‘And no moon beetles drowned in it, either, I assure you.’
She drank and set the goblet down again. ‘My son is mad,’ she repeated. ‘He is emperor and he is mad. I do not understand the will of God.’
How tragic it had been, this flinty, green-eyed woman’s life. At least one, perhaps both, of her husbands murdered. Her daughter a slut, pregnant by her own chamberlain when still a girl, and even now still in confinement in the Palace of Hormisdas in the East. Galla never saw her. Instead she saw, daily, her son, who was an idiot, and a malevolent idiot at that.
Aetius said nothing. He would not lie, so there was nothing to say. The murder of any ruler was wrong. But there was this thin, world-weary care-worn woman sitting before him, whom in a way he did love. He had to remind himself that she was only a few years older than he was. They had grown old together, but she far faster than he. Life on the battlefield might be hard, but it was nothing like so hard as life at court. That friendless and airless world into which she had been born, a fetid world of backstabbings and complots, at whose heart she had remained out of sheer duty. No, he could not rebel against his emperor. And he could not kill this woman’s only son.
They drank more wine, toasting each other.
‘To wine!’
‘The peasant’s solution to all ills!’
They stepped outside.
Galla said, ‘I still do not understand why Theodosius is angry with us.’
‘It was Valentinian’s decision to attack the Huns, remember. The VIIth Legion carried it out. Attila attacked the VIIth Legion in return, and has destroyed it, if reports are correct. So of course Theodosius feels he is paying a terrible price for carrying out his cousin’s wishes. It was a brilliant stroke. The Huns have people working among us. As you have noted, Attila has attacked right at the border between the two empires. He is also playing havoc with communications – I do not yet understand how. I fear his grasp of intelligence is phenomenal.’
They stood in companionable silence and anxiety. The stars glimmered over the palace roofs. There was the sound of the trickling dolphin fountain in the courtyard, and the mesmeric hum of mosquitoes coming in from the marshes for the evening feed. Aetius slapped his forearm.
There were many things they could have said but sometimes it is better to say nothing. They stood together, looking out into the darkness with their thoughts: thoughts of decline and fall, of empires’ collapse; of how the manifest destiny of Rome seemed to have grown obscured almost to vanishing point in these latter days and years. Behind them they felt centuries of history, a weight both pleasant and unpleasant, comforting and burdensome; the gaze of many steadfast emperors upon them, Augustus, and Trajan, and Marcus Aurelius; Constantine the Great, of the House of the Flavians, direct forefather of Flavius Aetius; and Vespasian, too, that old soldier, who had his bust sculpted to show his laughter lines and his bald pate, and who liked to joke, ‘If you want to know whether the emperor is truly divine, ask the man who empties his chamber pot.’ He had even joked on his deathbed, saying sarcastically, ‘Good grief, I think I’m turning into a god!’ Not all Rome’s emperors had been mad with power.
Further off still, through distant mists of time, the stern, unflinching grey eyes of the old republic, which looked on the world and saw it clear, as it was, and were not dismayed. No Scipio or Cato had ever sought refuge in spells and charms. Now he and Galla and Theodosius were the last heirs of Rome. How would they be judged? What would their legacy be?
Down below, in his occult chamber, was the latest ruler of Rome, mad as the mist and snow. What swamps the Imperial Palace of Ravenna stood on, or was sinking into; swamps which no mere engineer could drain. What empire could find firm foundation in such base ooze, the sewage of dark centuries? In troubled times, end-times, people turn to strange cults and practices. Conscious of their ebbing power in the real world, they turn to fantasy power, and to beliefs and false enchantments that would shame a stronger man. Normality itself falls victim, and everywhere there is the triumph of pained uncertainty and panicked delusion.
And we sit and fester, brooded Aetius: Africa uncaptured, the empire slowly starving to death, and our offer of aid turned down by Theodosius, the scholar-emperor. Perhaps he was riding to war against the Huns even now, his head full of Homer’s hexameters. O Christ, our Saviour… Aetius thought of the Hun horses, their heads like bullock-heads, battering down men and walls in a ceaseless charge, men flying apart, lines of lightly armed Greek peltasts fleeing before their furious onslaught. In his dreams sometimes he saw those horses of the Asiatic steppes galloping down on him, screaming, their faceless riders lashing them forwards without mercy, their mouths curled back against the cruel bit, tongues lolling, the very teeth of those brute-headed horses smeared with blood… But one rider was not faceless. One rider’s face he knew of old.
3
Aetius could wait no longer for news of the great confrontation between Attila and the Eastern Field Army. It might be days yet, even weeks, and the thought of it made him horribly uneasy, with a prophetic unease.
‘I am very displeased,’ said Valentinian. His eyes were narrow and darting and dull with broken sleep and haunted dreams.
‘Neverthless, Majesty, I beg you will release me to sail east.’
‘And I am very mistrustful.’
Aetius said nothing.
‘You will take no legions, nor ships from Sicily.’
Aetius bowed.
‘And what of those oafish Visigoth friends of yours? I said I would not have them on the soil of Italy.’
Aetius could have reminded Valentinian that his mother, Galla Placidia, had once been married to a certain Athaulf the Goth. But he thought better of it.
He said, ‘The Princes Theodoric and Torismond and their one thousand wolf-lords are stationed at Massilia, with their father’s blessing. They would not have sailed with me against their Germanic kinsmen the Vandals, of course. But they would willingly sail with me east to fight their ancient enemy the Huns.’
‘You’re welcome to them. Perhaps they will not return. ’
‘I still believe, Majesty, that the Visigoths might yet prove our greatest allies.’
Valentinian took a sudden, close interest in a loose thread in the hem of his robe.
Eventually, Aetius said, ‘Majesty?’
He looked up testily. ‘Yes, yes, go, then. But I may not want you back.’
Aetius almost smiled. Oh yes you will, he thought.
‘Take this,’ said Galla. She pressed a small, leather-bound book into his hands. It was a rich psaltery, most delicately illustrated.
He refused it. ‘Salt water,’ he said, ‘would ruin it.’
‘Then keep it well protected.’
‘And if we go to the bottom?’
There was a lost look in her eyes. Then she leaned up and kissed him. ‘Take it,’ she said.
He rode fast westwards to Mediolanum and on to Massilia, cursing Valentinian at every milepost. He took only his boy optio, Rufus, who chattered excitedly much of the way. How large is Constantinople? What is the food like? Do they still have gladiatorial combats there? Aetius told him Constantinople was much like Rome, except it didn’t smell so bad.
On the edge of the great port of Massilia he found the Visigothic princes in a fine villa, their wolf-lords’ tents spread across parklands, vineyards, half a hillside. The villa was half-wrecked, the adolescents dishevelled, red- faced and hung over from last night’s debauch. He gave them a talking-to. They hung their heads. He said he would be sailing on the evening tide and if they weren’t ready, prepared and sober, he would sail without them.
‘Sailing?’ said Torismond, looking anxious.
These steppe horsemen. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve never been on a ship before?’
They hadn’t. They thought they would be riding east, a thousand of them in gorgeous panoply, to fight the Huns on the Pannonian plain.
