EMPIRE OF SHADES

by Gordon Doherty

  Valentinian gulped and remained silent, shaking – maybe from the cold.

  ‘His mother,’ Merobaudes countered, ‘was told he was being taken out by you to ride to your country villa, Domine – to see the animals you keep there as pets.’

  Valentinian perked up just a little at this. ‘Goats, prize pigs and ducks, Mother said,’ he mumbled. ‘I have goats in Mediolanum. I feed them and play with them most days.’

  Gratian threw his head back and roared with laughter. ‘So much growing to do, young stepbrother. We share the same sire, but you, lad, are being cosseted by Lady Justina.’ He tapped one temple vigorously, lowering himself a little as if to steal a sight of Valentinian’s eyes. ‘Poisoned!’

  ‘May I remind you, Domine,’ Merobaudes interrupted, ‘that Master Valentinian is unused to being spoken to in such a manner.’

  Gratian sat upright and back a little in mock-fright, cupping his hands over his mouth, eyes wide. ‘Is he? Ah, yes, the Augustus of Italy and Africa, my equal,’ Gratian chuckled, ‘so thoughtless of me.’

  The pup’s home in Mediolanum was well-guarded, but Gratian had proved time and again, just like today, that he could summon the boy from that sanctuary and to his side. Yes, the lad wore an invisible chain, as did his gruff Frankish watchdog. When the time is right… one yank is all it will take, Gratian thought, imagining the chain tightening around both Merobaudes’ and the lad’s neck, tongues extended, eyes bulging, gasping for their lives.

  ‘Domine, put aside this hunt for another day,’ Merobaudes said in a low burr, ‘there are more pressing matters. The Black Horde has ruined Dacia, and the scouts of Alatheus and Saphrax have been spotted making darting rides across into Pannonia… into the West. Soon, the troubles of the East might be our troubles also. Your sacrum consistorium are gathered in the palace hall right now, eager to discuss the matter.’

  Gratian’s teeth worked behind taut lips. Alatheus and Saphrax had served their purpose at Adrianople. He had promised them things for doing so, things he had no intention of delivering. Why couldn’t they have died in that clash too? he grumbled inwardly. And now they dare to probe my borders. What on earth do they hope to achieve? he mused. In reply, the feeble voice of the crone whispered in his head: You will have… years…

  And then he saw it again – the dream the old hag had cursed him with: the bleak moor and the shadow-creature. And now it was no longer an outline on the horizon… now it was on the middle-ground of the moor, silent, still… closer – as if it had stolen nearer during his waking hours. Alatheus or Saphrax? he wondered, suddenly beset with pangs of panic.

  ‘The Goths would not dare set a soldier’s foot in my lands,’ he snapped, chasing the fear away then throwing down the rest of the wine in a single gulp to wash the image away. ‘I am to travel to Sirmium in the coming summer. From there I will set eyes upon the border with the Eastern Empire myself, and if needs be I will organise the defences while I am there.’ He sniffed, clapped his hands together and turned to the third rider in his retinue. ‘Now, the hunt. Perhaps you could explain the significance of today’s pursuit, Bishop Ambrosius?’

  Ambrosius sat astride a dark pony next to Valentinian. His Chi-Rho neck chain sparkled in the sunlight against his simple, sandy robes. His face was unblemished with emotion, at peace, his close beard masking any hint of expression from his lips. Presiding over the Christian faithful of Mediolanum, the Nicene faithful, Ambrosius kept in check Justina’s Arian heresy. More, he had young Valentinian’s ear and could report to Gratian on the boy’s development and his mother’s dealings. The man was pious beyond belief, and Gratian had only been half-joking when he casually suggested today’s hunt. Incredibly, the bishop’s eyes had lit up. Some sins can be seen as just in the Lord’s eyes, Ambrosius had replied.

  The bishop squinted into the sunlight. ‘God watches the hunt today, Domine,’ he said in a bleating tone, placing a comforting hand on Valentinian’s shoulder. ‘Ride with your stepbrother, lad. Let him show you the truth of God. We can free you from the Arian mistruths later, what matters first and most is that you are Christian.’ His gaze slid over to rest upon the four slaves. Now shivering uncontrollably, they shared nervous glances.

  ‘And, by His will, the festering, lasting plague of the pagans – the true heresy – must… must be eradicated, if God’s world is to be cleansed.’ Ambrosius’ face changed now, a hot ire twisting it, his beard stretched by his rictus-like teeth. ‘Let their blood be purged in the name of the almighty!’

