by Roger Booth
“Two battles, two tribes. When you were younger, you must have been good.”
A passing smile. “Fredbal, he’s yours, Lucellus.”
Without even so much as a protest; a surprise, he must admit, a pleasant surprise.
“But you do one thing for me.”
“Of course, Wallia. Whatever you say.”
“Tomorrow, show him the battlefield.” Wallia reached for a blanket, wrapped it round him tight as a shroud. “Then let him choose one of the dead horses, whichever one he fancies. A gift from me; you tell him that.”
A broad grin on Theoderic’s face, as he got to his feet, but no attempt to explain.
“What on earth for, Wallia?”
“Because, Count Lucellus, that horse is what you’re going to feed him. Every day until he reaches Ravenna. You understand me?” A surge of anger before Wallia’s face fell into a contented smile and, slowly, he closed his eyes.
The audience with King Wallia evidently at an end, Lucellus was back up on his mount, nosing it out of the Goth camp. In the empty yards between the Goth and Roman lines the strangest notion he suddenly had; that the plain, the whole world might tip on its edge and send all mankind, screaming and sprawling, into the maw of the valley’s dark mouth. The sweat broke out on his neck. The horse walked on, unperturbed, while his hands touched of themselves sword hilt, breast-plate; again the reins. Ahead, the Roman camp fires glimmered steady across the plain towards him.
Shivering horror on the wane, he thought back to their first meeting, far away by the Rhodanus; far away and long ago. That foul-smelling and mocking chieftain, as King still foul-smelling and mocking by turns; he was as good a commander as the General himself – better when it came to the killing.
His official report that would accompany Fredbal back to Ravenna was going to make thought-provoking reading, for all its standard Army language. But what he really thought would have to wait for the next time he met Euplutius. This loyal wolf-hound deserved a fine kennel and soon; before it developed a taste for the wrong kind of meat.
XVIII
The month of September: approaching Tolosa
“You know, Theoderic, more I think about it, the oddest thing of all. That sly old devil Euplutius, he seemed to be saying sorry.”
“What, sorry for finally giving us the lands they’ve promised since I don’t know when?”
Wallia shook his head. “No, Theoderic, sorry we weren’t going to fight the Hasdings, get more of our people killed.” He thought about it all for a moment and shook his head again. “Makes you think, Theoderic.”
“About how their minds work?”
Leading the advance guard, they had passed by Barcino, crossed over the mountains, at Narbo turned to the north; familiar territory all. They sat on horseback by the main Tolosa highway, a few miles outside the town; sat and watched the wagons roll in and make camp. Wallia brushed aside a fly that had lost interest in the horse and switched its attention to the rider. “No, Theoderic; makes me wonder how they think our minds work.”
After the battle with the Silings they were barely a week back in Corduba when Euplutius had paid him an unexpected call.
“Wallia, the Emperor and Patrician are very pleased. Pleased,” the plump, balding man had bubbled. “No,” he said, “more like overjoyed. Your capture of Fredbal, barbarians to be paraded in triumph by a victorious Emperor; why, I must tell you, Wallia. It’s just like old times.”
At this he’d not been able to keep a straight face. But Euplutius was so pre-occupied he had not even noticed. The long and short of it: the Empire wished to reward their allies with lands, and reward them immediately – Aquitania with the towns of Tolosa and Burdigala, if that was acceptable.
“In just a few words, Theoderic, it’s all ours. Not every detail agreed – but with Constantius coming, it must be all over; can’t see him coming all this way otherwise.”
“You don’t suppose it’s a trap, do you? Big banquet, wine then, all of a sudden, Romans with sharp swords.”
He turned in the saddle, startled, and Theoderic added quickly: “Only they did it to us once before, if memory serves, just after we crossed the great river. Before my time, I admit.”
“Aye, Theoderic, so they did,” he agreed slowly. “So they did. Just don’t think it’s their game this time.”
