Defender of Rome

by Douglas Jackson

  He left the road a mile short of the gate, ensuring no hidden watcher would announce his arrival today. His horse plotted its own way through the familiar hills until they met the track leading from the gateway to the house. Everything seemed normal, but his mind sharpened with every clatter of the animal’s hooves.

  When the villa came into view he reined in beside a clump of black poplars and sat for more than a minute, watching and listening. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then why did he have this overwhelming sense of danger? Dismounting, he led his horse into the nearest barn and tied it next to a pair of matched roans superior to anything his father had ever owned. Beside them stood an elaborately painted four-wheeled coach. His suspicions growing, he walked out into the sunshine and across the courtyard. The door was closed, but not barred, and he entered silently, immediately experiencing the intimacy of surroundings he’d known since childhood. Each tessera of the mosaic floor was as familiar as when he’d crawled across it as a child. He was approaching the interior garden with its open roof and whitewashed columns when he heard the raised voices.

  Three men lay on couches around a stone table beside the central pool, with his father furthest away facing the doorway. Despite his relaxed pose, Lucius gave the impression of being a reluctant member of the group. He lay with his body pushed back as far as the couch would allow and with his cup clutched defensively to his chest. His eyes darted between his two guests like a dog wondering which was going to hit him first. The man to his right could have been the villa’s owner as he casually picked at grapes from the table. He had dark hair that curled back from a wide brow and a neatly trimmed spade beard. Deep-set, obsidian eyes seemed to focus upon something interesting in the middle distance. The third man had his back to Valerius, but his bulk and his posture made him unmistakable. Seneca.

  The dark man turned to Lucius with a tight smile. ‘It seems we have a new guest.’

  Lucius looked up and his face froze when he recognized Valerius.

  Seneca didn’t even turn his head. ‘Welcome, my boy. Two visits within two weeks? Your filial devotion surprises even me. Come, we are just going.’ He raised himself from the couch with surprising ease for such a big man and turned with a smile, as if he found the unwanted intrusion amusing. ‘A social call to discuss matters of mutual interest among neighbours,’ he explained. ‘May I introduce my business acquaintance, Saul of Tarsus.’

  The bearded man’s eyes flicked a warning to Seneca, but the philosopher waved a languid hand.

  ‘We are among friends here.’ He looked to Valerius for confirmation. ‘Discreet friends. Your work goes well?’ The question was heavy with emphasis, but the young Roman decided to treat it as a social enquiry.

  ‘Life in Rome is always interesting, as you know, master Seneca.’

  Seneca laughed. ‘A good answer. I taught you well, Valerius.’ He turned to Lucius. ‘I bid you good day. You will bear in mind what we discussed?’ Lucius bowed.

  Saul of Tarsus approached Valerius. He was an inch or two shorter than the Roman and older than he first appeared. Something about him stirred a memory. ‘Your father speaks well of you, young man. I wish you success in your every endeavour.’

  Valerius nodded his thanks, but, when the two guests had left, the impression he had of Saul was of a prison pallor and an unmistakable prison scent. In the silence that followed he realized that the traditional father-son roles had become reversed. Lucius stared from the window refusing to meet his eyes, and Valerius felt a growing certainty that the older man had somehow placed them all at risk. What games was he playing that had come to Torquatus’s notice? Where was the link between these men and Lucina? He tried to keep his voice steady but the words emerged rough-edged as a saw blade. ‘You warned me only a few days ago that I should be wary of Seneca. Why should I take your advice when you clearly cannot?’

  On another day his father would have snapped a rebuke, but now he only waved a weary hand. ‘If a neighbour visits me am I to turn him from my door?’

  ‘Seneca does not make social visits. Who was the man with him?’

  ‘Saul of Tarsus is a friend of Seneca’s brother. A good man, and a Roman citizen despite his birth.’

  ‘A good man does not carry the stink of the jail on him.’

  Lucius looked up sharply. ‘Yes, he has been in prison for his beliefs, but he was spared to carry on his work.’

