Saviour of Rome

III

Valerius felt dwarfed by the enormous marble-clad buildings that towered over him like cliffs as he climbed the gentle slope of the Victory Road on the north flank of the Palatine Hill. His mood was wary, but approaching the seat of the Empire’s most powerful man held no terrors for him. He’d first walked this path almost ten years before, at the Emperor Nero’s bidding, resigned to what seemed certain death. In the years since, he’d gained honourable scars and grey hairs in three wars, been duped, betrayed and dishonoured, lost friends and lovers, but finally, he hoped, found peace.

He’d changed and so had his city.

When he looked out over the Forum towards the Esquiline Hill, the sea of red-tiled roofs was pocked with gaping blackened holes, the ongoing legacy of the great fire of eight years earlier. The owners of the burned-out buildings were either dead or didn’t have the resources to rebuild their holdings. To his right lay the great Golden House villa complex Nero had built on the charred remains of an entire district, and the lake where he had staged grandiose naval engagements in which ship-borne gladiators fought to the death. To his left, the Capitoline and the reborn Temple of Jupiter, greatest and best, the vast structure at last close to completion after two years of work. Valerius had played his own, unwitting, part in the destruction of the temple and he had an irrational sense that its resurrection went hand in hand with his own recovery after the horrors of Jerusalem. The project had been the first act of Vespasian’s reign, funded by the fiscus judaicus, a tax on Jewish males across the Empire who were continuing to pay for the failed rebellion in their homeland.

He announced himself to the black-clad gate guards. Once they’d satisfied themselves he was on the list of visitors, they passed him through into the gardens of what had originally been the palace of Tiberius. Here he was met by the Emperor’s secretary, Junius Mauricus, an ambitious young man who greeted him with the coolness of one who resented Valerius’s ease of access to his master. Valerius responded amiably enough. No point in making an enemy of an official whose freedman predecessor was now a member of the Senate. Mauricus led him along the familiar marble corridors with their alcoves filled with busts of Vespasian’s predecessors. Nero was there, and Claudius, alongside Augustus, Tiberius and Caligula, but Valerius noted that neither Galba nor Otho nor Vitellius had been given space. Their absence puzzled him, because Vespasian had never struck him as a vengeful or vindictive man. The Emperor had offered Vitellius his life if he laid down the purple, even though the former governor of Germania was as responsible as any man for the civil war that had come so close to bringing down the Empire. The memory of the corpulent emperor who had been his friend reminded Valerius of the probability that Vespasian had summoned him to be ordered on some clandestine mission that would take him into danger again.

He knew he could refuse. Titus had hinted as much when they’d inspected the part-built villa north of Fidenae. ‘You deserve all this and more, Valerius, for the service you have done the Empire and my family, never forget that.’

But without Vespasian’s support would the Senate have endorsed Valerius’s senior military tribune’s share of the vast spoils of Jerusalem where he had served Titus in an entirely unofficial capacity? Neither could Valerius forget it had been the Emperor who had reinstated his award of the Gold Crown of Valour, the honour bestowed by Nero. Valerius had always thought of the Corona Aurea as a gaudy bauble, but he’d been strangely moved when Domitian, Vespasian’s younger son, had ordered it taken from him. Domitian had been jealous of Valerius’s relationship with Domitia Longina Corbulo and falsely accused him of charges of treason that had left him facing a death sentence. Only Domitia’s intervention had saved his life, but that intervention had lost her to him for ever.

Would it be Syria, Parthia or the Danuvius frontier, all areas where he had previously fought and survived? Germania was another festering sore, still volatile in the aftermath of the Batavian revolt that had seen two legions wiped out and another four humiliated. Sporadic outbursts of rebellion meant eight legions had to be stationed there that could have been of greater use elsewhere.

‘This way.’ Mauricus led him through double doors into the familiar receiving room, with its raised golden throne and the great marble statue of Laocoon and his sons. The last time Valerius had been in this room, the then Emperor Galba had ordered him on a mission to negotiate peace with Aulus Vitellius. Before he could set out, the Praetorian Guard had butchered Galba and it was in his successor Marcus Salvius Otho’s name that Valerius eventually rode north.

Vespasian could have no illusions about how precarious his seat on that golden throne might be. Yes, he had the support of the eastern legions, and the army Vitellius had led from Germania had been vanquished, but he still had to win over the vast majority. The Emperor had appointed Titus prefect of the Praetorian Guard, and replaced its cohorts of legionaries from Germania loyal to Vitellius with his own men. Yet there were many in the Senate with long memories and fine bloodlines who resented the rise of a man they called the Muleteer: Vespasian having been forced to sell those animals in a period of financial distress.

