Attila

by William Napier

He poured them each a fresh cup of wine, Lucius not refusing. A moment later, he said, ‘You believe in prophecies, lieutenant?’

  ‘Well,’ said the lieutenant slowly, ‘I’m no philosopher, but I think I do. Like most people, I suppose.’

  ‘Exactly!’ The general banged his fist on the table and his eyes gleamed.

  ‘In my part of Britain, sir . . . I don’t know if I should say, as we’re all Christian now, I know, and they weren’t exactly popular with Julius Caesar . . . ’

  Stilicho frowned. ‘Who, the Christians?’

  ‘No, sir, the druithynn and the bandruithynn - the holy men and women of Britain, the priests of our native religion.’

  ‘Ah yes, the druids. Caesar detested them, and the power they wielded. Which was why he pretty much wiped them out, I thought, on the Isle of Môn?’

  ‘He killed a lot of them, sir. But some escaped, to their cousins, over the water in Hibernia.’

  ‘Ah yes, Hibernia. Never could get the hang of Hibernia. They’re all mad there, aren’t they?’

  Lucius smiled, and then said enigmatically, ‘Well, they don’t build straight roads over there, let’s say. But after the massacre on Môn, it was the home of the druithynn for the next four hundred years.’

  ‘And now . . . ?’

  ‘Now they’re returning to Britain. Even though we’re all Christians now, even in Hibernia, the druithynn are returning. And many of the people, especially the country people, are still faithful to the old religion.’

  Stilicho nodded. ‘Don’t tell me. The things that still go on in the hills and the villages - even in civilised Italy. I tell you, soldier, your average village Saturnalia still makes a night in a Suburran brothel look like dinner with the Vestal Virgins.’

  ‘In Dumnonia, sir, in my village, the marriage bond is held as sacred as it is among the strictest Christians of the East. But that’s not the case everywhere in Britain, especially on the great feast days of our Celtic year - like with your Saturnalia. In Dumnonia we still have the midwinter festival of Samhain, and then Beltane—’

  ‘And that’s when men really have to watch their wives, huh?’

  Lucius grimaced. ‘And as for the young people not yet married . . . ’

  The two men brooded for a while on the thought of young Celtic girls with no clothes on, and then harrumphed simultaneously and came back to reality.

  ‘How did we get onto this subject?’ growled the general.

  ‘Prophecy, sir.’

  ‘Ah yes.’ He poured more wine.

  ‘And I meant to say,’ said Lucius, ‘that prophecy is very strong among the druithynn - except that nothing is ever written down. Prophecies are considered to possess too much mana - that is, sacred power. Once they’re written down, anyone can read them.’

  Stilicho nodded, his burning brown eyes in his long, lugubrious face fixed on the lieutenant. And then, without changing his gaze, he reached down and picked up a scroll from the table, upended it and shook. Another tattered scrap of a scroll fell out, and Stilicho unrolled it and pressed it out flat upon the table. It was brown with age, and blackened with burns round its edges.

  ‘Only two weeks ago,’ said the general, very slowly and softly, ‘on the orders of the Princess Galla Placidia, I went to the Temple of Capitoline Jove, which is now a Christian place of worship, of course. And I took up the Sibylline Books, and I burnt them. I scattered the ashes off the Tarpeian Rock like dead leaves. And when I looked back, this one scrap had fallen from the brazier and survived. One of the priests emerged - not a man I had ever respected for his spiritual fervour or intelligence. A fat old senator called Majoricus. In earlier days he was actually one of the quindecemviri - the Fifteen Men - who guarded the Sibylline Books with their lives. But once Theodosius shut the pagan temples for good, Majoricus knew pretty quickly which side his bread was buttered and became the most vociferous and fervent of Christians overnight. So he never had to leave the temple at all, it was said. A kind of holy sitting tenant, whom the new landlord - the God of the Christians - couldn’t have got rid of even if He’d wanted to.’

  The two men chuckled.

  ‘So there I was, burning the last of the Books, when Majoricus came waddling over and retrieved this scrap of parchment from the floor. He looked it over and then he pressed it into my hand, saying that this was the very last Sibylline prophecy of all and that I must keep it. He didn’t know why, but he said it must be meant. He said, mysteriously, that “God has a thousand and one names.”

  ‘Now I had only reluctantly burnt the Books in the first place. Galla had said they were a wicked pagan superstition anyway, and they would sap the morale of the Roman people, with their endless foretelling of doom and destruction. But, with some surprise - at myself, you understand, for I am not a man who is generally much influenced by what fat old senators tell me to do—’

  ‘I imagine not, sir.’

  ‘All the same, at this moment, I did as that fat old priest commanded me, and I kept this last scrap of parchment. But it troubles me what I should do with it now. I do not know if my time will last much longer.’

  ‘Sir, you seem to me a very fit man.’

  Stilicho hadn’t meant that at all. But he said nothing. Instead, he pushed the scroll across to the lieutenant. ‘I want you to have this. Guard it with your life.’

  Lucius frowned. ‘Why? Why me?’