  Valerius’s heart sank at the way Lucius pronounced the word ‘beliefs’. ‘What are you doing to us?’ he demanded. ‘Don’t you understand that you are putting Olivia in danger? Is it not enough that you refuse to help her, but you must drag her with you to the executioner?’

  ‘I have done nothing. I—’

  ‘Nothing? Two days ago the Emperor’s Praetorian prefect advised me to ask my father if I wanted to know how to get close to a man Nero wants to see dead. Yesterday, a woman who condemned herself by her own words said the same thing. Since then I have been asking myself what it could mean. Now I understand.’ Lucius shook his head soundlessly. Valerius made no attempt to keep the frustration from his voice. ‘I have been ordered by the Emperor to seek out the leader of a religious sect accused of spreading sedition in Rome. They worship a criminal named Christus, who died on a cross thirty years ago. A madman who believed he was the son of a god and could work miracles. But you are already aware of that, because you worship him too.’

  ‘You know nothing of what you speak.’ Lucius’s tone recovered some of its authority. ‘I am still the head of this family. Leave my house now.’

  ‘What does MCVII mean?’

  ‘Go!’

  Valerius shook his head. ‘Tell me where to find Petrus, Father. Tell me where they meet.’

  ‘Get out, please.’

  ‘For Olivia, if not for me.’

  ‘Please, Valerius, leave me.’ Lucius slumped on the furthest couch. ‘I can tell you nothing.’

  Valerius was suddenly overwhelmed by the same helplessness he felt when he sat by Olivia’s bed. He would learn nothing more here. He made for the door. ‘You are a good man, Father, but you do not understand the danger you are in. Take your own advice. Beware Seneca – and this man Saul.’

  It wasn’t until he reached the barn that he realized they were both caught in the same net.

  He struggled to marshal his thoughts. How had the world become this blur of contradictions? It seemed impossible, yet deep in his heart he had known it since Lucina spoke those three fateful words in the garden. Lucius, an intelligent man and a good Roman, had become a Christus-follower. He believed. Believed in a man who claimed to have walked upon water. A crazed Judaean rebel who thought he was the son of a god; a god who must be worshipped exclusively and all other gods abandoned. Valerius remembered the comforting family routine of daily libations to the kitchen god, the coin for the god of the crossroads when Olivia married, sacrifices to Jupiter and Minerva, Bacchus and Mars, on the appropriate days for the appropriate purposes. Good harvests, good health, sweet wine and sweet victory. A Roman should be surrounded by gods. How could his father have changed so much?

  ‘You must not judge him too harshly.’ The soft voice came from above and behind him. Ruth sat like a serious-faced meadow sprite on a hillock of grass overlooking the road. To his surprise, he found he was glad to see her, but he wondered how she had known to be there.

  ‘You have not had time to water your horse.’ She rose to her feet and skipped down to a path that led through the trees. ‘Come, I will show you a place.’

  He hesitated, puzzled at the change from their previous encounter, but she smiled and he followed her, out of curiosity and for other reasons he would have found difficult to explain. The path was one he had used many times as a boy and he knew where it led. She slowed to allow him to walk at her side.

  ‘He was lost, but now he is found,’ she said cryptically.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he replied, knowing as he said it that it wasn’t quite true. He found her presence disturbing; i
t provoked a kind of asthmatic breathlessness he hadn’t experienced for a long time. She wore the same blue dress as the day in the olive grove. It was loose and unflattering, but the generous curves that lay beneath made themselves known in various subtle ways. She really was quite beautiful. Smaller than Valerius by a head, but lithe and athletic, her dark hair hanging long to her waist. Ruth’s skin glowed the colour of golden cinnamon and when she smiled her nose wrinkled like a little girl’s. The next words she spoke were an admission of treason, but she spoke them without fear in a way that made her very naive, very trusting or very brave.

  ‘There is but one God, and Jesus is his son,’ she said with simple faith. ‘When I came here Lucius had nothing. No family. No friends. No love. He was empty. We talked of our fears and I told him about my God, who is a loving God, and how I was never alone, because I believed.’

