watered, but no man will speak to you on pain of death. You will lose all privileges and be held in chains until confirmation arrives from Rome.’
The trek back to Antioch was a month-long torment of pain, filth and numbing boredom for Valerius. Each day his guards placed him in chains in one of the supply carts at the rear of the column and for hour upon hour he would shift from one painful position to another until his entire body became a mass of bruised flesh. At the halt, he would be lifted from the cart barely able to move and placed in an unfurnished tent at the centre of the Tenth Fretensis’s marching camp. The centurion followed Corbulo’s orders to feed him — a bowl of rough porridge and a goatskin of water were thrust through the tent flaps each night — but, whether through neglect or purpose, he was not allowed to wash or shave. After the first week he was ashamed of his stink; by the end of the second he no longer noticed, apart from the sweet scent of decay from the leather socket covering the stump of his amputated right hand. The worst of it was the silence. His guard, well warned of the consequences, never exchanged a word with him, conveying their orders with rough pushes and thumps of the wooden staves they carried. At first, the slaves of the baggage train treated the high-born prisoner with curiosity, but after the first man to get too close had his jaw broken they kept their distance. Only once, on the eighteenth day, did Valerius have the comfort of conversing with another human being. How he distracted the guards Valerius would never know, but somehow Serpentius was able to reach the tent wall and whisper a greeting.
‘Your friends have not forgotten you.’
‘Tell my friends I thank them,’ Valerius smiled for the first time in weeks, ‘but that is precisely what they must do.’
But Serpentius would not be deterred. ‘Tomorrow at noon Caladus and twenty men of his squadron will approach the baggage train for supplies. I will be with them. It will be the work of a moment to disable the guards and put you on a horse. We would be gone before anyone could react.’
‘And then?’
‘Armenia, or Cappadocia.’
‘To be outlaws.’
‘You would be alive.’
Valerius sighed. ‘I brought this upon myself, Serpentius, and I knew what the consequences could be. Tell Caladus and his men that I honour them, but I will not let them sacrifice themselves for me. As for my friend Serpentius, though he has the disposition of a bad-tempered hyena, he should know that I will never forget his companionship and that buried in the corner of my quarters in Antioch he will find a leather bag containing fifty gold aurei, which should be some compensation for all the misery I have brought him.’ Serpentius gave a low whistle at the size of the amount, which was equal to a legionary’s retirement bonus for twenty years’ service. ‘He should use it to toast my memory and then return to the wretched mountains he came from, there to live as a king, or a bandit, as he pleases.’
‘I will use it to toast your freedom.’
‘No, Serpentius. I don’t believe it will come to that. Gaius Valerius Verrens is a Hero of Rome, and he will meet his fate as a soldier.’
‘Then I will use it to finish what Tiberius started.’
‘You would kill my friend?’
He heard the Spaniard’s snort of disbelief. ‘General Corbulo has just sentenced you to death. How can he be your friend?’
‘Corbulo is only doing what he sees as his duty as a commander,’ Valerius explained patiently. ‘Just as Tiberius was doing his and just as I was doing mine when I led three thousand men to their deaths at Colonia. He is a strong leader and a strong leader does not flinch from hard decisions. His anger is as much because I have forced him to this as it is about giving Tiberius a quick death. He thinks I am a fool and I believe he would rather I didn’t die, but…’
‘So you won’t come?’
‘No, Serpentius. I have walked in the shadows for so long that I do not fear what is to come. Sometimes I am tired of life and tired of living.’
‘Then at least take this.’ The tent rustled as something was pushed under the leather. ‘Remember what they did to Tiberius and do not let it come to that.’
Valerius reached down with his left hand and fumbled for the object. His fingers closed over a small knife, such as a lady might use to peel her fruit. Or a man to open his own veins. He loosened the ties on the leather socket over his right arm and pushed the knife down until it was completely hidden before tightening them again.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered. But he might as well have been talking to the wind.
They placed him in a damp, windowless cell beneath the proconsul’s palace at Antioch and he counted the days by the food his jailers provided. Stoicism had been ingrained since his days on Corsica studying under Seneca, and he searched the many texts he had learned by heart to find some positives in his predicament. But, gradually, captivity and solitude took their toll and wore away at his defences. The rattle of the plate heralding each new day was a constant reminder that each might be his last. Like a drowning man clinging to a branch he took to using every moment to go over his life and asking himself what he might have changed. Not his time with Maeve, or the cost each of them paid for it, because some things are as inevitable as the next day’s dawn and their fate had been to meet at a time and a place that invited tragedy. Could he have been more of a son to his father, who had estranged himself from the family for so long? Only by sacrificing the respect that had finally brought them together at the very end, so, again, no. His life, it seemed, had been a series of perpetual dilemmas, and he had followed the only path open to the man who was Gaius Valerius Verrens. Perhaps every man’s life was the same. It meant he could die without regret, if die he must.
He worked the little knife free from the leather socket. He had told Serpentius that Corbulo was his friend, but was that completely true? Could a man so iron-willed ever be said to have friends? Yet there had been nights, as they contemplated the tokens on Caesar’s Tower in comfortable silence, when he had felt an innocent pleasure in another man’s company he had never known before. The mists cleared and finally he realized what it was, this thing that had been gnawing at him. No, he couldn’t have altered the relationship with his father, but he could regret that he had never been able to share the same companionable bond that came so naturally with Corbulo. Strange that he should have more in common with Tiberius, the man he had befriended and killed, than anyone alive.
The sound of the bolt snapping back brought him back to the present. Was this the time? He had the little knife in his hand and now he resolved to use it, not to kill himself, but to force his captors to kill him. Better that than being led docilely to the block like a white bull to slaughter on the temple steps. He gripped it in his fist, ready to take the first man who entered. The door swung back and a hooded figure entered, gasping as he rose up in front of her with the knife in his hand.
‘What have they done to you?’ Domitia Longina Corbulo drew back the hood and stared at the matted beard and straggling hair. The stench in the tiny room made her gag. ‘I came as soon as I could. They discharged Serpentius on the first day. I think some would have had him killed, but my father refused. He took lodgings in the town and found a way to reach me.’
‘You shouldn’t be here. It’s not safe. Did no one tell you that to speak to me was to die?’
Domitia bristled. ‘Of course they told me. Do you really believe that Domitia Longina Corbulo would be dictated to by fools?’
‘It was your father’s order.’
‘Then he is a fool, and I will tell him so. To think that my own father would kill his bravest and best for something as simple as an act of mercy. But you should not have provoked him, Valerius. He means to execute you.’
Valerius nodded. ‘Yes, there will be no pardon from the Emperor.’
‘If I could…’
‘No,’ he said solemnly, reaching out to touch her face. ‘Not even if the outcome was certain.’
A tear ran down the velvet of her cheek. ‘Then I will do what I can, even if it is with little hope of success. Sometimes I think he is a monster.’
‘Not a monster. Only a soldier.’
