Glory of Rome: (Gaius Valerius Verrens 8)

by Douglas Jackson

  ‘My lady.’ Valerius bowed. ‘This is a surprise.’

  ‘A surprise, Valerius, but not a pleasure?’

  It seemed she hadn’t lost the ability to disconcert him with a few well-chosen words. The last time they’d been alone together the smoke from the burning Temple of Jupiter still hung over the city and Valerius had been a penniless outcast. Domitia had bought his life by promising herself to Titus Flavius Domitianus. At the time he had felt slighted and diminished, not knowing whether to love or hate her. Now he understood that his reaction had been selfish and inconsiderate. She had saved him without thought for herself and had lived with the consequences.

  She saw something of it in his face. ‘What’s done is done, Valerius. We cannot take back the years.’

  ‘I thought my pleasure would have been obvious.’ He allowed himself a smile. They stood less than a pace apart and the breeze brought him the lilac of the perfumed oils she wore. She studied him for a moment and he noticed her eyes drifting to his neck. She was wondering whether he still wore the little golden star of Fortuna she had given him at their parting. He hoped she wouldn’t ask about it; he didn’t like to lie. She was a woman and despite the years that had passed he doubted she’d appreciate knowing he’d presented the charm to a soft-handed slave girl in the baths at Apamea.

  A door banged somewhere and Valerius again checked the way he’d come. ‘Won’t Dom—he miss you?’

  ‘He is not interested in me.’ A disdainful toss of the head accompanied her answer. ‘Only the ideal of me. First, he will apply himself to discovering just how much the slave told you, and how much harm it has the potential to do him. It will take time and involve shears and glowing iron. I doubt the slave will survive.’ She looked up into his face. ‘Does he deserve such a fate, Valerius?’

  Valerius told her about the scorpions and she grimaced. ‘Ugh. I remember the filthy creatures from my father’s palace at Antioch. He is truly evil.’ She could have been referring to Rautio, but Valerius chose to believe otherwise.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed.

  ‘When he has taken his pleasure from that creature’s pain he will retire to the library with a flask of wine and rail about his hatred for you, and how your every breath demeans and belittles him. He hates you and fears you, Valerius, and he believes that if he does not kill you, you will kill him.’

  ‘Perhaps I should.’

  ‘You are many things, Gaius Valerius Verrens, but you are not a murderer.’ She shot him a look of irritation. A harder Domitia, this, than he remembered, more cynical, but how could she not be, living with a man like Domitian? ‘We are safe enough for now. When the wine takes its effect he will spend another hour rambling about his favourite subject: himself. It is unfair his father heaps honours on Titus, while he must be content with a mere temporary consulship. It is unfair he must live in a twenty-room hovel while Vespasian and Titus occupy whole palaces. If his father did not want the Golden House, Domitian should have been given it. Instead he must watch it demolished. He says he will build the greatest palace Rome has ever seen, greater even than the Domus Aurea. It will cover the Palatine, absorbing everything that went before, and will have libraries and baths, and gardens, audience rooms, great halls so high clouds will form beneath their ceilings. The plans consume him.’

  Valerius remembered a visit to Nero, not so far from here. A hand sweeping across a model to clear whole districts from the centre of Rome. Another man consumed with the need to be remembered in stone. A thought occurred to him. ‘To carry out such a plan he would require not only wealth, but power.’

  Her eyes held his. ‘Of course.’ A heartbeat’s hesitation. ‘Are you happy, Valerius?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, surprised by the conversation’s abrupt change of direction. ‘I would never have believed I could be this happy.’

  For a moment he saw what might be pain in the dark eyes, then it vanished.

  ‘And they truly meant to kill your son?’

  ‘Truly.’

  ‘He will never stop until he sees you dead.’ Valerius nodded, uncertain where this was going. ‘So we must provide you with a means to make him stop.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Despite what happened between us I would never see you hurt … or your family.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He resisted the temptation to reach out to her, but he had a question. ‘What I don’t understand is how.’

  ‘Domitian is a plotter.’

