The Emporers Men

by Dirk van den Boom

  Volkert knew what that meant. Especially in a Roman familia, in which at least theoretically the father had the final decision in everything. Julia seemed to cherish these ancient traditions rather little and had possibly gone too far this time, even in the eyes of her doting father.

  “What happened?”

  “My mother said that any visit to the strange visitors is not permissible, even if the Emperor would accept your presence favorably. For me and in any case only a man of Roman nobility should be good enough, a senator’s son. She was also willing to consider a high-ranking officer or someone from the Imperial court or maybe a rich businessman. She said that my decision for you would be immediately interpreted as infamia.”

  “As what?”

  “Ah, yes, you might not know. The law of infamia explains the circumstances under which someone can lose his civil rights. For example, if a senator would marry the daughter of an innkeeper, that would be a reason to deprive him of civil rights. Or if a widow remarries, without waiting the one-year period of mourning to pass. There are many cases and marriage with someone of lower social status who pursues a profession which is regarded as particularly dirty and repulsive, is one of them.”

  “Innkeepers?”

  Julia threw a meaningful glance. “You’ll know what I mean. In any case, I replied that surely this didn’t relate to you, but she said you didn’t even had the right of citizenship, and therefore they couldn’t allow it in any case that someone like me …”

  “… should marry you,” Volkert completed the sentence.

  “Yes. That might change one day. But by now you’re simply …”

  “… quite strange.”

  “Very strange.”

  Volkert pressed his lips on each other. The feeling of despair and anger clamped his throat. He took Julia’s arm and pulled her toward him. For a moment she just held on tight and they gave each other comfort. “What have you told your mother then?” the young man eventually wanted to know.

  “I have made it clear that I’m not interested in any of her marriage-proposals and that I had made a decision.”

  Now it was the mixture of sudden joy and warmth that made Volkert’s words stick in his mouth. He locked Julia’s mouth with a long kiss. The happiness seemed almost overwhelming. But then reality crept back into his mind and he pulled away from her.

  “My mother was angry,” Julia went on. “But my parents have finally realized that they cannot do anything against my expressed will even with their own stubbornness.”

  Volkert hid a smile. The word “stubbornness” in Julia’s mouth, and then meant negative, was quite a bit ironic.

  “She has made me an offer,” she said.

  Volkert frowned in confusion. “An offer? What kind of offer?”

  “She told me I could take every free decision that I wanted, including the choice of my husband. And she told me she would never again complain about anything, if I would simply forget the guy from the future.”

  Volkert’s eyes were round. “That’s what she said?”

  Now the last sentence in Julia’s message suddenly made sense.

  “Thomas, I suspect that behind all this is more than my parents are willing to tell me. After the conversation with your trierarch, Symmachus and others have been in many consultations. My father may not be an avid politician, but he is not without influence, and he operates within certain constraints. Something is brewing, and I rather think that’s why he especially doesn’t want us to be together … in order to protect me.”

  “Protect? Against what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Volkert looked pensively into nothingness for a moment. He remembered the visit of Petronius. The uneasy feeling that he felt ever since intensified. Julia’s interpretation couldn’t be dismissed out of hand. “What remains for us to do?” he finally said quietly.

  Julia seemed to have been waiting for this question. The vehemence with which she pressed her full breasts against his chest was surely equally passionate as calculated, but the ensign couldn’t care less. They kissed again, long and hungry.

  When they separated from each other, Julia said it. “We must run away. Otherwise we have no chance to remain to be together, Thomas.”

  “Running away?” Volkert asked half incredulously. This seemed to him too much like one of the bad romance novels which he had read as a young man. “Where to?”

  “Someplace where no one knows us.”

  Julia seemed to notice the hesitation in the young man. She looked deep into his eyes. “Thomas, I love you!”

  Volkert’s heart leapt again. He blinked as tears wanted to shoot even in his eyes. “Julia … Julia …” he whispered, burying his face in her hair. “I love you, too!”

  “Then we should not be separated from each other,” she whispered back. “We really shouldn’t.”

  “No, that’s true.”

  “My father will not allow our relationship, and your trierarch will certainly have his objections.”

  Volkert thought back to the sharp rebuke that the captain had administered and could not help but once again accept Julia’s insight and intelligence. “And that’s true as well,” he had to confirm.

  “So what do we do?”

  Volkert was thinking, but he couldn’t deny the logic of the woman. And that he should be separated from her, perhaps forever, became a more and more unbearable thought with every second the young man spent in the presence of the beloved. Melodrama or not, he came to the conclusion that this was now a different time and a different place. No more formal permission to marry by the Emperor needed and really no Empire to defend for him. It pained him for a moment, having to behave disloyal, but ultimately he felt that the priorities began to move in his life.

  He felt the beautiful woman’s warm and soft body in his arms and realized that he had already made his decision.

  “Very well then,” he heard himself mutter. “This is probably really the only way. But where are we going? Of what should we live?”

