Defender of Rome

by Douglas Jackson

  That man. Poppaea had harboured an almost irrational fear of Torquatus since Octavia, Nero’s first wife, had been first banished then killed. The conspiracy had cemented the Praetorian prefect’s power on the Palatine. Now he saw Poppaea as his rival for Nero’s affections and trust, and any rival of Torquatus must necessarily check beneath the bed for vipers. Outwardly, Poppaea was like any other rich, spoiled Roman matron – only interested in the latest fashions, hairstyles and palace gossip – but as their friendship developed Fabia had seen a different Poppaea, one torn by doubt and capable of clutching at any passing fancy and making it her life’s passion. Parthian mystics, astrologers from Aegyptus and a smelly, bearded Gaulish ancient who called himself the last Druid had all found refuge in her household at one time or another.

  Experience told Fabia her friend was for ever destined to be disappointed. Her fate would always lie in the hands of her husband.

  That night Nero stared from his palace window over the city of a million people he ruled, centre of an Empire of forty million and more. The thought, as always, sent a thrill of panic through his breast and he had to hold on to the balcony. So many people. So much wealth. So much power. All his to command.

  So why did they taunt him, all these millions? He could hear them inside his head, a tumult of voices that never left him alone. Nero does nothing. Nero has achieved nothing. Nero gives us songs but what has he given us to ensure he is remembered? Nero sits in a palace built by other men, looking out on a city built by other men. Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius. Who is this Nero who dares to stand alongside them and call himself their equal? They taunted him and he had no answer.

  The thought began a chain reaction in his stomach and he vomited over the balcony, a choked, retching spew that dribbled in strands from his mouth. Tears filled his eyes. He knew the taunts meant his mother would visit him tonight and that made the panic return. At first, in the dreams, she had been beautiful, as she had been in life, but lately that had changed. She had begun to disintegrate before his eyes: hair falling in hanks from her skull, parchment skin breaking open to reveal rotting flesh, eye sockets filled with wriggling, milk-white tadpoles. Still, he could have endured it if only the whispers would stop. He had explained why he had to have her killed. It had been his time, not hers. Didn’t she understand that he could not live in her shadow? Why not take out her anger on those who had been as complicit as he, or Seneca, who had stood silent as the decision was made? They were to blame, not him.

  The moonlight fell on the giant table he had commissioned, the scale model of Rome with the moveable buildings; a single beam of white light fell directly on the Forum. A sign. A sign from his mother? A sign from the gods? He studied the wooden city and decided it was a deceit. This glory of Rome was nothing but a sham. Poverty and filth and degradation hidden beneath a veneer they liked to call civilization. With one hand he swept buildings from the table, sending the wooden blocks clattering across the mosaic floor and leaving a vast empty space in the centre of the city. The breath caught in his throat. It was perfect.

  He would build a new Rome.

  ‘Caesar?’

  The fury rose in him like a flame. Not now. Not when I have just begun to understand. He turned, ready to bring his hand across her face, and was only prevented by the concern in the round, frightened eyes. He touched her silken hair instead, running the strands through his fingers. She stood as tall as he, lithe and slim as a dancer, with the face of an Assyrian queen.

  ‘Poppaea? You startled me.’

  ‘I was concerned for you, lord,’ she said with the little girl’s pout she knew made him burn. A gossamer robe of the palest blue did nothing to hide her heavy, pink-tipped breasts or the shadowy secret of her sex. He felt his desire stir. So different from Octavia, who did her duty. She tried to hide it from him, but he knew Poppaea revelled in what other men would call his depravity, but he was moved to call his pleasure. When she offered herself to him the offer was unconditional. Everything she had was his to be taken as and when he desired. He dropped his hand to caress her breast through the thin material and watched the nipple harden, then took the ripening bud between his fingers and squeezed it so she gasped.

  ‘I wanted a boy today, but I could not have him. It vexed me.’

  ‘Then punish him, lord.’ Her voice was a husky whisper.

  ‘I cannot punish him.’ He slipped his hand to her other breast and felt her breathing quicken. ‘For he is a Hero of Rome.’

