Caesar's Sword (I): The Red Death

by David Pilling

  “There lies our future,” said my mother. She placed a hand on my shoulder and pointed at the city, still some miles away and yet filling the horizon to the west. “There we can begin anew.”

  Eliffer had never divulged how we were to forge a new life in Constantinople. I doubt she really knew. She was focused on merely getting there. It was a place of silver and gold, she thought, the richest in the world, and one of endless opportunity. A woman of high birth, beauty and learning could not fail to prosper in such a place.

  My poor mother was deluded. New lives did indeed await us inside the city, but not of the sort she imagined.

  Chapter 4

  We joined the steady flow of traffic entering the city via one of the bridges that led across the moat, and through one of the nine main gates that pierced both the inner and outer walls. I had never seen such a variety and number of people, ceaseless hordes of pilgrims and travellers and merchants and soldiers from all over the civilised world. Dozens of alien languages babbled in my ears, and my mother laughed and clapped her hands for joy at the excitement and grandeur of it all.

  Grandeur: that is my abiding first memory of Constantinople. Our caravan rattled through wide marble-paved avenues leading from the gates in the western wall to the very heart of the city. We entered squares and plazas decorated with sculptures taken from all regions of the world and brought here, to this New Rome, before the Western Empire collapsed.

  I vividly recall the sculptures, carved in marble and stone and portraying old pagan gods such as Zeus and Heracles, or in the shape of fantastic animals. Added to these were representations of classical heroes of Rome and Ancient Greece, the twin pillars of the Eastern Empire.

  We passed a plinth that bore a huge marble statue of a Roman general in full military regalia, one hand raised in victory, his severe, hook-nosed profile glowering in eternal disapproval at the crowds below.

  I asked the Frank driving our wagon who the statue was supposed to represent. “Julius Caesar,” he grunted. I gazed up in awe at the great man, and silently made him a promise to look after his sword.

  Clothaire led his wagons into one of the plazas, where he called a halt while he went in search of lodgings.

  “I’ll take the Sarmatians as an escort,” he said, balancing uncomfortably on his crutch, “the rest of you will stay here and keep an eye on the goods. This city is the same as any other. Rotten with thieves.”

  “Perhaps I should come with you,” said Eliffer, “I am quite fluent in Greek and other languages.”

  Clothaire’s ham of a face twisted into an alarming frown. “I can make myself understood, thank you,” he growled, “do as I say, and keep that son of yours out of trouble.”

  He swung away on his crutch, flanked by the Sarmatians. We waited for their return and kept a careful eye on the wagons. Droves of people bustled through and around the plaza, making the place almost unbearable with their noise and stench.

  “Clothaire resents me,” said Eliffer, “I have staved him off with promises, but now our journey is ended, and I do not mean to fulfil them.”

  She shuddered and looked around thoughtfully at the crowds. “We must get away. A few more days, enough time for me to wheedle some money out of him, and then we can escape. This city is big enough to lose ourselves in.”

  Some hours later Clothaire returned hours in a foul mood, having eventually arranged lodgings for us all in a series of tavernas in the north-western quarter of the city. He had also managed to find storage for the wagons and merchandise, though only after much haggling with a warehouse owner whom he roundly cursed for a crook and a swindler.

  “Tonight I am going to get drunk,” Clothaire growled once he had finished polluting the air, “and tomorrow start making a fat profit selling cheap Frankish cloth at criminal prices to half-witted Romans. I have not come all this way just to admire the sights!”

  He was as good as his word, and once the wagons were safely locked away proceeded to get roaring drunk in one of the tavernas. Eliffer wanted to lodge elsewhere, but Clothaire insisted that she and I join him for dinner.

  The taverna was a small place located down a sloping cobbled side-street. It was dark inside, but clean. The fat landlord seemed eager to please, and rushed back and forth to fetch food and drink. His only customers were Clothaire, Eliffer and I. The Sarmatians stood outside the door and made sure no-one else entered by glaring at passersby.