  Julia smiled at Volkert, obviously more than happy. “I have saved and hidden, and I can do work a bit. Embroidering, sewing, mending clothes, I can even cook.”

  “Did you have to learn all this?”

  Julia turned up her nose. “I wasn’t allowed to learn anything except languages and philosophy. But I was hanging around with the slaves and some taught me. My mother was horrified when I patched my first tunic myself. She feels that it is beneath the dignity of a senator’s daughter to have to do this kind of work.”

  “But I … I have no skills that can help us,” Volkert admitted sadly.

  “You’re healthy and strong. That’s enough. We have to travel quite a distance anyway, because my father’s arm reaches far. If we want to escape from him, we should go to the East. I know my father’s possessions almost better than himself, he has long since lost any overview and leaves everything to his administrators.”

  She reached into a bundle, which she carried along, and took out papers.

  “Here: My family controls manufactories and estates throughout the East, although significantly less than in the West. I cannot remember that my father has ever visited them, he may actually not, except that he went to the east of the Empire to buy some special wine in Greece. It was easy for me to use my father’s seal and to write some letters of recommendation. Here … you are now Lucius, from Gaul, and my name is Paulina. I’m a seamstress, and you a worker. With the letter of recommendation we will get a job anywhere in the eastern farms and estates of my father, without him ever knowing. He churns out such recommendations regularly – for freed slaves, clients of his friends and so on. There is absolutely nothing that calls out any attention.”

  Volkert noted with a mixture of admiration and suspicion that Julia had not only prepared everything well, but apparently hadn’t even for a second doubted his own decision in the matter. He wondered for a moment if he hadn’t just replaced one captain with another, although after giving her brow
n eyes a closer look it became obvious that the authority of his new superior had a slightly different basis than Rheinberg’s.

  “And how do we travel?”

  “Trading caravans constantly travel to the East. One buys a place in a cart. Or we go by sea, directly to Constantinople. In the capital of the East, we have the greatest opportunities to immerse ourselves and build a new life. The only problem is that the sea journey is arduous and my father has many good links to the owners of merchant ships – the chance that someone recognizes me isn’t low. The land route takes longer, but is also safer.”

  Volkert nodded. If they were unlucky, their escape would already falter in the harbor. He had little desire to take that risk. “Over land then,” he confirmed. “When do we start?”

  Julia Volkert pressed the bundle in his hand. “Here, put this on. I have another one hidden outside the city, with money and food.”

  Volkert unfolded the bundle and looked at clean, although a little worn-out clothes that would make him a Roman. Even his size was well measured. No, Julia had indeed not doubted for a second how he would decide. “So that means …”

  Julia shut his mouth with another kiss before she said, “That’s right, Thomas. We leave immediately!”

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  “It’s a miracle that you survived, my friend!”

  Richomer crouched beside the divan on which Flavius Victor rested and was careful not to beat the Master Equitum on the shoulder. The man was pale, with sunken cheeks, but he managed to give a weak smile to the officer from the West. He was the only surviving commander of the East, and has been close to death.

  “No gangrene,” he uttered quietly. “The physician is a butcher, but he knows his business. Has learned in the Gallic schools, he said. Seems to have helped him. I’m not the only one he saved.”

  Richomer nodded and looked at Victor’s injury. The left arm had been severed from the middle of the upper arm, a quick, well-aimed blow by an enemy, who wielded a well sharpened sword. The breastplate of the equestrian commander had finally stopped the blow, and a soldier from Victor’s guard had stretched the Goth down, but for the arm, it had been too late in any case. They had tied the stump and fled like everyone else.

  “When will you be fit for duty?” asked Richomer.

  “I need another week of care, says the Medicus. I’ve lost a lot of blood. Currently, he fills me with all sorts of potions and lets me eat overcooked meat. But it doesn’t seem to be completely ineffective; I feel a little stronger every day, and the frequent attacks of weakness are becoming less. A week seems to be realistic. And you yourself?”

  The German made a derogatory gesture. “Nothing serious, just a few scratches.”

  “And even though you have really tried to get hurt. You fought like a madman.”

  “My time has not yet come.”

  Victor smiled a little wider, and it seemed as if some color returned to his cheeks.

  “Valens has burned the cavalry, Victor,” muttered Richomer. “He ordered us to run into a drawn knife.”

  “He and Sebastianus,” Victor agreed. “But ultimately it was the rashness of incompetent officers who didn’t held back. Sebastianus has whipped up the confidence so much … and everyone was thirsty.”

  Richomer nodded. The army had gone without food and water in position and the wait certainly dragged on the nerves of all. The thirst had made them very impatient.

  “They both have not recognized the importance of the cavalry. And they were too confident. Fritigern may well be a barbarian, but he’s not an idiot. Until recently I have been talking about this to the Emperor. And then the barbarian lancers … they have made mincemeat out of the ground troops. We will have to rethink.”

