by Jack Ludlow
‘Then I am at a loss to know where that is,’ Flavius responded, with a catch in his voice that gave veracity to his continued lying. ‘Perhaps my brothers would have known and, as Ohannes here said, my mother, but they are no longer with us and she is far off.’
‘I fear the villa will need to be searched.’
Flavius protested immediately and vehemently. ‘This is a house in mourning.’
‘And I have the good of the empire to consider! You of all people, being your father’s son, would not surely stand in the way of that? I have my men still with me, and so I am able to carry out the task at once.’
Flavius took a deep breath before responding, finding when he did the means to sound very adult. ‘I must refuse, Bishop Gregory, until the proper period of mourning has passed, for my dear mother’s sake if no other.’
‘You cannot refuse.’
‘I do not wish to be difficult but I am, as you were keen to point out, now master of this household. Unless you can show to me an authority that gives you such a right, I will not accede to such a request.’
‘I am here on behalf of the magister militum!’
‘Who will have to give you written permission to act as you suggest.’
Flavius knew he had got it right by the confused expression that engendered; Blastos had no actual authority to act. If there had been the time to send a report of what had occurred to Marcianopolis, and to stand down any support that might be on the way, no reply had come back giving Blastos the powers he claimed, in what was at least a two-day journey on fast mounts with regular changes.
‘His need is enough.’
‘Forgive me, Bishop Gregory, but you must know that no one can act in such an arbitrary fashion. If I learnt anything from my father, it is never justified to exceed the bounds of the law, and he stayed true to that even when he had the unquestionable authority of his command.’
‘I have God as my authority.’
Flavius crossed himself but the look he gave the bishop told him that too was insufficient. Blastos tried bluster but he could not carry it off for he lacked the means to be convincing and, realising that to be true, his expression became increasingly concerned as he sought a solution. No doubt Senuthius was waiting for the successful finale to this visit.
‘Then I must seek what I need and will do so.’
If they exchanged a mutual glare both knew one fact so obvious it needed no airing: Flavius could be allowed no freedom of movement.
‘Until then I command that you stay within these walls and that you touch nothing you may find. I will leave people here to ensure that is obeyed, and as a precaution I will also take from your stables what mounts you have.’
‘There is only one now,’ Flavius responded with a look of gloom. ‘Mine.’
‘A fine beast, I recall, which will serve to cover the first stage of my messenger’s journey.’
Bishop Gregory Blastos did like to think of himself as the equal of Senuthius Vicinus; only rarely was he disabused of this comfortable notion, so when he arrived at the villa of the man he held to be an associate and equal he was, even if concerned, ill prepared for that which he ran into: a torrent of highly personal abuse for his very obvious failure to find any evidence that either had cause for concern.
With anyone else he might have stood his ground, but not with the senator, who, despite the girlish pitch of his voice, never had trouble in making the cleric wilt. With his height and girth, he oozed power enough to match his temper.
‘No doubt you were too busy slavering over the Belisarius brat to properly carry out what you were sent to do. All that would be needed to put you off the task you were sent to carry out is a flick of those long, dark eyelashes of his and you would be billing and cooing like a pigeon.’
‘The lad has two black eyes and a damaged shoulder …’
‘As if that would stop you! It probably added to your dribbling.’
This dressing-down did not end there; Senuthius went on to list the ways in which his sexual preferences and inability to disguise them made him a fool, to point out that as a representative of God he was an embarrassment to his entire flock, delivered in a voice loud enough to carry throughout the largest dwelling in the borderlands. Worse for the clerical pride, it was done in front of the children of the house, a boy and a girl, golden-haired, plump and well-fed twins, who had not yet seen ten summers, their mere presence made doubly galling by the way their expressions seemed to mirror their father’s disdain.
‘It may be there is nothing …’
Blastos got no chance to plead that excuse; the large senatorial frame actually shook with irritation, and given Senuthius had a belly large enough to testify to his prosperity, it was obvious even under his richly threaded garments.
‘My cousin smells a rat in the imperial court and Belisarius has to be the cause. When he says I should be on my guard, I am not fool enough to ignore his advice, even if you are!’
‘But he has no idea what we have to guard against.’
‘We?’ Senuthius growled. ‘You, Blastos, have only to concern yourself that you do not end up in a remote dungeon for pederasty and the selling of forgiveness for gold. It is I who is at real risk and by that I mean everything I own, and for what – acting as my duty as a father and a citizen dictates?’
The senator then waddled over to embrace his children, standing between them and laying his hands on their shoulders, his voice becoming soft and mournful as he spoke. It was well known he doted on his offspring, which stood in sharp contrast to the way he had treated their late mother, a woman who had needed all her skills with paints and powder to hide the regular bruises inflicted on her by her violent husband. Sometimes she was so badly beaten as to be unable to appear in public for weeks and there were those prepared to readily believe that her death had not been from any natural cause.
‘These two innocents could be left as paupers by the malice of that Belisarius swine, and that I will not allow to happen.’
