by Jack Ludlow
‘We will stay here and let them pass,’ came the whispered suggestion, before he added a touch of gallows humour. ‘Try not to let those teeth of yours chatter, Master Flavius, for it will be as loud as a drumbeat to a hound.’
CHAPTER NINE
Flavius and Ohannes were never to know what saved them from capture: the fact that Bishop Gregory Blastos was asleep at the villa of Senuthius and even when roused out by a message of what had occurred, neither man reacted as they might. The corpulent senator was sure that the escapees could not get far with a pack of hounds on their tail, the bishop being less sanguine but not prepared to dispute the conclusion drawn: that the innocent did not flee, so what had happened was positive, for it told them Flavius knew what they needed to find out. It was also an act that would only increase the sense of terrible sins committed, the very thing needed to excite the populace.
‘There will be many who doubt that of which we will accuse young Belisarius – after all, the family appeared upright, even if they were minded to worship in Chalcedonian blasphemy.’
Blastos was tempted to add that so did most of those who made up his flock but he stayed silent, there being no need to remind his host that in supporting the imperial edict they were in a minority within his own diocese as well as the greater one of Thrace. Not that there was much opportunity anyway; Senuthius was thinking on his feet again and talking fast.
‘The fellow he has fled with is the same one who looked after him when he was tipped off his horse and attended the cremation, is he not? Let’s blame him for introducing Lucifer to their household and throw him to the mob for his devilish corruption. God knows by the look of him he could be a pagan shaman.’
‘No crucifix for him, then?’ yawned Blastos.
That act set off his host, who replied after a mighty yawn of his own. ‘Why waste the timber? Let the faithful tear him limb from limb and feed what’s left to their pigs.’
‘Then I would be grateful to be allowed to go back to bed, I am weary.’
‘That slave boy I sent to you must have pleased you?’
Blastos pulled a face. ‘He stank, Senuthius. Would it be possible to bathe your gifts first?’
The fat man was already leaving the room. ‘Don’t tell me the smell of the creature stopped you.’
The second factor that aided the escape was fear; the reluctance of those set to pursue them to admit they might have failed. Someone would have to tell their master and that was bad enough, for the bishop was not shy of the whip. Worse than that, to do so meant one of their number going to the home of Senuthius and that induced terror, he not being a man to tolerate any level of failure. A lash could be a welcome punishment compared to what he might see as fitting.
As a group they had set out full of determination, a commodity that faded somewhat as time went by and both legs and minds grew weary, the same applying to animals denied the raw meat they had anticipated when taken from their kennels. Given there was no natural leader, dissension broke out as to the best avenue to follow, one dimwit even insisting that Flavius would have gone south and their whole endeavour on the riverbank, despite the spoor followed by the dogs, was false.
If Ohannes and his young companion had no real idea of the nature of the dispute, they were close enough to the hunters as they passed along the riverbank to hear what sounded like a lack of harmony. As the sound of voices faded, and it became clear that the Blastos servants were still moving away from their position, the Scythian hissed it was time to move, which they did at the slow pace such a passage through water would allow. Finally he led the way back onto dry land and broke into an immediate jog; if he and Flavius were also fatigued they had their fears to sustain their efforts.
‘Look, Master Flavius.’
Ohannes wheezed this when they had covered good ground, coming to such an abrupt halt that the youngster, head down, not really looking where he was going and himself straining for breath, bumped into him.
The old man had spotted an approaching boat. One of the people who had been out night-fishing was coming in with his catch, his position very obvious by the lantern on his stern pole, there to both attract the fish and to show any other vessel on the river of his presence. The fisherman had beached his boat before they came upon him; he was tying it off and taking out his oars and his catch when he heard the noise of their approach, wet sandals squelching on pebbles.
It never occurred to either to wonder at what kind of apparition they presented in what was still pale moonlight. They had been in the water and if they had avoided a true ducking their hair was soaked and straggling; Ohannes particularly, with his height and the slight stoop of his gait, looked like some kind of ethereal wraith. Sensing lost souls the poor fisherman let out a cry of dread and sunk to his knees, hands clasped before him.
The voice that rained down hellish curses made even Flavius wonder from where it came, so warbling and ghoulish did it sound, before he realised that Ohannes was playing the mischievous sprite in his native tongue to terrorise a fellow who would be prey to such fancies. Before they got close enough to be seen as human the man had got to his feet and fled, leaving the Scythian to quietly chuckle in a way that annoyed Flavius.
‘I have money, Ohannes,’ he said, tapping the leather pouches still tied to his belt, ‘we could have paid him for his boat.’
‘And have him boast of the gold he got all over the place, a fellow who rarely sees a copper coin from one month to the next. How long do you then think it would be until Senuthius got wind of that? And what then of the poor fellow? He would be roasted till he told the truth.’
The response was defensive. ‘It is what my father would have done.’
‘And noble as he was, he would have been wrong.’
‘You would not have dared tell him so!’
That got a bark of a laugh. ‘How little you know of real soldiers. When it comes to letting the men who lead them know they are being dense, they have their ways.’
