Attila ran back and found Bucco clearing his plate and bowl away. On impulse he hugged the fat slave round his huge waist. Bucco looked down in astonishment.
And then the boy was gone.
There was another guard outside the door into Serena’s chambers. He, too, behaved as if the boy were invisible.
Attila went in.
Serena was seated on a low couch with her back to him. When she heard him she turned, and he saw to his dismay that her face was streaked with tears. Serena, always so composed and dignified. Her large, liquid eyes filled with fresh tears at the sight of him.
‘Attila,’ she said, holding out her hand.
‘What is it?’ he said, hearing fear trembling in his voice.
She held him for a moment and then pushed him away. ‘There is danger,’ she said. ‘You must go. Tonight, if you can.’ She hesitated.
‘Tell me what,’ he said.
She shook her head. She looked anxious, bewildered, uncertain. She searched for the right words.
‘Where is Stilicho?’ asked the boy.
‘In Pavia.’ She spoke abruptly.
‘They said,’ he blurted, ‘they said - Eumolpus said - you’d ordered me never to speak to you again. He said that was what you wanted.’
‘He lied.’
‘I know he did. I . . . I bit him.’
Despite her tears, Serena smiled. ‘I know you did,’ she said. ‘The whole palace knows. And much of the palace rejoices.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Come and sit beside me. There is little time.’
He sat.
She sighed and pondered and then spoke. ‘Have you heard of the Sibylline Books?’
‘The books of prophecy?’ He nodded. ‘Among my people, prophecies and sacred verses and suchlike are never written down. They’re too precious, and they’re only ever committed to memory by the holy men.’
‘Ah,’ said Serena. ‘It is the same among the Celts, I believe. If only it were the same in Rome.’ She scrutinised his face, and then she said, ‘Among the last and greatest of the Sibylline Books is a prophecy that Rome will endure for twelve centuries. When Romulus founded the city, he looked into the sky and saw twelve vultures circling above the seven hills, and he knew they symbolised the twelve centuries during which the gods would permit Rome to reign triumphant over all the world. But the city was founded by Romulus in - you know your Livy?’
‘Yes,’ said the boy a little wearily. ‘Seven hundred and fifty-three years before the birth of Christ.’ He frowned. Then he began counting on his fingers. Then he looked up at Serena in shock.
‘Yes,’ she said sadly. ‘It is coming. It is coming soon - if one believes it. Or: if one believes it, it is coming soon.’ She drew breath. ‘I know, I know, everyone talks in riddles these days. Forgive me. Prin—that is to say, the imperial powers-that-be ordered General Stilicho to destroy the Books, and leave no trace behind. “That the people might continue to believe,” they said. But . . . there is a storm coming. And much which was precious and beautiful, and which seemed sheer miracle to the multitude, will be torn down and washed away for ever.’
The boy did not understand all she said. But he understood it when she told him he must go, and now. Rome was no longer safe for him.
‘Where am I to go?’
She smiled and touched her hand to his cheek. ‘Where you have always wanted to go, little wolf-cub. Home.’ She stood. ‘The sword that General Stilicho gave you . . . ’
‘I still have it,’ said the boy. ‘It is safely hidden.’
‘Of course it is,’ said Serena. ‘And Stilicho had one other gift to bestow. God send he bestow it wisely. The last, most direful prophecy of all. O Cassandra, why did we sons and daughters of Troy not listen?’
She seemed to be speaking almost to herself, and as if in Sibylline riddles again, distracted with anxiety and murmuring softly as her eyes searched the ground before her. ‘The prophecy told of the end of the world, we thought, but we misread it. We misread it always, we sons and daughters of Troy. It foretold not the end of the world, but only the end of Rome.’
She seized his hand one last time, fixing his eyes with her own troubled, dark, searching eyes, as if trying to communicate to him something that was beyond communication and older than all the ages of the world.
‘All will be destroyed, and all will come again,’ she said. ‘A holy man taught me that long ago, and I was loth to believe him. But I believe him now. Gamaliel he was called - Sun-singer, Fire-bringer, last of the Hidden Kings. Where is his voice and his wisdom now?’ She let his hand drop and her eyes grew distant.
At last the bewildered boy asked, ‘How am I to escape?’
‘It will be done tonight,’ she said.
Violent shouting suddenly arose in a distant part of the palace. Serena started, and Attila saw to his dismay that she was shaking with fear. She turned back to him.
‘Now go,’ she said. ‘The guard at your door is loyal. Stay within your chamber. At the appointed hour of the night, he will unlock the door and will guide you to a - a way out of the palace. It will lead you to the Chapel of the Magdalen, and from thence you will be guided out of the city by a monk called Eustachius, and you will be given your freedom - and perhaps even a pony.’
‘A pony!’
She smiled and reached out and touched him again. ‘Ride like the wind, little wolf-cub.’
‘Like the autumn wind on the steppe when Aldebaran is rising in the Eastern sky will I ride,’ he murmured. ‘And like the pale birchleaves of the mountains will I ride, when they are driven like multitudes before the autumn wind.’
