Valerius shook his head wearily. How could he have taken so long to make the connection? ‘Today I’ve been buried alive and almost drowned, but I’ve just realized that the worst is still to come.’
XXXV
Theroom looked and felt different. How could that be in so short a time? Murals he had always regarded as artistic and exotic now appeared merely vulgar and lewd. In the harsh light of day the wall hangings and the furniture seemed tired and worn. The scents which had once made his senses reel were no longer sweet, but cloying, and only just masked the unmistakable musky odour of the aroused men who queued here to couple with her. Fabia looked different too. She had lost the last bloom of youth in a few short weeks. The powder on her face was no longer to enhance her beauty, but to camouflage the lines in the corners of her eyes. Flesh that had been taut and firm had taken on the pasty texture that came with separation from the fine bone structure beneath. A new face. A middle-aged face. She sat on a couch opposite him, straight-backed and refusing to meet his gaze. ‘You had no right to come here without an appointment.’ Her voice sounded like ice cracking in a frozen stream.
‘You have never complained before.’
‘You have never come here coated in filth and stinking like a sewer cleaner. You have never forced your way past my doorkeeper while I was entertaining a friend. Now I will have to have him whipped for failing in his duty.’
Valerius laughed, remembering the scene; the outraged underling and the semi-tumescent senator making his escape still dressed in the distinctive robes of a Vestal virgin. ‘Your doorkeeper or the friend?’
She hissed like a snake. It was clear that everything they’d had was gone, but now he asked himself if it had only ever existed in his imagination.
‘You called me here last night for a reason.’
She darted a glance in his direction, but looked away before he had the chance to read its meaning. ‘To enjoy your company and exchange gossip. You were once an entertaining companion, although it is difficult to believe now.’
‘I remember the verbal exchange as very one-sided.’ Now his voice was as cold as hers. He should have felt hatred, or perhaps pity, but instead an empty space lay where his heart had been. ‘You were keen to hear the latest news of my quest for Petrus, and interested in each and every detail about the theft from the water castle.’
‘We were friends then. Friends are interested in each other’s lives.’
‘What we talked about was known only to Honorius the water commissioner and two men I trust with my life.’
‘Hired thugs, you mean.’
‘Perhaps, but men I can trust — as I once trusted you.’
He saw her face go pink beneath the powder. But was it anger or fear? Then she smiled at him and he was almost disarmed as the beauty shone from her like the sun breaking from behind a cloud.
‘Oh, Valerius, is that what this is about?’ she said lightly. ‘You would take a mercenary’s word against mine? Who is to say that old Honorius, a man who has never been known to speak one word when ten will do, did not blurt out your plans as he devoured one of his legendary midday meals? Surely that is not enough to break up our friendship.’
Valerius rose from his couch. ‘I suppose it is possible that Honorius might have talked to someone, but how did the Praetorians react so quickly? They were exactly where I thought I would find Petrus an hour before we were.’ He was behind her now, caressing her neck as he had once done to give her pleasure.
‘But of course they would be. Torquatus does not want you to get the credit for hunting down the Christian.’
‘Yes,’ he said, and she knew a thrill of fear as his voice hardened again and his left hand twisted in her hair and yanked her head round to face him. ‘But that doesn’t explain why Torquatus has been one step ahead of us ever since Nero gave me this task. It doesn’t explain why Cornelius Sulla and Lucina were arrested when the only people who knew what was said were Gaius Valerius Verrens and the lady Fabia Faustina. That’s right, Fabia. I didn’t even tell Marcus and Serpentius what passed between Cornelius and me. Only you. You betrayed them.’ His grip grew tighter and she cried out with pain. ‘You condemned them to the stake and the cage. You condemned Ruth to death too, because Lucina told Torquatus where the next meeting was to be held.’ She struggled, but he kept his grip. ‘And you betrayed Olivia and my father, and for that I can never forgive you.’
‘ I saved your father! ’ Fabia’s shout echoed from the walls. Valerius hesitated, reluctant to believe her, but he knew the truth when he heard it. He relaxed his grip and she collapsed sobbing on the stone floor.
‘You saved him?’
She raised her head and her eyes were filled with an explosive mixture of pain and shame and righteous fury. ‘Yes, I saved him. Saved him from Nero. Saved him from Torquatus. The doddering old fool would have been dead a month ago if I had told Torquatus everything I knew. I saved him today when I sent a slave to warn him not to go to the Christian ritual.’
‘But…’
She fought to regain her composure. ‘It’s true that I told Torquatus about Cornelius and Lucina, just as I have told him most of what you tell me.’
Valerius shook his head. He’d known it since the moment he’d seen Rodan waiting for them, and perhaps for much longer, but part of him still didn’t believe it.
‘Why? Why would you betray me? We were…’
‘Friends? I thought that once, Valerius, but would a friend have accepted my love without any intention of returning it? While I lay there thinking of you as my lover, you never thought of yourself as anything more than my client. A caring, affectionate client, perhaps, but a client all the same. Think. Does that make you better or worse than a degenerate like Posthumus in his pretty dress? He pays me and takes what he has paid for. You pretended you were my friend and used me just the same. Which of you made me more ashamed of what I am?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and he truly was, but there were things he had to know. ‘That still did not give you reason to betray me.’
‘No. It did not. I have known shame since the day Seneca destroyed my father and forced him to send me to that place, but I buried my shame deep and I disguised it with a smile. I had manners and beauty and I learned quickly and that saved me from the worst of it: the lowborn and the dangerous with their stinking breath and their dirty crawling hands and hungry mouths. They kept me for people like you — arrogant, perfumed patricians with power and money. I learned about power and I learned how to part you from your money and in time I was able to buy myself out and set up here. But the shame remained, Valerius. I knew I had lost my honour and that I would never marry, and I gave up hope… until I met you. When you came to me I understood that here was someone as broken as I. Britain had come close to destroying you, just as what I am had come close to destroying me. Your missing hand was as much a burden as my lost virtue. So I allowed myself hope, until I realized that hope was in vain.’
‘I didn’t know about Seneca. If I had it might have been different.’
Her face transformed into a bitter smile. ‘No, Valerius, because you think of Seneca as your friend and Gaius Valerius Verrens stands by his friends. If you learn only one lesson from today, let it be never to trust your friends.’
‘But Seneca didn’t betray me, you did, and Seneca is not my enemy. So who is?’
She shook her head again. ‘Still so loyal, Valerius. Who has most to gain if your father dies, and his son is implicated in his plotting? Ask Seneca about the marble. Ask him about the geological survey he has just had carried out on his estate. The estate which borders your father’s.’
Valerius remembered the day Honorius had congratulated him on Lucius’s good fortune and another building block fell into place.
Fabia nodded. ‘Now you understand. But you are right, Seneca is not the man you must fear most. That man is Torquatus.’