  Gratian followed the bishop’s glower, seeing that the four slaves had worked out what was about to happen to them. He drew the hunting bow from his back and checked the string was well-aligned. ‘We heard your ceremonies in the palace cellar,’ he said calmly. ‘Which fantastical creature were you praying to? A tree? A cloud? A goat? What did you ask it to bestow upon you? Fortune, offspring… health?’ He chuckled. ‘I certainly hope you did not pray for good health… for you will be disappointed.’

  One of the slaves, a woman, wailed, urine soaking the inside of her legs.

  ‘You have a count of one hundred heartbeats. After that, my stepbrother and I will come for you. When we catch you – and we will – you will be taken into the vaults below Treverorum and filleted alive.’

  The slaves shook violently, clustering together.

  One, two, three… Gratian mouthed, then waved a hand daintily. ‘I would be moving on if I were you.’ Four, five, six… he leaned forward in the saddle: ‘Go!’

  The four slaves burst away, flooding down the sunlit side of the hillock and streaming across the meadow.

  ‘Towards the trees,’ Gratian smiled, ‘always towards the trees.’ After the hundredth heartbeat, he turned to Valentinian and flicked his head, beckoning him. ‘Ya!’ he roared as the pair thundered off in pursuit of the slaves, a pair of his bright-robed Alani guardsmen shadowing them.

  For Valentinian, the burst into a gallop was like slipping on soft, comfortable shoes. He had been trained well in the arts of horsemanship by Merobaudes. Speedy and skilful, he had already raced against men famed for their abilities… and won. But most importantly, the whistling wind of the ride and the focus on the way ahead meant he did not have to look at, or listen to, his stepbrother. He lay flat in the saddle, hugging his roan’s neck, its mane thrashing like his locks. Just one squeeze of his thighs and his mount would burst ahead, overtaking Gratian. But he opted not to do so. Gratian was never to be crossed.

  He had first learned this as a four-year-old boy. It was a dark, cold November night, a month after his Father, Emperor Valentinian, had left him behind in Mediolanum and travelled to the wild river frontiers to talk with the Quadi. He had been awoken by the sound of his pigs snorting and his chickens clucking. He had whispered some words of playful rebuke towards the shutters then set his head down on the pillow again. Then came a scream. Mother? he had yelped, sitting upright in his bed. Hold the bitch down, a strange voice snarled, we’ll do what needs doing then we’ll be back… then we can all have a turn on her.

  To his young mind, the words made no sense. Nor did the sudden clash and clatter of metal. Soldiers? Father has returned? he had croaked, rubbing his eyes. The blackness of the Mediolanum villa had lit up as two torch-wielding soldiers in bronze scale jackets bustled into his bedchamber. He blinked: they were not Father’s men. Their eyes glittered like ice crystals as they crept towards his bed, and they reeked of sweat and stale smoke. One slid his sword from his scabbard. Valentinian scrambled to the back of his bed, feeling the cold plaster of the wall on his back. Where… where is mother? he said weakly. Easy now, lad, one of them purred as he flexed his fingers on his sword hilt, just you lie down, stretch out your neck over the edge of the bed, and it’ll all be fine. The other nudged a straw basket on the floor over to the edge of the bed. This’ll catch his head.

