Valerius didn’t hear him leave the room, but when he turned he was alone with his thoughts. And fears. Not fears for the future of Gaius Valerius Verrens. But for Rome.
They had been held in pens like cattle, and like cattle they were led to the slaughter. Five hundred men, drawn by lot from their centuries, stumbling in chains up the Via Tiburtina, followed by the comrades who would watch them die. The men of the naval militia were unarmed and guarded by three cohorts of Praetorians, with a full cavalry wing of archers standing by to fill the air with death at the first sign of trouble. Valerius surveyed the scene of humiliation and despair with a sickness in his stomach and a feeling of terrible dread at what was to come. He rode with Serpentius along the marching ranks of the living and the soon-to-be dead, looking in vain for Juva and the crew of the Waverider. He could see that the seamen had been roughly handled and barely fed in the two weeks since Galba’s bloody march into Rome, but they marched with their heads high, showing at least some still had their pride.
‘Poor bastards,’ Serpentius said, as a throaty growl went up from a thousand throats when they recognized the place of execution.
In Divine Caesar’s day, the lost, the friendless, the destitute and the nameless dead – anonymous victims of the assassin’s dagger, unwanted girl children or exposed babies – had been thrown into pits on the Esquiline beyond the city wall, to rot where they lay among the rubbish and the filth. But the pits had proved too noisome for Augustus’s sensitive nose and they had been covered with earth to four times the height of a man and turned into a park under the direction of the Emperor’s favourite, the poet Maecenas. The new disposal ground lay well away from the city, out towards the River Teverone. Here, among the smaller pits stinking of death and corruption, a greater excavation had been dug, enough to hold five hundred corpses and more. No burial rights for the men who had defied Galba, and no memorial, just an unmarked grave among Rome’s nameless, faceless pariahs.
A large crowd had already gathered to witness their fate and a fourth cohort of Praetorians was waiting to hustle the prisoners to a cleared area beyond the great pit, where they lined them up in ranks of fifty. The remainder of the sailors and marines were kicked and pushed into three sides of a square that faced the condemned men across the gaping trench. Valerius watched from a nearby grove, his eyes still searching for Juva’s bulk and waiting for some reaction. But for several minutes nothing happened. It was as if they were all waiting.
For what, became clear when the rattle of chains and horse brass announced the arrival of a new column, headed by the Emperor himself. Galba rode a white stallion, resplendent in his cloak of Imperial purple and the gilded armour of a Roman general and flanked by his closest aides, Vinius and Laco. Otho lagged to the rear among a cluster of senators Valerius guessed was smaller than Galba would like. Behind them came a separate group of twenty prisoners and these Valerius did recognize. Milo, their reluctant leader, marched at the front, his chest out and disdain for the proceedings written on his peasant’s face. Among the men behind him stumbled two of the Waverider’s crew, Glico the veteran sailor and Lucca, the big oarsman, but no Juva.
A substantial platform had been raised beyond what was now the left-hand face of the square and Galba and his retinue took their place on it as the last of the chained men were lined up in front of him facing the pit. Valerius held his breath in the unnatural silence. Not even the rustle of leaves disturbed the heartbeat before Galba rose to his feet.
‘If he had any sense,’ Serpentius grunted, ‘he’d spare them and we’d all go home happy, but then he didn’t come all this way to do that, did he?’
‘No, I don’t think he did.’
Galba allowed his bleak gaze to roam over the condemned men and their comrades, eyes bright with an emotion only he could identify. He made them wait what seemed like an eternity and as the tension built Valerius suppressed an urge to cry out.
‘Get on with it, you bastard.’ The savage plea came from the back of the ranks, but there was no reaction from the man it was aimed at.
Finally, the Emperor’s harsh voice rang out across the reeking landscape of death. All here had been condemned by their actions, he told them, but it was an Emperor’s prerogative to temper justice with mercy. Therefore he had decided that only one in ten must die and the others would be allowed to return to their ships under guard, while their centurions would be reduced in rank. None of the orator’s tricks for Servius Sulpicius Galba on this day. He knew them well enough, the extravagant gestures, the tricola, the repetitions, but they were for the Senate and those who could appreciate their subtleties. His only affectation was a raised arm, the finger pointing across the great open death pit almost directly at Valerius, in a pose that aped the armour-clad marble effigy of Augustus Caesar that stood on its pillar in the Forum.