Falco stood on the main street outside the goldsmith’s shop alongside Corvinus. Normally a hundred people would be in this section even at this hour, buying or selling or just looking. Now it was eerily silent. An empty wicker birdcage rolled back and forth outside one of the other shops and the curtain flapped in an empty doorway.
‘It would be my privilege, Primus Pilus.’ Valerius bowed. ‘And perhaps you would do me the honour of inspecting mine.’
The militia commander looked pleased at the compliment. Strange that the years seemed to have dropped away from him during the long, punishing night, while the goldsmith’s burden appeared to have doubled.
They walked towards the Forum past Lucullus’s townhouse and Valerius remembered the day he’d read his father’s letter pleading for his return to Rome. A shiver ran through him and he looked up at the sun rising strong and bright over the roof of the great temple. It brought back memories of other suns; fierce Tuscan suns and suns glittering on the azure sea at Neapolis, the sun on his back when he had made love to his first woman and the sun that had highlighted the stark bones on his mother’s face a week before she died. There had been so many suns. Would this be his last?
Falco said sadly, ‘My slaves buried the amphorae with my best wines in a pit outside the east gate. I didn’t have the heart to smash them and watch all those years of effort go to waste. A pity you didn’t arrive a few days earlier — we could have given them the send-off they deserved.’
‘Anything is better than leaving them for the Celts,’ Corvinus said bitterly, and Valerius wondered what he’d done with the accumulated treasures and profits of nine years. Buried, most likely, somewhere safe where he could recover them if… He realized he’d not seen the gold-smith’s wife among the women in the carts. But then there had been so many.
They reached the temple precinct where Lunaris and the soldiers from the Londinium garrison were already working to reinforce the main gateway.
‘I want every spare weapon brought here. Spears, swords, bows, even stones, anything that can stop a man.’
‘Petronius has the key to the armoury,’ Falco pointed out.
Valerius called for his clerk. He scrawled something quickly on a wax tablet and handed it to the wine merchant. ‘This is my order to open the armoury and empty it. If he refuses or attempts to delay, break down the doors. Lunaris!’ he roared.
The big man laid down the baulk of timber he was carrying towards the gate and jogged across to them. ‘Sir,’ he acknowledged, his broad face shining with sweat.
‘Water?’
Lunaris frowned. ‘There’s a well in the far corner and a tank in one of the buildings on the north side that’s fed by a bucket chain from the river. Only Mithras knows how long we can depend on them.’
‘Not for long. Get some men and gather every amphora you can find. I need them filled and sealed and then stored inside the temple with a guard over them. Food, too. Have every house searched and what food there is brought here.’ He studied the sun again. Its heat was already making the red-tiled roofs of the temple complex shimmer. ‘And make sure every man has a full water skin. I don’t mind if they die but I don’t want them dying of thirst.’ He saw Lunaris hesitate. ‘What?’
‘The temple. We’ve been having a problem with the priests. They don’t want to let us near the place and the Mules are frightened they offend the god. We can’t even get into the offices and stores.’ He nodded to the buildings of the east range, where two white-robed men stood outside a doorway watching the soldiers suspiciously. Something else he ought to have thought of, Valerius realized. He should have insisted the augurs and their masters were evacuated with the convoy.
‘Leave the priests to me,’ he said and marched off towards them.
Lunaris grinned. Suddenly he felt a little sorry for the bloodsucking chicken murderers who’d been making his life difficult all morning.
Valerius recognized the younger priest as the augur who had refused payment for telling his future seven months earlier. What was it the man had said? You have much to gain but more to lose if you continue along the road you have chosen. Well, he had gained Maeve and then lost her. He had followed his road here, where there was more to lose still. He knew the perils of meddling with the imperial cult. Retribution was more likely to be earthly than divine and the punishments were very specific, very painful and very permanent. But he had a more immediate concern. He had been ordered to defend Colonia, and defend it he would. Even if it was only this small portion of it. At any cost.
‘You are in charge of the temple?’ he asked the older of the two, a bulky man with thinning fair hair and frightened eyes that never stayed still.
‘Marcus Agrippa,’ the priest said, as if his name should be familiar. ‘I have responsibility for the temple of Divine Claudius and I must protest at the high-handed manner in which your soldiers are desecrating this sacred ground. I intend to write to Rome, sir,’ he blustered, ‘and I will mention your name.’
Valerius smiled coldly and looked around to where Lunaris was now jogging up the temple steps with an amphora under each arm. The younger priest recognized the dangerous change in the atmosphere and stepped away from his colleague.
‘By order of the governor, this temple and everything and everyone in it are now under military authority.’ He had no orders from the governor, but compared with sacrilege it seemed a minor offence. ‘I’m sure Divine Claudius as a military man will understand. You are obstructing a vital military operation and under military law may be subject to summary justice. What’s inside here?’ He pushed between the two men and shook the door, which was solid and obviously locked.
‘That is a private area,’ the older priest cried. ‘There is nothing of military value there.’
‘Let me be the judge of that.’ Valerius put his foot to the wooden panel and the lock snapped, allowing the door to swing open. He looked inside. ‘You will take every piece of furniture and every carpet, every statue and every wall hanging and carry them to the temple. Tell the tall soldier there that I want the area between the columns fortified around the area of the pronaos.’
‘But this is…’ the priest protested.
Valerius very deliberately slid his sword from its scabbard. The gladius came free with an ominous whisper and the edge glinted blue in the morning sunlight. ‘Perhaps you did not understand the meaning of summary justice.’
The priest’s mouth dropped open and he scuttled through the door, from where there came the satisfying sounds of furniture scraping on the mosaic floor.
‘What are you waiting for?’ he growled at the young augur.
‘I wondered where I could find a sword, sir,’ the boy said, nervously eyeing the gladius.
Valerius almost laughed, but he knew that would have shamed the lad. Courage could be found in the most unlikely places and he had need of all the courage he could get. He had another warrior. ‘Well…’
‘Fabius, sir,’ the boy volunteered.
‘Well, Fabius, when you’ve finished here talk to Lunaris at the temple. Tell him I said to station you in the pronaos.’
He walked the seventy paces back to the temple studying his surroundings, seeking out anything that could give the defenders an advantage, or any vulnerable point where the enemy could gain one in their turn. The front wall with the gateway in the centre was the most obvious weakness and therefore the most likely place the Britons would attack. So, when the time came, if he was still alive, that was where he would place his strongest force and he would use that wall to wear them down. He would keep a strong reserve — he shook his head. How could he use a word like strong in a situation like this? As strong as he could afford, then — by the temple steps ready to react if the barbarians broke through anywhere. Yes, he was satisfied he could make them pay dearly for the front wall.
But there were four walls. What about the east, west and north? He considered the east first. Sturdy single- storey offices and storerooms beneath a tiled roof that pitched upwards and ended where it met the wall, which on the sheer outer face was higher by far than the combined height of two men. The north? He realized there was a gap in his knowledge and abruptly changed direction and marched out of the front gate to make a circuit of the outer walls. The inner wall was a continuation of the covered walkway which also included the west side of the precinct but outside, he noted with satisfaction, it backed directly on to the slope which fell away to the flat meadows that edged the river. An enemy without siege equipment would have to be very determined to climb the
