Sword of Rome

III

Rome, 6 June, AD 68

The city glowed like multi-hued gold in the pale early evening sunlight. Beyond the walls and the low rise of the Aventine, the greater mass of the Palatine Hill dominated their view. The marble palaces of the Emperors gleamed as if they were studded with diamonds and, just visible beyond them, the pale bulk of the temples of Jupiter and Juno on the Capitoline were backlit by a sea of fiery red: the terracotta roof tiles that covered plebeian and patrician alike. Valerius hitched his cloak to better disguise the wooden hand that identified him as clearly as any banner. He could visualize the seething mass of humanity that fornicated and farted, plotted and squabbled beneath those roofs. The stink of corruption, physical and political, permeated every inch of the seven hills, but still he smiled. ‘It’s good to be back.’

‘Then why are we standing here in this stinking gutter when we could be inside the walls with a warm bed and a warm woman?’ Serpentius growled.

Valerius shook his head in mock dismay. ‘Trust a Spaniard to be always thinking of his own comfort, even if it will eventually kill him. In case you hadn’t noticed, the gate guards are searching every man for weapons, and experience tells us there’ll be a spy on every second street corner. Before I go into the leopard’s lair I want to know whether he’s eaten or not.’

‘And how do we find that out?’

‘From an old friend.’

‘Does he live far from here?’

‘Not far, that’s why we came to the south gate.’

The Spaniard sniffed, testing the air until he found what he wanted. ‘Well, I’ll be in the tavern over there until you come back.’

Early next morning, Valerius was making his way along the Vicus Patricius when six Praetorians appeared from nowhere to surround him. He looked around for Serpentius, but the gladiator had vanished at the first sight of the black cloaks.

‘You are under arrest.’

‘May I be permitted to ask why?’

‘On the orders of the Emperor.’ The decurion’s words sent a shiver of unease through Valerius.

‘Very well.’ Valerius raised his arms. As the Praetorian searched him for hidden weapons he noticed that the few passers-by who risked a glance in his direction did so with a mixture of fear and pity, but most didn’t even look. Clearly, no one wished to be tainted by association with whatever crime he was accused of. The decurion’s eyes turned shrewd when he saw the wooden hand and Valerius knew he had been recognized. Only time would tell whether it was for good or ill.

When the soldiers were satisfied, they marched him up the cobbled Nova Via before turning right on to the Clivus Palatinus, and the palace complex that sprawled across the hill. It had been four years since he last visited this place, for the interview with Nero that had led him on the fateful mission to track down the Rock of Christus and almost cost him his life.

His captors pushed him through a guardroom and from there into the depths of the hill to an evil-smelling, windowless cell. He was not surprised; death had always been a potential outcome of this quest. Gaius Valerius Verrens had faced death many times, not least in the flame-scorched furnace of the Temple of Claudius as Boudicca’s champions broke in to slaughter the last of Colonia’s defenders. It was there that his right hand had been taken, and now the Emperor’s guards removed the walnut fist on the leather stock that had replaced it. He had steeled himself to accept whatever horrors they planned for him, but when the mottled stump was revealed he cried out as if he could again feel the long Celtic sword carving through flesh and blood and bone.

When they were done, his captors left him with his thoughts and the damp already beginning to eat into his bones. He closed his eyes, willing his heart to stop thundering. A face swam into focus. This wasn’t how it was meant to be. Had his informant got it wrong? Had he been betrayed? He ran the conversation of the previous day through his mind.

‘Whoever sent you has misread the situation entirely. Nymphidius is a country-bred boor who struts like the cock of the dungheap because he believes Nero is finished, but he does not control the Praetorian Guard.’

‘Then who does?’

‘Offonius Tigellinus.’

‘They said he had gone into hiding.’

‘Is that so different from staying in the shadows?’ His old friend had raised a cultured eyebrow. ‘It does not mean he has lost his power. He understands the position better than anyone in Rome. He fears the outcome, but he can still influence it. If any man can bring Nero down it is Tigellinus.’