  ‘You are the only Hero of Rome, lord.’ Her body moved against his now, soft and urgent.

  ‘Will you reward your Hero of Rome, Poppaea?’ His voice could have belonged to a ten-year-old. He dropped his head to her breast and she gave a low moan.

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘How will you reward him, Poppaea?’ The desire was thick enough to clog his throat. ‘Will you be his boy?’

  She turned away hiding her face and dropping the robe so the silken flesh of her body turned silver in the moon-shadow. Slowly she bent forward over the table so he could take her in the way he chose. ‘Yes, lord,’ she whispered. ‘I will be your boy.’

  When he moved over her he wasn’t sure whether she cried out in pain or pleasure.

  Later, when she was gone but he could still smell the raw scent of her on himself, he stood at the window again.

  Was she betraying him?

  X

  THE MESSAGE CONTAINED a time, a place, and a name. Valerius drew breath when he recognized the name. Why should he be surprised? They hadn’t set eyes on each other for at least ten years, but this was a man who had spent more than a decade at the very heart of the Empire, close enough to hear every beat.

  Should he go? What did he have to gain? Or lose? The meeting place was convenient enough for his purposes, but they had never been friends. Their short relationship had been closer to master and servant. He remembered feeling used at yet another demand to fetch water from the well or recite from memory a complex argument by Apollodorus of Seleucia, or one of a dozen other wordy, overblown Stoic texts. But he had learned. His mind had quickened and his grasp and understanding of the subjects had grown with each passing day he spent in the great man’s presence. Great? Seneca hadn’t been great then. A few slaves, most of them spying for the Emperor. A trusted servant who no doubt betrayed him to his enemies. His ‘villa’ had been a run-down Corsican chicken farm and the fine court clothes he affected were worn and patched by the time Valerius had been sent to him. Exile had cracked him like one of the eggs his hens laid among the vines, but it had never broken him. Seneca consoled himself with his studies and his teachings and the letters he wrote to his mother, and ignored the heat and the filth.

  Strange that a life devoted to logic and forbearance should have been almost destroyed by such an enormous capacity for human recklessness. The irresponsibility which had brought him into conflict with Caligula was bordering on suicidal. A woman had been the cause of it. That folly might have been forgiven, but to argue semantics with an Emperor who thought himself the new Aristotle was perhaps pushing Stoicism beyond its acceptable limits. Caligula’s acerbic dismissal of Seneca’s writings as ‘lime without sand’ had been more painful even than the threat of execution. And how could a man who had fought so hard to resuscitate his career throw everything away for a second time by conducting a flagrant, pointless affair with his new Emperor’s niece? Even benign old Claudius couldn’t allow that to go unpunished. Seneca had been fortunate to escape with nine years’ misery in exile. It had been Agrippina who finally recalled him and saved him from madness, and had entrusted him with her son’s education. His genius had made him first indispensable and then a liability. He was finished, but he didn’t seem to know it. And that made him doubly dangerous.

  Of course, there was another possibility. It could be a trap. Valerius smiled at the thought. Proximity to the Emperor was making him paranoid. The writing was in the same firm, controlled hand he remembered.

  Bu
t why now? This was no invitation to a pleasant afternoon of philosophical debate and discussion. The whole tenor of the note and the way it had been delivered was designed to intrigue him. It was the bait thrown to a hungry carp in a stew pond. Yet the bait was so blatantly presented that there was no disguising it could also be an invitation to put his neck on the executioner’s block.

  So he should be suspicious, and he was suspicious, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t take the bait.

  He went through the arrangements in his mind, aware that the dangers ahead could be as great as anything he had faced in Britain. When he answered Nero’s commission he had laid aside the cosy trappings of civilian life to become a soldier again. He just wasn’t sure yet what he was fighting for.

  Valerius rode out early next day through the valley between the Quirinal and Viminal hills and then up on to the Via Salaria, with the winding course of the Tiber away to his left. In the relative cool of the morning even the streets of the Subura proved bearable and once he was in sight of the massive red brick Praetorian barracks he was able to enjoy the prospect of the open road ahead.

