Gamaliel sighed. ‘I came to that conclusion myself a while back,’ he said. ‘I think it was when all Athens got excited over the logical paradox of the Pseudomenos – The Liar.’
Lucius looked blank.
‘Quite,’ said Gamaliel. ‘That is to say: if I say, “I am lying,” then if I am lying, I am telling the truth. And if I am telling the truth, I can’t be lying. And yet if it is the truth, it must be true that I am lying. And yet again, if I am-’
‘Stop, for pity’s sake. My head’s hurting.’
‘Well, you see my point.’
Lucius wasn’t sure he did, but he said nothing. He was used to the old vagabond’s ways, as rambling and discursive as his wanderings over the wide earth; and with their own kind of foolish, ungovernable wisdom, somewhere underneath the patched old cloak and the moth-eaten Phrygian cap.
‘My old friend Chrysippus,’ Gamaliel went on, ‘not a bad philosopher in his way – a Stoic, you know, and pupil of Cleanthes – wrote six books on the matter of the Pseudomenos. And another, Philetas, wasted himself to death with anxiety over it. I think it was then that I began to feel sceptical about the… the purely intellectual approach to life. There was much to be said for the more pragmatic wisdom of my old friend Crates. A sensitive young student of his, one Metrocles, once – there is no polite way of putting this – once broke wind thunderously in the agora one day, to the general mirth and ridicule of hundreds of his fellow citizens. They could be very cruel in their humour, those Athenians. They even began to suggest that he might have to quit Athens altogether in his shame, and nicknamed him???????s????s.’
Gamaliel chortled to himself, a little shamefacedly.
Lucius looked unimpressed.
‘Never mind,’ said the old man. ‘It’s a Greek pun.’
The soldier shrugged. ‘It’s all Greek to me. But – not wishing to be rude or anything – but does this story have a point, at any point?’
‘Ah, yes, well. You see. Now. So there’s Metrocles, covered in shame at having – emitted such a stercoraceous effluvium in this unfortunate manner. Fundamentally embarrassed, you might say!’ Again, Gamaliel chuckled. ‘So Crates, to show how ridiculous it is for any man to be ashamed of what is, after all, a perfectly natural bodily function, promptly devoured five pounds of lupins – which, as you know, are powerfully flatulofacient, if not downright poisonous – and went about eructating at all the greatest men of Athens for the next week. Metrocles saw the point, and ceased to feel any shame.’
‘Hm.’ Lucius still wasn’t quite sure that he saw the point.
‘Anyway,’ resumed Gamaliel. ‘Philosophy aside, you were wondering
… what?’
‘I was thinking about what you said about hell: that a man may still be redeemed by good deeds, even a man such as that murderous Saxon there.’
Gamaliel too grew serious. ‘How could eternal punishment treat with justice?’ he said gently. ‘I knew one of those theologians you speak of once – a man better than most, in fact. A neat little Egyptian; Origen, he was called. He is principally remembered now for having emasculated himself with a knife, the better to serve Christ.’
‘Idiot,’ said Lucius.
Gamaliel ignored this untheological interjection. ‘He took the teachings of the Son of Man a little too literally, perhaps. But far more interesting was his own teaching on hell. He said that eventually, all would be forgiven. He said that even the Devil himself would one day repent, and his shriven soul be admitted to the mansions of heaven.’
‘Well.’ Lucius gouged his knife into the wooden bulwark of the boat. ‘I learn something new every day.’
‘Keep your eyes open and your heart humble,’ said Gamaliel, ‘and you will learn a thousand new things every day.’
One morning, as they passed Augusta Vindelicorum on the southern shore, Gamaliel found Lucius staring down into the brown and turbid waters of the great river. When he raised his eyes, Gamaliel saw that they were bright with tears. The old man laid a hand on his shoulder to comfort him, but Lucius only shook his head and smiled and said he was not sure if he had dreamt it or not, but he thought he had heard a boy on the farther bank of the river whistling a certain tune. It was the same tune that Cadoc used to whistle every morning, as he pottered around in the yard at home, scattering meal for the chickens, or as he sauntered through the woods and fields of Dumnonia, hand in hand with his sister.
