Debt of Ages

by Steve White

  Debt of Ages

  The Disinherited

  Book III

  Steve White

  Content

  Prologue - 491 A.D.2

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Historical Note

  Prologue - 491 A.D.2

  The Restorer was dying.

  I knew him for the Restorer at the moment I first met him, thought Sidonius Apollinaris, known to the world these past eight years as His Holiness Gaius II, keeper of the keys of Saint Peter.

  Behind him stood most of the Consistory, filling the incense-heavy air with that sense of numb disbelief with which the entire Sacred Palace, the entire City of Constantine around it, and the whole of Rome’s reunified and expanded empire beyond that awaited the passing of him who had brought it all back from the edge of the abyss. But Sidonius was aware of none of the overdressed dignitaries with whom he shared the Imperial bedchamber. He stood over the bed and looked down into his old friends face, worn down by war, the cares of empire and sixty-four winters, as well as by the sickness that was killing him.

  The dark eyes fluttered open, glittering with recognition as much as with fever. “Sidonius,” he said in a dry whisper to which he still managed to give a kind of firmness.

  “Yes, Augustus, I am here.”

  The shockingly aged face formed the famous grin whose boyishness had never seemed incongruous and still didn’t.

  “There you go again, Sidonius! I never persuaded you to stop addressing me as ‘Riothamus’ even though I kept telling you we Britons only used the title on formal occasions. And after that it’s always been ‘Augustus’! Will you let me go to my grave still refusing to call me by my name, at least in private?”

  All at once, Sidonius was no longer in the ornate room that the doctors insisted on keeping so stifling. He was on a beach at the mouth of the Loire twenty-two years before, standing in the chill salt wind with the men—all dead now, besides him—who had awaited the arrival of the High King of the Britons whose army was the Western Empires last hope against the Visigoths.

  I can still see the afternoon sun blazing forth through the first break in that day’s overcast as he stepped from the boat, silhouetting him against the divine fire. But that fire burned even more strongly within him, burned with a force that could snatch back that which had been consigned to the irrecoverable past and defy the Fates themselves (as always, Sidonius automatically chided himself for his lifelong weakness for pagan mythology). Yes, he had known that the British ruler with whom he had corresponded was destined to restore the Empire. He had known it with a simple, absolute certainty that, he guiltily acknowledged, not even the Church’s doctrines could inspire in him.

  That moment had remained with Sidonius through all the tumultuous, unbelievable years that had followed. His certainty had faltered that very winter when he had learned of the treason of the Praetorian Prefect of Gaul, whom he had once called friend. (What had his name been? Oh, yes: Arvandus.) But the Restorers destiny was not to be deflected by betrayal, and the matter had been forgotten in the jubilation following the great victory at Bourges. That victory had banished the terrifying Visigothic threat to the realm of old nightmares from which one had awakened. And then had come a potentially disastrous digression, with rebellion calling the High King back to Britain. But he had returned to the continent somehow strengthened by his campaigning in the islands wild western hills. After that, events had moved with the seeming inevitability of a rivers journey to the sea.

  The Restorer had never ceased to insist that he had not sought even the Emperorship of the West, much less of a reunited Roman Empire. Sidonius was inclined to believe him. Looking back, it was hard to see how he could have avoided any one of the steps he had taken, or how each of those steps could have failed to lead to the step that had followed. After his ally the Western Emperor Anthemius had been murdered, Odoacer—who had succeeded Ricimer as Master of Soldiers at Rome—had moved against him. With no alternative save extinction, the Restorer had advanced into Italy, where on the victorious field of Pavia his British and Gallic and Frankish troops had proclaimed him Augustus of the West. That had been in 474, the year the Eastern Emperor Leo had died; his successor Zeno had never acknowledged that he had a legitimate fellow in the West, and after six years of uneasy coexistence had come the inevitable clash. Thinking back, Sidonius wondered how he could ever have doubted its outcome. Me and most of the world, he reflected, which always made him feel a little better. But if his confidence had wavered, his loyalty never had. And when old Pope Simplicius had died in 483, the ruler of the miraculously reunified Empire had let it be known that in his opinion the churchmen and citizenry of Rome could make no better choice for their new bishop than his old friend and supporter, that noted prelate and man of letters Bishop Sidonius of Clermont. For some odd reason they had agreed.

