Of course she knew it. Her mouth twitched with amusement at my stammering, hopeless, infatuated obedience to her every whim. She could have ordered me to stand on the high window ledge of the chamber and throw myself to the ground three floors below, and I would have obeyed. But naturally she would not. Proud she may have been; vain of her beauty, certainly – what woman would not be? But cruel? No. In a cruel world, and a cruel and fickle court, Athenais was never cruel. She loved all humanity with a generous, spontaneous outpouring of affection.
She began to speak.
My pen quivered, and I began to write.
When I ran to make my humblest apologies for my absence later that morning to the court chamberlain, a tall, unsmiling eunuch called Nicephorus, he merely waved me away with his long-fingered hand, festooned with signet rings.
‘The empress has already made your pardons for you,’ he said. ‘You were required elsewhere this morning.’
No one else would have troubled thus to save a humble court clerk from a tongue lashing. But that was Athenais: loved as much for her kindness of heart as for her beauty.
They are rare companions in a woman.
I doted on her. Sometimes to the sly ridicule of my fellow scribes and clerks, I adored her.
This then was the palace and its inhabitants on the eve of the arrival of Galla, Aetius and her small retinue, only months after the imperial wedding. It was a moonless night when they arrived at that great fortified compound with its mighty walls of red Egyptian granite, and its interior lavishly decorated with porphyry from Ptolemais in Palestine, Attic marble, rich damask hangings from Damascus, ivory and sandalwood from India, silken brocades and porcelain from China. A dream-palace where even the chamber-pots were made of purest silver.
The fugitives from the West were treated with great kindness upon their arrival – Galla Placidia and Theodosius were, after all, aunt and nephew: she the daughter and he the grandson of Emperor Theodosius the Great. And perhaps the pure Pulcheria admired Galla the more when she found that the reason for her precipitate flight from Italy had been to preserve herself from the unchaste advances of a man.
They were given some of the finest suites in the Imperial Palace, overlooking that bright sunlit sea, so different and so far away from the marshes and the gloom of Ravenna, and they were lavished with gifts of gold, and precious gems, and fine robes. All these things Galla rejoiced in. Aetius was perhaps less impressed, but he said nothing. He had been to Constantinople before. He knew the city of old.
At dusk the following day a firm knock came on my door.
I was engaged in some tedious but necessary work for the Count of the Sacred Largesse – adding up columns of figures, in other words. I couldn’t help wishing there were a symbol… It seems madness to say so, but I couldn’t help wishing there were a symbol for nothing, as well as for all the numerals denoting somethings. A special number signifying no number. Idly I even drew a round ‘O’ in the margin of my paper, to signify emptiness, absence. Surely it would make adding up easier in some ways? But I scribbled it out again. It was a foolish notion, and would only earn me ridicule; and I suffered enough ridicule as it was from my fellow clerks, owing to my great devotion to the Empress.
‘Enter,’ I said, not looking round.
The door opened, and someone stood behind me. Still I did not look, but then the power of his presence was overwhelming, and I glanced back.
It was him. My pupil. My dear, my much-missed, grave-eyed, tall, lean pupil. A general, at twenty-five!
Before I knew what I was doing I had scrambled to my feet and embraced him. It was contrary to all court etiquette, of course, for a mere slave-born pedagogue even to approach a nobleman unbidden, or address words to him first, let alone to embrace him. But Aetius and I had always been more to each other than mere slave-teacher and master-pupil. He embraced me fondly in return, his blue eyes shining with affection, and perhaps amused remembrance of our long hours of learning together which he had so openly detested.
We stood back and regarded each other.
It was good to have him back in the court, for however short a while. His very presence, so still and strong, was a calmative, in a world which seemed increasingly beset by winds of violent change from without, and unhealthy miasmas of weakness and madness from within. News from Ravenna of Emperor Honorius was not good. Aetius stood through it all, this lean, hard young man, steady-eyed, unflinching, like a pillar of granite in a hailstorm.
‘So,’ he said, his hands on my shoulders, looking down at me. ‘You work here in Constantinople now?’
I nodded. ‘After my years of pedagogy had finished, and I had seen my most brilliant though idle pupil off into the wide world – you remember faithfully all your lessons in logic, I trust? And the three categories: demonstrative, persuasive, and sophistic?’
‘Only in your late twenties yourself,’ said Aetius, clapping me on the arm, ‘and talking like an aged pedant already.’
‘Already talking like an aged pedant,’ I corrected him. ‘It is vulgar to end a sentence with an adverb.’
He smiled. ‘What little logic I ever learned is long forgotten. Besides,’ he added, the smile fading, ‘the wide world you saw me off into but rarely conforms to its laws.’
I looked away, out of the window and across the shimmering Golden Horn. Gulls wheeled low in the twilight beyond the bars.
‘After you had gone off to the frontier to learn soldiering, I was despatched from the court of Honorius to come east. It is peaceful here.’ I looked back at him. ‘But what of yourself? I have no other great news, but what of you? What news?’
‘I hear that the emperor has married,’ murmured Aetius. ‘News enough, I would have thought.’
‘Ah, yes,’ I said. ‘Athenais.’
‘You speak of her as a man speaks of his beloved.’
‘Ssshh!’ I hissed, alarmed. ‘Do not even whisper such things!’
He laughed. I glared. Fine for him to fear nothing, but we slave-born pedagogues have a great deal to fear in an imperial court.
‘So,’ he said, ‘this Athenais – Eudoxia, we should say, I think – she is very beautiful?’
‘Hmph.’ I still glared. ‘You can decide for yourself when you meet her. She returns from the Summer Palace at Hieron in two days’ time.’
‘What other news?’
I shrugged. ‘No other news. You know better than that. Humble scribes such as myself do not have news. Whereas generals…’
‘You wish to hear my news?’
I nodded. ‘Of course.’
He considered, then sighed, pulled over a splintery stool from the shadows and sat down. After long rumination he began. ‘During my last season on the Danube station, at Viminacium-’
‘Wait, wait!’ I cried, hurriedly sharpening my goosequill as best I could.
‘You’re writing all this down?’ he said.
‘Every word,’ I said. ‘For the day when…’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘The Annals of Priscus of Panium?’
I nodded sheepishly. ‘It won’t be Tacitus, I know. But-’
He laid his powerful hand on my arm, and said, ‘Do not be so sure. We live in interesting times.’
Our eyes met. We both understood the bleak irony in his words.
I rested my hands on the brim of my writing lectern, dipped my quill, and waited.
‘Well,’ he began. ‘News from the Danube station.’
It was a daily delight to me to see my dear pupil, Aetius, in his red general’s robes, attending the interminable meetings and sessions of statutes in the imperial Consistory with great forbearance for a man of action such as himself. ‘With attainments beyond his years, and a steadiness of character beyond his attainments’, as St Gregory of Nazianzus said.
He served as dutifully in Consistory as on the battlefield. The frontier was quiet for now; there were no major campaigns to be fought and, besides, the summer campaigning season was almost at an end. So he took his place obediently in the great semicircle of the court, with Theodosius enthroned at the centre, and his senators,
