Douglas Jackson - Sword of Rome

Throughout July, the tension eased from the city like air escaping from an overblown goatskin, but by August, with the heat bouncing from Rome’s walls like a furnace and the Senate acting like rabbits at the mercy of an imaginary weasel, the populace became increasingly impatient. And none more so than the naval legion.

‘They should have sent them back to Misenum,’ Serpentius said balefully as he and Valerius passed another tavern brawl involving men in blue tunics. Having spent the two months since Nero’s death kicking their heels and waiting for something positive to happen, the two men were as frustrated as anyone else in Rome. Even the Spaniard found the relentless heat and dust of summer oppressive, and the Tiber, never the most sweet-smelling of streams, filled the whole city with the reek of an open sewer.

‘The Senate is frightened to make a decision,’ Valerius pointed out. Normally the senators would have left the city in August for their holiday homes at Baiae, Neapolis and Oplontis, but with the advent of a new regime none had dared. ‘Any decision. An Emperor ordered the marine legion’s creation and now only an Emperor can decide their future. They are neither one thing nor the other, and, worse, they are frightened. When Nero called, they volunteered, to stop one man. Galba. That man is now their Emperor and Emperors are not known for tolerance or mercy. Their future is uncertain at best and painful at worst.’

‘Then why don’t they run?’

‘If they run, it will prove their treason and Galba will hunt them down, as Crassus hunted down Spartacus. Their greatest strength is in their unity and a display of their loyalty. If they can convince Galba they are worthy of his trust and he has the sense to accept it, perhaps we will yet see them march behind an eagle.’

‘Aye,’ Serpentius spat. ‘And perhaps one day when I back the Greens they will win.’

It was towards the end of the month, and still with no sign of Galba, that Valerius decided to visit his sister Olivia at the family estate at Fidenae, to the north of the city. Conveniently, it also allowed him to meet another obligation.

They could hear the laughter from the wayside tavern long before they reached it. A single bullock cart stood in the yard, alongside six horses being fed and watered by a stable boy. Valerius reined in beside them and left Serpentius to see to their mounts.

A large man in a formal toga sat at a table heavy with a dozen dishes, telling a story Valerius had heard before about an African tyrant and his performing elephant.

‘It got to the end of the tightrope, wobbled for a moment with a look of extreme displeasure on its sad features … fell off and landed on his head. You’ve never seen such a mess. They had to clean the old man off the floor with a bucket and brush. His wife rushed in, screaming, “Is he hurt?” The elephant handler carefully looked his beast over and replied, “No, he seems fine.”’

The man’s six companions roared with laughter and the storyteller beamed. His smile grew wider when he noticed Valerius at the door.

‘Enter the ghost of Achilles.’ Aulus Vitellius raised a silver cup that was certainly not from the inn’s stock. ‘Gentlemen, I give you a true warrior. May I introduce Gaius Valerius Verrens, Hero of Rome and special envoy to our lord and master, the Caesar of the South. Valerius, my aides, Lucius, Gavo, Octavius and … the rest.’ Valerius met the frank stares and nodded a greeting. Vitellius’s reference to his work for Galba proved he trusted his aides, but he had always been trusting. Perhaps too trusting. Today, though it was barely midday, he was at his loquacious best. ‘Landlord! This calls for more food and more wine. A toast, to one Aulus Vitellius, the newly appointed governor of Germania Inferior, may his legions be victorious, may he prosper among the barbarians, and may his creditors wither on the vine, be swallowed by blackbirds and shat out like the manure they are to do some good for a change.’ Someone passed Valerius a cup and he joined in the toast, laughing with the rest.

An aide moved to allow Valerius to squeeze in beside his old friend on a bench designed for three, and below the table he slipped a well-stocked purse into the folds of Vitellius’s toga. ‘Perhaps this will help keep the manure at bay for a little longer,’ he said quietly.

The new governor of Germania Inferior studied him like a long-lost son and his eyes turned moist. Valerius knew that his friend was busily weighing the purse in his hand and would by now have calculated its value to the last as . He saw the deep-set eyes narrow, then widen, and finally Vitellius gave a roar that made all five of his chins quiver like waves in a storm. Valerius felt himself engulfed in two enormous arms and drawn into a suffocating embrace. Eventually, Vitellius released him and they sat back, each studying the other with a mixture of pleasure and wariness.

They had first met in a riverside fort on the Dacian frontier when Vitellius cheerfully admitted trying to have Valerius killed, then almost certainly saved his life by offering him a position as military adviser when he left to govern his African province. He had changed little since their eighteen months together in Carthage. His thinning hair was mostly gone now, and he was perhaps a little heavier around the middle — hardly surprising in a man who could eat three large meals a day and still be demanding more when everyone else was crouched in the vomitorium . Many made the mistake of confusing fat with foolish and lumbering with slow-witted. In fact, Vitellius’s bumbling self-mockery disguised a shrewd brain that the Emperor Claudius had recognized by making him consul. He had been a friend and intimate of Nero, but, as the Emperor’s power waned, he had hidden away on his estate until Servius Sulpicius Galba had called him back to service. It was Vitellius who had revealed to Valerius that Otho’s evaluation of the situation in Rome was flawed, and that there could be no transfer of power without the help of both Praetorian prefects, and Vitellius who had arranged the meeting in the Palatine dungeon with Nero’s former favourite, Tigellinus.

Vitellius fumbled the purse into a secure position and murmured his thanks. ‘You would think a man of any intelligence could not fail to return rich from his province, but I was struck down with an almost terminal case of honesty.’ He shook his head in mock sadness as he repeated the refrain Valerius knew so well. ‘After all those years of avoiding it, my conscience finally caught up with me. How could any man let those people starve?’

Valerius knew of many governors who would cheerfully have watched their people starve, and profited from it by raising the price of what little wheat was left. Instead, Vitellius had purchased grain from Rome at exorbitant prices and had it shipped over to Africa at his own expense. It had made him hugely popular among his citizenry, who had petitioned Nero to recompense him, but a laughing stock in the Imperial capital. He was still waiting for his money. ‘And now you have an Emperor’s confidence again.’

Vitellius gave him a shrewd look. ‘Perhaps you know more than I do. I have my appointment and an opportunity, that is true, but who is to say why it has been offered.’ He raised the silver cup and drank deeply, wiping his lips with the back of a plump hand. ‘My predecessor, Capito, despite his mistimed and fatal hesitation, was a man of action, which I, let us be quite open, am not. He was also a man of means, which I,’ his moon face split into a grin, ‘notwithstanding some recent good fortune, am patently not. Therefore, by our new Emperor, I am seen as harmless, perhaps ineffectual; a man more likely to shout “Bring us more wine, you lazy bastard”’ — the tavern owner laughed and added another three jugs to the table — ‘than “Let us march on Gaul”. Yet he may have mistaken me. I am not without ambition.’ He gestured to one of the aides and the man disappeared outside to return a moment later with a polished rosewood box, three feet in length and five inches across. Serpentius appeared watchfully behind him, a threatening, whip-thin presence with a curled lip who drew uneasy glances from the young aristocrats who served Vitellius. The governor laughed at their discomfiture. ‘I see you still have your Spanish wolf, Valerius. A wise decision in these uncertain times.’ He stared at the former gladiator, seeking some sign of acknowledgement, before his eyes registered recognition. ‘Didn’t you win me money when you butchered Caladus the Thracian at the old Taurus arena?’