Theodoric

rancour, that his brother’s glory should eclipse his own. In dying a royal hero who had sacrificed himself for his people, Thiudimund had exemplified, like Ermanaric before him, the highest tradition of the legends of his race. At least in death, the king reflected, he had made a kind of reparation.

Theoderic himself had crossed a great watershed in his life, he realized. By masterminding the migration of his people, and taking them successfully beyond their journey’s halfway point, he had proved himself a great leader. And his victory against the Gepids had achieved for him the status of a hero king. When he faced Odovacar in the spring, it would be at the head of a united, strong and confident nation.

*

With supplies replenished from the Gepids’ harvest — enough to see them through wintering in camp — the train pushed on up the valley of the wide, slow-moving Dravus,* through a gentle landscape of low hills crowned by woods, with vineyards terracing their lower slopes. The frosts of early December were riming the grass in the mornings, when the wagons parked for the final time against the crossing of the Alps in spring.

* The River Drava, in modern Slovenia.

EIGHTEEN

Appoint the day and field of battle

Message of Clovis to Syagrius, 487

At the time when Theoderic was laying siege to Constantinople, Myrddin, true to his resolve to join Artorius, was nearing the city of Augusta Suessionum* in north-east Gaul, en route to Britannia. Armed with both safe- conduct and letter of introduction from Odovacar (who, cherishing warm memories of his meeting with Severinus, was pleased to help his acolyte), Myrddin had travelled from Noricum through northern Italy to the adjoining kingdom of the Visigoths. Although their powerful king, Euric, had died three years previously, to be succeeded by his infant son Alaric, the friendly relations established by Odovacar during Euric’s reign still obtained. Accordingly, Myrddin was able to travel in perfect security up the valley of the Rhodanus,† then west and north through Arvernum to the Liger,‡ which river formed the boundary between the Visigothic realm and that of the Salian Franks — that is, Gaul to the north of the Liger.

Within this recent and somewhat tenuous kingdom existed a surviving island of romanitas, the area corresponding to the former province of Belgica Secunda. This territory was ruled by one Syagrius, a Roman landowner who had revived the province’s name, and whose subjects — both Roman and Frankish — had accorded him the astonishing and incongruous title of ‘Rex Romanorum’. It was the capital city of this ‘king’ that Myrddin was approaching. The guards at the main gate, wearing imperial-issue armour, after scrutinizing his documents waved him through, with directions to the praetorium.§ Myrddin proceeded through well-maintained streets to an imposing public building where, after waiting his turn in a queue, he was ushered into a pillared council chamber. Swathed in an archaic toga, the affable-looking man reclining on a couch waved Myrddin to a chair.

‘Britain — bad choice,’ declared Syagrius after scanning Myrddin’s papers. ‘Place is crawling with those ghastly Saxons. Unlike Gaul, it’ll never be reoccupied by Rome.’ He smiled, charmingly. ‘I see Odovacar describes you as a healer. In that case, why not stay on here? Medics are always welcome — especially as it looks as though I’ll have to use force to see off this young puppy Clovis. Calls himself king of the Franks, after taking over — at the age of fifteen! — from his father Childeric, who died six years ago. Childeric knew his place — never aspired to anything more than client-king status, even after the Imperium Romanum in the West came to an end eleven years ago. A temporary end,’ he added, rising and beginning to pace the mosaic flooring energetically.

‘Temporary? Surely not, Highness.’

‘“O ye of little faith”!’ exclaimed the other. Whirling round, he pointed an admonitory finger at Myrddin. ‘Look how long Sidonius held out in Arverna — and that was against the mighty Euric. Now that Euric’s gone, who’s to say it won’t fall into Roman hands again? Look at my own fiefdom, Belgica Secunda; no reason why other Roman magnates shouldn’t follow my example.’ Syagrius resumed his pacing. ‘Zeno’s just waiting till the time is ripe, to replace Odovacar with a Western emperor. That should have been Julius Nepos, of course — still the legitimate, if exiled emperor when he was assassinated seven years ago, after Odovacar had taken over. Plenty of candidates waiting in the wings.’ He paused in his perambulations, then went on in musing tones, ‘Should the offer come my way, I wouldn’t be averse myself to donning the purple.’ He turned his head sideways to Myrddin’s gaze. ‘My profile — suitable for a new imperial coinage, do you think?

Murmuring polite platitudes, Myrddin acknowledged to himself that the other’s profile — eagle nose, lofty forehead, determined chin — did indeed add up to everyone’s ideal image of a Roman emperor. What drove the man? Syagrius, son of Aegidius, a general of the great Aetius who had defeated Attila at the Catalaunian Fields, was living in a fantasy world, he decided. All this talk of ‘reoccupation by Rome’, ‘client kings’, ‘Belgica Secunda’, ‘donning the purple’, ‘new imperial coinage’, suggested that the man was acting out a dream in which the barbarians were a temporary nuisance who, in the course of time, would surely be removed. Everyone — except Syagrius, it seemed — knew that the Western Empire was finished,* a fact tacitly acknowledged by the Eastern Emperor, Zeno, by not contesting Odovacar’s usurpation. (Although Odovacar had seemed to hedge his bets at first, by having Julius Nepos’ head stamped on his coinage.) Even Sidonius, who had heroically defended Arverna against the Visigoths, had accepted that the game was up, and was now living amicably among the barbarians he had once despised.

During the next few days, while enjoying Syagrius’ hospitality (Myrddin was waiting to join an armed party who would escort him to Gesoriacum† on the coast when they went there to pick up supplies), the Briton’s sense of inhabiting a strange dream world grew ever stronger. In ‘Belgica Secunda’, Syagrius had succeeded in creating a Roman ministate which somehow worked. Everything ran on Roman lines: administration, taxes, law. Even the Frankish war-bands who, under Childeric, had penetrated the region in a rather haphazard way, seemed to have accepted the authority of their Roman ‘governor’. They were apparently happy to be judged by Roman rather than by Salic law — an exception to the situation obtaining in the rest of Gaul, where barbarians and Romans adhered strictly to their own separate legal codes.

The glue holding the whole tenuous fabric of the ‘province’ together appeared to be nothing more substantial than charisma — a quality Syagrius possessed in overflowing measure. Like Aetius before him, he had the ability to establish a rapport with barbarians, chatting easily with the Franks in their own tongue, tempering their natural ferocity with tact and humour, and persuading them to integrate peacefully as part of the Roman ‘communitas’. Under the mild and just regime established by Syagrius, whose vast estates covered much of the area he claimed to rule, the machinery of society ran smoothly: the economy flourished, roads and public buildings were kept in good repair, and law and order maintained — with the help of veterans from the old Roman Field Army of Gaul.

It was all too perfect, Myrddin told himself. Sooner, rather than later, the bubble had to burst. And in fact, on the very day he departed with the ‘cohort’, there came a hint of cold reality waiting to intrude. Syagrius was visited by a messenger from Clovis, bearing a challenge to meet the Frankish king in battle on a day and at a place of Syagrius’ choosing. The latter seemed to relish the prospect, cheerfully remarking to Myrddin that he would teach young Clovis, an upstart scarcely out of his teens, a lesson he wouldn’t forget. He would show the presumptuous pipsqueak that a disciplined Roman force was more than a match for a rabble of disorderly barbarians.

‘Sin’, sin’, sin’-dex’-sin’,’ chanted the campidoctores,* as — with ancient titles resurrected from the glory days of Rome, Syagrius’ ‘legion’ marched to meet Clovis’s Franks outside Remi.† The