‘His brother rules the Gothic nation now. Athawulf, he’s called. Just as much of a sharp one as his big brother, they reckon. And you know what? You know who he’s gone and married? Or who’s gone and married him, rather?’ The sailor stretched his aching back. ‘Times we live in, I don’t know. He’s only gone and got himself hitched to the emperor’s sister, hasn’t he?’
Lucius stared open-mouthed. ‘Princess… Galla Placidia?’ he said hoarsely.
The sailor pointed a forefinger at him. ‘That’s the one. Emperor’s sister, and a right handful, they say. And now she’s only gone and given herself in marriage to the King of the Goths!’
Lucius’s head sank down on his chest and he spoke no more.
But that evening, as the ship pitched gently through the waves, and the stars came out in the late summer sky and the moon went down, and the golden shores of Hispania retreated behind them into the night, the captain and his two crewmen sat and wondered at the strangeness of their passenger, the grey-eyed British horseman. For Lucius sat alone in the prow of the old cargo-ship, staring up at the stars with his fists raised to heaven, his head thrown back, laughing to himself as if he had just been told the funniest joke in the world.
The sailors’ garbled, dockside intelligence was broadly accurate.
On the night of 24 August, 410 years after the birth of Our Saviour, Rome fell. For the first time in nearly eight hundred years, the proud capital of empire heard in its streets the tramp of a barbarian army.
They came pouring through the Salarian Gates to the sound of triumphal Gothic trumpets. Many of the starving multitude welcomed them as an end to their suffering. Furthermore, Alaric, the Christian king of his people, gave strict orders that, while any loot belonged to his men by jus belli, no churches, chapels or other places of Christian worship were to be touched. And no holy women were to be subjected to the usual jus belli, either. And his Gothic warriors – cross-gartered, long-haired, moustachioed barbarians in outward form – conducted themselves with restraint and even nobility.
Sacking certainly took place, and many centuries of treasures were lost – which had been sacked in their turn from weaker, colonised peoples, of course. But tales of atrocity and torture, such as one expects to hear at the collapse of a great city, were few, and often disbelieved. The Goths’ reputation for both martial ferocity and a certain proud clemency towards those weaker than themselves was once again confirmed. Indeed, the worst atrocities that took place during those fateful few hours were committed, it was said, not by the fair-haired invaders but by disgruntled slaves taking private revenge on cruel masters and mistresses for years of oppression, under cover of chaos and the night.
The houses the length of the Via Salaria were put to the torch, to light the army’s way into the heart of the city. And once there, amid the seven hills, many of Rome’s great towers and palaces were brought down in ashes and dust. The Palace of Sallust on the Quirinal Hill, beside the Baths of Diocletian, that architectural jewel containing the unnumbered treasures of Numidia, and every miracle of the jeweller’s and goldsmith’s, the painter’s and the sculptor’s art, was fired and destroyed in a single night, its contents vanished for ever. Likewise the palace of the fabulously wealthy Anician clan was seen from afar off, aflame in the night. Wagons piled high with gold and silver, silks and ornaments and purples, were soon trundling out of the gates towards the Gothic camp.
In the Forum, the mighty statues of the heroes of Rome were roped and pulled down by rearing horses and their drunken, whooping riders. In the fiery light of the burning buildings, those monuments of the ages came crashing to the ground: Aeneas and the early rulers of Rome, the honoured generals of the Carthaginian and Macedonian campaigns, the deified emperors, great Hadrian and Trajan themselves. Even Caesar’s solemn mask, melting into the flames as he if were no more a man of bronze but only a pitiful figurine of wax…
Some of the wealthier citizens fled ahead of the invaders, and sought refuge on the little isle of Igilium, off the Argentarian promontory. The woods there grew thick with huddled and hungry refugees, still strangely attired in rich robes and gold-embroidered dalmatics. But on those summer nights they shivered like any beggar in his rags, to see Rome burn across the bay, and all their vaunted wealth go up in smoke. Others took ship for Africa or Egypt; still others took the veil. But none truly escaped the wrath of those days.
