a child in rags, no more than four or five years old, its face of parchment, eyes rolled up in its head, flies settling already around the shrunken lips and the flaking nose. The child would be the same age as his own…
He bowed his head sorrowfully and could walk no further. He let go of Tugha Ban and leant down and gathered the dead child up in its rags. He covered its face – it was impossible to say even whether it was a boy or a girl – and laid the featherlight bundle at the side of the road, brushing away the flies and hiding the drawn, ashen face with a corner of ragged cloak. It was not enough, it was never enough, but it was as much as he could do. Then he and Tugha Ban walked on.
The whole city lay under an ominous silence, except for perhaps a long-drawn-out, barely audible sigh as it settled into enervation and death. The bodies of the dead were everywhere, and the clouds of breeding flies. It was still August, and in this heat Disease would soon make his appearance, close on the heels of his beloved bride, Starvation, and add to the manifold miseries of Rome.
Lucius and Tugha Ban walked for half an hour through the starved and haunted streets, the huddled groups of the dying sometimes stirring and chattering as they passed, eyeing with glittering, half-mad eyes the plump, grass- fed flanks of Tugha Ban. Lucius patted her on the nose.
At last they came to the Palatine Hill and the gates of the Imperial Palace. The guards here looked better fed. He demanded entrance, saying he came from Count Heraclian, from the column that had been despatched to Ravenna earlier in the month, and he gave the correct passwords. There was a long delay, and then at last he was admitted. He insisted on an audience with Princess Galla Placidia, saying that he had a confidential message for her from Count Heraclian himself. He was told to wait, and he waited for two hours. He waited until the evening. And then they said that the Princess Galla would receive him.
‘Look after my horse,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘I’ll be coming back for her.’
They gave him their word.
He was escorted by four armed guards into the Chamber of the Imperial Audience, and there in regal splendour on her throne of finest Carrara marble sat Princess Galla Placidia. Close by her stood the eunuch Eumolpus.
The princess let her pale eyes settle upon him for some time. Then she said, ‘So Heraclian is safe in Ravenna.’
‘He is. Along with his beloved Palatine Guard.’ The soldier’s tone was peculiar, sarcastic.
‘Address the Throne as “Your Excellency”,’ hissed Eumolpus.
Lucius turned and gazed at him steadily. Then he turned back and looked at the princess with equal steadiness. He said nothing.
Galla was astonished, but she betrayed nothing. A princess must never betray any emotion, which is weakness; she must never raise her voice, and she must walk with a slow stateliness at all times, as if a cup of water were balanced on her head.
Besides, perhaps this filthy, tousled, bare-legged soldier, whose malodorous presence she must endure for the sake of his communication from that fool Heraclian, had sunstroke, or was weak with hunger or something. No matter. For once, palace protocol could be put aside. All she wanted to know was: ‘And the rest of the column?’
‘Dead.’
She nodded. ‘And the Hun boy?’
‘Apart from the boy. He is free now.’
She smiled. ‘As you put it.’
Lucius nodded. ‘He will be well on his way back to his people by now.’
Galla hesitated. ‘You mean… his ancestors?’
‘No, I mean his people. Out on the Scythian plains. That’s clear enough, isn’t it?’
‘Your Excellency!’ cried Eumolpus, snatching up his skirts and hurrying out into the centre of the chamber. ‘This impertinence is grotesque! I must abjure you’ – he swung round to the deranged soldier who dared to address the Imperial Throne in such a way – ‘I must abjure you…’ Uncertain of what exactly he must abjure the soldier from, he raised his hand angrily.
‘Slap me,’ said the soldier quietly, ‘and I will break your neck where you stand.’
‘Oh!’ cried Eumolpus, backing away. ‘Your Excellency! Guards!’
But Princess Galla waved the guards away. ‘Bring this man some wine.’
‘I have no need of your wine,’ said the soldier. ‘It might make me puke.’
Galla’s face began to show signs of revulsion, uncertainty and fear in equal measure. When she spoke, it was with further hesitancy. ‘What is your message, soldier?’
Lucius fixed her unblinkingly. ‘“If Satan cast out Satan,”’ he said, ‘“how then shall his kingdom stand? For then he is divided against himself.” The Gospel of St Matthew, chapter twelve, verse twenty-six.’
Eumolpus retreated to his mistress’s side, and the two of them stared at the strange, sun-maddened soldier.
Finally, Galla spoke again. Her skin and her pale red hair looked paler than ever. ‘You are telling me the boy got away?’
‘The boy got away. Heraclian and the Palatine Guard got to Ravenna. And the rest of my century – my entire century – got wiped out. By a detachment of Batavian cavalry from the Danube station, disguised as a Gothic warband.’ Lucius kept his eyes on Galla all the time, his voice rising now in volume and anger. ‘I don’t have a message for you from that scumbag Heraclian, may he rot in hell. I only came here to ask you a question. One simple question, to which I trust you will give a straight answer. Is it true that this whole disgusting business – this massacre – was merely a-’
‘Your Excellency!’ cried Eumolpus, unable to contain himself any longer. ‘This is outrageous! You, an unwashed hooligan, do not put questions to Her Imperial Majesty, and you do not -’
Lucius took two deliberate steps towards Eumolpus. ‘Shut the fuck up,’ he said. ‘I want to hear an answer from the one who gives the orders, not a fucking eunuch.’
‘Guards!’ yelped Eumolpus. ‘Arrest this man!’
This time, the princess was so shaken that she did nothing to stop them. Two burly Palace Guards soon had Lucius’ arms locked up painfully behind his back, but he appeared not even to have noticed. His eyes never left Galla’s porcelain-white face.
‘If you do not answer,’ he said, as he was dragged back from the throne, ‘I will assume that my century was destroyed on your orders, as part of a plot using the Hun boy as a pawn. Am I right?’
Galla said nothing, but her lower lip trembled, and she clenched one small white fist in the palm of her other hand.
‘ Am I right? ’ roared Lucius, and his voice echoed deafeningly around the cavernous chamber like an angry missile.
Still there was nothing from the throne but an aghast silence.
‘Then I pray to God that you are punished for it,’ said Lucius, his voice quiet again but perfectly clear. ‘And that the line of Honorius die.’
At last it was too much for Galla. She leapt to her feet, all regal diginity and slow stateliness gone, and she raised her voice and cried with considerable emotion, ‘Take this man away! Have him beaten – and executed within the hour!’
And Lucius was dragged from the room.
‘So the Huns will not come?’ said Eumolpus, once the obnoxious soldier had been dragged away.
Galla resumed her seat, still shaken. ‘If what that madman has just told us is correct, the Huns will not come. The plan has failed.’
‘What must we do now, Your Excellency?’
Galla scowled in fury. ‘We must negotiate with the Goths. At first light tomorrow.’
‘And the boy? We do not know how much he really knows. If he makes it home to Scythia – unlikely, I know, but if he does – and tells his story, we will make mortal enemies of the Hun nation as well.’
Galla turned such a look on Eumolpus that he quailed where he stood.
‘Kill him,’ she said. ‘Send out orders. Scour all of Italy, and all of Pannonia beyond, to the very banks of the Danube. He must be destroyed. He must not get away. Rome itself may depend on it. Find him. And kill him.’
After ten lashes from the knotted rawhide whip, his back was streaming with blood. After thirty lashes, the
