by Jack Ludlow
‘A fight,’ Procopius reported. ‘Two Huns killed one of their comrades, all three drunk and that after they had molested some of the local women. The leading citizens of the port are demanding something be done.’
‘And it will.’
He had everyone brought back aboard their ships and had himself rowed around the fleet to pass on his message that this was a Christian army going to the aid of a persecuted people who shared their faith and who were suffering persecution, ignoring a wind that had sprung up to allow departure.
‘We cannot prevail if they turn against us, but I would demand they be respected even if they were pagans. It is pointless to take land then oppress those who live off it for then we become their enemy. We are charged by our Emperor to bring back under his sceptre a province of the Roman Empire. I promise any man that transgresses against those we are about to free will feel the full force of my wrath, as you will see.’
Back aboard his command vessel the two miscreants stood, their hands bound in the middle of the deck with their leader Blasas present but declining to intervene to save them. From each end of the mainsail spar hung a rope, noosed at the end. The men who had murdered and molested were led forward to have these placed round their necks. Within what Flavius hoped was sight of the whole fleet, a running body of his comitatus officers hauled the pair, legs kicking, into the air, there to writhe and jerk until their last breath departed their body.
‘We leave them there,’ he told the commander of the fleet, Calonymus. ‘Let all see what their fate will be for transgression.’
The bodies still swung from the spar as, three days’ sailing later, the fleet entered the harbour of Methone. There the task of loading the regular troops of the empire began and it did not go well. Units marched onto the quay in no order whatsoever and got in each other’s path, ending up as a rabble. He seemed to have command of a mob not an army, and it got worse as each hour passed.
‘If I have another moment of this disorder, Procopius, I will cut my throat.’
‘I am not a soldier, General, but land this horde and we will perish.’
This time, when the wind dropped and becalmed the fleet, Flavius was grateful and if it led to men being disgruntled he did not care. Just come aboard they were disembarked and led out of the small port to open fields where he could begin to form them into the fighting force he wanted and needed.
He had a dozen men who held general rank and understood what was required, even if they had never tried to impose it. To change that he bypassed them and spoke directly to their middle-ranking officers to tell them what he required. In addition to that there were the outright mercenaries and his own well-drilled comitatus to demonstrate the necessary drills.
There was no time to ask if they could fight, that had to be a hope, but they had to be taught how to manoeuvre, more so the cavalry than the ten thousand infantry. The education they required was in holding their ground against a horse-led assault, for if he knew nothing of Vandal tactics or weaponry he had to assume them to be mobile and mounted. The cavalry arm had to be able to move as individual units, had to be shown how as well as when to combine, and most importantly how not be tempted into useless pursuits.
In the face of a degree of mild resistance from his inferior commanders – they were all long-serving military men – Flavius had several assets to employ. First he had chosen them and he knew them to be good commanders. What made their movement poor was not stupidity or a lack of ability, but an absence of the experience of operating as a large body. Second, he was the Victor of Dara and none of these men had fought a major battle let alone won one. But greatest of all was the plain fact that he had the trust of Justinian and sole command. He had no need to include another in his deliberations or seek support in a discussion of tactics.
‘Pharas will tell you that I am no martinet.’
The crowded tent was full of men with their eyes fixed upon him and Flavius was pleased by their acute attention. If they were ruffled they still wanted to know his plans for they wanted, like him, to succeed.
‘Ask for the right to act on your own notions and I will listen – and if I agree? Well, as I said, ask Pharas, who did just that at Dara and aided me in the victory we achieved. But another man who owed me obedience was Coutzes and because he disobeyed a direct instruction thousands died. I have no need to tell you that is not what I desire. Give me cause to think you will do so and the next ship home is what you earn.’
He smiled to take the sting out of the threat. ‘Let us hope for a wind on the morrow, but if it fails us again then it is to these fields we will return, for my friends, I tell you there is no amount of training that constitutes too much. What the enemy will do I have no idea. But I must know what we will do, and I must have the confidence to confound any move they make.’
It was not wind that came on the morrow but something close to a calamity. A whole chiliarch of his infantry were unable to parade when called forth by the horns at dawn. Of the three thousand men afflicted, a high number succumbed during the day, dying in an agony of severe stomach pains. This was a situation in which the suspicious and superstitious made merry with rumours of either conspiracy or evil portents.
Flavius had to gather the local priests to go amongst the army and institute prayers, as well as to scotch any wild imagining, and those same priests were to later bury nearly five hundred men. Those who survived, indeed the entire army, needed to know what had happened and the common cause was narrowed down to infected bread baked to look as it should, but with some ingredient within that was potentially deadly. Archelaus was summoned for an explanation.
‘All I do, Flavius Belisarius, is indent for supplies. In the case of bread it is the imperial granaries that provide them and they do so on the instructions of the Cappadocian.’
‘It was not inspected prior to distribution?’
‘Why would it be, we are still in imperial territory?’
