you. Does Torquatus know how much it is worth? Of course he doesn’t. If he did both estates would be confiscated by the state and Torquatus would already be sleeping in your bed. But did you really think you could trust him?’ Let Seneca think the Praetorian prefect had betrayed him. The truth was that Torquatus liked to boast, even to a woman he believed he owned body and soul.
Seneca was too astute to deny the fraud. He knew the two papers screamed his guilt as clearly as a written confession. All that remained was the court’s sentence. ‘It would be a pleasure to kill you, old man. A little more pressure and you will lose consciousness; then it would be a simple act to drag your carcass through to the bath and slit your wrists and allow the Fates to choose whether you drown or bleed to death.’
The philosopher bridled. ‘If I am going to die,’ he spluttered, ‘then at least do me the courtesy of making it look like murder. Thrust deep and let no man believe Lucius Annaeus Seneca took his own life in despair.’
‘I have a friend who would beg me to take that advice, but I have another use for you.’ He loosened his grip and Seneca collapsed forward, coughing. Valerius showed him the dagger to let him know the respite was purely temporary and produced another pair of scrolls from inside his tunic. He picked up a block of wax from a table at Seneca’s right hand and allowed it to melt over an oil lamp so it would drip on the top scroll. ‘Your seal. Quickly now.’
Seneca frowned, but complied. He tried to read what was written on the parchment, but Valerius whipped it away before repeating the process with the second.
‘Two scrolls,’ he explained. ‘Both witnessed by you and two others, both recounting the tale of your deceit, including the parts played by Saul of Tarsus and Torquatus, commander of the Praetorian Guard. Enough to have all three of you executed. If anything happens to me or my father one scroll will go directly to the Emperor, the other to the Senate.’
Seneca flinched, but a surge of relief made him feel quite giddy. He was going to live.
Valerius picked up the geologist’s report and the forged transfer paper and held them over the candle, only dropping them when the flames reached his fingers.
The philosopher watched with a puzzled frown. ‘What will you do now, Valerius? You are a rich man, or at least a rich man’s son. The money that lies beneath that hill would guarantee you a place in the Senate. With your intelligence, money and the right friends who knows what you could achieve? A consulship, given time, certainly.’
Valerius marvelled at the conceit of the man. ‘I will do what Nero has commanded me to do. I will find Petrus and I will deliver him to the Emperor.’ He saw the disbelief in Seneca’s eyes. ‘Not for you, or for him, but for the twenty thousand innocents who will die if I do not deliver him. Do you think he would count it a good bargain, your Christian? His life for twenty thousand others. Would that not place him even above his master, the Messiah?’
‘Yes, he would count it a bargain.’ The deep voice came from behind them. How long had Saul been listening? Had he been prepared to watch Seneca die without calling for help? Valerius decided he had never met anyone quite so ruthless.
The Cilician continued: ‘Of course Petrus would welcome the opportunity to give his life for others. My brother in Christus has so much to atone for, after all. But Jesus died for all men, my young friend, not for a mere twenty thousand. If you can find him, Petrus will be a willing sacrifice. But first you must find him.’
XXXVII
The earth was angry today, snorting steam like breath from a hard-ridden horse.
Quintus Corbo often rode out to the little height two miles from Neapolis to gaze across the garlanded crescent of the Campi Flegrei. Perhaps great Homer had stood here looking out to Puteoli and beyond, over the glittering expanse of emerald and blue waters to the pretty little harbour town of Baiae and the naval base at Misenum. Certainly the poet had known of the Phlegraean Fields, because he had written of them in his Odyssey, where they had provided the inspiration for the forbidding lair of Polyphemos the Cyclops. More recently Puteoli had known fame as the harbour from which the Emperor Gaius Caligula had built his three-mile bridge of ships in a show of manic extravagance that had done as much as anything to bring him to his just and painful end.
