Death of an Empire (60 page)

Then Cleoxenes was at his shoulder, clapping him on the back and embracing him with genuine affection. ‘Myrddion, my fine young friend! I never thought to see you again, least of all in Constantinople. So, the last of your prophecies has come to fruition and here you are. I am so pleased to see you.’

Myrddion extricated himself from his friend’s embrace and stepped back so he could take in the envoy’s splendour.

‘Gods, Cleoxenes, I swear you must look finer than the emperor himself. Even the late unlamented Aetius would have been impressed had he seen you dressed as you are today.’

Cleoxenes was certainly magnificent. Head to toe, he was dressed in rich silks that had been dyed in vivid shades of blue. His cloak, which he carried over his arm, was dark as the midnight sky, while his tunic was a cobalt shade that gave his regalia a dazzlingly
clean appearance. He wore soft dyed boots that laced up to the calf and his golden arm rings were decorated with cabochon turquoise and lapis lazuli stones. Round his neck he wore a heavy golden chain with a solid gold pendant embossed with a profile of Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. On the reverse was a depiction of an owl with tiny rubies for its eyes.

Under his friend’s amused gaze, Cleoxenes blushed and then began to laugh. ‘You think I’m dressed up like a Roman whore, don’t you, my young friend? Don’t deny it. But in Constantinople, this dress is considered conservative. Wait and see. You’re positively funereal in your choice of clothing, so you’ll cause quite a stir among the notables. Now I come to look at you, you’re sporting more jewels than I am, and some of them are quite fine. That pin is damascene, isn’t it?’

Myrddion nodded, confused by the unfamiliar term but trusting to Cleoxenes’s greater knowledge. While they were talking they had climbed the stairs and passed between the huge, bronze-studded doors that were flung wide to allow entry for invited guests. Just inside, while Myrddion marvelled at the wonders of the tessellated floor, two guards relieved the waiting aristocrats of their weaponry in the way of all courts. Myrddion handed over his great-grandfather’s sword without demur, although he demanded an assurance that the weapon would be returned.

The large anteroom inside the doors was gorgeously decorated with wall frescoes and mosaics of great naturalness and intricacy. Myrddion found himself gawping like a bucolic at the beautiful fabrics, the gemstones, the decorated tables and stools, and the sheer wealth of glass goblets and wine jugs of beaten gold that adorned the melee of courtiers and were treated with casual disregard. When a woman with an exaggeratedly curled headdress dropped a goblet of wine onto the floor and the precious glass shattered into glittering shards, Myrddion sucked in his breath
with shock. A peasant family in Segontium could have lived for years on the value of that goblet. The woman looked accusingly at a servant who had come running to clean up the mess as if he was responsible for the wine stains on her elaborate robe.

Myrddion and Cleoxenes chatted idly, while a number of perfumed and gorgeous men of all ages joined them, ostensibly to renew their acquaintance with the envoy, but covertly studying Myrddion, who was fully aware of their curiosity. The gilded gentlemen were surprised at the purity of his Latin and were fascinated to hear his first-hand accounts of Flavius Aetius, Attila’s meeting with Pope Leo and the situation in Rome. These aristocrats had rarely travelled to the west, for they preferred the more stable political conditions of Constantinople, but they were interested in the murder of Flavius Aetius and alarmed by the rapid decline of the social structure of Rome. Myrddion found his opinion sought by any number of influential gentlemen who marvelled at his youth, considering the vast distances the lad had covered to reach the Eastern Empire.

The healer suppressed his initial distrust of men who were overly concerned with dress and ornamentation, once he realised that every courtier in the anteroom was competing to be the most elaborately garbed. His quick eyes discovered that smooth arms were bronzed and powerful under their golden bracelets, and clean-shaven faces were strong-jawed regardless of the occasional application of cosmetics. Myrddion was still very young, and he had yet to lose some of his provincial misconceptions about how men comported themselves. He was a little embarrassed that he had considered the courtiers to be foppish and decadent merely on the evidence of their dress.

He was also embarrassed by the many covert glances from noble ladies of all ages, who clustered together to talk behind hand-painted fans and to giggle at each other’s comments on his face
and figure. The aristocrats here are just as rude and vulgar as high-born people anywhere, he thought acidly. There’s no real difference between nobility from different parts of the world, only the languages they speak and the affectations they adopt.

