Attila: The Gathering of the Storm

by William Napier

  He had served for some time as chief clerk in the office of the Count of the Sacred Largesse, and also as a clerk-in-consistory, recording rank, until he had been appointed deputy chief clerk-in-consistory, a post, it may justly be said, of no little reach and responsibility.

  But let me not be boastful. It is just that oh, how I wished my aged parents could have lived to see the day when I attended upon the Empress Galla Placidia herself! How proud they would have been, how they would have beamed and nodded their white heads, to hear their son tell of court doings and dealings, on my rare visits home on leave to that little town of Panium, there on the sunwarmed olive-green hillside. But it was not to be. Both my parents lay sleeping beneath that green hillside, and my family, if I had any, were the clerks and secretaries and chamberlains of the imperial court.

  Thanks to my well-known trustworthiness and reserve, I was at this time as close to Galla Placidia as any commoner. This was doubtless a great privilege, though not always a great comfort. I was often obliged to sleep at night lying on my right-hand side, my less favoured side, since my left cheek was stinging so much from her slaps and was too hot to put to the pallet. However, all agreed that the empress slapped her staff less often than she used to.

  She was now an old woman, approaching her sixtieth year, and although she tried to maintain her regal bearing and hold herself rigidly erect she could not disguise a worsening stoop, as if she carried a great weight on her thin shoulders. Her skin was still very pale and pure, untouched by sunlight in six decades, but she had many fine lines round her cold green eyes, and her thin, hard lips were thinner than ever. It was long since a husband had shared her bed, and she had found motherhood a disappointment. What mother’s breast could swell with pride contemplating such a daughter as the ludicrously named Honoria, or such a son as Emperor Valentinian III? A son who had on more than one occasion, it was said, tried to poison his mother, leaving her retching and groaning in her chamber for days afterwards. They never spoke to each other but to quarrel.

  Valentinian born in the month of July, 419, was on the eve of his twenty-eighth birthday, though still without either wife or child. He was very thin, with almost no muscle on his arms and legs but with a distended little potbelly like that of an old man. His face was unlined and boyish, chubby and wide-eyed. When excited he dribbled a little. But the appearance of sottish, retard boy was deceptive. He was in fact exceptionally cunning, cruel and unscrupulous. And darker still were the rumours of his fascination with witchcraft and black magic, and what monsters that had brought forth, deep in the underground chambers of the palace kept strictly for his private use . . .

  Now he withdrew his right hand hurriedly from under his lavish robes and leaped to his feet with a cry of indignation. The golden platter of truffles shot from his lap and fell clanging to the marble floor like a dropped cymbal.

  ‘Mother!’ he cried. ‘How many times have I told you . . .’

  She ignored him, and ordered me to unroll the scroll on a large oak table. I did so, and a beautiful map of our beloved empire was revealed, all illuminated in a gorgeous array of coloured inks on venerable ivory-hued linen paper.

  Galla placed a cool forefinger somewhere beyond the borders, in Trans-Pannonia. Then she traced it south, over the Danube and into the heart of Illyricum and Moesia.

  ‘Should an enemy army attack here, at this point,’ she said, ‘between Sirmium and Viminacium, say, whose responsibility would it be?’

  ‘Enemy?’ gabbled Valentinian. ‘What enemy?’

  Again his mother ignored him. ‘Whose territory is it? Yours, or the Emperor Theodosius’?’

  ‘I, I . . .’ stammered the emperor, staring open-mouthed at her. To my shame, I saw his right hand creep between the folds of his long robe, like a little boy clutching himself for comfort in a moment of anxiety. I turned my face away. God’s appointed vice-regent upon earth. The Lord of Western Christendom.

  ‘Here!’ she cried icily, rapping her fingernail on the map.

  Valentinian looked down where she pointed, his eyes swimming, uncertain.

  ‘Sirmium is, is ...’ he stammered. He couldn’t think straight. His mind kept going back to his truffles. Where had they got to? It felt as if one had got stuck to the bottom of his sandal. ‘Sirmium is mine, obviously. At the junction of the Danube and the, what is it? I can never remember. The . . .’

  ‘The Sava,’ said Galla.

  ‘Is it?’ The emperor laughed, a manic, high-pitched giggle. ‘But then after that, this bit ... I mean, it’s a bit vague, it’s ... Singidunum is theirs, isn’t it?’

  Galla Placidia looked at me for enlightenment.

  ‘Singidunum falls within the prefecture of the Praefectus Praetoria per Illyricum,’ I affirmed, ‘and therefore is also under Your Majesty’s rule.’

  ‘Is it?’ Valentinian looked like a child who had just been given an unexpected present. ‘It’s a while since we have toured our Danube borders, I confess.’

  ‘And from Singidunum eastwards to Viminacium and beyond is under Theodosius?’ asked Galla. She was talking to me. I nodded. ‘Viminacium, at least, is strongly fortified, is it not?’

  ‘Does it need to be?’ asked Valentinian. ‘Why?’ He looked very anxious again. ‘Why does it need to be fortified?’

