Saviour of Rome [Gaius Valerius Verrens 7]

by Douglas Jackson

  ‘It seemed a courtesy to present my credentials and a letter of introduction from the governor.’ Valerius ignored the coolness of his welcome and handed over a leather scroll case.

  Proculus’s frown deepened as he read the letter. ‘My apologies, sir. Had I known you’d held high military office and are a holder of the Corona Aurea I would have seen you immediately. Be sure I will have my clerk whipped for his trouble.’

  ‘There is no need for that, prefect,’ Valerius assured him. ‘It is not something I wished widely known. A man’s fortunes and good name have a way of ebbing and flowing with each change of emperor.’ Proculus gave him a suspicious look. Was he being provoked? It took either a brave man or a foolish one to speak so freely of emperors. Valerius smiled. ‘I mean only that I am a man for whom status is not important.’

  Proculus coiled the scroll and rapped it against his desk. ‘This letter from Governor Secundus asks me to provide you every help and support in some quest he does not specify?’

  ‘An old comrade who saved my life in Armenia asked for my help,’ Valerius explained. ‘But I was travelling. By the time I finally managed to answer his letter he didn’t reply.’

  ‘And you think he is in Legio?’

  ‘His letter mentioned Asturica Augusta.’ Valerius and Pliny had concocted the scheme before he’d left Tarraco. Better a man of some status for access, official or otherwise, than a nobody. And what was more natural than to seek out an old comrade who had saved your life. It gave Valerius a reason to ask questions about Petronius, but didn’t link him directly to the investigation into the missing gold.

  ‘I have no authority in Asturica,’ Proculus complained. ‘It is governed by a civilian administration. More to the point I do not have the resources to offer you any support. Every man is needed for duty.’ He waved at a parchment map pinned to a frame near the doorway. ‘I have a quarter of the men I need to properly defend this fort, but I am told my priority is to provide security for the mines, guards for the gold trains, engineers to keep the aqueducts flowing. The entire area is plagued by bandits. I asked Governor Secundus to send me a reinforcement of two cohorts to allow me to make a clean sweep of the mountains and remove at least this threat, but no, I am instructed to stay in camp and somehow turn one man into four.’

  ‘I heard mention of some Ghost who leaves no tracks.’

  Proculus gave a bark of disgust. ‘There is no Ghost, as I keep telling these fools. Only a man who is cleverer than the idiots I am able to send against him. He has time to make his raids, carry off the gold and cover his tracks before they come close to him. But we will have him soon enough. If you had been a week earlier you would have seen the heads of a dozen of his accomplices on display outside the fortress.’

  ‘Did they betray his whereabouts before they died?’

  ‘No,’ Proculus admitted. ‘But it is only a matter of time.’

  ‘Then I pray Fortuna favours you.’ Valerius bowed. ‘Clearly Governor Secundus was unaware of the difficulties you face. Be sure I will see he is given the full story when I return. In the meantime all I ask is your leave to travel in your area of responsibility.’

  ‘At your own risk?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then you have it.’ Proculus rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. ‘I will also tell my clerk to give you a letter of introduction to the head of Asturica’s ordo. Hopefully he will be able to help you find your friend. Now, if you please …’

  ‘Thank you for your time, prefect.’ By the time Valerius reached the door Proculus was already peering at a new list of demands.

  Next morning Valerius said his farewells to Abilio and the rest of the escort. The Vardulli commander couldn’t hide his concern when Valerius revealed that Proculus wasn’t able to provide him with an escort or guide while he was in Asturica.

  Abilio rubbed a gnarled hand across his stubbled chin. ‘The governor didn’t give me any details, but when he briefed us to bring you north with the courier he hinted there was more to your visit than mere courtesy. Had he known this would happen, I think he might have wanted us to stay with you. As it is, I’ve pledged my troop to reinforce the Parthians when they guard the next gold train south.’

  ‘Do not trouble yourself, Abilio,’ Valerius assured him with a smile. ‘I’m well versed in the ways of staying out of trouble. I’m just another traveller seeking out an old friend to visit, to drink too much wine and tell lies about how much better it was when we were young.’

