Flame of the West (5 page)

   I was happy to see John go, and to enjoy an interval of peace in
Rome. The city was still surrounded by a vast horde of Goths, but the morale of our garrison was high, and even the citizens – usually a miserable, cowardly, treacherous set - were buoyed by the recent influx of supplies.

   “Give a man enough bread and wine,” Procopius remarked, “a woman in his bed, and a chance to score off his enemies, a
nd you won’t hear much complaining from
him
.”

   We had resumed our walks through the city whenever I was off-duty. H
e delighted in pointing out antiquities and filling my head with the long, complex and bloody history of Rome. I was happy to listen. Procopius had a passion for teaching and history, and it was easier to succumb to it than resist.

  
“There,” he said, indicating a familiar sight, “the sepulchre of Hadrian. You know it quite well, I believe.”

   I did indeed. It had been the scene of some of the fiercest fighting for
Rome, when the Goths had launched an all-out assault on the walls and chosen the sepulchre as a weak point in our defences. I had helped to repulse the assault, ordering my men to fetch the statues of old Roman gods decorating the terrace, and fling them down on the heads of the Goths. Exposed to a deadly hail of statuary, the enemy had retreated, leaving a number of their comrades crushed like insects under figures of Mars and Jupiter.

   “Some of the citizens called my actions blasphemy,” I said, “there are those in
Rome who still favour the old gods, and would happily abandon Christ. I have seen them, scowling and making the sign of evil at me in the street.”

  
“Madmen,” Procopius said with a shrug, “every city has them. Fear not. I imagine the Emperor Hadrian would have approved. He was a practical man.”

   I paused to study the defences. The space between the sepulchre and the Flaminian Gate was marked by the flow of the
Tiber, and the walls along the riverbank were low and unprotected by towers. There were men patrolling the ramparts, but they could have been scaled from outside without too much difficulty.

   “The Goths were right to identify this as a weak spot,” I said, “
Belisarius should strengthen the guard.”

  
“With what?” replied my friend, “even with reinforcements, our garrison is thinly-spread. Rome is a big city, and they have miles of wall to cover. In any case, the spirit of the Goths is broken. Why else would they beg for a truce? One more push will topple Vitiges from his throne.”

   He was almost correct. The Goths, and Vitiges, were not quite done, and made two last-ditch efforts to recapture
Rome.

   Disregarding the truce, Vitiges
sent a band of chosen soldiers to explore the old aqueducts outside the city walls. They crept into the tunnels at night and levered a piece of stone from the buttress that Belisarius had constructed to guard against just such an entry. The glimmer of their torches was observed by one of our sentinels, but he and his foolish comrades agreed it was nothing suspicious, and probably the eyes of a wolf glowing in the dark.

   The Goths too
k the stone back to their chief as proof of their efforts. Vitiges might have sent them back into the tunnels with picks, to break down the buttress and gain access to the city, but sheer chance foiled his plans: Belisarius happened to overhear the guards talking of the phantom wolf in the night, and sent men to check the aqueduct. They found the discarded torches of the Goths, and the hole in the buttress, and so Belisarius immediately trebled the guard along this stretch of wall.  

   Frustrated yet again, Vitiges turned to deceit. Even now, after all our victories, there were those among the Roman citizenry prepared to betray their countrymen for a handful of barbarian gold.

   Vitiges procured the services of two such traitors, named Cassius and Gaius, and paid them to offer drugged wine to the guards defending the weak section of wall between the sepulchre of Hadrian and the Flaminian Gate.

   Meanwhil
e the Goths obtained some boats and crammed them with soldiers. When the guards on the wall were asleep, knocked out by the narcotic in the wine, Cassius and Gaius were supposed to raise a lantern. The Goths would then cross the Tiber, scale the undefended walls and open the gates to their comrades.

   I knew all this because Cassius lost his nerve on the eve of the attempt, and came to my quarters to pour out his tale.

   He was a tall, emaciated individual, a butcher by trade, and stank of offal. The stench mingled with the smell of his fear as he knelt before me and clutched at my legs with trembling, clammy hands.

  
“Please, sir,” he babbled, “you must save me. Speak for me with the general – they say he favours you, and you have influence with him.”

   I had just finished supper, and was alone in the little room I had hired above a wine-shop
near the Field of Mars, where my men were encamped.

   “Curse the landlord,” I growled, thr
usting the man back with the heel of my boot, “I told him to turn away strangers. Who in God’s name are you, and what do you want?”
   He told me, snuffling out the details between sobs and whimpers. I never saw a man so frightened in my life.

   “I have a wife and seven children, sir,” he pleaded, wringing his bony hands, “my trade has fallen away since this wretched siege began, an
d I have no money to feed them. I had no choice but to take the bribe. It was that or starve!”
   “No-one starves in Rome,” I said, looking at him with distaste, “Belisarius has made sure of that. I think you were greedy for gold, but lack the stomach for treachery.”

  
He continued to whine and whimper, like a kicked dog, until I was sick of the sight and sound (and smell) of him. I would have preferred to throw him out into the street, but it seemed his colleague Gaius still intended to go through with the plan. Belisarius had to be alerted.

  
I took the man by the arm and half-led, half-dragged him through the streets to the general’s house. After speaking with the Veterans on the door, who recognised me, I was permitted an audience with their chief.

   Belisarius sat and listened in grim silence to Cassius, who made an even more abject display of himself. When he was done, and his words had died away in a gruesome mess of tears and snot, Belisarius continued to sit
in silence.

   I recognised the signs, and feared for Cassius.
Some men rant and rave when they lose their temper, but Belisarius was at his most dangerous like this, quiet and pensive.

