Theodoric

somewhat inflated, you see. I am credited with the power of prophecy, would you believe, a power which I simply do not possess. But try Myrddin. He is said to have what they call the ‘second sight’ — a gift peculiar to the Celts, I believe. It comes to him only at certain times; but who knows, you might be lucky.’ The old man drew a wasted hand from beneath the coverlet and laid it on Theoderic’s. ‘Thank you for coming, my friend. Farewell, and God’s blessing be upon you.’

Saddened and dispirited, Theoderic took his leave and descended to the lower room.

‘I see two eagles,’ intoned Myrddin, ‘one living, and one dead: the living in the East, the dead in the West.’ The seer sat upright in a trance-like state, his eyes open but seeming to look at something far beyond the confines of the chamber. ‘A horse comes from the land of the live eagle to that of the dead one, where he fights and kills a boar which has come there before him. After many years the horse dies, to be followed by eight others of his line. The final six of these the eagle of the East attacks, killing the last. The vision fades; there is no more.’ Myrddin stirred and blinked, seeming to return to the present.

‘Don’t question me about what I’ve seen, or ask me to explain it,’ he said. ‘I have no memory of anything. The meaning is for you alone; in due course it will reveal itself to you.’

‘That’s good to know, for I confess I can make nothing of the menagerie that you’ve described. Eagles, boars and horses!’ Theoderic shook his head, giving a wry smile. ‘But I’m grateful nonetheless. Tell me, what are your plans now, Myrddin? Stay on in Noricum, perhaps, to continue the work begun by Severinus?’

‘Hardly that, Sire. There is only one Severinus — “the latchet of whose shoe I am not worthy to unloose”, as it says in the Gospel of St John. Besides, his work here is done. As a province of the former Western Empire, Noricum comes under the jurisdiction of Odovacar, who has proved himself a strong and able king. In the six short years of his reign, he has done more to solve the problems of the Noricans than all the petty emperors who wore the purple following the murder of Aetius. Severinus has suggested that I return to Britannia. He says that there I will find work fully to engage my hands and brain, in helping Artorius.’

‘Artorius?’

‘The successor to Aurelian, the Dux Britanniae who fell in battle against the Saxon invaders seven years ago.’

‘Then I wish you good fortune, Myrddin. I fear you will need it. I’ve heard the Saxons are a hard and cruel foe, still clinging to the fierce old gods that we Goths abandoned a century ago for a kinder faith.’

‘I’ve no doubt the struggle will be long and bloody, Sire. But I’ve had a vision of my own in which two dragons fight, a red against a white. In the end it is the red dragon which prevails.’

‘Make it the symbol on your pennant, then. A red dragon fluttering in the breeze before the host — now there’s a flag to inspire your fighters.’

* Durresi, Albania.

† Trieste.

FOURTEEN

If, with the Divine permission, I succeed, I shall govern in your name

Anonymous Valesianus (paraphrasing Theoderic’s reply to Zeno, on being commissioned to invade Italy), Excerpta: pars posterior, c. 530

From the battlements surmounting St Barbara’s Gate, Julian watched the flotilla creeping across the Bosphorus from Chrysopolis on the Asiatic shore. Licking his lips nervously, he glanced at the array of brazen tubes poking between the crenellations. ‘These things had better work,’ he snapped at Menander, the engineer in charge of a revolutionary new weapons system intended to counter Theoderic’s assault on Constantinople.

‘Don’t worry, General,’ replied the other calmly. ‘They performed perfectly during the trials yesterday. Those chaps have a nasty surprise coming to them.’ And he nodded towards the fleet of impounded vessels crammed with Ostrogoths, the van of which was already grounding on the narrow strip of shore below the city’s sea-walls.

Should Menander’s contraptions prove ineffective, he, Julian, would be in serious trouble. Sourly, the general reflected on the events leading up to this crisis — events for which he was being made to shoulder the blame. It all went back to the confrontation between Strabo and Theoderic at the Shipka Pass. Julian had engineered the clash, but unfortunately it had backfired badly. The empire had paid dearly for his miscalculation. Full of fury and resentment, his trust in the word of Romans shattered, Theoderic had gone on the rampage, sacking Stobi and slaughtering its defenders, then embarking on a campaign of devastation and pillage throughout Thrace. The death of Strabo and the consequent unification of all the Ostrogoths under Theoderic made the latter a doubly dangerous foe. However, Zeno’s attempts to mollify Theoderic — heaping him with gold and honours, making him a ‘Friend of the Emperor’, consul and Magister Militum praesentalis, the top post in the army — had been largely successful. (Julian, a career soldier who had come a long way from his first appointment as a lowly decurion of horse, had been especially resentful of this last preferment. He had expected to be appointed to the post himself, but had been fobbed off with the lesser assignment of Magister Militum per Thracias.) And then, just when it seemed that fences had been mended with Theoderic, this wretched business of Illus had blown up.

Illus, an ambitious general and, like Zeno, an Isaurian, had at first supported Basiliscus in his short-lived usurpation ten years previously. However, realizing in time that he had backed a loser, he had switched his allegiance to Zeno — temporarily, as it transpired. In the year of Theoderic’s consulship he had made his own bid for the purple, coming out openly against the Eastern Emperor. To meet this fresh threat, Zeno had turned to the old ally who had helped him regain his throne from Basiliscus: Theoderic. With a mixed force of Gothic warriors and regular Roman troops (including Thracian units under a seething Julian), Theoderic loyally set out for Isauria. The army had advanced no farther than Nicomedia, the first major city in Asia, when a messenger came secretly to Julian in camp. The man revealed that he had come from Theoderic’s brother Thiudimund, with this warning: the Amal king was planning to join forces with Illus; together they would then overthrow Zeno and replace him with his rival Isaurian. Julian couldn’t believe his luck. If he acted swiftly, he could bring about the humiliation, perhaps downfall, of his old adversary. At the same time, he would be ingratiating himself with the emperor, and no doubt the coveted post of Magister Militum praesentalis would soon be his. Minutes later, a dispatch rider was posting westward for the capital; within hours rather than days, Theoderic would surely be receiving the order — written in purple ink and bearing the emperor’s seal — for his recall. .

And so it had transpired. In bitterness and fury, Theoderic had returned to his base at Novae, whence he had vented his feelings of betrayal in a series of devastating raids on Thrace. Within these last few weeks, he had escalated his offensive by launching a major assault on Constantinople itself: pillaging suburbs, cutting the Aqueduct of Valens, the conduit to the city’s main water supply, and now mounting this sea-borne attack on the capital’s soft underbelly, unprotected by the great landward-facing Walls of Theodosius.

The expected imperial gratitude for divulging Theoderic’s reported treachery had not been forthcoming. To Julian’s consternation, when he told Zeno that the source of his information was Thiudimund, the emperor had reacted with rage and disbelief.

‘Thiudimund slanders his brother — and you believe him!’ Zeno had stormed. ‘Good God, man, everyone knows that their relationship is poisonous, and that Thiudimund wouldn’t overlook the slightest opportunity to do his brother down. Everyone but Flavius Julianus it would seem. Well, thanks to you, we’ve got the most powerful barbarian nation in Europe in a state of war against us. For your sake, you’d better pray that Theoderic’s assault on the capital doesn’t succeed.’

‘Jacite!’* On Menander’s command, the stubby tongues of flame wavering from the mouths of the row of tubes were suddenly transformed into roaring jets, as his team began to work the pump-