. ‘I think you should leave,’ she hissed.

He opened his mouth to urge her to consider what he’d said, but the slightest shake of her head silenced him. He turned to go.

‘Of course,’ the words that followed him were perfectly composed, ‘there is another, much simpler solution. If my husband is the dangerous criminal you suggest, all I have to do is ask him to bring me your head on a silver plate.’

Six fruitless and frustrating days later, Valerius slipped out of his lodgings to meet Cornelius Aurelius Saco at a house in the north of the city, in the Street of the Engravers. ‘It is the home of one of my managers,’ the builder had explained. ‘You will recognize it when you see where the signatores have been at work urging voters to elect honest Lucius Octavius Fronton as aedile instead of the less deserving Cornelius Aurelius Saco.’

Saco’s man Claudius slipped in behind him as he approached the house and whispered confirmation that he hadn’t been followed. The builder was waiting just inside the door.

‘I wish I had better news for you,’ Saco said as they shook hands. ‘I fear I am no closer to finding Petronius’s source or identifying the guiding force behind this nest of thieves. Claudius made enquiries among the neighbours about Petronius’s movements, but either he seldom left the house or he covered his tracks well. No one had noticed any visitors.’

‘Petronius would have been careful,’ Valerius acknowledged. ‘Though much good it did him in the end.’

‘I will keep looking, but I do not hold out much hope.’ The builder sounded disheartened.

‘There may be another way,’ Valerius said. It was something he’d been considering since the confrontation with Calpurnia. ‘If we can’t find Petronius’s source, perhaps we can create one of our own. Severus, Ferox and Fronton can’t be working alone. To siphon off that much gold and cover up its existence would require any number of well-placed people.’

‘True,’ Saco agreed. ‘But how many of them would be in a position to supply the kind of evidence the governor requires?’

‘All it needs is one.’ Valerius understood the shortcomings of his plan, but they had to start somewhere. ‘You know how things work in Asturica Augusta. Think about how you would go about stealing the gold. Who would you have to corrupt to make it happen? Make a list and together we’ll identify their strengths and weaknesses, starting with the main conspirators.’

‘Severus is an opportunist.’ Saco’s lip twisted with contempt. ‘He is driven entirely by greed and he won’t give up what he’s stolen lightly. Ferox knows the fate of an Imperial official who is caught with his hands on Vespasian’s gold. It would be difficult – I think impossible – to turn him against the others.’

‘Fronton?’

Saco nodded slowly. ‘It’s possible. A man frightened of his own shadow. He won’t even look me in the face if we meet on the street. It would depend,’ his eyes drifted to Valerius’s wooden hand, ‘whether he was more frightened of you than he is of Severus and the others. By approaching him you’d risk forcing them to take direct action against you. Let me put together the list you asked for. You know,’ he said, with a rueful smile, ‘in a way it’s a pity. All those people on the thieves’ payroll have contributed to making Asturica Augusta the fine city it is. They buy jewellery for their wives. Horses for their children. They buy the houses I build and rent the apartments I own. Even the lowliest clerk massaging Ferox’s figures. If you – we – succeed, this city will never be the same again.’

They agreed to another meeting and Valerius returned to his lodgings. As soon as he entered the main room he sensed something had changed. He’d always been a tidy man, even a creature of habit. Tabitha laughed at the way the oil for his stump must always be in the same place. His shaving gear placed precisely so in reach of the bed. The bag containing his spare clothing had been in a certain position, but it had been moved ever so slightly. It was the same with everything else in the room. Servants cleaning? But it had been done only yesterday. The writing materials he’d laid out to record his lack of progress in finding Petronius were also out of place. The scroll case containing Marius’s map. Valerius picked it up and opened the flap. The rolled-up map was still there.

But the Emperor’s warrant that had been hidden inside it was gone.