‘Gaius Valerius Verrens, Caesar.’ Mauricus announced him in a strong voice that echoed from the bare walls.

The throne was empty and it took a moment before Valerius realized the Emperor was standing over a table close to the balcony that overlooked the Forum. A wooden model of central Rome covered the table top. Valerius had seen it once before, when Nero had outlined his plan to build his great Golden House on the ashes of thousands of houses in the Third and Fourth districts. The normal, unadorned toga Vespasian wore and his lack of regalia told Valerius this was to be an informal audience.

‘Ah, Verrens. A welcome face in a day that has not been filled with them.’

‘Caesar,’ Valerius bowed. Vespasian would be in his sixty-third year; stout, balding and more careworn than Valerius remembered, but still outwardly unaffected by his lofty status. He could be hard on those he considered fools, but he had been the same as a general. He could also be generous and forgiving to those he liked.

‘Come,’ the older man smiled. ‘We do not stand on ceremony among friends. Mauricus? Send for my son.’ The blue eyes twinkled. ‘My elder son.’ Vespasian was perfectly aware of the enmity between Valerius and his son Domitian. ‘While we are waiting perhaps you would like to see this.’ He beckoned Valerius over to the table. ‘You recognize it?’

‘Of course, Caesar.’

‘Cities develop.’ The Emperor nodded absently. ‘Sometimes naturally, sometimes steered by the hand of man. My predecessor Nero, for instance, before the great fire, gave orders for any street requiring rebuilding to be created around an open square to combat just such a cataclysm. In that respect, at least, he left Rome the better for his reign. The Domus Aurea, however,’ he picked up a substantial building in the centre of the model, ‘I view differently. Some would say the scale matches its creator’s vanity. It is not in my nature to criticize my predecessors. I will only say that, from an architectural point of view I find it out of proportion with its neighbours and I have plans for it, but first …’ He replaced the building and picked up a sunken oblong that represented Nero’s lake. He looked around with a puzzled frown. ‘Now, what did I do with it. Yes, here it is.’ Sitting on the balcony was what looked like a small upturned barrel on a similar oblong of wood, which he placed in the position previously occupied by the lake. ‘There.’ He studied Valerius with a smile. ‘My gift to Rome.’

Valerius blinked. On closer inspection it was a model of an arena. An enormous amphitheatre that dwarfed everything in the city except the even vaster Circus Maximus.

‘You think me a hypocrite, Verrens?’

‘No, Caesar.’ Valerius almost choked on the words. ‘It’s magnificent.’

‘It will seat up to eighty thousand spectators. I fear there will be no great military advances during my reign, so I must give my people spectacle instead of victory. Of course, I may be dead by the time it’s complete. Titus! I’ve just been showing Verrens how we’re going to fill in Nero’s boating lake.’

‘Consul,’ Valerius bowed as Titus entered the room by a hidden doorway.

‘Have you told him how you’re going to pay for it, Father?’

‘I was just coming to that. Come, we will sit in the sunshine on the balcony. Bring wine,’ he called to a slave hovering nearby. ‘I find the sun eases my old bones.’ He eased himself on to a padded couch beyond the window and Valerius and Titus joined him. ‘How will we pay for it? I expect we will borrow. I’ve squeezed the Jews once to rebuild the Temple of Jupiter; I doubt even they can afford twice-’

Titus saw Valerius frown and interrupted his father’s flow of words. ‘You’re wondering why we don’t use the treasures of Jerusalem?’

‘It would seem a possible solution,’ Valerius agreed.

Titus grimaced as he remembered the aftermath of the siege: the great temple a tower of flame, the bittersweet scent of roasting flesh and the long lines of wagons filled with plunder. ‘All that gold. I thought it limitless at the time. A thousand kings’ ransoms …’

‘But we’ve discovered that even a king’s ransom doesn’t go very far when it comes to running an empire,’ Vespasian resumed. ‘I will be candid with you, Verrens: it turns out that this empire I have inherited is on the very brink of financial disaster. The treasury empty, officials white-faced and trembling with fear when I approach, and the mints tell us that the silver denarii issued by Nero during his tenure are considerably less silver than they should be. It means every denarius we do have is worth twenty per cent less than its face value.’ He sipped his wine and sent a meaningful glance in the direction of the treasury in the Temple of Saturn on the far side of the Forum. ‘Eventually I will be forced to raise taxes and squeeze the provinces, but that will make me unpopular. An emperor cannot afford to be unpopular so early in his reign, particularly a New Man whose father was a tax farmer. But the problem is not silver-’

‘It’s gold,’ Titus intervened for a second time. ‘And that is why we have asked you here. I’m afraid your Empire must ask one last service of you, Valerius.’

