Caesar's Sword (I): The Red Death

by David Pilling

  As for Gelimer, the Emperor held to his promise of clemency and gave him a considerable and well-guarded estate in Galatia to live out his days on. I never saw him again after the triumph, though I occasionally heard stories of a harmless madman walking the gardens and orchards of his gentle prison, babbling in Latin and weeping over his lost kingdom.

  His brave nephew Euages requested and was allowed to join the Vandal soldiers captured in North Africa and brought to Constantinople. These were divided into mercenary squadrons and sent to the eastern frontiers of the Empire, to serve as auxiliaries against the threat of Sassanid Persia. Thus the Emperor skilfully turned his enemies against each other.

  I did not see Belisarius’s second triumph, held to mark his consulship, when he was carried on a chair on the shoulders of captured Vandals and showered the adoring crowds with gold and silver pennies.

  The triumph was held during the January of 535 AD, by which time I was languishing in prison with a charge of treason hanging over my head.

  Chapter 26

  From the moment I stepped off the boat in Constantinople, I had been wary of danger lurking around every corner. My enemies were powerful, and could have my life snuffed out like a candle. I am convinced that only the favour of Belisarius protected me during the weeks leading up to his first triumph.

  I recalled the fate of my childhood friend, Felix, done to death in an alleyway by Theodora’s lackeys, and took steps to guard myself. Belisarius’s personal guards were quartered near his private chambers in the Great Palace, where I felt safe from the knives of hired assassins. I rarely ventured out alone, especially at night, and wore my armour during all waking hours, even when off-duty. Some of my comrades thought this a great joke. Others knew that Belisarius favoured me, and made wry comments about the fate of poor soldiers who meddled in politics.

  “A word of advice,” one officer confided to me over supper. “Apply for a transfer to one of the garrisons along the Danube, and get out of the city. It’s cold there, and you will have to suffer the company of Thracians, but a little discomfort and boredom is better than ending up dead.”

  “I’ll not leave,” I replied through a mouthful of bread, “the city is my home, and I have no desire to freeze on some isolated border outpost. At any rate, the Danube is not far enough to escape my enemies. I would have to quit the Empire.”

  The officer shrugged and said I was a fool. He was right. I should have fled Constantinople when I had the chance. My experiences in North Africa had led me to believe I could weather any storm, and I reckoned without the arrogance and cruelty of Theodora.

  It was impossible to walk in company at all times, and as a natural loner I resented the claustrophobic atmosphere of life in guardrooms and barracks. As weeks turned into months, and still my enemies made no move, I started to think that my fears were imaginary. The Empress was co-ruler of a significant portion of the known world, and surely had higher things on her mind than me. As for Antonina, she was the most notorious adulteress in Constantinople. According to popular rumour she took entire legions of lovers to her bed, while her husband allowed himself to be cuckolded. Belisarius’s slave-like devotion to his dreadful wife, and apparent willingness to turn a blind eye to her infidelities, was the one black mark on his shining reputation among the people.

  No, I persuaded myself, one man more or less was unlikely to mean anything to Antonina. Hundreds of acres of male flesh must have covered her since Carthage. She would have forgotten all about me.

  In short, I let my guard slip.

  Late one summer’s afternoon I was walking back alone from the Forum of Theodosius, where I had spent a few hours in the market, tasting food from distant lands and inspecting the slave-market. The sight of those poor wretches, shivering and virtually naked as they stood on the blocks waiting to be sold, reminded me of my first days in Constantinople. I found it difficult to believe that I had stood on the block myself, next to my poor mother, and that we had been sold like a couple of choice sweetmeats by Clothaire. I had not thought of him for years, and had to drink an extra cup of Spanish wine to rinse out the foul taste of his memory.

  The forum was situated beside the Mese, and on the way back to the palace I strolled along one of the porticoed streets, gazing idly into shop windows. Street-hawkers and prostitutes attempted to sell me their wares, in vain since I had no money left. It was pleasant just to walk in the pleasant afterglow of a baking summer’s day and listen to the chatter of dozens of languages.

