‘Mother! Make it stop.’
But Mother couldn’t stop the flames even if she had wanted to. Because Mother was dead. At his hand. Or if not at his hand, by his will; like so many. They came to him now, all those he had called friend and lover and, yes, even brother. One by one they pierced him with their accusing eyes and he did not know which was greater, the pain of their contempt or the agony of the fire that was melting his flesh from his bones like wax dripping from a candle. He remembered a pillar of writhing flame, a blackened skull with burning eyes, and a name: Cornelius Sulla. So this is what it had been like.
He opened his mouth to scream and flames filled his mouth and his nose and he felt them flash down his throat, incinerating his lungs and exploding his heart. He raised his arms to the heavens in a last despairing gesture and before his eyes shrivelled in his head he looked out over the Rome he had created, the sea of fire that was his gift to his people, and saw a fiery orb arc across the sky, leaving a trail of sparks in its wake. A falling star? No. A fallen god.
‘Tigellinus!’
He shot bolt upright with the sweat dripping from his face as if he’d just emerged from the baths. ‘Tigellinus!’ The waking scream echoed the unanswered one from the dream. The dream which had seemed so real that he could still feel the raw agony of the flame shooting down his throat. Running feet. Not Tigellinus, but the slaves who served his bedchamber. For a moment he wondered why Poppaea wasn’t at his side, then he remembered that she was dead. Dead more than a year, along with the child.
‘Send for my Praetorian prefect.’
By the time Tigellinus arrived Nero was curled in a ball on top of his bed, his whole body shaking as if he was suffering from a fever. The Emperor’s personal physician stood by the doorway with a look of perplexed anxiety on his face.
‘Is he sick?’ Tigellinus asked the Greek. The physician shook his head and the Praetorian sighed. He had grown accustomed to late night summonses to heal crises of the body or the mind, to interpret dreams which promised triumph or disaster, to praise ideas of such genius no mortal man could turn them into reality, or simply to hear a song which had fixed itself in his master’s head and must be heard before it disappeared for ever. Just lately it had been the dreams.
‘Caesar?’ He approached the bed.
‘It is finished.’
The three whispered words sent a stream of ice water down Tigellinus’s spine. In the past there had always been doubt. Here there was only certainty.
‘No, Caesar.’
‘I watched a burning god fall from the sky.’
‘Falling to smite your enemies.’
‘No, I was on fire. The whole city was on fire.’
‘A memory. Remember how you fought the flames and saved your people.’
‘I saved them?’
‘You were everywhere,’ Tigellinus assured him. ‘Directing the rescue, organizing the water supply. Without Nero there would be no Rome.’
Nero opened his eyes. It had been almost three years earlier. He remembered a burning glow on the horizon. The smell of smoke. Ashes. Perhaps it was true. But the certainty was clouded by the fact that he had wanted it, and when he wanted things they tended to happen.
‘The followers of Christus, Caesar,’ Tigellinus pre-empted the next question. ‘Vile creatures who sought to destroy Rome, and through Rome, you. Fanatics and purveyors of lies.’
‘Yes, the Christus followers. They admitted their guilt under question.’
‘Each one bore the mark of the fire.’ The Praetorian commander remembered the careful selection. The refinements necessary to ensure that each confession should be exact in every detail. Yet still one had duped him.
‘But the man Paulus claimed it was a portent of the end. He said Rome was the great whore.’ The young Emperor reached out and gripped Tigellinus’s hand with surprising strength. ‘It must not happen. You will not allow it to happen.’
‘No, Caesar.’ Tigellinus’s voice was soft and reassuring. ‘Your agents are in place with the German frontier legions and in Hispania and Lusitania. The traitor Vinicianus will soon be in our hands. Thus far he has not implicated his father-in-law, Corbulo, and there has been a delay in my agent’s reaching Antioch. But if he is guilty I will know it within the month.’
‘Find them for me. Find my enemies. Hunt them down. Show them no mercy.’
‘At your command, Caesar.’
‘For Rome.’
‘For Rome.’
