The boy’s blood ran cold. ‘Gone? You mean…?’
‘Released, sir, under the general amnesty with Alaric and his allies.’
Attila dropped the hunk of bread he was holding. ‘Then why wasn’t I let go, too? How were the Gothic armies beaten, if not with the help of my people? Under the command of my own grandfather?’
Bucco looked miserable.
The boy was already scrambling up from his bench and making for the door. ‘This is what we get from Rome!’ he yelled.
He snatched open the door, and stopped dead. A burly palace guard was standing immediately outside, his spear held firmly across the doorway, and a broad grin on his face.
He turned and took his place on the bench again. Something was going terribly wrong. He longed to talk to Serena and Stilicho, his only friends in Rome.
‘Eat your bread,’ said Bucco.
‘Eat it yourself, you fat Sicilian turd!’ screamed Attila, seizing the hunk of bread before him and hurling it at Bucco. It was a good shot, and hit Bucco on a pudgy jowl. But he simply stooped, a little awkwardly given his ample girth, retrieved the bread from the floor, waddled over and set it before the boy again.
‘Not your soup,’ he said. ‘Your bread. ’
Attila stared up at the slave. There was something in Bucco’s eyes
… an urgency.
He gingerly tore the bread open. There was a slip of paper inside it.
Bucco waddled round and returned, whistling with false joviality, to the cooking range.
Attila eased the paper out. It read: ‘ Wait in the kitchens until after the twelfth hour. When the guard outside the door has changed, come to my room immediately. The second guard will permit it. Do not be seen. Make haste. S.’
Attila did as he was told. For once.
After the bells had struck in the great court, he waited a few minutes and then emerged from the doorway of the kitchens. There was the new guard standing beside the door clutching his spear. He did not stir, as if the boy were invisible.
Attila ran back and found Bucco clearing his plate and bowl away. On impulse he hugged the fat slave round his huge waist. Bucco looked down in astonishment.
And then the boy was gone.
There was another guard outside the door into Serena’s chambers. He, too, behaved as if the boy were invisible.
Attila went in.
Serena was seated on a low couch with her back to him. When she heard him she turned, and he saw to his dismay that her face was streaked with tears. Serena, always so composed and dignified. Her large, liquid eyes filled with fresh tears at the sight of him.
‘Attila,’ she said, holding out her hand.
‘What is it?’ he said, hearing fear trembling in his voice.
She held him for a moment and then pushed him away. ‘There is danger,’ she said. ‘You must go. Tonight, if you can.’ She hesitated.
‘Tell me what,’ he said.
She shook her head. She looked anxious, bewildered, uncertain. She searched for the right words.
‘Where is Stilicho?’ asked the boy.
‘In Pavia.’ She spoke abruptly.
‘They said,’ he blurted, ‘they said – Eumolpus said – you’d ordered me never to speak to you again. He said that was what you wanted.’
‘He lied.’
‘I know he did. I… I bit him.’
Despite her tears, Serena smiled. ‘I know you did,’ she said. ‘The whole palace knows. And much of the palace rejoices.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Come and sit beside me. There is little time.’
He sat.
She sighed and pondered and then spoke. ‘Have you heard of the Sibylline Books?’
‘The books of prophecy?’ He nodded. ‘Among my people, prophecies and sacred verses and suchlike are never written down. They’re too precious, and they’re only ever committed to memory by the holy men.’
‘Ah,’ said Serena. ‘It is the same among the Celts, I believe. If only it were the same in Rome.’ She scrutinised his face, and then she said, ‘Among the last and greatest of the Sibylline Books is a prophecy that Rome will endure for twelve centuries. When Romulus founded the city, he looked into the sky and saw twelve vultures circling above the seven hills, and he knew they symbolised the twelve centuries during which the gods would permit Rome to reign triumphant over all the world. But the city was founded by Romulus in – you know your Livy?’
‘Yes,’ said the boy a little wearily. ‘Seven hundred and fifty-three years before the birth of Christ.’ He frowned. Then he began counting on his fingers. Then he looked up at Serena in shock.
‘Yes,’ she said sadly. ‘It is coming. It is coming soon – if one believes it. Or: if one believes it, it is coming soon.’ She drew breath. ‘I know, I know, everyone talks in riddles these days. Forgive me. Prin-that is to say, the imperial powers-that-be ordered General Stilicho to destroy the Books, and leave no trace behind. “That the people might continue to believe,” they said. But… there is a storm coming. And much which was precious and beautiful, and which seemed sheer miracle to the multitude, will be torn down and washed away for ever.’
The boy did not understand all she said. But he understood it when she told him he must go, and now. Rome was no longer safe for him.
‘Where am I to go?’
She smiled and touched her hand to his cheek. ‘Where you have always wanted to go, little wolf-cub. Home.’ She stood. ‘The sword that General Stilicho gave you… ’
‘I still have it,’ said the boy. ‘It is safely hidden.’
‘Of course it is,’ said Serena. ‘And Stilicho had one other gift to bestow. God send he bestow it wisely. The last, most direful prophecy of all. O Cassandra, why did we sons and daughters of Troy not listen?’
She seemed to be speaking almost to herself, and as if in Sibylline riddles again, distracted with anxiety and murmuring softly as her eyes searched the ground before her. ‘The prophecy told of the end of the world, we thought, but we misread it. We misread it always, we sons and daughters of Troy. It foretold not the end of the world, but only the end of Rome.’
She seized his hand one last time, fixing his eyes with her own troubled, dark, searching eyes, as if trying to communicate to him something that was beyond communication and older than all the ages of the world.
‘All will be destroyed, and all will come again,’ she said. ‘A holy man taught me that long ago, and I was loth to believe him. But I believe him now. Gamaliel he was called – Sun-singer, Fire-bringer, last of the Hidden Kings. Where is his voice and his wisdom now?’ She let his hand drop and her eyes grew distant.
At last the bewildered boy asked, ‘How am I to escape?’
‘It will be done tonight,’ she said.
Violent shouting suddenly arose in a distant part of the palace. Serena started, and Attila saw to his dismay that she was shaking with fear. She turned back to him.
‘Now go,’ she said. ‘The guard at your door is loyal. Stay within your chamber. At the appointed hour of the night, he will unlock the door and will guide you to a – a way out of the palace. It will lead you to the Chapel of the Magdalen, and from thence you will be guided out of the city by a monk called Eustachius, and you will be given your freedom – and perhaps even a pony.’
‘A pony!’
She smiled and reached out and touched him again. ‘Ride like the wind, little wolf-cub.’
‘Like the autumn wind on the steppe when Aldebaran is rising in the Eastern sky will I ride,’ he murmured. ‘And like the pale birchleaves of the mountains will I ride, when they are driven like multitudes before the autumn wind.’
‘And they tell us that barbarians have no poetry.’ She smiled. Then her smile vanished. ‘Steal what you must. Speak to no one. Give no one your name.’
