Glory of Rome: (Gaius Valerius Verrens 8)

by Douglas Jackson

  Valerius was already sprinting down the hill to where the two older boys stood paralysed. He pushed them aside and searched the depths until he saw a string of bubbles and a pair of startled eyes staring up at him from a face twisted into a mask of consternation. Taking a deep breath, he leapt into the pool. The chilled waters made him gasp, but they only reached his shoulders. He ducked his head beneath the surface and reached down to grasp the drowning child with his left hand. The boy struggled in his grip, choking and spluttering, until Valerius threw his catch on the riverbank like a sack of grain, where he lay with his eyes closed and his bony chest heaving.

  Valerius pulled himself out of the water under the appalled gaze of the others. ‘Claudius. Milo. Go back to the house. You know what to tell your fathers when they return from the fields?’

  ‘Yes, lord,’ the pair said miserably, turning away to walk downstream, glancing back occasionally to glare at the party responsible for their coming troubles.

  Valerius stood over the boy as he lay on his back with his eyes still shut. ‘You know what this means, Lucius?’ he asked sternly.

  ‘Yes, Father. Five strokes of the cane.’

  ‘Was it worth it?’

  One eye blinked open and the brown face slipped into a grin. ‘It would have been if I’d aimed properly.’

  Valerius pulled his son to his feet and cuffed him gently. ‘How big was it?’

  Lucius threw his arms as wide as they would go.

  ‘Then we’ll come back later with hook and feathers and see if we can get him, but first …’

  ‘Yes, Father?’

  ‘As we’re both already wet,’ he grabbed Lucius by the waist and lifted him up, ‘we’ll start teaching you to swim.’ With a shout of laughter, he tossed the shrieking boy into the centre of the pool and dived in after him.

  Valerius studied his wife Tabitha as she spun yarn with a hand spindle in her seat by the window overlooking the gardens. Slim, and with an exotic, eastern beauty that still took his breath away, she moved with unconscious grace as the spindle twirled to the twitch of her fingers. She sensed his gaze and looked up with a smile.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be working on the accounts, husband?’

  ‘They can wait,’ he said, continuing to oil the mechanism of the hidden knife in the wooden fist that took the place of his right hand. He’d lost the original during the rebellion that ravaged Britannia during Nero’s reign, but the replacement had become so much part of him over the years he barely felt the difference. She knew that poring over the accounts was the part of an estate owner’s life he least enjoyed. He could have employed someone to do them, but his father always said a man who didn’t look after his own accounts was a man asking to be relieved of his estate. ‘I was just thinking I have never been so happy.’

  ‘Then I am pleased,’ she said, her words confirmed by the light flush of her cheeks. ‘Though I fear Lucius is less so.’

  ‘You warned him against going near the Rock Pool,’ Valerius pointed out. ‘He understood the consequences.’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘But he has a way of persuading the other boys to follow him into trouble. He takes after his father, I think.’ Her lips twitched mischievously.

  ‘His father wouldn’t have got caught,’ Valerius said in mock dismissal. Yet her words contained a grain of truth. Even at four, Lucius was an adventurous child, always searching out some new place or testing some fascinating, and often potentially dangerous, new experience. Valerius had seen enough adventure to satisfy two lifetimes. He’d soldiered in the mountains of Britannia and on the plains of Armenia, played the spy for emperors and princes, and faced death more times than he cared to remember. But no more.

  In the last four years the fates had been kind. He’d been allowed to enjoy a settled life with his family. The accession of Vespasian to the purple united Rome and brought prosperity to those he valued, of whom Valerius was fortunate to count himself one. This villa and the sprawling estate, with its olive groves, well-irrigated fields and slopes filled with vines, were the gift of the Emperor. To the south lay a second family estate, occupied by his sister Olivia and her husband, and to the north the vast palace that once belonged to the philosopher Seneca, a former owner of these lands. After Seneca’s enforced suicide, Nero granted the estate to his secretary and spymaster Tigellinus. Years later, Tigellinus suffered a similar fate at the orders of Marcus Salvius Otho during the disastrous civil war known as the Year of the Four Emperors. The war that brought Vespasian to power. Valerius’s friend and protector, the Emperor’s eldest son Titus, commander of the elite Praetorian Guard, was currently serving his sixth consulship and had developed a deserved reputation for honesty and competence that boded well for the future of the Empire.

