Death of an Empire (64 page)

The
magister militum
’s face lit up with amusement. ‘As for Cleoxenes, he’s always read my character correctly, but he’s wrong in this case. I’ve nothing to lose and much entertainment to gain by keeping you alive. Somehow, I don’t think your oaths would permit you the luxury of assassination, so I’m prepared to take my chances on you. You see, I know rather more about you than you know about me.’

Myrddion stared at Aspar, his eyes flat and disbelieving.

‘Come along, my boy, and we’ll ask el Kabir to re-join us.’ Aspar almost giggled. ‘We shall eat well and come to know each other better. I have several strong and clever sons, but none who amuse me as much as you. You look like me when I was a younger man. What was the name that your mother used to describe me?’

‘Hyacinth beauty,’ Myrddion murmured as they retraced their steps to the palace, where Ali el Kabir stood waiting with a servant. ‘You drove her to madness, you know. She has tried to kill me, or any man who came near her, on many occasions. You spoiled her.’

‘Ah, but she still lives,’ Aspar replied, as Myrddion saw a woman in a blood red dress sway out of the shadows of the columns. ‘I believe you know my amour, Mistress Flavia?’

Myrddion felt the earth sway as Flavia bared her head and moved towards the small group of men with her wonderful hair glowing in the setting sun.

‘Flavia?’ Myrddion whispered, his heart clearly exposed in his eyes.

Flavia faced him evenly, her mismatched eyes calmly surveying him. In his imaginings, those eyes were Flavia’s nature, false and true by turns, and now she travelled the way of least resistance. She was accustomed to being owned by a man more forceful than herself until he failed her in some way and she moved on to the next. Like a destructive force of nature, she lacked the soul to understand what havoc she wrought.

‘You are as you were made by your father, my lady. You are as you were made.’ Then Myrddion bowed low so Flavia could not see that his heart was breaking.

Aspar moved carefully from Myrddion’s side to stand a little before his woman. As usual, he was wryly amused. ‘I have heard from my friend that you are married, Aspar, with sons and daughters who carry your gens.’ Myrddion glanced at Flavia,
standing behind Aspar’s broad back, then returned his eyes to his father.

‘Of course I have sons, and I also have a noble wife. I’ve had three, in fact. What of it? Women are to be loved while the bloom lies on their cheeks and the pomegranate rouge is on their moist red mouths. You will learn the value of the moment, if the Lord High God sees fit to permit you to age.’

‘I’ll not spend my seed on the earth as you have,’ Myrddion retorted. ‘Nor will I scatter it on women of all castes with no concern for their suffering. I swear by the Lord of Light for whom I am named that I’ll never use women as . . . receptacles for my lust. Even if I must live alone . . . lifelong!’

‘Don’t be tedious, boy. You’d renounce women for the sake of a lost love? Please! I had hoped for better from you.’ He chuckled. ‘Now we shall dine. I’ve discovered I have an appetite and I believe I’ll be interested in the experiences of your friend, Emir el Kabir. Come. Flavia, my dove, you shall lead the way.’

Impotent, and completely outclassed by the urbane and dangerous Aspar, Myrddion followed the couple into the palace. There, the triclinium awaited them with soft-footed servants who offered light, sweet music and unwatered wine for the enjoyment of Aspar’s guests.

A little confused by the undercurrents within the room, el Kabir attempted to maintain a civilised conversation with his host, while Myrddion picked at the dishes that were offered to him by silent women servants. He had no appetite, so he spent his time mentally cursing himself as an idiot for retaining hopes of regaining Flavia’s favour. He tried hard to discover some vein of anger in the ashes of his desire – anything but the cold, sick feelings of loss and self-disgust that turned the most delectable food into so much tasteless muck.

‘I’m sorry,’ Flavia mouthed across the low table between them,
from where she ate beside her paramour, who was fully occupied with a conversation about horses with el Kabir.

Myrddion turned aside so that only his profile was visible to Flavia. She flushed along her cheekbones and applied herself to her wine cup. Myrddion could tell that she was angered by his deliberate slight.

With a stab of actual physical pain, Myrddion realised that Flavia had seen the features of the son in the father, so her quick intelligence had led her to Aspar like a homing pigeon to its perch. Too despairing even for jealousy, Myrddion turned his face away from her.