  Valerius froze. The information didn’t surprise him, but the fact that she was prepared to share it meant she knew more. ‘Who does he plot against?’ Even as he asked the question the faces were already clear in his mind.

  ‘Anyone in a position to oppose his ambitions.’ So, there it was, unsaid, but unmistakable. Only two men held positions lofty enough to thwart Domitian. ‘I cannot promise anything, Valerius,’ she continued. ‘At the moment all is suspicion and conjecture, but if there is a way of discovering more I will find out. If I succeed, I rely on you to deal with it sensitively.’

  Do not get me killed, was what she meant. He felt a sudden surge of his old affection for her. ‘You have my word. But please, Domitia, don’t put yourself in any danger.’

  ‘Do you remember the cypher we were to use to write to each other when I was staying with my uncle at Dertona?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’ A simple substitution code – numbers for letters of the alphabet – with a symbol to indicate which letter was the number 1, and the added refinement that the first two sentences of the message were nonsense, designed to frustrate any potential code-breaker.

  ‘If I discover anything of value, I will contact you. The messenger will carry a token.’ She removed a gold ring with an enormous green stone set in a coiled snake. ‘Will you remember this?’

  He laughed. ‘It would be hard to forget. But will you be able to trust your courier?’

  She nodded. ‘With my life. He served with my father in Armenia and he’s entirely devoted to me.’

  ‘What if I want to contact you?’

  Perhaps the words contained an implicit message he hadn’t intended, because she shook her head and her smile was tinged with sadness. ‘Oh, Valerius, so scarred and experienced, but so unworldly. That is not how it works. This is the Palatine. You may count on my support, but after we part today I doubt we will ever see each other again.’

  She lifted her head to kiss him on the cheek. When she disappeared into the trees, the sense of loss surprised him.

  V

  Valerius had just reached the gate when he heard footsteps at his back and a gruff voice announced: ‘Guards. Do not let this man leave the palace.’

  ‘I surrender.’ Valerius turned with a weary sigh.

  ‘I believe the expression is “caught in the act”,’ said Titus Flavius Vespasian, heir to the Empire. ‘You certainly haven’t lost your flair for diplomacy, Valerius. I know my advice is sometimes flawed, but …’

  ‘I’m sorry, Titus, but there were pressing reasons …’

  ‘There are always pressing reasons.’ Titus ushered him away from the gate in the direction of the Domus Transitoria. As they walked, Valerius considered his friend of almost a dozen years. They were of a similar age and height, but different in build, Valerius lean and well muscled from his hour of exercise with the gladius every morning, Titus sleeker, with just a hint of bulge around the middle. Yet there could be no doubt the years had been much kinder to Titus. The close-cropped hair remained a lustrous crow black with none of the grey flecks Valerius saw when he looked in a mirror. Health and good living shone from the fine aristocratic features, the full lips had a sardonic twist which hinted that whatever happened the world would always amuse him, and a glint in his eyes confirmed it. Valerius, on the other hand, looked more like his old friend Serpentius every day. The dark eyes increasingly hawkish, the cheeks a little more sunken, a thin-lipped mouth that might have been drawn with a knife blade. Hard features that didn’t need too much encouragement to become sava
ge. Titus smiled, aware of his friend’s appraisal. ‘Your reasons will wait until we’re in the shade with a cup of wine. I could have sent a servant, but I don’t get out often enough these days and I thought I’d surprise you.’

  ‘If surprise means almost giving me a seizure you succeeded. How did you know I was here?’

  ‘The gate commander sent a guard to announce your arrival, but by then I’d already had news of what was happening at Domitian’s residence.’ He saw Valerius’s look. ‘Yes, he’s my brother, but I know what’s happening in his household almost before he does.’

  Did that mean Titus’s sources kept him informed of Domitian’s intrigues? Valerius thought about what Domitia had said. If Domitian’s wife didn’t know the details, then few others did; could Domitia herself be one of Titus’s informants? He dismissed the thought even as it formed. Duty and honour were the principles by which Domitia Longina had lived her life. She might take a risk to aid Valerius and his family, but she wouldn’t play the spy for mere politics.

