David Pilling

The Red Death

“There is another wonder in the country called Ergyng. There is a tomb there by a spring, called Llygad Amhar; the name of the man buried in the tomb was Amhar. He was the son of the warrior Arthur, who killed him there and buried him.”

- The Historia Brittonum

Prologue

Abbaye de Rhuys, Brittany, 568 AD

I, Coel son of Amhar son of Arthur, am close to death. My sixty-sixth year on this earth looms, though I have no great desire to reach it. A man robbed of his strength and vigour is left only with his mental resources to fall back on. Lately these have ebbed. A strange mist encroaches on my mind, making me forgetful and indecisive.

Abbot Gildas, that good man, is most understanding of my frailty, and does all he can to ensure my comfort. The monastery he founded here on the Isle of Rhuys is the finest in Brittany, a monument to Christ built in stone and glass. I will be happy to die here.

My husk of a body, riddled with agues and rheumatic pains, confines me to my cell for much of the day, though I insist on hobbling to Vespers. With nothing to do but linger in idleness and prayers, I find my thoughts wandering back to the past.

And such a past. I have witnessed the splendour and pity of the world, the rise and fall of great empires, and in my own small way contributed to the defence and salvation of the greatest. I have spilled my life’s blood on battlefields from the heartlands of Britain to the desert sands of Africa. There is barely a patch of my wrinkled skin that does not bear the scars of war, which the abbot once compared to the wounds of Christ.

“Like our Lord, you have suffered greatly for the faith,” he told me, “you are blessed to live this long.”

Blessed? Maybe. Privately I suspect my advanced years are a punishment. Age, disease and the sword have deprived me of all those I loved. Their souls have flown into darkness. I am left alone, a fragment of decaying flesh sustained by a little bone and sinew.

My darkness is lit by the sputtering flame of a single candle. The abbot would gladly allow me more candles if I wished, enough to light my cell like the nave of a cathedral, but I refuse to be indulged.

One last work remains. A heap of parchment lies on the lectern before me. My withered hand trembles as it grasps the quill, and my writing is a painful scrawl. Before the mists descend, extinguishing the last spark of my memory, I have taken a solemn vow to commit the story of my life to manuscript.

I do this not to please my vanity, but to leave behind a history that will serve as a lesson to future generations in survival and redemption.

I, Coel, once a soldier and now a poor man of God, write this.

Chapter 1

Unless you are some benighted savage with no knowledge of the world beyond your immediate ken, you will have heard of Arthur. His name resounds from the Island of Britain like a trumpet. The echoes have spread across the decaying corpse of the Western Empire, giving hope to those who dwell in darkness and ruin. He is remembered as more than a man: rather, a sort of god or deathless warrior-king who will rise from his unknown grave in Britain’s darkest hour and lead his people to victory.

I am living proof that he was but a man. I do not mean to recount his life and career, only those details relevant to my history.

Know, then, that I was born the only child of Amhar and Eliffer, five hundred and two years after the martyrdom of Christ. My father was one of Arthur’s five bastard sons, and my mother a direct descendent of Coel Hen, who was King in the North after the Roman legions abandoned Britain to its fate.

Little is said of Arthur’s children these days. Many of the poets and storytellers omit them altogether. This is understandable. All of Arthur’s sons led sad lives, bent under the weight of their father’s gigantic shadow, and most came to bad ends. Only Cydfan, the eldest, achieved peace and long life by shaving his head and entering a monastery.

My father, Amhar, came to the worst end of all. In the last days of Arthur’s Peace, when his teulu were split into factions and there was plague in Britain and Ireland, Amhar chose to desert Arthur and throw in his lot with the arch-traitor, Medraut.

Some days before the strife of Camlann, Arthur and Amhar’s war-bands met in battle. Amhar’s men were routed, and he taken prisoner.

My grandfather was as merciless in his wrath as any Roman Emperor. He cut his son’s throat and buried him under a cairn near a spring. I have heard that he dug the grave-pit and piled up the stones with his own hands, still reeking with Amhar’s blood.

Arthur’s vengeance resembled that of Antonia, mother to the Emperor Claudius, when she sealed up her sinful daughter Livilla and listened to her cries as she starved to death. Amhar’s punishment was to die, while Arthur’s was to personally bury the child he had killed. My grandfather was a stark man. He spared no-one the consequences of their actions, least of all himself.

I know all this from my mother. She, poor woman, also suffered for her husband’s treason. Arthur ordered her execution, and I, who was barely two years old at the time, to be ripped from her arms and brought to his llys at Caerleon. I believe he intended to spare my life, and have me raised as a warrior under his close supervision.

Whatever his plans for me, they would never come to pass. A young warrior of Amhar’s teulu named Owain had escaped the slaughter of his lord’s host. He fled the battlefield and hastened to the palace of Caerwent, where Amhar had placed his wife and son for safe keeping.

Owain had ever loved my mother from afar, which was why he rescued her from Arthur’s vengeance. I was too young to remember, but in later years she told me of the story of our flight from Britain.

The young warrior came stumbling into her bower, exhausted and rank with the blood and filth of battle.

“Your husband is defeated and slain, my lady,” he said, going down on one knee before her, “and his war-band scattered. Arthur has ordered your death. His men are close behind me. We must flee while there is still time.”

“Flee? Where to?” demanded Eliffer, shocked his appearance and the dreadful news he brought. Word of Amhar’s death was already spreading through the palace. Fearful of being put to the sword by Arthur’s soldiers, most of the servants chose to abandon their mistress.

“Nowhere in Britain will be safe for you,” he replied, “we must get to the coast and take ship for Frankia. You and your son can find refuge there.”

There was no time to think of a better plan. My mother fled Caerwent with just Owain for a guard and two or three loyal servants who refused to abandon her. Owain perched me on the front of his saddle.

The fugitives pushed on through the night, allowing their horses no rest as they headed south-west, following the coastline of Gwent in the hope of finding a ship before Arthur’s men caught up with them.

They reached the settlement near the old Roman fortress of Isca. This had become a poor and squalid place, much degraded since the legions had left, but it did at least possess a harbour. Here Eliffer bribed a fisherman with a handful of the gold coins she had snatched up before fleeing from Caerwent. He reluctantly agreed to put to sea at once, even though it was pitch-dark and the weather promised a storm.

We owed our lives to the skill and courage of the fisherman and his crew. After three days at sea, through the midst of storms and ferocious waves that threatened to smash their vessel to splinters, they brought us safe to the coast. Not to Frankia, for the boat was blown off-course, but the western tip of the kingdom of Domnonia in Less Britain.

There was no pursuit. We didn’t know it then, but soon after our flight from Caerwent the hosts of Arthur and Medraut destroyed each other in the valley of Camlann.

The details of that dreadful battle, fought over several days in a haze of mist and blood, are vague and contradictory. It is known that Medraut perished and Arthur disappeared. Certainly his body was never found. His Legion, the elite company of horse-soldiers that had protected Britain from her many foes for over twenty years, was wiped out almost to a man. Of them all, only noble Bedwyr survived to live out his remaining days as a hermit, and perhaps a handful of others whose names are forgotten.