Flavius knew it was no good laying blame on Archelaus; the bread had been consumed and the aforementioned John was back in Constantinople, where it would be impossible to prove that he had a hand in what was clearly an attempt to cheat and save money by using questionable and less costly ingredients.
‘It must be disseminated that John is responsible.’
‘He might not be, he would have asked the provincial governor to provide.’
‘He is a villain with enough guilt to spare for his many thefts, so let him carry the responsibility for this. It cannot be you, Archelaus, or the men will lose faith in our provisions.’
The wind came the following day but that had to be ignored; many were still too sick. It was another two days before they could think to depart and they would be leaving behind a mass grave of their unlucky comrades. The now overcrowded argosy finally raised sail and dropped oars, heading due south in sight of the Greek shore, heading for the twin capes that formed the south of the Attic mainland.
Flavius, with little to do, was happy in the company of Antonina and the closest officer members of his comitatus, while she seemed delighted to entertain a group of young and admiring men who set out to flatter her, that is till the weather turned foul and she found herself once more confined and retching to her cot.
Procopius succumbed too, but Flavius kept a steady stomach and was often on deck, his body whipped by the wind, easing and stiffening his legs with the role of the ship. These were the very waters Odysseus sailed through on his return from Troy, and if it was fanciful of him to think himself on a similar odyssey, it was pleasant listening to the breeze singing in the rigging and imagining it to be the voice of the siren Circe.
CHAPTER TWENTY
No matter how good a general a man is, no matter the state of the army he leads, good fortune must attend his efforts and Flavius Belisarius was lucky. Crossing the Adriatic, the only time the fleet was out of sight of land, a contrary wind, not anticipated by the vastly experienced Calonymus, meant that the journey took many days longer than he anti
cipated. That meant a shortage of water, for to carry enough for both the men and the horses was too taxing even for such a large quantity of transports, and it became brackish and undrinkable. Even then men consumed it until it ran out, adding illness to a raging thirst.
The results would have been catastrophic had the wind not swung round just in time; the horses were in a bad way and the soldiers and sailors Flavius led were worse: it takes very little time in mild weather to suffer from thirst. At sea, with a hot wind and a scorching temperature, confined between stuffy and crowded decks, an hour of deprivation became critical and the time was approaching where the only sustenance for the humans would be the blood of the equines.
Flavius sent the fighting galleys ahead in the hope they could make a landfall and return with enough water to stave off disaster. The abiding sound before that change of wind was of men praying to God, mixed with the neighing of distressed horses and then Hosannas, as they felt the breeze shift and saw the sails swing and the water before the bows begin to cream. They raised Brindisi with little time to spare, glad to find that their galley captains had barges setting out to save them.
There was no pumping to fill barrels, just a stream of pumped water aimed at the crowded decks which the men took at full force into grateful faces before filling buckets for their mounts. From now on and all the way to Sicily, they would again be in sight of the shore, only when they crossed from there to their destination would the same threat occur, a lesser one given the shorter distance between islands.
Restored, it seemed as if everything went in their favour as a fair wind took them round to the Straits of Messina. At Syracuse they found a special market had been set up for them by the Queen of the Goths where they could cheaply buy fresh produce to supplement their rations. The locals were Catholic coreligionists, likewise ruled by Arians, though the Goths allowed them the freedom to worship. They hated the Vandals not only for their persecutions but for the memory of raids and depredations all along the coast: rape, theft, the taking of slaves and murder, so the thought of chastisement of these barbarians was welcome, the people set to carry it out treated as champions.
There had been a constant stream of news and encouragement from Constantinople: Tripolitania was still in revolt and the province of Byzacium was on the verge of an uprising, intelligence supplied by disaffected Christians. There was a message from the leader of the revolt on the island of Sardinia saying he needed scant help in terms of soldiers and certainly no one to command him, which meant little diminution of the forces Flavius would have available.
Procopius went investigating again. Left behind once the fleet sailed on, his task was to interrogate anyone who might provide intelligence on the enemy. Again luck played a part; Procopius ran into an old acquaintance with whom he had studied law. The man was now in the seaborne trade and had recently had a ship and cargo return from Carthage. The master of that vessel was summoned and he was adamant that the Vandal capital was peaceful.
No one there behaved as if an invasion was imminent and Gelimer was not even in the capital city, he was rumoured to be in the eastern province of Byzacium to cow the disaffected populace, which fitted with what had been heard from home. Even more important was the information that he had despatched a force of five thousand of his soldiers, under his brother Tzazon, to quell the rebellion in Sardinia. The sailing master was taken to be questioned by Flavius, now anchored off the southern tip of Sicily.
The other information he provided was just as valuable. As a regular visitor to Carthage he knew how the society of the region was constituted and that again fitted with what was already known. The Vandals had done nothing to integrate with the indigenes until the accession of Hilderic, and with him now in prison they had reverted to old habits and renewed religious persecution.