  They followed a marble portico to one of the palace’s secluded gardens, where a table and benches waited beneath the broad canopy of a stone pine. Titus invited Valerius to sit. A servant poured wine from a jug into silver cups. The consul leaned back against the bole of the tree, looking relaxed and at ease as he studied Valerius. Eventually he nodded, as if the interval had confirmed his decision.

  ‘In a way it’s fortuitous you came here today, despite your little scene with Domitian. Why did you come? I know you said you had good reason, but I’ll need the details to enable me to deflect any possible repercussions. My brother is not the type to take a slight lightly. Tell me what brought you here.’

  Valerius repeated the story he’d told Domitia and Titus listened in grim silence. When Valerius mentioned the species of scorpion the young consul shook his head in disgust. ‘You are certain this is Domitian’s doing? It is difficult to believe even my brother would stoop to such a filthy trick.’

  ‘I can’t think of anyone else who hates me that much. He didn’t react like an innocent man.’

  ‘That proves nothing.’

  ‘No, but what happens to the slave will be interesting. If Domitian is innocent he’ll send him back and tell me to deal with him myself.’

  ‘But that won’t happen.’

  ‘No, I don’t believe it will.’

  ‘Very well.’ Titus nodded to himself. ‘We can consider the present matter closed. As to the future …’ He hesitated for a moment, choosing his words carefully. ‘Perhaps I have a solution to your problem. A radical one, but one that will afford your family a measure of protection it does not currently possess.’

  ‘I’m not sure I like the word radical.’ Valerius eyed him warily. Was Titus making him an offer or about to give him a direct order?

  Titus smiled. ‘Perhaps I used it unwisely. It is a matter of distance.’ He waited for the obvious question, but Valerius held his gaze. ‘If you hadn’t come here today, my father was about to summon you. You’re acquainted with Julius Agricola?’

  Valerius blinked at the name. A face tried to force its way into his head, but it was like looking through a veil and the features remained blurred and indistinct. ‘Acquainted, yes, but I haven’t met him for almost twenty years. We served together for a few months on Paulinus’s staff in Britannia before the general brought Boudicca’s rebels to battle.’ Not battle, but a slaughter; a mass bloodletting that cost Valerius his first real love. ‘We were never close, but I remember him as a competent, steady officer.’

  ‘Yes, that would describe him,’ Titus agreed. ‘My father values him, though I find him too aloof for my liking. A little too sure of himself, and I suspect he looks down on tax farmers and mule sellers.’ Valerius met his friend’s eye and smiled. Vespasian’s family had been tax gatherers before they rose to senatorial rank, and the Emperor himself had been forced to trade mules in the past to stay solvent. ‘But that is to digress,’ Titus continued. ‘Apart from a few questions about his time in Asia as quaestor to the rapacious Titianus, his record is spotless. He did well in Hispania as Galba’s praetor and stayed out of trouble during the late war until Otho’s pirates burned the family estate in Liguria and murdered his mother. Vespasian gave him command of the Twentieth where he did well enough to merit a suffect consulship …’

  ‘So he’s a patrician now.’ Valerius smiled.

  ‘You didn’t know?’

  ‘I’ve spent the last few years running the estate and fighting the occasional case in the basilica.’ Valerius had been destined for a career in the law until events conspired to make him a soldier. He’d completed his studies on his return to Rome and an inquisitive mind and a talent for oratory ensured his success as a litigator. There’d been talk of a pact to share high-profile cases with his friend Gaius Plinius Secundus, but Pliny’s political fortunes had soared with the return of Vespasian and it had come to nothing. ‘I’ve never been one for court gossip.’

  ‘So you’re also unaware, my friend, that Julius Agricola now has a new province?’

  Something in his tone told Valerius the information was significant. ‘New province?’

  ‘Britannia.’

