Saviour of Rome [Gaius Valerius Verrens 7] (36 page)

Serpentius opened his mouth to deny them his permission, but shut it again like a bear trap. Nothing he could say would make any difference. Julia wouldn’t change her mind and Tito was just as capable as his father in this country. He knew the hidden valleys and barely passable heights that would keep him out of reach of Harpocration’s patrols.

Valerius reached out to lay his left hand on Tito’s arm. ‘Look after her.’

‘Of course.’ The young man nodded and walked away to arrange the horses and an escort.

‘I have only met your father once,’ Valerius said to the girl. ‘But my advice would be not to push him too hard. He is under great pressure and if he feels trapped he may react in a way you don’t anticipate. If he refuses, be prepared to walk away.’ He hesitated, but it had to be said. ‘It is possible that you could be going into danger.’

‘My father would never harm me.’ She said it with force, but he had a feeling she wasn’t so certain.

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ he said gravely. ‘But you will think on my words?’

She gave an apologetic nod and turned to her horse. Like many women aristocrats Julia was perfectly at home in the saddle, though she rode aside, with one leg hooked over the pommel beneath her skirts. Tito helped her into her seat.

Valerius returned to Serpentius’s side and they watched the little group of riders pick their way up the hill as they headed south. The Spaniard’s lined features looked set in stone.

‘It’s never easy to watch others ride out to do a task you think you should be doing yourself,’ Valerius consoled his friend.

‘For twenty years and more I thought I was alone.’ Serpentius struggled to control his emotions. ‘If my dead wife and child appeared in my dreams I drove them away. I allowed myself to care for no one and nothing. In the arena, I stayed alive to spite the people who placed me there. When you took me from it and gave me hope of freedom I had to choose between life and death. I was forced to remember that I once had a reason for living. I chose life, but hardened my heart against compassion and friendship. Only when our lives became intertwined and the fates brought death so close I could feel the scent of it, did I understand that, even if friendship with a Roman was not possible, perhaps comradeship was. When comradeship develops into brotherhood a man would have to be a fool to refuse it.’ He turned and looked
directly into Valerius’s eyes. ‘Yet you are not my son, Valerius. A son is the mirror in which you can see all your triumphs and mistakes. A son is your despair and your hope. A son is everything you wished you could be and an accusation of all you are not. And that son, Valerius, is such a son as any man would pray for. For twenty years I did not know he existed. He was nothing to me. Now I do not know what I would do if anything were to happen to him. Even seeing him ride away is tearing my heart out. To think that he would never return—’

‘He will return, Serpentius.’ Valerius looked up to where the little group was disappearing over the horizon. ‘Tito is as capable as you,’ his face split into a grin, ‘maybe more capable. It will take more than Claudius Harpocration’s hook-noses to bring him low. And he too has something to protect.’

A snort of laughter burst from Serpentius; he wrapped an arm that felt like an iron ring around Valerius’s neck. ‘You think me old and spent, Roman. Well, we will see about that. There are fields to dig and wood to hew. Anything to take a man’s mind off the waiting. By the time we’re finished we will see who is old and spent, eh?’

Tito and his band approached Fronton’s estate from an entirely different direction than the night they’d carried out the raid on the villa. Fronton would undoubtedly have discovered where they’d left the horses and his guards would take particular notice. This time a great circular loop brought the Zoelans to an almost imperceptible track that led through the hills from the west. The approach also had the advantage of being covered by a low hogback hill that would give them a vantage point to check out the villa before Tito decided whether Julia could go ahead.

Not, she’d made him aware, that he was likely to have much say in the matter.

During her time in Avala they’d been together often, but neither had shown the inclination for deep conversation. It was as if, Tito thought, they had been gauging the effect of close proximity before taking the next step. They had begun at a discreet distance but the gap gradually closed until they could smell each other’s scent. At this point Tito found himself, almost without his own volition, taking a daily visit to the stream that irrigated the settlement’s fields. Julia gave no outward sign of approval, but he took the fact that her nostrils no longer twitched at his presence as progress of a sort.