  Clothaire made no attempt to be charming at dinner. He got drunk very quickly on strong retsina, and spent the first part of the meal damning all foreigners and drinking noisy healths to his native Frankia.

  “And your country too, of course,” he said, leering horribly at Eliffer, “I offer a toast to the Britons, with whom my people have so much in common.”

  My mother lifted her cup in reply and took a reluctant sip of wine. She had remained silent throughout.

  “Britain is doomed, of course,” added Clothaire, resting his elbows on the table, “she has lost Arthur, her guiding star, and will quickly slide into ruin. Tell me, lady, where did your son get that fine sword?”

  Eliffer started. “You have never asked before,” she replied quietly. I was seated beside her, and felt her body start to tremble.

  “No,” he replied, running the tip of his liver-coloured tongue across his lower lip as he studied me, “I have respected you too much to ask questions. Admired you. Loved you, even.”

  “Lust is not love,” she said, still in the same quiet tone.

  He slammed his right hand palm-down on the table, making it jump and almost overturning the wine jug. “It’s the best offer you will get,” he growled through clenched teeth. “Your high blood and fine education will do you no good here. The Romans reckon themselves Gods, and will laugh at the claims of some barbarian slut to nobility.”

  I rose from my chair, furious at this insult to my mother’s honour, and reached for Caledfwlch. A hand seized my wrist and an arm like an iron bar thrust me back into my seat. Screaming in futile rage, I looked up to see one of the Sarmatians – the same one who had allowed me to ride his horse so often during the long journey from Paris. There was no warmth or humour in his heavy, square-jawed face now, and his little eyes were cold and devoid of emotion as he held me fast.

  Clothaire was coughing with drunken laughter. “Your pup has some fire in him, Eliffer,” he gasped, banging his chest, “he will need to learn to control it. Not all his masters will be as gentle as me.”

  “Coel is of ancient royal stock, and will never call any man master,” Eliffer shot back, her cheeks flaming with anger, “tell your ape to release him.”

  The Frank did no such thing. He leaned back in his chair and folded his thick arms. “I give you this one last opportunity,” he said quietly, “will you agree to be my wife, and come back with me to Frankia?”

  Eliffer slowly stood up, and I never saw her look more proud or beautiful. She summoned up the ghosts of her royal ancestors and treated the ignoble Clothaire to a blast of hauteur and contempt.

  “Never,” she replied with calm dignity, “never would I, a descendent of the ancient line of Troy, consent to bind myself to an animal like you. I would rather sever the veins in my wrists, and die with honour, than submit to such degradation.”

  Clothaire’s face suffused with blood. He scraped back his chair and almost overbalanced as he fumbled for his crutch.

  “Have it your way then, you arrogant bitch!” he howled, jabbing his finger at her, “but I will extract some value from you, come what may! Let us see you quote your proud ancestry in the slave-market tomorrow! Impress a Numidian flesh-merchant with your fine education, why don’t you, or plead your descent from Brutus with a Persian whoremaster!”

  For a moment Eliffer was struck dumb. “You can’t mean it,” she managed, “my son and I are Christians. Christians cannot be bartered as slaves.”

  Clothaire hawked up a gobbet of phlegm and spat it on the floor. “That is the value of most human life here,”
he sneered, “Roman citizens are exempt from slavery, true, but who will defend the rights of a couple of pale-skinned savages from the distant north? The highest bidder can have you both, and welcome.”

  We were held captive in the cellar underneath the taverna all night, guarded by two of the Sarmatians. My mother begged them to release us. When that didn’t work her temper snapped and she railed and threw curses at them. The Sarmatians were indifferent, and remained silent and rigid as statues while Eliffer raged and Clothaire continued to get noisily drunk upstairs.

  At last Eliffer’s pride and anger were spent. She gave way to sorrow and crouched in a corner of the darkened cellar, her body wracked with sobs as she held me tight in her thin arms. There was little I could say or do to help. That noble lady, born and raised to a gentle life of privilege, was lost in a foreign land with no-one to protect her. Her torments had only just begun.