While this catastrophe was unfolding, my mother and her tiny company struggled ashore on a deserted stretch of coast. Thunder boomed and lightning crackled overhead, tearing the clouds to shreds and whipping the foam-flecked breakers into a maelstrom.

“I carried you through the shallows to the beach,” Eliffer was fond of telling me when I was older, “the waves were fierce, and at times threatened to engulf me, so I held you over my head.”

At last the company reached dry land, and took refuge from the elements in a little cave just above the beach. There they crouched like frightened rats, miserable, soaked and half-starved. They had nothing to eat save some meagre portions of bread and biscuit, which Eliffer insisted on dividing equally.

“I am no great lady now,” she declared, “and my descent from the kings of old counts for nothing on this storm-wracked shore.”

It was here that Owain revealed the secret he carried on his person, and which was to prove the bane and blessing of my life. He drew from the scabbard at his belt a sword. Not any sword, but the half-legendary blade known to the Britons as Caledfwlch.

Caledfwlch was Arthur’s sword. It had been knocked from his hand, so Owain claimed, during the battle against Amhar’s men.

“I saw this lying on the ground,” said Owain, holding the sword up for the others to admire, “and snatched it while Arthur was busy defending himself with his shield. When all was over, and the broken bodies of my comrades lay scattered across the field, I stole away with the sword hidden under my cloak.”

The blade of Caledfwlch shone, so my mother recalled, like a silver flame in the damp and darkness of the cave.

“I was going to keep it for myself,” Owain went on, “but that is not right. It was Arthur’s, and should be carried by men of his blood.”

He placed the hilt in my hand. I grasped it tightly and refused to let go, causing the wretched fugitives to laugh for the first time since their flight from Caerwent.

I close my eyes a moment and picture the sword I carried for most of my life. It was an old Roman gladius, a short stabbing blade with a broad base and sharply tapering point. The bone grip was well-worn and inlaid with strips of gold.

Arthur wielded Caledflwch in all his battles. It had once been the property of Nennius, an ancient British prince who fought the invading Romans. He won the sword in single combat with Julius Caesar himself. Nennius got little joy of his prize, for Caesar left it buried in his skull.

Caledfwlch or Hard Hitter was Arthur’s name for the sword. It has gone under other names. The Romans called it Crocea Mors or the Yellow Death, and the British variants were Angau Coch (Red Death) or Agheu Glas (Grey Death).

Said to be forged by Vulcan in the forges under Mount Olympus, some deadly magic was worked into the metal, ensuring that the blade never lost its edge and would cut through any armour, no matter how well-made. A wound inflicted by the Red Death, even if just a graze, would instantly slay the man it struck.

The chief power of Caledfwlch, besides its keen cutting edge, was as a symbol. This was a weapon forged by a god and wielded by heroes. Whoever possessed it could claim to be the natural heir of such men. In Britain and Domnonia there was a lingering prophecy that whoever owned Caledfwlch would gain dominion over the Western Empire. Arthur wisely never tried to fulfil such an impossible dream, but there were many lesser men who dreamed of inheriting the throne of the Caesars.

No human eyes shall see Caledfwlch again. I have taken care to hide it somewhere safe, secret, and well-guarded. The sword has fallen into the wrong hands too often (including mine) and must be hidden from men and their selfish ambitions.

It took me many years to realise the necessity of putting Caledfwlch somewhere it could never be found. Poor Owain, whose intentions were honourable, thought he was presenting me with a gift beyond price when he placed the hilt in my hand. He would have saved many lives, and eased the course of mine, if he had thrown the thing into the sea.

Chapter 2

My mother had some notion of claiming sanctuary at the court of Rhiwal Mawr, the King of Domnonia, but Owain advised against it.

“Rhiwal was Arthur’s ally,” he warned, “and Arthur will have sent envoys to Rennes to tell him of your escape. Rhiwal will not risk the alliance for your sake. He will either clap you in chains and send you back to Britain, or kill you out of hand.”

His words put Eliffer at a loss, for as yet she had no knowledge of the slaughter at Camlann. Owain persuaded her to travel to Frankia on foot, where he planned to enlist in the armies of Clovis, the great warrior-king of the Franks.

It was about this time that he made his love for Eliffer known to her, and begged her hand in marriage. He was rebuffed. My mother was still in mourning for Amhar, and not so forgetful of her high birth that she would consent to wed the son of a petty chieftain.

Owain swallowed the pain of her refusal and stayed with us as we toiled through Domnonia on their way east to the Frankish border. Eliffer spent the last of her gold on food during the journey, bought from passing tradesmen and merchant caravans.

Domnonia was a kingdom forged by British settlers fleeing from the incessant wars and disturbances of their homeland. Eliffer and her companions spoke the same tongue as most of those they met on the road, and learned of Camlann and its aftermath from a group of travelling wine merchants.

“Who rules in Britain now?” he asked.

“No-one,” was the reply, “all the petty kings have turned to fighting each other. Some say that Cador of Cornwall will prove the strongest. So he might, with King Rhiwal to help him. But for now the land is lit from sea to sea by the fires of burning towns, and there is no sanctuary to be found anywhere.”

“What of the Saxons?”

“Their chief Cerdic has broken loose from the treaty lands, and his war-bands are ravaging the west. There are few to stop them, now Arthur’s Legion is no more. Those who try are slaughtered.”

The news could not be worse. Britain had lurched into war and chaos again, as though Arthur’s hard-won peace had never existed.

“Domnonia will be overrun by refugees,” said one man, giving us a hard look, “all looking for work and food. There is none to be had. The wars with Clovis have drained us.”

We moved on hurriedly, before the mood could turn sour and the merchants started asking awkward questions. Owain was careful to keep Caledfwlch in a plain wooden scabbard at his belt, and wrapped the hilt in leather to hide the gold decoration.

“No-one must know we have it,” he said, “Cador of Cornwall would give much to have Arthur’s sword in his grasp.”

“And Arthur’s grandson in his care,” added my mother. She was convinced that the squabbling kings of Britain regarded me as a prize worth having. In truth I was of no importance whatsoever. Having Arthur’s blood in my veins gave me no claim to kingship, for he had refused the High Kingship and ruled as Dux Bellorum, a purely military rank.

Owain had a rather grander fate in mind for me. “He planned to raise you as a soldier in Clovis’s army,” she told me when I was old enough to understand, “and, when you were grown, to take you back to Britain with an army of Frankish mercenaries. You would fulfil the promise of Arthur’s return, and restore peace and order to our homeland.”

I remember the sadness in her voice as she described Owain’s absurd plan. “He also imagined you doing what Arthur never dared to do, and claiming the High Kingship. In his mind, you were Coel Hen reborn.”

Owain schemed and risked so much on my behalf. He loved me for my mother’s sake, and perhaps saw me as the son he never had. If I concentrate I can conjure up a vague image of the man, as though peering at him through an opaque screen. He was a powerful, thickset young warrior, with strong rather than handsome features, and a deep voice. He is one of those whose souls I pray for night and day.

