Saviour of Rome

XXXII

The sound of thunder woke Valerius from a troubled sleep. It took a moment before his stunned mind worked out someone was hammering at the outer door. He’d slept with his wooden fist attached to his wrist and he tightened the laces before pulling a tunic over his head. A new round of frantic knocking reverberated through the house. Where were the servants? At least one of them should have been awake.

He stepped out of the room. The house was in darkness apart from a single oil lamp illuminating the stairs. There was still no sign of the household staff Severus had allocated him. He ran down the stairs as the hammering continued, but by the time he was able to unbar the door it had stopped. He hesitated for a heartbeat waiting for it to begin again, but all he could hear was the sound of hoarse breathing.

When he pulled the door inwards a shadowy figure in a hooded cloak slumped towards him and he stepped forward to take the weight of the falling body in his arms. The hood fell back to reveal the twisted, blood-drained features of Cornelius Aurelius Saco. Saco’s right hand clamped convulsively on Valerius’s arm and a soft groan escaped his lips. Valerius looked into the dying man’s eyes and saw a moment of recognition there. Saco tried to say something, and Valerius bowed his head so his ear was close to Saco’s mouth. All that emerged was a long sigh and he felt the all too familiar sensation of life fading from a body. The moment when a living, breathing human being became nothing more than an inert piece of meat. One look at the sightless eyes confirmed his fear and he lowered Saco to the marble tiles.

The sound of urgent voices echoed in the street and Valerius saw the flicker of torches in the distance. His mind spun. He looked down at what had been a white tunic to see it stained with Saco’s blood that also covered his left hand. A running figure carrying a torch appeared from a cobbled alleyway opposite, quickly followed by another. With relief Valerius recognized the first man as Aurelio, Marcus Atilius Melanius’s servant. Aurelio stared at him and Valerius was about to step into the street to explain what had happened when the grim resolve on the other man’s face transformed into a broad smile.

‘Murderer!’

The cry came from the second man, Saco’s secretary Claudius. A chill ran down Valerius’s spine as it was taken up first by Aurelio then a dozen others who appeared and began to run towards the house. He snatched up the bar with his good hand and kicked the door shut, ramming the wooden crosspiece into place.

Fists hammered at the door and he could hear Aurelio urging the crowd to action and Claudius extolling the virtues of his late master. Valerius closed his eyes and tried to think. Reason with them? He remembered the look on Aurelio’s face and dismissed the thought. With a last glance at Saco’s body he dashed upstairs to his quarters, blocking the door with a couch and a bed frame. He pulled his sword from its scabbard and waited, heart pounding, knowing this siege could have only one outcome. Better for the orchestrators if the mob tore him limb from limb, but, whatever the outcome, Aurelio would ensure he never appeared before any magistrate.

Aurelio! Suddenly everything became clear. Saco’s guiding hand belonged to that fat goat’s turd Melanius. Working together it would only have been a matter of time before Valerius and Saco came up with the answer. Melanius couldn’t risk that. Claudius must have been spying on Saco from the start. No wonder they’d been able to act when Petronius was about to make his breakthrough. Valerius remembered the fawning welcome and sumptuous hospitality, the brotherly pats on the shoulder, and prayed that one day he’d have the chance to ram his sword down Melanius’s throat.

Not that it seemed likely, with the muffled roar of a growing crowd audible on all sides. He checked the windows on to the adjoining street and they must have seen his shadow because he was greeted with a hail of stones for his trouble. Go down fighting then. But could he kill innocents who’d been duped into arresting him by Aurelio and Claudius? He whipped round at a sound from the inner room. Mars’ arse, they’d found a way in already. He ran to the door and hauled it open. And froze.

‘You?’

‘Don’t just stand there like an idiot.’ A tall, whip-thin figure threw a satchel and Valerius dropped his sword and caught it with his left hand. ‘Put together whatever you think you’ll need to get by in the mountains.’

‘The mountains?’

‘Would you rather stay here? What started all this?’

‘They think I killed someone.’ Valerius found his cloak and stuffed it into the leather satchel.

‘Did you?’

‘Not this time. How did you know I was-’

‘There’s no time for that now.’ Serpentius sniffed the air. ‘I think I smell smoke.’

‘So do I.’

‘Jupiter’s wrinkled balls they’re in a hurry to kill you. What have you done, apart from killing …?’

‘Cornelius Saco.’

‘A pity, he was a good man.’

‘This will have to do.’ Valerius hitched the bag over his shoulder and picked up his sword. ‘What now?’ White smoke billowed from beneath the door and they could see the red glow of fire in the gap. He looked to Serpentius. His old friend had aged in the years since they’d last seen each other. The short stubble that covered his skull was a dull silver and the lines in his ravaged face had deepened, giving him the sunken, decaying look of a week-old corpse. But he was as decisive as he’d ever been.