XXI
VALERIUS STARED OUT
beyond the bow of the twin-banked bireme galley, hypnotized by the glint of sun on sea. He was so spellbound that he didn’t notice Domitia emerging from the flimsy wooden cabin that had been built for her until she came to stand at his side. For more than a minute they stood a few decorous feet apart, as aware of each other’s presence as if they were touching hands. He was searching for the word or the gesture that would breach the barrier that had separated them since the night on the beach when a pair of blue dolphins, lithe, swift and fearless, appeared from nowhere to carve their way effortlessly through the waters below the lovers’ feet.
Domitia studied them for a while, her eyes never leaving the dark shapes as they rose and fell, triangular fins chopping the surface to leave a trail of silver bubbles, and even occasionally departing their natural element entirely. One was larger and seemed to take the lead, but the other mirrored its partner’s every move, never more than a few inches from its side. Sometimes they were so close that their bodies touched.
When she spoke her voice was soft as the kiss of the sea on the galley’s hull. ‘Don’t you ever wish you were free, Valerius? Free of duty and of obligation. Free to go where you want with whom you want. What if Poseidon were to grant you the ability to choose, this very moment, to
turn
into a dolphin and swim away with me, to spend our lives roaming the oceans together? Would you accept or would you stand here and watch me swim away alone?’
Just for a moment he was swayed, and the mesmeric rhythm of the sleek streamlined figures cutting through the water drew him to them. He remembered desire and softness and strength beneath the knowing stars of an Egyptian night. A night of magic. When he had been with her, anything had seemed possible, but … But he was Gaius Valerius Verrens, Hero of Rome. He had never known anything but duty and obligation. Duty to his father and the estate. Duty to the
cursus honorum
which had shaped his path through life. Duty to the men he had served with and served under. Duty to Rome and its Emperor. And his duty to the Emperor had made him a spy. What would she think of him if she ever discovered that he had been sent from Rome to spy on her father? He knew the answer well enough. She would despise a man so weak and disloyal. He did not tell her that he could have been free. That the marble deposits beneath his estate at Fidenae would have bought a hundred freedoms, or a thousand. He knew that when she said
free to go where you want with whom you want
, she actually meant
free to love whom you want
. But that was as much a dream as the dream of turning into a dolphin. The reality was that Domitia was betrothed to a man already spoken of as a future consul and Valerius would always be bound to the master within.
When he looked again, the dolphins were gone. He felt her eyes on him, but he dared not turn to see what was written in them. He feared her next words, but when she spoke it was lightly, though her voice was touched by a lost, wistful sadness.
‘So we will not wander the oceans together, tribune? It is of no matter. It was a silly girl’s whim. Better that we both forget that this ever happened. It was a momentary thing, and in any case, one which we will never be in a position to repeat. I am a respectable Roman lady, Valerius, and I rely on your discretion and your honour to ensure that
my
honour remains untarnished.’ When she said the last few words he heard a smile in her voice. As she left him her hand brushed lightly against his.
Two days later they docked at the port of Seleucia Pieria, the magnificent harbour at the mouth of the River Orontes created by Antioch’s founder Seleucus, one of Alexander the Great’s generals. When they disembarked, a closed carriage awaited Domitia and she insisted on hurrying ahead up the paved road by the river to meet her father. Valerius, Tiberius and Serpentius waited until their equipment was unloaded and packed on a pair of mules before joining their escort for the ten-mile ride inland to Antioch.
And Corbulo.
They entered the city by an enormous twin-towered gate and along a broad avenue flanked by marble pillars. Alexandria with its towering palaces, secluded gardens and great trading port might be Rome’s gateway to the east, but Antioch was the crossroads between east and west, a sprawling city of more than half a million people, its streets teeming with merchants and traders of every nationality. Valerius was struck by the scale of the walls, which challenged even those of Rome. This was where his hero, Germanicus Caesar, father of the Emperor Caligula, had finally succumbed either to some awful disease contracted in Egypt or to poison administered on the orders of his rival, another treacherous Piso. He wondered in which of these buildings the great man had died. On closer inspection many showed the filled cracks and wall repairs that were clear signs of earthquake damage, although not from a recent event. The river was always to their left, and when they turned off the main road towards it they were welcomed by a paradise on earth. Even the normally undemonstrative Tiberius gaped when he saw it. The governor’s palace proved to be a place of cool waters and shaded cypress and laurel groves, where waterfalls tumbled from the surrounding hills to create sparkling pools filled with small darting fish and purple herons stood frozen among the reedbeds. Further upstream the enormously rich Syrian merchants of Antioch had built villas in the Roman style, but nothing could match the magnificence of governor Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo’s official residence. Two storeys high with a roof of red tile, pale cream bricks and milk white marble, it dominated
everything
around it, stretching for close to a quarter of a mile along the bank of the Orontes.