Aspar had paused in his conversation with el Kabir to apply himself to a stuffed squab garnished with honey. Expertly, he spitted the bird’s breast with his eating knife and carved off a leg which he devoured with relish.

Flavia caught Myrddion’s eye. Her chin lifted, and Myrddion knew that she intended to cause trouble for him. Suddenly, he realised that he didn’t care.

‘Despite his meek demeanour, your young guest has several hidden gifts, my lord. Perhaps you should ask him how he first met me at Châlons. And then ask him why my father hated him so profoundly.’

‘Be silent, Flavia,’ Myrddion cut in roughly, his voice thick with emotion. He applied Captus’s knife to the task of dismembering a quail.

‘You really mustn’t tease the poor boy,’ Aspar replied carelessly.

‘Ask him about his gifts, then, and how few times he’s been proved wrong,’ she persisted.

Aspar turned to face Myrddion with a polite expression of vague interest. One eyebrow rose as he continued to tear at the meat on the point of his knife with his remarkably well-shaped teeth.

‘It’s nothing, Aspar, merely an ailment I’ve suffered since infancy.’

‘What ailment, Myrddion? God’s teeth, I had no interest in her words until you seemed so unwilling to share your little secret. I’m sure my dove will inform me if you don’t tell me yourself.’

‘He has visions,’ Flavia snapped. Her face was momentarily ugly and old, as if her baser self stripped away her youth. ‘My father hated him because he saw through to Aetius’s heart and foretold the manner of his death.’

Aspar scoffed. ‘Impossible! No man can see through the veil of time, least of all an itinerant healer with neither wealth nor status.’

‘You’re wrong,’ Flavia protested. ‘I was in the palace at the time and the servants who were there told me word for word. Myrddion predicted the deaths of my father, King Merovech of the Salian Franks and King Theodoric of the Visigoths. They all died, exactly as he predicted.’

‘I don’t believe in the Sight. It’s a trick used by charlatans to frighten the gullible – and silly women.’

Myrddion remained silent.

Yusuf’s uncle looked at him with a strange expression and his dark eyes glowed in the torchlight. His hawk’s eyes and long, narrow face remained impassive and watchful, yet they were sharp with curiosity.

‘I have always found that those people who persist in cherishing hopes that the future can be opened to them are those who are unable to face the present.’ Aspar’s voice was laced with amusement and contempt. ‘For them, anything is better than today, Myrddion, and I believe that sentiment and hope are for fools.’

‘I agree – my words are only for fools. I’ve come to learn that only the highest of aspirations are of lasting value.’

Aspar stopped smiling. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Some men appear to be born to serve, while others are born to take. You are one kind, while I am the other.’

Myrddion rubbed his forehead where a sharp, tense knot of pain had formed. He feared another terrible episode like the one that had made him so ill in Rome, so he dreaded this foolish game of cat and mouse. It exposed his emotions and exacerbated his pain, a vicious circle of tension and agony.

Flavia stared at the healer, hoping that this sudden change in behaviour would spark the onset of another fit. She had never seen one before, so she could not know the implications.

‘Don’t wish to know what the future will bring, Flavia, for you do not truly wish to hear your fate. No one does. The last time the fit came over me, I foretold the demise of Rome – and its imminent onset.’

‘I don’t care about Rome,’ Flavia sniped.

‘What, then, are a few hundred thousand people?’ the healer retorted sardonically. Pulchria’s face appeared before him. Somehow, the Roman landlady and former whore seemed so much more decent than this aristocratic young woman who lazed on her eating couch before him.

The room shuddered before his glowing eyes. ‘What’s wrong, Myrddion?’ El Kabir’s voice seemed to come from far away, and the young man struggled to hold himself back from the brink of unconsciousness. Even so, his voice began to build in his head, as if he were an onlooker and some demon really did inhabit his inner self.

No, he thought blankly. No. No. No. Never again! Please, Mother Ceridwen, save me from this curse. Don’t let me betray myself in front of this terrible man.

But, as on so many occasions in the past, the wave within his skull could not be stopped, no matter how he tried. But this time he would be forced to listen to what his stranger’s voice had to say.