  Valentinian made to leap for the shutters, only for one of the soldiers to spring, catching him and throwing him down with ease, pinning him on his back by
the shoulders, head dangling over the basket. He screamed until his lungs were empty, but the pair simply laughed. Be as loud as you like, boy, there’s nobody to hear you: all of the local sentries’ throats are wide open. Emperor Valentinian is dead, and you carry his blood, so this is the end for you too. Now stay still, will you? the sword-bearing one said, closing one eye, resting his spatha edge on Valentinian’s throat then raising the blade a foot or so. When the man’s shoulders tensed to chop down, Valentinian closed his eyes tight. He heard a forced ripping of meat then a swift, clean chopping sound. Blood flooded over his face, into his nostrils and mouth. So young, he could not comprehend this sensation of brutal death, nor understand the complete absence of pain. Blinking through the blood, he opened his eyes: he could not understand why he could still see, feel and hear, why his head had not fallen from his body. His killer stood, sword still raised over him, gazing emptily, another blade poking through his breastbone from behind. The second man pinning him had no head. Both bodies toppled away and a colossus stood where the executioner had been. A handsome man with thick, long brown hair. The scent of smoke had spilled around the room then, and Valentinian saw the dancing orange of flames and black coils of smoke, somewhere in the villa. Mother, where is mother? he had cried. My men have rescued her, boy. Do not fear, the giant had said, scooping Valentinian up underarm, then carrying him through the now smoke-thick corridors, coughing. When they came to the atrium, it was ablaze, fire racing up every wall, the impluvium the only part not alight. Beyond the entrance gateway, he saw Mother and a few of her slaves outside, crying out, pleading with the giant to be quick. The man-mountain bounded towards the villa’s entrance, just as a great groan of stressed timber brought the place crashing down. Valentinian remembered being thrown like a discus, clear of the collapsing villa. He remembered Mother cradling him, kissing his forehead over and over. And then he remembered the sight of the collapsed and glowing entrance rubble shifting, then sliding away as the giant rose again, his face half-burnt away, his hair all but gone on one side too. Yet the man never made a sound of pain. What happened, Mother? he pleaded. She stroked and cradled him, tears streaking her face: Merobaudes saved us, she replied. From who? Valentinian asked. Mother barely whispered her reply. From Gratian’s men.

  As the memory faded, the thunder of his roan’s hooves and the whistle of the wind came back to him, along with a fierce desire to defy his stepbrother. Verve like this came to him only in dashes though, and was quickly beaten back down like the flames were later that dark night in Mediolanum.

  Gratian laughed aloud and pointed ahead as they approached the thicket of sycamores. ‘You two hang back,’ he ordered the two Alani. ‘Go in, Stepbrother,’ he commanded. ‘Flush the pagan pigs from the trees, drive them north. I will pick them off as they emerge.’ And he was gone, rounding the thicket to disappear behind its northern edge.

  Valentinian gulped. The invisible chains by which he was attached to his more powerful stepbrother drew tight around his neck. To disobey might mean the end of him. And that would snap the delicate kindling which held the West together: Merobaudes and the generals who had supported and shielded him since that dark night would make war with Gratian, but in his heart of hearts, he knew they had not the means to defeat him. His heart sunk. Nobody could contest the mighty Gratian. He heeled his roan into a canter towards the trees. Having shed its leaves, the sycamore wood was skeletal and clad in frost, but thick enough still to hide men. He followed the ancient trail worn into the floor of the wood, wearily drawing his bow from his back. A shot at the slaves’ feet, he wondered, enough to send them north as Gratian had demanded? He could never kill a man, he was sure, but then he wondered if it might be merciful to spare these wretches an end on Gratian’s terms. Filleted alive, had been the threat. He had heard tales of many others who had been dragged, wailing, down into the dungeons below Treverorum’s palace. The ten-year death, some called such an end, given the skills of Gratian’s finest torturers who could balance a man’s life on the edge of agony and insanity for as long as they wished.

  A twig snapped. Valentinian’s bow swung up instinctively. The stable master who had taught him to ride had also taught him to shoot, and with just as much skill. He had refused to shoot birds and rabbits, though, instead contenting himself with wooden targets and the like. Today, he found in his sights the slave woman who had wet herself. She was on her haunches, ready to spring away like a hare. Her eyes were wide as she stared back at him. He gulped and lowered his bow. ‘Don’t run north,’ he said gently, ‘trust me. He turned in the saddle and looked east, seeing the vales beyond the trees. ‘Go that way, and stay low.’

  The woman’s face creased in disbelief. Valentinian then noticed the other three, dotted nearby. One man held a large rock in his hand, and still seemed set to throw it. ‘You try to trick us?’

  ‘I do not wish to see you hurt. Why would I?’

  ‘Because you come on the hunt with Emperor Gratian,’ the fellow retorted.

  ‘Only because I am in thrall to him as much as you are,’ Valentinian said.

  ‘You wear thick, expensive cloaks and fine ox-hide boots, you have never ground grain in your life, nor scrubbed a floor nor cleaned out a latrine,’ the man sobbed.

  Valentinian reached up and unclasped his cloak, tossing it carefully down towards the woman. ‘Had I a choice, I would be content to take a patch of land far from here… far from him… and till it under the baking sun, to feed animals and grow old.’ He met the eyes of each of the slaves, the act taking a great deal of bravery. ‘You know, as I do, how capricious my stepbrother can be. He will not wait long at the woods’ northern edge. Go, before your chance slips away.’