  ‘Then I wish you a safe journey onward, and may Fortuna be with you, sir.’

  Marius approached with some advice as Valerius readied his horse. ‘If you push hard and change your mount at Palantia you should be able to make Asturica Augusta before sundown and avoid a cold night in the open. I thought this might save you some trouble if you are travelling in the area.’ He handed over a long leather tube containing a rolled-up scroll. Valerius made to open it, but the young man laid a hand on his arm. ‘Not yet, I think, but at need. It is as accurate as I can make it and I’d be glad of its return when you have finished with it.’

  ‘Thank you for your mysterious gift, Marius.’ Valerius was genuinely touched. ‘I will certainly treasure it and return it before I go back to Rome. And also for your entertaining company on the way north.’

  Marius grinned at the compliment. ‘It was my pleasure on what could have been a long, dull ride. I gained the impression that you are a man who takes an interest in his surroundings?’

  Valerius hid his unease behind his smile. ‘As much as the next man.’

  ‘You will find much to interest you in Asturica.’ The courier patted the neck of Valerius’s bay mare. ‘But don’t be too trusting of those you meet until they prove worthy of it.’

  ‘You said the tribesfolk could be distant.’

  ‘I don’t mean the tribesfolk,’ Marius said softly. ‘I’m talking about the men who run the place. The ordo. They’re all Roman citizens now and put on fashionable airs and graces, but not long ago their families were thieves and bandits. They have been cheating people for so long they believe anything else is abnormal. Anyone honest is regarded as gullible and an opportunity for profit.’

  ‘Thank you for your advice.’

  ‘There is one other thing. When I left Tarraco Governor Secundus’s secretary gave me a letter to be opened only when I reached Legio. It instructs me that should a certain person – identified by a distinctive physical feature – need to get an urgent message to the governor I am ordered to make myself available to carry it.’ Valerius stared at him, but Marius only grinned. ‘Such things are not so unusual for men who serve the governor. There is a tavern by the bridge – the innkeeper’s daughter is a … friend. If you can send a message there by a trusted hand I will carry it south before the day is out. All the arrangements are in place.’

  ‘It seems I am even more in debt than I knew. The Bridge Tavern?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ His eyes drifted over Valerius’s shoulder. ‘Take care on your journey. It seems you are not the only one around here who is interested in his surroundings.’

  Valerius followed his gaze to where two men watched them from one of the towers by the gate. From their beards and saturnine complexions Valerius had no doubt they were Parthians.

  XIII

  The road from Legio took him first south, then west. He set a fast pace, only stopping to water the mare and the pack horse, and to change the animals at a government way station beside the road. It was a substantial place, as was to be expected on such a busy route, with several paddocks and a shaded terrace for weary travellers to rest and eat. He ate bread and olives there, and drank from a flask of watered wine, relaxed, but his eyes never leaving the road back to Legio. The plain all around was blessed with few distinguishing features and by the time he remounted he was certain enough he wasn’t being followed.

  As he rode, he considered what Marius had told him. Not much on the face of it, but the fact he felt the need to draw
attention to what Valerius might expect in Asturica was message enough. Trust no one until they’ve proved themselves worthy of your trust. Naturally, for a man of Valerius’s experience, that led to the question of whether he could trust Marius. The courier had made no attempt to show the supposed letter from Pliny, which left open the possibility of a trick. Yet … there was something about the young man that made Valerius inclined to believe him. For one thing, behind the boyish naivety lay a core of something much harder: you didn’t become an Imperial courier if you balked at the first obstacle. In some ways, Marius reminded Valerius of Tiberius Crescens, the tribune who’d accompanied him on his journey to join General Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo in Syria. Tiberius had betrayed him in the end, but that wasn’t the point. It had been nothing personal.