We got safely into Frankia, though it was a near-run thing, and a band of King Rhiwal’s horse-soldiers insisted on interrogating us near the border. Eliffer, who was still a great beauty, managed to charm them into letting us go, though her remaining servants were sufficiently frightened by the experience to abandon her.

“You have nothing to pay us with, lady,” they told her, “and we are not prepared to share your dangers for nothing. God go with you.”

Owain cursed them for cowards and traitors, and threatened them with Caledfwlch, but Eliffer stayed his hand.

“They owe me nothing,” she said gently, “and I have no right to put them in danger. We must carry on alone.”

And so they did, though how Eliffer kept me alive in the years that followed is little short of a miracle. She and Owain made their way to Paris, where Clovis had established his court. They were ragged and half-starved by the time they finally reached the city, and to look at my mother none could have suspected she was royalty.

Owain immediately applied to join Clovis’s elite household guard, privileged troops that got the best gear, quarters and rations. He knew only a few words of Frankish, and had to speak to the soldiers on the palace gate via a British priest who had taken pity on us.

The tall, arrogant Franks took one look at Owain, wretched and beggarly as he was, and laughed him to scorn.

“I am a better man than any of you,” he cried, struggling to keep his temper in check, “and am ready to prove that on your bodies.”

His proud bearing, and the sword at his hip, persuaded them to give Owain a trial. Despite his weakened condition, he did well enough with sword and spear to persuade them that he could be of use, but not in the guard. Instead he was offered a lowly berth in the city garrison, which he accepted for our sake.

My mother and I lived with him in poor lodgings near the barracks, all three of us together in a single tiny room. She, a descendent of the illustrious line of British kings, was reduced to cooking and washing and living alongside the wives of common soldiers. My earliest clear memories of Eliffer are of a painfully thin, tired woman, old before her time, her hands red-raw from endless work: cleaning dishes, washing and darning clothes, toiling over a kitchen fire, and countless other menial tasks.

As one raised to privilege and soft living, Eliffer hated her new existence. In later years she freely admitted that, were it not for me, she would have put an end to it and herself with a knife. For Owain she seemed to care remarkably little, though we owed him our lives. He was the only person who treated Eliffer with the deference she had been raised to expect. Instead of responding with gratitude she treated him like an inferior to the end of his days.

This was not long in coming. When I was five years old Clovis made war on his neighbour Alaric, King of the Visigoths. In the spring of that year the Frankish army marched to meet the Visigoths in battle. Owain marched with it. Desperate to prove himself worthy of a place in Clovis’s personal guard, he had volunteered to join an auxiliary unit of infantry. Eliffer was too proud to try and dissuade him, and I have a memory of standing hand-in-hand with her on the parapet over the city gates, watching the long columns of horse and foot march away.

A few days later the casualties started to come in, carried on the backs of litters and covered wagons. Eliffer did not spare me from witnessing the procession of maimed and shattered men as they came through the gates.

I will never forget the sight and stench of so much pain and death, or the misery of families and loved ones as they searched through the human wreckage for what was left of their men. That was my first exposure to the reality and cost of war.

But it was victory. With his usual swiftness and aggression, Clovis had led his men across the Loire, in the northern marches of Visigoth territory, and destroyed Alaric’s army at a place called Vouille. Clovis personally slew Alaric, and many of his soldiers were made rich by the plunder and spoil that the fleeing Visigoths left behind.

Owain’s well of good fortune had run dry. We found him lying on a filthy stretcher just inside the gates. One of his comrades, a young Frankish auxiliary, was kneeling beside him and trying to force a few drops of water from a gourd through his lips.

I remember the Frank’s head was partially covered by a blood-soaked linen bandage, wrapped tight around where his left ear used to be. He glanced up at us, and his pale face turned paler still as he made the obvious mistake.

“Owain,” he said, patting Owain’s bloodless cheek, “your wife and son are here.”

The fallen man’s eyes opened a little. He was in terrible pain. The auxiliary units wore little armour, and a Visigoth spear had pierced Owain’s chest. The ash shaft of the spear had split and broken off, leaving the iron head lodged inside him. Much of his life’s blood had already pumped out of the mortal wound, though his comrades had done their best to stem it with a crude bandage made from his cloak.

Owain’s spirit was all but flown, and he was robbed of speech, but there was time and strength left inside him for a few more words. He did not look at my mother, but beckoned feebly at me.

Children can be terribly heartless, and I recall feeling no great emotion as I knelt beside his stretcher. Owain had been like a father to me, and risked his life many times over to protect mine, but I appreciate these things only in hindsight. Perhaps I did not fully understand what was happening, or the sight of so much blood and death had numbed my senses.

His fingers crawled to the hilt of the sword at his belt. “Yours,” he whispered.

The young Frank looked impressed. Only the richest and noblest warriors usually carried swords, and it must have been a wonder to him that Owain possessed such a fine one.

Owain tried to pull Caledfwlch from its sheath, but his strength failed. I placed my small hand over his and helped him to draw it out. The blade was smeared with blood, presumably belonging to Visigoth warriors he had slain in battle.

“He has struck his blow,” said Eliffer, “let him go to God.”

“Remember,” Owain repeated as he slipped away, his dying eyes fixed on mine, “remember.”

Chapter 3

My mother had no desire to stay in Frankia after Owain’s death. There was nobody to protect us anymore, unless she married a Frankish soldier or civilian. The very idea of wedding a commoner revolted her, even though she was now one herself. Eliffer had no skill or trade, and no money or anything of value in her possession except Caledfwlch.

Even so, she never spoke of pawning or selling the sword. Caledfwlch was the sum total of my inheritance, and she could not bring herself to deprive me of it.

“Your father’s shade would never forgive me,” she said one night in our lodgings, “nor would your grandfather’s. I do not care to have Arthur pursuing me though all eternity.”

“What shall we do, then?” I asked. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor with Caledfwlch laid across my knees. Since Owain’s death I had insisted on carrying the sword at all times, and grew angry if Eliffer tried to take it from me. She was terrified that someone might steal it, and ever watchful for agents from Britain or Domnonia.

She rubbed her thin hands together, and her eyes took on a faraway look. “East,” she murmured, “the whole of the Western Empire is tumbling into barbarism, but the Eastern half remains strong. These days the pillar of civilisation is not Rome, but Constantinople.”

Eliffer took my hands in hers. “We are going to a marvellous city,” she said with one of the rare smiles that summoned up the ghost of her old beauty, “a place of silver and gold, where the people wear silks and eat caviar. We can start anew there.”

Her description of the city made me eager to leave at once. Nor did I object to leaving Paris, which I regarded as a dirty, alien and friendless place.

We left very soon after Owain’s funeral in a large military cemetery outside the city, and joined one of the many merchant caravans striking out on the long journey to Constantinople, half a world away. The mighty imperial city straddling the Bosphorus was the world’s largest centre of commerce, a place where East met West to trade.

