Avenger of Rome by Douglas Jackson Page B

man. ‘It was given to me for what the general believed was an act of great bravery. Perhaps you deserve it more.’
    Tiberius looked down at the sword, but his hand didn’t move towards the blade. ‘Even if I were to win the Gold Crown of Valour it would not equal the honour you have already done me. You ask me if you can do me a service?’ He hesitated and shook his head. ‘You will think me less of a soldier.’
    ‘No, Tiberius. Ask what you will.’
    Tiberius took a deep breath. ‘I have never known a man I respect more than Gaius Valerius Verrens, Hero of Rome, and I can think of nothing finer than to call him my friend.’
    Valerius laughed out loud, and felt the stares from the sailors down by the shoreline. Who could laugh at a time like this? But if anything could raise his morale in these dire circumstances it was this competent, agreeable young man, a tribute to his class, believing that his friendship meant something. He held out his right hand and Tiberius took the walnut fist in his.
    ‘Of course, it will make no difference to our military relationship …’ Tiberius stuttered. He was interrupted by a familiar snicker and a substantial form plodded out of the wind and the darkness to nuzzle Valerius’s hand.
    Valerius grinned at the younger man. ‘We needed a gift from the gods and they have delivered one.’ He patted the gelding’s shoulder. ‘Come, Tiberius, we have plans to make.’

XII
    Theatre of Pompey, Rome
    A STORM WAS coming. He could feel it in the tension in the air and the oppressive heat that lay like a dirty blanket over the city, and he prayed that rain would not spoil the entertainment. All around him was a cacophony of noise: how they roared, the common people, and how quickly they forgot. Afranius had written
The Fire
as a tragedy, but an Emperor could not be confined by mere convention and he, Nero, in his wisdom, had reconfigured the play as a comedy. Of all the theatres in Rome only that of Pompey the Great had a stage large enough to contain it. Capable of seating twenty thousand people, the vast semicircular auditorium was filled to capacity, with the front six rows packed with evil-smelling plebeians of the lowest rank, lured by free entry and the promise of rich pickings. For this was a play like no other.
    He loved the theatre, because it allowed him to escape for a few hours from the increasing cares of state. Sometimes, alone in his great palaces, he had the feeling that the walls were closing in on him. He had lived with the scent of fear his entire life; first his own, the unloved child in a house full of enemies. Then the infinitely more preferable scent of other people’s fear as his power and – yes, he would not deny it – his malevolence grew. Other men’s fear gave him an almost godlike sense of omnipotence that he normally only felt on the stage or on the podium. So why was it so different when he smelled the fear on Tigellinus? Because Tigellinus, of all people, had no reason to be frightened of him. If Tigellinus was frightened it meant that Tigellinus felt vulnerable, even threatened. If Tigellinus felt threatened, it was because he believed his position was weak. And if Tigellinus was weak, where did that leave the Emperor who depended on him? It was a question he would never ask the man standing next to him, for fear of the answer he would receive.
    He took a deep breath to still his growing panic and thrust the melancholy thought aside. From his favoured place by the
proscaenium
wall he was able to look up to where the statues of the mere mortals who had dominated this very stage – Aesopus, the tragedian, and Roscius, who had made laughter into an art form – stared blankly from their niches out towards the great pillared temple where Venus Victrix ruled. Surely they would have appreciated the genius of his production?
    The full-sized, five-storey house, a replica of the ubiquitous
insula
apartment blocks that lined Rome’s streets, was blazing