I had never really confided in anyone before, save Procopius, and I had always been careful to feed him carefully selected bits of information. Procopius was a friend, but also a clever and self-interested man, and his first instinct was to use people to his advantage.
Arthur knew nothing of his family on my side. I had told Elene a fair deal, in the days when we were lovers, but she chose to keep her son in ignorance of his distinguished British ancestry.
He devoured the tales of his namesake, my grandsire, and of the glorious line of ancient British princes we were descended from.
“This sword,” I said, running my hand along the gleaming blade of Caledfwlch, “has dropped in and out of our family’s history. Nennius took it from Caesar, and then the enchanter Merlin gave it to Arthur. My mother gave Caledfwlch to me, and so, when the time comes, it shall pass to you.”
I weighed the sword carefully in my hands. “It has always been the most precious thing in my life. I went to the far ends of the earth to retrieve it from the King of the Vandals. I believe the soul of Arthur resides inside the steel.”
On impulse, I held it out to him. “Take it.”
Arthur gaped at me, and at Caledfwlch. His face was pale and washed-out from sickness. “No,” he said weakly, “I can’t take it now. When you are gone, maybe…”
“Now,” I said firmly, “I was never fit to wield Caledfwlch. You are Arthur’s true heir.”
He required some persuasion, but eventually consented to take the sword. I could sense he wanted it for himself, and was anxious to avoid causing any jealousy or resentment by making him wait for his birthright.
In truth, I was weary of the responsibility. Caesar’s sword was a heavy burden, and I had always felt like a mere guardian rather than its owner. A stopgap, until a better man came along. Now he had, in the person of my son.
Arthur reverently took Caledfwlch. The pale morning sun caught the polished steel. For the second time in my life I saw Caesar’s sword burst into silvery flame, a nimbus of light that rippled up the length of the blade and surrounded it in a kind of unearthly glow.
“The Flame of the West,” I muttered. Caesar’s sword bore many names, and now it had another.
The moment was spoiled somewhat when another spasm gripped Arthur’s belly, and he was obliged to turn away to dry-heave over the side. I hoped it wasn’t a bad omen, and patted him on the back until he had finished retching.
You may think me a fool for returning to Constantinople, where I had made so many powerful enemies. Perhaps I was foolish, but I was also sick of running, and living in fear of the glut of degenerates who governed the Empire.
There is a deep core of stubbornness to my character, and I had rejected my old notion of fleeing, beyond the borders of Rome. I gambled on being no threat to the likes of Antonina and Narses now, and of no interest either. Merely an ageing ex-soldier, looking to live out his declining years in peace. Besides, Constantinople had been my home since childhood, and I wanted to see it again, the jewel of the civilised world.
A plan was forming in my mind. By the time the walls and towers of Constantinople came in sight, and our little ship was rowing carefully around the edge of the great fleet nestling in the harbour of the Golden Horn, it was complete.
I would use my money to set up as a horse-dealer, one of the most profitable trades I knew, and supply beasts to the army and the merchant caravans that frequently passed through Constantinople. Not the most honourable trade for the descendent of princes, perhaps, but I was done with honour. It was a foolish conceit invented by those who knew nothing of the world, and the true character of mankind.
Done with honour, and war, and politics. The whole messy, bloody business.
For a time, God granted me the peace I craved. But nothing in life is permanent, and no man can elude his destiny.
20.
I remained in Constantinople for ten years, with Arthur at my side. My money from the Italian campaign purchased a fine set of stables on the Asiatic side of the city suburbs, including training grounds and a paddock.
As an ex-cavalry officer, I knew something of horses, and bought decent stock from stud farms in Hispania and North Africa. I bred and raised foals for the chariot races in the Hippodrome, for merchant caravans, and for the army, which had an inexhaustible need for cavalry mounts.
These were good years, perhaps the best of my life. As I hoped, my enemies no longer had any interest in me, and were too embroiled in their own affairs to waste time persecuting nonentities. I heard of the various court scandals and intrigues from afar, and thanked God I was no longer dragged into them.