Emperors and their peculiarities were on Corbo’s mind today, but that was not what brought him here. He regarded himself, perhaps unjustly, as little more than an enthusiastic amateur in the science of natural phenomena, but the gods had placed him in the best position in the entire Empire to witness it, here in the gigantic boiling pot of the ash fields. Epicurus of Samos had first expounded the theory that the explosive underground activity in and around the Mare Nostrum was a direct effect of air penetrating deep into the earth and taking on a new and ferocious energy which made it more dangerous than any other element. The only reason the entire world did not explode was because of the phenomenon he was witnessing at this very moment. When a certain amount of violently disturbed air had amassed in cavities below the surface, the earth allowed it to escape through fissures and boreholes, thus relieving the pressure. He had walked in the foul-scented hills behind Baiae and seen the hundreds of hot springs and sulphur pools where the escaping gases created great jets of super-heated steam that dotted the landscape, which the uneducated sometimes mistook for giants. Normally this manifested itself in a low fog, but today it appeared the entire peninsula was on fire.
A slight shudder made his horse skip beneath him. That was another sign that the trapped air was attempting to find a way out, but it was such a common occurrence that he barely noticed. The tremors had become more frequent in the past few days, but even Corbo’s scientific mind had failed to register the fact.
That might have been because of his other concerns. Everything had to be perfect for the performance the following night. Corbo had recently been appointed one of four aediles in Neapolis and good fortune had given him responsibility for presiding over public entertainments rather than, the gods forbid, the workings of the sewers. The city boasted one of the finest theatres in the Empire and he took great pride in the events he sponsored there. Neapolitan audiences were notoriously difficult to please and regarded themselves as the most cultured of the Empire’s citizens.
And the Emperor undoubtedly agreed. Because tomorrow night he would be performing in front of them. If anything went wrong, Corbo knew it would be the death of him.
He frowned and scoured his mind. They had been preparing for months, but was there anything else he could do? The theatre manager was an arrogant pedant, but he knew his job and was as aware as Corbo of the price of unforeseen disaster. He had made certain that every seat would be filled, and filled with men and women who had reason to love their Emperor. To doubly ensure the reception was nothing less than rapturous Corbo had recruited a thousand young men of artistic disposition who had been tutored in the various proper forms of applause; bombi, imitating the drone of bees; imbrices, the beating of a hollow vessel with a thin stick; and testoe, which was similar to imbrices, but with a more bass sound. These he would strategically position in groups of fifty around the theatre to sing the Emperor’s praises at the appropriate moment. Members of the city guard would be on each of the gates to bar known malcontents. The programme itself was a carefully guarded secret, with each performer sworn to silence. They had been chosen for their aptitude rather than their brilliance. There could be only one star in this firmament.
He sighed and turned his horse back towards the city. No, there was nothing he could do but say a prayer and sacrifice a lamb to the goddess. If Minerva could not help him, no one could. The scent of juniper drifted to him on a light breeze from the great conical mountain on whose lower slopes he rode. He smiled. It was a comfort to live in the shadow of such a beautiful, benign and fertile giant.
Lucius dabbed at his daughter’s brow with a cloth as the covered wagon lurched through the mountains. The sheet covering Olivia’s body had become soaked with sweat and heat radiated from her flesh as if from an open fire. From time to time small moans of discomfort escaped her desiccated lips and he felt the guilt like a nail scraped across the inside of his skull.
For the hundredth time he repeated the prayer, calling on his lord God to give him the strength to endure. Of course he regretted her ordeal, but he couldn’t regret the impulse that had made him bring her. It would have been much easier if the ceremony had gone ahead in Rome, but the message he had received had been unequivocal. Olivia moaned again, almost a squeal, and he placed a jug of water against her cracked lips and poured a little into her mouth. He knew her suffering increased with every mile they travelled on this rutted track, but she must endure as he must endure. They were being tested, but if Olivia survived the test she would be saved, one way or the