  I was still mindful of security, and wore my helmet and chain mail. Caledfwlch, as always, sat snug in my sword-belt. Army life had filled out my spare frame. Few would have dared to try and tackle me, big and broad-shouldered as I was in those days.

  Those few were waiting for me in an alley halfway down the street. They waited until I was almost past and then sprang out, five burly figures in dark grey robes, hooded mantles and masks that covered the lower part of their faces. They carried long white truncheons and ignored the panicked shouts of nearby citizens as they set about me.

  Taken unawares, I reacted with the sharpness of one who had been waiting for this moment for months. I had no time to draw Caledfwlch before the nearest truncheon was swinging at my face. I ducked, kicked its wielder under the knee and whirled around with the sound of his muffled scream and the crack of bone still ringing in my ears.

  The second man was equally fast. His truncheon smashed into my shoulder before I had a chance to react. My chain mail absorbed the worst of it, and I punched him in the throat, not wanting Caledfwlch to get tangled in his robes.

  He staggered away as two more men came at me. I dived at the one to my left, ran him against the wall, grabbed his throat with my left hand and drew Caledfwlch, ready to stab into his gut.

  That was a mistake. A hand gripped my wrist from behind. A heavy blow rang against my helmet. Dazed, my grip on the man’s throat slackened. Clumsy fingers tore at my chin-strap. More blows rained down on my head and body. Finally the strap loosened, and my helmet was wrenched off.

  “Now!” someone hissed.

  The edge of a truncheon cracked against my temple, and I was plunged into darkness.

  I surfaced to find myself in the blackest depths of Hell. My head throbbed abominably and I could taste dried blood on my lips. All was darkness. I was flat on my back on some hard surface and could scarcely move. My back felt strangely warm, and my wrists and ankles were tightly bound by leather straps that only grew tighter if I struggled.

  “He’s awake,” said a male voice. I gasped as the cloth over my eyes was ripped away, and blinked as my eyes adjusted to the sudden light.

  I was in some dank underground cellar with rough stone walls, lit by a smoking brazier and a torch set in a bracket on the wall to my left. To the right was a narrow flight of steps, leading to a large iron-bound door.

  The room was filled with an acrid stench, the source of which only became apparent when I looked down to see what I was lying on.

  An involuntary scream ripped from my throat. I was naked and strapped to a rectangular iron griddle. The griddle was set on top of a stone base, about four feet high, with a vent in one side. Under the griddle was a bed of charcoal. The purpose of the gently smoking brazier was obvious, as was the intent of the three men standing either side of my hellish bed.

  They wore dark grey robes, the same worn by those who had attacked me in the street, and had pushed their hoods back to reveal tough, scarred faces – the faces of men who would do almost anything for money. My scream was cut off as I looked up at their grim expressions.

  “Well met, Coel,” said Theodora.

  The Empress sat on a wooden chair at the opposite end of the cellar. Her hair was pinned up, but otherwise she was dressed plainly by her standards in sober black. A fluted wine jug and a bowl full of glazed fruit rested on a little stool beside her chair.

  God knows where my clothes and armour had gone, but Caledfwlch lay across her lap inside its leather sheath. I h
owled again, and strained uselessly against my restraints until my eyes bulged from their sockets.

  “It is my understanding,” she said, popping a piece of fruit into her mouth, “that the bread baked for the army was ruined by the time it had reached Methone. John of Cappadocia was in charge of that undertaking.”

  She smiled languidly. I noticed she was wearing no cosmetic. “John is a fine minister, but a poor baker. I am rather better. Baking is not a talent you might expect to find in an Empress, is it?”

  I swallowed, desperately trying to suppress my panic and find words. This mad bitch that Justinian married in an evil hour intended to bake me alive on her foul griddle. I had to say something, anything, to deter her until help arrived.

  Help from where? Who was going to come and rescue me? Theodora’s hirelings would have taken care to bring me here in secret. Doubtless I was not the first of her enemies to be brought here and done to death, while she watched and relished every moment.