‘And they tell us that barbarians have no poetry.’ She smiled. Then her smile vanished. ‘Steal what you must. Speak to no one. Give no one your name.’
She turned away so that he would not see her tears. ‘Now go,’ she said.
He took a step towards her, his hands held out as if in supplication. ‘But . . . But I . . . ’
She did not look back. ‘I said go!’ she cried.
He flinched and took a step backwards, and then turned and ran, his eyes blurred with tears.
He returned to his room by flickering torchlight, to find that a couple of guards had overturned his bed, ransacked his linen chest, and were searching through his every possession. When he came running in, they barely spared him a glance.
‘Outside,’ they growled.
Attila stepped back outside, and slipped down the corridor towards the statue of Augustus - its mysteriously missing eye now replaced. He felt behind the statue and it was still there: his sword, the gift of Stilicho, in the last place the guards would think of looking.
He heard footsteps behind him.
It was Eumolpus. He raised one finely plucked eyebrow. ‘And what fresh destruction are you wreaking now, rat-boy?’
Without a word, his blood beating, Attila pulled the bundle out from behind the statue, drew the sword from its oiled cloth and turned it round and about in front of the eunuch’s eyes.
‘Isn’t it fine?’ he said.
‘Give that here.’
The boy smiled and shook his head.
The eunuch suddenly looked dangerous. ‘I said, give it here.’
Attila looked up, and then raised the blade to the level of his shoulder, arm crooked ready to strike, the long and lethal point aiming straight at his tormentor’s chest.
‘If you want it so much,’ he said, ‘take it.’
Eumolpus stared at him long and hard. Then he moved suddenly, stepping sideways and grabbing at the boy’s side. But the boy was faster, ducking under the eunuch’s outstretched arm and turning on the ball of his foot and holding out the sword towards him again.
‘Well, well,’ said Eumolpus in a low voice. ‘And what sort of person - what traitor - would give a little urchin such as yourself a gift as fine as that?’
Contrary to all expectations, Attila suddenly lunged forwards, and the startled Eumolpus stepped backwards, stumbled against the pediment of the
statue of Augustus, and fell. Scrambling to his feet again, all composure lost, he cursed the boy furiously. He paused to brush his resplendent golden dalmatic clean of the barbarian touch, hissed some unintelligible Greek at the boy like a peevish viper, and departed.
‘Nasty cut you’ve got there, by the way,’ the boy called after him. ‘Round your throat.’
He rewrapped the sword in its oiled cloth and hid it in the folds of his tunic.
When Eumolpus fell, he had dropped a scrap of paper. Once he had vanished round the corner, the boy retrieved it. It was in code. He took it back to his room. The guards let him in, and then locked and bolted the door behind him. He settled down on the low bed to crack the code. He liked codes, but this one was hard. Soon his tired eyes began to close, and he fell asleep.
In his dreams, he continued to work on the code. He knew that it mattered somehow. He saw himself as if from a distance, in the dusk, straining his eyes by the guttering oil lamp. From one of the distant courtyards came a strange, high-pitched cry, like a bird in lamentation.
He dreamt that he leapt from his bed and ran to the Chamber of the Imperial Audience, to find Princess Galla Placidia seated on a painted wooden throne and surrounded by children, which was strange since she had none. And who, as they said in the backrooms of the palace, would want to marry her anyway? ‘Galla and husband,’ they quipped. ‘Virgin and martyr.’
Her brother, Honorius, sat at her feet, playing with a child’s spinning top. The princess stroked the goatkid in her lap and smiled. The kid smiled, too.
Stilicho was standing beside her. He wore an expression of puzzlement. He reached behind his back, and gave a low groan. Attila saw to his horror that the general had a big knife sticking out of his back, with gold scrollwork on the handle.
‘I must go home to my wife,’ said Stilicho.
The princess stroked the kid and looked at Attila and smiled.
He woke up numb with sorrow, and to the sound of screaming.
He lay wide awake and in a cold sweat, straining to hear again. Perhaps it hadn’t been a scream. Perhaps it had been the friendly guard knocking on the door, or even the monk Eustachius himself.
But then another scream came ringing through the night to his chamber, like the cry of one of the exotic birds in the imperial aviary, and he knew that things had begun to go terribly wrong. He knew in his heart that now there would be no friendly guard, and no kindly monk called Eustachius. He was alone.
He heard violent shouting in the corridor outside, and then a sound like scuffling, and a man bellowing as if in raw pain. There were running footsteps, and doors slamming, and then the sound of wood being smashed and splintering. He gripped the edges of his bed with fear, as a man adrift on the ocean in the black night might grip a plank of wood. He was unable to move. Any moment, a couple of armed guards would burst in through his door with drawn swords, and drive those thick steel blades straight through him and into the straw pallet below.
But no one came. He forced himself to loosen his grip on the bed. He shook his head as if to clear it of the fog of nightmare.
