The Beacon at Alexandria

by Gillian Bradshaw

  I hadn’t expected to see him, and was caught off guard. I stopped short in the doorway, my heart leaping; I could feel my face going hot. Fortunately, there were no lamps by the door, so no one noticed the blush. But as soon as he saw me Athanaric gave a smile of delighted welcome, hurried over, and took my hand. “Welcome, Chariton!” he said. “I gather that it’s to you I owe Sebastianus’ presence here. Well done!”

  I said nothing; I was trying to control myself. Athanaric’s greeting made me quite dizzy, as though I were swinging out over some great void.

  “He got Theodoros to agree to send grain, as well,” Sebastianus informed his friend.

  “Immortal God!” Athanaric said. “How did you manage that? I tried arguing with him, but got nowhere: he said he couldn’t get the grain.”

  I managed to sneeze, to excuse my silence. “Any governor can get more grain if he wants to squeeze the landowners,” I said. “It was just a matter of convincing Thorion that it was necessary. He’s a kind man, he doesn’t like suffering. And I’d just helped deliver his firstborn son.”

  “The advantages of the Hippocratic method!” said Athanaric, grinning. “Well, I am pleased to have such a powerful ally.”

  “I thought you were in Antioch.”

  “I’ve just arrived from there.” The grin was gone, and I saw that he looked tired and careworn. “Allies there are less capable. The most illustrious Eutherios will listen to me, but Festinus, the governor here, is a friend of the praetorian prefect. Eutherios may say one thing to His Sacred Majesty, but Modestus just dismisses it all, and the emperor listens to Modestus. And everyone is preoccupied with Persia. No one wants to know what’s happening here; no one will do anything. It will go on until the Theruingi revolt. Unless you can convince Lupicinus to stop it,” to Sebastianus.

  “I will try. But can we forget the Theruingi for tonight? I’ll have to do quite enough talking about their problems tomorrow.”

  We reclined at table, Daphne and Sebastianus on one couch, Athanaric and I separate on two others. Daphne was yawning, tired from the journey and her swim. She rested her blonde head on Sebastianus’ arm; they made a very pretty picture. Athanaric looked at them sourly, and started on the problems of the Theruingi again before the first course was finished.

  “Will Theodoros really send the grain?” he asked me. “He and Festinus are notorious for the way they detest each other; neither will do anything that might benefit the other. And it is Festinus’ responsibility to provide supplies for Fritigern’s people.”

  “I have letters from Theodoros, asking Festinus to arrange distribution of the grain when it arrives for Scythia,” I said simply.

  Athanaric gave a whistle of admiration and shook his head.

  “Why are they enemies?” asked Sebastianus, sipping his wine and looking affectionately at Athanaric over Daphne’s head.

  “It’s a personal grudge,” said Athanaric. “Theodoros’ sister was supposed to marry Festinus. She disappeared a month before the wedding, leaving the bridegroom looking foolish — there was a scandal about it in Asia a few years back. Theodoros is supposed to have arranged the disappearance so that he wouldn’t have to call an auctioneer’s son ‘brother.’ Festinus was furious, and used all his influence to make things difficult for Theodoros and his family.”

  “What happened to the sister?” asked Daphne.

  Athanaric shrugged. “No one knows. Something must have, or she’d have turned up again by now. She pined to death, her delicate nature crushed by the scandal and the concealment. Or she ran off with a charioteer. Those are two of the rumors: take your pick.”

  “Oh, I’ll pick the charioteer!” said Daphne with a laugh. “I like races.”

  Sebastianus laughed and kissed her. “I’ll bear that in mind,” he said. “No charioteers will be invited to this house. Slaves! More wine. And Athanaric, no more talk about the Goths!”

  The following day Sebastianus went to see Lupicinus, and I gave Athanaric Thorion’s letters about the shipment of grain to take to the governor’s office. Athanaric was surprised that I wouldn’t take the letters myself. I said that I thought a curiosus of the agentes in rebus would receive more attention more quickly than an army doctor.

