Reluctantly, Valerius allowed himself to be led to the front of the great curved balcony that dominated the western end of the arena. The soft, ethereal haze that heralded dusk was settling over the city, but it would not be dark for another hour. Ahead of him the circus stretched away for five hundred paces, a narrow oval of hard-packed sand split by a central spine with a turning post at each end and an enormous carved stone obelisk in the centre. To his right was the lavish imperial box where Nero whispered into Poppaea’s ear. Away to his left were the seven bronzed dolphins of the lap counter. Tiered stands overlooked every yard of the circuit and the track on either side of the spine appeared so narrow it was difficult to imagine four- and six-horse chariot teams overtaking each other, but Valerius had seen the Reds and the Greens matched wheel to wheel at the corner. Today the spectators were to be treated to a different spectacle.
The near end of the circus, between the closest turning post and the curved platform, had been turned into a separate arena by a twelve-foot fence of metal bars. As he watched, Praetorian guards herded a huddle of terrified prisoners into the centre of the open space. There must have been close to twenty of them, more men than women.
‘Only six or seven of them are followers of the Judaean,’ Rodan whispered. ‘The rest are condemned criminals, but it is the example that matters, don’t you think? Do you see anyone you recognize?’
Valerius froze. What did he mean? He frantically studied the men and women, but they were massed so close together it was difficult to identify individuals. Then he caught sight of a hank of silver hair and a slim, familiar figure. He half rose, but a sharp prick at his ribs stopped him. He looked down to find Rodan holding a small dagger he’d taken from the folds of his tunic.
‘No heroics today. We have more work to do, you and I.’
Valerius knew Rodan wouldn’t dare kill him without Nero’s sanction and he was ready to leap on to the sand to his father’s rescue. But, when he looked again, he had a clearer view of the silver-haired man. It wasn’t Lucius, but a much older person. Rodan grinned at him and he reluctantly resumed his place beside the Praetorian, his heart numb with dread.
Nero stood to address the captives, his querulous tones ringing around the empty circus.
‘You worship one god to the exclusion of all others. Where is your god today? Let him show me a single sign that he loves you and I will spare every one of you.’ He paused, studying the sky like a bad actor in a Greek tragedy. ‘You see, there is no sign, and there will be none because your god only exists in your own minds, which have been warped by those who lead you. The man you follow claimed to be the son of that false god, but he was a mere deceiver who dazzled simple country dwellers with crude conjuring tricks. He rebelled against Rome and was a traitor to his own people. He promised to save you, yet he could not even save himself. He offered you eternal life and you believed him.’ He waved his hand with a flourish and a door swung open in the opposite side of the arena. His plump, perspiring face hardened and Valerius had never seen anything so pitiless. ‘I grant you your wish.’
A lion roared, a thundering growl that seemed to shake the very stones of the circus and was quickly joined by the throat-tearing cough of a leopard. The beasts, five lions and two of the spotted cats, must have been starved for days because they didn’t hesitate as they burst into the light towards the little group huddled in the centre. A collective cry that tore Valerius’s heart rose from the captives and now the herd instinct that had held them together was broken by sheer terror. They splintered in every direction, a few sinking to the ground and raising their arms in supplication, but most fleeing in mindless panic, pleading for mercy they knew would not be forthcoming.
The old man Valerius had mistaken for his father died on his knees as a lioness tore his screaming head from his shoulders with a single twist of her enormous jaws. Blood sprayed bright across the sand. A muscular giant with a red face and heat-scarred arms faced up to a charging leopard, his features set in a determined scowl, but even a blacksmith’s strength counted for nothing against a big cat’s power. He went down under her weight and her rear legs stripped out his guts in a dozen frenzied sweeps as he howled in disbelief at the outrage done to his body. The wild beasts killed and killed again and the surviving prisoners clawed at the walls and the bars. All except one.
Cornelius’s girl.
