Their ferocity was still there, however, and it was this ferocity that Aetius hoped I could somehow help harness. The Visigoths were as haughty as Huns and as regal as Greeks. They were as famed for the long lances of their heavy cavalry as Attila’s men were for their bows; and the palace guards looked like mailed, bearded giants, their pale eyes glinting from beneath the brow of iron helmets like bright, suspicious jewels. Their legs were like tree trunks, their arms like thighs. When the tips of their long swords rested on the chipped marble floor, the pommels came to their chests. Here were men who should have no fear of Huns. Why weren’t they riding with us?
Perhaps they hesitated because their ancestors had been put to flight by the Huns three generations before. Had the Visigoths journeyed across Europe only to be faced with this peril once again? Would they at last make a stand? Or become vassals of Attila? I had to convince Theodoric that survival was with Aetius and the hated Romans.
My arrival had already been promised by correspondence from Aetius. A Visigothic captain helped stable my horse, gave me watered wine to quench my thirst, and finally escorted me to Theodoric. There was a courtyard in the palace, familiar enough except that its fountain was dry because no one could be found with the skill to repair it, and its plants dead because no barbarian could be bothered to keep them alive. Then we entered the reception hall beyond. The old Roman standards and symbols of office were long gone, of course, the pillars hung now with the bright shields and crossed lances of the Goths. Banners and captured tapestries gave color atop faded paint, and the marble floors were obscured by rushes that had been strewn to catch the mud of barbarian boots. High windows let in a crosshatch of light. Nobles clustered and gossiped behind a railing that separated Theodoric’s carved wooden throne from petitioners and courtiers. A single aide stood by to make notes—could the fifty-six-year-old king read?—and the monarch’s crown was a circlet of simple steel. His hair was long, his beard gray, his nose curved, and his expression set in a permanent frown. This was a man used to saying no.
Theodoric beckoned me forward through the wood railing to stand where we could talk without being overheard. I bowed, trying to remember the formal manners of Maximinus, my diplomatic mentor, and marveling at the odyssey that had brought me here. “I bring you greetings, King Theodoric, from your friend and ally Flavius Aetius. Great happenings shake the world, and great deeds are needed.”
“General Aetius has already sent me such greetings a hundred times in missives this winter,” the barbarian replied with a deep, skeptical voice. “The greetings always come with tidings, and the tidings with requests. Is this not so, Hagan?” He turned to his scribe.
“The Roman wants us to fight his battle for him,” the scribe said.
“Not for him, with him,” I corrected. “Attila is marching on the West, and if we don’t stand together, all of us will perish separately, frightened and alone.”
“I have heard this talk from Aetius before,” the king replied. “He is a master at playing on the fears of the tribes. Always there is some dire peril that requires us to muster our armies for Rome and shed our blood for his Empire. Yet even as he begs for our help, he is reluctant to promise how many legions he will muster or what other tribes will join. Nor can he explain why Attila should be my enemy. I have no quarrel with the Huns.”
This would be difficult. “The world has changed, sire.” I recited what Theodoric already knew: the plea of Honoria, the accession of Marcian in the East, and the claim of the Frankish prince Cloda in the north. He listened impatiently.
“And then there is the matter of the Greek doctor Eudoxius,” I tried.
“Who?” The king turned in curiosity to Hagan.
“I think he is referring to the man who stirred up the Bagaudae in the north,” the scribe said, “an intellectual who led a rabble.”
“In the revolt that Aetius crushed a few years ago,” I added.
“Ah, I remember this Greek now. What about him?” Theodoric asked.
“He fled to Attila.”
“So?”
“He persuaded Attila to send him as embassy to Gaiseric in Carthage. It was when Eudoxius came back from the Vandals that the Huns decided to march on the West.” At these words something moved in the shadows, jerking as if startled. It was a shrouded figure, I realized, listening from an alcove. Who was that?
“Gaiseric?” Theodoric’s gaze narrowed at mention of the Vandal king. “Why is Attila talking to the Vandals?”