  Britannia. Rome’s most northerly province, and some would say its most troublesome. A land of gloomy mist-clad mountains where the winds howled like the cries of lost souls, bottomless mires could swallow a man and his horse in moments, and near impenetrable forests saw the native priests carry out their disgusting rituals, even the trees seeming to whisper ‘enemy’. A rich land, not just in gold, which was what had drawn Emperor Claudius there almost four decades earlier, but in the fertile black soil and the lush meadows, the broad rivers teeming with fish and the woods that swarmed with game. The great tribal federations of Britannia claimed that land – the Catuvellauni, the Dobunni, the Durotriges, with their tribes and their sub-tribes. In battle their champions fought naked and bore the record of their deeds tattooed on their skin; huge men, who felt no pain and feared nothing but failure. The memory sent a shudder of dread through Valerius. He had left his right hand in Britannia, along with his youth.

  ‘What has this to do with me?’

  ‘My father received an initial report from Agricola a week ago – he has been in Britannia less than three months – and the governor believes the only way to guarantee the security of the province is to bring the entire island under our control.’

  ‘No easy task,’ Valerius ventured. ‘I never travelled further north than Lindum, but I was in Siluria and merchants I spoke to later said the mountains of the north dwarf those of the west, and the terrain is far more difficult. Ambush territory. If Agricola isn’t careful he’ll end up a second Varus.’

  ‘Precisely what he said.’ Titus paused for a moment to reflect on the fate of Publius Quinctilius Varus and the legions he had led to ambush and annihilation in the forests of Germania sixty years earlier. It had taken Rome decades to recover from the ignominy of the defeat and the loss of three eagles. ‘That is why it will be a long, meticulously planned campaign, lasting several seasons. And why he needs help.’

  Valerius shook his head. ‘My fighting days are done. After Asturica Augusta I promised Tabitha I would never risk my neck again. I’d dedicate myself to the estate and my family. I owe it to my wife and Lucius to keep that promise.’

  ‘Oh, you won’t be fighting, my friend, and I would not separate you from your family.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I’ll let my father explain.’

  ‘Who do you favour today, Titus?’

  Valerius expected to meet Vespasian in the large receiving room at his palace, or in his private quarters. Instead, Titus had escorted him to the southern side of the Palatine where a reviewing stand overlooked the seething crowds who’d flocked to the Circus Maximus to watch the Vinalia chariot meeting. Their elevated position gave them a panoramic view of the packed stands and the track. The staggered starting gates were below on the right and Valerius could see th
e handlers already pushing their teams into position while officials cleared the wreckage of a damaged chariot from the far end of the spina, the central barrier that divided the track. The stands were a sea of red, white and blue, signifying three of the teams the spectators supported, but the predominant colour was green.

  ‘I have a small wager on the Whites, Father.’ Titus’s face glowed with anticipation and he gave Valerius a wry look that told him the bet was anything but small.

  ‘Not the Greens? Scorpus seems unbeatable these days. It makes things quite dull.’ Vespasian would be close to seventy, and he looked it. Eyes once bright with restless energy now appeared washed out, pale orbs sunk deep in a face whose every wrinkle marked a crisis or a tragedy during the seven exhausting years he had worn the purple. He’d survived one conspiracy after another seemingly unmoved, but the death of Antonia Caenis, the freedwoman who was the love of his life, had aged him overnight. The full lips were permanently down-turned, giving the impression of a constant frown, and his voice was a scratchy parody of that which once barked orders to his army commanders. Ruling the Empire would have taxed a man twenty years younger, which was why he delegated much of the responsibility to Titus, who reigned as co-Emperor in all but name.

  ‘I watched the bay team in practice last week. Atticus tells me his lead horse Perseus was born to win and his driver is fearless.’ Titus took a seat behind his father and beckoned Valerius to join him. He leaned forward and spoke quietly in Vespasian’s ear. ‘Valerius Verrens on the Agricola matter.’

  ‘Ah, Verrens.’ The Emperor looked over his shoulder and his lips twitched in what might have been an attempt at a smile. ‘Your presence is always welcome. I could have left this to my son, but he believed there might be a certain reluctance on your part to accept the offer. After your good work in Hispania I felt it only right that I should personally convince you of the importance I attach to this mission.’