Vengeance (4 page)

It was a dream that would recur often at night, but also a vision that would come to him unbidden during many a day as he recreated time and again the scene, without ever being sure he had the right of it. He would remember with clarity that all four were covered in blood and had multiple wounds, deep cuts to arms and body, so that it was impossible to know which blow was the one to prove fatal, while around them, in ground made soggy by so much gore, lay a dozen corpses of the men they had slain, evidence that they had not been cheaply overcome; the barbarians who had escaped would be jubilant but on this spot they had paid a heavy price to kill the men of the Belisarius family.

Flavius fell weeping to his knees and if he had suffered mental turmoil before this moment it was as nothing to what he was going through now, that jumbled up with the seeking of a reason why this should have happened. Being alive for fourteen summers did not prepare anyone for this, the sudden realisation that all the pillars that supported his life, barring his absent mother, were gone.

‘We must get a cart, young sir, and take their bodies home to be laid out for burial.’

Ohannes’s soft injunction took time to penetrate the troubled
mind of the kneeling youth and when it did that brought forth an image of the slimy, pederast bishop Gregory Blastos overseeing the funeral rites, a thought at which Flavius rebelled.

If Senuthius had betrayed his family then he had done so with the blessing of a man who did not deserve the ecclesiastical title he wore. Added to that, Blastos would say Mass according to the Monophysite creed, an interpretation of gospel and the nature of God to which his father had never subscribed.

Decimus Belisarius had worn his Christian faith as a badge of honour and that permeated his family. That said, he had been sure that if salvation existed there were more routes to grace than the one solely provided by a church that was so often corrupt, with prelates and priests who seemed to care more for their own comfort than that of God’s flock. It had also become more Eastern and mystical, less the pure faith into which he had happily been subsumed as a young man.

Proud to call himself a Roman he had allowed himself no truck with the way the empire leant towards the Greek in both language and behaviour, refusing to allow anyone to address him as
kentarchos
instead of centurion, quick to remind any person unwise enough to use that military title of the nature of the domain of which they were part. It was not a Greek polity even if a high proportion of the population were of that race; it was Roman and had been, whether pagan or Christian, before the dawning of the Augustan age!

Descended from barbarian stock himself and raised outside the Christian faith – he had first taken the Eucharist as a soldier – Decimus had embraced the empire and its doctrines with a full heart and mind, to become more Roman than the citizens of the ancient city itself. It had become a creed, if not an obsession, to be seen so,
to show those over whom he held sway that there was a better way to act, a true Roman way.

It was that which coloured the bereaved youngster’s thinking as he finally replied to Ohannes, his voice a hiss. ‘I wish them to be left here.’

‘What!’ Ohannes replied, clearly shocked that the boy could consider such a thing for his loved ones. ‘So the crows can peck their eyes out?’

With some effort and still on his knees Flavius scrabbled forward to ensure their eyes were closed and to kiss each blood-coated cheek in turn, his father the last and longest, mouthing as he did so a quiet prayer, before whispering a wish based on many intimate moments he had shared with the object of his supplications.

Decimus Belisarius had never ceased to remind his offspring of their birthright as full Roman citizens, a gift, to his thinking, beyond price and that included the rituals of what had been a pagan society, one he had refused to condemn as worse than its Christian successor. Added to that was an oft-expressed wish to die like one.

‘I want them to have a proper Roman funeral, it is for that my father would have wished, something of which he spoke many times.’ Ohannes was confused as Flavius continued, a fact made obvious by his silence. ‘I will remain with them and pray for their souls. You I would ask to return to the villa – the servants will come back as soon as they know the threat has receded. Fetch the males to this place and bring with them saws and axes.’

‘In God’s name, why?’

The reply was firm for the first time since the boy had fallen to his knees, forced through his troubled larynx. ‘So they can be given the funeral rites of Romans. Fetch pitch too, and oil as well as
terebinthus. I intend that a pyre should be built and that they should be laid upon it and cremated.’

‘Am I allowed to say, young sir, that such a thing is blasphemous and is forbidden?’

‘Say nothing to anyone!’ Flavius rasped. ‘Bring what I ask here for this is where I want their ashes to remain. As for blasphemy, is not the bishop who resides in his basilica the very living expression of that sin? I would not have that swine say a single word over their bodies, for any prayer from him is a profanity.’