“An equally pressing question, sire, is why are the Vandals talking to the Huns?”
I had at last struck a nerve. Attila was distant, and the Roman emperor Valentinian impotent, but Gaiseric and his haughty Vandals were the one group the Visigoths truly feared. They were a powerful tribe of Germanic origin like themselves, lodged in Africa, and no doubt they coveted Aquitania. I could see that this news had a powerful effect. I remembered hearing that the Vandals had humiliated the Visigoths by rejecting and mutilating Theodoric’s daughter. “Gaiseric is marching with the Huns?” he asked.
“Perhaps. We don’t know. We only know that to wait and do nothing is folly.”
Theodoric sat back on his throne, fingers drumming as he thought. Gaiseric, whose warriors were the equivalent of his own. Gaiseric, who alone matched Theodoric in age, longevity of rule, and list of bloody victories. Gaiseric, who had shamed him as no man ever had by scarring Berta, his beloved child. He squinted at me, this young Roman before him. “What proof do you have of what you say?”
“The word of Aetius and the favor of God.”
“The favor of God?”
“How else to explain my possession of the sword of Mars? Have you heard of this relic? I stole it from Attila himself and carried it to Aetius. It is reputed to be a sword of the gods that Attila has used to arouse his people. Now Aetius is using it to rally the West.”
Theodoric looked skeptical. “That’s the sword there, on your belt?”
I smiled at this opportunity to cite more evidence, and lifted out the knife I had taken from Eudoxius. “This is a dagger I took from the Greek. For the sword, imagine something a hundred times larger.”
“Humph.” He shook his head. The hooded figure in the shadows, I noticed, had disappeared. “The Huns are advancing on Aetius, not the Visigoths,” Theodoric insisted. “What proof do you have of Vandals? I want to know about Vandals, not Huns.”
I hesitated. “Eudoxius himself told me that Gaiseric had pledged to make war with Attila, meaning the Huns and Vandals are one. Gaiseric hopes Attila will crush you.”
“Yet how do you know this?”
“We captured the doctor. I was captive in the Hun camp, and when we made off with that sword we took the Greek with us.”
“So this Greek could tell me himself.”
Here I dropped my head. “No. The Huns pursued us, and there was a fight at a Roman tower. He escaped.”
The Visigoth king laughed. “See? What proof for any of what Aetius claims!” His secretary Hagan smiled scornfully.
“The whole Empire and world are in peril!” I exclaimed. “Isn’t that proof enough? With you, Aetius can win. Without—”
“What proof?” Theodoric demanded softly.
My jaw was rigid with frustration. “My word.”
The king looked at me quietly a long time, and finally softened just a little. “I do not know who you are, young man, but you have spoken as well as you could for a master who is notoriously elusive. My frustration is not with you but with Aetius, whom I know too well. Go, let my stewards show you lodging, while I think about what you have said. I do not trust Aetius. Should I trust you? I tell you only this: When the Visigoths ride, it will be for a Visigothic cause, not Rome’s.”
I was depressed. Theodoric’s faint praise seemed only to presage failure. That happy moment when my father first announced that I had an opportunity to accompany an embassy to Attila seemed an age ago. What I had hoped would make my future seemed only to cloud it. Our diplomacy w
ith the Huns had been a disaster. My attempts to win or rescue Ilana had come to nothing. Now, here I was again, a fledgling diplomat, and the one proof I needed to persuade the Visi-goths—the testimony of Eudoxius—I had lost at the tower. So this embassy seemed unlikely to be any more fruitful than the earlier one! I’d never really persuaded anyone, now that I thought of it, from the fetching Olivia in Constantinople to this barbarian king. What a joke that I was an envoy at all!
I could wait here in Tolosa for the end, I supposed. My presence would make little difference to the poor army of Aetius, and it would take a while for Attila to ride this far. Or I could return and hurl myself into battle and end things sooner: There was a certain finality in that. There would be no unity against the Huns; Rome was too old and too tired. There would only be hopeless battle, fire, oblivion. . . .
