Death of an Empire (30 page)

‘Never, master,’ Cadoc answered absentmindedly. He was learning to make fishing nets out of very fine twine with a narrow wooden hook, so he was forced to concentrate hard so that he didn’t drop stitches and spoil the mesh.

Before Myrddion could respond, he saw Cleoxenes moving easily along the deck in company with the Roman officer, who had discarded his heavy cloak but was still wearing his magnificent armour. His face was red and puffy, and sweat stained his tunic.

‘Myrddion!’ Cleoxenes called peremptorily, although his voice wasn’t unkind.

Myrddion felt his shoulders stiffen, as their relationship had never previously been one of master and servant. ‘Yes, my lord. How may I serve you?’

The healer’s voice was exaggeratedly servile, and Cleoxenes’s eyebrows rose in surprise. I’m being stupid, Myrddion thought. He realised, with a pang of guilt, that Cleoxenes had probably been
unaware of the autocratic tone in his voice. Unfortunately, Roman manners were catching.

‘Ignore my mood, my lord,’ he added. ‘I’m a little on edge, now that our journey is nearing its end. Forgive any lapse of courtesy on my part.’

Cleoxenes still looked puzzled, but as Myrddion was now smiling easily in his customary manner, the envoy from Constantinople put his concerns aside.

‘This gentleman is Flavius Petronius Maximus, senator of Rome, patrician and adviser to the Emperor Valentinian. He is accompanying Lady Flavia, daughter of General Flavius Aetius. Lady Flavia is chaperoned by her noble kinswoman, Heraclea, who is the daughter of Thraustila Major, a cousin of Aetius’s third wife.’ The envoy’s tone was neutral, and he explained later that Thraustila came from a noble Hun family, one whose members were loyal to the interests of Rome. He turned to the senator.

‘May I introduce to you Myrddion Emrys of Segontium, a healer of extraordinary note. This young man is travelling to Rome to extend his knowledge under the greatest Roman practitioners of our age. Myrddion served General Flavius Aetius with distinction at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plain, where he ministered to many Roman warriors and saved the lives of countless wounded.’

Myrddion bowed gracefully, careful not to shame his friend. For his part, Flavius Petronius Maximus gave a haughty nod, so Myrddion decided that he would irritate the great man by introducing his apprentices to him next.

Another Flavius! Myrddion thought irritably. And this one is the right age, give or take a few years. He’s a reasonable figure of a man but no one, no one, could ever say that he possessed a hyacinth beauty.

Fortunately, the Roman was unable to read Myrddion’s mind.

‘Noble Cleoxenes tells me that you are a soothsayer as well as a healer,’ Petronius said.

‘That’s not exactly true, my lord. Sometimes, unbidden, I am afflicted with strange trances during which I utter prophecies, but this state is beyond my control. Nor can I vouch for the veracity of my words for, frankly, I don’t remember them.’

‘Myrddion is overly modest, Petronius. This young man predicted our successes on the Catalaunian Plain in minute detail. Even more amazingly, he foretold the death of King Theodoric of the Visigoth tribes. Myrddion is also literate and speaks and writes fluent Latin.’

Petronius raised one eyebrow sceptically and made excuses to continue his private conversation with Cleoxenes. As the Roman and the eastern aristocrat moved away, Myrddion was free to examine Petronius at his leisure.

Flavius Petronius Maximus was a middle-aged man, and Myrddion guessed that he had lived for at least fifty years. Fortune had smiled on him at his birth and he was sturdy, athletic and handsome in a rough, florid fashion, although good living had thickened his waist and padded his shoulders with a layer of fat. His jaw was a little jowly and the suspicion of an incipient double chin marred a broad, clean-shaven face with regular, well-shaped features. Under a tonsure of fair hair, which Petronius constantly patted down across a central bald spot, the Roman’s appearance was pleasing in spite of a snub nose. Myrddion was particularly impressed by the way the light caught his pale hazel eyes, lending them deceptive depth.

He’s like Narcissus, in love with his own reflection, Myrddion thought as Petronius Maximus obviously referred to something personal once more, and his beringed hand patted his breastplate. But the senator’s hands had authority and Myrddion saw the calluses that were only built up from years of practice with the sword.

Fascinating as Petronius was, Myrddion had been surprised at his own lack of response when he learned that Flavia was a passenger on the galley. His heart didn’t leap in his breast, and neither did his hands tremble. The young healer smiled slightly, for he had been a little afraid that the daughter of the Roman general still held him in her thrall. With luck, he would not be obliged to see her during their final days aboard the galley.