They talked, but not about important things. After the first days she’d
come to regard her captivity as an adventure to be savoured rather than an ordeal to be endured. She’d been frightened of his father, of course, who would not be, but from the first she’d sensed something in him – Tito – that made her feel safe. From the first time he’d seen her he’d felt a protective instinct. He would have killed anyone who’d touched her. Even his father? The question had been accompanied by an impish sideways look. His father would never harm anyone innocent or helpless. He hadn’t been sure that was true, but he was certain Serpentius would never harm Julia.

The only serious exchange occurred after the massacre when Julia had recovered from her faint. She’d been devastated by what had been done to people who, whatever their circumstances, came from the same lineage as her own.

‘What did they do to deserve such a fate?’ she’d asked.

With anyone else he’d have been angry. What did she mean by ‘deserve’? What could someone do that would justify being hounded from their homes and slaughtered? That was when he’d told her about the gold and her father’s part in the plot to steal it. How Claudius Harpocration and his Parthian butchers carried out the bidding of the men involved. At first she’d refused to believe him, but gradually realization replaced disbelief – she’d experienced her father’s changing moods and odd absences – and was followed, in that mercurial way she had, by resolve. He must be saved if that were possible, but even if he could not be saved this must stop. Would he help her?

The long ride to her father’s estate had provided a different opportunity. As the hours passed and the endless miles flowed by, her thoughts had moved on from what was to come in the hours ahead, to what might become of
them
. It had taken him a number of miles to understand what was happening, but gradually he became aware of what she was saying to him.

They led different lives, yes, but that should not matter to what might happen in the future. She talked of her life, and his, and of Rome, the unifier. He bridled: Rome was no unifier, Rome was the enemy.

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘That is the way it has been in the past, but you
have to understand, Tito, that Asturica Augusta is not Rome. This is not the way it has to be. My father might be little more than a country gentleman, but he has entertained some of the most important men in the Empire – senators and governors – and I listened to what they had to say. The Empire offers possibilities, it offers opportunity, it offers stability. It is not in the Empire’s interest to have this constant enmity and conflict. Of one being the aggressor and one the subdued. I have travelled to Gaul, where the Gauls live their own lives and cling to their old ways and their old gods, and are allowed to do so within reason. Yes, they pay taxes to Rome and their lives are bound by a legal system created by Rome, but Gauls sit in the Senate beside Romans born on the seven hills. They have the power to change the laws they live by. Hispania Tarraconensis could be like that, but not if Melanius and Severus have their way.’

She drew in her horse and stared at him. ‘If we can stop them, Tito, the people of this land will have an opportunity to petition Rome for change, but it cannot just be left to the
ordo
of Asturica Augusta. It must be an alliance of
all
Asturians, the people of the hills and the plains, as well as the people of the cities. That means brave men must be prepared to come forward to represent their people. Men like you.’

Tito felt the blood rush to his face at the mix of emotions she ignited within him. Was this what she really thought of him? Some kind of hero? He wanted to be the man she noticed, but he knew he was not. She’d seen the way the others deferred to him and thought he was a leader, like his father. But he was only a leader because he could knock the others down with fighting sticks when they were practising spear craft. Because he could climb faster and jump further than any man in Avala.

‘I would not know what to say,’ he kept his tone light. ‘I have never travelled further than Asturica or Legio. It is my father you should try to persuade, a man who has known emperors and generals and spoken to them as an equal.’ She grimaced at him and turned away and he sought to ease her disappointment. ‘Only a few days ago his friend, the Roman Valerius, told him of changes the governor in Tarraco had
spoken of. Something called
civitas
that would be extended beyond the cities.’

Julia brightened. ‘Don’t you see, Tito,
civitas
means Roman citizenship for the people of Hispania. Citizenship opens the door to the opportunities I spoke of. Those with the resources, the access and the ability will be able to rise under Rome, and with their rise will come the power to change and improve the lives of those around them. It does not have to be the way it is.’

