Claudius by Douglas Jackson Read Free Book Online Page B

thirty miles beyond the river.’
    ‘Then we may lie safe in our beds?’
    ‘But, lord . . .’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘They have bent a monster to their will.’
    Caratacus made the sign and despite himself he felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. He asked the question, but he did not want to hear the answer. ‘What kind of monster have the Romans bent to their will?’
    ‘A dragon, lord – a mighty dragon that breathes smoke and fire.’

VI
    The Senate was well attended when Lucius Arruntius Scribonianus was condemned. Claudius counted no fewer than nine former consuls from his elevated position above the throng, not to mention the cream of those of senatorial rank, though a few were missing who would normally have been there to witness the spectacle.
    He looked down at the shrunken figure who had been dragged before him. What changes six months in prison could impose upon a man, even a proud man like Scribonianus. Claudius had seen men broken in body by torture, but he had never seen anyone quite so broken within . He remembered Scribonianus as a solid, almost portly figure, swelled by his own vision of his importance. Now his features were sunken, the ravages he had suffered written plain on the stark bones of his face. The governor of Illyricum; he had come so close, so dangerously close. With three legions he could have swept down from that place where Strabo said, curiously, that the natives lived in caves beneath their dung heaps, and taken Rome in a day. Only the Praetorian Guard would have stood between Scribonianus and the purple, and Claudius doubted they would have stood for long against twenty thousand veterans.
    He realized he’d slumped lower in his seat as his thoughts wandered, and he straightened, attempting, no doubt in vain, to make his features look more imperial. It should not be so difficult; he did, after all, have the blood of Augustus running through his veins. Concentrate. By now Seneca had abandoned wit for bile, and was excoriating Scribonianus as a traitor and a coward. You could always depend on Seneca to frolic at the feet of power like some faithful puppy, ready to beg or roll over at the first sign of a sweetmeat, or cringe if he was shown the whip. He had become a little too familiar of late. Perhaps Valeria Messalina was right and it was time to send him back to Corsica?
    He wished they would get on with it. Scribonianus looked as if he was going to die of his own accord. Three legions had joined him in the revolt, their officers seduced by promises of loot and advancement. But he had waited too long. Dilly-dallied nervously in his Dalmatian fastness until they sensed his lack of resolve. Still, they might have followed him, but for Narcissus. Claudius smiled to himself. He was always amazed by the brilliant and ruthless intellect hidden behind that benign, almost childlike face. The Greek’s spies had brought word of the revolt almost before it had begun.
    Clever Narcissus, who always knew which to bribe and which to threaten. Within a week of his clandestine arrival in Illyricum, the legate of each legion was persuaded his interests lay in supporting the Emperor. Scribonianus was hunted down in a shepherd’s hut as he attempted to flee to the mountains. Since then he had spent each day being peeled of information, one painful layer at a time; friends, relatives, casual acquaintances, fellow conspirators, he had eventually implicated them all. The soldiers, naturally, were safe from punishment. No point in throwing rocks at a hornets’ nest. Those without influence – including, of course, the innocent but expendable – would die forgotten in the mines. But Scribonianus had not acted without allies in Rome, and that accounted for the gaps on the senatorial benches. Claudius was surprised how much the rebellion had unnerved him, yet now his enemies were unmasked he felt more confident; he would be able to face them one by one. They awaited his pleasure. Did that make him strong,