‘Your Emperor,’ his father corrected. ‘The problem lies in the goldfields of Hispania Tarraconensis. During the late war, particularly after the death of Servius Sulpicius Galba, the legions of the province were riven by division over their loyalties, firstly between Vitellius and Otho, and later between Vitellius and myself.’ The shrewd blue eyes held Valerius. ‘I attach no blame. When Vitellius marched from Germania in such overwhelming force every man was forced to make a choice. At that time there was no certain outcome and no certain legitimacy.’

As a lawyer Valerius could have argued that this was semantics. Otho had been hailed Emperor by the Senate and people of Rome, but since Vespasian had been in the same position as Vitellius when his own legions marched on Italia it didn’t seem politic to make the point.

‘Even individual cohorts of the same legion were split over who to support,’ the Emperor continued. ‘With no guidance from Rome, and little more from Tarraco, individual unit commanders were forced to act on their own authority, with varying degrees of success. In the north, around Asturica Augusta, local tribespeople, who had long been thought to be fully Romanized, sensed this weakness and attacked our convoys and supply depots. The supply of gold dropped to a trickle, most of it from the mines around Carthago Nova in the south.’

‘Naturally, the treasury officials were concerned,’ Titus said. ‘But they assumed the mines were operating as normal and storing the gold until it could be safely dispatched. They have been proved wrong. Although the supply has increased, it is still much less than it was before Galba left Spain, and much of the backlog is unaccounted for. We have had various excuses about lower yields, labour problems and continuing trouble from bandits.’

‘With respect, sir,’ Valerius addressed Vespasian. ‘You have been Emperor for two years. Surely the legions are no longer divided? A proconsul with five thousand legionaries at his back should be able to get the mines working again and teach the natives a lesson.’

‘That may well be true, young man, but there are no five thousand legionaries. At the end of the civil war the Batavian revolt was at its height and threatening to ignite the entire Empire. I was forced to assign the First Adiutrix and most of the Tenth and Sixth legions to join Petilius Cerialis on the Rhenus. I cannot release them until we are certain the entire area is pacified and the threat from east of the river extinguished. Our entire presence in Hispania consists of a few auxiliary units, a vexillation of the Sixth based at Legio in the north and another from the Tenth at Carthago Nova, and they are scattered across the country providing security.’

‘My father replaced the proconsul with a man he trusts: Gaius Plinius Secundus.’

‘Pliny?’ Valerius frowned at the mention of the familiar name. Pliny was an old friend and fellow lawyer who had spoken for him at his trial for treason.

‘Plinius Secundus must deal with his own problems in the south before he can venture to the northern goldfields,’ Titus continued. ‘In the meantime he has asked us to send him a special agent he can dispatch to Asturica Augusta. A man with a nose for trouble, subtle and versed in the ways of the law, but capable of wielding a sword at need. A lawyer and a soldier. In short, Valerius, you.’

‘The Empire cannot function without gold,’ the Emperor continued relentlessly, ‘and our most prolific source is the goldfields of Hispania. I am appointing you legatus iuridicus metallorum, with a warrant giving you full powers to inspect all aspects of metalworking in northern Hispania. The decision will be yours, in discussion with the proconsul, of course, whether you use these powers overtly or covertly. Is something troubling you, Verrens?’

‘My apologies, Caesar,’ Valerius bowed; he’d barely been listening. ‘I’ve just recalled that I have an old friend who had connections with Asturica.’

Titus laughed. ‘Your Spanish wolf. The man I told you about, Father, the one who rescued me from the Judaean skinning knives.’

Vespasian gave him the look of a commander who believed generals should never allow themselves to end up within range of skinning knives, Judaean or otherwise.

‘We left Serpentius with the medicus of the Twelfth,’ Valerius said. ‘When he recovered from his wounds he intended to take ship direct to Hispania. The generous bounty you provided would have purchased him a small estate. He talked of planting vines and olive trees, but it is difficult to imagine a wolf pushing a plough.’

‘You have heard nothing from him?’

Valerius shook his head. ‘For all I know he could be dead.’