Saviour of Rome [Gaius Valerius Verrens 7] (11 page)

First, the jailer, muttering to himself, his starved rat’s face illuminated by the oil lamp he held in front of him, eyes only for the first lamp in its niche in the wall. One, two, three steps. The first guard appeared hauling at the leather pipe and grunting. The jailer reaching up to light the lamp with the one in his right hand, the bucket of slops in his left. The second guard giving the pipe one last heave and stepping into the chamber.

Now.

There is a lump on a man’s throat that is uniquely vulnerable to attack and also part of the apparatus that allows him to communicate. Serpentius was a keen student of the myriad ways of dealing death. A punch directly on the lump, with the knuckle protruding, would have done the job, but the rusty, four-inch iron nail did it better. The first the guard knew of his impending doom was a choking sensation. He couldn’t scream, he couldn’t breathe and someone had lit a fire in his throat. By now Serpentius was already turning away, the wrist chains whirling towards the second guard alerted too late by the sound of his comrade’s last indrawn breath. As he pivoted to meet the threat Serpentius’s chains settled round his neck and instantly tightened, choking off any shout for help. The Spaniard hauled with all his strength, twisting the links so the loop tightened like a strangling rope until, with a crack like a snapping twig, the guard’s neck broke. He laid the twitching body to the ground, taking in the welcome sight of the jailer being drowned in his slop bucket before turning back to the first man.

Shock had pinned him in place, his hands clawing at the terrible spike in his throat and the blood running down his neck, but now he realized his error and turned to stagger towards the guardroom. Serpentius was on him in two bounds, his hand twisting in the man’s hair. Somehow he’d found a heartbeat to retrieve the dead guard’s
gladius.
Now he sawed the nicked blade across the man’s neck in a single stroke that released a fountain of blood.

He hauled the body back into the chamber. The jailer’s legs gave one
last jerk and a large bubble burst in the slops with a ‘plop’ that broke the stunned silence. Clitus and another man – Thaumasto, wasn’t it? – stared at him with gaping eyes as if they couldn’t believe what they’d done. Serpentius held out his arms with the chain hanging between. Clitus was the first to recover. He searched the jailer’s clothing until he found the crude key to unlock Serpentius’s shackles.

‘Now do the rest,’ the Spaniard growled softly. He stood over the remaining prisoners. ‘Any who are able should come with us,’ he whispered. ‘There is only pain and death if you stay.’

‘Pain and death if we come,’ one man, more feeble than the rest, muttered. ‘They’ll catch you before you get out of the valley.’

‘So be it.’ Serpentius nodded. ‘But all are welcome.’ To Clitus: ‘Take the guards’ uniforms. Give them to whoever fits best.’ Clitus picked up the second guard’s sword and held it awkwardly, but his eyes were filled with determination.

‘No.’ Serpentius managed a rictus of a smile. ‘I’ll do this alone.’

He stalked silently up the ill-lit passage until he came to the curtained guard chamber. The sound of soft breathing and one rasping snorer greeted him. From what he’d learned there should be four. He twitched the curtain aside and in the dull light of the oil lamps in the main passage he made out their sleeping forms. It was the work of moments. The fourth guard came awake as Serpentius stood over him.

‘What’s happening?’ He rubbed his eyes.

‘Go back to sleep, friend.’ Serpentius placed the point of the sword beneath the man’s breastbone and put his weight behind it.

Six men in uniform, escorting eight prisoners to the entrance of the mine shaft. Fortuna had favoured them so far, but Serpentius knew it wouldn’t last. Some of these men were going to die. He’d given them their chance. The strong would survive and at least the weak would slow and divide the pursuit. And, he vowed, the strong would have their revenge. But to do that they had to get out of the mine before the main workforce arrived.

Thanks to Vegeto he had the layout of the outer mine in his head. Two guards at the entrance, but a half century within call. The
legionaries were divided between the smelting house, where the gold was extracted from the crushed rock and turned into ingots, and the fortress-like storehouse where the ingots were held before being transported to Tarraco. The air turned cool and fresh and the oil lamps flickered in the draught and Serpentius knew they were approaching the entrance. He whispered to the others to wait and summoned Clitus and Thaumasto to follow him.