  We slept little, and at first light the guards seized us and dragged us up the stair. Clothaire was slumped over his table, face-down in a pool of stale wine and snoring like a pig. One of the Sarmatians impatiently shook him awake. He slowly peeled his face from the table and regarded us with a painfully bloodshot eye.

  “Have you been weeping, lady?” he croaked, “how plain and ugly you look in the morning light. To think I once desired you. The gods must have made me mad.”

  He said something to the Sarmatians in their language. They took us out of the taverna and into the street, which was deserted and covered in thick morning mist. It was cold, and the cobbles were wet and slippery underfoot. I cried out as I stumbled and cut my knee.

  “Hush,” whispered Eliffer as she picked me up and clapped a hand over my mouth, “don’t let them hear you. Remember who you are, and be brave.”

  The Sarmatians hurried us along through a maze of streets, which steadily grew wider and filled up with people as we approached the main thoroughfare of the city. At last we reached a gigantic square edifice with a domed roof supported by four colossal arches. I didn’t know it then, but this was the Milion, a monument erected by the Emperor Constantine and intended to act as a starting-place for the measurement of roads leading to all corners of the Eastern Empire.

  The Milion was also the starting-point of the thoroughfare, called the Mese. It was still early morning, and everything obscured by mist, but I could see the colonnaded porticoes that lined either side of the street, some twenty-five metres wide. The porticoes housed shops and tavernas. Lights flickered in their windows as the Sarmatians moved us along.

  They took us to an enormous central forum, dominated on the western side by a marble triumphal arch. I remember gawping at the sheer size and magnificence of the vaulted roof towering over my head. The roof was split into three passageways, and the central archway, the largest, was flanked by columns carved into the shape of clubs grasped by colossal fists. The central archway was mounted by a heroic statue of an Emperor in full military regalia, flanked by statues of two younger men I took to be his sons.

  The centre of the forum was dominated by another edifice, a marble column decorated with carved reliefs that displayed the same Emperor receiving tribute from defeated barbarians. Another triumphal statue, similar to the one on the arch, was mounted on top of the column.

  One of the Sarmatians croaked at my mother in a painful semblance of Greek. “He says this is the Forum of Theodosius,” she told me, “where we shall be sold as slaves. The statues are of the Emperor Theodosius, who had all of this made.”

  I shaded my eyes to gaze up at the column. “Look!” I cried, all my sorrow and fear briefly forgotten, “there is someone up there!”

  The column was over forty feet high, and narrowed towards the top, but there was a man standing on a ledge just beneath the statue of Theodosius. From my vantage point, so far below, I saw that he was barefoot and clad in a soiled gown that hung limply from his fleshless body. His hands were clasped in prayer and his face turned upwards Heaven.

  “I have heard of such holy men,” said Eliffer, “in Greek they are called stylites. They live on top of columns and high pillars, sustained by charity and praying for the sins of the world. We should beseech him to pray for us now.”

  There was little time for prayer, as we were herded towards a corner of the forum. Here there were a number of raised wooden blocks arranged in neat, widely-spaced rows. The blocks were meant for slaves to stand on display during the auction that would soon begin. A few were already occupied, one by a black-skinned man I took to be a Numidian.

  He had clearly been a fine-looking man once, handsome and muscular, but the miserable life of slavery had reduced him to a cowed, emaciated brute. He wore nothing but a loin-cloth, and his glossy flesh shivered in the chill. His master, a big Arab with a swollen gut, growled at him in some indecipherable tongue and frequently struck his back and thighs with a vine rod, perhaps to stop him shivering.

  The Numidian’s face wore an expression of gross stupidity, as if such cruel treatment had excised his humanity. I can still picture the fresh welts on his back, the wasted muscles of his long limbs, and the dull, glassy look in his eyes. I never knew his name, or spoke with him, but he is one of the people whose souls I light daily candles for.

  My mother and I were made to stand on a vacant block. There we waited, trembling and hugging each other, as the morning mist gradually lifted and the forum started to fill up with people.