I forged a successful working partnership with my son. At first he was wary of me, which was only natural, considering the lies Elene had fed him about his father. I took various measures to win his trust, including giving him a share in the business, a degree of responsibility, and a stipend to live on.
Perhaps I was too generous, and left myself open to being exploited, but Arthur never looked to take advantage. He was an easy-natured youth, quiet and hard-working, and never complained or demanded more than I gave him.
I never really got to know him. Even when we were alone together, sharing a last cup of wine after dinner before retiring, I was conscious of a certain reserve. Maybe it was due to his strange upbringing, wandering from place to place, always among strangers, always wondering where the next meal would come from, but he never revealed his inner soul. The gates to his true self were firmly locked and barred. I could only hope, as the years passed and he ran out of reasons to distrust his father, that one day I would be permitted to enter.
For much of this time, the Empire was at war. Shortly after being recalled from Italy, Belisarius was sent to fight the Sassanids. Under the leadership of their cruel and ambitious ruler, Nurshivan, the Sassanid armies had burst over our eastern frontiers like the pent-up waters of a great dam, flooding Roman territories and threatening to overrun the whole of Syria.
The Roman general entrusted with the defence of the region, Buzes, collected his forces at Hierapolis. After making a speech, exhorting the soldiers and citizens to fight to the last, he fled at night with a few attendants, leaving them to face the fury of the Sassanid host. Hierapolis fell, and the great city of Antioch, and many other Roman towns and cities.
Dire rumours reached Constantinople of the fate of our citizens in the East. Nurshivan was a merciless pagan savage, and committed terrible massacres, regardless of age or sex or degree. After the destruction of Antioch he stripped naked and bathed in the waters of the Orontes, as if to say this was his territory now, and he might do as he wished.
“Only one man can halt the progress of Nurshivan,” said Procopius over dinner one evening, “Justinian knows that, and will pack Belisarius off to the East without delay. He is taking me with him, so we may not see other again for a while.”
He was still a friend, and occasionally visited us when he could spare the time. Belisarius owned an estate at Rufinianae, barely a mile from my house. Procopius usually resided there, attending on his master and secretly working on his own history of our times.
This was a year after the end of the Italian war. I had not seen Procopius since leaving Italy, and a definite change had been wrought in him. He was always lean, and full of manic energy, but now there was something else: a kind of desperate, feverish intensity that seemed to be eating away at him from inside.
“You don’t look well, my friend,” I remarked, which was an understatement. He looked half-starved. The tendons on his scrawny neck stood out, and there was not an ounce of spare flesh on him. He picked restlessly at his food, speaking too quickly and eating too little.
“I am perfectly well,” he snapped, “never better – never better! It is the Empire that sickens. Can you not see it, Coel? Can you not smell it? The stench of decay and corruption. It is all around us. It hangs in the air over this benighted city like a cloud, carrying plague and damnation and hellfire. Hellfire!”
<
br /> His knife stabbed at a slice of chicken, missed, and almost overturned his bowl.
“You still can’t wield a blade, then,” I said drily, and was gratified to hear Arthur laugh. We were alone, just the three of us, seated on couches in the triclinium of my modest house.
Procopius sniffed, and crammed the morsel of chicken into his mouth. “You may jest,” he grumbled, still chewing, “but it is the laughter of the damned. So might the Greeks have laughed while Athens burned, or the citizens of Carthage, even as Scipio’s legions battered down their gates.”
Arthur sat upright on his couch and peered out of the window, which commanded a good view of the Bosphorus. “I see no enemy fleets sailing up the Horn,” he said lightly, “should we sound the alarm? Is the city threatened with imminent invasion?”
Procopius frowned horribly, stretching the too-tight yellow skin of his face. “Ignorant boy,” he snarled, “have you read no history? Every great empire eventually destroys itself from within.”
