I was courteously ushered out of the throne room, and given supper in a smaller room leading off the antechamber. Meanwhile Vitiges despatched the young officer and six of his royal guards to find Elene and Arthur.
“They are still lodged in the palace,” he explained, “near my own quarters. Please, eat and drink your fill, and be comfortable. My men shall soon return.”
Unable to eat, I pushed away the platter of salt beef and sat trembling with fear and nervous excitement. I was going to see my son. After all these years, we would clap eyes on each other for the first time.
Endless questions swirled through my mind. How would he react to me? Would he rush into my arms, or spring at me with a curse on his lips? He must have something of his mother in him. I prayed he had not inherited her gift for hating.
Time crawled past. After an age, the young Gothic officer appeared in the doorway.
Like me, he trembled, and tears coursed down his beardless cheeks. I half-rose, and instinctively reached for Caledfwlch.
“You won’t need that,” he said, his voice full of misery and despair, “Elene is dead. She took her own life, rather than spend it without her son. Are you content now, father?”
16.
Elene lay in her bath, the blood from her slit wrists gently expanding to turn the water a cloudy red.
She looked peaceful in death, almost serene. The years had left little mark on her, save a few grey hairs in her long, glossy black hair, now unbound and dabbled in blood.
Orphaned as a baby, Elene had been raised in the Hippodrome and trained as a dancer. Her body was as lean and wiry and muscular as ever. I remembered the warmth of it, coiled around me in bed during the distant days of our shared youth.
The warmth and life was gone from her forever. Her dancer’s body was naught but a lifeless piece of meat, floating in dirty water. Her shade had fled, hopefully to some peaceful haven. The moment I heard she was dead, all my hatred and bitterness for Elene had dissipated like morning mist.
I tore my eyes away from the terrible, pitiful sight, to face her son. Our son.
We were alone in his mother’s quarters. Arthur had dismissed the rest of the guard, and brought me here by himself. I thought he meant to kill me.
“Here,” I said, loosening Caledfwlch in her scabbard and offering him the hilt, “if you’re going to do it, use your great-grandsire’s blade. I won’t try and stop you.”
His face was still streaked with tears. At just fifteen, he was already a head taller than me, and would grow to be a giant. He had his mother’s wiry frame, of the sort that does not carry fat, and the red hair and fair colouring of his royal British ancestors. My heart swelled with grief and pride to look at him. The grief was for myself; the pride all for him. It was obvious, just by his appearance, that my grandsire’s blood ran far stronger in his veins than mine.
He had his mother’s eyes, though, large and green and fiercely expressive. They fastened on Caledfwlch.
“Caesar’s sword,” he murmured, wiping his face with the back of his gauntlet, “I have heard so much about it. The twin Roman eagles, stamped in gold on an ivory hilt.”
“Your inheritance,” I said, “take it now, if you like.”
Arthur’s gaze lingered my sword for a moment. Then he drew himself up, towering above me, and patted the hilt of the spatha hanging from his hip. “I have my own sword,” he replied sternly, “and have no interest in old heirlooms.”
“When you saw my mother, lying dead in the water,” he added, nodding at Elene, “what did you feel? Shame? Guilt? Or nothing at all?”
He rapped out the questions like an officer used to command. The harsh, soldierly tone concealed the pain I sensed was ravaging his soul.
“Sadness,” I answered truthfully, “but no shame or guilt. Elene chose to leave me, all those years ago. She chose to betray me, to lie to me, to try and have me killed. She betrayed her employers, and the Empire, and eventually ran out of places to hide.”
I shook my head, trying not to look at the thing in the bath. “You knew her better than I, but it seems to me Elene tried to use treachery as a weapon. Unlike others, she lacked the skill to wield it.”
Arthur’s index finger tap-tapped on the hilt of his sword. I watched it closely, waiting for him to draw steel. I was testing him, seeing how far he could be pushed, trying to divine his feelings for Elene.