The man who agreed to take us was a Frankish cloth merchant named Clothaire, an ex-soldier who had fought in Clovis’s army against the Romans at Soissons. He had one leg and an inexhaustible fund of stories about his military career. Most of these were obvious lies, even to a child like me. He took a liking to my mother, and chose to believe her story that Owain had been her husband.

“Who am I to ignore the plight of a fellow soldier’s widow?” he said, “no common widow, but a woman of beauty and learning.”

He stroked her hand with his callused paws as he spoke, and smiled at her with a suggestive familiarity that Eliffer must have found repellent. But she was a fine actress when occasion demanded.

“My eternal thanks,” she replied, discreetly pulling her hand away, “and we promise not to be a burden to you.”

Clothaire might have been a liar, but he was no fool, and provided well for the long and dangerous journey to the East. His caravan consisted of a dozen wagons, all loaded with merchandise and supplies. His drivers were honest, sober men, and he hired a reliable troop of mercenaries as a guard. Most of them were Franks, but I remember a trio of Sarmatians, expert horsemen from the steppes of Rus, hundreds of miles to the east.

The Sarmatians were extraordinary-looking men, larger than most Franks, with long fair hair and beards and dark skins. They wore bronze helmets and coats of scale armour made of lacquered bone, and preferred to keep their own company, sitting apart at meals and growling away in their strange language. They took a liking to me, perhaps because I was the only child in the caravan, and let me perch on the saddle of one of their big horses while the rider walked the beast about.

Some seventeen hundred miles lay between us and Constantinople – seventeen hundred miles full of danger, even for a company so well-armed and prepared as ours. I was happily oblivious to the risks, and regarded the journey as a great adventure into the unknown.

We left Frankia and passed through the land of the Burgundians into southern Germania, part of the kingdom of the Ostrogoths. These were relatively civilised and peaceful lands, but the roads and highways were not as safe to travel as they had been under the Caesars, nor as well-kept. Several times the caravan was attacked by bandits, but they were easily driven off by Clothaire’s guards. I recall one of the Sarmatians riding back from pursuing one such band of would-be robbers. His white teeth flashed in a grin as he galloped past our wagon, proudly holding his lance aloft with a severed head impaled on the tip.

Clothaire was amused by my friendship with the Sarmatians, and lusted after my mother for the duration of the journey. She was aware of his intentions and skilfully managed to evade them without giving offence. He made strenuous efforts to ingratiate himself, and had one of the Sarmatians make me a leather baldric or sword-belt for Caledfwlch. I was too small to carry the sword at my hip, so slung it across my back.

Even at that tender age I knew Caledfwlch was an essential part of me. It was a link to the homeland I would probably never see again, the father I had hardly known, and my famous grandfather. The shadow of Arthur loomed large in my mind, though I knew little about him save what Eliffer chose to tell me.

She whiled away the tedious hours on the road by regaling me with stories of Arthur’s exploits and his extraordinary court at Caerleon. I devoured them all and demanded more, and like every good storyteller she filled the gaps in her knowledge with colourful lies and exaggeration.

“Your grandsire was a man of fire and gold,” she told me, “a huge man, the biggest I ever saw, and immensely strong. They called him The Bear of Britain. His hair was the colour of molten gold, his eyes flashed like stars, and he wore golden armour with red boots and gauntlets. A leaping red dragon was engraved on his shield, and seemed to roar and breathe fire when he charged into battle.”

“Did he kill many men in battle?” I asked excitedly. That was what I cared about – not whether he was a good man, or a kind man, but whether he was a fighter.

“Hundreds, I should think,” Eliffer said absently, stroking my hair. I was perched on her lap, and she was seated on the back of one of the wagons, dangling her legs over the edge. Hills covered in dark pine forest stretched away either side of the uneven, rutted road, and rain pattered against the canvas roof above our heads. We were passing through southern Germania, a gloomy, rain-misted land populated by sullen barbarians whose harsh tongue scraped against my nerves.

“Hundreds,” she repeated, warming to her theme, “thousands. Arthur and his Legion slaughtered innumerable hordes of foul barbarians, Saxons and Jutes and Irish and Picts and other such pagan filth. He fought twelve battles, and in every one was victorious. During the twelfth battle, at Mount Badon, he raised a great wooden crucifix and called on Christ to help him vanquish the pagan host. Christ heard him. A great shaft of light pierced the clouds, and in the first charge Arthur himself slew nine hundred and sixty warriors.”

She tapped Caledfwlch’s hilt. “This sword drank the blood of Britain’s enemies that day. But not enough. An entire generation of Saxon warriors was wiped out at Badon, but those folk breed like vermin. Slowly they recovered their strength, while we dissipated ours. Young men grew up who knew nothing of the old wars and how close Britain had come to destruction. They betrayed Arthur, and the result was Camlann.”

“My father was one of the traitors,” I said. She sighed and nodded.

“Yes. He was a good man in many ways, but weak and easily led. He allowed his cousin Medraut to trickle poisoned words into his ears. Amhar was a traitor to his father and oath-sworn lord, and paid the price for it. Never forget that, Coel. Treachery is an unforgivable crime.”

She preached the same lesson many times on the road to Constantinople. As a result the shame I felt over my father’s treachery festered inside me. I swore a private oath to be honest and true all my days, and root out treachery wherever I encountered it.

Eliffer also told me of Arthur’s wars, and the provenance of Caledfwlch. I learned how his Legion, which never exceeded three hundred horse-soldiers, had so frequently routed and overthrown the invading barbarians.

“The Saxons and their kin disdain horses except as pack-animals,” she explained, “and prefer to fight on foot. Your grandsire’s men used to ambush them at river crossings, or catch them in the open when they were loaded down with plunder.”

I devoured her stories of Arthur and his companions Cei, Bedwyr, Gwalcmei and the rest, whose names and exploits will live forever in legend. I also absorbed the lessons of Arthur’s strategy, and how a few well-disciplined men, with good horses and armour, can defeat many times their number of less organised foes.

“As for the sword,” she added, “it first came to Britain with Julius Caesar, who had found it, so the story goes, in the ruins of Troy. He wanted to conquer our homeland, but the Britons fought him under their prince, Nennius. During one of the battles, Caesar and Nennius engaged in single combat. Nennius was a great warrior, but Caesar even greater, and when his legions were forced to retreat he left Caledfwlch buried in the prince’s skull.”

“For a time Nennius hovered between life and death, but no-one could save him, and he died and was buried with honour. Most of his belongings were buried with him, but not Caledfwlch. The priests took the sword, and threw it as an offering to their pagan gods into a certain pool beside Caer Gai, near the mountains of Eryri.”

“How did Arthur come by it?” I asked. Caledfwlch lay unsheathed on my lap. I ran my fingers up and down the blade, marvelling at its strange history.

“The prophet and magician, Myrddin, who advised Arthur when he was a young man, went in search of Caledfwlch. He knew the region where it lay, and beseeched the gods of wind and water to deliver it up to him. The waters of the pool parted, and the sword appeared, held aloft by the skeletal hand of a long-dead pagan king. Myrddin gave it to Arthur, who wielded it as a symbol of his authority.”

