Sword of Rome(102)
‘Valens may be too scared to leave the mountains,’ Serpentius offered, ‘but he’s sending out raiding parties to try to goad Otho’s forces into attacking him. Fire and iron in the night and a few slaughtered civilians, and soon every town and village in the province is screaming for protection. With a little of lady Fortuna’s luck, Otho’s army could be within a day’s march.’
Valerius wasn’t so certain. There was nothing wrong with the Spaniard’s logic, but he knew Otho had been relying on the Balkan legions to stop Vitellius and those legions would take time to react. At best, a legion on the march would make twenty miles a day. He tried to remember how many days it had been since they had left Rome, but could only guess. It was possible, but nowhere near certain, that they could be somewhere close to Italia by now.
‘What lies that way?’ He pointed to the east. The elder shook his head and explained he had never ventured further than the next river. After a moment’s thought, he called over a small fat man who peered suspiciously from the doorway of one of the mud and wattle houses.
‘Cabour sometimes trades as far as Genua,’ he said proudly.
Valerius repeated his question and the trader’s brow furrowed. ‘When you come to Pollentia, follow the river upstream until you can cross the bridge at Alba Pompeia. There you will find a track that takes you to Aquae Statiellae, where you can join the Julia Augusta. It is a fine road,’ he said proudly. ‘Two full carts can pass side by side. Turn south and you will eventually reach Vada Sabatia and the great sea. Go north and the next town is Dertona, but I have never been there.’ He shrugged as if the place was of little consequence, but the name stirred a memory in Valerius.
‘These columns of smoke, could one of them have come from Dertona?’
Serpentius glanced up sharply at the new urgency in his friend’s voice, but Cabour only looked mystified. ‘Smoke is smoke. You see it in the sky, something is burning. Who knows where?’
Valerius shook his head in frustration. ‘Saddle up,’ he shouted, and saw the startled looks from his exhausted men.
When they were on the move, Serpentius rode up to him. ‘What’s so interesting about this Dertona?’ The flat plain stretched out ahead of them under an endless blue sky, a patchwork of fields cut with drainage ditches and streams and scattered with workers preparing the land for planting. Despite the relative warmth of the day, Valerius suppressed a shiver as he kept his eyes on the distant horizon.
‘Domitia.’
The villa sprawled across a low hill overlooking the town and Domitia Longina Corbulo had a clear view from the balcony over the plain. It was already pitch dark and silk-winged moths the size of gold aurei fluttered round the oil lamp, occasionally popping in a hissing splutter of bright flame when they came too close. A similar phenomenon was occurring in front of her eyes. Tiny pinpricks of red and gold dotted the distant blackness, first flaring, then fading quite quickly to a duller glow. With every new conflagration, a claw of cold iron gripped her heart.
What was she to do?
She had come north to evade the attentions of Flavius Domitianus and the growing unrest in Rome, but there was something else too. She had needed to get away to try to come to terms with her feelings for Gaius Valerius Verrens. She was a married woman – true, in name only – yet each time he appeared in her life she remembered the terrible shipwreck and the sun-baked beach in Egypt where it had all begun. The desperate struggle for survival against heat and thirst. The stern, masterful figure who had fought for her life and her honour, and, finally, her love. A man unlike any other she had ever known. She shivered, not entirely due to the chill night air. She was sure Valerius suffered similar feelings, because she had seen it in the soulful eyes that sat so uneasily in a face that was as hard and unyielding as the man who bore it. When news came that Galba was dead and Otho had taken the purple, her first instinct had been to return to him. But her uncle, head of Dertona’s ordo, the council of a hundred prominent citizens who controlled all civic life in the city, had persuaded her it was too dangerous to travel.
And now it was too late.
Hard on the heels of Otho’s elevation had come word that the governor of Germania, Aulus Vitellius, had been hailed Emperor in his turn, and that his legions were marching on Rome. Troops of hard-eyed auxiliary cavalry had appeared at every town along the Padus valley demanding that each ordo in turn pledge allegiance to Vitellius. Her uncle, dear, proud old Prixus, had closed the gates on them and a show of force on the walls had been enough to see them off. For now. Prixus argued in council that only the Senate and people of Rome had the right to hail an Emperor, and that Vitellius was a provincial upstart of the worst sort. The townsfolk had heard him out and agreed that a message should be sent to Rome assuring Otho of Dertona’s allegiance and asking for troops to be sent to safeguard the city against possible attack.