Defender of Rome

by Douglas Jackson

  This time he had the benefit of familiarity and he made good progress once he got back into the rhythm that had carried him to the chamber. He had one moment of minor panic when the walls closed in where the tunnel narrowed, but it passed quickly. True, every time he pushed himself along another few inches he thought he could hear the distant thunder of water coming to swamp him, but the rope barely hindered him and in a few minutes he saw the light of the exit shaft ahead. He felt a tug on the rope and realized Praxedes was telling him to pull her along. He hauled six feet of line into a coil and moved on, stopping to repeat the manoeuvre when he heard the shout from her father. The rest would have to wait until he reached the shaft. He only hoped he had the strength to pull them all. With a few feet to go, he froze at the sound of voices. Had Rodan sent a patrol to the hill after all? If he carried on they would arrest him. Worse, they might replace the stone cap and trap him in here with the others.

  ‘Keep that bloody knife in your belt.’ He recognized the gruff, welcome tones of Marcus and he could have wept.

  ‘What difference does it make? He’s drowned anyway, or he would have signalled,’ Serpentius replied. ‘We didn’t stop the water quickly enough. Nobody could survive for that long.’

  ‘You’ll be dead if you don’t help me out of here, you idle Spanish bastard,’ Valerius shouted, his words magnified and made ghostly by the shaft.

  The call was followed by the long silence of two men pondering a voice from the Otherworld.

  ‘Hello?’ Valerius had never heard Serpentius sound frightened. He clambered up, blinking, into the sunlight. Marcus stood back from the shaft eyeing him warily. Serpentius was a yard further away and looked ready to run for his life.

  ‘Are you going to help me,’ Valerius said, ‘or must I wait until Rodan does?’

  With a shout, the two men ran forward and pulled him out to lie gasping by the shaft entrance.

  ‘We thought …’

  He waved them away, untying the rope from his waist. ‘We’ve no time for happy reunions. Haul on this line, but gently now, and I promise you a catch the like of which you’ve never seen before.’

  They stared at him and he knew how mad he appeared, but he didn’t care.

  ‘Pull,’ he said. ‘We have souls to save.’

  Praxedes was first, her golden head appearing in the bottom of the shaft. Valerius descended a few steps to help her, but she refused to come out until he had rescued Olivia first. She was followed by her father and mother, and then, one after the other, the Christians emerged filthy and bewildered to fall on their knees and give thanks to their God. The lawyer’s wife was second to last, her eyes tight shut, and finally her husband’s face appeared.

  Some thanked him, most just gave him wary glances before they set off towards their homes. Pudens was last to go. ‘I have nothing now,’ he said, running his hand through his daughter’s hair. ‘Except my life and my family. For them I thank you.’ Valerius asked him if he had somewhere to stay and he said he did. Praxedes gave him a gap-toothed smile and the little family walked down the hill hand in hand.

  ‘May your God protect you,’ Valerius whispered. He turned to find Marcus and Serpentius looking at him as if he had just come back from the dead, which, in a way, he had.

  ‘What now?’ Marcus asked respectfully.

  ‘First Serpentius can steal me some clothes, then we go back to work.’

  An hour later they set off back towards the Forum. Valerius noticed a crowd lined up outside one of the government buildings behind the Senate House. ‘What’s going on?’

  Marcus spoke to a vendor at a nearby fruit stall and returned with the information. ‘It’s some kind of census. Posters have gone up all over the city ordering the Judaeans and a few of the other provincial groups to register with the state or they’ll lose their rights to stay in Rome.’

  Valerius closed his eyes. Time was running through his fingers. How long had it been? Six days and he was still no closer to the Rock than he had been on that first morning. He looked at the long line of men, women and children. If he didn’t succeed these people would all die. He had asked Pudens for information about Petrus, but the villa owner had sworn on his family’s life that he didn’t know where he could be found. Others organized the baptism ritual. Petrus came and carried out the ceremony, then he left. Today the location of the ritual had been betrayed. But by whom?