  The woman crept forward and warily picked up the cloak, before giving him something of a cautious half-bow of respect. All four broke east, crunching through the trees. When the sound faded, Valentinian took in a deep breath then looked north. He loosed his arrow into the earth then threw another away, before kicking his colt into a canter then a gallop. ‘Ya!’ he cried, mustering a hunter’s tone. When he burst clear of the thicket, he swept his colt round in an arc, over a low hill. Gratian burst over its brow, bow nocked and primed, then slowed.

  ‘Where are they?’ he snapped.

  ‘You did not see them?’ Valentinian panted.

  Gratian’s eyes tapered and slid one way and then the other, as if mistrusting every blade of grass. At last, he sat tall in the saddle and threw his head back. ‘You lost them?’ he said in disgust.

  ‘I drove them north,’ Valentinian insisted. ‘A few well-aimed arrows kept them coming this way.’

  Gratian’s eyes regarded his part-emptied quiver. ‘Where is your cloak?’

  Valentinian’s blood turned to ice and his skin to fire. ‘My cloak?’ His bravery crumbled, and he was the shy, callow lad again. ‘I… I… it must have snagged on a branch in the trees and-’

  Gratian brushed past him, lips thin, eyes spitting fire into the thicket. ‘Is it, is it indeed? Then we’ll find it in there, will we?’

  A cold stone settled in Valentinian’s belly. Only when hooves rumbled did Gratian’s lizard-like fascination with the cloak and the trees evaporate. He and Valentinian swung around to see a lone horseman thundering towards them from the south. Black-cloaked and hooded, like the shadow of a cloud scudding across the hills. The two Alani saw this and moved to intercept the newcomer, but Gratian called to them: ‘let him through.’

  Valentinian saw his stepbrother’s ravening look fall upon the rider now.

  ‘Let the slaves freeze out here wherever they hide,’ Gratian said, ‘for Scapula has returned. If he brings the name I asked him to find, then my torturers will have a new subject soon enough.’

  Chapter 15

  ‘Some say Emperor Theodosius has lost his mind,’ the grey-haired clerk said to the hook-nosed fellow walking by his side in the slow-moving crowds packing Thessalonica’s snowbound streets, ‘but they don’t understand.’

 
‘Aye. Dreams of death have plagued him for months,’ the hook-nosed one replied, rubbing his hands together against the late winter cold, ‘and he believes that today is his last hope,’ he added, his voice echoing as they stepped inside the red-brick rotunda.

  Pavo, draped in his best, bright white, ceremonial soldier clothes, could not help but hear their conversation as he followed them inside, Sura, Libo and Rectus in tow. They and many others – generals, high-ranking officers, senators, officials and magnates – spilled around the edges of the vast circular hall, with tens of thousands more packed outside, corralled by soldiers, awaiting the outcome of the events that were to follow.

  Pavo glanced up at the gold-painted ceiling, the dome etched with Christian angels and motifs, a halo of daylight beaming down from the oculus and dancing on the turquoise waters of the baptismal pool in the centre of the polished and heated stone floor, a few snowflakes finding their way in too. Around the pool, a ring of priests stood, chanting in a low, sombre tone that filled the chamber like a shiver. White curls of sweet incense smoke rose from burners around the pool.

  ‘God will save our glorious leader,’ the grey-haired one said.

  ‘Indeed he will – and woe betide the narrow-minded heretics,’ said Hook-nose.

  Pavo’s nose wrinkled. Any mention of heresy these days was usually followed by raised voices and violence, he had found. And over the winter that followed their return from the wilds, both had been incessant. On the Ides of January, Bishop Demophilus of Constantinople had sailed into Thessalonica’s snow-cloaked harbour to see if he could help the ailing emperor. The man had served the Holy See for ten years – interrupted only by the reign of the odious Bishop Evagrius. He was an Arian, true to the doctrine favoured by Valens. But such differences could be put aside, surely, Pavo had thought as he and a few Claudia men had escorted the stooping, aged man along Thessalonica’s triumphal road towards the palace. They stopped halfway along to drink hot berry juice and break warm, fresh bread at a tavern. There, Pavo and Demophilus had talked of Valens and of Ulfilla of Nicopolis, of the Arian way and of the way of the border legions.