  No, he could never forget those years. Nothing could dim their luster in his memory—not even the uncomprehending hurt and disappointment he had felt all too often during the years that had followed. And he heard himself form the same words he had spoken on that windy beach twenty-two years before, when it had all begun. “Very well… Artorius.”

  The Restorer smiled again. “Better! There may be hope for you yet, Sidonius!” Then he raised a hand from the bed and grasped the papal forearm with surprising strength. When he spoke, the whisper was fainter than before, but not with the faintness of failing strength. No, it was deliberate—these words were for the two of them alone.

  “Sidonius, you will see me again.”

  “Why, of course, Augustus.” Sidonius reverted to formality in his puzzlement. “There can be no doubt of it. We will see each other again, before the throne of God, when—”

  “No!” The grip tightened on his arm, and the whisper took on a compelling urgency. “I don’t mean that. I mean in this life! I’m telling you this because I want you to be prepared, and not doubt your sanity nor fear for your soul. You must dismiss all thoughts of the black arts, and accept what your eyes and ears and mind and heart tell you…”

  The whisper faded to nothing and the grip went slack, for the effort had been too much. Damasius the Syrian stepped forward and examined his imperial patient with that look of sharp concentration which all physicians cultivated, a mask behind which yawned bottomless ignorance.

  “He must rest now, Your Holiness. I fear he has exhausted himself.”

  Sidonius nodded and stepped back from the bedside. Whatever was he talking about? he wondered. Nothing, probably. His mind is going, and he can no longer command it to reason. Not even the force of will which hauled back the outgoing tide of history can hinder death in its work of dissolution.

  “Remember,” he told the physician, “I am to be notified when the end is at hand.” Then he turned from the bed and looked around the room, so very Greek in its massive, mosaic-encrusted sombreness. Equally Greek were most of the men and eunuchs in the room, the high officials of state and church. Then he saw a new face, and he froze.

  It seemed amazing that Acacius could have entered the room silently, moving under the weighty vestments of the Patriarch of Constantinople. Even more amazing was his audacity in being here at all, knowing that the Pope of Rome, his bitterest enemy, was bound to be present. Well, Sidonius thought, his habitual good nature reasserting itself, perhaps he feels
sincere affection for this dying man. Hp certainly has every reason to. And I will not create a scene here!

  He nodded stiffly to the Patriarch, who acknowledged with what he had to admit was probably superior grace. Then he turned and left the room, moving with that natural stateliness that people assured him he had acquired by virtue of the weight he had put on in recent decades. I hope that’s true, he thought as he made his way along corridors and past the occasional statue-like figures of white-uniformed Scholarian Guards. It would be good to have some recompense in exchange for wind and vigor! But I mustn’t complain. At fifty-nine I should be thanking God that I’m still alive, not whining to Him about the loss of youth.

  He reached the top of the marble stairs that led down from the imperial apartments to the first floor. Here hp paused, and gazed out the wide windows that gave light to the landing. They gave little light now, for it was approaching twilight. Sidonius looked out at the terraced gardens that sloped down to the Sea of Marmara, where lights were winking to life on passing ships. He liked this view, for the palace itself and the adjacent hippodrome blocked from sight the teeming hive that was Constantinople.

  At one time I dared hope that he’d move the principal Imperial residence back to Rome, where it was in the great days before the world began to go wrong, when the first Augustus ruled as Princeps among his fellow citizens, not as an Asiatic god-emperor inhabiting a world of ceremony and splendor far above his subjects’ cringing heads. But Rome was always hopeless as a location for the Imperial capital, from the military standpoint. The logistics were all wrong. And, of course, most of our wealth and people—and our most dangerous enemies—are in the East All of this was as true for Artorius as it had been for Constantine. As in everything else, he made the only possible choice.