  At the risk of losing my head, I ignored the emperor and answered his mother. The words of the most recent report by the clerk-of-the-works at Viminacium still all too clear in my memory. Scarcity of funds . . . months of back-pay still awaited ... consequent depletion of manpower . . . numerous desertions ... labour costs and shortage of decent materials . . . decay of the Danube fleet ...lack of communication with Aquincum ... walls in disrepair ... gatehouse extremely unstable . . . bridge requires compete rebuild . . . crumbling river embankments causing dangerous subsidence of western walls ... Nor was the story any better at Sirmium or Singidunum or Aquincum or Carnuntum or any other frontier fortification you cared to mention.

  ‘I believe,’ I said carefully, and truthfully, ‘that the capture of Viminacium would still require skilled siegework.’

  Galla understood. No mere nomad army, however numerous, could capture a Roman legionary fortress.

  ‘And the Seventh is still stationed there?’

  The Seventh. The once-legendary Legio VII Claudia Pia Fidelis. Like all the legions, it was a mere shadow of its former self. A handful of poorly equipped centuries, going to seed in a damp and decaying riverside fort. Playing dice, quarrelling, drinking cheap wine. No longer even able to seduce the local girls, not without their soldiers’ pay in their purses. Five hundred men at most, in place of the old five thousand. Aëtius had done his best, but it was never enough. There was never enough time, enough money, enough urgency.

  ‘Its numbers are not what they were,’ I said. ‘But yes, the Seventh is still stationed there.’

  Galla knew it all. She also listed the XIV at Carnuntum, the I at Brigetio, the fierce IV Scythica at Singidunum, and the II at Aquincum, along with the Danube fleet, or the dispirited remnants of it.

  She looked at the map again, and tapped the barbarian lands beyond the river, the rich plains between the Danube and the Tisza. On the map this land was still called by its ancient name, derived from the people who once lived there, and Valentinian, craning over, read it out loud.

  ‘Sarmatian Jazyges,’ he repeated slowly, almost lovingly. ‘Sarmatian Jazyges. I like that name.’ He looked at me and smiled in way that I can only describe as witless. ‘I wish I had a friend called Sarmatian Jazyges.’

  ‘It is right on the border,’ his mother snapped at him, ‘and for a reason. And that reason is called Attila.’

  Valentinian stared at her.

  ‘I have gathered the intelligence I required,’ she said crisply. ‘Attila is indeed their king. His brother, Bleda, is already dead, who would have been our ally, or at least our neutral feoderatus. Attila will not be our ally. Attila will be our enemy. That is why he has come and camped with his vas
t horde, in’ - she almost spat the words at her startled son - ‘Sarmatian Jazyges. He will invade across the river shortly, at the precise intersection between our two empires, to confuse us and set us against one another. I know that he is no fool. He is a man of the utmost cunning. He will attack here, at Singidunum, or close by. We will dither. He will ride on. He will ride at the head of a hundred thousand horsemen, and we had better be ready.’ She was nearly trembling with suppressed rage as she looked her son in his quavering eye. ‘Your Majesty.’

  Suddenly Valentinian snapped. There was danger. He did not understand, he was bewildered and frightened. He even trotted round in a little circle, and when he spoke it was in something of a wail.

  ‘Why? But why? Why do they want to attack me? Who are they? What do they want?’ Then he grew angry and tyrannical, his abject fear turning to aggression and then to cruelty, as is often the case with cowards. ‘We will attack them! We will march against them! See how they like it!’ He tried to draw himself up, and he touched his fingertips to his purple stole and affected a grander style. ‘How dare they insult Our Imperial Majesty or impugn Our Sovereign Territory!’

  ‘We should recall General Aëtius,’ said Galla Placidia, trying to remain calm, ‘no matter what offence he has caused Your Imperial Majesty in the past. He still commands great loyalty among the legions, and he knew this Attila in boyhood. He was a hostage in the camp of the Huns. They are of the same age.’ She tried to conceal her distaste. ‘The general even speaks some of their barbaric tongue.’

  Valentinian looked darkly at his mother. ‘He is as much of a threat as any Huns.’

  Galla shook her head. ‘No, he is—’

  Valentinian’s tantrum was instantaneous. ‘Do you contradict me, woman? Remember who you are! And who we are!’

  Galla bit her thin lip.

  ‘That Aëtius is nothing but trouble! He has never been anything but brusque to me!’ He slapped his hand down on the map. ‘I will not have him back. I’ll not!’ He stamped his foot, and when he moved away again, a single white truffle remained behind, squashed flat upon the marble. ‘Where is he now? With the Goths? With those great hairy lairy Germans he gets on so well with, who stink of onions and rancid butter?’ He looked rapidly between the empress and me, his tongue stretched right out, for some reason, the tip almost touching his chin, and his forefingers waggling on the top of his head, perhaps to resemble horns. ‘Hm? Hm?’

  I tried not to betray myself. ‘At the court of Theodoric, Your Majesty, that is correct.’