Even at five, I was somewhat inclined to doubt this version of events. “Wouldn’t it have rusted, from lying in the water for hundreds of years?”

Eliffer chuckled and patted my head. “An ordinary blade would, yes,” she said, “but this was forged by the gods on Mount Olympus. It could well be indestructible.”

Her faith in ancient Greek gods, especially coming from a Christian, surprised me, but a child can only question so far. I was content to believe that the sword really was Caesar’s, and that Myrddin had dredged it up from somewhere. From the little I knew of that old trickster, much of the story was probably a lie spun from his fertile imagination.

After several weeks on the road we passed from Germania into the lands of the Bulgars, and crossed the frozen waters of the Danube into Thrace, the westernmost province of the Eastern Empire. By now it was deep winter. Our caravan descended from the Haimos Mountains into a bleak, snowbound landscape swept by icy rains and frequent snowstorms.

The native Thracians that we encountered wore fox-skin caps on their heads and thick shawls that covered their bodies and reached down to their feet. We could have wished for such protection against the cold, which was so intense it made watered wine freeze inside the jars. I experienced the agony of frostbite for the first time in my life, and Eliffer bundled me up in furs and cloaks until I resembled a heap of baggage.

Clothaire traded with the Thracians, exchanging cloths and silks for spiced wine and food to get us through the last stage of the journey. He punished the wine savagely, and if I concentrate I can still hear his harsh, cracked voice echoing across the barren white fields, braying some obscene marching song from his time in the army.

The memory of my early youth is wreathed in shadows, and it has taken much effort to dredge up the details I record here. Soon they shall sink back into the black well of my fading mind, forgotten save for the words scratched on this manuscript. One image, however, shall never leave me. The first time I beheld Constantinople shall remain scored in my brain until my dying hour.

We approached the city from the west, the only side it is not bound by water. Our travel-weariness lifted as the distant walls came within sight, and a thrill of excitement ran through the guards and drivers. Clothaire’s mounted scouts galloped on ahead, forgetting their duty in their eagerness to see the fabled city of the Romans.

I had listened to endless stories of Constantinople during the journey, and was heartily sick of hearing about the place. It could not, so I thought, possibly be so impressive in reality.

“O imperial city, city of the emperor…Queen of the queen of cities, song of songs and glory of glories!”

This snatch of rhyme runs through my head as I try and record my first impression. That great concentric ring of fortifications, a triple line of walls protected by a moat and enclosing the landward side of the city, would have impressed an adult. To a child it seemed awesome and not quite real, a dream-fortress that had somehow taken on substance. I had seen walls and towers of similar design as we passed through Thrace, but the sheer scale of the defences of Constantinople was overwhelming.

“There lies our future,” said my mother. She placed a hand on my shoulder and pointed at the city, still some miles away and yet filling the horizon to the west. “There we can begin anew.”

Eliffer had never divulged how we were to forge a new life in Constantinople. I doubt she really knew. She was focused on merely getting there. It was a place of silver and gold, she thought, the richest in the world, and one of endless opportunity. A woman of high birth, beauty and learning could not fail to prosper in such a place.

My poor mother was deluded. New lives did indeed await us inside the city, but not of the sort she imagined.

Chapter 4

We joined the steady flow of traffic entering the city via one of the bridges that led across the moat, and through one of the nine main gates that pierced both the inner and outer walls. I had never seen such a variety and number of people, ceaseless hordes of pilgrims and travellers and merchants and soldiers from all over the civilised world. Dozens of alien languages babbled in my ears, and my mother laughed and clapped her hands for joy at the excitement and grandeur of it all.

Grandeur: that is my abiding first memory of Constantinople. Our caravan rattled through wide marble-paved avenues leading from the gates in the western wall to the very heart of the city. We entered squares and plazas decorated with sculptures taken from all regions of the world and brought here, to this New Rome, before the Western Empire collapsed.

I vividly recall the sculptures, carved in marble and stone and portraying old pagan gods such as Zeus and Heracles, or in the shape of fantastic animals. Added to these were representations of classical heroes of Rome and Ancient Greece, the twin pillars of the Eastern Empire.

We passed a plinth that bore a huge marble statue of a Roman general in full military regalia, one hand raised in victory, his severe, hook-nosed profile glowering in eternal disapproval at the crowds below.

I asked the Frank driving our wagon who the statue was supposed to represent. “Julius Caesar,” he grunted. I gazed up in awe at the great man, and silently made him a promise to look after his sword.

Clothaire led his wagons into one of the plazas, where he called a halt while he went in search of lodgings.

“I’ll take the Sarmatians as an escort,” he said, balancing uncomfortably on his crutch, “the rest of you will stay here and keep an eye on the goods. This city is the same as any other. Rotten with thieves.”

“Perhaps I should come with you,” said Eliffer, “I am quite fluent in Greek and other languages.”

Clothaire’s ham of a face twisted into an alarming frown. “I can make myself understood, thank you,” he growled, “do as I say, and keep that son of yours out of trouble.”

He swung away on his crutch, flanked by the Sarmatians. We waited for their return and kept a careful eye on the wagons. Droves of people bustled through and around the plaza, making the place almost unbearable with their noise and stench.

“Clothaire resents me,” said Eliffer, “I have staved him off with promises, but now our journey is ended, and I do not mean to fulfil them.”

She shuddered and looked around thoughtfully at the crowds. “We must get away. A few more days, enough time for me to wheedle some money out of him, and then we can escape. This city is big enough to lose ourselves in.”

Some hours later Clothaire returned hours in a foul mood, having eventually arranged lodgings for us all in a series of tavernas in the north-western quarter of the city. He had also managed to find storage for the wagons and merchandise, though only after much haggling with a warehouse owner whom he roundly cursed for a crook and a swindler.

“Tonight I am going to get drunk,” Clothaire growled once he had finished polluting the air, “and tomorrow start making a fat profit selling cheap Frankish cloth at criminal prices to half-witted Romans. I have not come all this way just to admire the sights!”

He was as good as his word, and once the wagons were safely locked away proceeded to get roaring drunk in one of the tavernas. Eliffer wanted to lodge elsewhere, but Clothaire insisted that she and I join him for dinner.

The taverna was a small place located down a sloping cobbled side-street. It was dark inside, but clean. The fat landlord seemed eager to please, and rushed back and forth to fetch food and drink. His only customers were Clothaire, Eliffer and I. The Sarmatians stood outside the door and made sure no-one else entered by glaring at passersby.

Clothaire made no attempt to be charming at dinner. He got drunk very quickly on strong retsina, and spent the first part of the meal damning all foreigners and drinking noisy healths to his native Frankia.

“And your country too, of course,” he said, leering horribly at Eliffer, “I offer a toast to the Britons, with whom my people have so much in common.”

My mother lifted her cup in reply and took a reluctant sip of wine. She had remained silent throughout.

