Emperor Marcian and the pious Empress Pulcheria so busy, exactly? What are the Eastern bishops debating?’
His sarcasm was lost on the fellow, who loved nothing more than discussing theology, and explained with animation, ‘Well, firstly, the barbarous enormities of the Irish.’
‘The barbarous…?’
The deacon nodded vigorously. ‘Enormities. Of the Irish. And then, following the Second Council of Ephesus, and the considerable progress made there on the issue of homoousion and homoiousion, they will be discussing the heretical teachings of Nestorius – the Christotokos rather than the Theotokos, of course. Harsh was his own treatment of the Arians and the Novatianists, as you know, but against Nestorius himself, that great thinker Theophilus of Alexandria will be urging the strictest anathemas.’
‘Indeed.’ Aetius broke a bread roll. ‘Well, that’s good to know.’
‘But there will be other, more heterodox voices present,’ said the young churchman darkly, ‘including both Philoxenus of Maboug and Zenobius of Mopsuestia.’
‘And we do not approve of Zenobius of…?’
‘Zenobius of Mopsuestia!’ he cried, flecks of spittle flying from his mouth in his sudden fury. ‘That… that…’ But he could not find the appropriate words to describe Zenobius of Mopsuestia.
Truly, thought Aetius, there is no hatred like the hatred between fellow-believers. After Arius’ death, didn’t his great theological enemy Athanasius spread the news that he had died in a public lavatory?
The young deacon drank a little wine, then resumed more calmly, ‘It is to be hoped that the final Ekthesis of the Council will find that the difference of the Divine Natures is in no way altered by Union, but rather that the properties of each Nature are preserved in one single – one Prosopon and one Hypostasis – with various monoenergist and monothelite qualifications, naturally.’
‘Naturally.’ Aetius munched his roll. ‘And isn’t that precisely what Christ himself spent so much time teaching? Rather than preaching about the poor, and brotherly love and so forth?’
At last Aetius’ sarcasm dawned on the deacon and he glared at him. Aetius smiled politely, rising from the bench. ‘Excuse me. I must go and talk to someone more interesting.’
He went and squeezed in between the princes. ‘Truly,’ he murmured, ‘the Church must be under the protection of God. It would never have survived this long otherwise. ’
The next day, Aetius and his retinue saddled up and rode soberly out of the east gate back to their encampment. They would have to face the Huns alone, outnumbered by as much as ten to one. He reined in and looked at his twenty-five thousand men. ‘It is not enough,’ had said Theodoric himself.
‘Then why in hell’s name does he not join us?’ growled Aetius. He yanked his reins savagely and rode on down into the camp.
‘We ride out today?’ asked Germanus.
Aetius shook his head.
‘But why should we delay? All of northern Gaul is burning.’
Aetius said nothing for a long time. Then he gazed back towards Tolosa. ‘I cannot tell you why, but we must wait. Just one more day.’
The men grumbled and ate little that evening and slept badly. Waiting was the worst. Every campfire made them think of another burning building, another blazing town, and in the ruins of each blood-orange fire they saw shapes of the Devil’s horsemen, trailing catastrophe in their wake.
Aetius, too, had a feeling of impending horror, but he knew he must await it. Evasion was impossible. And as sure as the sun rising, the following morning brought horror, and the horror brought with it a sort of salvation. When he understood, he wished salvation had come otherwise.
6
A messenger turned off the road into the camp, stiff and cold from his night ride.
He had come at the gallop from Narbo. Princess Amalasuntha…
Aetius raced back to Tolosa, and straight to the royal quarters of the palace. Even as he approached, he could hear a terrible, bull-like roaring.
A ship had come in from Carthage. It bore a small party of Gothic maids, and the princess. She had been expelled by Genseric, who had become suspicious that she was a witch trying to put his son Euric under a spell, and then eventually convinced that she was planning to kill both her husband and her father-in-law. She, an innocent girl of no more than sixteen summers.
But there was worse…
The expelled and humiliated party was on its way. A column of wolf-lords rode out to escort them home.
Never would Aetius forget the glimpse he had of the girl as he looked down from an upper window of the palace. He saw her being helped down from the carriage, and remembered how he had seen her only two years before, a flash and a blur of long fair hair and laughing smile, as she threw her slim arms round her father’s great hoary head and covered him in kisses. And now…
There was wailing and grieving as in a Greek tragedy. The elderly Queen Amalfrida looked near to collapse as she leaned on one of her six sons, speechless with sorrow. Another son turned away, unable to look, at once broken-hearted for his sister and burning with a rage for vengeance. And old King Theodoric himself took his daughter in his arms and wept, and held her to his great chest, but very gently. For her head was wrapped in bandages stained with blood: her ears and nose had been cut off by Genseric in punishment for her imagined sorcery.
As in Greek tragedy, sorrow followed on the heels of sorrow, like hounds in a slavering pack. The sweet princess, hardly understanding what had befallen her or why, a pawn in a great game played between cruel god- kings or gods, developed a fever as she lay in her bed, and within hours they were saying that her blood had become poisoned by infection. She died the following day, her mother holding one hand and her father the other, begging her parents not to sorrow, and giving her blessings to them and to her brothers and to all her father’s people.
None was cruel enough to whisper that perhaps it was a blessing. The queen was speechless with grief, but the King’s voice was heard throughout the palace, his agony all the greater because he felt he himself was to blame. His revenge would be terrible.
He cried out in the old Gothic as he took his daughter’s body in his huge arms and clutched her to his chest, and all those who heard closed their eyes and turned away.
‘ Me jarta, O me jarta, ’ he lamented. ‘My heart, oh, my heart,’ his own great heart almost cracking in remorse. ‘May God forgive me. She was my all, my heart, my soul, she was my dawn, my evening sun, my lamp, my stay, my staff, her mother’s daughter, my only comfort. How I loved her. My tongue is too weak to tell.’
At last he laid her down, and the girl’s mother and father clung to each other by her silent bedside and wept until they could weep no more.
Soon the whole of Tolosa was in uproar, with everywhere the sound of horses’ hooves and tramping men. Aetius asked for one last audience with the King. He was denied: ‘The King is busy with preparations for war.’
Aetius pushed the guard aside, burly as he was, and strode into Theodoric’s council of war. With him round the table stood his two eldest sons, Theodoric and Torismond, and his two wolf-lord commanders, Jormunreik and Valamir. The rest looked up at Aetius’ entrance, silent and grim-faced, but Theodoric did not. The fact that Aetius’ darkest warnings about Genseric had turned out to be true did not endear him to the King, far from it. They only compounded the warring guilt and anger in Theodoric’s breast.
He growled, ‘My heart is set, Roman. We sail for Carthage tomorrow.’
‘You cannot.’
Theodoric exploded into fury, a fury all the more terrible because it was half grief. The table shuddered under his great thumping fist, and then he strode round to Aetius and roared in his face, ‘Do not come between me and my wrath, Roman! Do not involve me and my wolf-lords in your puny squabbles with your enemies! We have a
