‘When will you leave?’ Otho’s voice cut through his thoughts.
‘At dusk.’ He had considered heading downriver to Massilia and taking passage on a merchant ship, but he knew Nero would have agents watching Ostia and every other Roman port for Galba’s couriers. ‘We’ll travel by dark, staying close to the Via Aurelia until we clear Aquae Sextiae. The coast road will be watched and it will be safer to take to the mountains. Better to get there alive than not at all.’
Otho nodded distractedly. ‘Arrange for your servant to switch saddle blankets with my mount, but make sure he does it out of view of the escort.’
He saw Valerius’s look. ‘Five thousand gold aurei sewn into the lining. A poor exchange.’ He smiled. ‘Atlas will be glad to have someone else carry the load, but it grieves me to part with it.’
But Valerius’s mind was already reaching out towards the distant mountains that lay between him and his destiny. He was going into the unknown again, but he hadn’t bargained on carrying an Emperor’s bounty.
III
Rome, 6 June, AD 68
The city glowed like multi-hued gold in the pale early evening sunlight. Beyond the walls and the low rise of the Aventine, the greater mass of the Palatine Hill dominated their view. The marble palaces of the Emperors gleamed as if they were studded with diamonds and, just visible beyond them, the pale bulk of the temples of Jupiter and Juno on the Capitoline were backlit by a sea of fiery red: the terracotta roof tiles that covered plebeian and patrician alike. Valerius hitched his cloak to better disguise the wooden hand that identified him as clearly as any banner. He could visualize the seething mass of humanity that fornicated and farted, plotted and squabbled beneath those roofs. The stink of corruption, physical and political, permeated every inch of the seven hills, but still he smiled. ‘It’s good to be back.’
‘Then why are we standing here in this stinking gutter when we could be inside the walls with a warm bed and a warm woman?’ Serpentius growled.
Valerius shook his head in mock dismay. ‘Trust a Spaniard to be always thinking of his own comfort, even if it will eventually kill him. In case you hadn’t noticed, the gate guards are searching every man for weapons, and experience tells us there’ll be a spy on every second street corner. Before I go into the leopard’s lair I want to know whether he’s eaten or not.’
‘And how do we find that out?’
‘From an old friend.’
‘Does he live far from here?’
‘Not far, that’s why we came to the south gate.’
The Spaniard sniffed, testing the air until he found what he wanted. ‘Well, I’ll be in the tavern over there until you come back.’
Early next morning, Valerius was making his way along the Vicus Patricius when six Praetorians appeared from nowhere to surround him. He looked around for Serpentius, but the gladiator had vanished at the first sight of the black cloaks.
‘You are under arrest.’
‘May I be permitted to ask why?’
‘On the orders of the Emperor.’ The decurion’s words sent a shiver of unease through Valerius.
‘Very well.’ Valerius raised his arms. As the Praetorian searched him for hidden weapons he noticed that the few passers-by who risked a glance in his direction did so with a mixture of fear and pity, but most didn’t even look. Clearly, no one wished to be tainted by association with whatever crime he was accused of. The decurion’s eyes turned shrewd when he saw the wooden hand and Valerius knew he had been recognized. Only time would tell whether it was for good or ill.
When the soldiers were satisfied, they marched him up the cobbled Nova Via before turning right on to the Clivus Palatinus, and the palace complex that sprawled across the hill. It had been four years since he last visited this place, for the interview with Nero that had led him on the fateful mission to track down the Rock of Christus and almost cost him his life.
His captors pushed him through a guardroom and from there into the depths of the hill to an evil-smelling, windowless cell. He was not surprised; death had always been a potential outcome of this quest. Gaius Valerius Verrens had faced death many times, not least in the flame-scorched furnace of the Temple of Claudius as Boudicca’s champions broke in to slaughter the last of Colonia’s defenders. It was there that his right hand had been taken, and now the Emperor’s guards removed the walnut fist on the leather stock that had replaced it. He had steeled himself to accept whatever horrors they planned for him, but when the mottled stump was revealed he cried out as if he could again feel the long Celtic sword carving through flesh and blood and bone.