  ‘Are you feeling all right?’ Marcus looked at him as if he’d grown an extra eye.

  Valerius shook his head wearily. How could he have taken so long to make the connection? ‘Today I’ve been buried alive and almost drowned, but I’ve just realized that the worst is still to come.’

  XXXV

  THE ROOM LOOKED and felt different. How could that be in so short a time? Murals he had always regarded as artistic and exotic now appeared merely vulgar and lewd. In the harsh light of day the wall hangings and the furniture seemed tired and worn. The scents which had once made his senses reel were no longer sweet, but cloying, and only just masked the unmistakable musky odour of the aroused men who queued here to couple with her. Fabia looked different too. She had lost the last bloom of youth in a few short weeks. The powder on her face was no longer to enhance her beauty, but to camouflage the lines in the corners of her eyes. Flesh that had been taut and firm had taken on the pasty texture that came with separation from the fine bone structure beneath. A new face. A middle-aged face. She sat on a couch opposite him, straight-backed and refusing to meet his gaze. ‘You had no right to come here without an appointment.’ Her voice sounded like ice cracking in a frozen stream.

  ‘You have never complained before.’

  ‘You have never come here coated in filth and stinking like a sewer cleaner. You have never forced your way past my doorkeeper while I was entertaining a friend. Now I will have to have him whipped for failing in his duty.’

  Valerius laughed, remembering the scene; the outraged underling and the semi-tumescent senator making his escape still dressed in the distinctive robes of a Vestal virgin. ‘Your doorkeeper or the friend?’

  She hissed like a snake. It was clear that everything they’d had was gone, but now he asked himself if it had only ever existed in his imagination.

  ‘You called me here last night for a reason.’

  She darted a glance in his direction, but looked away before he had the chance to read its meaning. ‘To enjoy your company and exchange gossip. You were once an entertaining companion, although it is difficult to believe now.’

  ‘I remember the verbal exchange as very one-sided.’ Now his voice was as cold as hers. He should have felt hatred, or perhaps pity, but instead an empty space lay where his heart had been. ‘You were keen to hear the latest news of my quest for Petrus, and interested in each and every detail about the theft from the water castle.’

  ‘We were friends then. Friends are interested in each other’s lives.’

  ‘What we talked about was known only to Honorius the water commissioner and two men I trust with my life.’

  ‘Hired thugs, you mean.’

  ‘Perhaps, but men I can trust – as I once trusted you.’

  He saw her face go pink beneath the powder. But was it anger or fear? Then she smiled at him and he was almost disarmed as the beauty shone from her like the sun breaking from behind a cloud.

  ‘Oh, Valerius, is that what this is about?’ she said lightly. ‘You would take a mercenary’s word against mine? Who is to say that old Honorius, a man who has never been known to speak one word when ten will do, did not blurt out your plans as he devoured one of his legendary midday meals? Surely that is not enough to break up our friendship.’

  Valerius rose from his couch. ‘I suppose it is possible that Honorius might have talked to someone, but how did the Praetorians react so quickly? They were exactly where I thought I would find Petrus an hour before we were.’ He was behind her now, caressing her neck as he had once done to give her pleasure.

  ‘But of course
they would be. Torquatus does not want you to get the credit for hunting down the Christian.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and she knew a thrill of fear as his voice hardened again and his left hand twisted in her hair and yanked her head round to face him. ‘But that doesn’t explain why Torquatus has been one step ahead of us ever since Nero gave me this task. It doesn’t explain why Cornelius Sulla and Lucina were arrested when the only people who knew what was said were Gaius Valerius Verrens and the lady Fabia Faustina. That’s right, Fabia. I didn’t even tell Marcus and Serpentius what passed between Cornelius and me. Only you. You betrayed them.’ His grip grew tighter and she cried out with pain. ‘You condemned them to the stake and the cage. You condemned Ruth to death too, because Lucina told Torquatus where the next meeting was to be held.’ She struggled, but he kept his grip. ‘And you betrayed Olivia and my father, and for that I can never forgive you.’