  “You don’t have any conciliatory messages from Theodoros to Festinus, then?” he asked, looking worried. “There’s a danger that Festinus will refuse to receive the grain, particularly if it’s Theodoros who sends it. The two hate each other very dearly. And Festinus may want to continue his trade at present, and may not be eager to receive supplies for the Goths, even at someone else’s expense.”

  “Even if Theodoros would agree to send a conciliatory message,” I replied, “I’m not the person to carry it. I’d rather not meet the governor.”

  Athanaric stood watching me carefully. “He knows you?”

  I shrugged. I’d thought this over carefully, and decided that it was highly unlikely that Festinus would recognize me. He’d only actually seen me a few times, years before, and my own brother had failed to recognize in me the curled and perfumed young lady of his memories. Nonetheless, I was not keen to speak to the governor. “He probably doesn’t remember me,” I told Athanaric. “We have met, but there’s no reason that he should notice me. Only I remember him. Most Ephesians do. Or perhaps you never heard how he acted when he governed us?”

  “I heard. Well, well. You got into trouble not only in Egypt and Thrace but in Asia as well. You seem almost as good at finding trouble as you are at medicine. What was it that time? Did you help Theodoros to arrange his sister’s disappearance?”

  I laughed, and handed Athanaric Thorion’s letters. “ ‘Sufficient unto the day the evil thereof,’ “ I told him. “Let old grudges sleep. Good luck with Festinus.”

  Sebastianus had notified Duke Maximus of Moesia that we were coming, and I accordingly presented myself as the learned doctor he had asked for. The duke was a tall, bronzed man with the looks, manners, and morals of a bandit. He had summoned two of his doctors to Marcianopolis as soon as he heard I was coming; he took me down to the barracks, introduced me to his men, and left us to discuss plagues. The doctors were marginally better than Xanthos and Diokles, but only marginally. I asked about supplies of water in the camps by the river; they said the people had the river. I asked about sanitation; they said the Romans had the usual arrangements, but the barbarians wandered up and down the banks looking for food and fouling everything. I asked about provisions for the sick; they said that the troops cared for their own on the spot and sent severe cases to the hospital. No provisions of any sort had been made for the barbarians. The doctors were highly resentful of the Theruingi, who were lashed by various illnesses which they passed on to the Roman troops; the doctors seemed to think they did it deliberately.

  I gave a long lecture about how contagions affect the air and water, about the importance of insuring supplies of clean water for everyone, about quarantine and the use of sulfur to purify the air. I ended by stressing the urgent need to settle the Goths in their own land. When I left, the doctors were dissatisfied with me because I’d offered no magical cure for plague, and dissatisfied with their commander for keeping the plaguey Theruingi so near their own troops. I was dissatisfied too. If the doctors followed my instructions carefully, they might manage to control the spread of disease among the Roman troops. But I had done nothing for the Goths. I walked back to the center of Marcianopolis in a temper, cursing Roman greed.

  When I reached the headquarters building, I found Sebastianus and Athanaric in an equally bad temper. “That Festinus is a fat red bloodsucking leech,” Athanaric declared in a low voice. “I gave him Theodoros’ letters and invented a few compliments, but he wouldn’t say what he’d do about them, or if he’d do anything at all. He invited me to some banquet tonight. He’s done the prefectural palace up like a Sybarite’s mansion and stuffed it with Theruingian slaves to attend on him. He’s in the thick of this business.”

  “Lupicinus credits him with con
siderable ingenuity,” Sebastianus said with distaste. “When I brought the matter up, he tried to lay all the blame on the governor. Though it’s plain the basic idea was his. Well, they’ve had a good few months of profiteering now: Lupicinus may agree to end the business. He’s heard some rumors that the Goths may revolt, and he’s beginning to worry. Festinus has invited him to dinner tonight too, as well as the three of us, and Lupicinus promised me he’d say something about the Goths there.”

  “Not me too?” I asked.

  “He’s invited all the army commanders and their staffs, and your name was specifically included. It’s hardly surprising: you’re a learned man, and could hardly be left out. Why, what’s the matter?”

  “He got into trouble in Ephesus when Festinus was governor,” said Athanaric, grinning. “He won’t say why.”