The information should have reassured him, but for a moment his guts churned with panic, as if the entire hill were pressing down on him. Eventually the feeling passed, and he huddled into the corner where, despite his closed eyes, true sleep evaded him. Instead, he found himself in a half-light world where dream and imagination swirled and eddied until he wasn’t certain where the one ended and the other began. A female presence hovered on the edge of his consciousness. Some instinct told him it was the shade of the Trinovante girl who had betrayed him almost a decade earlier, or Fabia, the beautiful courtesan who had given her life to save his, but he knew his mind was shielding him from the truth. There it was, a narrow, sculpted face with a wide mouth and flashing chestnut eyes: Domitia Longina Corbulo. Her message was that she released him from his vow, the vow to avenge the death of her father. But how could someone else release a man from a solemn pledge made over his general’s still warm body?

Three days, or was it four? There was no way of telling, with a filth-spattered bucket for his waste, and food and water pushed through the hatch whenever someone remembered. At some point he found himself reliving his first meeting with Servius Sulpicius Galba, the man whose ambition had brought him to this place, and quite possibly his death.

Eighteen months earlier, in the chaotic hours after Corbulo’s suicide, Valerius had fled Antioch with Serpentius and Domitia, one step ahead of Nero’s executioners. When they reached Alexandria the general’s old friend and rival, Titus Flavius Vespasian, had taken Domitia into his protection. But Vespasian was less certain what to do with the two men who were now being blamed for Corbulo’s death. In the end, they had been exiled to a remote desert outpost, where they spent six months training the general’s Nubian cavalry for his assault on the rebel province of Judaea. Their exile only ended when Vespasian summoned them to carry a message to Carthago Nova in Galba’s province of Hispania Tarraconensis. Then, no one had any inkling that a geriatric patrician with a reputation as both a snob and a skinflint had ambitions for the purple. But with Corbulo, most loyal of the loyal, forced to fall on his sword, Nero’s generals knew that the only way any of them would be safe was if their increasingly erratic master could be deposed. By the time Valerius reached him, Galba had allied himself with Vindex and his rebels.

On first acquaintance, Servius Sulpicius Galba was a dried-out stick of a man with all the attraction of a well-gnawed bone. Tall, thin and stooped, he had a broad forehead and a gnarled skull that gleamed like a legionary’s helm, and he wore the permanent expression of someone who had just sucked on an unripe lemon. He seldom smiled, because to do so would reveal the absence of any teeth, and his hooked patrician nose was perfectly shaped for looking down on those he felt were beneath him

Valerius had pondered how to address the man who aspired to be the next occupant of Nero’s throne. ‘Caesar,’ he bowed.

‘I am not your Caesar,’ Galba snapped. ‘I will govern Rome for the people and the Senate, not for personal aggrandizement. The Empire needs stability and firm management and I will provide it. This has always been my destiny. Only a patrician, a man of maturity and long military experience, is capable of providing the leadership Rome needs. You have Vespasian’s letter?’

Valerius reached into his pouch and handed over the scroll. Before opening it, the old man peered at the seal, checking it hadn’t been tampered with. His bony hands shook as he read it and Valerius wondered how any man could believe those hands capable of steering the Empire on the steady course it needed. His head had been filled with an image of Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, a true leader: resolute, firm and battle-tested; loved by the men he pushed to the very limits of their mental and physical endurance. Corbulo would have made a great Emperor, but he would never have taken the purple while Nero lived. By ordering his death, Nero had deprived himself of the one man who had the power to hold the Empire together. This old man would never have dared to stir from his bed while Corbulo lived. Yet here he was, and it seemed he held Nero’s fate in his hands, because he produced a sour, tight-lipped smile.

Otho had been hovering in the background waiting to be told the contents of the letter, but Galba ignored him. ‘General Vespasian tells me here that you are a man of resource who can be trusted?’

‘General Vespasian honours me.’ Valerius had felt Otho’s eyes on him. What had Vespasian got him into?

‘I may have work for a man of resource.’

Valerius shook his head at the memory just as the cell door burst open and two guards armed with naked swords strode in. They stood over him while two others bound his arms tight with rope and dragged him out into the corridor and down a set of steep steps. His throat turned dry at the sight of the horrors that awaited him there. The brazier glowed so bright the walls were painted red and the very air seemed to sizzle. On a table lay instruments of torture that needed no identification. He wanted nothing more than to be returned to his dark, damp cell and left there to rot if need be.