The dark-haired figure hadn’t been visible among the huddle of prisoners, but now Valerius saw her running for her life, crying out for the laughing guards to take the cloth-wrapped bundle she held in her arms. A few paces away a lioness tracked her progress, the glowing yellow eyes never leaving her prey. The girl knew she was doomed, but she refused to give up. She ran on round the inner wall until some instinct brought her to the point where Valerius now stood hard against the balcony. Helplessly, she looked up at him, much too young, the face he recognized from the brothel turned ugly by fear. Among the cries of ecstasy and gasps of horror around him, he heard her shouted plea. ‘Please, sir, take my baby. If not me, at least save my child.’ Terror made her voice brittle and the words came out in a rush. With shaking hands she held the tiny bundle high, so Valerius could see the small dark eyes and pink, grizzling features. ‘Please!’
The big cat covered the ground in three enormous bounds, but the girl was driven by the speed of despair. In the very moment the lioness struck, she launched the baby upwards with every ounce of her remaining strength. Valerius saw it come, a featureless mass, the swaddling wrap fluttering loosely around it. The girl’s dying screams filled his ears as he stretched as far as he could reach with his left hand. He felt his fingers close on the coarse brown cloth and for a single heartbeat the baby’s weight was in his control. Relief washed through him as he drew the bundle towards the wall. But he had reckoned without the blood-hungry gods of the arena and they would not be denied. Slowly, the blanket began to unravel, uncoiling one relentless fold at a time from the doll-like figure it protected. Frantically he reached out with his other hand, but the lifeless wooden fist could find no grip on the child’s arm. A voice screamed inside his head as the soft thud of the child’s body on the sand was instantly followed by the snarls of two cats fighting over a morsel of prey.
For a few seconds his world went dark, but soon something nameless and terrible swelled inside him. He had never known such anger or such despair; a killing rage that was born in his lower body and rose up ready to erupt into suicidal violence. Still holding the blanket, he turned back towards Rodan. The Praetorian held the knife protectively in front of him, but fear marked his ruined face.
‘Harm me and your father dies,’ the centurion cried. ‘He dies.’
Valerius knew he could kill Rodan with a single blow, but what was the point when the man truly responsible was sitting a few paces away. ‘Your time will come, Rodan, and when it does, I hope it is my sword that sends you across the Styx.’
He turned towards where Nero sat, his jewelled fingers hooked on to the balcony as he leaned forward to savour every moment of the agony below. A dozen black guards separated Valerius from his target and every eye was on him. He knew that to take a single step in the Emperor’s direction was to commit suicide. The killing urge subsided, the fleeting moment gone. As he walked to the stairs his gaze met Poppaea’s. He expected to see contempt, even triumph, but instead she stared hard into his eyes and there seemed no mistaking the message she passed.
He hesitated, unsure whether he understood, before walking out of the circus into the clean air and the silence.
They stopped him in the long passageway to the entrance and took him to a room with bare walls which might have been a cell but for the scent of the hay that had been stored there. Valerius sat with his back to the cold stone and worked the coarse wool of the child’s blanket through his hands. He had promised Cornelius Sulla he would protect them, but the girl and her baby had died because of him. Nothing on earth would persuade him to deliver Cornelius or Lucina to Torquatus now, even if they killed him for it. The thought steadied him. He felt no fear, but the awfulness of what he had just witnessed had numbed his mind, so he had no control over the visions that flew through it. Savagery in war he could understand. Terror and self-preservation made soldiers kill without mercy and constant proximity to death often led to mindless cruelty. Two men fighting for their lives in the arena had a certain dignity, even honour, but to feed helpless men and women to wild animals and relish the spectacle seemed to him the lowest kind of barbarism, worse even than the druids who threw Roman prisoners into the blazing heart of the Wicker Man. They, at least, had the mitigation of hatred, the excuse of religion, however perverted. He saw again the frown of concentration on the girl’s face as she ignored her own fate in that last futile attempt to save her infant. Felt the cloth unwrap one fold at a time as the child fell away from him towards the sand.