  “Serious trouble?” asked Sebastianus sharply, looking exasperated.

  “I was never accused of anything,” I said, now annoyed with Athanaric’s easy deduction and concerned to prevent him from guessing anything else. “I doubt very much that Festinus will even remember me. I might as well go; I imagine I’ll be seated at one of the bottom couches anyway.” I went up to my room to wash, then sat on the bed in my good cloak and worried.

  I needn’t have. The banquet was a very large affair. Sebastianus took one of his staff officers as well as me, and on arriving in the banquet room we discovered that the duke of Moesia had a party of seven (and he hadn’t included his doctors) and Lupicinus was there with a group of ten. Festinus greeted the arrivals at the banquet hall door. He was stouter than I remembered him, and more of the veins in his face had burst, leaving it blotched with red, but the glassy blue eyes were the same. He smiled as he shook Sebastianus’ hand: the baring of teeth I remembered, like an animal’s snarl. Sebastianus introduced me — “Chariton of Ephesus, my chief physician” — and the eyes skimmed my face, a fat damp hand rested in mine for a moment, and then he was baring his teeth at Athanaric, and one of the slaves was showing me to my place for the dinner, on the bottom couch with one of the junior staff officers. I sat down, feeling a bit limp. One of the prefectural slaves gave me a cup of honeyed white wine.

  The banquet room was large and magnificent, recently replastered, repainted with hunting scenes, and hung with new brocade curtains. It was lit by three racks of oil lamps which burned a sweet oil scented with frankincense and cast a brilliant light over the whole room. The table was of citron wood and maple, highly polished, and it glittered with a dinner service of silver and Corinthian ware. At one side of the room sat three fair-haired girls playing flutes and lyres; the lyre player was rather clumsy, and looked nervous. Other slaves, girls and boys, hurried about filling the guests’ cups and handing out rolls of white bread. They were all young, attractive, and quite clearly Gothic.

  The guests were seated, and the banquet began. Lupicinus shared the host’s couch, but Athanaric and Sebastianus were given the place of honor to Festinus’ right. The slaves brought in a plate of oysters; three slim girls in thin red tunics served the upper part of the table, and some other children handed out food at my end. The staff officers around me began discussing campaigns, and I could hear nothing that anyone at the other end of the table might be saying.

  The oysters were followed by stuffed dormice and grilled mullet with leeks; then chicken in white sauce, wild boar with honey and asafetida, and a peacock, roasted and carried in covered with its own splendid plumage. Lupicinus was given the privilege of ordering the wine, and he called for it strong and early; it was an unfamiliar red wine, old, highly fragrant, the sweetness balanced with the vinegar of age. I later learned that it was an Italian vintage called Falernian, which westerners esteem very highly and which is priced accordingly. We didn’t get too much of it down at the bottom couch, but the slaves seemed to be constantly filling the cups at the top, and before long the guests at that end were all flushed and loud with it.

  The staff officers went on about sieges and fortifications for most of the second course, pausing only to pinch the serving girls. But toward the end of the second course there was a lull in the conversation, and then Festinus said, loudly and clearly, “That damned insolent Theodoros wants to send grain supplies to the Goths.” He looked at Athanaric as he spoke.

  Lupicinus sneered; some of his staff officers jeered.

  “The most careful Theodoros heard that Your Honor was unable to supply the Theruingi with the necessities of life,” Athanaric returned evenly, “and he has most generously agreed to send some grain from the surplus of the province he governs, to assist Your Beneficence in your task of providing for them. He explains this in the letters I gave Your Prudence this morning.”

  “What I do in my province is no business of Theodoros’!” Festinus said contemptuously. “I’ve thought about his offer, and the more I think, the more insolent it seems. The fellow has done it simply to insult me! It’s just a way of saying he thinks I’m incompetent. I’ve been governing provinces since he was a gaping adolescent; I saw him in his father’s house in Ephesus, sulking over his schoolwork. He can sink his grain in the Danube before I’ll take it.”