“Britain is doomed, of course,” added Clothaire, resting his elbows on the table, “she has lost Arthur, her guiding star, and will quickly slide into ruin. Tell me, lady, where did your son get that fine sword?”

Eliffer started. “You have never asked before,” she replied quietly. I was seated beside her, and felt her body start to tremble.

“No,” he replied, running the tip of his liver-coloured tongue across his lower lip as he studied me, “I have respected you too much to ask questions. Admired you. Loved you, even.”

“Lust is not love,” she said, still in the same quiet tone.

He slammed his right hand palm-down on the table, making it jump and almost overturning the wine jug. “It’s the best offer you will get,” he growled through clenched teeth. “Your high blood and fine education will do you no good here. The Romans reckon themselves Gods, and will laugh at the claims of some barbarian slut to nobility.”

I rose from my chair, furious at this insult to my mother’s honour, and reached for Caledfwlch. A hand seized my wrist and an arm like an iron bar thrust me back into my seat. Screaming in futile rage, I looked up to see one of the Sarmatians – the same one who had allowed me to ride his horse so often during the long journey from Paris. There was no warmth or humour in his heavy, square-jawed face now, and his little eyes were cold and devoid of emotion as he held me fast.

Clothaire was coughing with drunken laughter. “Your pup has some fire in him, Eliffer,” he gasped, banging his chest, “he will need to learn to control it. Not all his masters will be as gentle as me.”

“Coel is of ancient royal stock, and will never call any man master,” Eliffer shot back, her cheeks flaming with anger, “tell your ape to release him.”

The Frank did no such thing. He leaned back in his chair and folded his thick arms. “I give you this one last opportunity,” he said quietly, “will you agree to be my wife, and come back with me to Frankia?”

Eliffer slowly stood up, and I never saw her look more proud or beautiful. She summoned up the ghosts of her royal ancestors and treated the ignoble Clothaire to a blast of hauteur and contempt.

“Never,” she replied with calm dignity, “never would I, a descendent of the ancient line of Troy, consent to bind myself to an animal like you. I would rather sever the veins in my wrists, and die with honour, than submit to such degradation.”

Clothaire’s face suffused with blood. He scraped back his chair and almost overbalanced as he fumbled for his crutch.

“Have it your way then, you arrogant bitch!” he howled, jabbing his finger at her, “but I will extract some value from you, come what may! Let us see you quote your proud ancestry in the slave-market tomorrow! Impress a Numidian flesh-merchant with your fine education, why don’t you, or plead your descent from Brutus with a Persian whoremaster!”

For a moment Eliffer was struck dumb. “You can’t mean it,” she managed, “my son and I are Christians. Christians cannot be bartered as slaves.”

Clothaire hawked up a gobbet of phlegm and spat it on the floor. “That is the value of most human life here,” he sneered, “Roman citizens are exempt from slavery, true, but who will defend the rights of a couple of pale-skinned savages from the distant north? The highest bidder can have you both, and welcome.”

We were held captive in the cellar underneath the taverna all night, guarded by two of the Sarmatians. My mother begged them to release us. When that didn’t work her temper snapped and she railed and threw curses at them. The Sarmatians were indifferent, and remained silent and rigid as statues while Eliffer raged and Clothaire continued to get noisily drunk upstairs.

At last Eliffer’s pride and anger were spent. She gave way to sorrow and crouched in a corner of the darkened cellar, her body wracked with sobs as she held me tight in her thin arms. There was little I could say or do to help. That noble lady, born and raised to a gentle life of privilege, was lost in a foreign land with no-one to protect her. Her torments had only just begun.

We slept little, and at first light the guards seized us and dragged us up the stair. Clothaire was slumped over his table, face-down in a pool of stale wine and snoring like a pig. One of the Sarmatians impatiently shook him awake. He slowly peeled his face from the table and regarded us with a painfully bloodshot eye.

“Have you been weeping, lady?” he croaked, “how plain and ugly you look in the morning light. To think I once desired you. The gods must have made me mad.”

He said something to the Sarmatians in their language. They took us out of the taverna and into the street, which was deserted and covered in thick morning mist. It was cold, and the cobbles were wet and slippery underfoot. I cried out as I stumbled and cut my knee.

“Hush,” whispered Eliffer as she picked me up and clapped a hand over my mouth, “don’t let them hear you. Remember who you are, and be brave.”

The Sarmatians hurried us along through a maze of streets, which steadily grew wider and filled up with people as we approached the main thoroughfare of the city. At last we reached a gigantic square edifice with a domed roof supported by four colossal arches. I didn’t know it then, but this was the Milion, a monument erected by the Emperor Constantine and intended to act as a starting-place for the measurement of roads leading to all corners of the Eastern Empire.

The Milion was also the starting-point of the thoroughfare, called the Mese. It was still early morning, and everything obscured by mist, but I could see the colonnaded porticoes that lined either side of the street, some twenty-five metres wide. The porticoes housed shops and tavernas. Lights flickered in their windows as the Sarmatians moved us along.

They took us to an enormous central forum, dominated on the western side by a marble triumphal arch. I remember gawping at the sheer size and magnificence of the vaulted roof towering over my head. The roof was split into three passageways, and the central archway, the largest, was flanked by columns carved into the shape of clubs grasped by colossal fists. The central archway was mounted by a heroic statue of an Emperor in full military regalia, flanked by statues of two younger men I took to be his sons.

The centre of the forum was dominated by another edifice, a marble column decorated with carved reliefs that displayed the same Emperor receiving tribute from defeated barbarians. Another triumphal statue, similar to the one on the arch, was mounted on top of the column.

One of the Sarmatians croaked at my mother in a painful semblance of Greek. “He says this is the Forum of Theodosius,” she told me, “where we shall be sold as slaves. The statues are of the Emperor Theodosius, who had all of this made.”

I shaded my eyes to gaze up at the column. “Look!” I cried, all my sorrow and fear briefly forgotten, “there is someone up there!”

The column was over forty feet high, and narrowed towards the top, but there was a man standing on a ledge just beneath the statue of Theodosius. From my vantage point, so far below, I saw that he was barefoot and clad in a soiled gown that hung limply from his fleshless body. His hands were clasped in prayer and his face turned upwards Heaven.

“I have heard of such holy men,” said Eliffer, “in Greek they are called stylites. They live on top of columns and high pillars, sustained by charity and praying for the sins of the world. We should beseech him to pray for us now.”

There was little time for prayer, as we were herded towards a corner of the forum. Here there were a number of raised wooden blocks arranged in neat, widely-spaced rows. The blocks were meant for slaves to stand on display during the auction that would soon begin. A few were already occupied, one by a black-skinned man I took to be a Numidian.

He had clearly been a fine-looking man once, handsome and muscular, but the miserable life of slavery had reduced him to a cowed, emaciated brute. He wore nothing but a loin-cloth, and his glossy flesh shivered in the chill. His master, a big Arab with a swollen gut, growled at him in some indecipherable tongue and frequently struck his back and thighs with a vine rod, perhaps to stop him shivering.