  He retrieved the scroll case the courier had given him from a sack tied to the saddle. Using his left hand and his teeth he pulled a roll of parchment clear and sat back with his leg hooked over one of the front pommels, allowing the horse to make his own pace. The contents both surprised and intrigued him. He’d expected one of Marius’s charcoal drawings, but it turned out to be something much more valuable. What he had in his hands was a detailed map of Asturia, with Legio and Asturica Augusta towards the east and the Lusitanian border in the south. Roads and rivers, mountains and bridges, but most significantly the sites of the region’s gold mines all defined in ochre. He studied it closely, taking in the changes in terrain and the little clusters of brownish dots. Where on this poorly cured piece of hide would he find what he was looking for? What was it he was looking for?

  He was wondering whether he’d have to stop for the night after all when the dipping sun created a blood-red sky that silhouetted a low chain of mountains on the horizon. Thanks to Marius’s map he realized he must be close to Asturica Augusta.

  An hour later he approached the walls of a city that lay squat and secure on a low mound overlooking a river. Like Legio, Asturica had most likely begun life as a military camp, but had evolved into a civilian settlement at the end of the Cantabrian wars. Its location made it the gateway to the mountains and the goldfields they contained. A position like this, dominating major trading routes, had made the city of Emesa in Syria rich, and Valerius didn’t doubt he would find something similar in Asturica. Unlike Emesa, though, the riches Asturica gathered didn’t stay in the city’s treasure houses. They were transported to the treasury in Rome. At least they were meant to be.

  He pondered his next move as he rode slowly towards the gate. Logically, it would depend on the reaction to his arrival. He had an introduction to the leader of Asturica’s council, and another to the man Pliny had suggested might be able to help him find Petronius. On the other hand he was hungry, tired and travel-stained. If he wanted to reach the mansio before they shut down the fires for the baths and the kitchens he’d have to leave the introductions till tomorrow. On reflection he decided there was no hurry. The delay would give him the opportunity to check out the lie of the land. He slapped his horse on the shoulder and laughed. ‘It never does any harm to have a bolt hole in mind.’

  Proculus’s warrant ensured there was no trouble with the watch and a gate guard directed him towards the south wall and a stable not far from the mansio. He paid a groom to look after the beasts and carried the packs with his belongings to the guest house as darkness fell.

  Tired or not, he quickly became aware of his shadow. A single man, if his instincts were to be believed. Only time would tell whether he posed a threat. For the moment he was keeping his distance, content to dog Valerius’s footsteps. Still, from what he’d heard of the depth of corruption, and presumably suspicion, in Asturica it wouldn’t be a surprise to find a stranger being followed when he entered the city. For the moment there was nothing he could do about it. He checked in, took a bath – ensuring he always had company in waters well polluted by the previous occupants – and had a simple meal in the communal dining room.

  Returning to the private bedchamber he’d paid for, he paused for a few moments listening for any follower. When he was satisfied he hauled the bed across the inside of the curtained doorway. He lifted the thin mattress and placed it on the floor in the corner of the room and lay down with his sword within easy reach of his left hand and the wooden fist securely strapped to the right.

  No point in taking any chances.

  The next morning he rose early and broke his fast with a bowl of thin gruel sweetened with honey, followed by flat bread and olives. He already wore his sword belt beneath his cloak, but in a mansio frequented by soldiers loath to be parted from their weapons it excited no comment. He finished his meal and left a coin on the wooden table. The kitchen lay at the rear of the room behind a curtained doorway and he walked quickly across and stepped through.

  A slave tending flat breads in a shimmering oven looked up as he stepped into the kitchen. Valerius met his puzzled frown with a stare and nodded imperiously as if he were here to inspect the place. Three strides took him out of the back door, which opened on to a noisome yard filled with reeking buckets of slops, empty amphorae and the gutted remains of soiled mattresses. On the far side a wooden door led to the alley beyond.

