Sword of Rome(44)

Valerius smiled at his friend’s understatement as he read the letter in the house on the Esquiline. Since the day they’d met, Titus Flavius Vespasian had never tried to hide his envy of the Corona Aurea – the Gold Crown of Valour – Valerius had won defending the Temple of Claudius against Boudicca and her rebels. To win the Corona Aurea, a man had to be first over the walls in the assault on an enemy city or carry out some other act of almost suicidal courage. Vespasian would never have given the award lightly, and Valerius knew Titus must have performed an astonishing feat in front of the whole army for the general to present his own son with one of Rome’s highest military honours. Titus continued his report:



We made further progress after the turn of the year, but, with so much uncertainty in Rome, my father took the decision in June to pause. Everything remains in place for the final suppression of the revolt, but, thus far, there has been a singular lack of direction. I am sure the Emperor has his reasons for this, but it has been difficult to sit back in the knowledge that the war could have been won by now. Even as I write, the Jews will be reinforcing their fortresses and strengthening their defences, but the reason I do so at this time is that I will soon be visiting you in Rome. I leave in one week and my father has entrusted me with dispatches and a letter commending me to the Emperor, for reasons of which I know you are aware …





How could he not have seen it? Titus’s letter had arrived the day he had been summoned before the Emperor and, in the chaos since, he had missed the significance of the short passage he had just read. A letter commending me to the Emperor. A letter with the same message Valerius had carried orally to Galba in Carthago Nova. Take away the diplomatic language and the meaning was clear: here is my son. Announce him as your heir and you will have my support in everything you do. But Galba had made Piso his heir. Where would Titus be now? And how long would it take for the news to reach him? He wouldn’t continue his journey only to be humiliated, Valerius was certain of that. He would turn about and go back to his father. Which raised yet another question: what would his father do? Vespasian controlled the best part of six legions in the East. He was a man of enormous principle, but also a man of enormous pride. Galba’s refusal to consider Titus was as good as a slap in the face.

But that wasn’t what had made him reread the letter. He scanned the pages until he found the passage he was searching for.



I hope very much to see you when I reach Rome, but there are many others I must visit. Among them a young gentleman who accompanied a friend of yours, and of mine, on the day she took ship back to Italia. I shall not name the lady, for reasons we both understand. From the tone of his letters it seems he was quite taken with his shipmate, and she with him. He has been sent to my uncle, Sabinus, in the hope he will learn the craft of diplomacy and the intricacies of politics, but he is young and easily bored, and I fear he will be more often found at the games. You may see him there. He is my brother, Titus Flavius Domitianus.





Titus Flavius Domitianus.

The young man he had threatened and whose bodyguards he had left bleeding was Titus’s brother. Vespasian’s son was Domitia Longina’s protector?

But no longer. His breath caught in his throat as he turned his attention for the third time to the letter from Domitia the doorman had passed to him. It was in a code her father had perfected and they had agreed to use in the dangerous weeks that followed Corbulo’s death. In it, she explained how what had begun as a flirtatious game to pass the time on the ship bringing her back from Alexandria had become something much more serious in the mind of Domitianus. When he had begun to appear at the house at all hours of the day and night, she had decided the only way to cool his ardour was to put some distance between them. There was more. She apologized for the abrupt nature of their last parting and he read into her words something that created a liquid feeling inside him and made his heart soar, despite the voice in his head that cried caution. Hidden in the dry groups of anonymous letters was a hint of genuine affection, and perhaps more than affection.

She had left a few days earlier for the country house of an aunt outside the northern city of Dertona. According to the doorman she planned to spend three months there, before returning to Rome in the spring.

It was an odd choice of destination in winter, but Dertona was known for its benign climate. He consoled himself that at least she would be safe from Domitianus there.

And if Otho’s doom-laden prediction came true, the further away from Rome, the better.



The following day Valerius took Serpentius to check whether Laco had the Emperor’s letter. He still hadn’t told the Spaniard the detail of their mission, only that they were going on a journey and he should arrange food, horses and warm clothing. But the former gladiator’s nose for trouble was already twitching.