‘He came here with Phaon and four others. Slaves, we think,’ the Spaniard informed him. ‘The place is surrounded. There’s no way out.’
Valerius nodded. He reached into the pouch at his belt and his fingers settled on the small blue stone Domitia had placed in his hand. Corbulo’s master piece in Caesar’s Tower. He picked it out and weighed it for a few moments before disappearing into the darkness of the walled garden. Serpentius heard a short squeal of terror and the horses shuffled nervously at the sound. The screech of an owl made his fingers automatically form the sign against evil before the sound of voices left him oblivious to all else.
‘Will you never leave me alone?’
‘I will follow you to the ends of the Empire if need be. You have too much blood on your hands.’
‘So it must be now?’
‘Yes, it must be now.’ Was it some night creature or the soft hiss of a sword being drawn?
‘Here?’
‘No, here would be better.’
‘Will it hurt?’
‘Only for a moment.’
‘I cannot.’
‘You must.’
A sharp cry followed by soft, pitiful sobbing. ‘See, I cannot. Help me, my Hero of Rome.’
‘For Rome.’
The words were followed by a prolonged wistful sigh; the kind of sigh a great actor might make before leaving the stage for the final time. A shadowy figure reappeared, stooping to wipe something on the long grass. The Spaniard went to stand at his friend’s side. ‘So it is finished?’
Valerius looked to the north, where the wolves of the Rhenus were gathering. He remembered the limitless ambition in Otho’s eyes. Galba’s bony hands shaking as they unrolled Vespasian’s scroll. How long would those hands be able to keep their grip on the Empire’s reins? A peal of thunder broke the silence and lightning flashed over the distant hills. All the ingredients for mischief and the gods were already stirring the cauldron. ‘What if this is just the beginning?’
VIII
At first it went well. Galba, typically, did not move until official word of his acclamation by the Senate reached him in early July at Clunia, in the north of Hispania. Only when he had the sealed leather scroll in his hand did he don the purple cloak and begin his march. Another man would have hurried to Rome before someone stepped in and tore the prize from him, but the Emperor-elect was a patrician who took the trappings of his new status seriously. With the recently constituted Legio VII Galbiana, a barely trained rabble of Spanish peasants under Roman centurions and officers, in the van, he made his stately way across southern Gaul, while Otho cursed at his side. All this Valerius would discover later, along with more sinister intelligence of which he was about to receive forewarning.
Fortunately for the new Emperor, the man most likely to usurp his position, Verginius Rufus, had been among the first to accept his elevation, before retiring with his Rhenus legions to Moguntiacum. Rufus kept his command, for the moment, but Fonteius Capito, governor of Germania Inferior, had not been so fortunate. Unable to make up his mind whether to support the new Emperor, he had been accused of treason and executed by two of his own officers. It helped that most Romans perceived Galba as a great statesman; also that he was old, and therefore unlikely to be around for long. Since he had no living children there would be no Galbanian dynasty, but a judiciously chosen heir in whose selection they might have some say. Valerius had a feeling they would be disappointed.
Throughout July, the tension eased from the city like air escaping from an overblown goatskin, but by August, with the heat bouncing from Rome’s walls like a furnace and the Senate acting like rabbits at the mercy of an imaginary weasel, the populace became increasingly impatient. And none more so than the naval legion.
‘They should have sent them back to Misenum,’ Serpentius said balefully as he and Valerius passed another tavern brawl involving men in blue tunics. Having spent the two months since Nero’s death kicking their heels and waiting for something positive to happen, the two men were as frustrated as anyone else in Rome. Even the Spaniard found the relentless heat and dust of summer oppressive, and the Tiber, never the most sweet-smelling of streams, filled the whole city with the reek of an open sewer.
‘The Senate is frightened to make a decision,’ Valerius pointed out. Normally the senators would have left the city in August for their holiday homes at Baiae, Neapolis and Oplontis, but with the advent of a new regime none had dared. ‘Any decision. An Emperor ordered the marine legion’s creation and now only an Emperor can decide their future. They are neither one thing nor the other, and, worse, they are frightened. When Nero called, they volunteered, to stop one man. Galba. That man is now their Emperor and Emperors are not known for tolerance or mercy. Their future is uncertain at best and painful at worst.’