Sword of Rome(32)
Now puzzlement and consternation was clear on the faces of the cavalry. Killing a crowd of mutinous sailors on the Emperor’s orders was one thing. A full-scale battle against the Praetorian Guard was another. Milo took advantage of the hesitation to order his men back behind the Praetorian line and the cry went up to retreat to the river. The bloodied sailors and marines faded away, leaving their dead and dying behind, and their tormentors to face the wall of Praetorian shields. A few of the Vascones attempted to force their way through, and the order went up from Helius to act defensively. On the right flank, the Germans stood their ground, apart from a section beyond the end of the line who galloped among the fleeing seamen hitting out with the flat of their swords.
Juva had appeared at Valerius’s side, but now he turned to go.
‘You saved my life,’ Valerius reminded him. ‘Stay with me and I will guarantee your safety.’
The big man shook his head. ‘My place is with my shipmates.’ With a last dejected glance at the carnage around him, he walked away.
Valerius looked towards the river. Hundreds of sailors crowded the bank, but a thousand and more waited uncertainly in the space between. The killing had stopped. The shrill cry of a trumpet sounded amid the ranks of the Imperial column and the Vascones wheeled away to disappear up the Via Flaminia. A group of officers from Galba’s staff appeared and began talking animatedly with the prefect commanding the German cavalry wing. Helius stood in front of his men looking bewildered, and as Valerius watched one of the staff men trotted over to the Praetorian’s side and began barking questions at him.
The sound of hooves close behind announced the arrival of Serpentius leading Valerius’s horse. ‘I saw you were in trouble, but I couldn’t get to you,’ the Spaniard said apologetically. He looked at the dog-legged line of crumpled bodies and the sword-slashed wounded now walking or crawling to join their comrades in the space between the road and the river. He shook his head. ‘Idiots.’ It wasn’t clear whether he meant the victims or their killers. ‘What happens now?’
A reinforced cohort of legionaries – perhaps fifteen hundred men – approached. For a moment, Valerius feared they would draw swords and the killing would begin again. Instead they began to use their shields to herd the seamen into a smaller area. The bemused sailors showed no resistance.
‘What happens now?’ Serpentius repeated.
Valerius touched the side of his head where he’d been hit – he still wasn’t sure with what – and his fingers came away sticky with blood. ‘If the Emperor has any sense he’ll understand that this was nothing but a mistake and send the sailors back to their barracks in Misenum. Bad enough killing so many of his own people without stirring up any more bad feeling.’
But he knew that for Servius Sulpicius Galba it would not be a question of sense or otherwise. The Emperor had issued a direct order to the seamen to disperse and that order had not been obeyed. Deep in his gut, Valerius sensed there was more trouble on the way.
And it came sooner than he’d expected.
‘Gaius Valerius Verrens, I arrest you in the name of the Emperor.’
XIII
Two weeks after Galba’s bloody entry into Rome Valerius stood in the atrium of the luxurious villa Marcus Salvius Otho had allocated himself. Only his host’s intervention had saved him from facing the same charges as the marine legion. Now he listened in growing disbelief as Otho outlined the punishment Galba had devised for the survivors of the massacre at the Milvian Bridge.
‘Decimation.’
For a moment the word shocked Valerius into silence. Surely it wasn’t possible? ‘But no legion has suffered decimation since the time of Crassus, and none for two hundred years before that. In the name of Mars, even Caligula didn’t order decimation when the Rhenus legions threatened to rebel. The head of Gaetulicus was enough for him. The Emperor should know that, since he was the man Caligula sent to take it.’
‘Yet there is a certain logic.’ Silhouetted against the window with his back to his guest, Marcus Salvius Otho shrugged. ‘Our Emperor is an old-fashioned man and he has resolved upon an old-fashioned punishment for an old-fashioned crime. He wished to include you among the ringleaders of the mutiny. It took all my charm and diplomacy to persuade him otherwise.’
Valerius waited to discover the price for this unlikely munificence, but Otho continued to stare from the villa window out towards the marbled bulk of the Palatine. The injustice of it – no, it was more than injustice, it was madness – drove Valerius to impotent rage. Decimation meant that one man in every ten, regardless of service or worth, would be drawn by lot, taken out and slaughtered. ‘There was no mutiny. There were misunderstandings, there were mistakes, someone,’ the fury in his voice made the other man turn, ‘panicked. Those men went to the Milvian Bridge to give Servius Sulpicius Galba their oath of allegiance. To prove their loyalty. Now a hundred of them are dead, two hundred more are wounded and our Emperor wants to slaughter another five hundred. To make a point? It is beyond stupidity. It is insane.’