Lucius looked up at Gamaliel. ‘Is it possible?’ he said. ‘That we are following even the trail of a song?’
‘Anything is possible,’ said Gamaliel, ‘except for a one-armed man to touch his elbow.’ He slapped Lucius jovially on the back. ‘Perhaps it has been laid down for us, even to follow a boy’s whistle.’
Led thus by strange and unexpected clues, they followed the river east. To starboard lay the empire, and to port stretched the tribal lands of the north: the contested and warlike lands of the Hermunduri and Marcommanni, the Langobardi and Cattameni, and still other tribes whose names were yet unknown. They passed through the frontier towns of Lauriacum, Vindobona and Carnuntum, their mighty legionary fortresses rising sheer from the banks of the southern side, and they came to the great bend in the river where it turns south into Illyria, with the wild lands of Sarmatian Jazyges and then vast and unmapped Scythia beyond. There they disembarked, having heard another clue which seemed to Lucius both tantalising and terrible but barely seemed to surprise Gamaliel at all.
‘These things happen,’ he said equably.
In a smoky wine-shop full of drunken frontier soldiery, they had heard a blind Scythian beggar singing a haunting tune. They questioned him, and found out his name, and heard that he had been blinded by his own people for spying on the king’s concubines when they were bathing. He had been driven out into the wilderness to die like an animal, but had found a refuge of sorts here in the borderland between Scythia and Rome, singing cracked tunes in taverns and brothels for coppers.
Gamaliel and Lucius looked at each other over their cups of foul wine, and Lucius said he had had dealings with some of that tribe before.
Gamaliel nodded. ‘So have I.’
They tightened their belts, hitched up their packs, and set off across the grassy plains of Scythia, for the famed black tents of the most dreaded tribe of all.
16
THE LAST FRONTIER
Throughout the heart of the bitter winter, Attila and Orestes struggled on through the towering white mountains of Noricum, lips chapped and bleeding, snowflakes on their eyelashes, their hands and feet bound with no more than rags. Whenever they found wild berries or trapped game, they divided every mouthful precisely between them, so that even if they were both slowly starving, they would at least starve at an equal rate. Every night, crawling into whatever shelter they could find or improvise – usually no more than a rough bivouac of silver fir branches – they unwrapped the sodden cloths from each other’s feet, and rubbed life back into them. Then they slept side by side, shivering through the night. In the freezing dawn, their bodies were as stiff and unbiddable as old men’s. They said nothing, but each dreaded waking one morning to find the other dead. They both prayed that if one should die, the gods would take the other, too, in the same instant, to the sunlit lands beyond the dark river.
One morning, as they brushed past under the low branches of a firwood, there came a soft, slithering sound from above, and an entire shelf of snow was dumped on Orestes’ head and shoulders. When he had pushed back his hood, and wiped the stinging snow from his eyes, Attila was grinning at him.
‘What are you grinning at, you idiot?’ he gasped.
‘It’s melting,’ said Attila, still grinning. ‘It’s thawing.’
When Orestes understood what he was saying – that they had made it – they threw their arms round each other, and howled in triumph at the bare blue sky above, while more snow slithered from the branches of the silver fir above and fell upon them both. A cloak of soft white snow over their heads and about t
heir shoulders, equally and without distinction.
Soon they came down into the thinner snow-covering of the lower slopes, which in the summer would be the higher pastures for the sleek brown cows of that country. They even found the first raw shoots of greenery, and chewed the sprigs of yarrow and salad burnet that peeped from the long-hidden grasses. But though they no longer had to fight the bitter cold at every step, there were more villages now, more people to be avoided, more dogs set barking as they passed by in silence and darkness.
After some days they passed along the ridge of hills to the north of the great lake of Balaton, and that evening they came down to its tranquil shores. Attila fixed up a wooden pole with some barbs cut from bone, and went gaffing for trout in the shallows. They baked the trout on hot stones and gorged until they could eat no more.
