‘Stop that bitch!’
Valerius took in the scene in a heartbeat. Ruth’s long legs flying as she closed the gap between them. The Praetorians just twenty paces behind, Rodan at their head, impossible to outrun, and, even with Serpentius at his side, impossible to outfight. Behind him, he heard more shouts. They were trapped. The day by the river flashed through his head. In the same instant he saw the flames climbing Cornelius Sulla’s body. Lucina naked in the cage. A girl and her baby torn to pieces by wild beasts. There was no time for panic. No time for indecision. The despair that was tearing him apart had to be pushed to the darkest recesses of his mind. He had only seconds. He reached below the cloak.
Ruth’s body collided with his, her arms searching for him. He caught her and held her; felt her softness and her warmth and the agitated fluttering of her terror. She looked into his eyes and behind the tears he saw a mixture of fear and love and hope. He wanted to tell her how he could have returned her love. He wanted to tell her… instead, he thrust the dagger in his left hand up below her breastbone and felt the moment it entered the pulsing life force of her heart.
The hazel eyes opened wide as she felt the cold iron and a numbing blow to the chest that froze her rigid. Valerius watched the light within first brighten, then fade.
‘I’m sorry.’ The whispered words were the last thing she would ever hear. Valerius twisted away and melted into the crowd in front of the still dancing bear.
For a few seconds Ruth stood swaying, kept upright only by will, before her body collapsed just as Rodan arrived at the head of his men. Valerius would have stayed, tortured by the need to be close to her, but Serpentius dragged him cursing towards the main road. Before they were out of sight, he turned to take one last look at the pathetic bundle lying in the street like a heap of blue rags. He heard Rodan raging at the dead girl, before the Praetorian pulled back an iron-shod foot and kicked her unprotected face. ‘Christian whore!’
Somehow the assault on her lifeless body seemed more of an outrage than the thrust that killed her. Valerius’s heart turned to stone and his mind cried out for revenge. Beneath the cloak he drew his sword from its scabbard and moved towards the Praetorians.
‘No!’ Serpentius caught his shoulder. ‘No point in throwing away your life as well as hers.’ He dragged Valerius towards safety.
Behind them Rodan belatedly realized the girl couldn’t have killed herself. ‘Close off the street,’ he shouted. ‘No one is to leave the area.’
But it was already too late.
XXX
I had no choice.
He remembered an earlier Valerius, a whole Valerius, who had told himself those very same words and done what was right. In the end, the result had been the same.
They would have taken her and burned her, or fed her to the wild beasts. I had no choice.
But he did have a choice. He could have fought and he could have died saving her.
And when they had killed me they would have put her to the torture.
Still, he could have chosen to kill Ruth and die avenging her; that, at least, would have been an honourable end.
But it would have meant abandoning Olivia and my father and condemning twenty thousand innocent people.
Coward! The word rang through his brain like a clash of swords. Maeve, the British girl he had loved and betrayed, had called him a coward. Was it true?
No!
Coward!
‘Valerius?’ The voice came from a different world and ended with a choked gasp as his left hand found the speaker’s throat. He opened his eyes to see his father’s face darkening above him, the rheumy eyes bulging. Just for a second, he blamed Lucius for Ruth’s death and might have squeezed harder, but the moment passed and he loosened his grip. The old man retreated from the bed massaging his throat. He stared at Valerius as if he didn’t recognize him. Six years earlier he had sent a boy to become a man with the legions. The boy had returned a warrior. Now he realized just what the warrior was capable of and it frightened him. But it wasn’t the hand on his throat that had frightened him most. It was the look in his eyes. Valerius had become a killer.
‘I’m sorry, Father. You startled me.’
Lucius forced a smile. ‘Not so much as you startled me, I think.’
The closed shutters kept the room in darkness, but the temperature and the light squeezing through the gaps indicated some hour around mid-morning.
‘You must not blame yourself.’
Valerius shook his head. I killed her. How could I not blame myself?
‘She went of her own free will and knew the risk she took.’
He felt the anger rising within him again. ‘Did they also take Petrus?’
‘I do not believe so.’ Lucius hesitated. ‘Someone would have sent me word. It was his way to let the faithful gather before he arrived. It was more secure.’
Valerius didn’t hide his bitterness. ‘So he used them as bait in a trap. He used Ruth as bait in a trap? What would your compassionate Christus have made of that?’
Lucius turned his face away. ‘Petrus is more important than any of us. Than all of us. Without Petrus the faith would wither and die. He is the keeper of the truth.’
‘Tell me about him.’
The old man hesitated. Keeping the secret had become a habit.
‘When your mother died at least I still had my ambition and my son, who would make that ambition a reality. Olivia married well, you went to Britain with your legion and I was content.’ He saw the look in Valerius’s eyes. ‘I know what you think of me, Valerius. I know that you laughed at my hopes and only accepted your part in them out of duty. This family once figured among Rome’s great, and I was determined that we should do so again. Seneca, who is my friend, said he would help me.’
Seneca, Valerius thought, like a spider at the centre of a web, manipulating all around him. And at what price?
‘Then Olivia’s husband died, and you returned from Britain, a hero, but a part-man. I looked at you and I saw a candle starved of air, a life flickering on the brink of extinction. You have recovered your health, but when I look into your eyes I know that they have seen too much and you have suffered too much. You will never be the same again, my son, and for that I blame myself. You were changed, but you were not quite lost to me; not yet.’ Valerius opened his mouth, knowing what was coming, but Lucius raised his hand. ‘No, let me speak. I will come to Petrus in my own time. I searched Rome, and the provinces too, to find a suitable husband for your sister, but I did not have enough to offer them. Who would want an alliance with an old man who last had influence in Tiberius’s time? Without mortgaging the estate, the dowry I could offer was not attractive. Olivia is beautiful, but that means nothing to the powerful families I courted. It was Seneca who found Calpurnius Ahenobarbus.’
Valerius sighed. ‘A man as old as you are,’ he pointed out. ‘With a face like a starved warthog and a reputation for degeneracy that would not have shamed Caligula.’
‘A rich man,’ Lucius countered. ‘A man with connections to the Emperor. She should have obeyed me — I am her father. Instead, she shamed me. And you supported her.’
Valerius nodded. ‘And support her still.’
‘Finally, I had lost everything. A razor and a warm bath seemed more welcome than another day of life. Next morning Granta brought the girl to the estate. A gift from a friend.’
‘Ruth.’ Valerius struggled to keep his voice steady.
‘She was different from the other slaves. Something inside her shone.’ Lucius sniffed. ‘How does one define goodness? She sensed my emptiness and she came to me when I was alone amongst my olive trees. At first I sent her away; I did not want whatever it was she had to offer. But she persisted. She too had lost everything, she said, but her God for ever walked by her side and she would never be alone. He protected her from the evils without and within. The temptations of the earthly world and the weakness of her own body. I too could receive her God’s protection. She spoke of a man called Petrus.’