At last, he spoke. ‘Marcus Salvius Otho greets you. He chose me to carry his message because he knows of our friendship and is certain you would never believe I would advise you to act against your best interests.’
‘Hah,’ Vitellius growled. ‘Then that is his first mistake. He does not know Gaius Valerius Verrens as I do. If you have a failing, Valerius, it is that you’re too honest and too loyal. You will act in the best interests of Aulus Vitellius? No, Gaius Valerius Verrens will act in the best interests of Rome, because Gaius Valerius Verrens is wedded to a sugar-dusted image of Rome that has nothing to do with the sewer-breathed reality, and Aulus Vitellius may burn in the deepest pit of Hades if it suits Rome’s purposes. So do not feed me an onion and tell me it is a peach. I have tasted enough things in my life to know the flavour of ox manure.’
The words struck like a slap in the face from Vitellius’s jewelled fingers. Valerius felt the blood surge to his cheeks as he experienced a rush of anger that wouldn’t be constrained by the armed men lining the walls. ‘And what is Aulus Vitellius Germanicus Imperator’s vision of Rome?’ He tried to keep his voice level, but the words emerged with the speed and venom of sling pellets. ‘Is it the women and children, every one a client of the Empire, lying in a burned-out town on the Aarus river? It was only the first of many we encountered in the lands of the Helvetii. You asked me if I was hungry. I was hungry when I came here, but not when I saw what we were to eat, because your roasting pig reminded me of a babe I saw not a week ago lying in the ruins of its home, with its mother’s blackened bones beside it.’ He struggled for words as his head filled with the images he’d seen. ‘I hope you enjoyed your pork, Aulus. I would have choked on it.’
‘That was none of my doing.’ The fat man didn’t respond to the anger in Valerius’s voice. ‘We needed supplies. The Helvetii would not give us them. Caecina said they must be taught a lesson.’
‘It was done in your name,’ Valerius countered, each word fighting its way through clenched teeth. ‘This is Marcus Salvius Otho’s message to you. “Tell him I will give him anything short of the crown. He can name his price. He may govern any province that takes his fancy. I will share the consulship with him. I will pay off his soldiers and his generals.” You have unleashed the wolves of the North, Aulus. Unless you find a way to call them back, what happened to the Helvetii will happen to Romans from Augusta Taurinorum to the very gates of the Rome. Whatever you have heard about Otho, he is an honest man. He means what he says. I would stake my life on it.’ He saw the look in Vitellius’s eyes as he spoke the last sentence and knew, as if there had ever been any doubt, that he had done just that.
‘I must think on this. There are other factors here of which you know nothing. Other lives are at stake. Even if I was minded to give up my claim to rule Rome, which I am not, do you think I could snap my fingers and call back my legions? Those men hailed Aulus Vitellius Emperor and Aulus Vitellius in turn pledged himself to them. What sort of weak fool would I look if I dithered at the first bank? Britannia and Gaul have declared for me. Caecina and Valens are halfway to Rome with close to fifty thousand men, and very soon I will join them. There is nothing to stop us but a handful of auxiliaries. Where are Otho’s legions? He has only his palace guard, the Praetorians whose loyalty he has bought, and the mob—’
For all the decisiveness of his words, Vitellius sounded like a man attempting to persuade not the person opposite but himself, and from somewhere Valerius found the courage to interrupt. ‘He was hailed Emperor by the Senate and people of Rome,’ he said.
‘He murdered an old man and stole the purple for himself.’ Vitellius’s voice hardened again. ‘That alone should condemn him. The Senate supported him because it was support him or die. The people? What do the people know? All they care about is their bellies. Otho is not worthy of the throne of Rome.’
The last words were almost a snarl and Valerius caught the other man’s mood. ‘Yet he sits on the throne of Rome and you do not. If Aulus Vitellius Germanicus Imperator wants the purple he will have to walk over the bodies of a hundred thousand innocents to take it. Could you bear that, Aulus? Could the man who gave up his fortune to feed the starving of his African province use dead children as his stepping stones to the Palatium? If he could, he is no longer the man I called friend.’
Valerius found himself on his feet, chest heaving as if he’d just survived a battle. Vitellius’s bodyguards moved to surround him with their swords drawn and a wild look in their eyes. The German Emperor slumped forward in his chair like a man awaiting the executioner’s axe. For a moment, Valerius’s fate lay balanced on the razor edge of a gladius, but before a blow could be struck Vitellius raised himself and waved his aides away.