  ‘I saved your father!’ Fabia’s shout echoed from the walls. Valerius hesitated, reluctant to believe her, but he knew the truth when he heard it. He relaxed his grip and she collapsed sobbing on the stone floor.

  ‘You saved him?’

  She raised her head and her eyes were filled with an explosive mixture of pain and shame and righteous fury. ‘Yes, I saved him. Saved him from Nero. Saved him from Torquatus. The doddering old fool would have been dead a month ago if I had told Torquatus everything I knew. I saved him today when I sent a slave to warn him not to go to the Christian ritual.’

  ‘But …’

  She fought to regain her composure. ‘It’s true that I told Torquatus about Cornelius and Lucina, just as I have told him most of what you tell me.’

  Valerius shook his head. He’d known it since the moment he’d seen Rodan waiting for them, and perhaps for much longer, but part of him still didn’t believe it.

  ‘Why? Why would you betray me? We were …’

  ‘Friends? I thought that once, Valerius, but would a friend have accepted my love without any intention of returning it? While I lay there thinking of you as my lover, you never thought of yourself as anything more than my client. A caring, affectionate client, perhaps, but a client all the same. Think. Does that make you better or worse than a degenerate like Posthumus in his pretty dress? He pays me and takes what he has paid for. You pretended you were my friend and used me just the same. Which of you made me more ashamed of what I am?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and he truly was, but there were things he had to know. ‘That still did not give you reason to betray me.’

  ‘No. It did not. I have known shame since the day Seneca destroyed my father and forced him to send me to that place, but I buried my shame deep and I disguised it with a smile. I had manners and beauty and I learned quickly and that saved me from the worst of it: the lowborn and the dangerous with their stinking breath and their dirty crawling hands and hungry mouths. They kept me for people like you – arrogant, perfumed patricians with power and money. I learned about power and I learned how to part you from your money and in time I was able to buy myself out and set up here. But the shame remained, Valerius. I knew I had lost my honour and that I would never marry, and I gave up hope … until I met you. When you came to me I understood that here was someone as broken as I. Britain had come close to destroying you, just as what I am had come close to destroying me. Your missing hand was as much a burden as my lost virtue. So I allowed myself hope, until I realized that hope was in vain.’

  ‘I didn’t know about Seneca. If I had it might have been different.’

  Her face transformed into a bitter smile. ‘No, Valerius, because you think of Seneca as your friend and Gaius Valerius Verrens stands by his friends. If you learn only one lesson from today, let it be never to trust your friends.’

  ‘But Seneca didn’t betray me, you did, and Seneca is not my enemy. So who is?’

  She shook her head again. ‘Still so loyal, Valerius. Who has most to gain if your father dies, and his son is implicated in his plotting? Ask Seneca about the marble. Ask him about the geological survey he has just had carried out on his estate. The estate which borders your father’s.’

  Valerius remembered the day Honorius had congratulated him on Lucius’s good fortune and another building block fell into place.

  Fabia nodded. ‘Now you understand. But you are right, Seneca is not the man you must fear most. That man is Torquatus.’

  The name was hardly a surprise, but it still didn’t explain the lengths to which the Praetorian prefect had gone to sabotage a mission for which he was partially responsible. ‘I can understand why Torquatus dislikes me, even hates me, but not why he would want to destroy me. I am no threat to him and never could be. Why would he want me to fail when he was instrumental in giving me the mission to hunt down Petrus and the Christians in the first place?’

  ‘Because if you fail, Torquatus succeeds. He can’t allow you to find this Petrus when he could not. That is why he has had Rodan dog your footsteps ready to pounce on Petrus. With the Christian in his grasp he would denounce you as a traitor who knew all along that your father was one of the people you sought. If your enemies have their way, you and Lucius will die on neighbouring pyres, Valerius, and the Emperor’s greatest amusement will be in deciding who burns first.’

