Enemy of Rome (2 page)

A final turn and he was walking in a dream towards the man at the centre of the square. For the first time, the movement brought a reaction from the three cohorts of soldiers brought here to witness the execution of Gaius Valerius Verrens. Just a soft rustle as two thousand men shifted uneasily, but proof that not every legionary here supported the condemnation of a Hero of Rome. He took a deep breath and concentrated on his executioner. A big man, with curiously sensitive eyes but powerful shoulders and the muscles of an athlete or a wrestler. Stripped to the waist, his brick-red face and forearms contrasted sharply with the fish-belly white of his torso. A legionary seldom removed his tunic, except to sleep or bathe. Valerius remembered a man condemned by his general for daring to work naked apart from his sword, and the incongruity of it made him laugh.

The executioner’s face hardened at the unlikely sound. This wasn’t what he expected from his victims. A simple man, born and raised on an Etrurian pig farm, he was only doing his job, and he liked the proceedings to pass with dignity for all concerned. Valerius nodded gravely in greeting and the peasant face relaxed as the man returned it. The escort moved away.

‘Kneel, facing in that direction.’ The soldier pointed towards the men of the Thirteenth.

Valerius obeyed, wincing as his bare knees sank into the burning sand. He sensed the man moving into position behind him. Suddenly his throat felt as dry as an Egyptian salt pan and he would have given anything for a last drink of cool water to send him on his way. In contrast, his whole body felt liquid and sweat started to pour down his face. He told himself it was not fear, but a natural reaction to his situation. He prayed there would be no others.

‘Steady, lad. I’ve done this a hundred times.’ The voice was surprisingly soothing and Valerius was reminded of a sacrifice where the young
victimarius
had whispered into the bull’s ear right up until the last moment. ‘Just keep your head up and you won’t feel a thing. Good lad.’

Valerius closed his eyes. He felt the soft, experimental touch of the blade on the back of his neck before it lifted for the last time. His father’s face swam into his mind, inspiring a sudden burst of panic as he realized his sister Olivia would be all alone now. He imagined the man behind choosing the perfect spot between two vertebrae, his muscles rippling as the sword rose. He gulped a final breath. A silence like no other filled his world.

‘Hold!’ The sharp command was accompanied by the thunder of hooves. ‘I said hold,’ a voice accustomed to authority snapped a second time.

Valerius heard a murmur of confusion run through the massed ranks in the square, instantly silenced by the snarl of centurions and
optiones
. He sensed the moment the executioner took a step back, heard Aquila’s outraged tones in the distance. ‘What is the meaning of this?’

The owner of the first voice didn’t reply immediately. Instead, Valerius heard the sound of a single horse approaching and felt a shadow fall over him. ‘You can open your eyes now.’

Warily, Valerius did as the speaker suggested. His head swam as he looked up to see a travel-stained young man in a simple tunic gazing quizzically down at him from the saddle of a fine milk-white stallion. Only the scarlet band at his waist identified him as a legionary legate, and the equal in authority of any man here; perhaps superior. He sighed. ‘Trouble follows you around the way a seasoned bitch attracts every dog in town. Get up, man.’ He grinned. ‘There’s no need to kneel to me. At least not yet.’

‘Titus?’

‘This officer has been found guilty by a military tribunal of cowardice and desertion and sentenced according to military justice.’

‘I do not dispute that,’ said Titus Flavius Vespasian, son of the man whose legions were now converging on Italian soil to depose an Emperor. ‘I dispute your right to carry out the sentence without confirmation from my father. Gaius Valerius Verrens is a Hero of Rome, a holder of the Gold Crown of Valour. He has done certain services for the Empire – and for my father.’

Aquila spluttered and Valerius looked on dispassionately as the two men debated his fate. Titus, seated behind the campaign table where the tribunal had passed sentence, was of a similar age to the one-handed Roman. He’d be almost thirty now, though he looked younger. Each had a background in the law, and they’d both served in Britannia during the Boudiccan uprising. That shared past provided a connection after Titus had saved Valerius from dying of thirst on an Egyptian beach after shipwreck. It developed into friendship later, when Valerius had spent six months in the desert helping Titus train Vespasian’s Nubian cavalry. While Valerius tried in vain to prevent civil war, Titus had been adding to his laurels in Judaea as commander of the Fifteenth Apollinaris. Vespasian had wanted his son to become Galba’s heir, but Galba had died before Titus reached Rome. Now the father was bent on taking Rome for himself.