They fixed his bound arms to a hook on the wall, so that his toes could barely reach the ground and his muscles quickly felt as if they were on fire. When they left, he had never felt so alone.

Only he wasn’t alone.

From the far side of the room he heard a soft scratching sound, the sound a rat makes when it tries to chew its way into a wooden corn store. Gradually, Valerius pinpointed the source of the noise as two bright ovals of reflected light. As he watched, the ovals rose and in the brazier’s glow he became aware of a human shape; naked and skeletal surely to the point of death, but with a hugely engorged manhood. The — thing — approached until it was stopped by the bars of a cage, where it stood gnawing with filed teeth at what looked to Valerius like a human thigh bone held between two clawlike hands. He found he had stopped breathing and drew in a huge gasp of fume-tainted, overheated air.

‘You are fortunate that our Egyptian has been recently fed.’ Valerius flinched at the unexpected voice from the doorway. The tone was conversational, almost apologetic, but it was belied by the bright blade Offonius Tigellinus held in his right hand. ‘The Emperor found him amusing, like a pet crocodile, but I fear he is bored of his tricks. He hasn’t come to see the entertainment for more than a year.’

Valerius had no illusions what was meant by entertainment, but he buried his fears and focused on his jailer. Tigellinus wore none of the trappings that went with his position as prefect and commander of the Praetorian Guard, but his tunic was of the finest material and a gold chain belted it at the waist. Tall and thin, he had a bald head with a fringe of mousy hair that clung to the back of his skull like a frightened squirrel. If it hadn’t been for the sword, you might have thought him harmless, which would have been a mistake. According to Valerius’s agent, Tigellinus was still the most dangerous man in Rome.

‘I thought we had an agreement.’

‘We do.’ The Praetorian prefect nodded gravely. ‘I spoke to our mutual friend last evening. If you are what you say you are, I will put the arrangements in place and you will go free, just another poor coward who gave up everyone he knew at the first sight of the Egyptian. It is a process which safeguards us both. But our bargain depends entirely on the answers you give in the next few minutes. First, you should know that I am aware of certain facts and that I can surmise certain others. I tell you this so that you understand that I will know if you stray from the truth. Of course, you do not know which facts, which should make you all the more careful what you say.’ He frowned, and for a moment he seemed quite lost. ‘I have served the Emperor loyally for five years, but now that his focus turns to military affairs I fear that I can no longer be of so much use to him. It is my wish to retire, with honour and suitably recompensed, to my estate beyond Fidenae. The question is whether you are able to fulfil your promise to facilitate this.’

‘And that, as you are all too aware, Tigellinus,’ Valerius kept his voice as reasonable as the other man’s, ‘is a question that can only be answered by cutting me down from here.’

‘What guarantees have I that you will keep your word?’

‘None.’

A sharp intake of breath seemed to indicate that all the hours playing Caesar’s Tower with Corbulo hadn’t been wasted. ‘Then tell me why I should not call the guards and have you stripped and tethered for the Egyptian’s pleasure … and mine.’

‘Because I am your only hope, Offonius Tigellinus. Galba will rise and Nero will fall. It is only a matter of how and when. If the legions are forced to besiege Rome, the mob will tear the Emperor apart and his faithful lieutenant with him. You have heard it, Tigellinus, the baying for blood and the cracking of sinews; indeed you have instigated it.’ Tigellinus shook his head and Valerius saw something other than superiority in the dark eyes. Raw fear. ‘Your only hope is for a peaceful change of rule and the protection of the victors; your only salvation the fact that you fully cooperated in ensuring it. Would you rather these gifts were in the hands of your fellow prefect Nymphidius?’

Tigellinus spluttered. ‘Put your faith in that blustering pig and the Great Fire of Rome will seem like a flickering candle compared to the inferno the gods will wish on this city.’

‘Then help me, and Galba will hear of your heroics.’ Even chained to the wall with the drooling Egyptian eight paces away, Valerius struggled to disguise the contempt in his voice. A million Romans had lived in fear because of this man’s tyranny. Thousands of innocents had died horribly because he had pandered to the whims of a gilded man-boy driven mad by omnipotence. Of all the men in the Emperor’s inner circle Lucius Annaeus Seneca alone might have curbed Nero’s excesses. By engineering the philosopher’s death Offonius Tigellinus had condemned Rome to years of terror and ultimately brought her to the brink of civil war. Now, it seemed, he was the only man who could save her.

