Siege of Rome (23 page)

   The mists before my eyes cleared, a
nd I found myself gazing at that lovely heart-shaped face, just inches from my own.   

   At first I thought I was dreaming. Her red lips were close enough to kiss, and I felt an impulse to reach up and stroke her cheek.
She was entrancing, as desirable as she was vile. I had to have her. I had to kill her.

   Reality intruded as pain flared in my shoulder.
The half-healed wound was now sealed by a neat line of stitches, but it still stung as though hot knives were being pressed against my flesh.

  
“Lie back,” she said in a warm, soothing voice, sweet as honey, deadly as poison, “you have slept for two days and nights. What injuries you have suffered on behalf of Rome. Your body is a network of scars.”

   I looked down, and found I was lying in a large, too-soft bed in a bedchamber fit for an empress. The walls were decorated with friezes and tapestries, and the white marble of the floor covered i
n costly Persian rugs.

   “What in God’s name…” I croaked, pulling the heavy bedclothes up to cover my naked body.

   “Are you doing here, in my care?” said Antonina, smiling as she finished the sentence for me.

  
Her golden hair was bound up, and she was dressed like a respectable Roman matron in a white stola, a long, pleated woolen dress reaching to her ankles. The stola was sleeveless, exposing her shapely white arms.

   “You fainted,” she went on, frowning slightly as she inspected h
er stitching, “and so my husband turned you over to me. Give our fallen hero plenty of food and rest, he said, and also sent a doctor to look at your wounds. I dismissed the man. Like most military physicians, he was a butcher, and would have bled and purged you to death. I tell you, Coel, I have more knowledge of the art of healing in my little finger.”

   I eyed her with loathing
. Two days and nights in the care of Antonina, one of my most dangerous enemies. She might have easily murdered me as I slept, and yet I still lived.

   Caledfwlch. Where was my sword? I looked around frantically, and spotted it standing on top of a neatly-folded pile of clean clothing on a chair.

   “Have no fear,” said Antonina, with the mannered little laugh, devoid of any true mirth, that I remembered from our brief encounter in Carthage, “I am no thief. Old Julius’s sword is your rightful property, everyone knows that.”

  
I had nothing to say to her, and was determined to be up and out of her bedchamber as quickly as possible.

   “I have men outside,” she said as I made to throw back the bedclothes, “you can depart when I give you permission, not before.”

   Her light, playful voice had suddenly acquired an edge. I hesitated, watching her closely.

   What game was she playing? Antonina had tried to seduce me in
Carthage, in a failed attempt to damn me in the eyes of her husband. She was hand-in-glove with Theodora, the Empress who had conspired to make me fight for my life in the Hippodrome.

  
Her foul son, Photius, had tried to kill me at Membresa, almost certainly on her orders. I had little doubt that she was also behind the latest attempt on my life, beneath the aqueduct outside Napoli. 

  
“You are wondering,” she said complacently, “why I have chosen to spare your life, when I could have taken it at any time during the past two days.”

  
I said nothing. The subtleties of this woman were beyond me, but I knew what she was capable of, and that any word that fell from my mouth would be deliberated twisted and misconstrued.

   She cocked her head to one side. “Lost your tongue? Heavens, Coel, you look like a frightened mouse. I do believe you are more afraid of me than any raging Gothic swordsman.”

   “You need not be afraid. Why should I wish to rub out our tough little Briton? I enjoy watching you too much. Holding onto that absurd sword like a baby with a rattle, forcing yourself to fight and play the hero, creeping around underground passages…always surrounded by death and danger, always alone, suspicious, scared, tossed about like a straw on the seas of fate.” 

   This was too much.
I felt compelled to speak. “You will get nothing from me, lady,” I said, sitting up, “so you may as well let me go, or call in your men to murder me. Just as you ordered your son to murder me at Membresa.”

   She
pushed back a loose strand of hair. “Photius is a disappointment,” she replied, “though admittedly I have not been much of a mother to him. I was not born to be a parent. He was an accident. Perhaps I shouldn’t have told him that quite so often.”

   N
otice how she avoided the issue. She made no effort to excuse or explain Photius’ attempt to kill me. Nor was I interested in listening to her lies.

   “I have some good news for you,” she said, “my husband was greatly impressed by your recent heroics in the defence of
Rome. He means to promote you again. To centenar.”

   My head still felt as though it was stuffed with wool. I gaped stupidly at her, struggling to comprehend.

   “Your Heruls are all dead,” she added casually, “killed in the fighting by the Praenestine Gate. Some might question why Belisarius wishes to put an officer who wastes the lives of ten men in charge of a hundred, but of course I know nothing of soldiering.”

   “Dead?” I gasped. Antonina had completely wrong-footed me now. She was enjoying herself immensely, batting me back and forth in her paws, like a cat with a dazed mouse. 

   “Yes, all quite dead. Don’t be too sad about it, Coel. They fought well, by all accounts, if unwisely. Of course they had no officer on hand to restrain them.”

   She gave a little shrug of her delectable shoulders. “Soldiers die
, especially if they are Heruls. Those savages believe it a great dishonour to die anywhere save the battlefield.”

  
I kindled with anger. “I know rather more about the customs of the Heruls than you, lady,” I said, “their deaths are on my conscience. Why do you taunt me with them? Is this how you derive your pleasures?”

   “What a bore you are, Coel,” she said, with a little yawn, “Theodora warned me that you are a bore. Your life could have been so different, so much easier and more rewa
rding, if only you had submitted to my friend’s desires.”

   She referred to my refusal to take part in a three-way coupling with the Empress, during an orgy in
Constantinople, and my later refusal to spy on Belisarius during the North African campaign. I had never regretted either decision, though they cost me the life of a childhood friend, and caused me much pain and hardship since.

