since the day you arrived here,’ she said, her voice as cutting as Toletum steel. ‘You have had the finest Gallic tutors in Rome, to teach you rhetoric, logic, grammar, mathematics and astronomy… They have even tried to teach you Greek!’ She laughed. ‘What touching optimism! You have, of course, learnt nothing. Your table manners are a continuing disgrace, you do nothing but scowl and sneer at the other hostages, your barbarian… equals. And now you are growing destructive as well.’
‘Rhadagastus would have done much worse,’ blurted the boy.
For a fleeting instant, Galla hesitated. ‘Rhadagastus is finished,’ she said. ‘As the triumphal Arch of Honorius will demonstrate when it is unveiled at the ceremony next week. Which you will attend.’
He looked up at her wide-eyed. ‘Strange it’s not called the Arch of Stilicho, really, isn’t it? In my country, when a battle is fought and won-’
‘I am not interested in what goes on in your country. Just so long as it does not go on here.’
‘But we’re allies now, aren’t we? If it hadn’t been for the help of my people, Rome would probably be overrun with barbarians by now.’
‘Hold your tongue.’
‘And they’d do far more damage than this.’ He waved at the mutilated statue that towered over them. ‘If Rhadagastus and his warriors had got into the city, apparently they were going stuff the Senate House full of straw and set fire-’
‘I order you to hold your tongue!’ said Galla furiously, advancing towards him again.
‘-to it, and leave it and all of Rome nothing but a field of blackened rubble. As the Goths might next, they say, now that Alaric is their leader, and a just brilliant general, who-’
The princess’s cold and bony hand was raised to strike the little wretch a second time, and his slanted, malevolent Asiatic eyes glittered as he taunted her, when another voice rang out from the far corner of the courtyard.
‘Galla!’
They heard the swish of a stola over the paved floor, and there was Serena, the wife of Master-General Stilicho, advancing towards them.
Galla turned to her, hand still raised. ‘Serena?’ she said.
Serena contrived a curtsey to the princess as she hurried forward, but the look in her eyes was anything but humble or obedient. ‘Lower your hand.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘And you, boy, go to your room.’
He backed up against the wall and waited.
‘Do you presume to order me?’
Serena faced Galla Placidia and her eyes did not flinch. She was shorter than the princess, and perhaps twice her age, but there was no denying her beauty. Her hair was simply coiffed, and her stola of white silk left her neck and shoulders bare but for a slim necklace of Indian pearls. Her eyes, edged with fine laughter lines, were dark and lustrous, and few men in the court were strong enough to refuse her wishes when she expressed them in her low and gentle voice, turning her gaze and her wide smile full upon them. But when angered, those beautiful eyes could flash fire. They flashed fire now.
‘Do you think it wise, Princess Galla, to maltreat the grandson of our most valued ally?’
‘Maltreat, Serena? And what would you have me do when I catch him outraging one of the most precious statues in the palace?’ Galla moved almost imperceptibly nearer to her. ‘Sometimes, I wonder if you really mind about such things. One would sometimes think your sympathies were as much barbarian as Roman! Ridiculous, I know. But of course, I understand that your husband-’
‘That’s enough!’ flared Serena.
‘On the contrary, it is not nearly enough. Since your husband was of unbaptised and barbarian birth himself, I – and indeed many others in court circles, though you may be comfortably unaware of it – many of us have begun to suspect that you have difficulty in distinguishing between what is truly Roman and what is not.’
Serena smiled scornfully. ‘It has been a long time since even the emperors themselves were Roman born and bred. Hadrian was Spanish, as was Trajan. Septimius Severus was Libyan. P-’
‘I know my history, thank you,’ cut in the princess. ‘What is your point?’
‘My point is that you seem to be suggesting that my husband is not truly Roman on account of his birth. Romanitas no longer has anything to do with birth.’
‘You wilfully misunderstand me. I am rather suggesting that you and your husband’s party-’
‘We have no “party”.’
‘-are in grave danger of forgetting the very principles of Roman civilisation.’
‘When I see a grown woman striking a small boy, I do not see civilisation, Princess,’ Serena said acidly. ‘Nor do I see subtle diplomacy in evidence, when that boy is the grandson of our most valuable ally.’
‘Of course, some would argue that, since you are merely the wife of a soldier, however peculiarly… elevated that soldier may have become, your views are of no consequence. But I would not like to be so uncharitable. Or so’ – Galla Placidia smiled – ‘complacent.’
‘You see ghosts, Princess,’ said Serena. ‘You see things that are not.’ She turned aside and laid her hand on the waiting boy’s shoulder. ‘Away to your room,’ she murmured. ‘Come now.’
Together they went down to the corridor to the boy’s chamber.
Galla Placidia stood clenching and unclenching her white, bony fists for some time. Eventually she turned on her heel and strode away, sightless with fury, her silk stola sweeping the ground before her as she went. In her darting mind’s eye she saw suspicions, plots and jealousies scuttling away like malign and chattering sprites into the dark shadows of the imperial courtyards; her haunted green eyes cast restlessly from left to right as she walked, and found nothing worth their constancy.
Serena halted at the door to the boy’s chamber and turned him gently but firmly to face her.
‘The knife,’ she said.
‘I – I dropped it somewhere.’
‘Look at me. Look at me.’
He glanced up into those penetrating dark eyes and then looked down again. ‘I need it,’ he said miserably.
‘No you don’t. Give it to me.’
With great reluctance, he handed it over.
‘And promise me you will do no more damage in the palace.’
He thought about it and said nothing.
She continued to fix him with her dark eyes. ‘Swear it.’
Very slowly, he swore it.
‘I am trusting you,’ said Serena. ‘Remember that. Now go to bed.’ She pushed him gently into his chamber, pulled the door shut behind him, and turned away. ‘Little wolf-cub,’ she murmured to herself with the trace of a smile as she went.
One of the palace eunuchs came to Galla’s door and knocked. She nodded for him to be admitted.
It was the sharp-witted, sardonic Eutropius. His vital intelligence was that Serena and Attila had been seen outside the boy’s chamber, making what appeared to be a mutual promise or pact.
When he was gone, the princess rose and strode restlessly around the room, imagining conspiracies and secret conversations everywhere. She pictured the Huns in secret negotiation with Stilicho, of the boy somehow passing messages from Stilicho and Serena to his own murderous people encamped far out on the wild Scythian plains. Or even to his grandfather, Uldin, who, mistakenly in her opinion, would take part in the imperial triumph tomorrow, alongside Stilicho – as if the equal of a Roman general!
She saw too her brother, Emperor Honorius, ruler of the Western Empire, back in his palace in Mediolanum, or hiding away in his new palace at Ravenna, safe behind the mosquito-ridden marshes, giggling to himself as he fed grains of the finest wheat to his pet poultry. Honorius, her idiot brother, two years her junior: the eighteen- year-old Ruler of the World. ‘The Emperor of Chickens’, malicious tongues at court had christened him. Galla Placidia knew it all, both from her network of informants and from her own piercing green eyes, which saw through everything and everyone.
Let Honorius stay in his new palace: it was better, perhaps, that he was kept out of the way. Ravenna, that
