Siege of Rome (12 page)

   “We are t
rue Roman citizens,” he declared, flinging out his withered brown hand to indicate the city, “and desire nothing more than to be ruled by a Caesar again.”

   “Then give up the city,” said Belisarius.
He was seated at his ease on a chair under an awning, with Antonina curled up beside him on a divan, eating white grapes and eyeing the Neapolitans with amusement.

  
Her husband made the old men stand, without shelter or refreshment, and wore his stoniest expression. The intention was to impress the ambassadors with his stern and ruthless bearing, and in this he succeeded. The men behind Stephen visibly quailed in the general’s presence, and I gave one wrinkled specimen a start by winking at him.

   “
Alas, the fate of Naples is not in the hands of its people,” replied Stephen, “the Goths rule the city, and will not allow us to open the gates. Their merciless king took their wives and children as hostages, and has let it be known that if Naples falls, he will cut all their throats. Therefore, dread Belisarius, you may expect them to fight and die to the last man rather than be conquered.”

   A groan passed through our officers,
but Stephen was not finished. “What benefit,” he added with another elaborate flourish, “can ensue to your imperial army from forcing Naples to surrender? Should you march on to Rome, and succeed in capturing her, the whole of Italy shall naturally fall into your hands. The loss of Rome will mean the end of Theodatus, and the families of our garrison here will escape the knife. Should you fail in your attempt on Rome, as is likely, then your capture of Naples shall prove useless, and a vain waste of money and men.”

  
He was blunt, this one, rather too blunt for a diplomat. Belisarius’ knuckles went white as he gripped the arms of his chair.

   “
You are speaking,” he said in firm and deliberate tones, “to the victor of Dara and the conqueror of North Africa and Sicily. Every one of my campaigns has been crowned with success.”

  
“Do not mistake that for false modesty, little man. Know that I was sent here by my Emperor to conquer, and so I shall. Do not think to close your gates against an army aiming to win back Italy’s freedom, and do not prefer barbarian tyranny to the ancient laws and liberties of Rome.”

   Stephen began to splutter a protest, but Belisarius stilled his voice with a raised finger. “With regard to the Gothic soldiers, I offer them a choice. They may either enlist in my army, and share in our exploits and rewards, or they are free to disband and return to their homes.
The fate of their families is not in my hands, except to say that I would disdain to serve a king who makes such craven threats against women and children. Persuade them to surrender, and I swear that your lives and properties shall go untouched.”

  
Stephen glumly shook his head, and so they prosed on for hours, arguing back and forth while the sun slowly dipped beyond the western hills and cramp stole into my aching limbs.

   
It was all a game, of course. For all his seeming virtue, Stephen was rotten to the core, and easily corrupted. When the official conference was over, he was invited to dinner with Belisarius and Antonina, and over the main course offered a huge bribe in gold and silver to stir up unrest inside Naples. He acquiesced, and returned the following morning with his fellows, no longer a servant of the Goths, but a double agent in the employ of Rome.

   His efforts had no immediate effect, and for several days we sat and waited for the gates to swing open and admit us. Belisarius had a tight grip on the city, having invested it by land and sea. Nothin
g could leave or enter without his knowledge.

  
The Gothic soldiers on the battlements threw defiance at us, beating their spears on their shield and mocking us for robbers and degenerates, boy-lovers and stunted Easterlings and I know not what else. They had every reason to be confident. Our twelve thousand men must have looked a poor and scanty host, against the many thousands of Goths mustering in the north.

   Theodatus, however, with all the advantages at his disposal, did nothing.
He was a coward, and refused to lead his troops to relieve Naples, or send another man in his stead.

   During this time Procopius returned, none the worse for his little adventure.
I approached him after he had made his report to Belisarius, and asked how his quest for legendary monsters had fared.

   “Success, I think,” he said, slapping his
thin hands together, “an age-old mystery is solved.”

   I gave him a cynical look, and he laughed. “No monsters, Coel. Scylla the six-headed hydra is nothing more than a rugged outcrop of rock, part of a cliff on the Italian side of the Strait. In darkness and foul weather, it is easy to understand how fearful sailors might have mistaken the outcrop for some kind of monster.”

   “What of Charybdis, the ship-swallowing demon?”

   “A whirlpool, I suspect, off the coast of
Sicily. Both natural elements are within arrow-shot of each other, so they quickly became merged in legend. When I have time, I will write down my findings and present them to the imperial court in Constantinople.”

   I glanced outside the pavilion, at the
high walls of Naples and the peaceful city that lay beyond them, apparently undisturbed by the presence of our army without.

   “If any of us ever see
Constantinople again,” I said gloomily, “unless our agents do their work, Belisarius will waste his strength outside this city. At some point Theodatus must find his courage, or the Goths will put him aside and choose a braver chief.”

   Belisarius was always careful of the lives of his men, and reluctant to throw them away in a frontal assault on
Naples. The city was protected by steep ground on the landward side, and any attempt to storm the harbour would end in catastrophe: the garrison had learned from the example of Palermo, and stocked their ramparts with war-machines to guard against any approach by our ships.

   Bessas and the other officers demanded that an attempt be made to storm the walls, and at last Belisarius yielded. In the early hours of morning, just before first
light, he sent in his Isaurian infantry, supported by detachments of foederatii, with ladders and grapples to scale the ramparts near the eastern gate.

   The Goths were waiting for them
. I stood and watched the slaughter, muffled up in a heavy cloak against the morning chill and privately thanking God that Belisarius had kept his guards in reserve.