He would have wagered a Kingdom he was right. Except he was wagering a Kingdom, he reminded himself. “Tell Brodagast and Rademer,” he said, as they turned back towards Tolosa and the tented clearing that for now was their home: “pickets every mile from here to Baeterrae.” Unnecessary and his heart wasn’t in it but he growled as much out of habit as anything else. “We’ll have Aquitania tight as a duck’s arse.”
An old timer leant against the wheel by one group of wagons; standing in a pool of sunlight, warmth to the bones, flesh hanging in lined strips from the creased throat. “Wallia! Theoderic!”
A salute in return as they trotted by; sons and daughters had done right, taken him in – no old age without kin, a good fire and a space in the wagon next time they rolled on to Lord knew where.
The click of the hooves, the familiar, contented rhythm of the stallion in the morning’s September sun; it was all so different from the starving camps at Barcino before the peace. Even so, the mood along the road was strange, he thought. Then it occurred to him. If all went well, the wagons, they would roll no more.
“Hard place to be, the highroad.”
“Aye, looking forward to a real place; Rohilde, too.”
Not sure how he felt about that, if he was honest, though Theoderic he understood well enough. He looked again, curiously, as men unyoked the oxen and the women readied the simple tents; knowing now this might be the last time he saw the like. Hunger, cold, the lashing rain soaking all they owned in this world; everything they had chafed under or taken for granted was going to be different, gone for ever. The road was the only way most of the people had ever known. Deep down, it was also part of their pride; his pride. When they trundled past the peasants and burghers, however empty their bellies, the beckon of the endless stone ways, it had driven them on, marked them as a breed apart.
“We stay in the camps?” Theoderic’s question brought him back to the sunshine of late summer. “We stay until Constantius arrives? Let him hand us the keys to the gates? Looks better that way.”
He hadn’t thought much beyond getting here. “Aye, Theoderic; looks better – as you say.”
“And safer,” said the reiks. “Fewer corners and alleys out here.”
He studied the wagons in their circles, could not quite shake the sense of melancholy that suddenly hung between the trees. “Safer,” he said. “Aye, there’s that too.”
*
Waiting on Constantius, some days he rode back along the ribbon of Roman cobbles, watching the last great camp stretch out its long tail back towards Carcaso; under the lee of the Black Mountain. Welcoming one minute, the next – when cloud masked the sun – dark and surly as its name.
Other days he came here, a short climb from his clearing through the woods and up the hill side. After the baking heat and dust of Hispania, the rustle of leaves, the cool, green shade ringing to birdsong; they softened the aches in his horse-worn frame. To the right of where he sat, the highroad dropped down towards Tolosa; to the left flowed the river Garumna. Before the town it branched to pass a small island and there, by the river’s branching, on the eastern bank, astride a plain stretching far as the eye could see, stood Tolosa; Tolosa soon to be their home. Across the same plain stretched the long tentacles of the aqueducts; the town at their centre a great spider of stone and brick.
The evening before he had spoken to Sigesar.
“Been up the hill to take a look?”
“Aye, Wallia. A big day it’ll be, as big as when we crossed the river.” Their bishop thought about that. “No
, even bigger.”
“Didn’t know much then, did we?”
Sigesar shook his head.
“Like to think we knew more now, Sigesar,” Wallia said. “Seen so many Roman towns; come to think of it, suppose I’ve never seen a real town that wasn’t Roman. Every one, though, I’ve always thought of with that in mind,” and he pointed to the sword belt that hung by the tent flap.
“That’s what I meant, Wallia. Many things will be the other way round.”
“Which is what they want, Sigesar. They mean to change us. Rohilde was right like she always is.”
Sigesar was curious. “What else did Rohilde say?”
“That we mustn’t let it happen; else we’ll end up weak as they are.”
“A wise woman. But, even if we wanted to be like them, I don’t think we could be, Wallia. The Romans, they have different memories.”
“One day, think they’ll be the same?”
“Perhaps.” Sigesar thought a while. “But, until that day, the King and the maistans must remind the people who they are.”
