Flame of the West (19 page)

  
The midwives did their best, but were unable to save the child. My granddaughter was stillborn. Her pitiful little body lies buried in the great cemetery on the Western side of the Bosphorus. The tiny grave is marked by a white marble cross, upon which is inscribed her name:
 

ELLIFER

My mother’s name. Perhaps it was blasphemy to give a name to one who never drew the breath of life, but in my grief I cared nothing for the condemnation of the church.
    

  
Flavia barely survived the trauma of childbirth, and was broken in spirit by the loss of her child. I feared Arthur might not comfort her, but he was kind in his way, and stayed by his wife’s bedside until her strength returned.

  
Our house was a sad, melancholy place, haunted by the ghost of the dead girl. In the midst of all this, when every day was a trial to be endured, a most unexpected visitor arrived at my door.

   My old chief, Belisarius.

22.

He came alone, which was dangerous for a man in his position, with so many enemies, and dressed in a plain grey woollen tunic and brown hooded mantle.

   I had not seen the general, save from afar during parades, for over four years. Our last meeting had been in
Ravenna, when he apologised for his deceit and permitted me to retire from the army.

   My servant
informed me there was a man at the door who insisted on seeing the master of the house. I was in my private study at the time, next to my bedchamber, trying and failing to work on a set of accounts for the previous month. Thoughts of my dead grandchild clawed at me, and the painful memory of her funeral.

   “Did he give a name?” I snapped.

   “No, sir,” the servant replied, “but he claims to be an old soldier, who served with you in Africa and Italy.”

   I rubbed my eyes, sore from hours of staring at numbers. This wasn’t the first time some down-at-heel veteran had visited my house, claiming to be a comrade of mine from the wars. I found it difficult to turn them away, these crippled old b
eggars, cast aside by the state after their usefulness was expended. My clerk disapproved, but more often than not I ended up giving them a purse of money and a few kind words.   

   “Ah, show him in,” I said, pushing away the rolls of parc
hment on my desk, “and fetch a jug of wine and two cups. The cheap stuff, mind.”

  
Moments later, an imposing figure stood framed in the doorway. I had expected the usual skulking, whining beggar, probably missing some body part or other, but this man had a presence about him.

  
His face was yet hidden under the hood. “Well, Coel,” said a strangely familiar voice.

   My servant had already brought the w
ine. I smiled up at the figure in the doorway, and poured two generous measures.

   There was a sheathed dagger in the left-hand drawer of my desk. “Come in, come in,” I said jovially, inching my left hand closer to the drawer, “I see you know my name.
Might I ask yours?”

   “
Flavius Belisarius,” said the other man, pushing back his hood.

  
I froze. The man standing before me was recognisably Belisarius, though his face had aged considerably since I last saw it at close quarters. His thinning black hair was rubbed away completely from the top of his scalp, and his close-shaved beard was now almost entirely grey.

   Belisarius was always an aesthetic-looking man, more priest than soldier by appearance. The deep lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes had proliferated, and the
weathered skin was stretched too tight over his long, narrow skull. He looked like a man who knew too much, worked too hard for little reward, and scarcely enjoyed a moment’s comfort or peace of mind.

  
“General,” I said, resisting the urge to stand up and salute, “you…you look well.”

   He smiled bleakly at the lie. “
I am what God has made me. And the Emperor.”

   Feeling foolish, I gestured at a spare seat. “Please, sit down. Share a cup of wine with me.”

   “No, no,” he said, waving away the courtesy, “I will not presume on your hospitality any longer than necessary. I feared you might turn me away.”

  
I groped for words. “The world moves on,” I said weakly, “and we must move with it. I should feel grateful for what passed in Ravenna.”

   “You have certainly prospered since,” he replied, “and breed the finest horses in the city, so they say. I have considered purchasing
some of your stock. At a discount, I hope.”

   “General,” I said, rubbing my head, which was beginning to pound, “am I to understand you have come here to discuss business?”

   “Of a sort.”

   He clasped his hands together and stood quiet for a few seconds, gazing at the floor.

   “Caesar is sending me back to Italy, at last,” he said, “the situation there is intolerable. I daresay you know something about it.”

   I nodded. “Totila has captured Beneventum, and now threatens
Naples. He has to be stopped.”

   “Just so.
I am gathering all my veterans about me before sailing. Every man will be needed. Coel, will you take up your grandsire’s sword again?”

  
It was rank discourtesy to drink when a guest went dry, but I had a sudden thirst. Half a cupful of rough red wine vanished down my throat before I gave him an answer.

   “
Caledfwlch has hung over my fireplace for four years,” I said, wiping my mouth, “and is destined to stay there. I bear you no ill-will, general, but meant what I said at Ravenna. I am retired.”

   I gave silent thanks that Arthur was not present, but down on the harbour, overseeing the unloading of a consignment of foals from
Carthage. He would have leaped at the chance to escape my house, and all the gloom and misery that had descended on it.

  
“You don’t need an old man like me,” I continued, “God’s bones, I am almost fifty! What use would I be, save to look after remounts?”

  
Belisarius was four or five years my junior, though he looked at least a decade older. “The best soldiers mature with age,” he said, “like a fine wine.”

   He glanced meaningfully at the rotgut I was drinking
. I could not help but laugh.

   “It’s no good, sir,” I said, “you can’t get round me. I pray you win a crushing victory in
Italy, and bring Totila back in chains. Better yet, leave his body in Italy and present his head in a casket to the Emperor. But the army will have to cope without my presence.”