Quickly Senuthius bent to kiss each plump child on the head, before quietly telling them it was time to be about their evening studies, so as to be ready for their schooling come the morning. He watched them depart the main room of the villa with a look most men reserved for a favourite mistress and only when they had gone did Senuthius bellow for his domesticus. His senior household servant came scurrying into the room within seconds, to find his master talking to the bishop in a less irate tone, a haughty gesture having the man wait by the door.
‘We know letters were sent out under the Anastasius seal and not from the office of the imperial scribes. Some other hand composed them and in such secrecy that the only fact my cousin could glean was that they were to be delivered by a special messenger to Dorostorum, and since they did not come to you or I, they had to be for Belisarius. He would not throw them away, therefore they must be in his house, unless they went up in that stupid pyre his son built.’
The thought that they might have been consumed by the flames cheered Blastos up somewhat, until Senuthius dismissed the notion as not only fanciful but too risky to assume. The man rambled on as he waddled back and forth with that particular gait all men use who have been heavy from birth, the feet splayed wide to accommodate thighs that could not easily pass each other.
If he was telling the bishop things they had discussed before, Senuthius was in reality talking to himself and not without a dose of his habitual self-pity, based on the notion that the malice of lesser creatures would ever see his actions in the wrong light.
For all his strength and prominence locally and his ability to buy gubernatorial silence in what was a distant and little regarded corner of the empire, Senuthius knew that he operated too often outside the laws to feel entirely secure, hence his ongoing feud with the man who had the task of enforcing imperial edicts. If he had seen Centurion Belisarius as an irritant, the man had, until recently, been no more than a flea to his great beast and one moreover without influence where it truly mattered
.
If that had changed, due to the shifting nature of power in the imperial palace, as related to him by the same relative who had hitherto nullified any complaints against him, it could leave him exposed. The emperor was a man to be swayed by the last voice that had his ear, and in many ways that had been an asset in the past: the people who had counselled him, when contacted by his cousin, were easily won over either by conviction or bribery. The former came from the feeling that as long as the border was kept secure at low cost, how peace was maintained seemed of little account, the latter requiring neither explanation nor principles!
What had hitherto been simple had grown more complex and the foremost cause was religion, or to be precise the interpretation of dogma, and that was fuelling a division that had existed since anyone could remember, made really serious by the action of Anastasius in promulgating the supremacy of the Monophysite position. If rumour came slowly to the borders of the empire, those that had recently emerged were worrying indeed.
The only substantial force of soldiers in the Diocese of Thrace, indeed between Dorostorum and the capital, barbarian foederati, were under the command of a general called Vitalian and he was threatening revolt to overturn the imperial edict. If that came to pass, the first city to feel the brunt of insurrection would be Marcianopolis and the magister militum, Conatus, a serious part of the Vicinian network of support.
But it was in Constantinople that such things really mattered and there too they had taken a less than encouraging turn. Conflict at court between the soldiers of empire, who had to fight its battles, set against civilian courtiers who had as their prime concern the costs of doing so, was endemic. Military campaigns against powerful enemies required the hiring and feeding of mercenaries, the empire having centuries ago lost the ability to man its forces with its own citizens. The preferred method of the palace officials, seen as a cheaper one, was to buy peace in ingots of gold where a threat could be considered serious; outside that parameter, as on the northern border at Dorostorum, trouble was ignored.
The military had acquired increased influence recently, thanks to their victories in the recent war with the Persians, and in the febrile politics of the Byzantine Court that had brought several of the commanders into positions of increased weight. If the conflict had ended, there was an uneasy peace on the eastern border and a major fort being constructed at Dara, meaning the soldiers, being still needed, constituted a substantial body of power.
Fighting men being no more upright than their civilian counterparts, the senator’s cousin had assiduously sought to find out whom he could bribe and whom he could either sideline or diminish by the kind of base rumour that swirled around such a shifting polity. Yet the admission was open: there were those who might be beyond such attempts, and a further concern came from the fact that the centurion Belisarius, having served so long and in so many campaigns, could have a bond with some of these soldiers that might be unbreakable by any means.
This was then fuelled by the rumours of secret communications. Uncertainty created anxiety and with good reason; to fall from favour in the empire was not just to lose land, wealth and power – it just as often meant a loss of your very life and if not that, a public blinding that would leave the victim a begging imbecile with nothing but a gutter in which to exist.
The thought of such a fate, added to the notion of his children being rendered destitute, so terrified Senuthius that Blastos was subjected to a stream of sorrowful self-indulgence as his host went from listing what he saw as his virtues, through a paean to his qualities, followed by a lament as to what he would forfeit.
The bishop had been subjected to such tirades before and so he knew what was coming; Senuthius was working himself up to a pitch in which he could justify whatever action he deemed necessary to protect himself. It had been the same when the hint first came of some kind of unknown imperial communication with the centurion, culminating in the only safe course of action, which was to eliminate that part of the threat within his reach.