“She never betrayed me,” he said quietly, “for years we led a vagabond life, wandering Anatolia and Syria, begging for our keep most of the time. We often had little to eat, but that little always went to me first. My earliest memory is of her weeping with hunger, while she pushed bread into my mouth.”
It was too much. I lifted my hand in a silent plea for mercy.
“Why?” I burst out when I could trust myself to speak again, “why did she leave me? There was no need for such hardship – no need to expose herself, and you, to such suffering! I would have provided for both of you.”
To my astonishment, Arthur laughed. It was the bitterest laugh I ever heard, full of contempt and mockery, and the last thing I expected to hear. His mother’s body lay cooling in the bath, just a few feet away, with a bloody knife lying on the flagstones beside the stone tub, and yet he laughed.
“She didn’t want you!” he cried, “she didn’t want to be any man’s wife, looking after his hearth and home, preparing his meals, submitting to his desires in bed. My mother was a lone wolf, angry and frustrated with the limits placed on her sex. In truth, she should have been born a man. What a soldier she would have made!”
“And she didn’t love you. She loved nothing and no-one, save me.”
Suddenly I was angry. “Very well, she didn’t love me,” I retorted, “but I did nothing to incur her hatred. Why did she try and have me killed outside Naples?”
Arthur hung his head, and ran a hand through his thick mop of red curls. “I don’t know, for certain. I suspect she held a grudge against you for putting a child in her belly. Nature compelled her to love me, so she turned all her anger and resentment on you. No-one could hate like Elene. When I was eight years old, she turned her hand to killing for money. An assassin, hiring out her services to the highest bidder. Turned out she had a rare talent for it. A passion for dealing death. We lived well, until she took service with Antonina, and failed her once too often.”
“And you?” I asked, “did she teach you to hate?”
“She tried, but I was always a disappointment to her in that regard. She tried to turn me into a killer, to teach me the ways of the assassin. No-one suspects a child, do they? I could slip poison into a man’s drink, or a subtle knife into his back, and escape before anyone noticed I had gone. I refused to do it. Why should I? I had no cause to hate anyone.”
“Still, she kept me by her side through the years. As I grew, I became her protector, her shield against the buffets of the world.”
He eyed me with a cynical smile on his lips, far too cynical for one so young. “I suspected who you were, as soon as you told me you were British. Your continued survival drove her mad. In the end, she decided you were not quite mortal, and that she was fated to die by your hand.”
“But she died by her own,” I said heavily.
“Yes. She preferred death by the knife, in the warm and comfort of her bath, than the humiliation of being defeated by you. Disgraced Roman senators used to open their veins in the bath. I believe she was following their example, and tried to make a noble end.”
“I was ready to kill you in the throne room,” he added, “even though I knew you were my father. If you had asked Vitiges to put Elene to death, I was going to draw my sword and run you through the heart. Vitiges would have executed me, of course, but I cared little for my own life. I could not see my mother end on the gallows, or by the headsman’s blade.”
In the end, I left him to grieve. It was unbearable, being in the presence of such a pitiful death, and I could feel the weight of all Elene’s wasted years pressing down on m
e. Somehow, though I claimed to feel no guilt, the blame was mine. For whatever reason, I had not been good enough for her, and the result of my inadequacy lay bleeding in a lukewarm bath.
For the present, I had exhausted all I had to say to Arthur. He had shocked me, and frightened me a little, and finally left me baffled. His love and sorrow for Elene was evident, but there was something unknowable about him. In time, when his grief had passed and Elene was safely in the ground, I hoped to become his friend.
I was obliged to leave Ravenna the same evening, to inform Belisarius of the success of my mission. He was elated, the happiest I had seen him in many a long year, and warmly congratulated me on finding my son.
“God has not seen fit to bless me in that regard, alas,” he said, shaking my hand (he had just one child, a daughter from a previous marriage), “but I wish you joy of him. Arthur, is his name? Ha, your grandsire lives again!”
