Free Sword of Rome by Douglas Jackson

joined in the toast, laughing with the rest.
    An aide moved to allow Valerius to squeeze in beside his old friend on a bench designed for three, and below the table he slipped a well-stocked purse into the folds of Vitellius’s toga. ‘Perhaps this will help keep the manure at bay for a little longer,’ he said quietly.
    The new governor of Germania Inferior studied him like a long-lost son and his eyes turned moist. Valerius knew that his friend was busily weighing the purse in his hand and would by now have calculated its value to the last
as
. He saw the deep-set eyes narrow, then widen, and finally Vitellius gave a roar that made all five of his chins quiver like waves in a storm. Valerius felt himself engulfed in two enormous arms and drawn into a suffocating embrace. Eventually, Vitellius released him and they sat back, each studying the other with a mixture of pleasure and wariness.
    They had first met in a riverside fort on the Dacian frontier when Vitellius cheerfully admitted trying to have Valerius killed, then almost certainly saved his life by offering him a position as military adviser when he left to govern his African province. He had changed little since their eighteen months together in Carthage. His thinning hair was mostly gone now, and he was perhaps a little heavier around the middle – hardly surprising in a man who could eat three large meals a day and still be demanding more when everyone else was crouched in the
vomitorium
. Many made the mistake of confusing fat with foolish and lumbering with slow-witted. In fact, Vitellius’s bumbling self-mockery disguised a shrewd brain that the Emperor Claudius had recognized by making him consul. He had been a friend and intimate of Nero, but, as the Emperor’s power waned, he had hidden away on his estate until Servius Sulpicius Galba had called him back to service. It was Vitellius who had revealed to Valerius that Otho’s evaluation of the situation in Rome was flawed, and that there could be no transfer of power without the help of both Praetorian prefects, and Vitellius who had arranged the meeting in the Palatine dungeon with Nero’s former favourite, Tigellinus.
    Vitellius fumbled the purse into a secure position and murmured his thanks. ‘You would think a man of any intelligence could not fail to return rich from his province, but I was struck down with an almostterminal case of honesty.’ He shook his head in mock sadness as he repeated the refrain Valerius knew so well. ‘After all those years of avoiding it, my conscience finally caught up with me. How could any man let those people starve?’
    Valerius knew of many governors who would cheerfully have watched their people starve, and profited from it by raising the price of what little wheat was left. Instead, Vitellius had purchased grain from Rome at exorbitant prices and had it shipped over to Africa at his own expense. It had made him hugely popular among his citizenry, who had petitioned Nero to recompense him, but a laughing stock in the Imperial capital. He was still waiting for his money. ‘And now you have an Emperor’s confidence again.’
    Vitellius gave him a shrewd look. ‘Perhaps you know more than I do. I have my appointment and an opportunity, that is true, but who is to say why it has been offered.’ He raised the silver cup and drank deeply, wiping his lips with the back of a plump hand. ‘My predecessor, Capito, despite his mistimed and fatal hesitation, was a man of action, which I, let us be quite open, am not. He was also a man of means, which I,’ his moon face split into a grin, ‘notwithstanding some recent good fortune, am patently not. Therefore, by our new Emperor, I am seen as harmless, perhaps ineffectual; a man more likely to shout “Bring us more wine, you lazy bastard”’ – the tavern owner laughed and added another three jugs to the table – ‘than “Let us march on Gaul”. Yet he may have mistaken me. I am not without ambition.’ He