Attila: The Judgement

by William Napier

  Theodosius meanwhile had fled through a side-door and was gone, though not without the general’s last words still offending his ears.

  ‘You pigeon-livered, dung-brained, degenerate excuse for a Roman emperor!’ He freed himself roughly from the guards’ hesitant grasp. ‘Unhand me, you dolts. I’m going. I’ve got work to do.’

  He glanced back only once, and it was towards the empress. She still sat upon her throne, and she had not spoken nor stirred, but her luminous eyes were upon him, and he saw in those eyes something like pride at his rage.

  Then he was gone.

  Aëtius returned hurriedly to the east of the city and summoned all the men who had fought on the walls, all the women who had hauled heavy supplies, ammunition, food and water up to the battlements, even the children who had helped. He had them all assemble outside the Church of St George, and he climbed atop the Charisius Gate.

  ‘People of Constantinople,’ he declared, ‘Isaurians, Imperial Guard, Gothic wolf-lords, you have won a great victory. I, Aëtius, master-general of the West, regard each and every one of you as a hero, and were such things possible I would have you all in my army!’

  There were great cheers.

  ‘Your spirit has been indomitable, your faith unwavering, your victory richly deserved. The pagans are gone, their hearts heavy with defeat, and I do not think that they will return. They know under whose Protection this Holy City stands. Now go, with my heartfelt blessings, and live in peace.’

  There were more cheers, and weeping among the cheers.

  He descended the steps, mounted his horse, and looked over them all one last time. ‘Weep not, weep not. It is we in the West who must weep. Your city will stand for many centuries yet.’

  Then he spurred his horse, and made for the Harbour of Eleutherius.

  The wolf-lords rode with him. They would take ship back to Massilia, since Valentinian still would not permit Visigoths on Italian soil. At the docks he clasped the princes in farewell - Theodoric carefully, since his arm was still splinted and bandaged, though his healing had been remarkable.

  ‘We will see you again,’ said Torismond.

  ‘You will.’

  Theodoric said, ‘Our father has a deep love for you.’

  Aëtius coughed, somewhat embarrassed.

  They led their horses on up the gangway.

  ‘No vomiting over the side, you landlubbers!’

  They grinned. Yes, he would see them again. He knew it with foreboding.

  There was Gamaliel, looking old and stooped and tired.

  ‘Old man,’ Aëtius said. ‘You know your stuff.’

  ‘I know other stuff, too,’ said Gamaliel. ‘We also shall meet again. One last time, I think. But it will be enough.’ With those riddling words he was gone into the crowd.

  There was Captain Andronicus, fantastically colourful with cuts and wounds. He grinned.

  ‘The city’s in your hands now, Captain. But you will be at peace.’

  ‘I know it,’ said Andronicus. ‘Damn it.’

  And Zeno.

  ‘We owe your people all thanks. Back to Cilicia?’

  The chieftain’s eyes glimmered. ‘Back to banditry.’

  Aëtius grunted. ‘Mind you don’t get caught.’

  There were also the four: last remnant of the VIIth legion. He eyed them.

  ‘You put us in your close guard,’ said Knuckles, reading his thoughts. ‘Besides, I’m no Easterner, anyhow. Dodgy, slitty-eyed lot, they are, sell their own grannies for a bunch of grapes.’

  Arapovian snorted.

  Aëtius regarded the other two, Tatullus and Malchus. They looked resolute.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘jump aboard. But don’t expect any peace and quiet back West.’

  PART III

  The Last Battle

  1

  DEATH OF AN EMPRESS

  Aëtius and his few companions arrived in an autumnal Ravenna to find the city in the throes of terminal panic. Riding up from the port of Classis along the causeway over the marshes, past stagnant pools and stands of bog willow, they emerged into the streets of the sprawling suburb of Caesarea to hear rumours of distant, calamitous wars, omens of apocalypse, and everywhere intimations of things coming to an end. People said that statues had been seen weeping real tears, oysters opened welling with blood, and from empty churches at night came the sound of many voices lamenting. They had heard the steely clash of weapons from the clouds, there had been numerous earthquakes, and the ghosts of ancient emperors were haunting the sacred palaces. In Rome itself, Bishop Sebatius had gone to pray at the tomb of St Peter and been granted a terrible revelation ...

  Aëtius listened, unimpressed. Nearby, another bearded and wild-eyed millennial doomsayer ranted from the steps of a church, claiming that only days ago, while Valentinian was out hunting, two wolves had started up from nowhere under the emperor’s horse, and he almost fell to the ground. The wolves were speared and killed, and when they were cut open, their bellies were found to be full of severed human hands.

  Aëtius snorted. ‘This emperor doesn’t go hunting.’ He glared around at his men, walking behind his horse. ‘Anyway, we have problems enough without wolves full of severed hands. You’re under orders to silence any idiot prophet you come across.’

  Knuckles hefted his club and went over to talk to the wild-eyed doomsayer, shouldering his way through the crowd, which parted promptly before him. The prophet argued a little, until Knuckles dropped his club on the fellow’s bare toes, at which he howled and limped away, talking of demon wolves no more.

  They made for the palace, asking for news as they went.