‘The roof,’ Serpentius answered Valerius’s question. ‘Help me with this.’ He pushed a bust from a high table to smash on the marble floor tiles. Valerius sheathed his sword and took an end and they carried the table to the garden room at the rear of the house. It was edged with plant pots and had an opening in the roof to allow rainwater to gather in a small impluvium. ‘This is the way I got in.’

They positioned the table below the opening and the Spaniard leapt on to it. Balancing as easily as a cat he bent his knees and sprang high enough to allow his claw-like fingers to grasp the edge of the opening. With a swing of the legs and an acrobatic flip of the hips he used his own weight to help drag himself out on to the roof. ‘You now,’ he said to Valerius. ‘What happened to your neck?’ he asked when he saw the raw red line.

Valerius clambered on to the table with a little more difficulty and stood swaying beneath the opening. ‘Someone tried to kill me. Here, take this.’ He threw the satchel up and Serpentius caught it and pushed it out of sight.

‘On three,’ the Spaniard muttered, allowing his arms to dangle as low as possible. Valerius threw himself upwards and Serpentius’s iron grip closed on his wrists. The Spaniard grunted in pain and shifted his grip. Valerius looked up into the agonized rictus of Serpentius’s face as he tensed, and with a convulsive heave pulled Valerius on to the roof.

‘I think you’ve put on weight,’ Serpentius said as they lay gasping side by side. They heard a crash from below and a billow of smoke poured into the garden room and out of the opening. Serpentius grunted. ‘That was quick!’

‘They want me badly.’ Valerius pushed himself to his feet and picked up the satchel. ‘But not badly enough to let one of Severus’s houses burn down. Time to go.’ He helped Serpentius up. ‘Which way?’

‘This will take us to a place where we can get down to the street.’ Serpentius led the way northwards across the roof. ‘Then there’s a little gate in the wall. I have a pair of horses waiting.’

‘I should thank you,’ Valerius said formally.

‘We’re not clear yet,’ Serpentius spat.

‘What in the name of all the gods are you doing here?’

‘I could ask you the same thing.’

‘When we get to the horses,’ the Roman gasped.

They heard a furious shouting from behind and leapt down to a lower level just as a head popped out of the opening from which they’d escaped. Eventually they reached a point where they were able to lower themselves to ground level. Serpentius led the way unerringly to an iron gate cut low in the wall, accessed by a set of stairs hidden among scrubby bushes. It opened without a sound and Valerius realized his friend had prepared for just such a situation. He remembered Saco’s talk of the capable character who was Petronius’s eyes and ears and wondered what else Serpentius had prepared for. But that was for later.

‘Won’t they follow us?’ he asked as they reached the grove where a big man waited already mounted and holding two horses.

‘This is Placido,’ Serpentius informed Valerius. ‘He’s a good man. They’ll send the hook-noses.’

‘The Parthians?’ Valerius remembered the bearded native’s name for the auxiliaries.

‘That’s right, but it will take them time to gather them. After that,’ Serpentius shrugged as if outdistancing his enemies was an everyday event, ‘we know ways they don’t.’

‘And these are very good horses.’ Valerius patted his impressive mount’s shoulder.

‘They should be,’ the Spaniard grinned. ‘The day before yesterday they were owned by Lucius Octavius Fronton and he reckons himself the best judge of horseflesh in the whole of Asturica.’

They headed north, staying off the roads and moving through gullies and along remote paths barely worthy of the name, bypassing settlements and never seeing another human being. Once or twice Serpentius reacted to some inner sense and drew them into shelter and they listened as a column of horse moved past at a fast clip. When the pursuers were gone the Spaniard would look thoughtful before leading Valerius and Placido off in a different direction.

As they rode, they swapped stories.

‘Vespasian sent me,’ Valerius began. ‘Vespasian and Pliny. The gold yields from the Asturian mines have dwindled since the civil war, as I suspect you know …’ He grunted as his mount lurched across a dried-up stream bed and up the other side. ‘You are this Ghost they all talk about?’

‘Someone created a bandit,’ Serpentius said contemptuously. ‘They gave the name to me, but it is all smoke.’ He grinned at Valerius. ‘I wouldn’t have left them with a single bar of gold. No one except the Parthians has ever seen him. The wagon drivers will say nothing because they’re frightened of losing their jobs, or worse. All the wagons are supplied by the same small circle of men, just as all the miners are supplied by the same circle of men, and the bread to feed them, and the timber for pit props and to build the storehouses and the smelting rooms …’

‘I was sent here to look for our old friend Marcus Florus Petronius.’ Valerius was watching Serpentius’s face and saw the Spaniard’s bony jaw harden.