  Later, though…

  At first Artorius had been a breath of fresh air in this place. But then the wind had settled, and everything had been as before: the eunuchs, and the ceremonies and hierarchies they had devised and eternally elaborated (A substitute for what they’ve lost? Sidonius wondered); and the clerks and notaries who did the everyday business of the state with an inefficiency they defended with a stubbornness fit to shame the Saxons, for any change could only be to their disadvantage. There’s no way the empire can function without them, Sidonius reflected bleakly. No one else knows how to play the games they themselves have invented for the purpose of making themselves indispensable.

  He sighed and shook his head. He shouldn’t complain about the way the restored empire was governed. It’s like my advancing age, he reminded himself. Consider the alternative! No, the decisions that had wedged him and his old friend apart over the last few years had concerned not the things of Man but those of God… “Sidonius! Your Holiness, I meant to say!” Sidonius turned and smiled at the man bounding up the staircase. The clouds lifted from his mind for the moment. It was impossible to stay depressed around Ecdicius.

  “Noblissimus,” he greeted, using the proper form of address for the heir to the Empire.

  “Well, now that we’ve got all that out of the way— greetings!” Ecdicius reached the landing, not even breathing hard after an ascent that would have reduced Sidonius to a state of gasping exhaustion, and clasped forearms with his brother-in-law. Ecdicius flashed the smile that transfigured his engagingly ugly face, and Sidonius reflected as always on how much he was like his adoptive father the Augustus.

  Ecdicius had not yet reached adolescence when the twenty-year-old Sidonius, scion of another of the aristocratic Gallo-Roman families of their set, had come to seek the hand of his older sister Papianilla. Sidonius still thought of him as the wiry, restlessly energetic boy for whom the villa in the Auvergne had seemed too confining. God, what a brat he was, he recalled, in the wake of every man who ever courted a girl with a younger brother. But that boy had survived the whirlwind of events that had soon followed—his father Avitus’ brief reign as Augustus of the West and subsequent murder, and the “Marcelliana” conspiracy in which Sidonius had almost been implicated. And later, in his mid-twenties but already grown into the kind of man that other men instinctively follow, he had raised a private cavalry unit that had distinguished itself at the Battle of Bourges. He had subsequently become one of Artorius’ leading cavalry officers, with a reputation for taking hair-raising risks and emerging alive through sheer dash. When the childless Restorer had found it politic to adopt an heir, he hadn’t found the choice a difficult one.

  “I got back as quickly as I could,” Ecdicius said, sobering. “I wouldn’t have left for the Danube a fortnight ago, except that he seemed to be getting better and insisted that I not let it disrupt my schedule. Of course, when I heard he had taken a turn for the worse…” He indicated his dusty, travel-worn clothes. “How is he?” Without waiting for an answer, he abruptly started in the direction of the imperial apartments. Sidonius placed a restraining hand on his arm.

  “Sleeping now. You can’t get in to see him, so you may as well change and rest.” Ecdicius nodded, but continued to move, pacing as though to vent his excess vitality.

  Sidonius couldn’t swear that he had ever seen Ecdicius hold still, and it was no different now that he was in his late forties.

  “Come with me to the Daphne Palace,” Sidonius continued, gesturing at the garden vista outside the window and to the right, toward the residence that had been placed at the disposal of the Pope and his entourage. “We can dine… and we need to talk. Acacius has been hovering like a circling vulture. I fear that he and his supporters are planning some move after Artorius is…” He let the sentence die.

  Ecdicius’ face grew stormcloud-dark, and he unconsciously gripped the hilt of the cavalry spatha that never left his side. “I can’t imagine what he thinks hell be able to pull off, after I assume the purple. Maybe he hopes to take advantage of a confused transition.”