A knock came on the door to my chamber. I was in no mood to answer, but it came again and again with insistence. I finally opened the door to find a servant bearing a tray with dried fruit and meats, a gesture of hospitality I hadn’t expected. The figure was wearing a long gown with a hood pulled over her head. “Sustenance after your journey, ambassador,” a woman’s voice said.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Even for company?”
I was wary. “What kind of offer is that?”
“To hear more of what you know.”
Hear more? Who had heard any of my quiet discussion with Theodoric? Then I remembered. “You were listening from the shadows, from that pillar behind the throne.”
“As one who understands your warning better, even, than you.”
“But who are you?”
“Hurry.” The tone was nasal. “I’m not supposed to go to a man’s chambers.”
So I let her in. To my surprise she kept her head covered, her face in a dark hole. She put the platter down on a side table and stood back. “I need to watch you eat.”
“What?”
“I’ll explain.”
I looked at the food doubtfully.
“It’s not poisoned.”
I took a dried apple and bit tentatively, then sipped from the ewer of water. There was nothing peculiar. So I took out my dagger and cut a piece of meat.
“Yes.” Her breath was a hiss. “Where did you get that knife?” The question was as sharp as a slap.
I glanced down, suddenly realizing what her interest was. “From Eudoxius, the Greek doctor. I took it from him when he tried to escape. He almost stabbed me with it.”
“And where did he get it?”
I looked more closely at the weapon. Once more I noticed the fine carving of the ivory handle, the inlaid ruby, and the pretty glint of the blade. “I don’t know.”
“I do.”
I looked at her in mystification.
“Surely you must know who I am by now. The whole world knows the shame of Berta.” Reaching up, she pulled back her hood like a curtain.
Involuntarily, I gasped in horror.
She was a woman, yes, but a horribly disfigured one, puckered with pink and purple scars. One ear was almost entirely missing and another slit so that its two pieces ended in wrinkled points. Her lips had been sawn crosswise, turning any smile into a grimace. Worst was her nose, its tip cut off and the remainder flattened so that her nostrils were like those of a pig.
“Now you know who I am, don’t you?”
My heart was hammering. “Princess, I did not imagine . . .”
“No man can imagine my shame or the humiliation of my father or the need to banish mirrors from my quarters. My own king cannot bear to look at me, and keeps me locked away unless I cover my head or mask my face. I scuttle in the shadows of this palace like a ghost, an unwanted reminder of the arrogance of the Vandals.”
“You were the wife of Lochnar the Vandal.” I said it with pity.
“Daughter-in-law to the great Gaiseric himself, a symbol of unity between my people and his. How proud I was on my wedding day! Great armored regiments of the Goths and Vandals lined the processional path in Carthage, and Gaiseric paid a small fortune in dowry to my father! And yet when Valentinian offered Lochnar a Roman princess instead, I was forgotten by him in an instant.”
“But why . . . ?” I was shocked at her ugliness.
“Lochnar demanded a divorce so he could marry a Roman Christian, but no daughter of Theodoric is going to be so easily cast aside. My father wouldn’t give him one. So finally my father-in-law, Gaiseric, in a drunken rage at our intransigence about giving his son a divorce so he could ally himself with Rome, turned me into a monster. It would have been kinder if he had murdered me.”
“Why do you ask about my dagger?”
“Because I know who owned it.” She looked bitterly at the weapon. “I knew of your mission and watched you ride here from a tower window. I know Gaiseric as well as you know Attila, and I’ve been warning my father that the one is simply the twin of the other. Then you strode into our chambers and I almost fainted to see the hilt of that knife at your side. That”—she pointed—“is the blade that Gaiseric used to cut me.”
I dropped it as if it were hot. “I didn’t know! Please, I’m sorry! Eudoxius tried to cut me with it, so I took it from him!”
“Of course you didn’t know.” Her tone was calm as she walked forward and picked the weapon up, balancing it in her palm. “Even the bravest or craziest fool wouldn’t bring this into my father’s house if he knew its history. Only someone innocent, from ignorance, would do that.”
