An Empire for Ravens

by Eric Mayer

  John pulled Clementia to her feet. “Hurry, I’ll delay them.”

  She stood frozen looking around. Then she bent over and retrieved her dagger. “I’m not letting them have this. It was my mother’s.”

  John didn’t have time to be incredulous. As she ran away he found himself confronting two more assailants.

  He disposed of them automatically. He couldn’t recall afterwards what kinds of blows he had struck or what wounds he had opened.

  After that the pack had had enough. He could have turned his back and strolled out of Clementia’s temple of love, but he ran anyway.

  John suggested they return to his house but Clementia, clothes bloodied, insisted they complete their mission. Apparently, her silks and cosmetics concealed an iron will.

  The senator’s house was a short walk away. No guards met them, only the cook who fussed and fretted over Clementia’s appearance. When Clementia explained she was moving out of the house, the cook said she would stay with her family for the time being. She would be happy to do so since she didn’t feel safe with the guards gone.

  “Those ingrates,” Clementia complained. “I gave them work and they leave me on my own without so much as a warning.”

  “Every man with any military experience is staying at the wall in case Totila attacks again. They’ll probably return when the danger has passed. If Totila takes the city, there won’t be anything for them to guard.”

  Clementia only sighed. “I can’t leave the family valuables in an unguarded house.”

  To John’s surprise she went straight to the garden. At the end of a flagstone path, a thicket of rosebushes concealed a bench flanked by statues of Venus and Roma, miniatures of those in the temple.

  Clementia pulled on Roma’s hand, opening a door concealed in the statue’s back. Behind the door was a box.

  “These are special treasures which have always been in the family.” Clementia popped open the lid of the box. It contained several religious items including a jeweled cross and a small golden reliquary in the shape of a church, though containing what, she did not reveal.

  Apparently satisfied everything was in order, she handed the box to John. He wondered what else she might be hiding.

  Only when he was alone that night did John allow himself to think about Felix. Beyond the bedroom window a red, flickering light had replaced darkness. From the distance came shouts and screams. A fire had broken out somewhere, John concluded. He leaned down and picked up a jug from the floor and shook it, then poured the remaining wine into his cup.

  He was intoxicated, he admitted to himself. Yes, you are, the voice in his head told him. But tonight Felix is not here to help finish the wine or to sing one of those scurrilous marching songs he loved so much.

  John sang a few lines of a particular favorite of Felix’s, reciting certain feats of Eros which Theodora allegedly had performed with the cooperation of a number of young servants and mature fowl. Halfway through the second verse John stopped abruptly and threw his cup against the frescoed wall. It bounced off, leaving a bloody stain on the gates of Hades.

  He felt foolish as well as angry. He wasn’t the sort of man who sang ridiculous songs, except when he was drinking with his friend.

  Who was now gone forever.

  All lost comrades left gaps in a soldier’s world. He had asked Mithra the unanswerable question: why Felix, who had so recently been awarded a generalship? Couldn’t he at least have died fighting the Goths?

  There came no answer, of course. The commander does not answer to his foot soldiers.

  John recalled fighting next to Felix during the riots in Constantinople. The big bear of a man had seemed indomitable. In his memory Felix had held off a whole mob by himself, fending off swords, spears, clubs, axes. It was unimaginable he could have fallen to a single knife.

  But the riots had been more than a decade before, difficult as it was to believe. He and John had been that much younger. When does a fighting man’s experience no longer compensate for his slowing reflexes and senses? The arm commanded to move does so more slowly. The mind is instructed to remain alert but the ears no longer hear the stealthy footsteps approaching from behind.

  It had not been a murderer who had caught up to Felix. It had been age.

  And when would John fail to respond quickly enough, either physically or mentally?

  He got off the bed unsteadily, retrieved the cup from a corner, and filled it again, ashamed of himself for doing so. Ashamed he wanted to drink himself into oblivion so he didn’t have to see Felix’s face.

  After he had risen to be captain of the excubitors, Felix had been treated with the fear and respect due to the wealthy and powerful. John, too, as Lord Chamberlain, had been feared.

  Yet he and Felix were only simple men thrust by fate into complicated lives.

  Tears ran down John’s face.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The golden spiked solar crown worn by the colossal bronze statue of the sun god flashed brightly in the morning light as John approached the Flavian Amphitheater. He lowered his eyes and blinked but greenish after-images still tracked across his vision. He was feeling the effects of too much drinking the night before. The intensity of the light made his head throb.

  The god’s image was breathtakingly tall. Twenty men standing on each other’s shoulders would not have been able to look down upon it, yet the oval Amphitheater behind was higher still. Although it had been more than a century since the last of the gladiatorial contests for which it was famous, other events continued to be held there. Wild animal hunts, for example, and, this morning, public executions.

  “Diogenes has ordered two of the night watch guards to be executed,” Viteric said. “They were caught conspiring to let Goths into the city.”