‘I will think on it,’ he said, and they rode on in silence.

They reached the top of the rise with an hour of daylight left. The villa complex lay at the centre of a huge bowl laid out before them, ringed with orchards and olive groves strung with grape vines. Below them a track hugged the bottom of the hill before curving away through the fields to the villa. Julia had already decided she would wait till dusk to make her approach. Her arrival at that hour would give her the rest of the evening to persuade her father. If she succeeded, she would slip out in the morning and bring the documents to Tito. It would not be easy to persuade her father that cooperation was in his best interests, but she was sure that given time she could convince him. There must be no interruptions, she insisted, so Tito agreed to stay with the others and wait for her signal.

She remounted as the sun began to set and he watched her ride down the hill towards the villa with a feeling of loss.

Her arrival provoked a flurry of activity. Someone ran from the gatehouse to the main entrance of the villa and Tito saw a little knot of people emerge. He had a sense of great agitation before they disappeared back into the villa and a groom led the grey away in the direction of the stables.

He sat back, but with no sense of relief, and his eyes never left the villa. Soon would come the moment of greatest danger. Julia loved her father with a daughter’s sense of fidelity, but he’d gained no sense of that love being returned. Her mother had died four years earlier and since the age of thirteen Julia had acted as her father’s housekeeper and hostess. She blamed her mother’s death and a series of poor
harvests for Fronton allowing himself to be enticed into becoming part of Melanius’s conspiracy. There had been dinner parties attended by Melanius, Severus and Ferox, the
praefectus metallorum
, whom she described as ‘repulsive’. ‘He looked at me as if I was a piece of meat,’ she said. They drank far more than in her mother’s time and she’d had to be quick on her feet to avoid the prefect’s clutching hands. Her father had only laughed. How would he react to this appeal to ally himself with their enemies, from a daughter he appeared to regard with little more affection than a valued house servant?

As the stars made their appearance and the night sky turned from dark blue to inky black he made his decision. He slithered back to where Placido sat in the darkness holding the horses.

‘Stay here with the others,’ he ordered. ‘I’m going down to keep a watch on the villa.’

‘You said you’d wait for her.’ Tito detected disapproval in his tone.

‘She thinks he’ll hear her out and that’s it.’ Tito tried to justify his decision. ‘He’ll either agree and hand over the scrolls, or not, in which case he’ll let her return to us. Have you ever heard of this kind of thing having such a simple outcome?’

White teeth showed in the darkness. ‘No. That’s why I ended up down the mine.’

‘Give me one of the torches.’ A shadowy figure loomed out of the darkness and Tito took the torch, a short length of branch with a bundle of wool wrapped in rags and covered with pitch.

‘If there’s trouble I’ll wave this twice. When you see the signal bring my horse down to that clump of bushes at the bottom of the hill.’

‘The girl?’

‘If it comes to it he’ll have to carry us both.’

‘Let us hope it doesn’t come to that.’

Placido waited for an answer, but Tito was already gone, in total silence and at disquieting speed.

Julia emerged dripping from the bath with the help of her personal servant and lay face down on a marble table while the girl oiled and massaged her skin. She was glad her father insisted she bathe after the uproar of her return. She’d been overwhelmed by the tearful welcome from the servants, and his veiled hints about any ill treatment she might have suffered. The bath gave her time to think.

The slave girl’s hands were smooth and expert as they kneaded the muscles of her back. Julia felt a tingle in her lower stomach as she wondered how Tito’s strong, callused spearman’s hands would feel on her skin. Eventually she could take no more and asked the girl to remove the oil.

As the curved blade flowed across her body she mustered the courage to make the approach that had seemed so simple when she was with Tito at Avala. Perhaps it was because courage seemed to come so easily to Tito and his father that she’d felt driven to make the offer, but it seemed much more daunting now she was here. She tried to summon up Tito’s face, but the only image that appeared in her mind was her father’s gaunt features. He seemed to have aged ten years in the past six months and he appeared more nervous than relieved at her return. And she was about to make it worse.