Attila: The Judgement

by William Napier

  ‘Fascinating,’ murmured Gamaliel. ‘Hold out your tongue,’ he said to the old peasant.

  Behind them, Aëtius swept from the room.

  ‘However,’ said the second doctor, ‘notwithstanding my colleague’s animadversions upon my own school, for I am myself an orthodox Peripatetic Atomist, having participated at Athens, Mother of Learning, in the experimental decapitation of both eels, goats, tortoises and grasshoppers, I can assure you, as against the doubtless well-intentioned but hopelessly misguided teachings of the Alexandrian Pneumatists, that it is the head, and not the pneuma, which is the seat of the vital power, and it is the crowding of atoms to the head which causes all manner of night sweats, interferences of vision, and spasms of the bowels.’

  Gamaliel frowned. ‘What are you saying? We should cut his head off?’

  The Peripatetic Atomist smiled indulgently at the old fellow’s foolish jest. ‘My dear man, I am saying, in short, that in a man of his late years, doomed to expire shortly as he is, his body is too soft and relaxed, his atoms are slowed and weighed down with too much moisture, and he needs must be condensed.’

  The pregnant woman in the bed behind them groaned.

  ‘Condensed?’ scoffed the Alexandrian Pneumatist. ‘On the contrary, the atoms of his pneuma are already too condensed. They need to be more spaced apart. This can be achieved by moderate suffocation, or else by bleeding with leeches.’

  Gamaliel regarded them. ‘Gentlemen, when you see a ruddy man, full of air and fire, does he seem to you strong or weak?’

  ‘Strong,’ admitted the Atomist.

  ‘And when you see a man as pale as whey and obviously of thin or little blood, as this one, does he appear to you strong or weak?’

  ‘Weak. But, sir, the learned Galen—’

  ‘Oh, bugger Galen!’ snapped Gamaliel impatiently. ‘Now gentlemen, I could listen to you all day, but I must be about my work. Madam, all the shutters open, if you please. And boil some water. A large vat, yes.’

  ‘Water!’ exclaimed both doctors. ‘Too much moisture, too much softness! Highly dangerous!’

  ‘As for this one,’ said Gamaliel, turning to the woman, and then bending down to her kindly, ‘how old is . . . he? She?’

  ‘Near a week since, sir,’ she gasped. ‘She.’

  ‘A blessing,’ he said, then turned to the nurse. ‘Find some mouldy bread, rye if possible.’

  ‘We have made our examination of this one already,’ said the Alexandrian Pneumatist, ‘notwithstanding her protestations of modesty - always amusing in one so low-born. She suffers from a filthiness of her uterine matter, which is not all ejected. We recommended an application of dung, ideally of swine, being the foulest of dungs, on the sound principle that filth drives out filth.’

  ‘Absolute twaddle,’ said Gamaliel, washing his hands. ‘Mouldy bread is what she needs. Mouldy rye bread.’

  Both doctors laughed with disbelief. ‘My dear sir!’ ‘You know about ergot, the fungus that grows on rye-grain? Reappears in the loaf afterwards, if left to go mouldy. Mildly toxic, yes, hallucinogenic, yes, but also a powerful emmenagogue. Stimulates contraction of the uterine muscles. Now, out of my way. Swine dung indeed!’ He pushed the open-mouthed doctors aside and bent down to talk to the woman. To the doctors’ even greater astonishment, he wasted his time actually explaining to this unlettered peasant what treatment he would be administering to her, and why. He explained to her gently and patiently that the mould would make her feel a little sick, a little light-headed and unwell, but within a day it would make her better. The woman smiled faintly.

  ‘This is quite wrong, a gross categorical error,’ said the Pneumatist. ‘A woman’s afterbirth is not mouldy, it is filthy, and must be treated as such.’

  ‘Filthy?’ said Gamaliel, standing straight again. ‘Nonsense. You could cook it and eat it quite happily. Very strengthening. In fact, you could eat it raw if you really wanted, nice and fresh.’

  ‘The man’s mad,’ they muttered, and they backed away, appalled.

  Gamaliel smiled and moved on.

  Up on the walls, five men were on lookout post: Prince Torismond with his two Gothic wolf-lords, Jormunreik and Valamir, and two of the survivors from Viminacium, Knuckles and Arapovian. Rumour had spread that the empress had been taken ill earlier that day, and was treated by an old Jewish doctor. A couple of other learned medical men from Athens and Alexandria had also been in attendance, arguing furiously about the empress’s pneuma. And all this time, the clouded horizon came nearer.

  ‘Doctors!’ opined Knuckles. ‘Don’t give me fuckin’ doctors. Translate stuff, that’s all they ever do. Translate what you tell ’em into Greek and chuck it back at you. What’s this pneuma?’

  ‘Breath,’ said Arapovian, watching the north over Knuckles’ ox-like shoulder.

  ‘There you are, then. You go to a doctor, and you tell him you got a sore throat that won’t shift, and he tells you to poke your tongue out and he peers down your gullet, and then he pronounces, “Ah, yes, my good man, now what you have there is what we doctors call laryngitis.” Which is just Greek for “sore throat”. And you think, But I just told you that, you cockwit! And he says, “That will be one fine gold solidus for my invaluable diagnosis, if you please. Next client!”’