  The talk of love reminded Valerius that she belonged to his father. ‘He had me. He has Olivia.’

  ‘You were lost to him.’ She said it quietly, making no accusation.

  They came to the pool, as he had known they would. He tethered the horse to a tree with enough play on the reins to allow it to drink. For a time there was nothing but silence and the song of the river. They stood a little apart. Ruth was entirely at ease, but Valerius found himself trying to untangle the knot of conflicting feelings she awoke in him. Desire was one, mixed up with the beginnings of a deep, almost brotherly affection, but it was not the strongest. No, the most powerful feeling she inspired in him was a sense of his own inadequacy. She had an almost mystical quality; a disturbing ability to reach deep into his soul. When he was with her he felt ashamed of what he was and what he had done. He wanted to tell her everything: about Nero, Torquatus and Petrus, Maeve and Cearan and the bloody field of Colonia; but somehow the words wouldn’t come.

  Ruth saw his confusion, but affected not to notice. Instead, she continued her story. ‘One day we went to the city and he heard a man speak of goodness and love and of another man who sacrificed himself so that all men could be blessed with them. The man came to us and spoke to your father. I do not know what he said but your father wept and asked the man to pray for him.’

  ‘The man was Petrus?’

  ‘Yes, Petrus the healer. He who was chosen by Christus and made holy by him.’

  ‘And was my father healed?’

  ‘Later, he asked me to take him to meetings and after a time he took the blood and the body of Christus. Then he was healed.’ Valerius felt his gorge rise as he remembered Nero’s chilling warning about drinking the blood of children. She saw his look and her face turned serious. ‘It is not what you think. We only take watered wine and thin bread. But God is pleased to consider it the blood and body of Christus.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this? You do not know me at all. I may be your enemy and I am certainly a danger to you. I need to find Petrus and I must save my father from the enemies who will hurt him if they can.’

  ‘Your father has already been saved; that is why I am telling you. When you meet Petrus you will be faced with a choice and only by understanding will you make the correct decision. You think of us as the enemies of Rome and your first instinct is to strike out against us. But what are you defending Rome against? We seek only to spread the word of God and bring peace and harmony to all men, Jew and Gentile. Is that so terrible? Rome can be a hard mistress for a man with a conscience, and many a true Roman has listened to the word of the true God and been converted.’

  He listened to her voice and imagined he heard the sound of another speaking. Was this some trick of Petrus to win him over to the cause of Christus? Yet there was an obvious transparency and honesty to Ruth, an inner quality he thought must be what men called goodness, that convinced him she was sincere. He still couldn’t afford to trust her, but surely he could afford to listen to her?

  ‘It seems I do not know my own father.’

  ‘Your father is a fine man. When I came, he was stern, but now he knows peace.’

  ‘You have been good to him,’ Valerius said.

  ‘I have been as a daughter to him,’ she replied, answering his unspoken question.

  ‘I don’t understand. I thought you hated me. In the street after the boy spoke—’

  ‘We are taught not to feel hatred,’ she interrupted gently. ‘Only love, but I feared you would betray your father. I was confused. Then I saw that you, too, were a good man beneath the armour you wear to protect yourself along the path God has chosen for you.’

  He opened his mouth to deny it, but before he could speak she glanced across to where the fast water entered the pool. ‘I was baptized in a place like this. But I was young and I have only a slight memory of it.’

  Valerius frowned. ‘Baptized? It is not a word I know.’

  ‘It is one of our rituals. Your father has not yet experienced it. I do not truly understand its purpose, only that to enter the kingdom of God one must have been first immersed in water, and that to be baptized is to be saved. Jesus was baptized by John beneath a waterfall. Some say it is enough to pour water over the supplicant’s head, but Petrus believes that only by covering the entire body is the ceremony complete. Wherever he goes, he seeks out a waterfall.’

  ‘Can you help me reach Petrus?’

