The big man nodded. It was enough. As the Nubian ran back to his men, Valerius pushed his way back towards the Praetorian line. He was halfway there when he discovered the gods were laughing at them all.
The first sign of trouble was men in civilian clothing wandering among the newly formed sections whispering to one man and then another. At first he thought they must be encouraging the marines to straighten up or stay in line, but something on their faces bothered him: a combination of slyness and barely suppressed excitement. The feeling was reinforced when he saw a figure he recognized moving among a nearby cohort. It was Clodius, Nymphidius Sabinus’s doorman.
‘You! What are you doing?’
Clodius turned with a dangerous light in his eyes. ‘What the fuck is it to you?’ At first there was no recognition of the workman who had visited Nymphidius in the commanding figure wearing a rich man’s clothes, but there came a moment when the eyes changed and Clodius’s hand slipped to his waist. Valerius felt a thrill of alarm when he realized the other man wore a short sword beneath his cloak. What was going on?
The only way to find out was to ask and he started forward. Clodius saw his approach and drew his blade, but his expression faded from belligerence to confusion when he realized his opponent wasn’t going to be checked by the sight of gleaming iron.
A peal of thunder cracked somewhere to the south and for a fleeting moment Valerius was reminded of the night Nero had died. Then a new noise began to shake the air. The sound of raucous cheering.
Galba was coming.
XI
Pride swelled the chest of Servius Sulpicius Galba as the acclamation of the crowd filled his ears. The Emperor-elect struggled to maintain his habitual grim expression. The fleshy lips jutted, his rheumy eyes narrowed like those of a warrior squinting into a blizzard, and his long, hooked nose was set at an angle that allowed him to see a hundred paces ahead, but not the flower petals strewn beneath his horse’s hooves. He wore a purple cloak and a general’s armour, the breastplate and the helmet with its horsehair crest gleaming with golden ornament. At his side hung a long soldier’s sword, because, even at seventy, that was how he saw himself. If he was stern it was because he had learned that sternness kept those he commanded at a proper distance. If he was unyielding it was because he believed being unyielding was the only way to ensure his soldiers’ obedience. He was not interested in their liking or their respect. All that mattered was that they obey.
It had been a long ride from Clunia, in the north of what had been his province, an almost impossible journey for a man of his years. For most of the thousand miles he had travelled in a sprung carriage, but he had been in the saddle often enough to impress his escort of auxiliary cavalry, now reinforced by the seven hundred Batavian troopers of the Imperial Guard. The Batavians had ridden from Rome to meet him three days earlier, while he rested at Falerii and accepted the fawning homage of the ambitious senators who had stirred themselves to greet him there. Yes, a long journey. One full of lessons for those who thought to oppose him. Painful, but satisfactory and salutary lessons. He had not been cruel. He was not a cruel man. He had not acted out of fear. No, he had acted decisively, as an Emperor should.
Other lessons were on his mind now. Nymphidius Sabinus had betrayed and attempted to usurp him, and had paid the price. But what of those who had supported and encouraged him? He had their names, from the same senators who thought to grovel their way into high and profitable office. Those senators would be disappointed. Servius Sulpicius Galba did not buy loyalty. Loyalty must be freely given or it was not loyalty at all. That was another lesson to be learned.
As he rode this final stretch of road, with the cheers of his subjects ringing in his ears, he felt an unlikely and unusual lightening of the spirit. Since crossing the border into Italia he had been beset by a persistent and irrational horror that it would all be taken away from him before he could reach Rome. And now Rome was in sight. A blur of smoke on the horizon. He was here. After all the long years and long miles he had at last reached the pinnacle of his career. It was a pinnacle he had not sought, but when it had come within his reach he had stretched out for it with all the vigour of a much younger man. Rome was his. And not just Rome. The Empire. Nero had brought the world’s greatest power to the brink of ruin. The Empire’s coffers were empty. Somehow they must be refilled, and Servius Sulpicius Galba was the man to fill them. Had he not made a fortune that was the envy of other men, and that after being cheated of his rightful inheritance by Tiberius, of pestilential memory? He would begin by discovering the whereabouts of the money Nero had squandered. And then he would recover it. Naturally, those who had received it would complain, but by the very fact that they had received it they were Nero’s men, and guilty by association.