‘Tonight, soldier. At the twelfth hour.’
They dined well, and Stilicho insisted the lieutenant took at least a cup of wine.
‘I’m no wine expert,’ he said, ‘but this Opimian is pretty good, don’t you think? The vines grow overlooking the bay, and it’s supposed to have the taste of the salt sea in it.’ The general took a glug, rolled it round his mouth and swallowed. ‘Actually, I can’t taste anything of the sort, it’s just what the wine snobs back in Rome claim.’
The lieutenant liked this Stilicho.
They talked of the army, the barbarian invasions, the state of Rome. The vulnerability of Africa, and its vast grain-fields; and the inscrutable nature of the Huns.
‘They could yet be our salvation,’ said Stilicho.
‘Or… ’ said Lucius, and left it hanging in the air.
‘Hm,’ said the general. ‘It’ll pay to keep cosy with them, certainly. And take care of our Hun hostages, too.’
He poured them each a fresh cup of wine, Lucius not refusing. A moment later, he said, ‘You believe in prophecies, lieutenant?’
‘Well,’ said the lieutenant slowly, ‘I’m no philosopher, but I think I do. Like most people, I suppose.’
‘Exactly!’ The general banged his fist on the table and his eyes gleamed.
‘In my part of Britain, sir… I don’t know if I should say, as we’re all Christian now, I know, and they weren’t exactly popular with Julius Caesar… ’
Stilicho frowned. ‘Who, the Christians?’
‘No, sir, the druithynn and the bandruithynn – the holy men and women of Britain, the priests of our native religion.’
‘Ah yes, the druids. Caesar detested them, and the power they wielded. Which was why he pretty much wiped them out, I thought, on the Isle of Mon?’
‘He killed a lot of them, sir. But some escaped, to their cousins, over the water in Hibernia.’
‘Ah yes, Hibernia. Never could get the hang of Hibernia. They’re all mad there, aren’t they?’
Lucius smiled, and then said enigmatically, ‘Well, they don’t build straight roads over there, let’s say. But after the massacre on Mon, it was the home of the druithynn for the next four hundred years.’
‘And now…?’
‘Now they’re returning to Britain. Even though we’re all Christians now, even in Hibernia, the druithynn are returning. And many of the people, especially the country people, are still faithful to the old religion.’
Stilicho nodded. ‘Don’t tell me. The things that still go on in the hills and the villages – even in civilised Italy. I tell you, soldier, your average village Saturnalia still makes a night in a Suburran brothel look like dinner with the Vestal Virgins.’
‘In Dumnonia, sir, in my village, the marriage bond is held as sacred as it is among the strictest Christians of the East. But that’s not the case everywhere in Britain, especially on the great feast days of our Celtic year – like with your Saturnalia. In Dumnonia we still have the midwinter festival of Samhain, and then Beltane-’
‘And that’s when men really have to watch their wives, huh?’
Lucius grimaced. ‘And as for the young people not yet married.. . ’
The two men brooded for a while on the thought of young Celtic girls with no clothes on, and then harrumphed simultaneously and came back to reality.
‘How did we get onto this subject?’ growled the general.
‘Prophecy, sir.’
‘Ah yes.’ He poured more wine.
‘And I meant to say,’ said Lucius, ‘that prophecy is very strong among the druithynn – except that nothing is ever written down. Prophecies are considered to possess too much mana – that is, sacred power. Once they’re written down, anyone can read them.’
Stilicho nodded, his burning brown eyes in his long, lugubrious face fixed on the lieutenant. And then, without changing his gaze, he reached down and picked up a scroll from the table, upended it and shook. Another tattered scrap of a scroll fell out, and Stilicho unrolled it and pressed it out flat upon the table. It was brown with age, and blackened with burns round its edges.
‘Only two weeks ago,’ said the general, very slowly and softly, ‘on the orders of the Princess Galla Placidia, I went to the Temple of Capitoline Jove, which is now a Christian place of worship, of course. And I took up the Sibylline Books, and I burnt them. I scattered the ashes off the Tarpeian Rock like dead leaves. And when I looked back, this one scrap had fallen from the brazier and survived. One of the priests emerged – not a man I had ever respected for his spiritual fervour or intelligence. A fat old senator called Majoricus. In earlier days he was actually one of the quindecemviri – the Fifteen Men – who guarded the Sibylline Books with their lives. But once Theodosius shut the pagan temples for good, Majoricus knew pretty quickly which side his bread was buttered and became the most vociferous and fervent of Christians overnight. So he never had to leave the temple at all, it was said. A kind of holy sitting tenant, whom the new landlord – the God of the Christians – couldn’t have got rid of even if He’d wanted to.’
The two men chuckled.
‘So there I was, burning the last of the Books, when Majoricus came waddling over and retrieved this scrap of parchment from the floor. He looked it over and then he pressed it into my hand, saying that this was the very last Sibylline prophecy of all and that I must keep it. He didn’t know why, but he said it must be meant. He said, mysteriously, that “God has a thousand and one names.”
‘Now I had only reluctantly burnt the Books in the first place. Galla had said they were a wicked pagan superstition anyway, and they would sap the morale of the Roman people, with their endless foretelling of doom and destruction. But, with some surprise – at myself, you understand, for I am not a man who is generally much influenced by what fat old senators tell me to do-’
‘I imagine not, sir.’
‘All the same, at this moment, I did as that fat old priest commanded me, and I kept this last scrap of parchment. But it troubles me what I should do with it now. I do not know if my time will last much longer.’
‘Sir, you seem to me a very fit man.’
Stilicho hadn’t meant that at all. But he said nothing. Instead, he pushed the scroll across to the lieutenant. ‘I want you to have this. Guard it with your life.’
Lucius frowned. ‘Why? Why me?’
‘Call it a hunch. I’ve lived all my life listening to my hunches. My wife says it’s a female gift, but it’s one I’ve always received with gratitude. I usually get it right. Hunches tell us things that nothing else can. Here. It’s yours.’
Lucius gazed down at the scroll. There were two columns of verses, written in ancient temple-hand, in ink now yellowish-brown with age. Some lines were in long, bombastic hexameters, and others were brief, even vulgarly rhyming riddles, like the rhymes of barbarian peoples, which surprised him.
‘Read one,’ said Stilicho.
By the light of the candles beside him, Lucius read out in his deep, clear voice: ‘One with an empire,
One with a sword,
One with a son,
And one with a word.’
The general nodded. ‘And read those last hexameters.’
The lieutenant read, ‘When Romulus climbed to the rock,
Brother Remus stumbled below.
The dead man saw six, the king twelve,
And the book of Rome is closed.’
He looked up again. ‘This is… this is the prophecy that gives Rome twelve centuries to stand?’
‘And in our time… ’ said Stilicho. He opened his great hands wide. ‘In your hands is the very last prophecy of the Cumaean Sibyl, before she vanished for ever from our history. These are the verses regarding the end of Rome. They are difficult and obscure, like all the Sibylline verses; and they say that whoever seeks to interpret them will do so only to misunderstand them. Nevertheless, I pass them on to you.’
‘To me? Why?’
‘I feel somehow – I do not know why – that these last and most terrible verses must not be destroyed after