   “Or my son’s,” I added before he could speak again, “I stay in
Constantinople, and Arthur stays with me.”

   A note of desperation entered his voice. “Coel, I will have great need of loyal officers about me in
Italy.”

   “I’m sure you can find some,” I replied carelessly, “how many men is the Emperor giving you?”

   He took a deep breath. “None.”

   “What?”

   “After our recent defeats, Caesar claims he has no troops to spare. I am to sail to Italy with as many of veterans as I can collect, and there try to raise an army from native volunteers.”

   It was monstrous. Of all Justinian’s petty acts of treachery towards Belisarius, thi
s was the worst. It was true Rome had suffered severe losses, including the destruction of a fleet carrying reinforcements off the Bay of Naples, but fresh troops could always be raised or hired.

   The sickening truth hit me like a blow. Justinian was deliberately sending his greatest general to die.
An honourable death in battle against overwhelming numbers of barbarians. He wanted him out of the way, without risking the scandal of a trial and public execution. Belisarius was still far too popular for that.

   This, mark you, was the man whom Belisarius had refused to betray! Justinian’s
ignoble fear and envy of the general was only fuelled by the knowledge Belisarius had been in a position to destroy him. Hence he schemed and pondered on ways of bringing down the one loyal servant he should have esteemed above all others.

   For a brief moment I was tempted to
accept the general’s invitation. If he had offered to lead a rebellion against the Emperor, and storm the Great Palace at the head of his Veterans, I might well have done so.

  
I pushed aside temptation. It was too late. Far too late.

  
“I’m sorry, sir,” I said without meeting his eye, “my prayers shall go with you, but that is all.”

23
.

Knowing it would inflame his martial instincts, I kept the visit of Belisarius a secret from my son.
Arthur’s duty, as I saw it, was to stay in Constantinople and tend to his wife. She, poor, broken-hearted creature, was much affected by the loss of their child, and I despaired of her recovery.

  
My cause was not helped by the constant flow of desperate news from Italy. Belisarius sailed to Ravenna with the tiny handful of soldiers allowed him, and set about raising an army of four thousand volunteers from the natives. With this enthusiastic rabble at his back, he advanced boldly to meet the resurgent Goths.

  
The ensuing campaign was a confused series of disasters and victories. Hopelessly outnumbered, betrayed and let down time and again by his generals, Belisarius somehow managed to relieve some beleaguered Roman towns and fortresses, and worst the Goths in a few minor skirmishes.

  
For all that, his efforts to scrape together a proper army came to nothing. Dismayed by the endless run of defeats, and enraged by the constant slashing of their wages, a good portion of the imperial troops in Italy deserted the eagle and offered their swords to Totila. Unable to meet the Goths in battle, Belisarius sent a desperate message to the Emperor, pleading for aid:

“Great prince, I am arrived in Italy, unprovided with men or money, with horses or with arms, nor can any spirit bear up against such disadvantages as these….were it sufficient for success that Belisarius should appear in Italy, your aim would be accomplished. I am now in Italy. But if you desire to conquer; far greater preparations must be made; and the title of general dwindles to a shadow, where there is no army to uphold it…”

True to his nature and inclination, Justinian ignored the plea, and sent no aid. The fortunes of Totila continued to wax, as did the numbers of his army, and city after city fell to him.

   At last, thanks to the treachery of the garrison, he seized
Rome, and the Eternal City was once again in the hands of barbarians. Belisarius arrived too late with his fleet to save the city, and was forced to withdraw with the mocking laughter of Gothic warriors ringing in his ears.

  
I retired to my study when I heard the news, and wept tears of futile rage. The grotesque shades of all my dead comrades, who had fought alongside me on the walls of Rome and given their lives to defend the city, haunted my dreams: cursing me for a coward and a traitor, who had failed to answer the call to arms when it came.

  
If I had one consolation in this grim time, it was the knowledge that the Empress was dying. The details from the palace were unclear, but it seemed Theodora had contracted some kind of suppurating ulcer or tumour, which her physicians were powerless to remedy.

   I was told she died slowly, and in the most exquisite pain. When she finally gave up the
ghost, and the doleful lamentation of her priests echoed through the streets, I drank a quiet toast to my childhood friend Felix, whom Theodora had murdered for no other reason than to spite me. 

   Justinian was said to be prostrate with grief, and I earnestly hoped he would soon follow his evil consort to the grave.

   “Let him die, lord,” I prayed in the lonely silence of my bedchamber, “and keep Theodora company in the deepest furnace of Hell.”

   Frustratingly, the Emperor did not die, but lim
ped on, an increasingly forlorn and despised figure. Deaf to the frantic entreaties of Belisarius, he allowed himself to become embroiled in arguments with churchmen and theologians, and treated the war in Italy as an irritating distraction.

   The sorry campaign drew to a miserable and shameful end for
Rome. Belisarius was recalled, again on the pretext of being needed in the East, and after his departure the whole of Italy was lost to Totila. Most of our remaining garrisons were exterminated, and the native Italians – the same people had cheered the arrival of our fleet from Sicily, just a few years previously – hailed the all-conquering Gothic king as their new sovereign.

   I might have ended my days in
Constantinople, grumbling, as old soldiers do, over the follies of their superiors, but largely content. I was not short of worldly wealth, and I still had my son.