  Richomer put a placating hand on his friend’s chest. He waved a worried-looking servant away. Victor had been lucky that he had his own villa in Adrianople, and the house had been immediately opened for all the injured who had reached the safety of the city walls. Only this single suite allowed a little privacy, otherwise the whole place had turned into a military hospital.

  An attempt by the Goths to take the city had failed because of two factors: Their inability to besiege a well-fortified city and effectively attack the walls; and the combat readiness of the Roman citizen militia, which offered the Goths defiant resistance. Ultimately, the attackers had to withdraw.

  “Don’t get excited. Valens is dead. Sebastianus is dead. We have not heard from them since the battle, their bodies were never found, but would Valens be alive somewhere, even as a hostage to the Goths, we would’ve known by now. He is dead, and Gratian is our emperor.”

  Victor nodded. “A wiser emperor, I hope.”

  “He is young but not a fool either. And he won’t forget the East. He is at Sirmium and holds a council of war. I’m supposed to ride there and meet him. You should join us once you master a horse again.”

  “What are his plans?”

  “If I could read the thoughts of the Emperor, I would be a rich and powerful man, Victor. I guess that he will appoint a new general for the East, who, if he proves himself, will have a good chance to be promoted to Augustus. I don’t think the young Gratian has a strong interest to carry the whole empire in its entirety on his shoulders for too long. The West is difficult enough.”

  “Very true.”

  “We will have to inform him properly. First we need to know how many soldiers have survived.”

  “How many have reported back?”

  Richomer pulled out a paper. “I don’t have exact figures. Luckily, most of them had the good idea to retreat into the safety of the city. I guess that the one or the other might still be sitting in one of the villages.”

  “Or have deserted,” Victor added with some bitterness in his voice.

  “Or that, yes, unfortunately. Our estimates suggest that one third of the army survived. We currently expect 22,000 dead.”

  Victor looked even paler now. Valens had led around 30,000 men to the field.

  “This is the biggest loss since … since Cannae?” he asked.

  “Since Varus battled against the Germans.”

  “This is more than 350 years ago! And he lost only 20,000! What a great honor for us! The second largest massacre in Roman history, and we have been witnesses!”

  Richomer didn’t respond to the bitterness in Victor’s words. He could understand that feeling very well.

  “The problem is the structure of the survivors.”

  “Tell me about it!”

  Richomer summarized it in one sentence. “Most of the survivors are officers and NCOs.”

  “Ah, damn it,” Victor muttered. “We have an army of heads but without a body.”

  “That’s it.”

  Victor closed his eyes and thought for a moment. “We urged the Emperor to recruit more for years,” he muttered darkly. “Long gone are the days when a young man has found his way into the armed forces in order to gain citizenship or to obtain a piece of land or to achieve fame and glory. We force the sons of soldiers to take the same job, even if they don’t want to. We press men into the service, and the only reason for them to oblige is us threatening reprisals. We plunder the farms of their labor-force and even senators and former officers have started to protect deserters in order to have at least someone who can work on the land. Slaves gain their freedom by betraying deserters to the authorities. The system, my friend, is sick and only works with brute force. What will happen now? We will scour the East for new recruits. We will take every criminal with a promise of pardon and free slaves to enslave them again. Maybe we’ll even get another army assembled. Maybe we can hold back the Goths until this army is more or less ready for use. And then what?”

  He sighed.

  “Then comes the next enemy. Have you heard the stories that the Goths told us? That giant hordes of Huns have driven them from their lands? That even more will come and then eventually these barbarians will also arrive at our borders? How we will oppose them? How much gold will we th
row out to bribe barbarians, so they stay away from our borders? How often can they blackmail us, because we are weak?”

  Richomer smiled and shook his head rather sadly. “You are a philosopher, my friend. That must be because of the injury.”

  “Every soldier with some brains in his head is a philosopher when he noticed for long enough how the empire slowly but surely goes down the drain.”

  Victor ran his hand across his forehead.

  “I’ll try to make you a more complete list and bring it to Sirmium – as soon as I’m able to travel. Then we can present accurate numbers to the Emperor.”

  “Very good. Let us solve one problem after the other: first we take care of the Goths, then the salvation of the empire against all future threats.”

  “I would like to see the empire to develop into a state in which everyone wants to live and where we wouldn’t need to force anyone with the threat of death to join the legions. I’m tired of leading men into death who have no interest in fighting. I would really like to command a voluntary and motivated troop.”

  “Our cavalry was quite motivated.”

  “Their bodies are lying around the city.”

  Richomer patted the general’s shoulder and forced a smile. “You can really cheer one up, Viktor.”

  “You cheer me up by telling me in a week that Gratian has found a way to save all our asses.”

  Richomer rose. “I’ll try. Make me happy by actually showing up in a week and have some color in your face.”

  “I promise.”

  “Then I’ll do what I can.”

  The glance Victor sent after Richomer didn’t speak of much confidence.

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