“And their bishop?”
Sigesar chuckled. “I rather thought their bishop was a maistans as well.”
“Forgive me, Sigesar, I was forgetting.”
“No you weren’t. But our faith; it marks us out as much as did our wagons.”
“And our swords.”
Sigesar smiled. “Yes, Wallia – as much as our wagons and our swords.”
Two grey haired old men, they sat together, each with his own thoughts; until he, Wallia, had broken the silence.
“All my life, since we crossed the river, only ever thought of one thing; of a new Gutthiuda – every battle, every ride through the hail or the sweltering sun. Now, a few days away from all we’ve ever wanted and I realise. We’ll never have a Gutthiuda again; a new home, yes, a Kingdom to be proud of, that too – but not a Gutthiuda. That’s a word we Goths had better forget, Sigesar. Otherwise, it’s nothing but a lie.”
Puzzled and mild their Bishop had answered: “But, Wallia, we were never going back.”
“Sigesar, I know that well; or should have,” ruefully he agreed. “All the years I’ve kept ‘em alive, the memories; wide grasslands, whistling winds, the high skies. But those walls, that massive stone work, once we’re inside they’ll crush them memories stone dead. Frail now anyway, known only to a few of us; the crones and old boys like you and me.” A shake of the head: “Soon to go, Sigesar. Who knows, perhaps not even into the dark hall?”
“The dark hall?”
So he told him; about the moments in battle when he walked inside the hall. “Only ever felt the hall in battle. Now I feel it every day; every day since I first went up that hill.”
“Wallia, you know there’s no dark hall, not in this life or the next – only the blessed Kingdom of God and hellfire for those who reject Him.”
Not worth arguing about; the dark hall had been with him all his life. Instead: “So where do you think I’m bound, Sigesar?” he asked.
It was a few moments before their Bishop replied with a question of his own. “What would you say, Wallia, if you were the Lord sitting in judgement? What would you say to that?”
He steepled his fingers and gently blew through them; as if within the cup of his hands, and one by one, he might bring back to life the images he had faithfully carried all his days. The enchanted lost world of the Gutthiuda, the real Roman world in which they now lived, his father’s pride the day he rode his first pony, the first woman he bedded, the first man he killed, these and the many others besides. At length, the picture parade finished its march through his mind and vanished off into thin air. None the wiser he raised a quizzical eyebrow and looked back at Sigesar without a word.
*
“Euplutius – Lucellus, a fine thing you’ve done for Rome, a fine thing. It took longer that any of us thought, but we got there in the end. A day of victory – you should all be proud.”
Constantius was in good spirits that morning. They were headed for Carcaso, trotting through the peaceful patchwork of fields, a full cavalry regiment riding on behind in escort. To the north, olive groves smiled down on them, well laden, from pebble-dry slopes.
Every half a mile or so, they came past a new group of men and women who dug and pulled at the earth; bent double in their mute devotion to the red-brown clay. The last years had used men and land much the same. The world was on the mend, so spoke the fields through the sun-battered yellow flowers and leaves of faded greens; battered, faded but fertile still. He wanted his companions to reflect his hard-earned satisfaction, hard-earned not least in the dry indifference of his marriage bed. Perhaps on his return, the Goths – her Goths – duly rewarded, his wife would begin to see. How he was not an unreasonable man whose seed, with hers, deserved its own time of flowering.
“General, forgive me, a simple Tribune. But aren’t we giving away territory to barbarians? Necessary, I can see that, Sir – but a victory to be proud of?”
It had been obvious the others did not share his mood. If Clavinianus dared speak this way, a hundred solidi to one that Lucellus thought the same.
“Nonsense, dear fellow. We are allowing the Goths to settle as our foederati and under our authority. Believe me, gentlemen, the Empire will never give up ownership of its lands. Never.”
Lucellus duly took up the baton: “Do we still own Britannia, my Lord?”