  Valerius spent his time running the estate, attending the Senate, where he seldom spoke and then only in support of the Emperor or Titus, and took the occasional high-profile case at the law courts when it suited him.

  ‘Have you decided whether to defend Tulius?’ Tabitha’s words were a gentle reminder that one of his clients had asked him for help in a case. Normally, Valerius wouldn’t have hesitated. A man had a responsibility to support his followers. But …

  ‘I can’t.’ She wouldn’t judge him, but she was fond of Tulius and his young wife and he could feel her disappointment. ‘His accuser Rusticus is close to Domitian. Titus has asked me not to do anything that might antagonize his brother further.’

  And there lay the only shadow over their placid, rustic existence.

  Titus Flavius Domitianus, Vespasian’s younger son, had been Valerius’s sworn enemy since Domitian attempted to steal the one-handed Roman’s then lover, Domitia Longina Corbulo. The fact that Domitia was now Domitian’s wife changed nothing. Domitian had accused Valerius of treason and forced him into exile. Since then Valerius had survived several attempts to kill him, all, he was certain, emanating from the same source. He’d thought Titus’s favour and Vespasian’s admiration, won during the siege of Jerusalem, might have brought an end to the threat, but the potential menace of Domitian hung over the villa like the cloud of smoke over a volcano. Valerius had reason to believe his household contained more than one of Domitian’s spies. He and Tabitha both had experience of the clandestine world and Tabitha had ordered the sale of a slave she’d suspected, but Valerius knew that agents were easily replaced.

  ‘He cannot touch you without harming himself, at least as long as Titus and Vespasian live.’

  Tabitha’s honeyed voice contained a rare suggestion of contempt. In her eyes Domitian was a coward who paid other men to do his bidding. She viewed any threat to Valerius as a threat to them all and a core of iron ran through that willowy frame. Tabitha had been a princess of Emesa, an eastern state riven by political and religious division and threatened by its neighbours. Under normal circumstances her uncle, the king, would have used her marriage to form a dynastic alliance or cement an existing one. Instead, her close bond and friendship with Titus’s lover, Queen Berenice of Cilicia, had allowed her to marry for love. She had left friends and family to follow Valerius to an alien land, but he had never heard her complain. Her beauty hid the fact that she was accomplished in the darker arts of conspiracy and intrigue. Valerius knew that, given her way, she would have her own methods of dealing with Domitian. But he was the Emperor’s son and Valerius had pledged his loyalty to Vespasian.

  ‘That may be true,’ he conceded, ‘but he’s still a very dangerous man. Another reason Lucius shouldn’t go wandering off with his friends.’

  She nodded. ‘I will confine him to his room for the rest of the day. An extra punishment for frightening his poor mother.’

  Valerius laughed. They’d fought spears and knives, faced drowning together and almost burned to death, but he’d never seen her frightened. ‘Maybe it’s time we employed a tutor for him?’ he suggested.

  The delicate chin came up and a certain light in her eyes told him he had a fight on his hands. ‘But Valerius, he’s s
o young. It would be like caging a fox cub.’

  ‘He’d have less time to get into trouble,’ Valerius grumbled. ‘Two or three hours a day resolving Zeno’s paradoxes would clip our little hawk’s wings. And Olivia has a tutor for her boys. I’ll think about it. In the meantime, he should mend his ways.’

  ‘I will make sure he understands that,’ she said meekly. Too meekly.

  Being reminded of Domitian had changed his mood. Another reason for hating the scheming little bastard. In his fortieth year and with the scars and grey hairs to prove it, Valerius had better things to do with his time. He rose to his feet.

  ‘I’ll take a turn round the groves on the south slope and check how they’re getting on with the drainage channels. If I find Atticus sleeping under the olive nets again, I’ll sell him to Verecundus the shit collector.’

  ‘And quite right too,’ agreed Tabitha, who knew Valerius would never break up a family and that Atticus was the father of her devoted maid Helena’s daughter.