In Hippo, on the African coast, Bishop Augustine began to brood about the meaning of the Sack of Rome, and to contemplate the writing of his great masterpiece, The City of God. For the city of mankind’s longing must be a city that endures for ever, a celestial Rome. For here we have no abiding city…
And in Bethlehem in far-off Palestine, Holy Jerome in his sky-lit cell wept at the news that the world was at an end. ‘My voice is choked with sobs as I write these words,’ he lamented. ‘The city that conquered the world is now herself conquered.’
He also wrote, in a letter to a friend, a line that has become famous throughout the world. ‘All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.’
The Goths stayed only six days in the city before their creaking covered wagons rolled out again, laden with the treasures of half the world. Alaric marched south, his thirst for gold and glory not yet wholly appeased, and his Gothic horde sacked the city of Capua, the proud, sybaritic and luxurious capital of Campania. Along the Neapolitan coast, that playground of the rich and powerful for centuries, even the gorgeous villas of Cicero and Lucullus were filled with long-limbed Goths reclining on silk-upholstered couches, quaffing huge bejewelled goblets of the finest Falernian, and rejoicing in their mastery of the world. In their drunken vainglory, these haughty German warriors forgot that there were still other tribes – and one tribe in particular – that might envy them their easy conquest of Rome.
Alaric marched south again for Messina, his eyes on the rich pickings of Sicily just across the straits. But the weather was by then turning rough, with late summer and early autumn storms, and rising Sirius presiding as always over the season of storms that sailors have dreaded since man first presumed to travel in Neptune’s realm. And that very night, after a fine banquet in his palatial tent, cooked for him by his boasted new Roman chef, Alaric was suddenly taken ill with some mysterious form of poisoning, and died. His chef had in fact been a gift from the household of Princess Galla Placidia herself…
The unfortunate creator of the banquet was put to death, just to be on the safe side. And Alaric was given a burial fit for a conqueror and king. His generals, with massive slave labour from the neighbouring townships, diverted the River Busentius from the walls of Consentia, buried their lamented king in a triple casket in the muddy riverbed, then returned the river to its course. All those who had worked on the burial were slain, and to this day the exact place of Alaric’s burial has not been discovered. Doubtless it never will be.
To unanimous acclaim, Alaric’s capable, vigorous, taciturn younger brother, Athawulf, was made king in his stead. And the Gothic nation, abandoning its dreams of conquering Sicily, which seemed to them fore-damned, returned northwards to Rome. And there, to general astonishment, and not a little sardonic laughter, it was soon announced to the populace of the city, and to the Gothic nation, that King Athawulf, as a sign of the new concord that now existed between the Gothic and Roman peoples, would take as his bride the beautiful Princess Galla Placidia, sister to Emperor Honorius, and a spotless virgin of only twenty-two summers.
9
Throughout these tumultuous days for Rome – her last days, so it seemed – the Palatine Guard continued to hunt for the barbarian boy with the slanting eyes and the blue, scarred, tattooed cheeks, on his arduous flight through the ruins of Italy.
The boy fought on, hunted all the way.
His ancient mule died under him so he stole a horse. He rode that horse to death in a single day, and the next sunrise he stole another. He could cover a hundred miles between dawn and dusk, or as often by night, riding through the dense woods of the Italian mountains, only coming down into the more populous valleys to steal. He survived through anarchy and war, fighting sometimes like a cornered animal against vagrants or bandits or deserter soldiers with lust or cruelty in their eyes. He fought, cheated and lied his way through the flames of Roman devastation, and with every victory that he won he grew stronger. He was happier in those desperate weeks than he had ever been during the years of boredom and bitterness in the safe and perfumed courts of Rome.
He had always before him the prospect of his own country: the beloved, windy plains of Scythia, the broad, winding rivers and the vast, dense pine forests, the tents of black felt and the wagons where his people encamped.
