Valerius turned to Marcus. ‘Is there anything else I should know?’
The gladiator grinned. ‘Your old nag came first in the race of the day.’
‘Nag?’
‘That horse-faced old bitch Lucina. She thought she was being slippery, but I had Heracles on her and he’s a handy lad for such a big lump. She likes her gardens does Lucina, and there’s one she’s taken to visiting regularly up on the hill by the Temple of Diana. Very private, high wall, but as I say he’s a handy lad and he slips over it so’s he can keep an eye on her while she’s smelling the pretty flowers. Lucina does the rounds, but she’s not taking that much interest. Heracles thinks maybe she’s only there to get away from the old man, except she’s too watchful and he has to hide in a bush a couple of times in case she spots him. After about fifteen minutes it happens. Out of the trees on the far side a man appears. Oh ho, thinks Heracles, now the fun starts. He’s young, good-looking if you like them skinny, rich clothes, and shoes that won’t fall apart in the rain. Just what a dry old sow like Lucina needs to get the juices running again. Next thing they’ll be at it like rabbits on the grass. Only they aren’t. He’s respectful. He stands just the right distance away. He listens to what she says, he bows and he leaves.’
‘Just like that?’ Valerius knew from the glint in Marcus’s eye there was more to come.
‘Just like that. Only now Heracles has a problem. Does he stay with Lucina, who we know is up to something, or does he try to follow the boyfriend?’
‘He’s a bright lad.’
‘That’s right. He’s a bright lad. He skips up the nearest tree and over the wall, sprints round to the far side of the garden just in time to see the boyfriend disappearing down towards the meat market. Now your young man is a proper aristocrat, begging your lordship’s pardon, who knows how to stay busy doing nothing for hours on end. Heracles sticks with him as he wanders from shop to shop, only looking, never buying, stops in a tavern and spends an hour over a cup of warm wine and a sausage. You’re biding your time, thinks Heracles. You’re waiting to meet somebody. But if he does, Heracles misses it, because all of a sudden it’s up and we’re off, to a big house across the other side of the Via Flaminia from the Septa Julia and so fast we struggle to keep up. He owns the house, or thinks he does — you can tell by the way he treats the doorman — and it’s only a few minutes before he’s out, in a new tunic and cloak, and we’re off again. To the Palatine.’
Valerius went over the details, trying to follow the young man’s reasoning. ‘He knew he was being followed, or suspected he was.’
‘Or he was just making sure he wasn’t. Heracles doesn’t think he was seen.’
‘Yes, that would fit just as well. Where did he go on the Palatine?’
‘Heracles stayed with him until he walked up the Clivus Palatinus, then he left him. Did he do wrong?’
‘No. Someone would have questioned him and he might have ended up in trouble. He did well. Make sure he’s rewarded.’
Marcus nodded. ‘Before he came to report to me he went back to the Via Flaminia and asked at a stall across the street who the big house belonged to.’ Valerius sensed that, in his roundabout way, the gladiator had just come to the point. ‘The name was Cornelius Sulla.’
Valerius remembered languid eyes and a mocking smile across the great receiving room in the Domus Transitoria. Cornelius Sulla was one of Nero’s favourites who had taken particular delight in seeing him fall from grace. An arrogantly handsome boy-man with soft golden curls that fell in waves to his neck and a bloodline that went back to the great dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Yet if the blood held iron, Cornelius was careful not to display it. Nero treated him like a pet, forever absent-mindedly stroking and caressing his flesh, while Cornelius purred with pleasure and asked for more. Some of Fabia’s more scurrilous gossip hinted that the young aristocrat was the plaything of the Emperor and his wife, with Torquatus acting as ringmaster, and Valerius could believe it. The question was why a man whose future seemed so bound to Nero would risk everything by consorting with the woman who had declared herself the Emperor’s greatest foe?
‘I want Heracles to stay with Cornelius, and he can have Serpentius’s help if he needs it. We need to know everywhere he goes when he’s not at the palace, and everyone he talks to. I want Sextus and Felix watching my back. We’ll leave Lucina for the moment. It’s plain she knows she’s being watched by Torquatus. She has taken one gamble this week; she’s unlikely to take another.’
Marcus disagreed. ‘By meeting Cornelius in secret she has proved she’s prepared to risk everything. That makes it more likely she’ll act, not less.’
‘You may be right,’ Valerius admitted. ‘But there’s nothing we can do about it.’
He spent the evening at Olivia’s side, just listening to the sound of her breathing. He remembered the morning of her eleventh birthday, when he understood she would one day be beautiful, and the irrational conflict that had raged between pride and jealousy. Soon she would leave and become someone else’s friend. It seemed unfair that he would lose her just when she was becoming interesting. He had watched her grow from girl to woman and was surprised that the battle inside became all the more intense, and that it was accompanied by sensations he would never begin to understand. She was intelligent, perhaps wiser than he was; elegant, cultured and refined. He resented it. For a short time, when teenage arrogance overwhelmed good judgement, they had hated each other, but it didn’t last. When she was betrothed he had punched a wall with such impotent fury that he’d almost broken his knuckles, and when she married he went off to sulk among the olive trees the moment the traditional rites had been observed. She was part of him, and he of her.
Two deaths had brought them back together. First, when the thing in their mother’s breast had eaten the life out of her. Mama’s decline had been long, undignified and accompanied by a pain that no amount of courage could conquer, or tincture of poppy dull. As the ashes were placed in the family sarcophagus, Valerius and Olivia had stood side by side, united in their desire to replace the lifetime of love that had been torn from their father. On the day of her husband’s funeral it had been Valerius Olivia had turned to for support rather than Lucius. He wondered now if that reversal of roles after the death of one husband had been part of the reason for his poor choice of her next. In the aftermath of the storm that had followed Valerius had found himself responsible for her. Now he had failed her.
Amidst all the uncertainties he knew only one thing. He had to find Petrus.
XVI
‘Are you certain you possess the zeal your Emperor requires of you?’
The summons had come as a surprise and the atmosphere in the room was relentlessly hostile. Torquatus sat behind his desk, with Rodan, conspicuously armed and in the dark tunic of the Praetorian Guard, smirking over his shoulder.
Valerius stared at the two men. On the face of it he’d been called to the Palatine to explain his lack of progress, but he suspected there was another motive. ‘In an inquiry of this nature lack of zeal cannot be equated with lack of progress,’ he pointed out. ‘As I’m sure you are aware, prefect, it is a question of ensuring all the pieces are in place before you make your decisive move.’
Torquatus was unimpressed. ‘The future of the Empire is no game, Verrens,’ he snapped. ‘Perhaps the Emperor did not impress upon you enough the seriousness of your commission. It would take but a stroke of the stylus and you would be no more Hero of Rome.’
Valerius allowed himself a laugh. If Nero had wanted to get rid of him he wouldn’t be standing in front of Torquatus’s desk, he would be having a much more painful conversation in the torture chambers which existed somewhere beneath the hill. That thought reinforced his decision to keep what he’d discovered about Lucina Graecina and Cornelius Sulla to himself. There were things he needed to know before he handed them over to Torquatus’s tender mercies. He stared directly at Rodan.