Movement in the corner of his eye alerted Valerius to a newcomer. He looked beyond Titus and Aquila to the doorway and found himself the focus of a pair of the most malevolent eyes he’d ever seen. They smouldered with the primeval menace of a starving leopard and belonged to a tall, whip-thin savage in a ragged tunic. The apparition had a face that belonged in Hades: all dangerous shadow and razor edge, meshed with lines that looked as if they’d been scored with a knife point. His thin lips were drawn back in a permanent sneer and his shaven head glistened with the puckered scars of past battles.

Titus ignored the newcomer. ‘You say the verdict cannot be changed and the sentence stands. I say the verdict is not legally binding until it has been ratified by my father, and the sentence cannot be carried out until it has been confirmed.’ He graced Aquila with a courteous smile. Valerius knew he disliked using his father’s authority to further an argument, preferring reason to brute force, but in the end he was his father’s son and would deploy whatever weapons were to hand. ‘Since the verdict and the sentence cannot be changed, I suggest that they be suspended—’

‘What? Military justice—’

‘Suspended until they are confirmed by the Emperor,’ Titus continued. ‘In the meantime, Gaius Valerius Verrens remains under sentence of death. The punishment is to be carried out only after the Senate and people of Rome formally agree my father’s position and he ratifies the sentence. Thank you, Aquila, for your time and your patience.’

Aquila spluttered with suppressed rage, but he was general enough to know when he’d been outmanoeuvred. He rose from his chair and bowed, and stalked out of the tent, not even deigning to glance at Valerius.

Titus sighed and called for wine. A young slave brought a silver jug and placed it on a table beside four pewter cups, pouring one for the young legate and vanishing behind a curtain at the rear of the tent. The young aristocrat closed his eyes and savoured his drink. ‘I do so hate disagreements.’

‘You’ll forgive me if I’m glad you had this one.’ Valerius reached for the jug and poured two more cups.

‘I’m not sure a convicted criminal is worthy of this vintage.’ Titus fixed him with one weary eye. ‘But your Spanish wolf is certainly deserving. Without him the gentleman with the sword would have gone about his business and I would be having this conversation with your head.’

Valerius carried a cup to the ragged figure who still lounged by the doorway. Serpentius, former gladiator, his freedman and his friend, took the cup and sniffed it suspiciously. Valerius laughed. ‘None of your usual tavern horse piss.’

‘It smells like fruit,’ the Spaniard grumbled. ‘What’s the use of wine that smells like fruit? It should make your eyes shrivel and your balls explode. That’s proper wine.’

‘So what took you so long?’

Serpentius lifted the cup unhurriedly to his lips and drank, his nose twitching at the unfamiliar sweetness. ‘That first day, when they caught us by the river, I wasn’t too worried. I thought you’d talk your way out, the way you always do. So I just followed and watched when you were taken into the Thirteenth’s camp. As time passed, I realized you were in a bit of trouble.’ Titus laughed at the understatement and poured himself another cup. The Spaniard continued. ‘I managed to make friends with a couple of the guard detachment …’ He saw Valerius’s look. Making friends had never been Serpentius’s greatest talent. ‘I taught them a few gladiator tricks,’ he said defensively. ‘The old sword spin, and that belly punch that makes you piss blood for a week before you die. Anyway, they were happy to talk and I found out where you were being kept. They said you were a dead man walking because Aquila blamed you for Bedriacum. I thought about breaking you out …’

‘You were too closely guarded,’ Titus interjected. ‘So he decided the only way to save you was to find someone with more authority than Aquila and plead your case.’

‘I managed to reach the army’s headquarters at Poetivo …’

‘But Primus, who commands, kicked him out on his skinny Spanish arse because Primus is a proper patrician and your friend looks like a mongrel mix of rag salesman, latrine cleaner and hired assassin.’ They waited for some reaction from the Spaniard, but Serpentius only rolled his eyes and took another drink. ‘Somehow, he discovered I’d just arrived in the camp, found his way past my bodyguard – which they’ll regret for all eternity – and you know the rest.’

‘And he has my thanks for it.’ Valerius raised his cup, eliciting a shrug from the former gladiator. ‘What I don’t understand is how you happened to be here. I thought you would be back in Judaea by now. Oh, and Primus? That’s not Marcus Antonius Primus, I hope?’