‘My father—’
‘Never had much cause with him, God rest his soul, but that does not signify. Now we have a boat, however we have come by it, are we going to use it?’
Even if he too had concluded there was no choice, that Ohannes was right, the response was far from immediate. Flavius felt that he was being too much led, indeed pushed, and he resented it, added to which, what Ohannes had just said – the notion of his being less than wise – he thought of as diminishing.
His companion must have sensed his mood. ‘I would hate to go on my own, but go I will.’
‘The catch?’ Flavius asked, as Ohannes picked up the oars.
‘Take that as well, for even ghouls have to eat.’
There was some reassertion of balance when they were on the water, Ohannes being no oarsman, unlike his young companion who had spent many a summer’s day fishing these very waters and so found himself issuing instruction, given he was unable to row himself due to his shoulder. Despite the strictures to avoid doing so he and his friends had also passed the midpoint of the river many times to cast an eye on the northern bank, not so very different from its southern counterpart but exciting merely because it was forbidden territory.
Given the run of the Danube, added to the width and the lack of rowing competence, they drifted steadily downstream to make a landfall in a patch of woods, something accomplished just before sunrise, an added plus since they managed in the grey light of the predawn to do so unobserved. Then came another dispute: Ohannes was all for casting the boat adrift, Flavius insisting they would need it to get back across. In the end the youngster prevailed and they dragged it far enough inshore to hide it in some bushes.
‘We can eat the fish.’
‘Only if we can cook it, young sir, and I would be unhappy about doing that afore we have found out how far off we are from company.’ There was daylight enough now to show the crestfallen look of a very weary youth. ‘But let us, now we have enough light, gather the means to light a fire.’
They set off as
soon as the sun was over the horizon, for low in the sky the angle of its light allowed them to hold to a course that would bring them back to the point from which they set out. Added to that Ohannes knew how to use the terrain to guide his way and tired as he was, Flavius found himself learning some useful skills of movement.
The path of the sun lay to the south of where they were, so moss that showed on the bark of a tree indicated north, since it never saw enough sun to burn off the greenery. Likewise the mere shape of a sapling or a bush could help, for they too inclined towards the sun.
To avoid any risk of getting lost in what was quite dense woodland Ohannes left cuts low down on trunks, arrows pointing in the direction from which they had come, these disguised with earth rubbed in to take away their bright and too obvious appearance. There was game in the forest, deer and birds, obvious by the noise, and care was needed to avoid boar sows who might be raising young, for they would attack anyone and anything that threatened their piglets; at any sign of rooting the Scythian became very wary.
Bears he thought unlikely so close to the river on which there were a string of settlements, likewise wolves, and, after some time casting about, Ohannes pronounced himself satisfied that they were far away from humanity. They returned to their landing point and lit a fire under a large tree in full leaf, for the smoke would hang in the branches and be dispersed before it topped the canopy. Part of the fisherman’s catch was gutted and cooked, then consumed by two very hungry souls, the fire doused as soon as they were finished.
‘Smell of woodsmoke carries too.’
‘I know that,’ Flavius retorted, in a less than truly civil manner.
‘Well, you will forgive me for my instructing, Master Flavius, given I have no notion of what you do know and what you don’t. All that sword and spear play you and your companions got up to might be one part of soldiering, but it is only that, and all your wrestling is nothing but sport. Most youngsters I have met and fought with needed a lot of telling about what was right and what was stupid, an’ if they failed to listen then they died.’
A hand was rubbed across a face still bearing much of the mud with which it had been previously coated. ‘Forgive me, it is weariness that makes me talk so.’
‘Then it’s time you got your head down.’ The look that got was a protest, but not a fulsome one; Flavius was near to exhaustion, as much from the strain on his emotions as his body. ‘You need sleep if you’re to think clear, though God only knows what you can do. You rest and I will stand watch.’
‘We must take turns.’
‘And we shall.’
‘Somehow I must get word to Justinus of the death of my father,’ Flavius said, through a stifled yawn, ‘as well as how he met his end. We cannot leave that to the likes of Blastos.’
‘Well, right now he will be doing what you should be – sleeping.’
Flavius Justinus had been a soldier for exactly the same number of years as Decimus Belisarius – they had enlisted together – and he was inured to the habits of his profession, high rank and regard for his abilities making no difference; he woke with the dawn and rolled immediately off his cot. If his limbs, sixty-five summers in age, now creaked it was an act still carried out in one swift movement, to be followed by a morning piss and a wash in the bowl of water left by his side overnight.
The room he occupied was barren, again as befitted the old campaigner he was. Justinus had declined a bed of comfort in one of the many beautifully furnished chambers in the imperial palace, electing instead to occupy something more akin to a hermit’s cell; to the courtiers he now mixed with it was a space both barren and ridiculous and he suspected the men he led, the excubitors, successors to the praetorians who had guarded previous emperors of Rome, thought him either foolish or a man inclined to braggadocio. In truth he liked simple things and straightforward people.