I had come to a similar conclusion. Later, in the peace and solitude of my tent, I permitted myself the luxury of grand dreams.
Thanks to the discovery of Arthur, my chaotic, rootless existence now made sense. All had become clear. Belisarius would assume control of the restored Roman Empire and despatch me, at the head of an army, to make Britain a Roman province once again.
The stories of my grandsire insisted that he had not died at Camlann, but had been spirited away to Avallon, the legendary Isle of Apples, to recover from his wounds in a deathless sleep. When the time came, and Britain was in deadly peril, he would awake and return at the head of his warriors to save the country.
My mind raced with possibilities. The prophecy of my grandsire’s return would be fulfilled in the person of my son, another Arthur. He would return to Britain, with me at his side, and drive out the barbarians who had plagued the land for generations.
It was not I who would sit in royal state, with the glittering crown of the High King of Britain on my brow, and Caledfwlch at my hip. That glorious destiny was reserved for my son. My task was to bring it about.
My dreams that night were full of kings and crowns, dim battles fought beside a misted shore, the cries of dying men, the dying blast of war-horns, and the harsh croak of ravens as they feasted on the slain.
My youth had been haunted by such dreams, but I had not experienced any for years, ever since I slew the traitor Leo in the arena of the Hippodrome. I welcomed their return, and gloried in the vivid, bloodstained imagery of war. They were glimpses, I assured myself, of the glorious victories Arthur would win over the pagans in Britain.
Not once, in my fevered imaginings, did I consider the wishes of my son. He, like me, was inextricably bound up in the coils of fate. There was no escaping his destiny, and why should he wish to?
The night passed, dreams faded, and the sound of trumpets pierced the morning air, announcing the surrender of Ravenna.
17.
On a cold, bright dawn in mid-December, the gates of the Gothic capital were thrown open, and Belisarius led his army in triumph through the streets. His fleet, laden with provisions to sweeten the mood of the starving populace, was permitted to sail into the harbour at Classe.
The sailors immediately started distributing bread and wine to the citizens. Belisarius well understood how to win the affection of the mob, and that the fame and terror of his name were sometimes not enough to guarantee it.
I rode in the vanguard, among his Veterans, wearing the fine armour he had given me at Fermo. The imperial banner flew in triumph above my head, and thousands of people lined the streets to look upon their deliverer – or conqueror, depending on one’s allegiance – General Flavius Belisarius, the most famous soldier of the age.
“Shame!” I overheard some of the Gothic women cry, “shame!”
I thought their shouts were directed at me, but then I saw them spitting in the faces of their menfolk and pointing in derision at our troops.
They were heaping shame on their husbands and brothers and sons, the men of the Gothic nation, for being conquered by the Romans, whom they regarded as degenerate and effeminate. Certainly, most of our soldiers lacked the physical size and strength of the Goths. To the women, who knew little of war, it must have seemed impossible that our vastly outnumbered army of pygmy hirelings could have overcome their warriors in so many battles.
Belisarius was careful to restrain his men from looting the city, not wishing to spoil the glory of this, his final and decisive victory. Having surrendered peacefully, Ravenna was spared the horrors of the sack, and Belisarius’s accession to the throne of Italy untainted by the blood of innocents.
First, he had to formally claim the crown from Vitiges. Clad in his golden ceremonial armour, he dismounted before the steps of the palace, and entered on foot with two hundred Veterans marching at his back. The imperial banner was put aside, and trumpeters and drummers announced his arrival, filling the halls of Theoderic’s palace with triumphant noise.
I marched in the front rank of Veterans, between Bessas and Hildiger. Procopius hurried to keep step beside us, carrying a folded robe of purple and gold silk. Imperial robes, destined to be draped over his master’s shoulders at the height of the crowning ceremony.