“Eudoxius must have gotten it from Gaiseric—”
“To show Attila.” Her voice was low but bitter. “To unload his own sin. Do you know what Gaiseric said to me? That because of my stubborn pride no other man would ever have me and that I would have a face to frighten children and revolt lovers. He said he hoped I lived a hundred years, and that every day of those years I think of my folly for having dared defy a prince of the Vandals.”
“Lady, it was a truly monstrous thing that he did.”
“Can you imagine my hatred? Can you imagine my burning desire for revenge? Yet so embarrassed is my father that he sits frozen in this old palace, too afraid to challenge Gaiseric by himself and too proud to ask for Roman help. But now Rome asks for him! Now my deepest enemy has become allied with yours!” Her eyes flashed fire. “You are a gift from God, Jonas Alabanda, a messenger sent like the archangel to shake my father from his lethargy. He allows himself doubts, but I had none when I saw your dagger. You have a token of challenge from the Vandals, which you didn’t even know you bore.”
I saw hope. “Then you must convince your father that what I say is true!”
“I will demand the justice that is every Visigothic woman’s right. Attila thinks he has guaranteed his victory by allying with Gaiseric. But I say every person who bargains with that wicked Vandal is poisoned by fate, and Attila will be, too.” She held up the knife, her knuckles white and fist trembling. “By the blade that ended my happiness, I swear that my people will ride to the aid of Aetius and Rome, because to join with him is to defeat Hun and Vandal . . . once and for all!”
The signal fires were lit and the horns sounded from ridge crests to the deepest valleys. All Aquitania was stirring, from the shores of the great western ocean to the peaks of the central massif. The king was calling the Visigoths to war! The arrows fletched in the long dark days of winter were bundled and strapped, the long swords of the Germans were rasped on oiled stones, and the stout lances with their leaf-shaped tips of silver were carried forth. Great shields were shouldered, armor strapped, and helmets polished. Anxious boys were chosen for the campaign, while, groaning disappointment, their younger brothers were ordered to care for home at least one more season. Somber wives packed satchels of dried meat and grain while daughters stitched campaign clothing and wept at what might come. The Visigoths were going to war! Saddles were oiled, boots soled with new leather, belts cinched, and travel cloaks tied. The gathering men could be seen coming down from a dozen hills into every vi
llage and from a dozen villages into every town, rivulets becoming streams and streams becoming rivers.
The word had gone out. At long last, Berta would begin to be avenged.
In Tolosa, a thousand knights were waiting on horseback for their king. Their horses were huge, the hooves heavy, the tails tied with ribbons and the manes decked with coins. The Visigothic helmets were high peaked and plumed, their horse shields oval, and their spears were as high as a roof. It thrilled me to wait with them.
Finally stepping out onto the old Roman portico was Theodoric himself, tall and resplendent in gilded mail and a shield embossed with bright bronze. His sons Thorismund and Theodoric the Younger came with him, just as proudly armored and armed; and at the sight of them the assembled warriors roared greeting with a cry that made me shiver.
Their king spoke deeply but quietly, his words repeated like a ripple through the crowd. “Our fathers wrested this rich land. Now, it is our turn to defend it. Hun and Vandal have joined in league, and if either wins then our world is lost. My daughter asks vengeance. So hear me, my warlords! We ride to seek it!”
A thousand spear shafts banged against a thousand shields in acclamation. Then Theodoric mounted, raised his arm, and they were off. A thick, muscled parade flowed down the streets of Tolosa for its great Roman gates, thundering out to meet the far greater hordes of fellow tribesmen waiting in the fields and woodlots beyond. Thousands would become tens of thousands, and tens of thousands an army. The host of the Visigoths would ride to join Aetius, and the West would rally behind them.
Would it be enough to stop Attila?
I galloped ahead to bring my general this glad news, looking back at the tower that Berta watched from. Now she would have her revenge.
PART THREE
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