Titus frowned. ‘It is. Why would it matter to you?’

‘Because I prosecuted him in a fraud case. He and his friends forged an old man’s will so his nephew would get the proceeds of his estate. They threw him out of the Senate and banned him from Rome. Will that cause you a problem?’

The young legate waved a hand airily as if the fact had no import. ‘To answer your first question, I was in Cyprus waiting for my father’s instructions when word arrived that Primus had come out in support of him with his Pannonian legions. Vespasian is aware of, um … certain character defects in his most enthusiastic champion.’

‘You mean he’s a fraud, a liar and a thief?’

The other man smiled. ‘I was thinking more of the fact that he is reckless. The message I brought is that my father wishes him to delay here and conserve his forces until Licinius Mucianus arrives with his Syrian legions. You remember Mucianus from Antioch?’

A narrow, ill-tempered face swam into Valerius’s head. Sculpted patrician features with dark unforgiving eyes. Valerius had been sent to Syria to spy on Nero’s eastern commander, Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, only to discover that his real mission was to provide cover for the man sent to assassinate Corbulo. When Mucianus had taken command after his fellow general’s death Valerius had become a hunted man. ‘I don’t forget people who want me dead.’

‘One among many, it appears.’ Titus raised a cultured eyebrow. ‘But I believe he is no longer a threat to you. In Antioch he was Nero’s man, and once you had outlived your usefulness he would naturally have had you killed.’ His tone was utterly detached, as if he was discussing the price of grain, and Valerius was reminded that Titus was now a prince of Rome, and, if Vespasian won the throne, heir to the Empire. ‘His loyalty now lies with my father, and my father has made it known he owes a debt of gratitude to Gaius Valerius Verrens.’ He smiled. ‘What is done is done; we have new battles to fight.’

‘But I’m still under sentence of death,’ Valerius pointed out. ‘I won’t be of much use to your father dead.’

‘Suspended sentence,’ Titus agreed. ‘But Vespasian will never confirm it. In any case,’ he added cheerfully, ‘by the time he gets the opportunity you may actually
be
dead.’ He paused and took another sip of wine. ‘Soon I must return to Judaea, where my father has work for me. He will want all the information I can provide on Aulus Vitellius and his forces. Your Spaniard said you were at Bedriacum and Placentia, but he is as mean with words as he is free with his sword.’

Valerius nodded to Serpentius and the Spaniard slipped soundlessly out of the tent. When they were alone Valerius took the seat Aquila had vacated and told the younger man about his attempt to persuade Vitellius to give up his claim to the throne. He and Serpentius had been forced to flee to Placentia, where they’d manned the city walls against the might of two legions, then escaped to join Otho’s army in time for the horrors of Bedriacum. ‘We hurt them at Bedriacum, but we were defeated because of bad generalship and Otho’s insistence that the army take the offensive over ground that was more suitable for defence than attack. If he’d waited until the Seventh and the Fourteenth joined us it would have been different.’

Titus nodded, noting the grey pallor and new lines around his friend’s eyes that had nothing to do with his months in captivity. He had seen it before in the East, in the aftermath of military defeat. Gaius Valerius Verrens looked like a man worn out by war, or worn out by life. The melancholy thought made him frown. ‘And now Vitellius sits in Rome and my father must force him out or …’ He shrugged. They both knew that if Vespasian failed the most likely outcome was death for the entire family. ‘He will make a fine Emperor, Valerius. He will be fair and just and wise. A new Augustus.’

Valerius remembered another man who had spoken of becoming the new Augustus.
Our ambitions are the same, Valerius. A strong Rome, a prosperous Rome, a Rome untainted by the stain of corruption.
‘Vitellius may wear the purple, but the real power lies with his generals,’ he said carefully. Titus’s head came up and his eyes glittered with new interest. ‘If you can split him from them, I suspect his enthusiasm for his new position would be fatally weakened.’

Titus nodded carefully. ‘I will think on that; we can discuss it more fully later. Now, you must leave me. I have letters to write to my father and my brother Domitianus.’ He was already reaching for his stylus and missed Valerius’s startled reaction. Titus’s brother was Valerius’s rival for the affections of Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo’s daughter, and the last time they’d met Valerius had threatened to remove certain parts of Domitianus’s anatomy and make him eat them. ‘He is trapped in Rome, but under the protection of my uncle Sabinus. I—’