‘They will be tired, bored and desperate for their relief,’ he assured them. ‘Their attention will be on the east and the first hint of the rising sun. They stand one to each side of the entrance. You will take the guard on the right. The right,’ he gestured with his sword to that side of the tunnel, ‘you understand?’ Clitus nodded and Thaumasto’s eyebrows knotted in concentration. ‘It will be like the jailer. One to silence him and the other to kill him. I will take the one on the left. Wait for my signal. We must act together.’

They crept up to the entrance. Serpentius seemed to flow over the ground, but his companions agonized over every step. The Spaniard waited till he could hear the sound of a man breathing and raised his left hand. Two more strides and they could see the blue-black of the night sky and the first faint trace of dawn on the skyline. The outline of a Roman helmet pinpointed the guard on the right. Serpentius dropped his hand and stepped out into the open.

The guard on the left was more asleep than awake. The first he knew of his coming death was a hand clapped over his mouth before the sting as the
gladius
was dragged across his throat. Serpentius held him till he died, feeling the last frantic beats of the heart in the shuddering body, and with the familiar metallic scent of blood in his nostrils.

From behind came groans and thrashing, muttered curses and the sound of metal upon metal. He dropped the dead man and turned to find Clitus and Thaumasto still struggling with the second guard. Thaumasto had his hands over the man’s face and Clitus was lunging with the sword at his chest. Serpentius bent to ram his own sword into the guard’s throat. He pulled back the cloak.

‘Chain mail,’ he whispered. ‘Always go for the throat. Quicker and
quieter. You can let go now, Thaumasto. Dead men don’t shout for help. Fetch the others.’

By the time Serpentius and Clitus had dragged the dead men into the mine they’d been joined by the other prisoners. Serpentius stripped one of the corpses of his sandals and cut a piece from the guard’s tunic to wrap his bleeding feet. He stepped into the open and studied the skyline. The faint line had turned into a splash of orange and pink and against it he could see the silhouette of a straggling column of men. He turned to the prisoners. ‘Follow me and stay below the crest of the hillside. We go west, then north. If you become separated, just follow the course of the river into the mountains. We will find you.’

He set a fast pace he knew his companions couldn’t maintain for long, but there was no help for it. They had to get to the river before their former captors loosed the dogs.

When they were clear of the mine he took a last look back. Whatever happened he would die before he entered that den of Hades again.

‘Tiberius likened ruling the Empire to having hold of a wolf by the ears. I do believe he understated the complexity. It is much more like trying to control an entire pack.’

Vespasian’s tone was cheerful enough as he made the pronouncement, but Titus could see that the cares of high office were already taking their toll of his father. Worry lines furrowed his brow and his mouth had assumed a habitual downturned look of grim contemplation. Sometimes it seemed that only in the arms of his lover, Antonia, did his father find peace. Not that the knowledge brought Titus any consolation. He still couldn’t wholly forgive Vespasian for ordering him to set aside Berenice, whom he’d loved with just as much devotion and passion. But that was in the past. Now they held the wolf by the ears and the first priority was to keep hold of it.

‘You would rather we had left all this to Vitellius?’ Titus waved a hand at the raised platform where Vespasian’s predecessor’s golden throne had sat until it was carried away to be melted down. The receiving room was in the heart of the great Golden House constructed by
Nero. Vespasian was never comfortable in the grandiose palace complex, but had yet to find a use for it.

‘Thirty steps,’ the Emperor marvelled. ‘Perhaps he believed the closer to the gods he sat the more like them he would become. Poor man.’ Vespasian inspected the rear of the platform and the curious contraption there. ‘It’s rather like the lifts that take the beasts to the main level of the arena.’

‘He was so fat by the end he couldn’t climb the stairs.’ Titus didn’t hide his scorn.

‘Then he was no fool,’ his father said, a mild rebuke in his tone. Usurper or no, Vitellius had been Emperor. The legionaries of Marcus Antonius Primus claimed the Golden House had been stripped bare by the time they took the place. Vespasian’s younger son Domitian had not been inclined to believe them, but a few months earlier a building crew clearing the site of Vitellius’s burned-out villa had uncovered a fortune in gold coins and statuary buried in the garden. The Emperor bent and picked up something from the floor behind the platform. ‘A horse on wheels. A child’s toy.’ He shook his head. ‘I never intended for him to die, or the boy. In fact I ordered otherwise. He could have passed away his remaining years in relative comfort on Sicilia and I would have encouraged Lucius through the
cursus honorum
.’