  Viteric had not given the great bronze statue a glance. Craning one’s neck to look up at it was the mark of a visiting chickpea from the countryside. In John’s case it was more an act of veneration, given that to him Sol Invictus represented Mithra.

  “The general decided to hold a public execution to improve morale after the attack,” Viteric added as he and John passed under one of the many arches leading into the amphitheater. “He’s also managed to round up some Mithrans. As you hear, the decision is popular.”

  A wave of sound—howling, screaming, cursing—crested and rolled over them as they made their way to the imperial box. Bright sunlight poured down on gleaming walls adorned with niches sheltering statues of gods and emperors.

  It looked to John as if the turnout was larger than that for the races. The crowd was concentrated at one end of the arena behind a fence overlooking a row of newly erected gallows.

  Diogenes looked up as John and Viteric arrived. “Ah, Lord Chamberlain. Here as an official observer? The emperor will be happy to hear justice was done to these traitors.” He gestured to a pair of prisoners held several paces away from the gallows. “And well deserved it is too after violating their oaths of service to commander and emperor.”

  “Viteric tells me that this—” John paused as he sought the right words, before continuing “—spectacle is intended to improve morale. I take it you mean in the garrison as well as among civilians?”

  “But of course! To the garrison we demonstrate that military discipline will be upheld despite the dire circumstances in which we find ourselves, and to others we show not only that those who betray the empire will suffer the harshest consequences but also, and perhaps more importantly, that the defense of the city is safe in our hands.”

  In addition, John thought, an execution would serve to take the attention of those in the city from their wretched predicament.

  “I have taken into account these men’s previous service and only for that am I giving them the mercy of a quick death,” Diogenes went on.

  “Justice tempered with mercy,” Viteric ventured.

 
“Of a kind,” Diogenes agreed. “While we are waiting for the preparations to be completed, what brings you to visit me again, Lord Chamberlain?”

  “If we could retire out of earshot…?” John responded, glancing at Viteric.

  Diogenes instructed a visibly disgruntled Viteric to sit, while he led John to the back of the box. John asked if Diogenes thought Felix might, in addition to his official mission, have been investigating a conspiracy.

  “Among my men? I think not. He would surely have mentioned it to me. I don’t need such assistance in any event. Do you have any reason to think he might have been investigating a plot?”

  John wasn’t surprised Diogenes sounded apprehensive. The executions about to be carried out plainly showed that not everyone in the city remained loyal to Rome. “Information I recently discovered could equally apply to any group of people with a common interest, not necessarily a plot.”

  “Felix never said much about his mission or missions. Perhaps if he had been more forthcoming I could have assisted him to greater effect.”

  “Perhaps. Do you know a man called Optatus?”

  “The name means nothing to me. Is he from a good family?”

  “I don’t know anything about him. I was wondering if you did.”

  John went through the rest of Felix’s list, omitting Diogenes. The general professed ignorance of Bassus, Junius, Nilus, and Lucinius. Watching the man’s shrewd aristocratic face carefully, John believed him.

  “What about Sergius?”

  “Ah, now that’s familiar. He served under my command, I believe.” He wrinkled his broad brow and stared towards the gallows where the executioner was testing the ropes. “I don’t generally know the names of the individuals in the garrison, unless they come to my attention like those two miscreants out there. Wait, I have it! There was a Sergius killed on a sortie outside the walls several months back.”

  “Can you tell me anything about him?”

  “Except that he was killed? No.” A cloud of regret passed over his features. “Soon there will be too many dead for me to remember their names.”

  “Did Sergius die before or after Felix arrived?”

  “I can’t recall. It isn’t an uncommon name. He probably isn’t the man you’re looking for in any event. Why do you want to know about these people? Where did you hear about them? I take it these are the people you mentioned who share a common interest.”

  “I can’t say more. It may be nothing.”

  Diogenes might have pressed John on the matter but a deafening roar rose from the crowd and instead he hurried back to the front of the box as the two traitors were led towards the gallows.

  As they mounted the steps to their doom, the vast arena fell eerily quiet. The condemned men maintained discipline to the end. There were no shouts of innocence, no pleas for mercy. Not that they could have been heard. Their final ordeal took place in a cacophony that must have shaken dust off the amphitheater’s cornices. One moment they were living, thinking, feeling men, the next lifeless dangling corpses.

  John wondered if the two had proceeded to the point of contacting the Goths and if so, how? By what ways had they left the embattled city and to how many others were those ways known? Or had they met spies within the city walls? Or were they in fact guilty of nothing, victims of a miscarriage of justice?

  “So right has been upheld,” said Diogenes. “And now righteousness will be. Pagans are as dangerous to the empire as traitors, don’t you agree, Lord Chamberlain?”

  Cassius looked around uneasily as the condemned Mithrans were brought out to the jeers of the crowd. He had been gathering information on Hunulf and had wanted to tell John what he had learned. Although it seemed useless to him, to the Lord Chamberlain it might mean something.

  Was John attending Diogenes’ deplorable spectacle?