Led by their escort, an exotic mix of Syrian mounted archers in pot-shaped helmets and green cloaks and bearded Scythian spearmen in fish-scale armour, they crossed the river by a stone bridge and turned upstream along an avenue of cypress trees. In the shade of the branches, still as statues, the soldiers of a full cohort stood at rest. The design on their curve-edged
scuta
was unfamiliar to Valerius. At the top of the shield, against a red background, a proud bull in silhouette dared any comer to challenge him, while below the metal boss a galley in full sail cut its way across the painted ash. On either side of the boss he was a little unnerved to see a pair of dolphins.
‘The Tenth Fretensis,’ Tiberius said in a low voice. ‘General Corbulo’s elite. They provide his personal bodyguard.’
There had been times in the last two weeks when Valerius believed he would never reach this point, and others when he had prayed he wouldn’t. All he could think of was Vespasian’s warning.
If I know, General Corbulo also knows
. He had revealed the true purpose of their mission to Serpentius during the voyage from Alexandria and the Spaniard had accepted the information with a bitter laugh. Now he surveyed their surroundings with the wariness of a stalking panther. They passed through a pillared gateway to be met by an honour guard and Serpentius draped Valerius’s senior tribune’s white cloak – a gift from Titus – over his shoulders. As they approached the palace, his heart stopped when he noticed the coach that had carried Domitia and her servant from Seleucia. That was the thing about guilt: it didn’t matter where you went, it would always be waiting for you.
He checked in his sword at the door and an aide ushered him through a maze of corridors to a large receiving room with a colonnaded balcony overlooking the river. Vine stems writhed like snakes up the pillars and entwined to form a ceiling of emerald green through which the sun sparkled like so many polished jewels. It was early evening, but this was midsummer in the Orient and even in the depths of the Orontes gorge the force of the day’s heat still lingered in the stones and the grass. Six men waited for him there, six men who surveyed him with looks that
ranged
from naked animosity to open contempt and in at least one case pure hatred. From their uniforms and insignia he guessed they were Corbulo’s senior commanders, at least three of them legionary legates. There was no greeting, only the merest acknowledgement of his existence.
Valerius felt hot blood rise inside him, but he kept his expression blank. So that was the way it was to be. ‘Gaius Valerius Verrens, reporting for duty to General Corbulo. I was told he would be here.’
‘Since you have not lost your eyes as well as your arm, tribune, it should be clear to you that he has been detained elsewhere.’ The insult was deliberate and accompanied by a humourless smile. It came from the oldest of the six, a handsome, narrow-faced patrician with cropped grey hair. ‘You are interrupting an important conference. Surely your time would be better spent making yourself look like an officer for your interview and not some grubby recruit returning from his first patrol?’
Valerius bit back the retort that came to his tongue. The man’s age and the scarlet band at his waist marked him as a legionary commander, even if it hadn’t been already evident in the arrogant dismissal of a mere equestrian. He studied the grim faces and cursed Paulinus for his poor security. Then it came to him. Paulinus had made sure word of his mission preceded him. The consul knew that even with Olivia as a hostage, Valerius might be tempted to ignore his orders. Now he had little choice, because he was a pariah whether he carried them out or not. Yet something was not quite right with that theory. What … The legate’s sneer cut across his thoughts. ‘Perhaps you left your tongue where you left your hand? A gentleman would apologize and leave.’
‘Enough.’ The word snapped through the air like a cracking whip. Valerius’s tormentor stiffened before acknowledging the order with the slightest nod of the head.