‘Very well. And Nero?’
‘It will be as you suggested.’
Valerius flexed the fingers of his left hand and picked up the sword from where the Praetorian had laid it on the table. Tigellinus’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth to shout for aid, but the younger man strode past him towards the cage. ‘The Emperor will no longer be in need of a pet.’
IV
Valerius could feel it in the air around him: that sense of foreboding that came with the approach of a summer storm. In many ways Rome was a city already under siege. Serpentius had almost given up hope by the time he’d returned, pale and exhausted after four days and nights in the cells below the Palatine. Now the Spaniard recognized a new sense of purpose in his Roman friend.
In the stifling, airless depths between the four-and five-storey insula apartment blocks that filled the capital’s poorer areas life took on a frenzied desperation. Men and women fought each other over the dwindling stocks in the shops and streetside stalls, and the whole city seethed with fear and uncertainty. Either Nero had repealed the decree that prohibited civilians from carrying weapons or his supporters had decided they were safe to ignore it. Bands of thugs armed with cudgels and knives stood at every junction, unhindered by the Praetorians or vigiles, questioning or ‘arresting’ those who caught their eye. Anyone foolish enough to appear rich or even mildly prosperous was likely to come under suspicion. It was well known in the stews of the Subura and the tight-packed hovels on the slopes of the Collis Viminalis that the Emperor had been betrayed by the upper classes and the Senate. Dressed in the dusty work gear of a pair of itinerant builders Valerius and Serpentius had little to fear, and any keen-eyed bully who questioned their disguise would be quickly dissuaded by the aura of sheer savagery that cloaked the former gladiator. As an extra precaution, Valerius had wrapped his wooden fist in the folds of a rugged cloth sack of the kind workers used to carry their heaviest tools. His companion carried a similar bag, which, from the way he handled it, held equipment of considerable weight.
Tigellinus had arranged temporary accommodation for them out by the city wall near the Porta Salutaris. It was typical of its type, two dusty rooms on the fourth floor of a creaking insula block, with water drawn from a pump in the yard and a night soil pot you emptied in the stinking drain that ran down the centre of the street. They discovered why it was so readily available when they woke before dawn to the terrified screams of pigs being led to slaughter in the pork market beyond the wall.
On this day, their route took them down the Vicus Longus and into the teeming filth of the Subura before they turned left up the slope past the Temple of Juno Lucina and the sixth shrine of the Argei.
‘Watch out.’ Serpentius pulled Valerius to the side of the street at the familiar sound of marching feet in hobnailed sandals. They stood back beneath the awning of a fruit stall as a mismatched unit of soldiers stumbled past and veered off towards the Porta Tiburtina. Each of the men carried some kind of weapon, but they were dressed in a mix of blue tunics and civilian clothing. Some had helmets and armour, but most did not. They walked with a curious rolling gait, and those still dressed as civilians stood out because of the heavily muscled upper bodies and arms that gave them the look of acrobats or wrestlers. Many were clearly foreigners; swarthy and dark-skinned, like the Syrian cavalry Valerius had commanded in Parthia.
‘These must be the marines Nero is forming into a new legion. Sailors, too,’ he said.
‘They don’t look like much,’ Serpentius spat. ‘Sunshade operators.’
Valerius laughed at the reference to the sailors’ traditional onshore task of erecting the great sailcloth awnings that protected amphitheatre crowds from the fierce heat of the summer sun. ‘I don’t know. They all look tough enough, and they’re volunteers. Equip them properly and give them the right training and they might surprise you.’
‘No time for that,’ Serpentius pointed out. ‘If it had been anyone but Old Slowcoach the legions would already be marching across the Milvian Bridge. Corbulo would have shoved an eagle up Nero’s arse by now.’
It wasn’t how Valerius would have put it, but he knew the Spaniard was right. Where speed and determination had been needed, Galba had proved slow and timid. He should have reinforced Vindex at the start of his rebellion. Instead, he had begun his march too late. If he had continued his advance, the likelihood was that the two German legions who had defeated the Gaul would have joined him, or melted away in front of him. In the aftermath of the victory at Vesontio, while their blood was up, they had urged their own commander to proclaim himself Emperor and march on Rome. Lucius Verginius Rufus had refused, but it showed that his legionaries were ready to gamble all for change.