  “Majesty,” I babbled, “why are you doing this? I am not your enemy.”

  She stretched luxuriantly, like a black cat. “No? You might have been my friend. I gave you the opportunity, but you threw it back in my face. That is twice you have insulted me. Recently you insulted my friend Antonina. You are impertinent, Britannicus. It cannot be tolerated.”

  “Antonina tried to seduce me,” I protested, “she wanted to use me to cuckold her husband, and I was not the first! She is a whore and an adulteress!”

  Theodora rested her chin delicately on her fist. “She was a whore,” she replied, “and a good one. I should know. We worked together sometimes, servicing the great men of this city. And those who were not so great, when times were hard. Women do what they must to survive in this world. Feed the fire.”

  One of her bullies picked up a little shovel and dug some charcoal from the brazier. Then he emptied the shovel into the little vent on the side of the stone base. A moment later the bed of charcoal under my griddle flared with heat, and I yelped as a leaping flame scorched my naked back.

  “I have done nothing wrong!” I bawled. “How could I agree to spy on Belisarius, whom I had already sworn an oath of loyalty to? Why should I have coupled with you, years ago, just because you demanded it?”

  “Life is all about compromise,” she said, as I squirmed and arched my back against the intensifying heat, “honour and loyalty are outdated concepts. To prosper, one must learn to bend like the willow. To stand upright is to risk being snapped in half.”

  She stood up, drew Caledfwlch and tossed away the sheath. I drew a morsel of strength and courage from the blade, which shone like a glimpse of Heaven in that shadowy vault.

  “You value this, don’t you?” she said, turning the blade this way and that as she studied it, “what fools men are, to revere such objects. It’s just an old sword.”

  “Caledflwch was forged by the gods, and wielded by some of the noblest men who ever lived,” I panted, “your hand is unfit to hold it.”

  Theodora gave a little laugh. “Another insult. You might as well save your breath. Very soon from now, your skin shall start to blister and burn. You will scream and beg to be released.”

  She stood up and walked closer to the oven. “There shall be no release. I promise you that. No release, until you crack under the pain and go mad. I have seen it happen before. It is fascinating to look into a man’s eyes, just as his mind reaches the limits of endurance.”

  More charcoal was shovelled into the vent. I felt a gust of searing heat and tried unsuccessfully to stifle another scream. The iron griddle was hot now, not unbearably so, but would only get worse. My bowels churned, and I almost vomited at the thought of what was going to happen to me.

  “Belisarius will notice I have gone!” I yelled desperately. “He will ask questions, and want to know what has happened to me!”

  “We shall feed him lies,” was her response, “if the day comes that I cannot fool General Belisarius, then I shall open my veins in the bath. That man believes what his wife tells him, and she tells him what I want her to.”

  She stood a few inches from the oven, Caledfwlch naked in her hand. If I could just slip one of my bonds, I might have been able to snatch it from her.

  Theodora smiled in pure delight as she watched me suffer. Her bullies wore the blank, dispassionate expressions of men doing a job. A dirty and unpleasant job, perhaps, but one they were being well paid for.

  The heat was now almost intolerable. I could only bear it by screaming, and felt my strength and will leeching away. My last hope was that I would pass out with the pain.

  Theodora disabused me of that hope. “There is a bucket of cold water ready,” she whispered, her face so close to mine I could smell her perfumed breath, “to wake you when you fall unconscious. My men are skilled at keeping their subjects awake until the end. I have a mind to cut your heart out and hold it up before your living eyes. It is possible, you know.”

  She pressed the tip of Caledfwlch against my sweat-soaked chest. Her eyes gleamed like the Devil’s when Christ had his moment of weakness.

  “Grandfather!” I shouted. Through a haze of pain, I saw Theodora purse her lips in distaste.

  “Ancestor worship,” she muttered, “and I thought you were a Christian. Feed the fire again. It’s hungry.”

  One of her men bent to retrieve the shovel, and hesitated. There was a jangle of iron keys in a lock, the whine and scrape of a door being pushed back on rusted hinges, and the clatter of heavy footsteps.