  ‘Call it a hunch. I’ve lived all my life listening to my hunches. My wife says it’s a female gift, but it’s one I’ve always received with gratitude. I usually get it right. Hunches tell us things that nothing else can. Here. It’s yours.’

  Lucius gazed down at the scroll. There were two columns of verses, written in ancient temple-hand, in ink now yellowish-brown with age. Some lines were in long, bombastic hexameters, and others were brief, even vulgarly rhyming riddles, like the rhymes of barbarian peoples, which surprised him.

  ‘Read one,’ said Stilicho.

  By the light of the candles beside him, Lucius read out in his deep, clear voice:

  ‘One with an empire,

  One with a sword,

  One with a son,

  And one with a word.’

  The general nodded. ‘And read those last hexameters.’

  The lieutenant read,

  ‘When Romulus climbed to the rock,

  Brother Remus stumbled below.

  The dead man saw six, the king twelve,

  And the book of Rome is closed.’

  He looked up again. ‘This is . . . this is the prophecy that gives Rome twelve centuries to stand?’

  ‘And in our time . . . ’ said Stilicho. He opened his great hands wide. ‘In your hands is the very last prophecy of the Cumaean Sibyl, before she vanished for ever from our history. These are the verses regarding the end of Rome. They are difficult and obscure, like all the Sibylline verses; and they say that whoever seeks to interpret them will do so only to misunderstand them. Nevertheless, I pass them on to you.’

  ‘To me? Why?’

  ‘I feel somehow - I do not know why - that these last and most terrible verses must not be destroyed after all, but must be taken far, far away from Rome, beyond the frontier. For in some strange way, as yet unforeseen, they may yet save Rome. Or the spirit of Rome, if not the monuments and the temples and the palaces.’

  The general leant forward passionately, his dark eyes blazing afresh. ‘Do your duty, man: take them back to Britain with you.’

  ‘But I have thirteen years yet to serve, sir, unless I get leave.’

  ‘You go when you go,’ said Stilicho vaguely. ‘A burden they are, but remember them. Galla fears them, and the Church fears them, and yet I think it need not. For they are things of power if rightly used, and may yet save Rome in some way I cannot foresee. The Books have never been wrong - only wrongly interpreted.’ He sat back and looked suddenly like a weary old man. He passed his big hand across his brow. ‘I could not destroy that last Book. It seems to me that those who start out by burn
ing books end up by burning men.’

  The two men sat in eerie silence for a while. The camp outside was all but silent. An owl hooted, the sound carrying through the still, airless night. But within the tent, the two troubled soldiers seemed to feel the wind of the centuries pass by, brushing their very skins like a ghost. They felt both small, and burdened with something far greater than they could comprehend. The end was coming, they knew, but it was not an end whose shape they or any mortal man could see clearly. And it was all the more terrifying for that.

  The lieutenant saw in his mind’s eye a woman in a long white robe walking sightlessly through a thick sea-fog towards a cliff edge like the green and windswept headland of Pen Glas, above the beloved Dumnonian valley he called home. He wanted to cry out, but was dumb and helpless, and he saw the woman walking on with a stately dreaminess towards that teetering edge and the black-fanged rocks far below. And he thought that the woman was Clio, the Muse of History herself.

  ‘You see things.’ It was the general’s voice cutting in sharply.

  The lieutenant came back from his reverie with an effort. ‘I . . . ’

  ‘Unusual for a soldier.’

  ‘My . . . my people in Britain have often been fili, barda - poets and seers and such - as often as they’ve been soldiers.’ Lucius tried to laugh it off. ‘You know what a reputation we Celts have.’

  Stilicho made no comment. Instead he said, ‘There’s another thing I want from you.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I’m sending you back to Rome tomorrow.’

  ‘But, sir, the Palatine Guard have requested no Frontier Guards within the city precincts. That was why me and my lads were packed off with you to Pavia, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so. And we’re up for it, too - crack at the Goths and all that. But I don’t think—’

  ‘And the whores of Rome beginning to wear your men out too, eh, soldier?’

  Lucius grinned. ‘Lads were beginning to say they were a bit exhausted, yes, sir. Said that, after Rome, going back to the Pictish frontier would be a holiday.’

  ‘Well, the Pictish frontier is abandoned for good,’ said Stilicho grimly. ‘But there are plenty more frontiers still to fight for. The Rhine and the Danube must be held.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Anyhow, I am well aware of the tensions between the Palatine Guard and Frontier troops who get stationed back in Rome. But those are my orders, and I am, as the Palatine Guard might need to be reminded from time to time, master-general of all Rome’s armed forces. So never mind those nancy-boys. You and your century will return to Rome tomorrow. I want you to look out for someone for me.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Among the hostages there’s one who really matters - for obvious reasons just now. The Hun lad, name of Attila.’

  The lieutenant grinned. ‘I’ve met him.’

  The general was startled. ‘You have?’

  ‘It was my squad who brought him in, that night he escaped from the Palatine after cracking the codeword.’

  Stilicho stared hard at the lieutenant. ‘That is no coincidence, I feel sure,’ he said quietly. ‘Well, as you may have gathered, there’s something special about the lad. I don’t know what.’