  Valerius’s spirits rose with every stride he took up the broken path that wound between the olive trees and the vines. Halfway to the top he looked down at the sprawling villa complex. It was at least twice the size of the one he’d grown up in a few miles to the south, and lay in a great loop of the Tiber river. Fields of ripening crops carpeted the valley floor before they gave way to grapes and olive groves on the slopes. He remembered visiting groves just like this as a boy with his father and discussing the trees and their potential. Was it better to plant twenty-five to the iugerum or was the soil rich enough for fifty? Did this tree or that need pruning? Could a tree ever be too old? Was it worth planting vines directly beneath the canopy where the sun was unlikely to penetrate? That and the perennial problems that faced every estate owner. Low yields and dwindling profits. Why every pest under the sun liked grapes. And why did weeds grow twice as fast as any plant that could earn a man a living?

  He smiled at the memory and continued climbing. His son was named for his father: Lucius Valerius Verrens. Some day all this would be his and he would have to be taught how to care for it. That had been the old man’s byword, through good times and bad: Remember this, Valerius: we may profit from the earth but we are only caretakers of the land.

  Atticus and his workers were hard at it with spades and mattocks when he reached the area where he’d decided ditches would improve the drainage. The trees and vines needed all the moisture they could get, but sometimes a thunderstorm would cause a flash flood. Better that the water was channelled to drain away to the lower slopes than that it wash away the thin red soil. He had a feeling they hadn’t been working for long, but it didn’t matter. Just being here made him feel better. He talked to them all, as he had the men of his many commands. How were their families? The food? Did they have any complaints?

  Of course, there was always one. Didius, a slow-witted young labourer with shoulders like a bull, worried that an overseer was trying to take advantage of his mother. Valerius assured him he would deal with it and Didius thanked him with grave solemnity. When he left he heard the mattocks strike with renewed vigour. A slave always worked better when someone took an interest in who, rather than what, he was. He was their lord and master, with the power of life and death over them. They rightly feared incurring his wrath, but they also respected him, which was not always the case. Each man received a new tunic every year, and a cloak and a pair of wooden clogs every second year. They worked long hours, but they were well fed and they celebrated the same holidays as the family. Cato the Elder had advised that farmers sell ‘useless things, such as worn-out cattle, diseased sheep and aged and feeble slaves’. Valerius’s workers knew that when they were too old and unfit for heavy work they would still have a roof over their heads and a garden plot, and Tabitha would find them light duties around the house or the farm. Serpentius would have laughed and called him soft. Valerius felt the faint melancholy that always struck him when he thought of his old friend, the former gladiator. But he consoled himself that Serpentius would have gone mad with boredom here. Given the choice he’d have thanked his gods that he’d died with a sword in his hand and not a dribbling ancient lying in his own piss among damp blankets.

  Was that the fate that awaited Valerius? He knew he shouldn’t feel regret, because it meant many more nights with Tabitha, more time to watch his son grow, and, if the gods willed it, more children.

  But not if Domitian had his way.

  He heard the commotion as he approached the villa. Sharp cries and a child’s shrieks of something between excitement and fear. The sounds came from the family quarters and he dashed through the corridors until he found a gaggle of slaves and servants gathered outside Lucius’s bedroom.

  ‘Make way,’ he shouted. They parted like an enemy flank before a Boar’s Snout wedge and he pushed his way to the door. Lucius was on his bed jumping with excitement as Tabitha stood by it with a hobnailed sandal in her hand and a murderous look on her face. It took a moment before he saw the reason for her fury.

  Forty or fifty scorpions scuttled about the floor with their curved stings raised and ready to strike. He winced as Tabitha brought the sandal down with a sharp crack on one that came too close, leaving a mess of broken carapace on the tiled floor. She moved to strike another and Valerius saw with a thrill of alarm that her feet were bare.

  ‘Tabitha, wait.’

  The order evoked a rebellious glare, but she obeyed. She shouldn’t be in any real danger. The scorpions of the hills around Fidenae were small and black and capable of a sting that would cause a few days’ pain and a localized swelling. But Valerius noticed something different about some of these.