‘Sir, I—’

The youngster cut across Ohannes and he did so looking him hard in the eye, though his voice lacked any note of censure, being gentle.

‘You must do as I ask, for I am master of the house now and though you are a freeman, you’re still a family retainer. I cannot command you as I would a slave to obey but I can ask you, as one who was loyal to my father and his sons, to do for him what I insist he would have wished.’

‘You could be consigning them to hell.’

‘God, I am sure, will forgive me, and how can he place against their salvation an act of which they have no part? Better he be entreated over by those who esteemed him than a man he thought an apostate.’

All around them the militiamen were moving enemy bodies, having first searched them for booty, before carrying them to the riverbank and throwing them into the flowing waters, which would take them downriver to rest on some sandbank as carrion, perhaps even to be carried all the way into the Euxine Sea as food for the fish. The soldiers Decimus had led were being piled up like slaughtered cattle. One group approached Flavius to remove those killed by members of his family and, that completed, hinted they would help with the
four bodies over which he was mourning, only to recoil at his glare, as well as his grating command to get out of his sight.

There he knelt praying quietly as the sun began a slow, shadow-making descent. He was obliged to take from his relatives anything of value they had carried into battle, rings and personal talismans, most tellingly his father’s keys. Even without any of the twelve books to hand, the oft-memorised reflections of Marcus Aurelius came forth, to remind him of the transience of existence, that death comes to us all and what comes from nature will return to it.

Normally a source of consolation, even such a wise voice failed to ease his feelings now and he wept until no more tears would come.

A
s he made his way back to the villa, Ohannes passed men digging a long trench, which he assumed to be a communal grave, for the raiders had indulged in much casual slaughter of any citizens they had come across. As he strode along he reasoned that with so many farms now without owners or folk to occupy what houses still stood, there must close by each be a pile of already cut timber.

On arrival at the family villa he found that the household slaves had indeed returned and they were first ordered to cast into the road the bodies of the two thieves, as much to see if anyone would claim them as to clear the entrances, this while the poor guard who had been murdered was laid out in the servants’ quarters, there to remain until his relatives, if he had any, came to claim him.

That done he led the male staff, freedmen and slaves alike, back to where their master had met his end, gathering on the way such timber as they came across, carrying it to a spot near to where
Flavius still knelt, before sending them to scour for more. The wood, both gathered and cut down, was raised into a decent pyre onto which, once it was soaked in inflammables, the four bodies were laid, Flavius, unable to take part in any lifting, only able to watch.

An ex-soldier never went anywhere without his flints and it was Ohannes who gathered the long, dry grass and kindling that allowed him to ignite some straw then make that into a proper fire. One cloth-covered pole was soaked in oil and resin and this was handed to Flavius who stood in silent prayer before setting it alight.

Devotions complete he walked to the edge of the pyre where he thrust the torch into the heart of the timber. The soaked brushwood at the base showed an immediate flame, then the first of the logs ignited and soon the blaze began to spread and lick upwards, this as the sun dipped out of sight in the west, leaving a clear sky and a gilded edge to the horizon, that disappearing by the time the pyre was fully alight.

The darkness, aided by a palpable wind, made the flames appear furious as with red and orange flicks they began to wrap themselves around the quartet of bodies, sparks emerging from any unseasoned wood to fly into the night air. If the flames appeared angry, that was as nothing to the feelings of Flavius Belisarius, who saw in the shapes created the faces of the men who had betrayed his family, and there and then he swore two things.

He would erect here an obelisk to his father and brothers inscribed with their names and the manner of their demise. The second vow was even more heartfelt and filled his thoughts as he made his way, with a heavy tread, back to the Belisarius villa: the creatures that had caused their deaths would suffer a worse fate.

On his return home, the silence drove home the loss in an even more telling way than either the sight of the mutilated bodies or the act of cremation. From a busy and raucous household-cum-military-headquarters it was now as silent as what it had become, a graveyard if not of actual corpses, certainly of hopes, aspirations and activity. Just the day before the building had resounded with the sound of endless callers: soldiers seeking orders, citizenry in search of advantage or more often justice; now those who came would do so as mourners.