  ‘That still does not explain why Torquatus should be so determined to have me killed, or what I have done to earn so much hatred.’

  She laughed, short and sour. ‘You mean apart from being you, so handsome and so strong and always so certain? He mentioned it once, quite casually, as if he was discussing a horse that needed disciplining. A family matter, he said, some cousin who had served with you in Britain. The man was a centurion in the Twentieth legion who sent Torquatus a letter claiming you had destroyed his career and demanding help to gain reinstatement. He died in the British rebellion, but our Praetorian prefect was left to salvage the family’s honour. Such a trivial reason to die, don’t you think?’

  Valerius stared at her. It didn’t seem possible. Crespo? Rapist, bully, murderer and thief, the man had been a senior centurion in Valerius’s cohort. It had been Valerius’s accusation which had forced Crespo into the service of Catus Decianus, Britain’s procurator, who had made the decision to strip Boudicca of her lands and her people. Crespo had vowed revenge for that humiliation. Before he could fulfil his promise, the centurion, whose rape of Boudicca’s daughters helped ignite the rebellion, had met a terrible end at the hands of the Iceni queen. Now Crespo had reached from beyond the grave to destroy Valerius. He could almost hear the gods laughing.

  He shook his head. ‘You could have come to me instead of betraying me.’

  Some of the old spark returned and her eyes flashed. ‘You can be such a fool sometimes, Valerius. If I had come to you, we would both be dead. While you are close to finding Petrus, Torquatus has to keep you alive so that he can take the credit. He tried to have you killed in Dacia because he already had Lucina and thought he no longer needed you. You must believe me, I have always tried to protect my friends, whatever Torquatus has asked of me and however he has asked it.’ Her voice was close to breaking and Valerius realized how much anguish lay behind those words. A man like Torquatus had many ways of inflicting pain so that the wounds did not show. She recognized the look on his face. ‘Yes, pity me, Valerius, for there is no escape for me in this life. If you can find Petrus and present him to Nero you can still thwart Torquatus, but the only escape for Fabia Faustina is death.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Come with me and we will fight him together.’

  ‘You mean die together? If I leave Rome without Torquatus’s permission he will know that I have betrayed him; perhaps he knows it even now. If I stay it will give you the time to do what you must do.’

  He hesitated, but he knew she was right. The only chance he had to find Petrus was to leave her. Another friend failed. He got up to go, all his anger forgotten.

  ‘Wait, Valerius. There is more you need to know.’

  She told hi
m about Poppaea.

  ‘In many ways she is very like me, trapped in a loveless world and forced to sell herself to stay alive. Perhaps that is why we became friends. You think you know Nero, but you do not. His subjects see a charming young man who wants to be loved for his talents. Yes, he can be irrational and even vicious if the mood takes him, but men look at his line, shake their heads and ask: how could it not be? But in the night, in the privacy of his palace, he is different, more beast than man, and willing to couple with either if Torquatus is able to provide it. Poppaea is not a wife to him; no woman could be. She is flesh, as we all are, and she survives by being willing flesh, but not too willing, for she must be seductive as well as available. Compliant, but a challenge for his talents in the bedchamber. And, of course, she must entertain, as we all must entertain who enter beyond the doors of his personal quarters. What sordid piece of theatre will Torquatus provide tonight? Will it please him? Will we be able to suffer it with a smile? Will we survive it?’

  Fabia stared into the distance and Valerius knew that she was only telling him part of what went on in the palace. She wore the same look as a soldier who has stared death in the face, lost in the Otherworld that is at the centre of every human soul.

  ‘Poor Poppaea, she confides in me, all unaware that I am part of the trap Torquatus has set for her. He knows that she hates him more than she hates Nero, and he fears her, because her access to Nero makes her powerful. To Torquatus that combination is a threat which cannot be ignored. He too is like a beast, and will lash out at anything which endangers him.’

  ‘She confides in you and yet she has come to no harm?’