For Justinus his room had two advantages; the first was a single entrance, a stout oak door that once bolted would take a real effort to break down. The second was a window, the bars of which could be removed, which overlooked one of the canals that fed water to the imperial palace. With these attributes he felt he could sleep in peace: anyone seeking to harm him, and he was sure such creatures existed in a court full of competing factions, would have difficulty in doing so. The killing of the comes excubitorum was a prerequisite to the assassination of the emperor.
Making his way to the door he undid the bolts and upon opening he was met by the rigid back of one of the men who had been set to guard it. There were four per night, each chosen from amongst his troops at random, given a token only after all the other sentinels, several dozen in number, had been set at various key points under junior officers to protect the imperial apartments, they chosen by the same method as a protection against plots.
He had known before he ever took up his present duty what were the responsibilities: to keep his master alive, the best way to achieve that being to ensure anyone seeking to harm him would struggle themselves to survive. If others thought him overcautious then he would reply that the history of the palace in which he was employed had seen enough purple blood expended as to make his precautions worthwhile.
Never a man to take anything for granted, Justinus walked the halls of the palace as the sentinels were being changed, to observe that the first act of the day was carried out with proper discipline and secondly to ensure that the officers who took up their stations were from the cadre he commanded and he knew them all; if he could not identify every ranker by face – the imperial guard was a thousand strong – he always gave the impression of doing so, in some cases, where the faces were memorable, able to greet them by name.
That done he headed for the garrison barracks to eat breakfast in the company of the rest of the corps, electing to sit at a different board and with a different hundred-man tagma each morning to thus break bread with an unfamiliar group he led, conversing with and hearing, if they were so minded, their concerns and complaints. Word soon spread that caution was unnecessary; a man could speak his mind to the Count of the Excubitor as long as he spoke with honesty.
Justinus would also watch in silence as, fed and equipped and under their unit commanders, who tended to be the sons of the well-born and thus prone to dissipation, his men went about the duties that had been allotted to them on that day’s orders. If much of what he did was seen as outward show it served a serious purpose; he wanted all to know he was vigilant, to have them think he could see into their souls and sniff out any threat to his primary duty, as well as being a man who, appraised of a genuine grievance, would see it addressed.
He would also, on occasions, turn up and partake in their training in swordplay and spear work, as well as the drills they practised for ceremonial occasions, and given no quarter was asked for, none was given; he was as likely to depart bruised and weary as any other.
Justinus knew as well as anyone that in an empire depending on mercenary rank-and-file soldiers for its security, quite a number of whom came from well without the imperial borders, loyalty was personal, not to the state. He would, as he had sworn, be faithful to Anastasius, and the emperor would be secure as long as his men were loyal to him.
Any breakfasting and organising was completed before the palace, as a centre of governance, came fully to life. Then it became a hive of bodies, hundreds of people from high officials to common scribes needed to run the realm, with messengers coming and going endlessly from all corners of the empire. Every province had its committed representatives just as the satraps who ran them sought support to bolster their personal positions, which were not always in concert with either imperial policy or those they were set to rule over.
The wealth of the Eastern Roman Empire was stupendous. No goods could enter or leave any one of two hundred plus ports or cross a thousand-league border without paying custom dues, nor could land change hands without a duty being paid, while tax farmers ensured that where the imperial bureaucracy ended, the reach of the government did not.
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Given the gathering of huge sums of gold over such a large area and through so many different harbours and markets, corruption along with intrigue was endemic, ranging from the petty squabbles of the palace, with servants numbered in the thousands, to the near blood feuds of those who held higher office and sought to sway imperial policy, differing on what that should be either from genuine principle or in search of individual gain, and that included blood relatives – three competing nephews of a man with no children of his own.
At the head of the whole stood the elderly emperor himself. Anastasius had once himself been a high palace official and had come to the diadem from, as it was termed, without the bed sheets. When his predecessor Zeno died, his empress Ariadne had engineered handsome Anastasius’s elevation over the heads of the more obvious candidate, Zeno’s brother, and had then married him. Having worn the diadem for many years now he was well encased in the ceremony and grandeur of his elevated rank.
Only those with whom Anastasius was intimate, and they of necessity had to be few, were able to discern that he suffered all the frailties common to the merely human; he fretted and was often indecisive, swayed by powerful voices, as well as being so mean he was a byword for parsimony. Of necessity close enough to observe his master, as many others could not, his comes excubitorum knew of his many weaknesses as well as his few strengths, though it would have taken hot tongs to get him to reveal them.
If Justinus slept in the surroundings of a hermit, the rooms from which he exercised his responsibilities reflected more the position he held, a set of sumptuous apartments that controlled access to those of the imperial couple. While care had to be taken not to offend powerful officials, he always made sure they understood his function, which was to keep Anastasius and his ailing wife, the Empress Ariadne, safe from harm.
To do that he had to earn and keep their trust, a problem when he thought Anastasius often ill advised and one particular plank of their policy totally misguided. It was a subject to be avoided, for not adept at telling falsehoods, Justinus might be forced into an honest reply if asked for an opinion.