The Numidian’s face wore an expression of gross stupidity, as if such cruel treatment had excised his humanity. I can still picture the fresh welts on his back, the wasted muscles of his long limbs, and the dull, glassy look in his eyes. I never knew his name, or spoke with him, but he is one of the people whose souls I light daily candles for.

My mother and I were made to stand on a vacant block. There we waited, trembling and hugging each other, as the morning mist gradually lifted and the forum started to fill up with people.

Many of them were wealthy Roman citizens, whom I had not properly observed since entering the city. In other circumstances I would have found them fascinating, these bejewelled and perfumed aliens, elegantly dressed in long silken robes and conversing in Latin and Greek, which to me were the languages of the schoolroom. The wealthiest, with their entourages of clerks, slaves and hangers-on, projected a superior air, as though they considered themselves a race apart: understandably so, since they were the inheritors and keepers of Empire.

The slave-blocks filled up quickly, and by mid-morning men and women were being sold like sweetmeats. They were transported from all over the Empire and the mysterious lands beyond, these helpless souls, and of many different creeds and nations. Most were pagans, but there were a few Christians like us, their lips moving in silent prayer as they were inspected like cattle at a fair.

The Sarmatians guarded us closely, and the one who spoke bad Greek discussed prices with the few Romans who expressed interest in us. A few glanced with vague interest at the sword strapped across my back before moving on. Had they known its provenance, I daresay their interest would have known no bounds.

Clothaire was presumably sleeping off his hangover, but he turned up eventually, limping along on his crutch and nursing a sore head and a worse temper.

“No bids yet?” he grunted, glaring balefully up at us, “no wonder. You both look like you’re about to be carted off for burial. Smile, woman!”

He prodded Eliffer’s calf with the handle of his crutch. “It is in your interest,” he added, “smile and preen, look pleasant, and you might be fortunate enough to attract a kind owner. You do not want to end as the property of some of the bastards here, I assure you.”

Eliffer didn’t even deign to look at him. “I live only for my son,” she replied in a faraway voice, gazing over the heads of the teeming mob, “whatever happens today, I will ensure that he regains his freedom.”

“Perhaps he can fight his way clear with that,” Clothaire sneered, nodding at Caledfwlch, “you notice I have allowed him to keep his little sword. I thought it might add to his value.”

He positioned himself in front of our block, cupped his hands around his mouth and started bellowing in Greek, vying with the raised voices of the other slave-traders for the attention of passing trade. Still we drummed up little interest, until one man pushed his way through the throng to inspect us.

The potential buyer was rich, judging from his dress and deportment. He wore a long white tunic, and over that a dalmatic (a heavier and shorter form of tunic) of crimson silk fringed with a gold triangle pattern. There was a muscular, stocky look about him, and he wore a long gold-mounted sword in a black leather sheath at his hip.

Even at my tender age I knew a soldier when I saw one, and judged this man to be dangerous. He had a cruel mouth and a heavy jaw, and his large eyes were flat and expressionless.

Clothaire adopted his most ingratiating manner, and bowed and cringed before the Roman as they conversed together in Greek. The Roman did most of the talking. His eye kept straying to me and the sword on my back.

“Be calm, Coel,” whispered my mother, “remember who you are, and do not avoid his gaze. Arthur’s grandson fears no-one.”

In truth Arthur’s grandson feared a great many people, not least this thickset Roman who kept looking me up and down as though I was a choice joint of meat.

“He has made me an offer,” said Clothaire, turning with difficulty to face us and rubbing his hands, “a very handsome offer. More than I expected. He wants to examine the sword. Give it to me.”

I was sorely tempted to draw Caledfwlch and bury it in his throat. I reluctantly pulled out the sword and gave it to him, hilt-first.

Clothaire handed Caledfwlch to the Roman, who studied it carefully, turning the blade over and over in his big, powerful hands. The gold eagles on the hilt seemed to fascinate him.

“He knows what it is,” I whispered in panic to Eliffer, earning myself a furious glare from Clothaire, “he will take it from me!”

“Courage,” she said quietly, “the sword is your birthright. It was meant for you. God will not let anyone steal it.”

Eliffer put a deal too much faith in God. The Roman agreed a price for us with Clothaire, and called his clerk forward. The clerk, a bald, skinny Greek, counted out a number of gold coins from a bulging purse into Clothaire’s sweaty palm.

The sight of so much gold made my eyes bulge. Each coin or solidus was stamped with a stylised portrait of the Emperor and worth twenty-four Greco-Roman carats, or about four and a half grams of pure gold per coin. The solidus was the standard currency of the Empire, which gives some idea of the almost unimaginable wealth that flowed through the imperial coffers.

Thus a bargain was struck, and we became the chattels of a Roman military officer. His name, as his clerk curtly informed my mother in Greek, was Domitius, though we were to refer to him as Kurios (master).

As I had feared, Domitius kept Caledfwlch for himself. I did not see the sword again for many years.

Chapter 5

Domitius had his house at the upper end of the Mese, near the Milion and the vast, looming complex of the Great Palace, where the Emperor Anastasius and his court resided. As a high-ranking officer or doryphoroi in the Imperial Army, Domitius was wealthy enough to afford a fine villa inside a walled enclosure with grounds and gardens, and to employ a considerable household of clerks, servants and slaves.

Slaves, of course, were the lowest of the low in Roman society, and supported the weight of that society on their backs. They could be worked to death, abused and flogged as their masters liked, with none to protect them. This was the degraded state my mother and I were reduced to.

Domitius had us taken to his house immediately after purchasing us from Clothaire. I am happy to note that we never saw or heard from the one-legged Frank again. May God excuse my lack of Christian forgiveness, but I sincerely hope he died alone and in great pain.

We saw little of our new master. I suspect Domitius had bought us as an afterthought, since his household was a large one and could always find a place for extra staff. His real interest lay in Caledfwlch. His one and only interview with my mother, whom he summoned to his presence shortly after our arrival, concerned the sword.

“I told him almost nothing,” Eliffer told me later that evening, “but pretended to be ignorant of Caledfwlch’s history and previous ownership. Domitius reeks of ambition. The less he knows the better.”

“I want it back,” I complained, with all the snivelling selfishness of a child. “He has robbed me.”

“Let us work our way into his good graces,” she said soothingly, “and make him think that the sword is nothing but a common gladius. In time, once he realises that it can do him no good, he will give you back your property.”

She was wrong, for a slave has no property, and Domitius was intelligent enough to guess something of the sword’s provenance. I was desperate to retrieve it, and could not sleep properly or perform my duties adequately. Cleaning latrines and mopping floors are tedious enough duties at the best of times, and I earned a number of stripes on my back for my perceived sloth and insolence.

When I did manage to sleep, my dreams were haunted by vague images of slaughter on shadowy battlefields, accompanied by the echoes of war-shouts, clashing steel, blasting trumpets and all the panoply and splendour of war. The only solid presence in these dreams was Caledfwlch, glittering in the midst of a bloody haze.