After the Roman senator had sauntered off to order a decent meal for his ladies, Myrddion rejoined Cleoxenes, who was frowning darkly.

‘Damn that Aetius! I knew his weakness would cause us to lose thousands of lives . . . and so it has proved. The Hungvari have burned the north. Cities have been sacked and churches reduced to smoking ruins. But the worst news of all is that Aquileia has been utterly destroyed. Petronius told me that Attila ordered a wooden fortress to be built nearby from which he could watch the city as it burned with the last of its citizens trapped inside.’

Myrddion shuddered. The cold-bloodedness of Attila’s revenge could not fail to repulse any right-thinking man.

‘Attila now holds the entire north of Italia, while nothing stands between his army and Rome itself. Valentinian has fled from Ravenna, whose swamps and waterways will not protect her this time. So grave is the situation that Aetius has sent his daughter south, and if Rome is threatened she will be packed off to Sicily.’

‘If the Hun are as close as Petronius Maximus suggests, it would make sense to send her to Sicily immediately,’ Myrddion grumbled. ‘A battlefield is no place for a woman.’

‘Master!’ Cadoc had joined them. ‘Where would we be without our widows? Badly fed and half dead of exhaustion, I’d reckon.’

‘I meant gently born females,’ Myrddion said quickly.

‘Worse and worse, master. Are you suggesting that the battlefield is appropriate for the poor, the indigent and the ignorant? Or do
you say that the daughters of patricians are unfit to face the bloodbath of war? The philosophers could call you to task for these assumptions, master.’

‘He still has all the niceties of youth.’ Cleoxenes grinned at Cadoc. ‘Myrddion still believes that women are gentle creatures, whereas we know that they are ruthless to the bone, at least where love is concerned.’

With the laughter of his apprentice and Cleoxenes echoing good-naturedly in his ears, Myrddion escaped to the hard deck and his ragged woollen cloak. Eventually, under a blanket of stars, he fell into a deep sleep.

Now that they were approaching Rome, the population grew denser and the shore became a rich scroll of villages and towns that clustered along the coastal road. Tarquinii passed, and Cleoxenes entertained Myrddion with stories of the warriors who first built the city and ruled this ancient land long before the Romans ventured out of their mud huts. Centumcellae, Alsium, Fregenae . . . historic names that sang with magic, but the galley soon left the towns behind until, in a huge belch of brown and filthy water, the Tiber river emptied itself into the sea and Ostia hove into view.

With synchronised oars, the galley was manoeuvred towards a berth at the port, and with superb discipline the crew rowed towards the stone pylons to which the ship would be tied. Suddenly, they reversed their oars and the ship shuddered and began to back into position. The oars were raised, the galley slid smoothly into place and a strong length of rope was attached to the waiting mooring ring.

Flavia and Heraclea, dressed in their finery, hurried onto the deck, and Myrddion bowed low in the expectation that the Roman party would disembark quickly. However, some feminine
capriciousness drove Flavia to draw back the hood of her cloak to reveal her marvellous, curling hair as she approached the healer with a sweet, seductive sway of her hips. Myrddion noticed that her elegant hands were rouged on the palms with henna, her eyelashes and brows were darkened with stibium and her already pale complexion was further whitened to hide her charming freckles. He had difficulty equating this beautiful creature, so poised and autocratic, with the Flavia he had first met in Châlons. That girl had been equally composed of fire, honey and sour wine, but she was now eclipsed. Only Flavia’s extraordinary, mismatched eyes were the same, crackling as they were with life and fierce with a desire to experience everything that Rome had to offer.

‘Well met, Myrddion of Segontium. I have often wondered if we were destined to meet again.’

‘I’m pleased to see that you are well and that you have kept yourself safe from the dangers in the north,’ Myrddion murmured with formal courtesy.

‘Still a master of pretty words, I notice. Offer me your felicitations, healer, for I am betrothed and will be wed at the end of the spring when my father sends Attila back to Buda.’

‘May you experience much joy in your coming nuptials,’ Myrddion responded with a smile. ‘May I enquire who the lucky man might be who has won the hand of the daughter of Flavius Aetius?’

Flavia smiled coquettishly, while her cousin, Heraclea, frowned with disapproval. Now that Flavia was forbidden to him, Myrddion experienced the familiar lurch of his stomach as if he had fallen from a high cliff. He lowered his lids with their long lashes, curlier than those of any woman, in an effort to conceal his telltale eyes.