  She hesitated, studying his face intently before coming to a decision. ‘I will do what I can, but the final choice must be his,’ she said. ‘When I receive word of our next meeting I will contact you.’ She touched his hand and then she was gone, the blue dress disappearing among the trees by the river. Valerius stood for the time it took to recognize the sensation that threatened to overwhelm him. Loneliness.

  Later, on the road back to Rome, he was conscious of a curious mixture of elation and confusion. He was lost, but now he is found. He understood now what she had meant by it, but not in the way she meant it. A miracle had happened. He’d found something he believed he had lost for ever.

  But would he be allowed to keep it?

  XVIII

  NERO’S INVITATION COULDN’T have been more inconvenient. At best, it would be an evening of excruciating performances by the Emperor and his latest artist friends, the braying actors and falsetto-voiced singers who jostled each other to inform him how talented he was. At worst? Well, Valerius would find out. The memory of their last meeting was still fresh and the thought of the questing tongue and rank breath turned his stomach. He had spent the last hour with Fabia, in a vain attempt to unravel the mystery of Cornelius Sulla’s disappearance, and had looked forward to an evening at home. The venue, the circus Caligula had built on the Vatican meadows on the far side of the city, could hardly be worse placed. It made a theatrical or musical performance less likely, but with Nero it was impossible to tell. The arena was mainly used for the horse and chariot races the Emperor loved. Perhaps he was planning to hold a chariot race in the dark.

  ‘Still no sign of Cornelius or the girl,’ Marcus reported as Valerius readied himself to leave.

  ‘Don’t worry, they’ll turn up. Cornelius will probably make an appearance at the entertainment tonight.’

  ‘Do you want us to watch your back?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. I doubt Rodan will get up to any mischief. Take the others to a tavern for the evening. We’ll meet tomorrow to decide what to do next.’ He saw the scarred gladiator hesitate. ‘What is it?’

  Marcus shrugged. ‘Serpentius has offered to stay in the house to make sure your sister is safe.’

  ‘That’s good of him. He can find a bed in the slave quarters.’

  ‘That’s what he’s planning. Only I think he’s become a bit sweet on that girl of yours. A pretty little piece.’

  Valerius smiled. ‘He’ll find Julia is a little piece with sharp claws if he tries anything on with her. She knows her own mind. The Snake might have his tail chopped off. But I still think it will do no harm to have a man like Serpentius about the house.’

  He sent a servant to check if his chair had arrived
and walked through to Olivia’s room. Julia sat by the bed where his sister lay as pale as any ghost. The girl gasped when she saw the tall figure silhouetted in the doorway.

  ‘I’m sorry I scared you,’ he said reassuringly. ‘I came to tell you that Serpentius will be staying tonight to guard you both. He may look an intimidating character, but he has a good heart.’

  She nodded. ‘I like him. He makes me giggle. But I sense a darkness in him; he is almost as frightening as you.’

  Frightening? He almost laughed at the thought, before he realized how true it was. In many ways he’d become as stern as his father, all the lightness driven from him by his experiences in Britain and the strains of Olivia’s illness. ‘You have no reason to be afraid of me, Julia.’

  ‘I wanted to tell you.’

  ‘I’m glad you have. I promise to change.’

  ‘No, I don’t mean that. I mean about your father.’

  The room seemed to go very still. Outside, beyond the shuttered windows, he could hear the sound of voices and knew the chair had arrived, but he ignored it.

  ‘What about my father?’

  ‘He made me promise not to say anything. When you asked me if we had visitors, I lied. He has been coming to sit with Olivia once or twice each week since she became ill. I wanted to tell you, but …’

  Valerius placed his hand on her shoulder and turned her face to him. He brushed the tears from her cheek with his fingers. ‘Poor Julia, caught between two horrible, frightening men. No wonder you’ve been so sad lately.’ And poor Father, so determined not to appear weak that he couldn’t allow the people he loved to know how much he cared for them. ‘I have to go now. Look after Olivia for me.’ He bent down and kissed her on the forehead.