  Yes, Ravenna had heard of the Huns’ retreat from Constantinople, but didn’t that simply mean that the barbarian hordes would now be on their way here? Aëtius didn’t reply. Instead he tried to ascertain what was left of the Western Field Army, but the only replies he got were of lightning bolts from a cloudless sky, and a wolf-cub found in the heart of the Imperial Palace, and tales of the long-foretold awakening of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus.

  He kicked his horse onward. ‘I need to find my General Germanus,’ he muttered.

  The news from the imperial court was no better. A chamberlain said that the emperor was ... indisposed. Imperial finances were in disarray, and the last revenue had been scant. Ever since the loss of the African grainfields, taxation had been less than—

  ‘The legions?’ demanded Aëtius.

  ‘The Field Army remains encamped inland of the city,’ said the chamberlain. ‘But its mood, alas, without pay for these few months, is sadly ... restive. Winter is approaching, and I fear numbers are less than they were.’

  ‘And Her Majesty Galla Placidia?’

  The chamberlain lowered his eyes. ‘I regret to say that Her Majesty is dying.’

  He found her in a darkened chamber, seated upright on a high-backed wooden chair beside an iron brazier, swathed in white woollen blankets. She was clearly very weak, yet she knew him immediately. He sank to his knees before her.

  ‘On your feet, General,’ she said, her voice no more than a dry whisper. ‘The rest of the empire is on its knees. At least you should stand upright.’

  He promptly stood again. How he loved this old battle-axe. She might be dying but her mind and her tongue were as sharp as ever.

  ‘And I’ll try not to die in your company,’ she added. ‘There might be talk.’

  ‘The emperor?’ he dared to ask.

  She waved her hand, saying not a word, but the meaning was clear. The emperor was mad.

  ‘So,’ she whispered, ‘Attila has gone north.’

  ‘For now.’

  ‘The Western world stands on the brink.’ She fixed him with her watery green eyes. ‘And the Empress Athenaïs - Eudoxia?’

  He was startled. How her mind flitted. Perhaps she was losing her sharpness after all.

  ‘You loved her,’ said Galla.

  No. She was not losing her sharpness.

  ‘Yes,’
he said quietly, after a struggle. ‘But I was needed elsewhere.’

  She gave the slightest nod. ‘You still are. Stop him, Aëtius. With all your might. With all our prayers. You must stop him. Christendom depends on it.’ She held out a skeletal hand, and he understood and passed her the cup of water by her side. She drank and he set it down again for her.

  ‘This is a time of waiting,’ she said, ‘to see where he will strike next. But we know, do we not? We know he will come.’

  She gestured to him to sit down.

  ‘It is twelve centuries from the founding of Rome. You know it. And it has been held, since before Cicero and Varro, that the twelve vultures who appeared to Romulus when he founded the city signified the twelve centuries Rome would endure. This is borrowed time.’

  She breathed slowly. ‘Has the fratricidal death of Remus at last come back to destroy Rome? The shedding of his brother’s blood was the price Romulus paid for Rome’s twelve centuries of glory. They say Attila slew his brother, too - for all of a dozen years of glory. Perhaps now both debts are being called in. The first city was called Enoch and it was built by Cain. The murderer. Perhaps all cities and empires are founded in blood; and in the end that blood must be paid for.’ She closed her eyes, the lids leaf-thin, fluttering. ‘I cannot see the future, Aëtius, but it must be ... re-made. Rome may not be the future. But Attila and his pure spirit of destruction must not be, either.’

  She opened her eyes again. ‘Some of the wise say that it is only the old world that is dying. A new world is being born. Well, ask a woman how painful childbirth can be. As one of Euripides’ women says: “I’d rather stand in the line of battle than lie again in childbed.”’ She smiled weakly.

  ‘I have heard,’ said Aëtius, ‘that the harvests were poor, and weather-watchers say we have an exceptionally hard winter ahead.’

  ‘Which will hurt Attila more than us.’

  He grunted. ‘You should have been a general. That’s good insight.’ He stood again. ‘With your leave, Your Majesty, I must check troop numbers, find my general, Germanus.’

  ‘I can tell you,’ she said.

  He laughed aloud. ‘You really would have been a good general.’

  ‘Hm. Wrong gender.’

  She drew painful breath and then told him. The Rhine and Danube frontiers had been pretty much stripped bare. She herself had given the order, via her son. The East had no army left to speak of, and every last decent soldier in the West was with the Field Army, not six miles east of Ravenna. She reeled them off. The expeditionary force Aëtius himself had assembled in Sicily for the reconquest of Africa: six crack legions, including the Batavian, the Herculian, the Cornuti Seniores, the Moorish Cavalry, numbering some eighteen thousand in all.

  ‘Twenty thousand,’ he interrupted.

  ‘There have been desertions, even there.’

  He looked down.

  From the frontiers, a few sad remnants. The only legions worth the name, at around a thousand men each: the Legio I Italica pulled back from Brigetio, the II from Aquincum. The fierce IV Scythica at Singidunum had absconded entirely, quite possibly to the Hunnish side. But Aëtius also had the XII Fulminata, the Lightning Boys, good artillerymen; the XIV from Carnuntum; a useful troop of Augustan Horse, around five hundred men; and, finest of them all, the two thousand crack troops of the Palatine Guard. That was it.

