Sword of Rome(16)

‘Tell Juva I wish him well and that he doesn’t have to concern himself with us,’ Valerius said.

The last man nodded slowly before turning to help his shipmate. They took a man each and shouldered them down the street, edging their way past the Spaniard as he whirled the cudgel like a child’s toy.

They watched the sailors go. ‘Will they fight, do you think?’ Serpentius asked.

‘They don’t lack courage,’ Valerius said. ‘And Nero has been clever enough to offer them something to fight for. But they won’t stop Galba.’

The Spaniard snorted derisively. ‘Maybe they won’t have to. We’ll all have died of old age before Old Slowcoach gets here.’





VI


9 June


By early summer Rome was a whirling sea of rumour and gossip, each tale twisted and chewed over as a dog gnaws an old bone, and less likely than the one that preceded it. Nero had called on his old friend King Tiridates of Artaxata and an army of Armenians and Parthians was already marching to his aid. He had filled a ship with the contents of Queen Dido’s treasury and set off to found a new Empire in Africa. He had laid down the reins of power and pledged to make his career on the stage. He was already dead. Other stories were closer to the truth. Two more legions in Moesia had deserted his cause. Vespasian, who had yet to openly declare for Galba, had guaranteed Nero’s safety and offered a place of exile in Alexandria. This last scenario, Valerius knew, the Emperor’s opponents wanted to be true, and his new friend Nymphidius Sabinus, joint prefect of the Praetorian Guard, did what he could to make it seem so, sending loyalist elements among his cohorts to Ostia to await Nero’s coming. Within hours of their departure their more avaricious comrades accepted an offer from Nymphidius on behalf of the Lieutenant to the Senate and People of Rome of thirty thousand sesterces a man, ten years’ pay by Valerius’s calculation. Where Galba would find the money was another matter. The old man might be rich as Croesus, but Valerius doubted that Rome’s most notorious skinflint would be pleased to hear he had paid twice as much for his Empire as Claudius two and a half decades earlier.

Still the Senate wavered. Galba had not moved from his base in Hispania and the legions of Verginius Rufus, battle-hardened and angry, lurked around the headwaters of the Rhodanus in Gaul. Galba had the authority, but Rufus had the power. If ever Rufus wanted to be Emperor, now was his chance. But, through fear, or loyalty, he did not take it.

It needed one more push, and only one man could provide it. Valerius packed a thousand aurei of Otho’s Emperor’s bounty in the builder’s sack and went to visit Offonius Tigellinus. By late afternoon the deed was done and the Senate declared Emperor Nero Claudius Germanicus Caesar an enemy of the people.



The house Valerius sought lay close to the Temple of Diana on the Aventine Hill overlooking the Circus Maximus. Substantial and well built, it might have been the home of a prosperous merchant. He doubted it would have been the first choice of the woman who now occupied it, but perhaps she had good reason for selecting a modest residence. This visit was a distraction from his mission, and a potentially dangerous one, but Valerius was bound by the vow he had made to her father, and even if it had not been so, his heart would have drawn him here.

The thought of seeing her again turned his legs weak and he fidgeted at the entrance like a nervous schoolboy until a doorman answered his knock and showed him inside. Domitia Longina Corbulo’s face showed surprise when she recognized him, followed by a frown of suspicion as the doorman announced him by the assumed name he had given. But she would not have been her father’s daughter if she hadn’t instantly recovered her poise. She ushered him through to a light-filled room with an open roof and a small pool at its centre. On a bench in one corner an elderly woman looked up from her sewing and frowned. Domitia took a seat on a second bench and waved Valerius to a cushioned marble ledge a few decorous feet away.

‘You should not have come here, Valerius.’ She smiled. ‘I am a respectable married woman, you know.’

He shot her a warning look at the use of his true name, but Domitia only laughed in that unaffected way he remembered. If anything, she had grown more lovely in the two years since they had parted, the lithe figure fuller than he remembered, but the deep brown eyes still with their mocking glint. Not a girl any longer, but a true Roman lady. A respectable married woman. She would be nineteen.

‘Do not concern yourself. Cassia is deaf.’ She exchanged smiles with the old woman. ‘She sees no evil, because I ensure there is none to see, and she hears nothing at all, which I find useful. When he went to take up his praetorship in Sicilia, my husband left me with a hag whose tongue was as sharp as her ears, but I rid myself of her before she could do any damage.’