‘I’m fortunate,’ Flavia murmured. ‘I am to be wed to Thraustila Minor, the brother of Lady Heraclea and master of many broad acres north of the Padus river. He is the lord of Durostorum in
Moesia Inferior. His family has been linked to ours for several generations, and Thraustila and his kin are good Roman citizens, besides being fabulously wealthy.’

She couldn’t help herself. Her voice became boastful in the old way, while her chin lifted imperiously and her eyes embraced Myrddion’s handsome face with the measuring glance he remembered so well. Unsettled, and feeling off balance and awkward, he bowed low to both ladies as Flavia covered her rich hair and submitted to Heraclea’s attempt to hustle her away. At the galley rail, she turned back and fixed Myrddion with her unnatural eyes.

‘I hope we will see each other when I am mistress of my own house in Ravenna.’ She smiled one last time. ‘Be careful of your life, Myrddion of Segontium. Your death would be a very great waste.’

Then, flanked by Flavius Petronius Maximus and her chaperon, Flavia reached the gangplank and departed from the galley, leaving behind the heavy, erotic scent of her musky perfume.

‘Whew!’ Finn whistled. ‘What a woman, master, and no better than she ought to be, if her manners are any indication of her intentions towards you. She did everything but drag you into her bed. The invitation almost curled my toes . . . and it wasn’t even aimed at me.’

Finn looked so disapproving that Myrddion felt the urge to laugh, but in truth Flavia’s implied invitation was not amusing. How could he extricate himself if Flavia threw herself at him? With gratified regret, Myrddion determined to steer a course as far from Aetius’s daughter as possible.

Many hours passed in the practised discipline of unloading the tents, the medical supplies, and the precious collections of herbs, potions and concoctions, as well as the three widows and their meagre possessions. Willa clung to Brangaine’s hand, wide-eyed and silent as ever as she took in the strange new surroundings. In
the meantime, Cadoc had worked his usual magic and purchased two commodious wagons, two teams of horses and three mounts for the men. But some little time would elapse before Myrddion had the luxury to gaze around at the city of Ostia in all its tawdry magnificence, its wealth and its squalor.

Ostia had been a port of huge importance since, according to legend, Aeneas of Troy first saw the Tiber and sailed up the broad river until he beheld the seven hills that would become the city of Rome. Its geographical position was ideal, with the port itself situated at the point on the north bank of the wide river where it flowed into the sea. Myrddion felt a frisson of distaste at the huge tangles of rubbish that had been swept downstream, which included raw sewage as well as flotsam consisting of old cloth, light timber, and even several bloated, unrecognisable corpses both human and animal tangled in nets and webs of dislodged water hyacinth. Myrddion was no novice. He knew that human beings often used rivers for rubbish removal, in every sense of the phrase.

Ostia dwarfed Massilia, for Cleoxenes whispered that some fifty thousand men, women and children called it home. Most of the grain and trade goods that eventually found their way into Rome passed first through Ostia’s vast warehouses. Nothing in Britain had prepared the party for the size, complexity and capacity of the wharves. Although much depleted, the naval base for the Western Roman Empire was located in Ostia. Cleoxenes explained the differences between the neat rows of galleys of every shape, size, armament and complexity of oar-banks used to propel these strange vessels. The figureheads on their bows incorporated huge battering rams at the waterline, sheathed in iron and decorated with embossed brass sculptures.

‘Over there are the saltpans that made Ostia so important in the early days of the Republic. At one time, Ostia was the largest port
in the Empire, but . . .’ Cleoxenes shrugged his shoulders regretfully. ‘Now that the city drowns in its own waste, grain ships come less frequently, and malaria brings illness and death with every summer.’

‘I’m not surprised, if the famed Tiber is any indication. No one would dare to drink its waters.’

‘No one does drink from it,’ Cleoxenes muttered, and laughed. ‘Wine is drunk throughout the Empire, making its deluded citizens believe that Rome is still as vast and as powerful as it once was.’

As Myrddion helped the widows heft their possessions onto the stone and timbered wharf, Cadoc and Finn reloaded their goods into the wagons with the smooth efficiency of a well-trained team. The healer took note of the wharf’s rusted iron fittings and crumbling stone, and saw that the warehouses cried out for repairs, paint and cleaning. Yes, Ostia was visibly in decline.