A lone figure in white stood silhouetted against a sky which grew darker by the minute. Valerius flinched as a bolt of lightning ripped the far horizon and its flash lit the sky. A few seconds later a crash of thunder shook the air and the Emperor turned to him with a smile that was belied by the unnatural light in his eyes.
‘Even an Emperor cannot command the elements,’ he said regretfully. ‘The augurs say it means the gods are angry. Do you believe that?’
Valerius hesitated before deciding it would do no harm to tell the truth. ‘No, Caesar, I think wars are the way the gods show their anger.’
Nero nodded. ‘It seems to me that we blame the gods for the things we fear. You are a warrior; do you fear war?’
‘I do not fear war, but no sane man welcomes it… just as no man welcomes death.’
The Emperor frowned, as if the thought had never occurred to him. ‘Yes, death… you allowed Publius Sulla to kill himself before you could question him?’
Valerius heard the Praetorians moving in behind him and he saw Nero’s eyes flick towards them. It seemed someone was a step ahead of him again. He had rehearsed this moment in his mind a dozen times, determined to show no weakness. But reality was different. The words stuck in his throat and he felt shame at the fear he could hear in his voice. ‘Yes, Caesar.’
‘Then you have failed me. Failure requires punishment. Do you agree?’ The last three words were snapped out like nails hammered into a cross.
Valerius raised his head and looked directly into the pale eyes. He would not plead.
A faint rattle of metal told him the men behind him were preparing to strike and he knew — knew — that the other man was imagining the swords rising and falling, the haze of scarlet as the blades hacked into his body. He closed his eyes and waited for the first blow.
An eternity passed before the Emperor finally spoke. Valerius winced as another clap of thunder shattered the silence. When he looked up he found Nero studying him.
‘I said you have ten days to hunt down this Petrus.’ Valerius opened his mouth to protest. But there was worse to come. ‘At noon on the tenth day I will have every Judaean subject in Rome driven to the circus,’ Nero waved a hand at the great arena a hundred and fifty feet below, ‘and put to the sword. And you with them.’
He walked away, leaving Valerius to stare down at the oval of sand that would be stained with the blood of twenty thousand innocents if he failed.
Valerius’s feet took him back through the Forum, but the real world only existed inside his head, where his mind wrestled with the terrible implications of what he had just been told. Surely not even Nero…? But yes, he could. Valerius saw again Cornelius’s screaming, flame-filled mouth. The girl’s pleading face. The merciless glow in a leopard’s eyes. It was the same glow he had seen when Nero turned to greet him. But twenty thousand people? Somewhere to his left were the Gemonian stairs where executed criminals were left to rot. Soon his body could be lying among them.
He stumbled blindly through the crowds, bumping into hurrying figures who cursed him or thrust him aside.
‘Valerius!’
He blinked and the scene about him came into sharp focus, including the concerned features of Marcus. What now?
‘Lucina Graecina is taken.’
He closed his eyes. How many more obstacles could the gods place before him? ‘When?’ he demanded. ‘Where is she?’
‘Two weeks ago. In the prison.’ Marcus pointed across the Forum towards the base of the Capitoline Hill. ‘In the Carcer.’
May the gods help her. People who went into the Carcer seldom came out. But he had no choice, he had to find a way to free Lucina. Standing in the shadow of the great men who dominated the Forum — Caesar, Pompey and Augustus — he suddenly felt very small and wearied to the bone. He was a soldier. He was not equipped for plotting and conspiracy. But what else could he do? Too many lives depended on him to give up now.
It was unlikely any acquaintance would have recognized Valerius when he returned to the Forum the next morning. Now he wore the sculpted silver breastplate of a tribune of the Guard, with the black cloak covering his shoulders and his helmet low over his brow to hide a face which wore an expression of grim resolve. Behind him, equally stern, marched his escort; one tall and swarthy, his face set in a sneer as if everything and everyone around him stank, and an older guardsman, patently nearing the end of his sixteen-year commission, with the scars of his campaigns etched deep on his face.
‘Keep your backs straight and try to look like soldiers,’ Valerius warned them.
Serpentius set his shoulders and glared defiance at anyone who looked like getting in his way. Marcus muttered something about strutting peacocks and did his level best to stay in step. They were approaching the doorway of the imperial prison on the east side of the Capitoline Hill. Valerius, like all his countrymen, had heard the tales of what happened inside those walls. Now he was going to bluff his way into the most feared building in Rome.
He walked up the steps and hammered on the door of the prison. ‘Open in the name of the Emperor! Tribune Verrens to question the prisoner Lucina Graecina.’
With a clatter, a small shutter opened in the doorway to reveal a pinched, suspicious face with the features of a cornered rat.
‘Tribune Verrens to question the prisoner Lucina Graecina,’ Valerius repeated.
The rat yawned. ‘I’ll need to see your orders.’
Valerius leaned close to the opening and almost gagged on the stink of the jailer’s breath. ‘Nothing written down for this one,’ he said confidentially. ‘The orders came direct from prefect Torquatus himself. That’s right, soldier?’ He nodded to Marcus.
‘Nothing on paper. Tribune Verrens to question the prisoner about crimes against the Roman people,’ Marcus confirmed. ‘Results to be communicated direct to the Praetorian prefect without delay.’
‘Without delay,’ Valerius echoed.
The jailer sniffed noisily and sighed. Suspicion was replaced by a look of pained confusion. His job wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was meant to be simple. No one got in without orders, unless they made him a decent offer, and even then he wouldn’t take a bribe if he smelled trouble. But the tribune’s obvious authority and the Praetorian uniforms made it complicated. What made it more complicated were the special instructions he’d been given for the care of the prisoner.
‘A moment, sir,’ he whined. He disappeared, only to return a minute later with an expression of resigned failure. The shutter slammed shut and they heard the rattle of bolts before the door swung open, bringing with it a waft of stale sweat, dried urine and sour wine.
‘Stay here,’ Valerius ordered the two men.
‘Our pleasure.’ Marcus grinned.
Valerius removed his helmet and stooped to enter the doorway. Inside, the heat was stifling and the stagnant air thick enough to chew. His stomach rebelled at a combination of filth and suffering and despair that reminded him of the last day in the Temple of Claudius. The jailer proved to be taller than he had appeared, but he walked with a permanent crouch as a result of his long service in the low-ceilinged chamber. For a place with such a terrible reputation, the Carcer was surprisingly small, and made more so by the wooden partition which hid the rear of the chamber. In the centre of the floor a dark, noxious hole had been sunk, and for a moment Valerius’s spirits quailed at the thought that Lucina was being held in the notorious tullianum. Below him was the pit of horrors where the Catiline conspirators had met their end, the African king Jugurtha had been starved to death and the executioners had strangled Vercingetorix, the rebel Gaul who had defied Caesar.