Later that night, as he did every night, Orestes went a little way away among the trees, knelt down, leant his forehead against a cold, mossy trunk, and prayed for the soul of his departed sister. Then he returned to the campfire, his face alight and glowing, both radiant and calm, as if he had received comfort and solace even from the cold and glittering silence of the sky.
They came to the gates of the city of Aquincum, and the bored vigiles, the nightwatchmen, allowed them entry without a word. Two ragamuffins from the country come to sell their paltry, stolen wares, or maybe themselves, who knew?
The boys, of course, had come to Aquincum not to sell but to steal. They were nearly free, but still they had the great barrier of the Danube to cross. For that they hoped they could steal a boat or a raft, or perhaps stow away aboard a merchantman bound for one of the logwood trading-stations on the other side. And for that they needed to get down to the quayside.
Aquincum was a grim little frontier town of timber and mud, with the stone frontier fort of the legion rising at one corner, near the river. The narrow streets stank of the shambles where the animals were driven in and slaughtered, of open drains, of the pigs crowded together in filthy backyards, and of the charcoal furnaces of begrimed and weary-looking coppersmiths working late.
Approaching down the cobbled street was a group of drunks. So close to their longed-for goal, the boys had grown careless. Attila especially, feeling his princely blood stirring as he got closer to his homeland, and thinking of the astonished delight that would receive him amid the tents of his people, had grown proud and reckless. So when one of the drunks bumped into him, deliberately or not, he reacted as no fugitive and secret traveller should. For he had been in this situation before.
‘Hey, you fat oaf,’ he shouted, ‘watch yourself!’
Suddenly the group of drunks didn’t seem so drunk. Rather more orderly, though the wine on their breath still stank, the five of them halted.
‘What did you say?’ demanded one.
Orestes, standing a little way behind, glimpsed a flash of something beneath the man’s coarse woollen cloak. Something like steel, something like plate armour…
Before he could stop himself, he cried out, ‘Attila!’
Whatever fumes of wine had slowed the men’s minds and made unsteady their steps, vanished in an instant.
The man wheeled on Orestes. ‘ What did you call him?’
Orestes began to back away, his face a torment of fear and guilt. ‘My master, my master,’ he groaned softly, ‘come away. Run away…’
But the older boy’s hand was already reaching inside his ragged cloak, and he knew that everything they had travailed and suffered for, over so many weeks and months, would end now, in a damp and dismal backstreet of Aquincum.
The drunks were clearly no drunks at all, but a squad of tough frontier troops who had merely thrown back a few goblets of wine to help their supper go down. Furthermore, they were led by a keen-witted optio who actually read the despatches from legionary headquarters in Sirmium, and knew that the whole of this stretch of the river was under orders to be on the lookout for a fugitive Hun boy with distinctive blue tattoos and scars on his cheeks. A prince of the royal house of King Uldin, and a most valuable hostage. A boy called Attila’s sword was only half out of his scabbard when the optio placed two meaty hands on his shoulders and slammed him back against the wall of the gloomy street.
‘You, boy,’ he rasped, ‘your name?’
Attila said nothing, his slanted yellow eyes glittering.
The optio was about to rip the felt cap from the boy’s head, when he seemed to give a slight lurch backwards.
‘Sir?’ asked one his men, moving towards him.
The optio fell backwards into his soldier’s arms, staring wildly up at the sky, black blood gushing from his gaping, wordless mouth and over his stubbled chin.
And then Attila, the bloody sword still in his hand, was running down the street, dragging an open-mouthed Orestes after him. The soldiers’ wild shouts echoed from the high walls of the dank little street, and their hobnailed sandals rang on the cobbles as they pounded after them.
The boys twisted and turned through the narrow backstreets and shadowy courtyards of the town, trying to find their way to freedom, which had seemed so close.
‘If we’re caught,’ panted Orestes, ‘you will… won’t you?’ He drew his hand across his throat. ‘I’m not-’
‘Save your breath,’ said Attila harshly.
They pressed into the shadows of a wall behind some columns as the soldiers clattered past, their lungs aflame as they held their breath tight. Once the soldiers had gone, their breath exploded outwards and Orestes collapsed to his knees.