  “Nonetheless,” said Athanaric, still in a level voice but now with an edge to it, “it is unquestionable that the Goths have suffered greatly from hunger since their crossing into Roman lands. And it is possible that the barbarians, being too ignorant to understand the most excellent reasons Your Prudence and the most esteemed Lupicinus have for keeping them beside the river with nothing to eat, may try to find some food by force of arms — unless something is provided for them.”

  Festinus gave a snort of contempt. Lupicinus glared at Athanaric. “We have commanded the barbarians to leave the river and to come see us here in Marcianopolis,” he growled.

  Athanaric stared at him for a moment, leaning forward on his couch, his face flushed. “To receive their lands?” he asked.

  “To receive the lands His Sacred Majesty allotted them,” agreed Lupicinus.

  “I thank God.” Athanaric sank back onto the couch as though overcome by the weight of relief and exhaustion. He looked at Sebastianus, who raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

  “I’ve had reports that there are more Goths in Thrace than there ought to be,” Lupicinus said, to no one in particular. “The Greuthungi were petitioning to be allowed to cross as well, and I think some of them may have slipped over with the help of that fox Fritigern. I want to bring the brute here and get him to explain.”

  The staff officers all began talking, like a pack of hounds catching a scent, protesting that they would soon put an end to the unauthorized intrusion of the Greuthungi. Athanaric began to look worried again. The Theruingi were a great tribe, even defeated and divided as they were; the Greuthungi were also powerful. If they had joined forces and if they were both across the river, they were an enemy to be feared.

  “So Theodoros can keep his grain,” Festinus added when the hounds had finished baying. It was plainly true that he hated Thorion even more than Thorion hated him, and he was not letting slip a chance to abuse his enemy. “God rot him and it! He’s an arrogant and bigoted lout, and has no business interfering in my province.”

  “Especially not after interfering in your wedding,” said Lupicinus, grinning maliciously.

  Festinus swore. He had had too much to drink already. “Everyone tells that story to disgrace me,” he said savagely. “It’s Theodoros that it ought to disgrace. I was thinking of settling in Ephesus, I’d acquired some land there, I looked around for a wife. The elder Theodoros practically throws his daughter at me — a frigid little virgin of fifteen, all big eyes and a touch-me-not air. I agree to take the girl, and her father is delighted. Next thing I know, she vanishes. Her father is distraught. Theodoros the younger as good as admits that he hid her somewhere, all out of arrogance and vanity, thinking himself above an alliance with my house, just because his grandfather scrambled to power and saved him the bother of doing it himself. Is that the way a gentlem
an behaves? But in fact he did me a favor. I was well out of the match: I heard that the girl ran off with a gladiator.”

  “With a gladiator?” asked Sebastianus, smiling. “How unusual. I wasn’t aware that they had gladiators in Asia. I thought that was a western taste.”

  Festinus gave him a venomous look. “I meant a charioteer.”

  Lupicinus sniggered and called for more wine. Some fresh Gothic girls came out, in even finer and shorter tunics, and began to dance. The staff officers applauded.

  I had disliked the banquet before it started, and by now was very eager to go. It didn’t matter that I was supposed to have run off with a charioteer, but to have Festinus talking about me made me very uneasy. And the sight of the commanders feasting themselves and getting drunk on the profits they’d made from people like Gudrun, preparing to bed down with girls who’d been sold to ward off starvation, made me sick with anger. Fortunately, Sebastianus left early, pleading fatigue from his journey, and that meant his party could leave with him. We walked back to the headquarters in silence. The staff officer went off to bed, but Sebastianus invited Athanaric and me to join him in a drink. “Not Falernian,” he stated.

  “Did you convince Lupicinus to summon the Goths here?” Athanaric asked when the wine — Chian, mixed with warm water and fairly weak — was produced.

  “I talked to him about the dangers of a revolt,” said Sebastianus, swirling the wine about in his cup. “I hadn’t heard that the Greuthungi wanted to cross as well, though. I expected it was that which decided him. Well, I hope it’s over now.”

  “I hope it is,” said Athanaric heavily.

  “But you fear that Fritigern may have already set some kind of revolt in motion.”