  Aëtius appeared beside them. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A dust-cloud,’ said Arapovian, ‘a few degrees west of north. And growing.’

  The wolf-lords rumbled that they could see nothing, leaning their great copper-banded arms across on the top of the wall and gazing out into the twilight. Aëtius could see nothing, either, but the Easterner had the eyes of a hawk. If the Huns were on the horizon, from this height, maybe a hundred feet above ground, that would be - he did a quick calculation, learned decades back from his old tutor - twelve miles off, perhaps a little more. Even slow-moving cavalry would be here in three hours, and the Huns did not move slowly.

  It was time they left, with nightfall to hide them.

  14

  THE EMPRESS

  In the gloom of the convent chapel, there was a priest intoning the ancient litany, and, kneeling before him, a woman in white, veiled in keeping with the teachings of the Church, and, either side of her, two veiled handmaidens. The priest looked up, his expression angry.

  ‘The sacraments have been administered?’ demanded Aëtius.

  ‘Who are you, and how dare you interrupt the holy mass?’

  ‘I see they have. Shut up your gospel, Father. The service is finished. It’s time for the empress to leave.’

  Immediately one of the handmaidens stood before him. ‘Night is falling, and the empress is in no fit state to leave.’

  Aëtius frowned. Two other of her handmaidens helped her to her feet. She turned. Through the dim gauze he saw a woman who looked old but once beautiful, her eyes still large and luminous. In truth, she was only in her middle forties. She looked at him and clutched one of her maids.

  Aëtius’ heart sank. ‘Take her to the hospital,’ he ordered.

  There was a moment of hesitation, then the empress bowed her head and her handmaidens led her away.

  Athenaïs lay in a fever, very pale, her broad brow damp with perspiration. Gamaliel sent out for some fresh willow leaves. He said an infusion would help, but it would take time, and she must drink boiled water. His cures struck those around him as mad. Heat should be used to drive out heat, surely? The empress should be laden with blankets, and given strong spiced wine. But they did his bidding, under the stern eye of Master-General Aëtius, who seemed to have some connection with this bearded and peculiar ancient.

  The general was hovering in the door of the hospital, about to leave, when the empress summoned him over. For a moment, her fever seemed to clear. She gave him a sad smile.

  ‘What kept you?’ she said. She might have been referring to his whole life.

  He looked at the ground. ‘I was needed elsewhere.’

  ‘And still are?’

  He looked tro
ubled. ‘We must leave when we can. There isn’t much time.’

  ‘Do not leave,’ she said, misunderstanding. She reached out a trembling hand. ‘Stay.’

  A nurse lit a candle for her bedside. After a moment, Aëtius called for a chair to be brought.

  In the night she was feverish again, talking in her delirium, repeating an old rhyme: ‘Many a couple love one another, Though they never come together, Nor shall know each other’s name ever.’

  Suddenly she half sat up and stared at him. ‘Let us ride away.’

  ‘We will,’ he said quietly, ‘once you are well.’

  One of her handmaidens eased her gently down again.

  ‘Far away,’ murmured the empress. ‘Do not let the angel of history harry us to the bitter end.’

  The handmaiden looked awkwardly, questioningly, at the general. He nodded her away.

  ‘Somewhere there is escape from it,’ Athenaïs murmured, barely audible, her dark hair streaked with grey and plastered to her face.

  ‘You should rest now,’ he said. And then very carefully, with gross presumption by all the rules of court etiquette, he reached out his big scarred hand and stroked the hair back from her cheek. He took up the damp cloth on the edge of the bowl beside her and pressed it to her brow. She breathed in deeply, seemed calmer again.

  ‘Somewhere there is escape from it,’ she repeated softly. ‘Somewhere we might awake one morning out of the clutches of this nightmare.’

  He did not want to hear her words, but he could not leave her.

  ‘In two or three generations’ time, all this will be at an end.’ She was looking intently at him again, and he could see she knew who he was. She was not so delirious. ‘Rome and her empire . . . These things are at an end. Can you not see, Aëtius? In two or three generations’ time, these things will be only glorious memories in the minds of old men, monks and scholars in their chilly skylit cells, dreaming of the Golden Antique Past, and of the Kingdom to Come, and of Christos Pantocrator who will descend from heaven and spirit their souls away to a far, far better world than this. And why should they not dream? For the present will be nothing but dust and darkness and ashes. The lights are going out all over Europe, the darkness is coming. Only in a few isolated places will the flickering candles be kept burning. But the strong, brave dream that was Rome in her might and youth’ - she clutched his wrist with one hand - ‘and her centuries of confidence and pride . . . They are gone. It is done, and only darkness and ignorance remain.’

  Gently he released her grip and laid her arm back beside her. In the corner, in the gloom, her handmaidens were watching.