   Our
men stormed up the slope, arrows and javelins hurled from the battlements clattering against their upraised shields. Many fell, but more reached the foot of the walls and swarmed up the ladders. Hard fighting followed, and I sensed Belisarius’ tension as the struggle for the ramparts swayed back and forth. Spears and axes glinted in the morning mist, and the clatter of steel mingled with the screams and shouts of the combatants.

  
“Sheer folly,” I heard him mutter, “I have sacrificed my men on the altar of vanity. God forgive me.”

   The assault failed. Our men lacked the numbers, while the Goths were continually reinforced from inside.
Belisarius held his head in dismay as the Isaurians broke and fled back down the ladders and ropes, pursued by the jeers of the enemy and a storm of missiles. They left the slope carpeted with dead and dying. In a single assault we lost above three hundred men, far more than we could afford.

  
Bessas and Troglita urged another assault the following day, but Belisarius would not hear of it. He returned to his pavilion to brood and accept what comfort his wife could give him. Always, in times of grief and difficulty, he resorted to Antonina. That was where her power lay.

   The vital days of autumn slid away, and still our army languished hopelessly outside
Naples. Unknown to us, Stephen’s efforts to whip the citizens into revolt had been blocked by two of his fellow rhetoricians, named Pastor and Asclepiodotus, both of whom were devoted to the Gothic cause. Inspired by these, the people threw in their lot with the Goths, and joined with them in haughtily commanding us to withdraw.

  
Procopius buried himself in the histories of Italy, which he had brought to him from strong-rooms and libraries all over Lucania. Belisarius appeared to have no need of him. With no reinforcements on hand, and nothing save bad advice from his captains, the general sank into a torpor.  

   With defeat grinning at us, I thought this a bad time for Procopius to give himself up to scholarly pursuits, and told him so.

   “You look tired, Coel,” he replied, looking up from a yellowing scroll he had been studying, “you should get more rest.”

   “I will rest, when I know I can lay my head down at night without fear of an ass
assin’s blade. What is that rag of old sheepskin you’re peering at?”

   He rested his chin on his knuckles and smiled at me. “
A history of Naples during the reign of Augustus,” he replied, “it is extremely dull, and badly-written, but useful.”

   “Here,” he said, peeling back the scroll and placing his thumb on another beneath it,
“is a crude diagram of the Aqua Augusta, as mapped out by Roman architects.”

   I squinted at the faint lines on the decayed bit of parchment.
They showed the lines of a great aqueduct constructed during Augustus’s reign, some five hundred years previously.

   “The aqueduct was intended to supply fresh water to no less than eight Roman cities in the
Bay of Naples,” said Procopius, “including Naples, of course. Eight cities! A staggering achievement, but one the Romans of old were capable of performing. Its source was the mountains outside the city of Avellino in Campania.”

  
“I have seen the ruins of the aqueduct,” I said, “some stretches remain, scattered around Naples. What of it?”

  
Procopius sat back in his chair. “You are on light duties at present, are you not?” he asked.

   I wondered at his
sudden change of subject. “Belisarius has little need of me, other than my shifts guarding his pavilion.”

   “Good. Then you have plenty of free time to improve your mind. We are in the heart of
Italy, Coel! The centre of the Western Empire, before it fell to pieces. There is so much you can learn here.”

   “I’m not much of a scholar,” I said, eyeing him warily. Procopius seldom indulged in idle chat.

   “I certainly cannot imagine you devoting yourself to study,” he said, “the hard-faced British warrior, spending his days staring at ancient writings? No, you are of a more practical disposition. I think you should explore some of the ruins of the Aqua Augusta.”

   He plucked a scroll from the heap, scanned it quickly, and held it out to me. “
There is a particularly interesting series of channels sketched out here,” he said, “a little to the west of the city. Go and seek them out, Coel, and marvel at the wonders of Roman architecture.”

10.

I did as Procopius suggested, and rode out that same afternoon to inspect the remains of the aqueduct west of Naples, less than a mile from the boundaries of our camp.

   Seen close to, the ruins of the Aqua Augusta were a great crumbling series of stone arches piled on top of each other, ivy-grown and decayed, and in places entirely fallen away. Part of the channel was still connected to the city, but there were gaps in
the rows of arches above the surface. The surrounding land was a wet and stagnant bog, thanks to the water seeping out of the disused channel and polluting the ground.

   I tethered my horse in a little wood and wandered
among the ruins. The complexities of the design were beyond me, but I knew that the majority of the wells and cisterns were underground.

   “There will be entrances to these subterranean tunnels,” Procopius told me before I left, “find one, and explore
as far as you may. I trust you have no fear of dark, constricted spaces.”

   In fact I did, but it seemed to unwise to say so. Procopius had sent me here with more than mere sightseeing in mind.

   The ruins were silent. No birds sang nearby, and I began to feel I had entered a mausoleum. The Aqua Augusta had once been a glory of the Empire, but like the Empire it had fallen into neglect and disrepair. I was an ant, a pygmy, wandering haplessly through the remnants of a dead civilization.

   At last I found a narrow rent in the wall, once a doorway, but partially blocked up by fallen masonry. It was still wide enoug
h for me to squeeze through. For some time I stood irresolute, contemplating the darkness that lay beyond with fear and trepidation. My skin crawled at the thought of groping through the shadows beneath the earth, and of what might be lurking in those long-abandoned tunnels.

   Turn back, or press on. Some residual sense of duty overturned my fear, and I scraped though the gap.

   Beyond was a passage, wide enough for two men, and a stone floor that sloped sharply downwards. Gulping down a sense of panic, I shuffled carefully down the passage, keeping one hand pressed against the damp wall. The floor was slimy, but my way was guided by the light streaming through the  entrance.