   He was out of all patience, having spent several days wrangling with Gothic ambassadors who offered him nothing and expected gratitude in return. Besides which, he despised spies and traitors,
and they tended to rouse him to uncharacteristic acts of cruelty.

  
“Take this man,” he said, turning to the captain of his guard, “he will lead you to his accomplice, a man named Gaius. Arrest Gaius and bring him to me.”

   Cassius was spared punishment, for which he was pathetically grateful, and the force of the general’s wrath fell on his hapless colleague.

   Gaius was arrested at his house and brought before Belisarius. He was given no opportunity to explain himself. His nose was slit, his ears were sliced off, and his trembling, mutilated form bound and gagged and mounted on an ass, which Belisarius ordered driven out of Rome.

   The beast and her luckless burden fou
nd their way to the Gothic camp and the pavilion of King Vitiges, who beheld the bleeding ruin of his last hope with despair.

  
Belisarius now regarded the fragile truce as broken, and immediately despatched orders to John the Sanguinary, commanding him to invade Picenum. John proved to be a greater soldier than I could have imagined. He led his cavalry on a swift and brilliant campaign, massacring the Gothic troops in the region and laying siege to the cities of Urbino and Osimo.

   Like all our captains, John
also had an eye to his own profit, and mercilessly pillaged the countryside we had supposedly come to liberate. At last, with the land behind him thick with corpses and rank with the stench of fire and death, he arrived before the gates of Rimini, only a day’s ride from the Gothic capital at Ravenna. 

   In spite of John’s merciless plundering, the natives rallied to his banner, swelling the numbers of his little army. Alarmed by the size of the Roman host, the Gothic garrison of
Rimini panicked, abandoning the city and fleeing with all haste for the safety of the capital.

   At this point, King Vitiges finally lost his nerve. All his efforts to retake
Rome had come to nothing, his capital was threatened by our troops, and his army weakened by famine and desertions. Out-thought and outmanoeuvred by his rival Belisarius, sick at heart from all his defeats and disappointments, he reluctantly gave orders for a general retreat.

   After ov
er a year of hard fighting, the Eternal City was once again part of the Empire.

6.

On the morning of the twenty-first of March in the year of Our Lord Five Hundred and Thirty-Eight, one year and nine days after the siege of Rome began, I was shaken awake in my dingy quarters by an excited cavalry subaltern.

   “
Sir, sir!” he yelled in my ear, disturbing my pleasant dream of silken whores and honeyed wine, “you must wake up, sir, and come with me at once! All officers are summoned to muster by the Flaminian Gate!”

   I tumbled out of bed, muttering darkly under my breath, and allowed the subaltern to help me dress and arm in the semi-darkness. He was a native of Spoleto, one of the eager young volunteers who had flocked to join our army as soon as it set foot on the Italian mainland.
He served as my trumpeter in the detachment of cavalry John the Sanguinary had given me command of, and wore me out with his spirit and enthusiasm.

   It was early in the morning, far too early for civili
sed men to be up and active. I could hear the sound of distant trumpets ringing through the city.

   “What’s
happening?” I demanded blearily, struggling out of my nightshirt, “have the Goths launched a sudden attack?”

   “Far from it, sir!” Lucius panted, his beardless face shining with soap and warlike ardour, “the enemy are in full retreat – they
are burning their palisades and fortified camps, and streaming back towards the Milvian Bridge! Oh sir, you must come to the walls and see for yourself, it is a glorious sight. The sky is lit up with fire! We have won!”

   His excitement was infectious. I shook away the clouds of sleep and dressed hurriedly, snatching a swig of wine from the ju
g on my bedside table and a bit of bread for my breakfast.

   W
e clattered down the stairs and into the street, which was full of armed men hurrying towards the Flaminian Gate. Horns and bugles echoed through the city, summoning soldiers to their duty. The citizens were careful to stay indoors, though some of the bravest threw open their upper-storey windows and complained at the noise.

  
One wretched old woman emptied the contents of her chamber-pot on us, soaking Lucius and splashing my best cloak with urine, but there was no time for recriminations.

   We hurried on, to find the square before the Flaminian Gate packed with troops.
The gates were open, and columns of horse and foot were filing through it in good order to re-deploy on the wide plain beyond.

  
“Go and rouse our men,” I ordered Lucius, “and fetch them here at once, mounted and ready for battle.”

   He saluted and rushed away in the direction of the Field of Mars, where my levies were billeted.
Some three hundred remained under my command. As a mere centenar, I should not have been in charge of so many, but Belisarius had not appointed anyone else in my stead. Either he forgot to choose a more senior officer, or wanted me to prove my worth.

  
I hurried past the squadrons of infantry, Isaurian spearmen and archers for the most part, towards a group of mounted officers. Their chief was Bessas, Belisarius’ second-in-command, a tough, capable officer with the appearance and general demeanour of a disgruntled hawk.

   “Sir,” I cried, halting at a respectful
distance and ripping off a salute, “what is happening? Have the Goths quit the siege?”

   He switched his attention from the marching columns of infantry, and fastened his dark little eyes on me.

   “Ah, Britannicus,” he said, using the old name Theodora gave me in the arena, “yes, the Goths have packed it in, and we’re marching out to wave goodbye. Where the hell are your men?”

   I reddened. “On their way, sir.
The call to arms took me by surprise.”

  
Bessas grunted. “A good officer doesn’t wallow in bed when he hears the trumpet sound. He jumps to it, by God! Still, you’re not the only laggard in our ranks. The army is not what it was. When your men finally graces us with their presence, lead them out of Rome and take up position on the left wing, behind the Huns. When the Huns advance, you will support them. Understand?”