He leaned in closer, until I could smell the foul taint on his breath. “The Eastern Empire will go the same way as the West,” he hissed, “unless God sees fit to strike down Justinian and his whore of a wife. They are an evil couple, sent by the Devil to destroy the last outposts of civilisation with their venality and blatant injustices. Theodora has turned the imperial court into a simmering nest of slaves and vipers and profiteers – a veritable Sodom, the canker in the bosom of the Roman Empire!”
I held up my hand. “Enough,” I said patiently, “I won’t have that sort of talk in my house. It is treason.”
He sneered at my cowardice. “I seem to recall you were happy enough to commit treason in Italy.”
“I made a mistake. Belisarius lied to me, and I was fool enough to believe him. Afterwards, I swore to never again put my faith in so-called great men, or dip my toe in politics. I’m sorry, Procopius. If you speak of such matters again, I will have you ejected from my house.”
He growled and mumbled for a bit, but made no objection when I steered the conversation into calmer waters: the weather, my recent profits, the lamentable state of a recent shipload of mares from Hippo Regius.
Procopius’ illness and foul temper stemmed from his disappointment in Belisarius. Like me, he had trusted the general, and hoped he would restore the former glory of the decaying Roman state. Belisarius’ military victories had blinded us to the weaknesses of the man.
He continued to adore his wife, even though her affair with Theodosius had become the scandal of the age, and in doing so made himself ridiculous. The conqueror of North Africa and Italy, reduced to a hapless cuckold.
Fortune had deserted him. His reward for his loyalty in Italy was to be despatched to the East with a small and inadequate army. He had won great victories against the odds before, but Nurshivan was no fool, and refused to encounter the Romans in the field.
With half a mind on his wife’s infidelity, Belisarius fought a desultory campaign. He eventually managed to push the Sassanids back into their own country, and bring Nurshivan to the negotiating table. A treaty was signed, whereby the Sassanid king promised not to attack Roman territory for five years.
The wax was hardly cooled before Belisarius hurried back to Constantinople, to finally confront his faithless wife. I had forbade Procopius from uttering treason in my house, but it was difficult not to be fascinated by the morsels of court gossip and scandal he fed us.
“Belisarius is a broken man,” he confided to us during one of his infrequent visits, “would you believe, while in the East he tried to cultivate the friendship of Photius! He imagined Photius would help him bring about the downfall of Theodosius. Oh yes, our golden general finally accepts the truth of his wife’s infidelity. How he wept over her! It was pathetic to witness. Shameful. A great man and a great soldier, reduced to slavery by a woman.”
Photius was the son of Antonina, a deceptively godlike young man who had done his best to kill me, in the days when I mattered to the great ones of the Empire. I was astonished to hear Belisarius had forged an alliance with such a worthless character.
“So low had he fallen,” Procopius continued, “and has fallen lower still. I overheard his confrontation with Antonina.”
“Eavesdropping,” remarked Arthur. Procopius glowered at him, but went on with his tale.
“He accused her of betraying him, and making him a laughing stock. She stood firm against the assault, and responded with a sally of her own, claiming that Belisarius owed her his life and career. Justinian, she said, was unimpressed with her husband’s performance in the East, and had been on the verge of recalling him and accusing him of treason.”
“Only Antonina’s intervention – so she said, with that winning smile of hers – had persuaded the Emperor to relent, and saved Belisarius’ head.”
I could well imagine Antonina playing our endlessly suspicious little Emperor like a lyre, but thought Belisarius far too shrewd to be manipulated.
“Surely he did not believe it?” I exclaimed, “Justinian would not dare touch Belisarius. The general commands the loyalty of the army, and the love of the people.”
Procopius bared his yellowing teeth. “I told you, he is a broken man. He not only believed it, but was beside himself with gratitude. He actually went down on his knees before Antonina and licked her feet! Imagine it, Coel, the man we followed through seven kinds of Hell in all those campaigns, abasing himself like a frightened slave before his own wife!”