  
“You are proud, of course,” she went on, “ever so proud of your descent from barbarian princes and a remarkable grandfather. Arthur, was his name? I think I can picture him. An uncouth Roman-British chieftain, covered in tattoos and war-paint, strong as an ox, smelly as a pig.”

   Now I understood. Antonina was trying to goad me, to provoke me into reaching for Caledfwlch and striking her down. As soon as I moved, she would yell for her guards and have me cut to pieces on the spot.
Like her friend Theodora, she was not half so subtle as she pretended, and every bit as murderous.

  
“I imagine he held court in a big wooden hall,” she went on, warming to her theme, “with straw and dung on the floors and shields hanging on the walls. His warriors got swine-drunk on mead and boasted to each other of the men they had killed. The great man himself sat at high table, drinking bad wine and wearing a purple-dyed cloak in a pitiful attempt at aping Roman customs and styles. A stinking, ignorant, ludicrous barbarian.”

   She had some strange notions of British fashions – only the wild Picts beyond the Wall painted their bodies
– and I was more amused than offended.

   “Arthur would have been a barbarian to your eyes, true,” I replied, “but he had honour, and courage, and fought to the last to defend his country. He killed his enemies face-to-face, on the battlefield, and never stooped to conspiring in dark corners, or sending hired murderers to do his dirty work. Where is Elene?”

   Antonina waved aside my feeble effort to throw her off-track. “Honour,” she mused, “what a strange notion. Men spend their time killing each other like beasts in the field, and so invented the rules of honour to make it all more seemly. I am but a weak woman, Coel, and I came from nothing. I cannot rely on a proud lineage to protect me, or pick up a sword to defend myself.”

  
“You have plenty to do that for you,” I said, with a meaningful glance at the door.

   Antonia
smiled again, exposing perfect white teeth, and this time her smile had a genuine warmth to it. “Perhaps you are not quite such a bore,” she said, “there is a spark of wit buried away in you somewhere, under all that stiffness and stuffed nobility.”

   She suddenly rose and clapped her hands. The double doors swung open, and
three helmed and mailed guardsmen strode in. Cursing, for Antonina had lulled me into lowering my guard, I scrambled out of bed and lunged for Caledfwlch.

   My leg got tangled up in a blanket, and I missed, overturning the chair and spilling the contents all over the floor.

   “For God’s sake,” Antonina said distastefully as I groveled on the floor, trying to kick my leg free, “do you think I intend to have you butchered in my own bedchamber? Even the Goths are more sophisticated than that. Get up and dress, you strange man. My guards have no more desire to see your naked backside than I do.”

   Reddening, I dragged on the
underclothes, breeches, tunic and boots laid aside for me – they were new and clean, and a gift from Antonina – and wrestled on my sword-belt. There was a fine woolen cloak as well, fastened at the shoulder with a silver brooch worth more than a month’s pay. 

   “There,” she said when I was done, looking at me with a critical eye, “you are almost presentable.
Not quite good enough to be presented to an emperor, but good enough for my husband. Come.”

   I eyed her guards suspiciously, but they seemed to have no immediate intent to murder me.
Keeping my hand near Caledfwlch, I followed Antonina into the corridor.

   She led me along the wide, airy passage and down a flight of steps. Her guards marched behind us, and I was painfully aware of my back being exposed to their swords, should their mistress
choose to put aside her friendly mask.

  
The stair led to a little antechamber, which itself opened out on the grand audience chamber where I had witnessed Belisarius reject the Gothic peace terms. It was virtually empty, save for the general himself, Bessas and Constantine, and a couple of Roman senators. 

  
They were deep in argument when we entered, their wrangling voices echoing around the hall. Antonina lifted her hand, signaling us to halt, and a smile played around her lips as she listened to the furious exchange.

   “
We did not ask you to come,” cried one of the senators, a fleshy-faced greybeard who sprayed spittle as he talked, “Rome had recovered some of her wealth and dignity under the Goths, and her people were content. Then your Emperor saw fit to send you, General Belisarius, to drag us back into the Empire, almost a century after we had been cast adrift.”
   Belisarius listened impatiently, resting his chin on his fist and tapping his knee. The greybeard’s companion, an enormously large man who I can best compare to a mound of rancid butter poured into a toga, took up the cudgels.

   “
We invited you in!” he barked, raising one fat finger in admonition, “despite the risk to her newfound peace and prosperity, Rome opened her gates to your army. The sight of imperial banners reminded us of our ancient heritage, and stirred up old passions that were best left dormant.”

   He stabbed the finger at Belisarius. “
Now war has come, and you won’t allow us to fight. Instead you put your trust in mercenaries, barbarians of mongrel blood from far-flung provinces that once paid us tribute, and you think them more fit to defend Rome than its own citizens!”

   This was something new. Thus far the people of
Rome had played no part in the siege, other than to irritate and harass our troops as we rebuilt the defences. The cowardly attitude of the citizens, who were after all descended from that extraordinary, all-conquering race who once made the whole world their slave, had disappointed and baffled me. How could they, with such a proud heritage, ignore a chance to throw off their Germanic masters and become true Romans again?

  
Now, it seemed, the victories of Belisarius had ignited a flame in their breasts. He, however, was having none of it.

  
“I am impressed with your valour,” he said quietly once the lips of the senators had ceased to flap, “and happy to know that something of the old Roman martial spirit survives. But we must be practical. Even if I submitted to your request, and put every able-bodied man in Rome under arms, our combined army would still lack the numbers to face the Goths in open battle.”

  
The senators squawked and scoffed at his caution. “Lack the numbers?” cried the greybeard, “why, any one of your soldiers is worth ten of those barbarians! Your generals inform me that upwards of thirty thousand Goths died in the battle three nights ago, for the loss of some three or four thousand of our men.”