[Gaius Valerius Verrens 06] - Scourge of Rome by Douglas Jackson

covering his stump for days and it was a guilty pleasure to have the mutilated limb massaged and oiled by a slave girl. He tried to recall if Tabitha had noticed the wooden fist. If she had, she hadn’t reacted and she was clearly too diplomatic to mention it. Later, when he lay face down to have the oil removed from his back by a metal strigil, an image of Domitia Longina Corbulo swam into his mind. Should he feel guilty that he hadn’t thought of her for days now? She had sacrificed her future to save him, but the moment she’d made her decision she had reconciled herself to a life without him. His recollection of that last day was of a woman utterly remote, as if his existence were no longer of any consequence to her. He still felt the pain of the realization. Yes, it might have been partly to dull the terrible emptiness of their parting, but he sensed there’d been something else. As if she could only endure her new life if she expunged the memories of the old. Whether Domitian’s assassins succeeded or not, he was already dead to her. They would never meet again.
    When he’d dressed, he walked south towards the market, stopping occasionally to look at a shop or a stall, but with one eye on the people around him. It seemed unlikely he’d been followed, but the cruel reality was that he wouldn’t see the dagger that killed him. Even with Serpentius by his side, one day there’d be someone who was faster or more cunning than those who’d tried before. A troop of exotically uniformed cavalry rode past, hooves clattering on the stone slabs. Valerius kept his head down and his wooden hand covered.
    Ariston waited by the fountain, which, as its name implied, was dominated by a statue of an elephant standing in a pool with water streaming from a lead pipe in its trunk. The fountain was at the centre of a paved square surrounded by columns. Beyond the columns houses and villas clung to a hillside where another pillared roadway snaked its way to a magnificent temple that reminded Valerius of one he’d seen in Athens.
    Ariston stared at him. ‘You have lost your charm?’ He pointed to the Roman’s neck where the wheel of Fortuna had hung.
    Valerius’s hand instinctively went to his throat, but he smiled. The slave girl had been delighted with her unexpected gift. ‘I decided I didn’t need it any more. Sometimes a man must make his own luck.’
    Ariston’s expression said he must be mad, but the Syrian shrugged. ‘You like Apamea?’
    ‘It’s very civilized.’ Valerius smiled. ‘But perhaps a little brash for my taste.’
    ‘You can blame my forefather, Seleucas Nicador.’ Ariston ignored Valerius’s look of disbelief at his unlikely claim to royal blood. ‘He was Alexander’s most successful general and named the city for his fourth wife, a Bactrian with the nature of a bad-tempered crocodile. He loved her despite this, and to prove it Apamea must be bigger and more impressive than Antioch and Palmyra. He ordered a channel constructed that brings sweet water all the way from Salimiye.’ He rose and reached out to slap the elephant’s enormous behind. ‘This was where he kept his five hundred fighting elephants, and those fields we passed with the sheep would once have trembled beneath the hooves of forty thousand horses.’
    Valerius looked up at the sun. ‘She is late.’
    ‘What do you expect?’ Ariston’s laughter echoed round the market place. ‘A girl in a dress shop, of course she’s late.’
    A few men and women appeared and began setting up stalls for the next day’s market. They worked quietly and efficiently, laughing and joking amongst themselves. Valerius noticed the moment several heads looked up in alarm, like deer sensing the approach of a wolf. A heartbeat later he heard the sound of approaching hooves and as he leapt to his feet cavalry troopers funnelled into the square from every side. Squat, narrow-eyed men with fish scale armour, pot helmets and strung bows tensed and ready