  He couldn’t see from his vantage point. The sun was blinding, the crowds blurred into a howling mass, more like a storm raining hatred than a group of individual human beings.

  He voiced a prayer to the sun.

  Emperors now executed men for worshiping a deity to whom they had once created statues.

  Would they execute a Lord Chamberlain if they discovered John’s secret?

  Cassius wondered if Hunulf had discovered he was seeking information on him.

  Sweat ran burning into his eyes and he did his best to blink it away. It would not do for anyone to think he was crying.

  There! Wasn’t that John with Diogenes?

  He was never certain because at that instant the trap door opened under his feet and the rope took his life.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “You don’t need to escort me, Viteric. I can find my way to the wall.” John and his companion exited the Flavian Amphitheater with the crowd. While the spectacle had left most spectators boisterous, John felt nauseated. Men he had seen die brutally on the battlefield would have begged for a quick hanging if given the chance. What made him uneasy was his certainty that Cassius had looked directly at him before the trap door dropped. John supposed he had been the last sight of more than one man whose life he had taken but he had not taken Cassius’ life. Had Cassius blamed him with his final thoughts?

  “I’m certain you can find the wall, sir,” Viteric was saying. “You certainly fought well defending it.”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “Do I? Well, one does not expect a person such as yourself to be able to handle a sword so well.”

  “A person such as myself?”

  “A courtier, sir. That is to say, a high official or a—”

  “I see. You may go about your business.”

  “Diogenes has ordered me to inspect the walls, sir.”

  “Is that so? All of the walls or only whatever part I visit?”

  Viteric fell silent.

  On the ramparts there was no longer a sense of urgency. The more time passed the more unlikely it appeared that Totila would mount another offensive. Blood, broken weapons, and broken bodies had been cleared away. Weary guards did their best to relax at their posts.

  The Goths had withdrawn out of sight. The wreckage of their siege engines remained, great piles of charred wood resembling burnt houses. A ram jutted up from the rubble like a giant’s thigh bone. The warm wind carried the smell of ashes and the stench of dead horses and oxen and probably men whose remains had been inadvertently left behind to decay.

  John went from soldier to soldier, inquiring about the people Felix had written down on his mysterious parchment. Did they know them? Were the men part of the garrison? No one knew anything. Would their memories have improved had they been questioned by someone other than a stranger accompanied by an armed guard?

  Viteric must have noted their reticence. “They don’t need to bite their tongues, sir. You were just fighting beside them.”

  “Telling them I’m a high official isn’t going to loosen their tongues. It will just make them bite them until they bleed.”

  Viteric looked abashed.

  “No, never heard of any of those fellows,” declared a stout, red-faced fellow who took it upon himself to act as spokesman for a knot of visibly uncomfortable men busy repairing a ballista when John arrived.

  John asked carefully about Cassius. It was awkward with Viteric at his shoulder. Had he recognized Cassius as one of those whose death on the gallows he had just witnessed?

  No one had anything to say about Cassius either.

  John turned away and continued along the wall. He was getting nowhere.

  During normal times it would have been folly to expect to find anyone in Rome who knew some random person in the city. Now, however, with such a relatively small garrison and an even smaller civilian population, John felt it was worth the attempt. Given enough time he could have covered the whole city quite thoroughly, but he didn’t have time. He had, he calculated
, about two more weeks until Diogenes’ messenger returned from Constantinople with the information that would seal John’s fate.

  He noticed one of the men he had seen with Cassius at their first encounter, a short youngster with a furze of blond hair on his pointed chin. He was staring out across the countryside as John approached and when he turned and saw who was confronting him his face hardened and grew pale.

  John asked about the people on his list. The young man grunted a curt no to each.

  John mentioned seeing him with Cassius a few days ago.

  The youngster stared at him as expressionless as the emperor’s face on a coin.

  “You know he was executed?”

  The soldier said nothing.

  “How did he come to be arrested?”

  The man spit in front of John’s boots.

  “None of that!” growled Viteric. “This man is an emissary from the emperor. You will answer his questions or Diogenes will know about it!”

  “Guards came and dragged him away in the middle of the night. That’s all I know,” the other responded sullenly.

  “You don’t know who alerted Diogenes?”

  “No. Do you?”

  John cursed Viteric’s presence silently. Cassius’ friend obviously suspected John and it was impossible to convince him otherwise with Viteric listening. Even this brief conversation might strike Viteric as suspicious. He couldn’t risk starting to talk about Persians and Lions.

  Frustrated, John continued on his way. If he could confirm the identity of anyone on his list he’d need to contrive to question them privately. For the moment he’d have to keep searching, Viteric or not. He didn’t have time to waste.

  A weathered and scarred fellow who looked stitched together from leather armor considered John’s questions with a vacant look in his watery eyes. John expected a perfunctory shake of the head but the fellow surprised him.

  “Junius? I fought next to a man called Junius in the last attack.”

  “Was he a friend of yours?”