His family had been a noisy presence, their needs catered to by people who no longer bustled about the rooms and corridors but crept around in near-total silence, giving Flavius on any encounter a quick and sad look, before ensuring that apart from that first fleeting glance they avoided his eye. Their bickering, an ever-present part of life, was utterly muted now, while the schoolroom remained empty, so the daily noise of the pupils coming and going was likewise absent. When Flavius wandered from room to room it was as if it was already a place of ghosts, which in a sense it was; lacking an imperial centurion it had lost its function.

Exhaustion had got him through the first night; the next, even if he was just as tired, was very different. Sleep seemed impossible and when it finally came he was troubled by wild dreams. The advent of first light and awakening was a moment of confusion, turning to dread and disbelief, slowly maturing into the realisation that what had happened was true; Flavius was on his own and only the need to act as his family would have wished kept him from breaking down completely.

Ohannes tried for a certain level of normality, though there was a forced quality to his actions; he must have the physician look at his
shoulder, fortunately not as badly damaged as at first feared, though a sling was advised. Flavius had to eat, to bathe and to be presentable for the callers who came to proffer their condolences, as well as the widows and offspring of his father’s dead soldiers, who were wondering how they would be able to keep body and soul together now that the stipend they were supposed to receive through imperial service – it was often late or absent – was no more.

Nothing was harder than maintaining a decent composure in shared grief, to which was added his ignorance of what reassurances he could with honesty provide. Even with his fellow pupils, especially his closest friends, a mask of acceptance must be maintained. There were duties to perform: word had to be despatched by a trusted messenger, one of the older servants, to Illyria, to his mother, who had gone to the place where he had been born to visit relatives of what, on her side, was a significant and extended family. How would she cope with the news?

The chest over which he had so recently spilt blood, with the bright, fresh cuts of the axe a stark reminder of how close he too had come to death, had to be unlocked and the contents examined. He had quickly found and read his father’s last testament, which made him well up again as he saw the names of his brothers listed above his own, each to be given equal shares of what was a constrained inheritance, but only what remained upon the death of their mother.

The document included within it not only his wishes for his posterity, small gifts to certain religious institutions who would be asked to pray for his soul, a stone to be carved in Latin and placed on a wall outside the city with his full name, his title and a list of his battles, but also such mundane instructions as to which slaves should be in receipt of manumission. It was the accepted way to reward
long service upon death and it would be another manifestation of his father’s desire to be seen as nothing less than a proper citizen of the empire.

Flavius was familiar with most of the contents of a chest in which he had occasionally been allowed to rummage as a child: silver tableware and decorated goblets that were laid out on special occasions, one brightly polished silver salver held up in his hand to show him the now dark, yellow-tinged bruises under both his eyes, framing his swollen nose.

There was jewellery too, the property of his mother, and a mass of saved communications from both parents relating to friends and relatives, as well as the official despatches between the court and the centurion, too many demands for overdue money which had him look into the smaller chest containing the funds his father had control of, no great amount of coin, that went with the office he held.

He came across only one object on which he had never before set eyes, a tightly sealed and tied oilskin pouch. Unravelled with one hand and his teeth, it revealed a set of rolled-up papers, once opened contained a series of letters. A quick perusal showed they were copies of those sent to, as well as replies from, Constantinople. The former were in an inelegant hand he knew belonged to his father; the replies were properly composed and laid out with a fine hand, and given the elaborate broken seal, they appeared official.

That his father had written any letters was unusual for he was not fully gifted in the art, having been taught late in life by his spouse. Normally when communicating with palace officials he had used a trained scribe, a fellow well versed in flowery hyperbole, who knew how to set out communications in an acceptable manner, which required not only that the subject be presented clearly and properly
but had the added requirement that certain people be addressed with a degree of flattery alien to a mere soldier.

The very first missive sent by his father was dated less than a year past and it was to an old friend. Decimus Belisarius had, in his youth, been a boon companion of Flavius Justinus after whom he named his fourth son. It was an oft-repeated tale of how he, Justinus and two other companions had fled an Ostrogoth invasion of Illyria to arrive in Constantinople without money and with little food, their minds full of dreams of riches, which would surely come the way of such a deserving set of hearty fellows.