Then, with a fanfare and a sudden movement of the notables towards another set of brazen doors, the audience with the emperor began. Cleoxenes nudged Myrddion and the two men made their way to the back of the crowd. The doors leading to the emperor’s apartment opened with a flourish to reveal a small dais at the far end of the room, on which Emperor Marcian sat in state beside his wife, Pulcheria, the sister of the deceased emperor Theodosius.

The emperor was a man in his middle sixties, and illnesses suffered when he was a tribune and, later, when he was taken prisoner by the Vandals had left their mark on his long, large-nosed face. Rumour insisted that Flavius Ardabur Aspar, his
magister militum
, had engineered his rise to the throne after the death of Theodosius. Despite the emperor’s negligible appearance, Myrddion felt a brief flicker of curiosity as he examined the lean, avian face with its muddy, greying complexion. Marcian was beardless, and wore what was left of his hair in long, curled locks that fell to his shoulders, aping youth, a look that was assisted by a series of suspicious curls that marched across his forehead beneath his domed crown.

Are men in Constantinople so vain as to wear wigs? Myrddion wondered. Probably. Especially if old age has wearied the flesh and the crown weighs heavily on an ageing arthritic neck.

Beside him, his wife was dressed in a robe that was so heavy with gold thread and seed pearls that she looked like a small idol. The enormous headdress, which added considerably to Empress Pulcheria’s height, was obviously a wig, for her face below the tortured russet curls was far too raddled for hair of such an
improbable colour. Unlike her husband, who appeared quite meek, Empress Pulcheria seemed comfortable as she called the courtiers into her presence with an imperious wave of her hand. Like her husband, whom she had chosen on the death of her brother six years earlier, she had an almost skeletal face in which forehead, cheekbones, nose and chin were extremely prominent and proud.

Another man stood in the shadows of the throne in such a position that Myrddion could barely see his features.

‘Who’s the aristocrat in grey?’ he hissed in Cleoxenes’s ear. ‘He stands very close to the throne, so he must be a favourite of the emperor.’

Cleoxenes snorted under his breath, and Myrddion heard both respect and dislike in the sound. ‘He’s more than a favourite. He gave the throne to Marcian when our emperor was nothing but a minor commander, without background or ability. There stands the
magister militum
of the Eastern Empire, a man who has refused the throne of the east, supposedly because of his religion, but I believe because he likes to dominate weaker minds from behind. That, my young friend, is Flavius Ardabur Aspar, the most important man in Constantinople.’

‘A king-maker,’ Myrddion whispered.

On cue, Aspar stepped forward into the light of the sweet-scented torches and Myrddion could see him clearly. With a shock that seemed to travel downward to his toes, Myrddion recognised the ageing, handsome face that was lifted proudly to survey the crowd below him.

That face, with several decades added, was Myrddion’s own.

CHAPTER XXI

IN A DARK MIRROR

Flavius Ardabur Aspar was still a beautiful man. His thick hair, which had been so black, was now white across the hairline at the front, but still retained some traces of sable at the back where he kept it militarily short.

Not for a moment did Myrddion doubt that the
magister militum
was his sire.

Aspar had yet to notice Myrddion, so the younger man enjoyed the luxury of examining his father in detail. The general was taller than most men, but Myrddion realised that he himself was an inch or two taller yet. Broad-shouldered, long of leg and ascetic in his clothing. Aspar was the most elegant man in the room . . . and it was clear that he knew it, as he raised his clean-shaven chin to survey the faces that fawned on the emperor and his consort – and on himself.

‘You can see the likeness, can’t you, Myrddion?’ Cleoxenes whispered in a voice so soft that the courtiers who clustered around them couldn’t hear. ‘I’m not mistaken, am I?’

‘You knew, Cleoxenes! All this time. You knew!’

‘I guessed. I’m sorry, Myrddion, but did you never wonder why I took such an interest in you from the time we first met? How
could I not see Aspar in every line of your face and, especially, in your eyes? Although yours are kinder than his.’