  ‘The barbarians pour over the borders,’ she murmured, falling into oblivion again. ‘Or else they invest the empire from within, and in a dream people stagger on, the living dead, their civilisation long since finished, believing in nothing. A ghost culture kept going only by comfort and illusion and wealth.’

  They said the prophecies of the dying were the most powerful of all.

  When Gamaliel returned, Aëtius leapt to his feet and went to him. They spoke quietly in the shadows for a while, then the old physician mixed up more of his willow-leaf infusion, and added other ingredients from two more vessels. One of her handmaidens held up the empress’s head and she drank and then she slept.

  Aëtius would not leave, though he looked worn out.

  ‘You want me to assure you that she will live,’ said Gamaliel.

  Aëtius said nothing.

  ‘Well,’ said the old man. ‘You know the cynical old saying: “Ubi tres physici, duo athei - where there are three doctors, there are two atheists.” But I am the third of them. God is with us, in ways we cannot even imagine.’ He laid his hand on Aëtius’ arm. ‘A leader of men needs sharp wits, which means good sleep.’

  Against his will, Aëtius followed someone else’s advice for the first time in decades.

  15

  THE CAPTIVE

  The general was shaken awake only a few hours later.

  ‘There are campfires burning all over the plain.’ It was Prince Theodoric.

  He flung his cloak round him and they hurried outside, onto the walls. It was a pitch-black night, with no moon and thin skeins of cloud dimming even the stars. Someone offered him a torch to see his way but he damned him for a fool and told him to put it out. And then they were on the walls of Azimuntium, and the plains all about them were a sea of blackness studded golden with myriad campfires, like a fallen starlit sky.

  ‘So,’ he nodded. ‘They have come.’

  ‘The demand has been delivered already: an arrow over the gates.’

  ‘Let me guess. Surrender or die?’

  ‘In as many words,’ said Theodoric. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘A small hill-town and a column of forty spearmen, facing a Hun battle group of thousands? We ride out and attack ’em, of course.’

  Theodoric looked unconvinced. They watched the flickering campfires for a time, then Aëtius gestured at the nearest. ‘How far out are they, would you say? The nearest?’

  ‘Hard to tell by night. Not so far.’

  ‘Choose four of your best men. Mounted.’

  ‘Myself among them,’ interrupted Arapovian.

  Aëtius’ eyes narrowed. ‘You are as good as the wolf-lords? ’

  ‘Better. I survived Viminacium.’

  He grunted. ‘Prince, take three of your wolf-lords, and this one. Ride from the postern gate. The night is very dark. See if you can take a captive out there. Do not endanger your lives, not for one moment. Do you understand?’

  Theodoric nodded and the four departed for the stables below.

  The postern gate was opened without a sound, and left open, spearmen ranked inside. The four rode out at a walk with their horses’ hooves and muzzles bound in sacking, praying that the beasts would make no other noise, no friendly harrumphs to the horses of the Huns among the black felt tents. It would be pure luck if they did not. The riders wore dark cloaks, no helmets, and rode with their faces streaked with earth and bowed so as not to catch any light. The only weapons they dared carry were whips.

  An old warrior stood in the darkness beside his tent, his campfire long since burned out. The four riders stopped in the shadow of a slight depression. The old warrior was naked to the waist, belting up his breeches. Arapovian dismounted, moved round behind him and dropped a cloth bag over his head and gagged him before he knew what had happened. The next tent was a mere ten yards off but the occupants were already sleeping, and the four made no sound louder than a mouse in a cornfield. In their haughtiness the Huns had not posted a single lookout.

  They bound their captive with their whips. Another, smaller figure came out of the tent behind so they felled him and gagged and bound him likewise, and then pulled them back to the town behind their horses. The old warrior struggled mightily and threatened to cause trouble, so Jormunreik knocked him cold with a mighty fist to the back of his neck, and then they dragged him along peacefully enough in the dirt behind them like a travois. It was all done in two or three minutes, the postern gate latched and bolted again, the prisoners shaken back to consciousness and hauled up to the gatehouse for Aëtius’ inspection.

  ‘Asla konuşma Khlatina,’ growled the old warrior, his head still covered. ‘Sizmeli konuşmat Ioung.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll wager you speak Latin very well,’ said Aëtius evenly. ‘As I speak Hunnish.’ He glanced aside. ‘Light more lamps.’

  They sat the two captives on stools and pulled off the first bag from the smaller warrior.

  ‘You’ve brought me a woman,’ said Aëtius, glaring round at them. ‘You dolts.’

  Prince Theodoric began to protest at this unchivalrous attitude, but Aëtius silenced him. ‘Don’t add to your doltishness,’ he snapped. ‘It’s the Huns who don’t value women, not I. They’ll laugh in our faces if we demand favours in exchange for this one.’ He held the lamp up to the woman’s face. Dark hair, olive skin, a long, narrow face: she was no Hun. ‘My
apologies for any rough handling, ’ he said more gently. ‘Where were you captured?’

  ‘Philippopolis,’ she said. ‘My husband—’

  ‘Calm yourself. You are free now.’

  She tried to speak again, but another voice interrupted.

  ‘Leave her be,’ it growled. ‘She is a good ride.’