  “Well, then, we must assure that the transition is a smooth one,” Sidonius declared as the two of them descended the stairs. There was still just enough light to see by, and the spring night was warm. So they didn’t wait to summon lantern bearers but proceeded toward the Daphne unescorted, through gardens that the dusk transformed into a realm of pagan enchantment and mystery, its deepening shadows inhabited by nameless dangers…

  Ridiculous! Sidonius chided himself. What danger can there be in the grounds of the Sacred Palace? But for once he felt no inclination to ask Ecdicius to slow his pace in deference to the papal dignity and years.

  Ecdicius seemed oblivious to the frisson Sidonius felt, for he alternated between brooding and talking. “What can Acacius and his lot possibly hope for?” he wondered aloud. “Maybe they think they can persuade me to inaugurate my reign by calling a new Council, where they can do even more harm than was done at the last one…” He cut himself off. “I know, Sidonius. I shouldn’t speak ill of him, at this of all times. But we wouldn’t be worrying now if he hadn’t made that snake Patriarch of Constantinople again! And some of his other appointments… !” Bewilderment entered Ecdicius’ voice. “Why, Sidonius? What’s happened to him over the last few years?”

  “Well,” Sidonius spoke in the conciliatory tones of lifelong habit, “we can hardly blame him for the Council of Chalcedon. It was in 451, when he wasn’t even High King of the Britons yet That was where the great mistake was made, declaring the See of Constantinople equal to that of Rome, even though our Lord expressly delivered the keys of the Kingdom into the hands of Peter…” Exertion overcame indignation, and he had to pause for a gasping breath as he tried to talk and keep up with Ecdidius at the same time. “Well, at least they did one thing right at Chalcedon by rejecting the Monophysite heresy But later it came back to haunt the East.”

  “Yes… with Acacius carrying its standard! I tell you, Sidonius, I can’t understand it! That devil-begotten ‘Declaration of Union’ Acacius drew up in 482 was one of the reasons for Artorius’ final break with Zeno, Acacius’ patron. After he’d won, Artorius tore it up and deposed Acacius as Patr
iarch. So why, just four years later, did he restore the goat-bugger to the Patriarchate?”

  Sidonius frowned. A prelate of Holy Church—even Acacius!—was entitled to a certain respect. He was framing a stern admonition when the four darkly cloaked figures stepped from the bushes ahead of them and deployed across the pathway.

  Ecdicius wordlessly motioned Sidonius back and laid his hand on the hilt of his spatha. He cast a glance backward and Sidonius, following it, saw that three more strangers had blocked the path behind them.

  One of the quartet to their front stepped forward and spoke in cultivated Latin. “Noblissimus, a plot against you, and against the sacred person of the Augustus, has been uncovered. I must ask that you accompany us to a place of safety.”

  ” ‘Uncovered’ by whom?” Ecdicius inquired as he unobtrusively twirled his cloak around his left forearm. He did not draw his weapon—none of the strangers had— but he stood in a fighting stance that was as relaxed-seeming as his voice, and measured distances with his eyes. “Who are you, and who sent you?”

  “That is immaterial, Noblissimus. For the safety of the Empire and Holy Church I’m afraid I must insist that you cooperate.” He gestured to his followers, and swords appeared with a scrape of metal.

  Sheer, flabbergasted outrage brought Sidonius out of shock. He stepped forward to stand beside Ecdicius. “How dare you?” he thundered—or intended to thunder, but it came out closer to a gasp. “As you hope for salvation, I command you to let us pass!”

  They evidently recognized him. Blades wavered, and one of the men turned to the leader and muttered something. Sidonius couldn’t understand it, but he recognized the bastard Greek of Constantinople’s slums. The leader snarled back in a Greek that was educated enough for Sidonius to follow. “You cowardly dung-eaters! Take both of them!”