  He made his way through the waving armoured claws and into position behind one of the larger specimens. The scorpion was perhaps the length of his middle finger, and the pale yellow colour of ripening barley. He stooped and gently picked it up just beneath the sting, so it hung wriggling from his fingers. A gasp went up from the watching slaves.

  He showed it to Tabitha. ‘Do you recognize it?’

  The blood drained from her face. ‘The Deathbringer. How?’

  Valerius had experience of the species in Syria and Judaea, and Tabitha had grown up with a healthy respect for them. One of the few breeds of scorpion whose sting could be fatal. If one hid in your boot or your blanket, you could take a week to die in terrible agony. This changed everything. His first thought had been the revenge of a disgruntled slave. Even a child’s prank by one of Lucius’s companions. This was different. Whoever had released these scorpions into Lucius’s bedroom had murder in mind. They had tried to kill his child.

  ‘Marcus.’ His voice sounded like a sword scraping on the lid of a tomb and even Tabitha drew breath at the savagery of his tone. ‘Bring me my whip. The big one, not the toy I normally use. And have the household servants gather in the barn. Every last one, the aged, the sick, the kitchen boys and the lady’s maids. All of them.’

  II

  Thirty slaves, servants and their overseers gathered in a frightened huddle in the barn under the terrible gaze of Gaius Valerius Verrens, flanked by two trusted ex-legionaries he retained as bodyguards. Behind Valerius, Tabitha watched impassively, with Lucius clutched to her side, her eyes unblinking as a hawk on the brink of a stoop.

  ‘Helena?’ Tabitha’s maid stepped forward, her hands clutched together to stop them shaking. ‘Where were you between the seventh and eighth hours?’

  Valerius already knew the answer, but he and Tabitha agreed Helena must be questioned with the rest, and it gave him his starting point.

  ‘I was with the mistress, lord, as I’m sure she will confirm.’

  Valerius glanced at Tabitha and she nodded. ‘You may return to the house. Julia …’ The villa’s cook stepped from the huddle, her wizened, beetroot features daring him to question her loyalty.

  He began with those whose positions made them easy to track and one by one they confirmed their innocence, or had it confirmed by one of their workmate
s. Surprisingly quickly the group was whittled down to eight or nine. It took a while to establish who was where and when, but gradually they worked it out. And were left with two. Cassius, the estate manager, who said he was in the tablinum preparing the accounts for Valerius to check, but had no one to substantiate his claim, and was close enough to Lucius’s bedroom to deliver the scorpions. And Rautio, the overseer, who, if his claim he was counting amphorae in the wine store was true, had been too far away to do so.

  Valerius stared at them and Tabitha emitted a hiss of disgust. One glared back in defiance, the other stood a little aside, his face muscles twitching with either outraged innocence or fear. Valerius flicked out the whip so its length lay on the dirt floor between them. The leather tapered over ten sinuous feet to a slim tip split into three with knots that had shards of metal twisted in their loops. In his father’s day he’d seen a man stripped to the backbone in a dozen lashes.

  ‘Cassius. Did you try to kill my son with those obscenities?’

  The estate manager didn’t flinch. ‘I would never harm Lucius, lord. If you believe I would, lay aside your whip and give me your dagger. I’ll gladly cut my wrists now.’

  Valerius nodded. ‘That’s what I thought. You may go.’

  Cassius sidled past Valerius with a glance of hatred at the other man. Tabitha followed him from the barn with Lucius in tow, only to be replaced by Julia, the cook, dragging one of the kitchen boys by the arm.

  ‘You should hear what he says, lord,’ she said.

  ‘No, lord.’ Rautio’s voice crackled with desperation. ‘You must believe me. I couldn’t have had anything to do with it. I was in the wine store. The boy will confirm it.’

  ‘That’s what he told me to say.’ The kitchen boy’s shrill words ended with a squeak as the cook encouraged him with a sharp twist of the arm. ‘I met him between the dining room and the family quarters. He said he’d get into trouble if anyone knew, so I was to say I’d seen him in the wine store. He gave me a silver denarius.’