Attila:The Scourge of God

Here, the shepherd located a ford by an ingenious trick which greatly impressed the young courier. Lobbing stones in succession into mid-stream, the shepherd noted the difference between splashes until he located shallow water. Where it was deep, the stone sank with a hollow ‘plump’, the displaced water rising in a vertical spout; where shallow, both sound and splash were more diffused. Thus, slowly and with circumspection, the remaining five channels were negotiated, and at last the two men stood dripping on the farthest bank.

After thanking the shepherd, and rewarding him with a handful of nummi, Titus appealed to him not to show the way to a group of five riders, should he happen to encounter them. He, Titus, had dared to court the daughter of a rival family, he explained, for which temerity her relatives had vowed to pursue and kill him. The shepherd’s eyes sparkled with delight at being made privy to an affair of honour and the heart. ‘Ad Kalendas Graecas!⁴ Never!’ he exclaimed, dramatically placing a hand over his heart.

After the shepherd had departed, Titus concealed himself and his mount in a copse, and watched the river, his clothes slowly drying in the warm evening sunshine. Presently, the mysterious quintet appeared on the far side. Dusk was not far off, and he doubted they would try to cross the Tarus before morning: this was confirmed when they began gathering driftwood for a camp fire. Reassured that he would not be followed until after dawn, Titus pushed on to Fornovium.

After a night at an inn which was notable less for its hospitality than for its insect life, Titus was in the saddle before sun-up. Looking back as he left the town, he spotted on the far side of the Tarus eruptions of glowing dots where his pursuers were kicking out the embers of their fire. How would they fare crossing the river? Drown with any luck, he chuckled.

He rode on, past noble stands of chestnuts, their leaves a glory of gold and russet, meeting no one except an occasional shepherd or group of carbonarii, charcoal-burners. The foothills were now behind him, and he was into the Apennini proper. All morning he made good progress, switchbacking up and down the ridges separating the three remaining rivers this side of the watershed, but overall climbing steadily. The second river, the Parma, he forded as he had the Tarus; the others he was able to cross by rickety wooden causeways. All the time he checked his route by sightings of a strange rock looming on the southern skyline, a vast square column thrusting up from a sloping base.⁵

Early in the afternoon — about the eighth hour he reckoned — Titus came to the mouth of a deep and silent valley, hung with enormous woods and sloping upwards to where it was closed by a high grassy bank between two peaks. This bank, he felt, must be the central ridge of the Apennini, the watershed beyond which lay Etruria and journey’s end.

An hour later, Titus dismounted on the crest. Looking back, he surveyed with a quickening of the pulses, all the Aemilian plain, the old province of Cisalpine Gaul, unrolling northwards from the mountains’ base, and on the far horizon a line of sharp white clouds. But they were motionless, and he soon realized they must in fact be the Alpes. Far below and miles away, five crawling dots told him the pursuit had not been abandoned. He was not worried; all being well, by dusk he’d be in Luca, his mission safely accomplished.

Crossing the watershed marked by a line of cool forest, Titus heard on every side the noise of falling water, where the Sercium, springing from twenty sources on the southern slope, cascaded down between mosses and over slabs of smooth, dark rock. A glade opened, giving a view down the Garfagnana, whose western wall was a high jagged massif, with cliffs and ledges of a dazzling whiteness. Snow, thought Titus at first. But no: these must be the mountains of Carrara, quarried for their marble these five hundred years. He rode on, filled with pleasant thoughts of the bath, food, and rest that awaited him at Luca — no doubt to be followed in due course by congratulations from a grateful Boniface for a task well done.