  Fidenae lay only six miles beyond the city walls, but his father’s estate was tucked in a valley a further three miles to the west of the town, a sprawling untidy mix of vine and olives around a villa that had once been fine but, like the estate, suffered from lack of investment. Still, it would take him only two hours at most and it would be good to see the old man again. Perhaps this time he could persuade him to visit Olivia. The road was one of the oldest in the Empire, the route the Sabines had once used to fetch salt from the Tiber marshes, and later in the day it would be busy with people travelling to and from the city. As he rode past the first of the tombs lining the highway the air grew warmer and he allowed his senses to be lulled by the low buzz of insects, the bittersweet scent of horse sweat and the murmur of the wind in the roadside trees.

  It must have been close to the third hour when he reached the gateway to the estate. He experienced a strange sense of wellbeing as he rode beneath the stone arch. This was truly home, though he hadn’t called it that for years; the place where he had spent his childhood, carefree and safe among the hills and the streams. Twelve years earlier he’d been sent away to study, first under Seneca and then in Rome. Apart from a single short visit before he joined the Twentieth, and his mother’s funeral, he hadn’t been back since. He spotted a slave boy in a ragged tunic sprinting through the vines on the ridge above the dirt road and smiled: once he would have been on watch up there.

  By the time he turned the corner and saw the familiar low outline of the villa, an elderly man with lined, careworn features and straggling grey hair was waiting to welcome him with a jug of water and part of a loaf. Despite his years, the old servant’s limpid eyes were still sharp and they lit up when they recognized Valerius.

  ‘Granta,’ the young Roman shouted. ‘You haven’t aged a day.’ He slid from the horse and ran to his father’s long-suffering freedman, stopping short when he remembered he was no longer a child and couldn’t greet him with a hug. They studied each other for a few moments.

  ‘You have grown into a fine young man, master Valerius.’ Granta’s voice, which could tear a hole in a barn wall if he found a slave shirking, shook with emotion. ‘We were so proud when we heard about your great honour.’ The old man was smiling, but Valerius noticed the familiar shadow that never seemed to be far away whenever he met an old friend. Britain had marked him as surely as if the Iceni had pressed a slave brand against his skin. He saw Granta eyeing his wooden hand.

  ‘Even better than the old one.’ He grinned and pulled back his sleeve to show the carved fist attached to the leather socket that sheathed his arm. ‘It can hold a shield or a cup, as long as it’s not one of your best, but it can’t get up to mischief.’ Granta laughed, grateful to have the delicate subject out of the way. Valerius took a drink from the cup and a bite from the bread. ‘Is my father home?’

  The smile stayed in place, but Granta shifted uneasily. ‘He has been out tending the olive trees on the north slope since dawn. I was about to send a slave to him with bread and oil when you arrived.’

  ‘Then I’ll take it, and surprise him.’ He saw a shadow cross the old man’s face and laughed. ‘Don’t worry, it will be a gentle surprise. I’ll make sure he doesn’t have a seizure.’

  Granta wondered politely whether he wouldn’t prefer a bath to wash off the dust, but Valerius insisted and a young slave brought him a leather waterskin and a parcel made up with vine leaves. Before he set off, he removed his sandals to enjoy the warm earth between his toes, but he hadn’t gone far before the memory of the big black scorpions he once trapped here made him tread more warily. And, if he was honest with himself, that wasn’t the only recollection that invoked a prickle of fear. Life on the estate hadn’t always been idyllic. His father had brought him up by an aristocratic code which dictated that any deviation must be punished with the rod. He had sometimes hated the old man for it but, as an adult, he wondered just what it had cost Lucius to make him suffer.