The truth, if it was sobering at the time, became a humorous tale in later life and one oft referred to. The streets of the imperial capital were not paved with easily gathered gold, nor were the citizens, be they high or low, in any way impressed by these ragged, illiterate individuals from a far-flung province who spoke an incomprehensible tongue between themselves, a bit of rough Latin, and barely knew ten words of decent Greek.

It was fortunate that the empire always required soldiers, for they would have starved had it not. It was a world to which they took with a whole heart and varying success, given two of the original four had died in battle. Flavius Justinus had fared the best; through his own exploits and not a little luck he had risen to high imperial rank, that being common knowledge in the Belisarius household.

The beautifully executed reply to his first letter told Decimus that Justinus had been elevated yet again to the post of
comes excubitorum
. That was certainly a piece of news that had never been disseminated, strange given that the exploits of Justinus and the parental association had been the object of some pride. As Count of the Excubitor he was commander of the Imperial Palace Guard,
which made him the most trusted military officer in the capital.

Flavius was slow to realise why his father had written his part of the correspondence, but he got the point the further on he read: these communications concerned a matter he had wished to keep to himself and perhaps even from his own relatives. Flavius could recall no mention of it and if his brothers had known they had been as silent as their sire. Had his mother knowledge of it, for they shared everything as a couple? There was, at present, no way to find out.

Laid out in date order, it was the next copy of a parental letter that revealed his father’s reticence and need for secrecy. First he reminded Justinus that he had served the empire as a faithful soldier, campaigning in every theatre of war from Illyria to the Persian frontier, putting down local insurrections, seeing off barbarian incursions as well as fighting the enemies of the empire. If the position he had achieved as commander of an under-strength unit in a far-flung outpost was not so very elevated, he wished to assure his old companion that his reputation for probity was as important to him now as it had ever been.

He referred to the present disordered state of the whole Diocese of Thrace brought on by the imperial religious decrees, being open that his conscience would be troubled if he were called upon to take part in any uprising designed to restore the Chalcedonian dogma. General Vitalian, camped with the rump of an army north of Marcianopolis, was insisting upon a reversal of the imperial policy, he being a one-time commander of both men and a man Decimus still admired. More on that dispute and the potential ramifications followed but it was of little interest to the youth.

The real crux of the communication was to point out his local difficulties: that the depredations of the leading citizen with whom
he had to deal, aided by the local bishop, were undermining all his attempts to keep order in his area of responsibility. More importantly they stood against his endeavours to broker peace with the Sklaveni tribal elders and there was much written outlining his efforts in that regard, as well as a roll of those with whom he had dealt.

All his efforts had failed in the face of the most powerful man in the district and those who backed him, not least the
magister militum
Conatus. The offences committed by Senuthius, both alleged and known as facts, were listed, those of Blastos being broadly outlined, as well as the twin layers of protection that ensured they were never sanctioned. The crimes that could be laid at the door of Senuthius shocked even a young man who knew the object to be corrupt, for there were laid out acts of thievery the nature of which he was unaware.

This letter received a sympathetic reply, added to a reserved position on Vitalian and any proposed insurrection, but no real hint that Justinus would act regarding Senuthius and Blastos. Reading it several times, the words intrigued Flavius. The youngster got a strong impression that Justinus was agnostic on the dispute regarding dogma, though the letter was so carefully worded as to be open to several interpretations. While asking his father to reiterate his complaints it seemed also to contain some kind of gentle admonition, hinting to Decimus that he could not take them any further unless the centurion avoided all reference to religion.

Decimus had taken the hint; he duly rewrote his original complaint and was rewarded by a more positive reply. Justinus, having unfettered access to the throne he was tasked to protect and to oblige an old friend, had bypassed the court officials, especially the protective relative of Senator Senuthius, and taken these critiques
directly to the emperor himself, where they were seen as matters requiring more information, for instance the names of potential witnesses prepared to testify, this duly provided in that crabbed and inelegant parental hand.

Dated as being no more than a month past, the last missive from Constantinople carried within it a notification that an imperial commissioner with plenipotentiary powers would soon be despatched to investigate both named miscreants – it would include an imperial confessor to question Gregory Blastos – one that would bypass and keep in ignorance the Patriarch of Constantinople and the provincial government as well as certain unnamed but obvious palace officials.