He laughed out loud. “Britannia, Lucellus? Completely different and you know it. One thing to adjust the frontiers to make them more defensible; we’ve done that on the Rhenus and Danuvius before now. If need be we’ll do it again. But, Gallia and Hispania, these are ours and ours to stay.”
“Of course, my Lord,” agreed Euplutius. “But the barbarians will rule themselves with their own laws, will they not? In the end they remain barbarians and so a threat.”
“They certainly are, Euplutius. But they’ll become Romans and not a thing they’ll be able to do about it. Dulce et decorum; a fine thing it is to fight and die for your country – finer yet to drink and dine in the countryside.”
That at least got a wry smile from them all. But they were now at the nub of the whole thing and Clavinianus returned to the fray.
“How long then, General – before they’re persuaded by our ways?”
That was indeed the question, he thought to himself, the one question that mattered. “Clavinianus, you should know better than me. You’ve been living cheek by jowl with the rascals.”
“Don’t know, Sir; two generations?” He saw the regiment’s tribune look across at Lucellus for confirmation.
“I’d say so, Clavinianus. If we’re strong, then fifty years, your two generations, that might be right. Otherwise I don’t know, maybe longer.”
“So I suppose that’s what it comes down to,” this now from Euplutius. “Do we have the fifty years?”
It was good to know he had such men. It cost more time to convince them than fools but, in the end, you got back so much more. “How long has this road been here, Gentlemen?” he asked with a flourish. “To us, fifty years are the small change of history.”
Spoken with conviction, in a sense it was all academic. If there were no fifty years, none would live to rebuke their memory. And his words, as Constantius realised, had also effectively ended the conversation. To say the unthinkable would be the ultimate expression of treason. Anyway, they had no choice. As long as the Goths wandered from one province to the next, the Empire could never recover; not to forget those spine-chilling reports from Lucellus. Soon the Goths would have conquered all of Hispania, just one day’s sailing from Africa on a calm day like today. Then, to quote the good Count himself, who the master and who the hound?
“Large group of Goths ahead, Sir.”
“Aye, Marcus, I see them. Slow to a walk.”
Clavinianus dropped off their gro
up to give his orders. They had noticed a picket of Goth cavalry just outside Baeterrae but up ahead milled a small army of men, their horses tethered in a great fan across the fields. Watchful shields and spears guarded the highway.
“The road coming up from Narbo, Sir,” and Lucellus was pointing to the left; another highway this time dotted with wagons.
“All the way from Corduba?”
“Aye, Sir.”
Two Goths were cantering towards them and he noticed how Lucellus sounded quietly relieved when he whispered. “Brodagast and Rademer, my Lord; nobles on Wallia’s council.” Out loud as the Goths came within earshot: “Quite some welcoming party.”
The Goths reined in their horses, waited for the Romans to come up alongside. Brodagast waved back towards the road junction. “King’s orders, Lucellus, lot of wagons on the move and who knows what bagaudae up in the hills. Wagons from Tolosa right back to the mountains.”
“And of course,” interjected Rademer, “the royal treasury – it passed this way only yesterday.”
“How is the treasury these days?” Constantius asked, a little put out at being so ignored.
Rademer turned towards him. “General Constantius? Good morning to you. You may remember, General. We spent much gold buying food a few winters back. With the help of Lucellus and Clavinianus here, I reckon we’ve recovered our outlay and some.” Rademer beamed and a smile played around the man Brodagast’s eyes.
No smiles on the Roman faces; he’d heard that same tone before from a Goth. Lucellus had been right. These were men who thought once more that they could conquer the world. High time they had a home to hold, a home to lose.
Still, a courtesy he must acknowledge; the two Goths would escort them this last stretch of the way to Tolosa. Besides the heavy guard at the crossroads, every mile they travelled was a further picket and another large force just by Carcaso. No bagaudae in their right minds would come anywhere near. Lucellus and his men were the best he had north of the Alps. But they would never get back down that road if Wallia decided otherwise.