He got up and wrapped his light woollen cloak round him for protection, though the night was warm. Then he took his sword and went over to the door. He gripped the hilt in both hands, raised the sword high above his head, and drove it deep into the heavy oak. He was determined to dig a hole through it, no matter how long it took. But at the first blow the door swung eerily open. The guards outside were gone.
He wrenched the blade back and it came free of the wood with a squeak. In a daze he smelt, even tasted, the unmistakable coppery tang of blood in the air. And he sensed with the very hairs on his head that all the palace was under a cloud of fear. The night was in silent, horror-struck uproar.
He started to run. He passed a man slumped in the darkness of a doorway, and then he stopped and ran back. The front of the man’s coarse tunic was dark and wet. It was Bucco, the fat Sicilian baker, his friend. He knelt and laid his hand against Bucco’s cheek. It was as cold as wet clay. He moved Bucco’s head slightly, and it fell awkwardly to one side, revealing a ragged gaping slash across his throat. Nearly gagging, the boy reeled to his feet and ran on. Why Bucco? Why a simple slave?
Now things came to him, through the haze of fear. There was nobody around. Even at this late hour, there should have been palace guards patrolling the courtyards, night-slaves working, aquarii replenishing the water-butts, priests and deacons in the service of the imperial family on their way to chant the early-morning offices of Lauds and Terce in the cold and incense-filled chapel. But there was no one. It was as if the palace were suddenly deserted - and yet sounds carried from afar on the hot night air.
From deep within the palace he heard that cry of the bird again, only now he knew it was no bird but a woman’s screams. Then rounding a corner into a small courtyard he almost ran into another woman standing beside a small fountain. He had never seen her before. She was dressed all in white, like a priestess, but she held out to him at arm’s length a dead kitten, her mouth hanging open in a silent scream, her eyes staring unseeing at him. None of it made any sense. He stumbled away from her. Madly he wanted to laugh. It was all as meaningless as a nightmare, but it was real, it was all too real. He was wide awake.
He heard running footsteps coming closer and then fading, he heard doors slamming, the clanking of chains being dragged over marble tiles. He came to a bundle of rags slung in a corner, and as he passed by the bundle stirred and a bloody human hand reached out. He ran on.
He could hear the distant clangour of church bells in the city now, and again it made no sense. They seemed to signal some dire and bloody event, sounding to his ears as if they came from deep underground, from the realms of chaos and ancient night. He didn’t slink like a wolf through the palace now. He ran with one hand clenched to his chest with the steel weight of his sword beneath. He would need it tonight.
No one seemed to notice him, a mere child.
Two soldiers shoved past him, with a man grasped by the elbows between them. They virtually had to drag him, for his legs were broken. He wore a high-ranking officer’s uniform. His face was so bloodily pulped that the boy could not recognise him. Only his teeth showed white from his darkened face, his lips drawn back in some terrible nameless smile.
The boy passed on, down endless deserted corridors and through great hallways, desperate to reach Serena’s chambers before someone else did. In one of the great halls of the palace, he found that the vast mosaic of the god Bacchus that decorated the floor had been smashed as if by a lunatic, the face of the god almost obliterated in shards of shattered tesserae. As if some frenzied madman had taken a heavy brass lampstand to it, and attacked it like a living being. Nothing made sense. Always in the air the acrid stench of spilt blood, distant screams, the aftertang of oilsmoke from lit torches where soldiers had passed by on their murderous task, torches in one hand, drawn swords in the other. Some of them would be well rewarded for this night’s work.
Other footsteps were coming closer, and there were more cries in the night.
The boy ran on, and at last he reached the doors to Serena’s chambers. He hammered on them. She heard his voice and opened the doors and he ran in to her. He clasped her round the waist and buried his face in the folds of her white stola.
‘My darling . . . ’ she said.
‘What is it? What is happening?’
‘You must go. You must go now. In the confusion and the darkness, you must try to . . . ’
He looked up at her. Her eyes were bright with tears. All distance and formality were gone.
‘I promised General Stilicho that I’d never try to escape again.’
‘Oh, my darling, my darling, it is an oath you need no longer keep.’ She cradled his head. ‘You need not keep an oath to a man who is dead.’
The boy cried out and the sound nearly broke her heart.
A bottle or a vase smashed somewhere nearby. There was the sound of sandalled feet being
dragged over stone.
‘He can’t be!’ cried the boy.
She shook her head. It was the end. They clung together and wept.
‘They say my husband is a traitor - he and all his circle.’
Who were ‘they’? But he knew. The Emperor of Chickens, and his cold-eyed sister.
‘My darling, you must go.’
But he had already turned and drawn his sword when the soldiers came into the room. He walked towards them.
‘Attila,’ said her voice behind him.
He looked back. Two more soldiers had stepped from the doorway and were already flanking her with swords drawn.
He turned away. Ahead came a line of six or eight more soldiers of the Palatine Guard, resplendent in their black helmets and cuirasses. They smiled broadly.
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