‘Then why don’t they run?’
‘If they run, it will prove their treason and Galba will hunt them down, as Crassus hunted down Spartacus. Their greatest strength is in their unity and a display of their loyalty. If they can convince Galba they are worthy of his trust and he has the sense to accept it, perhaps we will yet see them march behind an eagle.’
‘Aye,’ Serpentius spat. ‘And perhaps one day when I back the Greens they will win.’
It was towards the end of the month, and still with no sign of Galba, that Valerius decided to visit his sister Olivia at the family estate at Fidenae, to the north of the city. Conveniently, it also allowed him to meet another obligation.
They could hear the laughter from the wayside tavern long before they reached it. A single bullock cart stood in the yard, alongside six horses being fed and watered by a stable boy. Valerius reined in beside them and left Serpentius to see to their mounts.
A large man in a formal toga sat at a table heavy with a dozen dishes, telling a story Valerius had heard before about an African tyrant and his performing elephant.
‘It got to the end of the tightrope, wobbled for a moment with a look of extreme displeasure on its sad features … fell off and landed on his head. You’ve never seen such a mess. They had to clean the old man off the floor with a bucket and brush. His wife rushed in, screaming, “Is he hurt?” The elephant handler carefully looked his beast over and replied, “No, he seems fine.”’
The man’s six companions roared with laughter and the storyteller beamed. His smile grew wider when he noticed Valerius at the door.
‘Enter the ghost of Achilles.’ Aulus Vitellius raised a silver cup that was certainly not from the inn’s stock. ‘Gentlemen, I give you a true warrior. May I introduce Gaius Valerius Verrens, Hero of Rome and special envoy to our lord and master, the Caesar of the South. Valerius, my aides, Lucius, Gavo, Octavius and … the rest.’ Valerius met the frank stares and nodded a greeting. Vitellius’s reference to his work for Galba proved he trusted his aides, but he had always been trusting. Perhaps too trusting. Today, though it was barely midday, he was at his loquacious best. ‘Landlord! This calls for more food and more wine. A toast, to one Aulus Vitellius, the newly appointed governor of Germania Inferior, may his legions be victorious, may he prosper among the barbarians, and may his creditors wither on the vine, be swallowed by blackbirds and shat out like the manure they are to do some good for a change.’ Someone passed Valerius a cup and he joined in the toast, laughing with the rest.
An aide moved to allow Valerius to squeeze in beside his old friend on a bench designed for three, and below the table he slipped a well-stocked purse into the folds of Vitellius’s toga. ‘Perhaps this will help keep the manure at bay for a little longer,’ he said quietly.
The new governor of Germania Inferior studied him like a long-lost son and his eyes turned moist. Valerius knew that his friend was busily weighing the purse in his hand and would by now have calculated its value to the last as. He saw the deep-set eyes narrow, then widen, and finally Vitellius gave a roar that made all five of his chins quiver like waves in a storm. Valerius felt himself engulfed in two enormous arms and drawn into a suffocating embrace. Eventually, Vitellius released him and they sat back, each studying the other with a mixture of pleasure and wariness.
They had first met in a riverside fort on the Dacian frontier when Vitellius cheerfully admitted trying to have Valerius killed, then almost certainly saved his life by offering him a position as military adviser when he left to govern his African province. He had changed little since their eighteen months together in Carthage. His thinning hair was mostly gone now, and he was perhaps a little heavier around the middle – hardly surprising in a man who could eat three large meals a day and still be demanding more when everyone else was crouched in the vomitorium. Many made the mistake of confusing fat with foolish and lumbering with slow-witted. In fact, Vitellius’s bumbling self-mockery disguised a shrewd brain that the Emperor Claudius had recognized by making him consul. He had been a friend and intimate of Nero, but, as the Emperor’s power waned, he had hidden away on his estate until Servius Sulpicius Galba had called him back to service. It was Vitellius who had revealed to Valerius that Otho’s evaluation of the situation in Rome was flawed, and that there could be no transfer of power without the help of both Praetorian prefects, and Vitellius who had arranged the meeting in the Palatine dungeon with Nero’s former favourite, Tigellinus.
Vitellius fumbled the purse into a secure position and murmured his thanks. ‘You would think a man of any intelligence could not fail to return rich from his province, but I was struck down with an almost terminal case of honesty.’ He shook his head in mock sadness as he repeated the refrain Valerius knew so well. ‘After all those years of avoiding it, my conscience finally caught up with me. How could any man let those people starve?’