  Many of them were wealthy Roman citizens, whom I had not properly observed since entering the city. In other circumstances I would have found them fascinating, these bejewelled and perfumed aliens, elegantly dressed in long silken robes and conversing in Latin and Greek, which to me were the languages of the schoolroom. The wealthiest, with their entourages of clerks, slaves and hangers-on, projected a superior air, as though they considered themselves a race apart: understandably so, since they were the inheritors and keepers of Empire.

  The slave-blocks filled up quickly, and by mid-morning men and women were being sold like sweetmeats. They were transported from all over the Empire and the mysterious lands beyond, these helpless souls, and of many different creeds and nations. Most were pagans, but there were a few Christians like us, their lips moving in silent prayer as they were inspected like cattle at a fair.

  The Sarmatians guarded us closely, and the one who spoke bad Greek discussed prices with the few Romans who expressed interest in us. A few glanced with vague interest at the sword strapped across my back before moving on. Had they known its provenance, I daresay their interest would have known no bounds.

  Clothaire was presumably sleeping off his hangover, but he turned up eventually, limping along on his crutch and nursing a sore head and a worse temper.

  “No bids yet?” he grunted, glaring balefully up at us, “no wonder. You both look like you’re about to be carted off for burial. Smile, woman!”

  He prodded Eliffer’s calf with the handle of his crutch. “It is in your interest,” he added, “smile and preen, look pleasant, and you might be fortunate enough to attract a kind owner. You do not want to end as the property of some of the bastards here, I assure you.”

  Eliffer didn’t even deign to look at him. “I live only for my son,” she replied in a faraway voice, gazing over the heads of the teeming mob, “whatever happens today, I will ensure that he regains his freedom.”

  “Perhaps he can fight his way clear with that,” Clothaire sneered, nodding at Caledfwlch, “you notice I have allowed him to keep his little sword. I thought it might add to his value.”

  He positioned himself in front of our block, cupped his hands around his mouth and started bellowing in Greek, vying with the raised voices of the other slave-traders for the attention of passing trade. Still we drummed up little interest, until one man pushed his way through the throng to inspect us.

  The potential buyer was rich, judging from his dress and deportment. He wore a long white tunic, and over that a dalmatic (a heavier and shorter form of tunic) of crimson silk fringed with a g
old triangle pattern. There was a muscular, stocky look about him, and he wore a long gold-mounted sword in a black leather sheath at his hip.

  Even at my tender age I knew a soldier when I saw one, and judged this man to be dangerous. He had a cruel mouth and a heavy jaw, and his large eyes were flat and expressionless.

  Clothaire adopted his most ingratiating manner, and bowed and cringed before the Roman as they conversed together in Greek. The Roman did most of the talking. His eye kept straying to me and the sword on my back.

  “Be calm, Coel,” whispered my mother, “remember who you are, and do not avoid his gaze. Arthur’s grandson fears no-one.”

  In truth Arthur’s grandson feared a great many people, not least this thickset Roman who kept looking me up and down as though I was a choice joint of meat.

  “He has made me an offer,” said Clothaire, turning with difficulty to face us and rubbing his hands, “a very handsome offer. More than I expected. He wants to examine the sword. Give it to me.”

  I was sorely tempted to draw Caledfwlch and bury it in his throat. I reluctantly pulled out the sword and gave it to him, hilt-first.

  Clothaire handed Caledfwlch to the Roman, who studied it carefully, turning the blade over and over in his big, powerful hands. The gold eagles on the hilt seemed to fascinate him.

  “He knows what it is,” I whispered in panic to Eliffer, earning myself a furious glare from Clothaire, “he will take it from me!”

  “Courage,” she said quietly, “the sword is your birthright. It was meant for you. God will not let anyone steal it.”

  Eliffer put a deal too much faith in God. The Roman agreed a price for us with Clothaire, and called his clerk forward. The clerk, a bald, skinny Greek, counted out a number of gold coins from a bulging purse into Clothaire’s sweaty palm.