We expected no resistance, and encountered none. Vitiges had ordered his guards to lay down their arms. The proudest of them had refused, and languished in chains under the palace, but the rest knelt in submission as we marched past. No longer soldiers of an independent Gothic kingdom, but subjects of Belisarius, King-Emperor of the West.
Vitiges and his chief councillors were waiting for us in the throne room. The ex-King of the Goths, now dressed in a plain blue mantle and long tunic, stood at the foot of the steps leading to the vacant throne. Queen Matasontha had already left him, departing from Ravenna in a cloud of dust and disapproval. A few loyal attendants had gone with her, and several ox-drawn wagons containing her share of the royal treasure.
Four trembling old councillors, dressed in plain robes, knelt in the middle of the avenue leading to the throne. Between them they held a purple cushion, and on the cushion gleamed the crown of Italy. A slender silver diadem, studded with flashing gemstones.
Without even glancing at the crown, Belisarius swept past the old men. Vitiges knelt in submission, but the general ignored him also, and mounted the steps of the dais.
The trumpets rang out once more, and his Veterans crashed to a halt. Belisarius turned to face us: a proud, imposing figure, tall and soldierly and dignified. Born to wear the purple.
I pictured Justinian, sitting in the heart of the Great Palace in Constantinople, and smiled. Soon enough, he would hear of his general’s betrayal, and soil himself in terror.
Belisarius beckoned to Procopius, who climbed the steps of the dais and stood beside him.
“Bring forth the crown,” he ordered, his voice full of confidence and authority. This was the true voice of Caesar.
The aged councillors struggled to their feet, and advanced slowly across the mosaic. Their rheumy eyes were full of fear. Vitiges shuffled aside on his knees to make space for them. He was a sorry sight, utterly cowed and defeated, forced to watch his enemy take the crown he had failed to defend.
One of the old men, the least decrepit, reverently lifted the crown from its cushion and limped up the steps. Wincing at the cracking in his bony knees, he abased himself before Belisarius, and offered up the crown.
Belisarius looked at it for the first time. An expectant silence hung over the chamber as he slowly stretched out his right hand and held it hovering over the precious diadem.
His hand curled into a fist.
“Soldiers,” he cried, “arrest these men, in the name of Rome and the Emperor Justinian.”
FLAME OF THE WEST (II)
1.
The shadows lengthen in my cell. Winter has come. Her bony fingers creep through the thick walls of our abbey, touching the hearts of those who lack the strength to withstand her.
I am one of them. This shall be my last winter on earth, for which
I thank God in His mercy. This ageing, crippled body of mine is a burden I long to shed. My spirit is ready to fly, to break free of this crumbling stronghold of flesh and bone, and look for salvation.
Or damnation, if the Lord wills. I have done enough good and evil in my life to warrant either. Strange to think that, left to myself, I would have happily lived out my days in peaceful obscurity. For nigh-on fifty years I was used by others before finding a degree of repose here, in the Abbaye de Rhuys.
The abbot, Gildas, disapproves of my writings. “A Christian monk should spend his time in prayer and contemplation,” he says, “not recording the sins and sorrows of his past.”
My answer is always the same. “What of your own histories, lord?” I ask in the mock-humble tone I know irritates him.
“They are sermons, Coel, not histories,” he huffs, “intended to condemn the kings of Britain for their sins, and warn future generations to heed the word of the Lord.”
We spend much of our remaining time like this, two old men, sitting in his freezing cell and arguing. It is one way to stay warm.
In truth, Gildas is famed for his learning and acerbic writing style. He keeps an extensive library – his only luxury – and is known to some as Gildas the Wise. His major work, On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain, describes events in Britain from the first arrival of the legions to our own time.
It is a history, whatever he might claim, though shamelessly inaccurate and larded with the righteous fury of a holy man who thinks his people have abandoned God.
His chronicle makes no mention of my grandsire, the man who united the Britons, at least for a time, and held the land safe against barbarian conquest for twenty-one years. I have begged and pleaded with Gildas to relent, but he will have none of it.
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