  The frontiers were, for the first time in centuries, undefended. He saw in his mind’s eye those once mighty legionary fortresses, now desolate and forlorn beside the cold, bleak waters of the Rhine and Danube, an eerie wind blowing through their narrow windows and around their squat U-shaped bastions, starlings nesting in their proud, deserted towers.

  He had around twenty-five thousand men. Attila had more than double that in first-rank warriors alone. In total, with mercenaries, lesser tribes, opportunists, nameless eastern peoples, the wild rumours that he rode at the head of half a million were edging towards the uncomfortable truth.

  Galla’s old face was bleak indeed. ‘I do not doubt,’ she said at last, very slowly, ‘that if Attila defeats us this last time - if his greatly superior numbers defeat yours - then, with nothing more to oppose him, he will not simply colonise our empire for his kingdom. He will destroy it. He will make a sacrifice to his gods upon an altar called Europe.’

  Aëtius did not disagree. He said without expression, ‘We gave the order for him to be killed, when he was no more than a boy. Now we are paying the price.’

  ‘I gave the order,’ said Galla, unflinching, ‘that he be slain. That the Huns not turn against us. Even that they fight with us, against Alaric and his Goths. His uncle Ruga was not our enemy.’ She shook her head. ‘So long ago. It seems another world. And we failed: we did not kill the boy, though we tried hard. Yet I am not the first ruler who has given the order to take innocent lives in order to save more. And I shall not be the last. I still do not repent it. But God be my judge.’

  There was a long silence, and then she said, ‘I feel - forgive an old, dying woman’s hackneyed prophesying - but I feel that he will never see Rome again.’ She seized his hand. ‘I feel that, Aëtius. He saw Rome as a boy, a savage boy, and he rejected it and all it stands for. He will not be offered that vision of the city again. I tell you ... he will never ... see ... Rome again.’ Each pause was an agonised intake of breath, her face implacable and unpitying throughout.

  ‘One day, one day ... and in another world,’ she whispered, so quietly that he had to lean down to hear her. He told her she must rest, but her thin lips curled with scorn. She had not rested once in sixty years. She whispered, ‘I have always ... held you in the highest esteem ... and the deepest affection ... Gaius ... Flavius ... Aëtius.’

  Her hand went lifeless in his.

  She was expertly embalmed and robed in purple cerecloths in the Triclinium of the Nineteen Couches, the diadem of Roman royalty on her head. In the centre of the hall, the great golden catafalque held her slight body. Forests of candles burned on golden pricket stands amid clouds of incense. Friends and mourners passed where she lay and kissed her: then bishops and priests, senators, patricians, prefects, magistrates, wives, ladies-in-waiting, all coming to kiss her cold cheeks and lament.

  Valentinian came, too, to kiss her goodbye, with tears running uncontrollably down his cheeks. Aëtius was shocked to see his appearance. He looked an old man, his hair thin and grey, his legs strangely bowed, his gait an exhausted shuffle, clutching a little white cloth to mop both his tears and his constantly dribbling mouth. He brought his mother a present: a lavish set of jewels for her to wear in the tomb. They would have been better used to buy mercenaries, thought Aëtius. Galla’s head was gently raised by an attendant, and the sobbing emperor placed the jewels round her neck with trembling hands, and then held her for a long time. He had to be led away.

  The funeral cortege processed down to the magnificent Basilica of the Resurrection, accompanied by chanting priests and wailing women mourners. All the way, riding his white horse, Aëtius could only think, In the lost boyhood of Judas, Christ was crucified. It was as if, he began to realise, Galla herself had killed the one thing she loved: Rome. She had maltreated the boy Attila so harshly, unwittingly instilled in him such hatred, that now he came back to destroy the city and the empire she stood for. Truly the drama of the world had been written not by that warm-hearted praise-singer, blind Homer, but by the lonely tragedian Galla had quoted on her deathbed: Euripides, gazing out to sea from his hermit’s cave.

  In the basilica, Galla’s diadem was at last removed and replaced with a band of purple silk.

  The Patriarch called out in a sonorous chant, ‘O Princess, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords calleth thee!’

  She was entombed in her own sarcophagus in the mausoleum nearby, between the two men who had gone before her: her second husband, Constantius, and her brother, the Emperor Honorius. Her own sarcophagus was the largest of the three. She was seated upright within it, as if still reigning over the do
main of which she had been ruler in all but name.

  The door was drawn closed and there was silence.

  2

  THE END OF TIMES

  It was well that Galla died when she did. Only three days later, a message came to the court of Ravenna. It was from Attila’s amanuensis, Orestes. He wrote that Attila was betrothed to the Emperor Valentinian’s sister, Galla Placidia’s daughter, the Princess Honoria, and that he would take as his dowry half the Roman Empire. Specifically, the Western half.

  Valentinian laughed hysterically. Even Aëtius nearly smiled. That demonic sense of humour was still intact. Then he recalled something Theodosius had said, something about a plot of Honoria’s being discovered ...