  ‘They must be punished! And the Huns, too, they must be punished! They must be punished first. They must be warned - given a warning shot, like an arrow, like a flying arrow.’ Valentinian was babbling now, pacing up and down the chamber, pulling the fingers of his left hand with his right and chewing his lips to ribbons. In a moment I feared he would start dribbling. ‘We are not afraid, that is the thing. A punitive expedition, that is the thing. Eutropius!’

  The chamberlain came bustling in from the neighbouring antechamber, from whence no doubt he had heard every word. He spread his golden dalmatic wide and knelt at the emperor’s feet and kissed the hem of his robe - the hem, he noted, was splashed with blood, and a little matted clot, like a clot of human hair, was stuck to it.

  ‘Send a message to the Fourteenth at Viminacium. Or is it the Seventh? Did you say the Seventh?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well. Send a message out to the Seventh at Viminacium. They are to despatch an armed body of men, a cohort or something, however many they can spare, and make a punitive expedition, that is the thing.’

  ‘Against whom, my lord?’

  ‘Against the Huns, you fool!’ Valentinian’s fists were taut and white at his sides. ‘Capture some of them, that’s it! Put them in chains, old men, women, little children! Tie them all up tight like fowl on a market-stall. Tightly tightly!’ Now he was dribbling. ‘We must show the people we are not afraid! We will have a proper games in the arena, and the Hun captives will be savagely and mercilessly punished!’

  ‘My lord,’ said a voice behind him.

  He turned, eyeing Galla dangerously. ‘I trust you agree with our plan, mother?’

  Galla’s thin breast heaved. ‘My lord, I beg you to reconsider ...’ Valentinian raised his hand to slap her, and held it there, inches from her cheek, as he yelled into her face, ‘You are growing tiresome, mother! We are the emperor, not you!’

  Galla did not flinch and she said nothing.

  Valentinian turned and bellowed at the chamberlain, ‘Well, get on with it! A punitive expedition. Those beastly barbarians in the arena in chains! Tightly tightly! See how they like that!’

  He looked over the empress and myself one last time, puffed up his cheeks and made an odd, explosive noise. Then he picked up his skirts and hurried off into the antechamber.

  I carefully rolled up the great map.

  When I turned round, the empress was still standing there, her head bowed, her eyes closed, her small white fists clenched by her sides, not moving.

  There was a circle of black tents beside the lower reaches of the Tisza, not far from where it flowed into the Danube, one of many such circles which spread over the plain amid a haze of campfire smoke. Women were stirring pots, or bringing water from the river in leather pails. Round-headed, red-cheeked children were playing chase and tag. It was a cold day in late spring, but very beautiful, the sky pale blue, the sunlight sharp, the green earth slowly softening after the night’s hard frost.

  A double ala of Roman cavalry, which is to say a hundred and sixty men, appeared in the west. They had ridden from the legionary fortress at Viminacium at dawn. They saw the camp from some way off and drew their curved cavalry swords.

  The grass was lush and bright with spring flowers.

  One of the children saw the men on their horses coming. She stopped and stared and put her thumb in her mouth. Then she raised her other hand and waved uncertainly.

  The horsemen did not wave back.

  There came the sound of two cheerful tuckets on brass bugles, and then the line of horses began to gallop.

  The smoke was seen rising from the circle of tents from far off, and one of the Kutrigur chieftains rode out with his men to see. When they got to where the cluster of tents had stood, there was nothing to see but ashes, heads on stakes, and severed limbs.

  The news was brought to Attila in his palace. He sat very still and looked into the fire, saying nothing.

  Late in the evening, when most had fallen into an uneasy sleep filled with dreams of revenge, Little Bird came unannounced into the presence of the brooding king and sat cross-legged in front of him, his face streaked with tears. And he half said, half sang:

  ‘The Song of Little Bird, Truth-Teller:

  ‘News travels like a plains fire

  And is as blood-red as a plains fire at dawn.

  Over the river they rode, their swords bright silver,

  Into the village, among the black tents they rode;

  Ten in red cloaks, bearded, oh, noble white men!

  Then over the river they rode, their swords bright red.’

  When he fell silent Attila looked up and their eyes met.

  ‘Vengeance travels like a plains fire,’ said Attila, ‘and is as blood-red as a plains fire at dawn.’

  4

  IN THE COURT OF THE VISIGOTHS: A GAME OF CHESS

  Far to the west, in a small arched courtyard partly shaded by the pale green leaves of young vines, two men were playing at the fine old Roman board-game of latrunculi, or chess. In the Visigothic court of Tolosa, in sun-warmed southern Gaul.

  How elegant was the court of the Visigoths under great old Theodoric! What paeans of praise were written of it! It seemed to unite all the old Roman virtues, and none of the new Roman vices. Many looked towards the new kingdom with something like longing, or even expectation, as if they saw in Theodoric’s kingdom, and in his six proud sons - ‘the Sons of Thunder’, they jokingly calle
d them - the future of Europe: a future at once Gallic and barbaric, Christian and Roman. Theodoric and his sons were valiant in battle, they knew their Roman history and jurisprudence, and they spoke Latin and even a little Greek as well as Gothic. They knew their Virgil well enough to quote appropriately when occasion demanded, and their accent was such as would make only the most scrupulous Latinist wince.