The voice went from whining through to firm resolve and then rose as it had on previous occasions to a solution. Senuthius always started quietly until anger began to take over, to go through growling then protestation before rising to what was a spitting crescendo of bile. He would not be brought down, would not see everything for which he had striven eaten up by imperial wolves on the word of a man like Belisarius, consumed with nothing but malice and jealousy for his position.
It ended with him screaming imprecations on that name, one fist thumping into his other hand with increasing force as he worked himself into a frenzy that had the imperial centurion lambasted as a traitor and an ingrate, a liar and a thief, quite missing the paradox as he damned with equal vehemence his public probity. Finally red of face and perspiring, Senuthius stopped, took several deep breaths and coming close, addressed the bishop in a soft voice, though not one without a degree of tension.
‘The Belisarius villa must be torn apart, stone by stone if need be, and that brat who survived can be racked and his flesh charred until he reveals what he must know. You must go to your pulpit and damn the whole family as heretics. Use that stupid pyre the boy built as a sign of their sacrilege, Blastos. Tell your flock of the rituals carried out in secret within the walls of that house, of blood sacrifices to pagan gods and the desecration of the symbols of Christ our Saviour. We know, do we not, how they will react?’
‘You wish to engineer a riot of the faithful?’
The question was posed without passion; if the notion of what was being proposed troubled the bishop he made no mention of it, just as he had so recently acquiesced in the plan Senuthius had hatched to rid himself of the imperial centurion. Desperate times required remedies to match.
‘Led by men I will provide,’ Senuthius replied, gesturing to his domesticus, a witness to the entire exchange. ‘But we must ensure that, in any confusion, they and only they get within the walls.’
‘To search?’
‘To find! Let that brat wish he had died along with his father and brothers if he does not lead them to it.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Having turned to give instructions, ordering that the requisite men be gathered from his outlying farms, Senuthius allowed Bishop Gregory time to think – really the first since he had arrived, so passionate had been the mood of his host – a short break in which the bishop could begin to calculate the outcome of what was being proposed, so that once the senator was done and the domesticus had departed, he could point up some possible difficulties.
‘It will ill serve our cause if we leave the Belisarius boy a gibbering wreck.’
Senuthius could not resist the barbed response. ‘Perhaps we should hand him over to you to do as you wish.’
‘Tempting,’ the bishop replied calmly, deliberately declining to rise to the slur, while being sure that the storm of abuse had subsided and he could address Senuthius as an equal. ‘But that will not serve either.’
That got him a questioning look; traduce him as he might, and often did, Senuthius knew that the cleric had a devious mind, added to a peasant cunning which came from his low birth and impoverished childhood. He also knew that the memory of that straitened past was both the spark that animated the ambition of the priest as well as the cause of his anxieties; having ascended so far in the only institution, outside soldiering, that permitted such an elevation, he had a deep fear of loss.
‘Whatever has happened in Constantinople it would be unwise to heighten the risks, which the broken body of the centurion’s son must most certainly do.’
‘If they hear of it, Blastos,’ Senuthius barked. ‘Remember, there is no swine sending grievances any more.’
‘If Flavius is alive …’ The bishop paused and spread his hands; he had no need to elaborate on that. Even with his tongue cut out and his eyes gouged the boy could write. ‘But to just kill him might be worse, and since we are unaware of the nature of what we face, it may make matters more difficult.’
> ‘While you are busy creating difficulties, I hope your mind is working on a solution.’
‘Why would I need to, when your outstanding genius has already provided one?’
Senuthius brightened at that: he loved flattery and in Blastos he had a man well versed in the art of sycophancy.
‘If we brand the boy as a heretic and so inflame the righteous against him, how could anyone be expected to prevent, say, a crucifixion?’
‘He must speak before that!’
‘Perhaps he will do so to avoid such a fate and you will have no need to take hot irons to his flesh to get him to talk. I will promise him the protection of the Church if he confides the whereabouts of what was sent to his father from the capital.’
‘And when he has divulged what he knows?’
The cross was once more in the priestly hand, as if by holding it he could be absolved of any sin he might commit. ‘Try as I might, I cannot protect him from the anger of those who would burn any heretic they could find …’
‘Perfect.’
‘And then,’ Blastos added, ‘I can write to the patriarch, who knows me to be a loyal Monophysite, and tell him I have found and contained a dangerous spread of something much worse than Chalcedonian heresy, that I have uncovered pagan worship, which being on the border with barbarians, we must most assiduously guard against. I am sure such a thing will please him.’
‘Don’t go seeking higher elevation, Bishop Gregory,’ Senuthius said in a piping voice, the eyebrows lowered over a penetrating gaze.
‘Would I desert you after all you have done for me and my church?’
That got a nod, even if the man giving it was unconvinced; Senuthius had paid to repair damage done to the basilica of Dorostorum by an earthquake, one that had occurred decades before and rendered the city a diocese that was not one to which many men of the cloth aspired. Far from rich, and in a ramshackle condition, Blastos, lacking influence to get a prized appointment, had taken it as the bishopric he could get, rather than the kind for which he craved, a see in which money flowed easily into his coffers without the need for underhand appropriation.