The Scourge of God

Greek with us.”

“So this Greek could tell me himself.”

Here I dropped my head. “No. The Huns pursued us, and there was a fight at a Roman tower. He escaped.”

The Visigoth king laughed. “See? What proof for any of what Aetius claims!” His secretary Hagan smiled scornfully.

“The whole Empire and world are in peril!” I exclaimed.

“Isn’t that proof enough? With you, Aetius can win.

Without—”

“What proof?” Theodoric demanded softly.

My jaw was rigid with frustration. “My word.”

The king looked at me quietly a long time, and finally softened just a little. “I do not know who you are, young man, but you have spoken as well as you could for a master who is notoriously elusive. My frustration is not with you but with Aetius, whom I know too well. Go, let my stewards show you lodging, while I think about what you have said. I do not trust Aetius. Should I trust you? I tell you only this: When the Visigoths ride, it will be for a Visigothic cause, not Rome’s.”

I was depressed. Theodoric’s faint praise seemed only to presage failure. That happy moment when my father first announced that I had an opportunity to accompany an embassy to Attila seemed an age ago. What I had hoped would make my future seemed only to cloud it. Our diplomacy with the Huns had been a disaster. My attempts to win or rescue Ilana had come to nothing. Now, here I was again, a fledgling diplomat, and the one proof I needed to persuade the Visigoths—the testimony of Eudoxius—I had lost at the tower.

So this embassy seemed unlikely to be any more fruitful than the earlier one! I’d never really persuaded anyone, now that I thought of it, from the fetching Olivia in Constantinople to this barbarian king. What a joke that I was an envoy at all!

I could wait here in Tolosa for the end, I supposed. My presence would make little difference to the poor army of Aetius, and it would take a while for Attila to ride this far.

Or I could return and hurl myself into battle and end things sooner: There was a certain finality in that. There would be no unity against the Huns; Rome was too old and too tired.

There would only be hopeless battle, fire, oblivion. . . .

A knock came on the door to my chamber. I was in no mood to answer, but it came again and again with insistence.

I finally opened the door to find a servant bearing a tray with dried fruit and meats, a gesture of hospitality I hadn’t expected. The figure was wearing a long gown with a hood pulled over her head. “Sustenance after your journey, ambassador,” a woman’s voice said.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Even for company?”

I was wary. “What kind of offer is that?”

“To hear more of what you know.”

Hear more? Who had heard any of my quiet discussion with Theodoric? Then I remembered. “You were listening from the shadows, from that pillar behind the throne.”

“As one who understands your warning better, even, than you.”

“But who are you?”

“Hurry.” The tone was nasal. “I’m not supposed to go to a man’s chambers.”

So I let her in. To my surprise she kept her head covered, her face in a dark hole. She put the platter down on a side table and stood back. “I need to watch you eat.”

“What?”

“I’ll explain.”

I looked at the food doubtfully.

“It’s not poisoned.”

I took a dried apple and bit tentatively, then sipped from the ewer of water. There was nothing peculiar. So I took out my dagger and cut a piece of meat.

“Yes.” Her breath was a hiss. “Where did you get that knife?” The question was as sharp as a slap.

I glanced down, suddenly realizing what her interest was.

“From Eudoxius, the Greek doctor. I took it from him when he tried to escape. He almost stabbed me with it.”

“And where did he get it?”

I looked more closely at the weapon. Once more I noticed the fine carving of the ivory handle, the inlaid ruby, and the pretty glint of the blade. “I don’t know.”

“I do.”

I looked at her in mystification.

“Surely you must know who I am by now. The whole world knows the shame of Berta.” Reaching up, she pulled back her hood like a curtain.

Involuntarily, I gasped in horror.

She was a woman, yes, but a horribly disfigured one, puckered with pink and purple scars. One ear was almost entirely missing and another slit so that its two pieces ended in wrinkled points. Her lips had been sawn crosswise, turning any smile into a grimace. Worst was her nose, its tip cut off and the remainder flattened so that her nostrils were like those of a pig.

“Now you know who I am, don’t you?”

My heart was hammering. “Princess, I did not imagine . . .”

“No man can imagine my shame or the humiliation of my father or the need to banish mirrors from my quarters. My own king cannot bear to look at me, and keeps me locked away unless I cover my head or mask my face. I scuttle in the shadows of this palace like a ghost, an unwanted reminder of the arrogance of the Vandals.”

“You were the wife of Lochnar the Vandal.” I said it with pity.

“Daughter-in-law to the great Gaiseric himself, a symbol of unity between my people and his. How proud I was on my wedding day! Great armored regiments of the Goths and Vandals lined the processional path in Carthage, and Gaiseric paid a small fortune in dowry to my father! And yet when Valentinian offered Lochnar a Roman princess instead, I was forgotten by him in an instant.”

“But why . . . ?” I was shocked at her ugliness.

“Lochnar demanded a divorce so he could marry a Roman Christian, but no daughter of Theodoric is going to be so easily cast aside. My father wouldn’t give him one. So finally my father-in-law, Gaiseric, in a drunken rage at our intransigence about giving his son a divorce so he could ally himself with Rome, turned me into a monster. It would have been kinder if he had murdered me.”

“Why do you ask about my dagger?”

“Because I know who owned it.” She looked bitterly at the weapon. “I knew of your mission and watched you ride here from a tower window. I know Gaiseric as well as you know Attila, and I’ve been warning my father that the one is simply the twin of the other. Then you strode into our chambers and I almost fainted to see the hilt of that knife at your side. That”—she pointed—“is the blade that Gaiseric used to cut me.”

I dropped it as if it were hot. “I didn’t know! Please, I’m sorry! Eudoxius tried to cut me with it, so I took it from him!”

“Of course you didn’t know.” Her tone was calm as she walked forward and picked the weapon up, balancing it in her palm. “Even the bravest or craziest fool wouldn’t bring this into my father’s house if he knew its history. Only someone innocent, from ignorance, would do that.”

“Eudoxius must have gotten it from Gaiseric—”

“To show Attila.” Her voice was low but bitter. “To unload his own sin. Do you know what Gaiseric said to me?

That because of my stubborn pride no other man would ever have me and that I would have a face to frighten children and revolt lovers. He said he hoped I lived a hundred years, and that every day of those years I think of my folly for having dared defy a prince of the Vandals.”