meeting place?’
Valerius shook his head. ‘No. One place is as good as another and the busier the better.’
‘The Emperor will demand a swift resolution, but despite what I have told you Petrus will not be an easy man to find,’ Seneca warned. ‘In six months Torquatus and Rodan have not even come close. Your investigation must be taken one step at a time. This will be your first step.’ He gave Valerius a name which surprised him. ‘You will wish to begin as soon as possible.’
Valerius knew when he was being dismissed. He had a dozen questions he would have liked to ask, but he doubted Seneca would answer any of them. They embraced as if they were father and son and as Valerius rode off towards the Via Salaria he pondered the astonishing name Seneca had given him.
And the biggest surprise of all: the description of Christus’s Rock, the man called Petrus, who sounded exactly like Joshua, the doctor in whom he had placed his faith.
Seneca was still standing in the doorway when Valerius passed out of sight.
‘Do you think he suspects?’ The quiet voice came from the shadow behind him.
‘No. He is an honest, straightforward young man. He will complete his task or die in the attempt.’
‘Then may he live long enough to complete it.’
Seneca turned to face the man who could have been a younger version of Petrus. ‘You realize what this could cost? Nero will have no mercy.’
‘We must all make sacrifices. Those who die will have died for Our Lord. Petrus is a good man but he is too soft to lead us to the Promised Land.’
‘And he favours a different path?’
‘Just so.’
‘You are a hard man.’
‘Just so,’ Saul of Tarsus said again.
XII
Poppaea fought the familiar animal squirm of panic. Everywhere she went she felt Nero’s eyes on her. But he couldn’t know, because if he truly knew she would be dead. Or worse. Yet even that was of no consequence, because soon she would be free and nothing they could do to her would matter. Just one more step. One more simple act, and it was done.
Loneliness and fear had been her lot ever since her father had married her off at the age of seventeen. She had been young and naive, a pretty plaything who knew nothing of the natural bounds of marriage or the power a wife might hold if she only understood her strength. Instead, she had submitted because her husband said she should, even when she knew it was wrong. Each night she would endure the pain and self-loathing that went hand in hand with the acts she was forced to perform for him. Each night she would cry herself to sleep. That should have been enough, even for him, but of course it was not. She thought she had married a strong man, but events had proved that what she had taken for strength was mere bravado, and what she had thought was courage only a disguise for bluster. A coward and a braggart who had bragged once too often.
What a fool she had been the night they were invited to the palace. She had been excited, proud that the man who ruled their Empire should seek the company of her husband, even a husband she had grown to hate. That was the first night she’d felt the little eyes roving over her skin, and later the hands, cold and clammy, the way a snake should feel, but does not, slithering across her breasts and her belly and… And later? Later he had watched again, those same eyes glittering as her husband used her. Yes, used. Not slept with, or made love to. Used. And when her husband was finished with her, he was ready. She knew that to refuse him was death, but she almost did. Almost. When that barrier was broken the rest was just more of the same. The servants and the slaves and the soldiers who shared the wide bed. And Otho, her husband, had rejoiced because he had the Emperor’s favour and the Emperor’s favour meant power and riches. And, though he was too foolish to understand it, danger.
Three months later, Torquatus had sent for Otho and ordered him to divorce her. She remembered the day he returned from the palace, his face the colour of dead flesh, hands shaking and eyes glazed with terror. Not out of concern for her. Not because he was going to lose her. But because he feared for his position and his life. She had despised him then and she despised him now, cowering in his Lusitanian exile praying for a speedy return to the inner circle, which would never be forthcoming as long as she had influence. She had been glad to be rid of him. Oh, what a fool she was.
Now she lived behind a mask, as much an actor as the man whose bed she shared. A better actor, she hoped, because her life depended upon it. She gave him everything he wanted, because it meant nothing to her now, these physical acrobatics and pointless, almost laughable penetrations, but it was never enough. It had been her initiative to introduce Fabia, though Fabia wasn’t aware of it. Fabia who had taught her to live with Otho’s demands, and eventually how to satisfy them. With Fabia, she could find comfort as well as pleasure, a hand to hold when it all became too much and a shoulder to cry on when it was over. Yet even to Fabia she could not speak of the true depths of her despair.
It had been a mistake to make an enemy of Torquatus. She had underestimated his ability to slither, serpent-like, through the long grass of palace politics. He had supported Octavia against her while Nero’s first wife still retained some of her power and it had only seemed right that she should undermine him. A few quiet words in the sultry aftermath of passion should have been enough. A suggestion of eyes lingering too long, perhaps a touch that could not be disproved, and she believed he would be gone. But that was not Nero’s way. Her husband’s greatest pleasure was to pitch those around him against each other in a never-ending dogfight that ensured the master was always in control. Now, with Octavia dead, Torquatus had made it his goal to either remove Poppaea or possess her. She didn’t know which she feared most.
She had sacrificed to the gods for her salvation, and when it became clear they had failed her she had considered — planned — her own death. Cornelius, who had been as much a prisoner as she, had shown her the path she must take. Why had she confided in Cornelius? Not because of the puppy eyes or the pretty smiles and prettier compliments. No, there had to be something more. She had recognized it on the night Nero’s degeneracy had reached its shameful low and he had placed her at the disposal of a pair of enormous Nubians for the entertainment of the narrow-eyed perverts who clung to him like leeches on a swollen leg. The memory of it made her gorge rise, but it had been then that she had seen the pain in Cornelius Sulla’s eyes and behind it discovered the tenderness and compassion of a good man. Here, at her lowest, most degraded point, she had found the only person on the Palatine she could trust.
Cornelius had opened her eyes to a world beyond her own world and a god who would not forsake her. It had been he who engineered her meeting with the Judaean who had spoken to her of Christus, the Messiah who had sacrificed himself for the good of all mankind, and of the god, the true god, who would protect her and keep her safe even as her body was being abused and her mind driven to the edge of madness. Despite her initial doubts about a religion which at first seemed exotic, if not outlandish, she had found herself persuaded by the old man’s luminous integrity. She had feigned illness to create a pretext for the meeting, convincing her ladies that if the Emperor discovered the true reason for her visit to the Greek physician, his reaction might endanger them all. Once inside the treatment room, the Greek had been replaced by the man Petrus. She had listened and she had believed. The truth was that she needed to believe. He had placed his hand upon her and she had felt energized in a way that astonished her. She had seen the light. She understood the truth. Now she had only one more step before she would be welcomed into God’s company. But how would it be achieved?
Petrus had said he would make the arrangements and she had placed her faith in him. That had been weeks ago. Lately, she had sensed that the surveillance within the palace had become more intensive. Was it her imagination, or were the slaves hovering a little more closely and her ladies more attentive? Cornelius would barely meet her eyes, and when he did she had seen the fear and the puzzlement in his. Her saviour was as trapped as she was.
A tear ran down her cheek as her eyes lighted on the painting that covered the wall of her room. It was her escape from everything that happened here in this palace that had become her prison. A country scene, a sunlit villa on a hill overlooking the sea. Her villa. The villa where she had grown up. The place where she had last been happy. She closed her eyes and she was back in the long pool in front of the house with the sound of the waterfall soft and
