Valerius allowed himself a smile. ‘Still as formidable as ever.’
‘I may be married, Valerius.’ Her words were accompanied by a smile, but they held an iron core. ‘Some day I may even be owned, but I will never be ruled.’ She held his gaze for what seemed an age. At the very heart of her was the same resolve that had made her father who he was: Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, general of the armies of the East. ‘I thought you must be dead.’
The change of direction caught him off balance. He remembered the desperate escape from Antioch as the Emperor’s agents closed in after Corbulo’s death. The resolve she’d shown even as her world was being torn apart. ‘I should have been. In Alexandria, Vespasian kept Nero’s assassins at bay, but when we left for Hispania they followed us through Africa and Mauretania. They came close in Leptis, but Serpentius saved both our lives.’
‘He is with you?’
‘He has business in the city.’
She nodded, slightly distracted. ‘And you have been with Governor Galba?’ He could hear the doubt in her voice.
‘You disapprove of what he is doing? I would have thought—’
‘No.’ Domitia shook her head. ‘It is just that he seems so …’ She searched for a word he knew was ‘feeble’, but came up with ‘old’. The next words came in a rush. ‘A true soldier would already have been at the gates of Rome. A true soldier would not have waited. You would not have waited, Valerius. You would have destroyed that man … that monster.’
He felt the heat of her passion, the same heat that had seared them both on the sun-scorched Egyptian beach where the shattered wreck of the Golden Cygnet had lain rocking in the shallows. He darted a glance at Cassia, but the old woman was concentrating on her needlework. That monster … the man who had ordered her father’s death. Nero. ‘That is why I came. I wanted you to know that he will fall, probably before morning. Who knows what might happen. The city could be dangerous for days, even weeks. Perhaps it would be safer if you left.’
She shook her head. ‘I will be safe enough. I have a protector who will provide me with guards.’ She saw his look as the alternative meanings of the word ‘protector’ registered and gave a bitter laugh. ‘No, Valerius, he would not dare. He was part of the escort General Vespasian provided from Alexandria. Now he follows me around like a devoted puppy, but sometimes … sometimes I see a look in his eyes that troubles me. When this is over I will send the puppy away with his tail between his legs.’
‘And who is this … protector?’
This time the laugh was genuine. ‘Surely you’re not jealous, Valerius? That was in another lifetime. He is seventeen, just a boy.’ He could have reminded her she was the same age when she had become his lover, but he doubted she would see the irony. They talked for a while longer, tiptoeing around the subject that linked them like one of the shackles binding the prisoners in Nero’s death cells beneath the Palatine. It was not his place to raise it, and when Domitia declined the opportunity he sensed the interview was at an end. They rose together, somehow coming closer than either intended. He could smell the scent of the perfumed oils on her body, and something more subtle below it.
‘Was that the only reason you came, Valerius, to warn me?’ She said it lightly enough, but the words made his head spin. When he spoke he seemed to have pebbles in his throat.
‘No. I wanted to see you again, for one last time.’
There was a moment – a long moment – when he wondered if she wanted him to take her in his arms and kiss her. He wanted it, and he knew she knew he wanted it. But neither moved. Eventually, her face twisted in a grimace that might have been pain or regret and she reached out her right hand to place something in his left. He looked down at the blue Caesar stone polished by the touch of Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo’s fingers.
The whispered words were so faint that, afterwards, he wondered if he had heard them at all.
‘Restore his honour, my Hero of Rome. Finish it.’
VII
Later, the only thing Valerius would recall clearly of that night was the walk from the Aventine to the Clivus Palatinus where he found Serpentius waiting. The rest was like being at the centre of someone else’s dream. An impossible drama played out in an alternative world.
‘You know what to do?’
The Spaniard nodded. ‘We have all the exits covered, including one or two only Tigellinus knew about.’
‘If he comes out, you follow him and send word to me,’ Valerius warned him. ‘There’s to be no trouble in the city. It’s unlikely the mob will support him, but we can’t afford to take the chance. His marines are still loyal. If they’re drawn into a fight with the Praetorians there will be a massacre.’