Titus had begun to relax when his horse suddenly checked and stumbled. Titus dismounted and examined its legs, but could find no damage. Then his eye caught the glint of metal a few paces behind; it was a solea ferrea, a broad iron cavalry horseshoe. He quickly checked his horse’s hoofs, and found that the off front shoe had been cast, while a rear shoe was so loose that it would likely have come off within another mile. Cursing the imperial farrier who had done such an evil job, Titus realized that the game might well be up. To ride on would be to lame his horse to no avail, for his pursuers must now inevitably overtake him. Nor could he expect to fare any better on foot; in this steep-sided valley, here clothed with grass instead of sheltering woods, he was as effectively trapped as a penned steer. Relieving his mount of its harness and saddle, which he concealed in bushes (a futile gesture, he admitted), he left it to graze and, for want of a better alternative, trudged on downhill, his saddlebag containing the precious missive slung over a shoulder.

He had gone perhaps three miles when he came to a strange and solemn place, a veritable ‘town’ of cone- shaped tumuli. Etruscan tombs from a thousand years before? Feeling like a hunted animal run to earth, he entered a tunnel which opened out of one of the tombs. As a hiding-place it was hopeless. His pursuers had only to spot his horse to know that its rider could not be far away. Still, at least the narrow entrance meant they could not surround him but must come at him singly. At least he would go down fighting.

So this was how his bright dreams were to end, Titus thought bitterly: in failure, and death at the hands of unknown killers. All he could do was ensure that Boniface’s message to the commandant at Luca remained secret. He removed the parchment scroll from his saddlebag and tore it into tiny pieces which he proceeded, with some difficulty, to swallow. Gulping down the last fragment, he looked out of the tunnel’s entrance and saw, with a sinking of the heart, five distant riders moving down the valley. When the distance had closed to a hundred paces, he could see them clearly at last: five soldiers, their leader a giant of a man.

Five against one: despite his fighting skills, those odds were too great. But at least he could try to take one or two with him. Drawing his sword (as an agens in rebus, he had been issued with uniform and weapons), he backed a few feet into the tunnel. While he waited, inconsequent details of his surroundings registered in the dim light filtering from the entrance: strange wall-paintings showing dancing-girls, boar-hunts, wrestlers, musicians, dead souls led away by good or evil spirits.

Footsteps sounded outside. A series of questions as to the purpose of his journey was fired at Titus by his unseen hunters. Ignoring the temptation to bargain for his life, Titus maintained a stubborn silence. If he had to die, he would die with honour.

A pause, then laughter sounded outside the tomb: Titus determined grimly to inflict maximum damage before he went down. Then a familiar voice called out, ‘The game’s over, Titus. You can come out now.’

His brain in a whirl, Titus emerged to find a smiling Boniface standing there. ‘Well done, Titus Valerius,’ said the Count. ‘You gave us a good run for our money. We can all go home now.’

‘But. . my mission, sir? The messages?’

‘The first, to the commander at Placentia, was genuine. The second was a subterfuge.’

‘And the horseshoes were loosened, I suppose?’ Titus felt anger begin to stir inside him.

‘You suppose correctly; the deed was done when you stopped at Placentia.’ Boniface shrugged, and smiled apologetically. ‘The second message was intended to be confidential. So naturally you didn’t read it. Ah, did you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Well, if you had, you’d have found it was a poem by Catullus. What did you do with it, by the way?’

‘I ate it, sir.’

Boniface stared for a moment, then gave a shout of laughter, in which he was joined by his four men. The fury and resentment that had begun to build up in Titus abruptly dissolved, and he found himself joining in. It was less amusing when he and his saddlebag were searched, but he knew it was necessary.

In a gesture oddly reminiscent of Aetius’ after Titus had saved him from the catafractarius, Boniface grasped Titus by the arm. ‘Don’t be angry, my young friend,’ he said. ‘In my position, I have to be sure that those who serve me can be trusted. I’m glad to say you passed my little test like a true agens.

¹ Piacenza and Lucca.

² The Taro, Parma, Enza, and Secchia.

³ Tuscany.

⁴ ‘To the Greek Kalends’, a Roman proverb, roughly equivalent to our colloquialism ‘When Hell freezes over’ (see Notes p.430).

⁵ Known today as Castelnuovo, from the nearby town of that name.