‘What would you have me do?’ The words were accompanied by a shudder of distaste. ‘He is insane, you know. He wanted to open the cages of the arena and fill the streets with wild beasts. To poison the entire Senate. Only the voice of reason stayed him.’ A faint light shone in the depths of Tigellinus’s dark eyes and Valerius wondered how many of these outrageous claims were true. The Praetorian paced the room, each time he approached the cell drawing a soft mew of anticipation from the Egyptian. ‘When I urged him to bring the African legions to Rome, he refused, because he mistrusts Mucianus and he fears Vespasian. Now he has sent the Fourteenth to hold the mountains and recruited a scratch legion of marines from Ostia to hold the city against attack. Marines? Does he think Galba is going to sail up the Tiber?’

‘Perhaps you should not have killed Corbulo?’

Despite the softness of Valerius’s voice, Tigellinus recognized the threat contained in the words. ‘That was not my doing. I would have saved him if I could, but the Emperor insisted. Even at the last he could not be swayed.’

‘Why?

Tigellinus blinked. ‘Why?’

‘Why did he have to die?’ Valerius saw emotions chase one another across the pale face as the Praetorian sought some avenue that would not condemn him.

‘Fear and envy,’ he said eventually. ‘The Emperor looked at Corbulo and saw the better man. He feared his strength and was envious of his popularity. When Corbulo overstepped his imperium by invading Parthia, Nero’s anger grew beyond control.’ The knowing glint in Valerius’s eyes forced a change of direction. ‘And the plotting, of course,’ Tigellinus hurried on, the words tumbling over each other. ‘His son-in-law stood against that very wall and implicated him in conspiracy with Piso and his scum. By then he had condemned half of Rome, but his naming of Corbulo could not be ignored.’

‘He was Nero’s most loyal general. He would never have betrayed him.’

‘Yes.’ Tigellinus’s voice took on a terminal weariness. ‘But when has loyalty ever been enough to save a man?’ A long moment passed as they stared at each other, the silence broken only by the animal-like snuffling in the background and the soft sputter of the glowing coals. ‘I ask again: what would you have me do?’

Valerius smiled at the incongruity of a man in chains dictating to a man with a sword in his hand. ‘Let it be known among the Guard that Nero is planning to escape to Alexandria. There is no dishonour in abandoning an Emperor who himself abandons his people.’ He saw the Praetorian’s startled glance. ‘Yes, it is true, Tigellinus. It seems that more than one rat is preparing to leave the sinking ship. But can you convince them?’

‘And if I do?’

‘You have your life, your estate and whatever plunder you have managed to lay your bloodstained hands on.’

Tigellinus ignored the insult. ‘Your word on it?’

Valerius nodded. ‘On my honour, though it makes me sick to the stomach to say it.’

‘And Galba? Will he pay what they ask?’

‘Senator Galba will know of your part in the peaceful handover of power. You have his freedman here?’ Tigellinus darted a guilty glance at the doorway. ‘Then I hope he is not too damaged, because we will send him with the glad news, and the message that Offonius Tigellinus alone is responsible for his salvation.’

Tigellinus came forward and used the edge of his sword to cut Valerius free. As Valerius rubbed the stump of his right wrist, the Praetorian prefect went to the table and retrieved the walnut fist with its leather socket from a cloth sack which had sat among the hooks and the knives. It was only then that Valerius truly believed he might leave the chamber alive.

Valerius used his teeth to tighten the leather ties and Tigellinus made one last suggestion. ‘You must still meet Nymphidius. He is much less a danger on the top of his dungheap than if you try to keep him out of the farmyard. Let him think he is in control. Let him offer the tribute and accept the acclaim. His arrogance will take care of the rest.’

‘Very well. And Nero?’

‘It will be as you suggested.’

Valerius flexed the fingers of his left hand and picked up the sword from where the Praetorian had laid it on the table. Tigellinus’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth to shout for aid, but the younger man strode past him towards the cage. ‘The Emperor will no longer be in need of a pet.’