  ‘Eagle sitting on his shoulder,’ joked the lieutenant. An old proverb.

  ‘Something like that,’ said the general, almost to himself. ‘The eagle, the storm-bringer.’ Then, more briskly, he said, ‘Anyway, I want you to look out for him. No more escape attempts, of course. But look out for him in other ways, too. We really don’t want to piss off his grandfather, Uldin, at this stage.’

  The lieutenant nodded.

  ‘The boy longs to be home, I know, but I don’t want him running off into the streets again. Far too dangerous, especially given his appetite for a fight. But if ever things changed - circumstances - and you felt he was in more danger in Rome than running free . . . Do you follow my meaning?’

  ‘I believe so, sir.’

  ‘The Huns - the Huns are not our enemies. They are not empire builders, so they have no reason to be empire destroyers. They neither fear the destruction of their own homeland nor desire that of another, a philosopher once said of them. After all, how could their homeland be destroyed? It is not a city or a country. It is the earth itself. How can you destroy the forests and the plains of Scythia? They don’t want to capture Rome. They want freedom, the wide open plains, pastureland for their horses and their cattle, good hunting. They don’t envy what the Romans have. They don’t want to take up residence in the Palatine, or recline in the Baths of Caracalla with lots of pretty Greek bumboys around to oil them and whatnot. And they will never, ever turn Christian. They will keep to their own religion, and their own kind.’

  ‘And they’re pretty good warriors, too.’

  ‘Pretty good?’ echoed the General. ‘I saw them tear into Rhadagastus’ army - who were no school-boys - and demolish them as if they were slaughtering a flock of sheep. God help us if they should ever turn against . . . ’

  There was a heavy silence.

  ‘It would be like a beast-fight in the arena,’ said the lieutenant, ‘between a bear and a buffalo.’

  ‘Exactly.’ The general took another glug of wine. ‘It would get messy. But, as I say, I don’t see that it’ll ever happen. As long as we keep on friendly terms with them, there’s no reason to see the Huns as a threat.’

  ‘I take your meaning, sir.’

  ‘And the hostage lad is a part of that. So guard him well, and see that no harm comes to him. I’m fond of the lad.’

  The lieutenant nodded. ‘You have my word.’

  8

  O CASSANDRA

  The following afternoon, when Attila had finally been released from his lessons for the day - Livy, always Livy, and the Glorious Founders of Rome - he ran to the kitchens at the rear of the palace, and took his place at the big, scruffy table where the hostage children usually had their supper. He was the first to arrive. But unusually, as soon as he had taken his seat, Bucco, the big fat Sicilian slave, brought him a bowl of soup and some bread on a wooden trencher.

  Attila devoured it: Livy always made him hungry. As soon as it was gone, Bucco was back to refill his bowl. The boy was mystified as to what he might have done to be so royally treated. But when he looked up at Bucco, the slave was looking down at him sadly. Almost . . . with pity.

  ‘Bucco?’

  ‘Little master?’

  Attila waved his hand around. ‘Where are the others? Hegemond and Beremond and the rest of them?’

  Bucco shifted uneasily and let his eyes drop. At last he said, in a voice that was no more than a whisper, ‘Gone, sir.’

  The boy’s blood ran cold. ‘Gone? You mean . . . ?’

  ‘Released, sir, under the general amnesty with Alaric and his allies.’

  Attila dropped the hunk of bread he was holding. ‘Then why wasn’t I let go, too? How were the Gothic armies beaten, if not with the help of my people? Under the command of my own grandfather?’

  Bucco looked miserable.

  The boy was already scrambling up from his bench and making for the door. ‘This is what we get from Rome!’ he yelled.

  He snatched open the door, and stopped dead. A burly palace guard was standing immediately outside, his spear held firmly across the doorway, and a broad grin on his face.

  He turned and took his place on the bench again. Something was going terribly wrong. He longed to talk to Serena and Stilicho, his only friends in Rome.

  ‘Eat your bread,’ said Bucco.

  ‘Eat it yourself, you fat Sicilian turd!’ screamed Attila, seizing the hunk of bread before him and hurling it at Bucco. It was a good shot, and hit Bucco on a pudgy jowl. But he simply stooped, a little awkwardly given his ample girth, retrieved the bread from the floor, waddled over and set it before the boy again.

  ‘Not your soup,’ he said. ‘Your bread.’

  Attila stared up at the slave. There was something in Bucco’s eyes . . . an urgency
.

  He gingerly tore the bread open. There was a slip of paper inside it.

  Bucco waddled round and returned, whistling with false joviality, to the cooking range.

  Attila eased the paper out. It read: ‘Wait in the kitchens until after the twelfth hour. When the guard outside the door has changed, come to my room immediately. The second guard will permit it. Do not be seen. Make haste. S.’

  Attila did as he was told. For once.

  After the bells had struck in the great court, he waited a few minutes and then emerged from the doorway of the kitchens. There was the new guard standing beside the door clutching his spear. He did not stir, as if the boy were invisible.