  The walk from the villa to the north slope took twenty minutes and he was sweating lightly by the time he reached there. He knew he was getting close when the neat rows of vines were replaced by gnarled olive trees his family had cultivated for generations. The warm, scented air tasted fresh and pure and for the first time he felt able to banish thoughts of Nero’s vile kiss. At least here, among the shades of his ancestors, he could feel clean. But he couldn’t forget everything. Seneca’s estate lay on the other side of this hill and once more he pondered the philosopher’s motives. Seneca had always been a leader, not a follower, and had developed his own, flexible theory of self-determination. Virtue might be sufficient for happiness, as he had preached, but survival was another critical factor. How happy could a dead man be? The same logic told Valerius that Seneca had seen a way out of his predicament and the only reason for the meeting was because he, Valerius, had something Seneca needed or wanted.

  A flash of blue against the dusty green of the close-ranked trees drew his attention and he smiled. He doubted whether his father had ever worn anything so vivid even in the days when he was close to Emperor Tiberius. Lucius must have brought someone to help him with his inspection. In a way, it was a surprise to find him out here at all. His father had never been a man of the soil. Running the family estate was an obligation, but the task of working it could safely be left to his freedmen and his slaves. Yet here he was, rising at cockcrow and getting his hands dirty.

  As he approached, the blue turned out to be turquoise and belonged to a skirt whose owner was part hidden behind a tree. Valerius saw no sign of his father, but he could make out the low drone of a man’s voice. The twisted olive trunks and low branches disguised his approach until he was a few paces away. He saw the girl in the instant she saw him. Long black hair, a pair of frightened brown eyes and a sharp gasp as her hand flew to her mouth. She sat at the base of a tree with her legs half tucked beneath her and the skirt draped decorously around. His eyes were drawn to the high breasts that quivered beneath her shift and he smiled to show she had nothing to fear. He turned to face his father.

  Lucius stood directly across from the girl. Valerius had intended to surprise the old man, so a little shock might have been expected, but not the anguish that was written plain across his face, nor the ferocity of a man ready to kill to protect whatever terrible secret he’d been discovered in. A pruning knife lay at the old man’s feet and Valerius realized he was fortunate it hadn’t been in his father’s hand.

  ‘Father?’ He grinned uncertainly. ‘I brought you food.’

  After a moment’s hesitation the old man’s face slowly crumpled and the fire vanished from his eyes. Lucius stumbled forward to take Valerius in his arms, then stepped back to stare in a kind of wonder at the wooden hand.

  ‘I am responsible for that. I sent you there.’ Valerius shook his head, but Lucius smiled sadly. ‘No, do not deny it, we both know it is true.
But I swear here and now that I will repay this debt before the end.’

  The girl had taken herself out of earshot and now sat a few yards away, her head bowed and her face concealed behind the dark veil of her hair. She was younger than Valerius had thought, probably no more than seventeen.

  ‘Ruth,’ his father called. ‘You should go back and help in the kitchen.’

  She rose with a dancer’s grace, and, still without looking at Valerius, walked off down the slope.

  Lucius’s eyes followed her swaying back and his face radiated a kind of awkward, bemused contentment. With a shock Valerius understood the reason for his father’s reaction. Surely it wasn’t possible? He was ancient: in his sixties. The girl could be his daughter. His granddaughter. And she was a slave. Lucius, the defender of all things moral, who would have damned another man for even thinking such a thing? Yet what else could explain his earlier defensiveness? And he had changed. Already Valerius had seen that Lucius was more at ease with himself than he had ever been.

  ‘She is very pretty,’ he said.

  ‘She is just a slave,’ Lucius replied in a tone that invited no further conversation.

  Valerius leaned back against a tree. If his father wanted to believe no one knew, he was happy to go along with it. But it was just as well he’d found out. Ruth was pretty. And desirable in a wholesome, vulnerable way. If he hadn’t been aware of his father’s feelings he might have invited her into his bed. He pushed the thought aside and returned to the reason for his visit. ‘You should see Olivia.’

  Lucius frowned. In the past he would have rejected the suggestion outright. Now, Valerius was heartened to see, he was prepared to consider it. But the old man would not give in easily.

  ‘She shamed me,’ he grumbled. ‘She should have accepted my choice of husband. A woman’s duty is to obey her father.’