‘Then the men who killed them did you a service,’ Titus said brutally. ‘It’s much tidier this way.’

‘True.’ A wry smile flitted across Vespasian’s puffy features and he replaced the toy. Titus returned the smile. His father could be kind-hearted and was seldom vindictive, but he could also be ruthless when he needed. He’d duped thousands of civilians to surrender at Tarrichaeae in Judaea with a promise of freedom, only to slaughter the elderly and infirm as a signal of the price for defying Rome’s rule. It had worked. All but three Galilaean fortress cities surrendered as soon as the legions appeared at their gates.

‘Ah, Domitian, you are here at last.’ Vespasian turned as a slight figure appeared in the doorway.

‘Father.’ The young man bowed. ‘Brother. I hope I see you well?’

‘All the better for seeing you, brother,’ Titus replied with an equal lack of sincerity.

‘I wanted to show you what we intend,’ Vespasian smiled, ‘before it is announced in the Senate.’

The smile on Domitian’s face froze at the word ‘we’. That ‘we’ meant the two men who jointly ruled Rome. A ‘we’ that excluded the third, and in Domitian’s view just as capable, member of the Flavian dynasty. They seemed to forget – or deliberately forgot – that in his father’s absence Domitian had taken control of Rome after the death of Vitellius. Reigned as Emperor in all but name for more than six months. He’d begun the rebuilding of the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus and the Castra Praetoria, both destroyed in the fighting. Since then he’d been reduced to minor roles. Even his consulship had been a mere suffect appointment, both temporary and honorary. Titus on the other hand was feted wherever he went, everyone’s favourite. Always at his father’s right hand and given command of the Praetorian Guard, a position of immense power. Domitian had been forced to ride with the generals in the wake of the chariot carrying Vespasian and Titus at the triumph to celebrate their victory in the Judaean Wars. Hundreds of thousands of Romans had hailed Titus
Imperator
as he rode with his father at the head of five legions and countless carriages piled high with the spoils of Jerusalem. Gold and silver wrought in every way imaginable, gems of extraordinary colour and lustre, loose or worked into crowns or diadems, bolts of silk in purple and gold. Had Domitian not fought too, in the final battle that defeated the Batavian rebels of Julius Civilis? And what was his reward? Nothing. Not even a word of thanks from his father, while Petilius Cerialis was appointed governor of Britannia.

‘You look out of countenance, my son. Is something wrong?’

‘A bad piece of fish,’ Domitian lied.

‘You should whip your cook,’ Titus said solemnly. He’d noticed his brother’s reaction and was perfectly aware of the reason. Perhaps if Domitian hadn’t styled himself Caesar and placed himself on the throne the moment Marcus Antonius Primus had retaken the city he might have fared better. It hadn’t helped that he’d married without his
father’s permission before the Emperor returned to the capital. And there was something odd about that union. Titus was acquainted with Domitia Longina Corbulo. Clever, beautiful if you liked your women slight and delicate, and with a strong personality that mirrored her soldier father. Too strong, he thought, to be attracted to someone like Domitian. But then, who knew with women? He studied his brother. Unlike Titus, Domitian had failed to inherit his father’s strong features or physical presence. He had a weak chin and a curiously feminine mouth. Where Vespasian was straightforward, loyal to his friends and trustworthy, Titus knew Domitian could be cruel, capricious and downright treacherous. And then there was the matter of Valerius. ‘Come, brother, some fresh air will dispel the ill humours.’

As Vespasian led the way through the corridors to Nero’s man-made lake the two younger Flavians held slightly back.

‘A rumour reached me that a certain member of your household has been in touch with members of the Society,’ Titus said quietly.

‘You should know better than to believe everything you hear at the baths, brother.’ Domitian’s tight smile told his brother he’d been correct. The Society was a guild of criminals: gangsters, thieves and killers for hire. They had their stronghold in the Subura, a pestilential slum in the centre of the city, but their tentacles stretched across the Empire.

‘And you should know that Gaius Valerius Verrens is under my protection – and my father’s.’