  The eunuch Narses appeared at the top of the steps. He wore a bowl helmet and a short sword strapped to his hip. Otherwise he was unarmed, but a cluster of enormous guardsmen loomed in the shadows behind him.

  Chapter 27

  Theodora whipped around at this intrusion. “Why are you here?” she shrieked, pale and trembling with fury, “get out, eunuch! This is no affair of yours!”

  Narses ignored her and pattered lightly down the steps, followed by his guardsmen. There were six of them, tall Armenian brutes wearing helmets and mail corslets and armed with axes and daggers.

  “This is very much my affair, Majesty,” he said lightly in that comical high-pitched voice I remembered so well, “I must ask you to release that poor devil before he is cooked to a turn.”

  Theodora went rigid, and for a hopeful moment I thought she might have a seizure.

  “Do you dare to give me orders, Narses? I am the Empress. No-one commands me save God and my husband.”

  “Such is usually the case,” the eunuch replied blandly, “but the circumstances here are exceptional. I have six armed men to your three. Who knows? Perhaps your men will be lucky.”

  I had done my part to reduce the odds, by incapacitating two of Theodora’s men when they abducted me. Silence rolled over the cellar, while Theodora and Narses locked wills and I bit my lip until it bled against the roasting agony in my back.

  “I will not forget, Narses,” Theodora said softly. She stepped away from the oven and ordered her men to stand down.

  “You will remember and learn, Majesty,” Narses replied, “no-one may act outside of the law, not even an Empress. We in the civilised world in general must cling to that premise, or descend into barbarism.”

  Her fragile composure broke. She spat at him, and called him a viper and a neutered dog and other names I shall not repeat. But she was outnumbered, and unprepared to risk a brawl that might go badly for her and certainly come to the attention of her husband.

  Narses ordered two of his men to release me. They cut through my bonds, all the while keeping a wary eye on Theodora’s hirelings, and lifted me carefully onto the floor. I lay there, gasping and retching and unable to prevent tears of pain rolling down my face. My back was badly burned, and I was unable to smother a yell as one of the Armenians dashed the bucket of cold water over me.

  “Gently, for God’s sake,” Narses said reprovingly, “get him on his feet. Coel, can you hear me?”

  I mumbled my thanks as his me
n lifted me up. One of them draped a cloak over me, and I gasped at the touch of rough-woven cloth on my scalded flesh.

  “My sword,” I managed, “I must have my sword. She cannot have it.”

  “Ah yes, the famous sword,” he said. “We will take Crocea Mors as well, Majesty, if you please.”

  He held out his hand to Theodora, who looked at it as though she meant to bite it off. Slowly, and with pure hatred radiating from every inch of her, she raised Caledfwlch and dropped the hilt into his palm.

  Narses gave a little bow from the waist and snapped his fingers, which was the signal for two of his Armenians to carry me up the steps between them. The rest followed, with the eunuch at their heels.

  “Hurry, hurry,” I heard him mutter. “We must be gone before the spell breaks. The Empress in a rage is capable of anything.”

  I was carried out into a darkened corridor, and had to be lifted over the prone figure of another of Theodora’s hirelings – presumably he had been guarding the door when Narses and his men came upon him. One of my bare feet slipped on a pool of warm, sticky blood that flowed from the fatal knife-wound in his gut.

  Narses heaved the door shut with a bang and contemplated the bunch of heavy iron keys in his hand.

  “It’s tempting to lock her in and throw these away,” he mused, “but it wouldn’t do. The Emperor would not thank me for starving his wife to death in a cellar.”

  He dropped the keys on the floor and padded away with my sword in his hand. I stumbled in his wake, leaning heavily on the stout shoulders of the Armenians.

  I was taken to the eunuch’s suite of private rooms, even more opulent than those of the Empress and Belisarius. The central chamber was a beautifully decorated and pillared hall, furnished by couches draped with zebra and tiger skins. Narses had me laid out on one of them and sent for a physician while he sat behind a desk and poured wine from a gilded silver jug.