The barbarians held themselves separate from those over whom they ruled and were very much in the minority, using fear and oppression to keep a grip on the country. They also maintained their migratory traditions: there were no Vandal farmers; every man was a warrior, expected when called upon to heed any call to arms to maintain ethnic supremacy. Only when it came to tactics when fighting was the seafarer at a loss, never having seen them do more than harass people in the crowded streets of the old city, which left Flavius still uncertain of what they would face when he landed.
‘I have carried out a calculation,’ Procopius said, producing a scroll which he opened on his lap. That fluttered in the welcome breeze coming in through the open cabin shutters, it still being hot. ‘Based on what we know of Vandal numbers.’
‘Not a great deal, I suspect.’
‘More, possibly, than you think, General. They have a well-stocked library in Syracuse and I went there to see what I could find, and I found books, mostly Greek but quite a lot of Roman as well, a lot of them military histories going back to and beyond Caesar’s Commentaries.’
‘I’m impressed.’
‘Better still, those who first treated with them in North Africa wrote accounts of the difficulties and I found one that sought to assess their population when they departed Hispania and arrived in Africa at some sixty thousand souls.’
That got an appreciative nod from his employer; Procopius was carrying out calculations that were of some importance and ones that had not even occurred to him.
‘Prior to the last migration they were at war with every one of their neighbours as well as Rome, so were much diminished by casualties in battle. In North Africa they have had peace at home excepting some losses in their piracy. But they have been settled for some time, inhabiting a fertile province which provides them with ample food so they should have procreated by some measure.’
Antonina, who had been walking, taking air on the deck, entered the cabin as Procopius was talking and, waving a fan to ward off the heat, she threw herself on a divan, her eyes on him, her expression a frown directed towards the seated secretary.
‘So you think they will have increased in numbers?’ Flavius enquired.
‘I do, but a figure of double their previous strength is only a guess.’
‘War is that in a lot of ways.’
‘Take out the elderly, the women and children and accept what our ship’s master says about everyone being a warrior and at my reckoning we face at worst some thirty thousand warriors in total.’
‘Less the men sent to Sardinia.’
‘Which still leaves them numerically superior.’
Antonina spoke up, her tone firm. ‘Then it comes down, Procopius, to who is the better general.’
‘Who has the better army, surely,’ her husband corrected her, with a kindly look that earned him a very brief scowl. ‘So it will have to be us.’
‘Anything else?’ Antonina asked, though it was far from her place to do so. ‘I have invited the comitatus officers to dine with us and the cabin must be got ready.’
‘Again?’ This Flavius said with just a trace of impatience and one that was brushed aside.
‘How else are we to entertain ourselves, Husband?’
About to respond with a salacious remark Flavius had to bite his tongue. Procopius was still present and he spoke again, his face pinched.
‘I have drafted for your approval a final despatch to the Emperor.’
Antonina sat forward then. ‘I will have a letter for Theodora to go with it.’
‘I’m sure you will,’ Procopius responded in a sour way that made Antonina bridle.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I don’t understand,’ the secretary replied in an unconvincing aside as he stood up, laying the scroll on the desk. ‘It’s an innocent remark.’
‘I do not like your tone.’
‘Antonina, please,’ Flavius said in a firm voice. ‘Fetch the draft, Procopius, and we shall go over it together, which will give you, my dear, time to use our private quarters to compose the letter you wish to send.’
Antonina did not budge until Procopius was gone. ‘You overindulge that fello
w. I have said it before and it is worthy of repetition.’
Flavius left his chair and came to sit beside her. ‘He does his job well and he does not steal.’
‘He does not show you sufficient respect. What is he doing sitting in your presence?’
‘I invited him to do so.’
‘As I said, overindulged.’
She exited, leaving Flavius to contemplate the problem of the mutual hostility between his secretary and his wife, which if it was awkward in itself was made ten times worse by being cooped up in the ship. This abrasion had manifested itself not long after leaving Constantinople and it had not abated since, if anything it had got worse, the only relief being when Procopius was absent at Syracuse.
He was a tidy fellow, evidenced by his own cubicle in which he both worked and slept. Procopius had a desk in which his writing equipment was neatly arranged and so were his possessions and it was known to Flavius they were not rendered so by his servant. His attention to detail was reflected in everything he did.
It would be unfair to suggest Antonina was the opposite but she was one to leave things to be cleaned up after her, which they were. The Belisarius servants, of which there were many thanks to her presence, were competent. The truth was they were chalk and cheese and he was caught in the middle. He had no desire to play the master with Procopius and no chance of doing so with his wife.
Thank God they would soon be ashore.
The day came when these red-striped sails were raised to take the northerly wind and for the ship commanded by Calonymus to lead the argosy south-west past the islands of Malta and Gozo, on to tiny Lampedusa where the water was replenished, before finally sighting the coast of Africa within the confines of a single day. The shore was far enough off their quarter to be just visible as a streak on the horizon, which Flavius wished maintained. Before the final dash to shore he called all his commanders to join him aboard his ship for a conference.