‘Woman, you will grow old before your time. That is all you need to know! Be silent!’

Myrddion’s voice was so guttural that all the humour was wiped from Aspar’s face.

‘Prince of the desert, friend. Your descendants will own this city and all its wealth will, one day, come to your people. But many centuries will pass before the Christian god is cast out of Hagia Sofia, and the Children of the Prophet who is to come will answer the call to prayer in the great echoing vaults. Under the magical Dome of the Lord, the sons of Ishmael will triumph.’

‘I don’t understand, master healer,’ el Kabir murmured. ‘Why should we desire to cast out Christianity?’

‘In centuries to come, my people and your people will be at war for ownership of the city of Jerusalem. Woe will come . . . and sadness . . . and the dreadful darkness.’

Without realising that he had moved, Myrddion rose and faced his father. From a great distance, he considered the death of any hope that he would find answers from this man, or a trace of the affection that his secret heart had yearned to see in Aspar’s eyes.

Then he relinquished everything but pain and loss. ‘You, Aspar, will live for many years. You will remain in power and will feast on the terror that you inflict on others. At your end, you will face the assassin’s knife and you will be remembered for what you were not, rather than what you were. You never ruled and you never sat upon the eastern throne, but nor did your children. You were, ultimately, terrified at the thought of serving, for only great men can throw themselves away for the needs of the people. You do not have the soul to serve.’

‘If you’ve said the worst you can of me, why should I fear your prophecy? If you speak the truth, then I will live long, die old and quickly, and be remembered. I thank you, Myrddion. I will permit you to be the one who serves, if you should so wish.’

‘Be silent! You have given me my name, Merlinus, for the bird you’ll never possess. When you are only scraps of information in scrolls that no scholar will ever read, every child in empires far larger than this one will know my name. And they will rejoice in their knowledge of the feats that have been achieved by me and mine. So it is without regret that I renounce you, and every root and branch of your family. I renounce your blood as trivial, an accident that the gods have sent me to repudiate. I have learned everything of you that I need to know . . . and what I have learned is not worth the knowing.’

Myrddion reached into his leather pouch and his blind fingers found the amber ring. Without further thought, and in the thrall of his words, the young man plucked it forth and threw it at his father’s face.

‘And, if you should doubt me, remember my words when Rome burns, and the Roman Church owns its heart and soul.’

Then, with Ali el Kabir at his back, Myrddion turned on his heel and strode out of Aspar’s great palace. They passed the statues that smiled on eternity with carved faces, and hurried out into the perfumed night with the sound of Flavia’s keening wails shivering the air in their wake. As the night embraced him, Myrddion didn’t realise that he was weeping for his lost youth.

The inn was silent when Myrddion arrived at its door, while Ali el Kabir attempted to keep pace with the Briton’s long legs.

‘I shall come to see Yusuf in the morning, friend,’ Myrddion said softly as they said their farewells. ‘Don’t be alarmed by my fits. I have been afflicted with them for many years. But you and your nephew will live well in the lands of your people. I wish you fortune with your horses and your hawks. I will smile often when I think of my friend in the warm south when the rain squalls fall chill on my face in Cymru.’

Ali el Kabir embraced the young healer and patted the sides of his beardless face.

‘I cannot hope to understand what you said in Aspar’s palace, or why you said it, but Aspar will now hate you for your words. I saw his face as you left and I knew that you had insulted the core of his vanity. We had planned to leave for Antiochia and Sidon tomorrow, but Yusuf will not be able to travel for many days yet. I will place my ship, the
Sea Shepherd
, at your disposal and I will give you a scroll for the captain to acquaint him with my wishes. Just send the vessel back to us in one piece! But go, young man – as quickly as possible. Aspar will lick his pride clean for a night or two, but then he will demand redress from you.’

Myrddion said everything that could be put into words of thanks and embraced el Kabir with gratitude. ‘I hope our people never hate each other as I have foretold, for I could never see you as an enemy, my friend.’

‘If it is the will of God, we will meet in Paradise, and, perhaps, we will weep for the greed and ambition that will rend this world apart in future times, my friend. There is nothing we can do but try to follow righteous paths.’

‘Your sons are fortunate to have such a father,’ Myrddion whispered, embracing him, and then he ran to rouse his friends.