Douglas Jackson: Sword of Rome

On first acquaintance, Servius Sulpicius Galba was a dried-out stick of a man with all the attraction of a well-gnawed bone. Tall, thin and stooped, he had a broad forehead and a gnarled skull that gleamed like a legionary’s helm, and he wore the permanent expression of someone who had just sucked on an unripe lemon. He seldom smiled, because to do so would reveal the absence of any teeth, and his hooked patrician nose was perfectly shaped for looking down on those he felt were beneath him

Valerius had pondered how to address the man who aspired to be the next occupant of Nero’s throne. ‘Caesar,’ he bowed.

‘I am not your Caesar,’ Galba snapped. ‘I will govern Rome for the people and the Senate, not for personal aggrandizement. The Empire needs stability and firm management and I will provide it. This has always been my destiny. Only a patrician, a man of maturity and long military experience, is capable of providing the leadership Rome needs. You have Vespasian’s letter?’

Valerius reached into his pouch and handed over the scroll. Before opening it, the old man peered at the seal, checking it hadn’t been tampered with. His bony hands shook as he read it and Valerius wondered how any man could believe those hands capable of steering the Empire on the steady course it needed. His head had been filled with an image of Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, a true leader: resolute, firm and battle-tested; loved by the men he pushed to the very limits of their mental and physical endurance. Corbulo would have made a great Emperor, but he would never have taken the purple while Nero lived. By ordering his death, Nero had deprived himself of the one man who had the power to hold the Empire together. This old man would never have dared to stir from his bed while Corbulo lived. Yet here he was, and it seemed he held Nero’s fate in his hands, because he produced a sour, tight-lipped smile.

Otho had been hovering in the background waiting to be told the contents of the letter, but Galba ignored him. ‘General Vespasian tells me here that you are a man of resource who can be trusted?’

‘General Vespasian honours me.’ Valerius had felt Otho’s eyes on him. What had Vespasian got him into?

‘I may have work for a man of resource.’

Valerius shook his head at the memory just as the cell door burst open and two guards armed with naked swords strode in. They stood over him while two others bound his arms tight with rope and dragged him out into the corridor and down a set of steep steps. His throat turned dry at the sight of the horrors that awaited him there. The brazier glowed so bright the walls were painted red and the very air seemed to sizzle. On a table lay instruments of torture that needed no identification. He wanted nothing more than to be returned to his dark, damp cell and left there to rot if need be.

They fixed his bound arms to a hook on the wall, so that his toes could barely reach the ground and his muscles quickly felt as if they were on fire. When they left, he had never felt so alone.

Only he wasn’t alone.

From the far side of the room he heard a soft scratching sound, the sound a rat makes when it tries to chew its way into a wooden corn store. Gradually, Valerius pinpointed the source of the noise as two bright ovals of reflected light. As he watched, the ovals rose and in the brazier’s glow he became aware of a human shape; naked and skeletal surely to the point of death, but with a hugely engorged manhood. The — thing — approached until it was stopped by the bars of a cage, where it stood gnawing with filed teeth at what looked to Valerius like a human thigh bone held between two clawlike hands. He found he had stopped breathing and drew in a huge gasp of fume-tainted, overheated air.

‘You are fortunate that our Egyptian has been recently fed.’ Valerius flinched at the unexpected voice from the doorway. The tone was conversational, almost apologetic, but it was belied by the bright blade Offonius Tigellinus held in his right hand. ‘The Emperor found him amusing, like a pet crocodile, but I fear he is bored of his tricks. He hasn’t come to see the entertainment for more than a year.’

Valerius had no illusions what was meant by entertainment , but he buried his fears and focused on his jailer. Tigellinus wore none of the trappings that went with his position as prefect and commander of the Praetorian Guard, but his tunic was of the finest material and a gold chain belted it at the waist. Tall and thin, he had a bald head with a fringe of mousy hair that clung to the back of his skull like a frightened squirrel. If it hadn’t been for the sword, you might have thought him harmless, which would have been a mistake. According to Valerius’s agent, Tigellinus was still the most dangerous man in Rome.

‘I thought we had an agreement.’

‘We do.’ The Praetorian prefect nodded gravely. ‘I spoke to our mutual friend last evening. If you are what you say you are, I will put the arrangements in place and you will go free, just another poor coward who gave up everyone he knew at the first sight of the Egyptian. It is a process which safeguards us both. But our bargain depends entirely on the answers you give in the next few minutes. First, you should know that I am aware of certain facts and that I can surmise certain others. I tell you this so that you understand that I will know if you stray from the truth. Of course, you do not know which facts, which should make you all the more careful what you say.’ He frowned, and for a moment he seemed quite lost. ‘I have served the Emperor loyally for five years, but now that his focus turns to military affairs I fear that I can no longer be of so much use to him. It is my wish to retire, with honour and suitably recompensed, to my estate beyond Fidenae. The question is whether you are able to fulfil your promise to facilitate this.’

‘And that, as you are all too aware, Tigellinus,’ Valerius kept his voice as reasonable as the other man’s, ‘is a question that can only be answered by cutting me down from here.’

‘What guarantees have I that you will keep your word?’

‘None.’

A sharp intake of breath seemed to indicate that all the hours playing Caesar’s Tower with Corbulo hadn’t been wasted. ‘Then tell me why I should not call the guards and have you stripped and tethered for the Egyptian’s pleasure … and mine.’

‘Because I am your only hope, Offonius Tigellinus. Galba will rise and Nero will fall. It is only a matter of how and when. If the legions are forced to besiege Rome, the mob will tear the Emperor apart and his faithful lieutenant with him. You have heard it, Tigellinus, the baying for blood and the cracking of sinews; indeed you have instigated it.’ Tigellinus shook his head and Valerius saw something other than superiority in the dark eyes. Raw fear. ‘Your only hope is for a peaceful change of rule and the protection of the victors; your only salvation the fact that you fully cooperated in ensuring it. Would you rather these gifts were in the hands of your fellow prefect Nymphidius?’

Tigellinus spluttered. ‘Put your faith in that blustering pig and the Great Fire of Rome will seem like a flickering candle compared to the inferno the gods will wish on this city.’

‘Then help me, and Galba will hear of your heroics.’ Even chained to the wall with the drooling Egyptian eight paces away, Valerius struggled to disguise the contempt in his voice. A million Romans had lived in fear because of this man’s tyranny. Thousands of innocents had died horribly because he had pandered to the whims of a gilded man-boy driven mad by omnipotence. Of all the men in the Emperor’s inner circle Lucius Annaeus Seneca alone might have curbed Nero’s excesses. By engineering the philosopher’s death Offonius Tigellinus had condemned Rome to years of terror and ultimately brought her to the brink of civil war. Now, it seemed, he was the only man who could save her.