Berta, back to her father in Gaul.
It was then that trouble truly started. The haughty Visigoths had refused to countenance the divorce of their already married Berta to make room for a new Roman wife.
But the Roman princess, a Christian, wouldn’t agree to polygamy. Visigothic refusal had been followed by recriminations, and recriminations by insult, and finally in a burst of drunken fury Gaiseric himself had slit the nose and ears of Berta and sent her in humiliation back to her father. Ever since, his dreams had been tormented by the possible vengeance of Theodoric: War with the Visigoths was what he feared above all else. “Do not mention those pig droppings in my court,” he now growled uneasily.
“It is the land of the Visigoths that Attila covets,” Eudoxius said. “It is Theodoric who is the only hope of Aetius.
Pledge yourself to this war, Gaiseric, and your most hated enemy becomes Attila’s enemy. Pledge yourself against Rome, and the Huns march against Theodoric. Even if he does not destroy the Visigoths Attila will surely wound them. Meanwhile, you can have Italy. But before Attila can march he must know you will distract the Romans in the south. That is the alliance that will benefit us all.”
“When will Attila march?”
Eudoxius shrugged. “He is waiting for portents and signs, including a sign from you. Your word alone may help him to finally make up his mind. Can I carry word back of agreement?”
Gaiseric pondered a moment more, considering how he could pit Hun and Roman and Visigoth against one another and then march in to pick up the pieces. The doctor and his miserable peasants would be trampled by them all, he knew, but wasn’t that how things were? The weak always gave way to the strong, and the foolish—like this doctor—were there to be used by the wise. How could he use him best? Finally he stood, swaying on his lame foot. “I am going to offer your king the jeweled dagger that I took from the mangled body of the Roman general Ausonius as proof of my word,”
he pronounced. “All men know that this is my favorite knife.
Give it to your new king, and tell the great Attila that if the Romans and Visigoths are his enemies, then I am his friend!”
His captains and their women roared in acclamation of this pledge, banging and screaming; and to Eudoxius it was the sweet sound of wolves, howling at the moon. He retreated with a grateful bow, unable to suppress his jubilant smile, and hurried to take ship with his news.
Later that evening, King Gaiseric drank with his men out in the warm courtyard, the desert they had come so far to conquer glittering under a shroud of stars. “We have accomplished two things this day, my chiefs,” he confided when drunk enough. “First, we have encouraged Attila to destroy Theodoric before Theodoric can destroy us. And second, I have gotten rid of that cursed knife I took from the Roman and cut that bitch of a Visigoth princess with. Every time I have worn it since then, I’ve had bad luck. Let this idiot of a doctor take it to Attila and see if they do any better.”
VII
I
A RUINED CITY
Ifirst truly realized what kind of a world I was journeying into when our Roman embassy camped on the banks of the Nisava River, across from the sacked city of Naissus.
The day was late, the sun already gone behind the mountains, and in the dimness it was possible to imagine that the roofless walls still represented a thriving Roman provincial city of fifty thousand people, waiting until the last possible minute to light their lamps. But as dusk deepened, no lamps shone. Instead, birds funneled down in somber spirals to roost in new nests that had been built in empty markets, the-aters, baths, and brothels. Bats swirled out from abandoned cellars. The city’s stones were shaggy with vines and brambles, and the desolation seemed somber and ominous.
Our camping place became even grimmer when we began to pitch our tents. It was dusk as I have said, difficult to see the ground, and when one of our slaves bent to tie a rope to what appeared to be a brown and weathered root, the peg burst upward from the soil as if rotten. The annoyed slave bent to retrieve the stick and throw it away in disgust, but as he straightened and cocked his arm, he suddenly looked in startled recognition and dropped it as if it were hot.
“Lord Jesus!” He began to back away.
“What’s wrong?”
The man crossed himself.
Sensing what it must be, I bent. The stem was a bone, I confirmed, the size and shape clearly human. A gray and brown femur, now jagged at one edge and spotted with lichen. I glanced about, my skin prickling. The displacement of earth had revealed the knobs of other bones and that what had appeared to be a half-buried rock in the twilight was in fact the dome of a skull. How rarely we look down! Now my eyes began sweeping the ground of the riverbank where we were making camp. There were bones everywhere, and what had seemed a shoal of weathered sticks left by a flooding current was in fact a litter of exposed human remains. Sight-less sockets, stuffed with dirt, looked blankly at the sky.
Ribs held together by persistent sinews of dried flesh curled from the soil like reaching fingers.
I hurried to the senator. “We’re in some kind of grave-yard.”
“Graveyard?” asked Maximinus.
“Or battlefield. Look. There are bones everywhere.”
We Romans began scuffling at the soil in wonder, crying out at each discovery and jumping when a crunch told us we had stepped on another fragment of the dead. The slaves joined in the dismayed clamor, and soon the camp was in an uproar. Tents that were being raised abruptly deflated, fires went unlit, and picketed horses whinnied nervously at the human disarray. Each skeleton brought a fresh shout of horror.
Edeco strode over in annoyance, kicking aside the de-nuded limbs with his boots as if they were autumn litter.
“Why aren’t you camping, Romans?”
“We’re in a boneyard,” Maximinus said. “Some massacre from Naissus.”
The Hun looked down at the remains, then looked around in sudden recognition. “I remember this place. The Romans fled like sheep, many swimming the river. We crossed ahead and waited for them here. If the city had submitted, they might have had a chance, but they had killed some of our warriors and so no mercy could be shown.” He turned, squinting downriver, and pointed to some feature in the gloom. “I think we killed them from here to there.”
His voice carried no shame, no remorse, not even the pride of victory. He recounted the slaughter as if recalling a business transaction.
Maximinus’s voice was thick. “For the Savior’s sake, then why did we camp here? Have you no decency? We must move at once.”
“Why? They are dead, and we will be, too, someday. All of us will be bones sooner or later. A bone is a bone, no different here than in a kitchen or waste yard. It turns to dust.
The whole world is bone, I suspect.”
The diplomat strained for patience. “These are our people, Edeco. We must move the camp out of respect for their remains. We should come back tomorrow to bury and sanc-tify these poor victims.”
“Attila gives no time for that.”
“There are too many, senator,” added Bigilas, who was translating the exchange.
Maximinus looked gloomily into the dark. “Then we must at least change our camping place. There are ghosts here.”
“Ghosts?”
“Can’t you feel the spirits?”
The Hun scowled, but his superstition showed. We walked half a mile to get out of the killing field, stopping in the lee of a ruined and abandoned Roman villa. The Huns seemed surprised and subdued by our reaction, as if upset that their companions had taken the battlefield so badly.
Death was simply the result of war, and war itself was life.
Since the Hun kit was simple—a cloak to wrap themselves in on the ground—their own move was