‘On your feet,’ hissed Attila.
‘Can’t,’ wheezed Orestes. ‘Just another-’
‘What happens to runaway slaves?’ demanded Attila cruelly. ‘Hands off? Eyes out?’
Orestes shook his head. ‘Please,’ he whispered.
Attila grabbed his arm and hauled. ‘Then on your feet, soldier. We’re nearly there.’
‘Where?’
‘The quayside.’
‘How do you know which way?’
Attila eyed him in the darkness. ‘Because land slopes down to a river, muttonbrain. Now let’s go.’
They ran on, downhill through the streets wherever possible, until at last they could hear water lapping against wooden barques and wharves, and smell the damp, pervading smell of the mile-wide river. Rats scurried in the darkness. The boys slid out between two huge wooden wharves and saw the gleam of the Danube. On their side, occasional lights and torches burnt from the churches and wealthier houses of the city, but on the eastern bank and beyond… nothing. Not a light showed from the black plains out there. Overhead, the uninterrupted, silvery shimmering of the Milky Way, the brilliant winter stars of Orion’s belt, and gleaming Sirius, the Dog Star, bringer of storms, rising and burning more brightly than any earthly light.
‘There,’ breathed Attila. ‘ There.’
They slipped down to the quayside and saw not a soul about. A cat mewed on one of the tethered grain-barges where it had been ratting, and eyed them pitifully and crept away. They approached the barge. It might be big enough for them to hide aboard somewhere, under some filthy and neglected canvas, or even inside a stinking coil of sodden rope.
There came the sound of horses’ hooves in the night, and they froze. Torchlight gradually spread along the ground from round the corners, and at last, at either end of the quay, they saw troops of frontier cavalry, as many as forty or fifty men. Attila, still clutching Orestes’ arm, made to run for the wooden quayside and hurl them both into the river. But a pair of cavalrymen spurred instantly into a gallop, and one hurled a Batavian net over the boys. They stumbled and fell, struggling as helplessly as flies in a web.
They were dragged to their feet and struck sharply across the face for good measure.
The commanding officer, evidently senior, with cropped white hair and a brutal, unflinching stare, ripped Attila’s cap from his head and ran his stubby fingers over the welts of the boy’s tattooed cheeks.
‘So,’ he said. ‘Attila
. You have come a long way.’
The boy spat in his face. The officer instantly struck him, so hard that his head spun round and he reeled back. But he did not fall. The officer was surprised. Such a blow would have felled most grown men. When Attila’s head had cleared enough for him to see again, he stepped back in front of the officer and stared him in the eye.
Wiping the spittle from his face, the officer nodded at Orestes. ‘And who’s he?’
Attila shrugged. ‘No idea. Just some hanger-on. Pain in the arse.’
Orestes said nothing, but as he was dragged away by two guards his eyes never left the sullen, unsmiling figure of Attila.
‘Give him a good kicking and throw him out of the city gates,’ said the officer. He paid no further attention to Orestes. All his attention was on Attila, and all his thoughts were of imperial gratitude, of speedy promotion, of donatives of silver and gold and finest Samian ware…
‘Manacle him hand and foot,’ he said at last, ‘and bring him to the fort. No more beating – I want some answers from him. This one knows more than he lets on.’
Orestes lay gasping in the mud for some time, he didn’t know how long. When he tried to stir, he ached all over. His arms and shoulders felt bruised to the bone, and one flank hurt deeply every time he took in a lungful of air. His buttocks almost cramped with pain, his legs, his feet… Even the roots of his hair still stung, where he had been wrenched about by the guffawing soldiers.
Worse than all this, his heart ached with loss. Attila had been everything to him. He had never felt so utterly alone in his life.
At last he crawled to his feet and walked slowly away from the city, to the open fields alongside the river. The river was so wide, so dark. He could never swim it. He limped on through the night until he came to a creek. And there among the reeds and the nodding bulrushes, miraculously, tied up to a half-rotting landing-stage, was an ancient wooden boat with a single wooden oar lying in it, gently sliding to and fro in the wash from the river. They needn’t have bothered with Aquincum.
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