‘Petronius is dead.’ Serpentius’s voice was as cold as a year-old grave. ‘They accused you of killing Saco. With me it was Petronius.’

‘You’re certain?’

‘I saw him dead. I’d been watching a convoy for him. He suspected the wagons which were supposedly taken in these raids had already been stripped of their gold and he was right. When I went to his house to confirm it he was lying across his desk with his throat cut. He was a good man, and clever, but he was too trusting. Someone betrayed him.’

‘Saco’s man Claudius was working for them.’

Serpentius turned to meet his eyes and Valerius saw a flicker of the former gladiator he’d first met, kept alive by his hatred and a burning need for revenge. ‘Another debt to pay. They were waiting for me, and a fat man in a Roman officer’s helmet and armour sentenced me to be worked to death in the mines.’

‘I’ve seen the mines,’ Valerius said bleakly, remembering Serpentius’s terror in the Conduit of Hezekiah beneath Jerusalem.

‘It was like being buried alive. Another week and I’d have gone mad.’

Valerius reached across to touch his arm. ‘But you escaped, old friend, because you are still Serpentius of Avala.’

Serpentius brightened at the sound of his name. ‘Serpentius of Avala.’ He smiled as he savoured the words on his tongue. ‘Barbaros the Proud.’

‘Barbaros?’

‘My name before I was taken.’

‘A good name,’ Valerius conceded. ‘A small circle of men, you said. Severus, the duovir of the ordo. Ferox, who runs the mines and without whom nothing is possible …’

‘Fronton, one of the main suppliers,’ Serpentius supplied the next name. ‘Harpocration, the prefect of Parthian auxiliaries, who provided the military threat and carried out any killings that were required.’

‘He killed Petronius?’

‘You may be certain of it. Petronius had marked them all, but he could never find the proof, not till right at the end. The night he died he had arranged a meeting with a man he believed would supply him with that proof. Names. Numbers on papers. Figures that would show each and every one of them was involved. He had long puzzled over Saco’s insistence that none of the names they uncovered was capable of carrying the others with him on such a perilous road. A mysterious figure stood in the shadows directing and uniting, threatening and cajoling. At one point he even suspected Severus’s wife, but if she is a conspirator she hides it well.’

‘He was wrong to suspect Calpurnia,’ Valerius confirmed. ‘Though she may well be part of her husband’s schemes. No, the man behind this is a man who appears to have no power, no ambition and no position. A man who will never have his statue in the Forum, but who realizes the value of information and knows how to use it. He is the puppet master who controls all the others. For a time he even controlled me.’ Serpentius darted his friend a look of surprise. ‘It’s true, Serpentius. He sent me to my death with a smile and I even thanked him for his kindness. But his greed led him to overstretch himself and now the forces of justice are closing in on him. His name is Marcus Atilius Melanius.’

‘I’ve never heard of him.’

‘Because that is the way he wants it. His greatest strength is his invisibility. Did Petronius ever mention the name Piso?’

‘No. Who is he, another invisible man?’

Valerius smiled. ‘Just the opposite. A young tribune of the Sixth legion who thinks he’s the next Caesar. When I had dinner with Severus and the others a few days ago he boasted as much. I think his ambitions are being encouraged by Melanius.’

Serpentius thought about that for a while. ‘So maybe Petronius was right and it’s not just about the gold?’

‘If Pliny is ever given proof they’re guilty every one of them will go under the axe, if they’re fortunate. They can kill us, but they know Rome will keep sending people until they get an answer. In Germania, the Batavians who followed Civilis are spent, their cohorts scattered across the Empire. It can’t be long before Vespasian is able to disengage a legion from Germania. When that happens Pliny will march north and take this place apart until he finds the truth. From their point of view it makes sense to act before that happens.’

‘Then they’re fools. Vespasian will crush them like a grape in a walnut press.’

‘It’s possible, but think about what would have happened if Galba had supported the Vindex revolt in Gaul a few years back.’ Gaius Julius Vindex, a tribal leader in Aquitania, had risen up against Nero, claiming to be acting in the name of freedom. ‘The legions of Germania were on the brink of mutiny. If all three had combined, they’d have brought down Nero a year earlier and the civil war might never have happened.’

A dry laugh escaped the Spaniard. ‘You’ve obviously forgotten how lovable Galba was.’

Valerius returned his grin. Servius Sulpicius Galba had been a bitter, parsimonious dry stick of a man whose penny-pinching had cost him the purple. The Praetorian Guard had killed him because he refused to pay them the money he’d promised … and because he chose the wrong heir. ‘Galba’s heir was another Calpurnius Piso.’

Serpentius gave him a certain look. ‘That bears thinking about.’

‘But first we have to track down Petronius’s informant.’

‘All I know is his name. A man called Nepos.’