Douglas Jackson: Defender of Rome

‘And what do the courts promise today? Are you defence or prosecution or both?’ she asked lightly.

‘Neither.’ Valerius allowed himself a sad smile. ‘I must be with Olivia.’

Fabia stared at him, but her thoughts remained concealed in the blue-gold depths of her eyes. ‘Tell her I send my prayers.’

Where Fabia’s beauty glowed like an imperial park in full blossom, Olivia’s was more ethereal: an Alpine snowfield touched only by the wind, or a sculpture of virgin marble before the artist applied the first brush of paint. Valerius stared down at his sister as she lay in the house on the Clivus Scauri. Regal and pale as an Egyptian princess, her long, almost raven hair framed her face, each strand placed precisely by her maid, Julia. His sister had the sculpted features so admired in the family, but more delicate than in the male line. A slim aristocratic nose, a long, curving jawline that reflected resolve and strength of purpose, and a mouth that, before her illness, had always seemed ready to smile. In fact, as he studied her, he realized she had changed even in the short time since he had last seen her, and he replaced the word ‘delicate’ with ‘fragile’.

‘She is wasting away.’ He tried to keep the accusation from his voice.

The fastidiously dressed man at his side stirred uncomfortably. ‘We are doing everything we can. The serving girl administers the daily draught as she has been instructed. She bathes her mistress only with warm water and serves thin soup three times a day.’

‘More is spilled than eaten,’ Valerius pointed out.

Metellus, the physician, frowned, making his pendulous jowls quiver, and the watery eyes narrowed. ‘We can only force so much upon her or it will do more harm than good. She is thin but not yet skeletal. With the gods’ will there is still hope. You have sacrificed to Asclepius as I advised?’

Valerius’s faith in the gods had been sorely tested by the two days he had spent in the Temple of Claudius waiting to be torn limb from limb by vengeful British warriors. The fact that he had survived had done nothing to restore it, but he would do anything that might help Olivia. ‘I visited the hospital on the Tiber island this morning and the priest dedicated a white ram to the god.’ The doctor nodded, impressed. A white ram was no mere token. He wondered if his fee was quite sufficient. Valerius continued: ‘The maid, Julia, has also carried a sacrifice to the Good Goddess.’

Again, this was only sensible. Bona Dea, the goddess of women, healing and fertility, could be counted on to intercede on Olivia’s behalf from her temple on the Aventine Hill.

‘Then you also are doing everything you can.’ He hesitated. ‘Perhaps if your father…?’

Valerius shook his head. ‘He won’t come here.’ He didn’t have to say more. His father Lucius had staked their family’s future on a match between Olivia and an indecently rich but very elderly second cousin of the Emperor. Olivia had taken one look at the balding, wrinkled figure of her betrothed, a man blessed with a single blackened tooth, and vowed to cut her wrists there and then. Lucius’s reputation had suffered more from the fact that he had capitulated to her threat than that she’d rejected Calpurnius Ahenobarbus. Under the law, he would have been entitled to sell Olivia into slavery or even kill her, but for all his stuffy patrician pomposity he had always been a loving father and had chosen disgrace rather than cause more distress to his daughter. Since the scandal he had locked himself away on the family estate at Fidenae and devoted himself to his grapes and his olive trees. Valerius had contacted him three times with the news that she was sick, but on each occasion his messenger had been turned away. The physicians who treated her speculated that the gods were taking their revenge for Olivia’s lack of filial devotion, but Valerius dismissed the theory as a desperate attempt to justify their failure. He suspected that Metellus, a well-meaning drunkard who claimed to have studied in Smyrna and Alexandria, had now joined their number.

As he watched, Olivia’s eyes opened, shale dark, liquid and slightly bemused. Recognition came slowly, but when she was certain of his identity her pale lips parted in a faint smile and before the eyes closed again her hand fluttered towards his. He sat on the bed and took it; it was cool and almost weightless. Olivia sighed lightly and he felt her fingers tighten. It will be like this when she dies, he thought, this helpless emptiness. I will sit here and her hand will grow cold and the room will grow dark and I will beg her to stay, but her spirit will fly from her as I have seen it fly from so many dying men. He began talking, of hope and love and the future, knowing she heard him but not whether she understood. And as he talked his mind drifted back to a time when a skinny girl with a dirty face and a torn tunic dogged his every footstep, forever asking foolish questions he couldn’t answer. Why? And How? And What? Everlasting days by the narrow, tree-lined river that provided water for the estate, hunting little green frogs among the weeds and plastering each other with slimy, speckled spawn. Other days spent chasing elusive brown songbirds among the vines in the certain knowledge that they would flutter to the next row and the chase would be up again. The bitter taste of unripe grapes and the awfulness that inevitably followed. Watching each other grow.

And the day that caused him to wonder what kind of man he truly was. When his patience finally snapped and, encouraged by the slave boys, he had locked her in the cellar below the house and walked away. He would never forget the look in her eyes when he returned an hour later to find her frozen in the darkness. Or the note of accusation in the whispered child’s voice. ‘Please never leave me alone again, Valerius.’

He squeezed her hand and stood up.

‘I will do anything to make her well.’ He knew the words alone meant nothing. He might have been talking to himself. He might have been talking to the gods he no longer believed in. Instead, he found he was addressing the fat physician whose presence he had entirely forgotten.

Metellus felt a thrill of panic at the certainty in Valerius’s voice; the tall, commanding presence and the hard eyes that pinned him like a legionary javelin. He had done all he could, truly he had. He raced through the remedies in his mind as if he was arguing for his life. The herbs mixed in warm leaded wine to cool the fever. Wolfsbane in minute doses to stimulate the blood. Extract of hemp to calm. The regime? Exemplary. Each step taken with a physician’s care and forethought. Was there anything more? No. Twice no. Except…

‘There may be a man…’

‘Where can I find him?’

Rome was changing. Nero had vowed to turn the city into the kind of modern metropolis befitting the capital of an Empire which ruled over forty million people. If a street fell into terminal disrepair or an urban slum burned, he had dictated that it be rebuilt around an open square, allowing space and freedom and light for the residents, and providing a barrier against the fires that could spread with such lightning rapidity through the city’s fourteen districts. In doing so he followed the lead of his uncle, Caligula, but where Caligula had forced the residents to pay for the improvements from their own pockets, the young Emperor increased his popularity by accepting the burden himself. Unfortunately for Valerius, some of the worst areas of the city remained untouched.

He held the torch high as he studied the narrow, fetid street ahead. From an alleyway to his left came the sounds of raucous, humourless laughter and screams that might be ecstasy or terror. I should have hired a bodyguard, he thought, and cursed as he stood in something which could have been animal or vegetable, but was undoubtedly obscenely soft and stank like a week-old corpse. Why must it always be the Subura? Rome’s cesspit. Apartment blocks six and seven storeys high towered like cliffs above him, smoky oil lamps glowing in windows that held, at best, the threat of the contents of a night soil pot, if not the pot itself. Twin wagon ruts doubled as an open sewer, the contents reeking in trapped heat that barely cooled from one day to the next. Every step was an invitation to fall into a trap and every darkened entrance a potential ambush.