‘Hyacinth beauty, my mother said, and she was a very acute person, for all that she’s been mad for twenty years. He is beautiful, but in a manly fashion. She called him Triton, you know, before he raped her – at twelve years of age.’ Myrddion’s face was set and bitter. Too many years of suffering and loss lay behind the young man’s open face, which closed shut into rigid, uncompromising lines even as Cleoxenes watched.

‘What was he doing in Segontium? In Britain, of all places – in the court of Vortigern, the High King of the Britons?’

Cleoxenes peered at Aspar over the crowd and then turned back to Myrddion and shook his head. ‘You’re two sides of a mirror, one young and one old. By my love of heaven, I don’t know, Myrddion. All I know of Aspar is his role, in company with his father Ardabarius, in removing the Usurper, Johannes, and placing Galla Placidia and her son Valentinian on the throne of the west. Yes, Aspar is a king-maker, like his father. So he was certainly in Rome and Ravenna during those years. I believe he was only a stripling in his middle twenties at the time. I also remember that he then campaigned in Africa for some years. But he was home, and serving as a consul, during his middle thirties. Why he would have travelled to Britain is a mystery to me.’

‘The timing of my birth would be consistent if Aspar is about fifty-six now, meaning that I was sired after Africa, and before he became a consul,’ Myrddion murmured. ‘Something, or someone, sent him to Britain and the visit must not have been to his credit.’

The crowd parted in front of them and the healer heard the emperor demand Cleoxenes’s presence in a loud, querulous voice. Suddenly, Myrddion felt very vulnerable and exposed. Determined to face Aspar down, the young man also lifted his chin in defiance,
unaware that more than one man in the room was experiencing a sudden spark of interest in the stranger.

‘How may I serve you, highness?’ Cleoxenes murmured in his mellifluous, easy voice.

‘Who is the very tall stranger in black accompanying you? Come forward, young man. The light shines in my eyes, and I cannot see you properly.’

‘I am proud to present Myrddion Emrys of Segontium in Britain. He is a healer of great renown who served under Flavius Aetius at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plain. Warriors perished in tens of thousands on that day, and many more passed through Myrddion’s hands and still live because of this young man’s skill. He was with me at Mantua when Attila turned aside from Italia, having saved my arm from amputation after an injury, and he served as a healer to the citizens of the city while in Rome. He is the great-grandson of a king and his grandmother was the chief priestess of his people. Myrddion Emrys offers you his obedience.’

Myrddion stepped forward and abased himself in the Celtic way towards Marcian and Pulcheria. His body formed a black cross upon the marble floor.

Cleoxenes had watched Aspar out of the corner of his eye while he addressed the emperor. Aspar had shown nothing when Segontium was mentioned, but Cleoxenes’s trained eyes could see a certain rigidity in his stance . . . and he wondered.

‘So, Myrddion Emrys,’ Marcian said in an avuncular voice. ‘Arise, young man, so we can speak. Rarely do we meet men of your trade, although my dear Pulcheria swears by the skills of a son of Ishmael who cares for the empress’s health. Usually, healers are Greeks, Jews or Persians, so we are very surprised to meet someone from the isles of Britain who has such a pedigree. Why would a nobleman become a healer?’

‘I am landless, my lord, and the trade of war has been closed to
me from birth. I was not willing to live on the charity of my aristocratic connections, so I took up the scalpel and have sworn myself to the oath of Hippocrates.’

Marcian smiled, but Cleoxenes could tell that the emperor had found a loose thread in Myrddion’s narrative. Knowing the dogmatic nature of the emperor and his querulous curiosity, Cleoxenes was certain that Marcian would pull on that thread until he understood everything about the young man who stood before him.

More to the point, did Myrddion intend that Marcian should ask his questions?

‘Highness, I could not become a warrior because I had no human father.’ The crowd stirred and murmured, as if a wind soughed through the audience room. Myrddion stood tall in his sable robes, the centre of all eyes, as his voice, so suited to storytelling, drew them into his tale.

‘My mother was twelve when I was conceived, a child who had been raised in a house of women, for her mother served the Goddess whose name must not be spoken. She swore she had been raped by a demon, but I was permitted to live because the serpents of the Goddess accepted me, as did the Lord of Light for whom I am named. I was called the Demon Seed, like King Merovech of the Salian Franks who perished on the Catalaunian Plain. I lived because I was feared.’