  He followed the alley until he reached a cobbled roadway that hugged the inside of the walls. This would once have been the intervallum, the road that separated the barrack buildings from the walls. Now it was home to stalls already filled with produce from the fields outside the fort, and workshops where entire families wove cloth, cobblers hammered new nails into the soles of worn sandals, and carpenters worked to smooth timber baulks. Turning north, he passed a factory where thousands of bricks were drying in the sun, and another where two small twin boys in ragged tunics watched wary-eyed for any cats that threatened to walk across the ochre roof tiles laid out ready for the kiln. Clearly this was a place that encouraged enterprise.

  The reason became clear as he walked the increasingly busy streets. Every one seemed to have at least one ostentatious villa and often more, the homes of rich men who could afford the finest of everything. The complacent, stony faces of those same men stared at him from each corner. Uniformly firm-jawed, their expressions were designed to convey honesty, intelligence and toil, the painted marble smoothing away the unpleasant realities of the human existence and creating something close to a god.

  Valerius studied one statue that dominated the square in front of a large ornate building complex. Dressed in a formal toga, the man had narrow, patrician features and stared across towards the columned frontage. A dedication identified the building and its benefactor ‘The Guild of Pipemakers set this up in thanks for the kindness, generosity and devotion of Cornelius Aurelius Saco, architectus, who financed and dedicated these baths in the first consulship of the Emperor Aulus Vitellius Germanicus Augustus.’

  Someone had chiselled a line through Vitellius’s name to indicate he was now in damnatio and deserved no honour, but it wasn’t that which drew Valerius’s attention. It struck him that Aurelius Saco must be a very successful builder to pay for something on this scale. Then again, perhaps Marius’s warning had made him overly suspicious and the man merely came from a wealthy family.

  Another turn brought him to an enormous building site covering an area fully a hundred and thirty paces square. On the far side dozens of slaves and craftsmen worked on a columned portico that took up the entire length of the square. Closer to Valerius, others manhandled sections of fluted pillar towards a partially built but already impressive basilica. A line of statues lay waiting like a row of dead bodies to be raised to positions at the top of eighteen – no twenty – marble columns. He recognized one of them as the official image of Vespasian the Emperor had approved for the provinces, and he had a feeling a figure in a sculpted breastplate might be Titus.

  The sound of a minor altercation on a street off the square drew his attention. A master was beating his slave with a stubby block of wood from the building works. At first it was of little interest. In Rome it wasn’t becoming
to be seen beating your servants on the street, but this seemed proof that Asturica’s sophisticated veneer was only wafer thin. A moment’s study confirmed that the man being beaten was the same who had followed Valerius the previous night. Presumably the slave’s job had been to follow him this morning and he was now reaping the reward for his failure.

  Valerius stepped into the shadows of a shop awning and observed the scene with greater interest. The person doing the beating was tall, thin, and sharp-featured, a stork in human form, probably in early middle age, while his victim was little more than a boy.

  A man in a toga was passing by with a pile of scrolls in his arms. Valerius stepped out to meet him with a smile and a gesture with the fingers of his left hand that signalled a fellow lawyer. ‘Excuse me, sir, but I am new to Asturica Augusta. Am I to understand you are renewing the entire forum?’

  The lawyer sniffed, not best pleased to have been prevented from going about his business, but constrained by good manners from ignoring another professional. ‘That is the case, sir, but I beg you not to include me in the project. The old one suited me well enough and I do not much like pleading cases in the temple precinct during the construction.’

  Valerius nodded his understanding. ‘It seems that at least one person believes it is too slow.’ He gestured in the direction of the slave, who was now on his knees and bleeding from a scalp wound as the other man stood over him. ‘Is it usual for masters to beat their slaves in the streets of Augusta?’

  ‘Why, no, sir, it is not,’ the lawyer said stiffly, ‘but in this case it would not be technically accurate. Though I do not know his identity, I am acquainted with the fact that the person chastising the slave – I’m sure for the best of reasons – is in fact the secretary to one of our leading citizens.’

  ‘May I enquire the name of the citizen?’

  The other man frowned. This was close to impertinence. Still, at least one of them had to show manners. ‘If you wish. The gentleman in question is a member of the ordo and magister of the guild of builders, Cornelius Aurelius Saco.’