I could scarcely credit any of it. Procopius was a bitter and disillusioned man, and probably guilty of exaggeration, but he told the truth in one respect. The star of Belisarius was gradually falling.
It disgusted me, to think of my old chief reduced to such a condition, but told myself it was none of my affair. He had made the great decision of his life at Ravenna, and was now suffering the consequences.
Years passed. The Emperor and his courtiers continued to plot and conspire against each other, and my business continued to prosper. Arthur married a sweet-faced young girl named Flavia, the daughter of a minor nobleman, and I looked forward to a gradual slide into peaceful old age.
In my heart, I knew I was allowing myself to be deceived. There would be no hearth and home for me in my old age, no laughter of grandchildren. Those who carry Arthur’s blood are not suffered to rest.
I knew the end was coming when news reached Constantinople of a massive uprising in Italy. Roman rule was precarious, and the men Belisarius left behind to govern the country had failed to stamp out the stubborn embers of Gothic resistance.
By now Vitiges was dead, having expired in honourable captivity in Constantinople. Instead of submitting, the Goths had chosen a new leader. The Roman armies in Italy had already suffered defeats at his hands, and he was said to have raised enough men to threaten Florence.
His name passed through the streets of Constantinople like an evil rumour, or a portent of dread.
Totila.
21.
All manner of stories circulated about the new King of the Goths. Some said he was the product of a tryst between a German witch and the Devil, and carried the marks to prove it: a pair of horns, sharp fangs in place of teeth, nails like curving daggers, and other such nonsense. Others claimed he had unearthly powers, and was capable of raising dead warriors to life with a snap of his fingers.
In reality Italy was not being overrun by an army of the undead led by a witch-king, but a resurgent nation in arms led by a fierce and charismatic young nobleman. He was clever, too, and whipped up support by liberating slaves and distributing land to peasants.
His army, small at first, performed daring raids on Roman garrison troops, ambushing our patrols and plundering convoys before vanishing back into the hills and forests of northern Italy.
“The wretched man must be caught, and soon,” said Procopius, “before these little victories start turning into major ones. Rome can ill-afford to fight another Spartacus.”
“A few battered patrols an
d burned wagons don’t amount to much,” I said complacently, “Constantian and Alexander will bring this Totila and his little army of rebels to battle soon enough, and there will be an end of the matter.”
Constantian and Alexander were the Roman generals Belisarius had left in charge of Italy. I didn’t know much about Constantian, but Alexander was notorious. A former financial official turned soldier, who had distinguished himself by accusing the Roman army of defrauding the state. He tried to save money by slashing the wages of the soldiers in Italy, abolishing the free corn ration to the poor in Rome, and levying crushing taxes on towns and cities.
Unsurprisingly, Alexander was also hugely unpopular, and I confidently expected him to be murdered sooner rather than later. Not, however, before he and his colleague had dealt with the rebels.
Word of the fateful battle reached Constantinople on a suitably gloomy, overcast day, borne by an envoy in a single leaking galley crawling up the Bosphorus. The envoy had been wounded in the fighting, and gave a vivid account of it to the crowds gathered on the harbour.
“I escaped the slaughter with this,” he cried, pointing dramatically at the bloodstained bandage wrapped round his head, “but thousands of our brave soldiers were not so fortunate. O Romans, was there ever such a defeat as this? Even Hannibal, whose name still carries a ring of terror down the centuries, never inflicted such shame on Roman arms.”
“Get on with it,” shouted Arthur, who had accompanied me to the harbour. Other impatient voices rose in agreement, and the pale-faced envoy hurried on with his narrative.
“As I say, twelve thousand of our finest soldiers marched from Ravenna to crush the ignoble Goths and their upstart princeling. They marched on Verona, but lately seized by the enemy, and retook the town by a clever stratagem at dead of night. One Artabazes, a Persian in our service, distinguished himself in this fight.”
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