A host of faceless men wielded the sword. One by one they were cut down, though not before reaping their enemies like ripe corn. The last of them was a gigantic figure, faceless like the rest, but his outline shone like the last rays of the setting sun. A kind of glory surrounded him. When Caledfwlch fell from his hand the glory faded, leaving a dim afterglow that quickly faded into darkness.

My mother despaired of me, and lived in terror that I might commit some supreme folly, such as attempting to steal Caledfwlch from our master’s bedchamber while he slept. Fortunately, God or fate intervened, and some weeks after he purchased us Domitius was summoned away by the Emperor.

He was ordered to accompany his patron, a high-ranking Roman general, on a diplomatic mission to Carthage in North Africa, which was then ruled by the Vandals under their king, Hilderic. Hilderic was careful to maintain good relations with the Eastern Empire. North Africa had once been part of a Roman province, and the Romans occasionally cast jealous eyes at their lost territory.

The sea-voyage to North Africa was long and dangerous, and it would be months before Domitius returned. He was unmarried – I suspect his interests lay in his own sex, though thankfully he never pressed them on me – and inspired little affection among his servants, so his departure was greeted with sorrow by no-one except me.

Domitius took Caledfwlch with him. The prospect of being parted from the sword for so long, perhaps forever, almost made me run mad. I suffered more bad dreams, and neglected my duties to the extent that the freedman who watched over Domitius’s slaves threatened to have me turned out of doors.

“I have thrashed him until my arm aches,” he warned my mother, “and still he refuses to work. It is not good enough. Discipline him, or out he goes. And you with him.”

Eliffer tried her best to bring me to my senses. A mixture of threats and entreaties, salted with her tears, succeeded in extracting from me a reluctant promise of obedience.

“We must play our parts here,” she said, holding me close and stroking my hair, “at least for a little while. Would you have us beg and starve on the streets?”

I kept my word, and gave the freedman no further cause to wear out his vine rods on my back. In the weeks after Domitius’s departure I performed all the dull, menial tasks allotted to me with sullen diligence, fuelled by the intensity of my hatred for them.

The other slaves of the household were a crude, base-born set of Thracians and Bulgars and I know not what else. None were fit to clean my royal mother’s sandals. They mocked us constantly, calling us contemptible little Britons, the progeny of pigs and devils, and shunned our company.

Life in that villa seemed to stretch into eternity. My mother was worked mercilessly hard, and as the weeks turned into months her proud spirit started to crack. All her hopes had been vested in finding a new life in the city of the Romans, one that befitted the rank and status she had enjoyed in Britain. Instead she found herself treated like an animal, and her only son condemned to the same fate.

The stresses and strains on Eliffer’s mind gradually worked their way into her body. Her health started to fail, and made worse by the brutish indifference of the freedman, who had little compassion for slaves that fell ill. One day she fainted in the kitchens, overturning a pan of boiling soup and scalding her legs. The other slaves present could hardly ignore her plight, and carried her to the infirmary.

She lay there for several days in that squalid, ill-lit chamber, neglected save for one ancient female slave whose age rendered her unfit for any task save spooning gruel into the mouths of the sick. There was no medicine on hand, or at least none that the freedman was willing to expend on Eliffer. He was already stretched to the limits of his mercy by allowing her to die indoors. In any case, I think there was no medicine on earth that could cure the wasting sickness in her mind.

I visited her as often as I was permitted in those last days, and sat by her side while she drifted in and out of delirium. At times she thought herself back in Britain, in the halls of Caerleon or Caerwent, and recited conversations she had enjoyed with men long dead.

Much of my long life has been hard and violent, and I am rendered immune to most feeling save the love of Christ that has ever sustained and nourished down the long years. It is hard for me now, in the barren and dried-up prison of old age, to describe the visceral anguish of a child about to lose that which he loves most in the world. Or perhaps simply too painful: there is a locked vault in my heart where I store all the worst that has befallen me in life. To open it would risk self-destruction.

The loss of Caledfwlch, my cherished birthright, felt to me like the loss of a limb. The death of my mother, the moment in which her hand went limp in mine and I realised she had ceased to breathe, temporarily stole away my reason. I sat, numb and lifeless, and cared nothing for what happened to me.

Many years later, when I went back to Domitius’s villa as a man of consequence and made the aged freedman grovel at my feet, I discovered Eliffer’s humble grave and had her exhumed and re-interred with the honour befitting her true station. Until then I had no knowledge of what had been done with her body, for barely an hour after her death the freedman threw me out.

“Now his mother is dead, the boy has no restraining influence,” he said, “I have no time or patience to school the little beast. Let him take his chances on the streets.”

In the absence of Domitius his word was law, and so I was cast out to fend for myself.

For the next three or four years I was little better than an animal, one of the hundreds of homeless street urchins that plagued the city like vermin. They lived off scraps or what they could beg or steal, slept in gutters and doorways and formed groups that I can only compare to dog-packs.

How I survived the first few months of this hellish existence is a mystery to me. My memories of that time are vague and mingled with the deadening pain of the loss of Caledfwlch and my mother. A large portion of my humanity had been stolen away with them, which may have been crucial to my survival. A child reduced to a beast, who is a stranger to fear and despair and most other human weaknesses, concerned only with finding enough food to live through another day, soon learns how to cling to life.

I was not completely lost to human feeling, and made a friend of a fellow savage. I first encountered him in one of the poorest quarters of the city, running for his life from a tribe of slightly older youths whom he had stolen half a loaf of mouldy bread from.

He had a rare turn of speed, which kept him out of their clutches long enough to reach the alley that I was squatting in.

“Out of my way!” he gasped, almost falling over me in his frantic haste. I hugged my knees to let him pass, and picked up the slingshot I had made from a couple of strips of leather. It had saved my skin in one more than one street-fight, and would now do so again.

There was a low wall at the end of the alley, and the brickwork was crumbling and covered with slimy lichen. I could hear the boy sobbing with fear as he tried to climb up it, with no success, while I busied myself loading a jagged stone into my sling.

His pursuers rounded the corner of the alley, a pack of gangly, dirty-faced youths, of the sort I knew well. Their courage was mostly invested in their leader. I picked him out as I whirled the sling. He was the biggest and oldest of them, with a shock of greasy black curls and a terribly hard-faced look for one so young.

What kind of man he might have become was destined to remain a mystery. My stone hit him square in his right eye, pulping the eyeball and penetrating into his brain. He fell like a puppet with its strings cut, and lay jerking in his death-throes on the filthy cobbles. His followers stopped dead, aghast, which gave me time to load another stone.

“Which of you is next?” I cried with a bravura I didn’t feel. There were five or six of them, each a head taller than me and several years older. They could have easily rushed and overpowered me, but not before I had time to loose off one more shot.

Their fragile courage evaporated, and they turned tail and ran. “That’s right, boys, run home to your mothers!” I shouted after them.

I turned to look at the boy they had been chasing. He was crouched at the end of the alley, looking rather shame-faced and trembling like a dog that had just suffered a beating.

“You saved me,” he said, “I behaved like a coward. I am sorry.”

He was short and stocky, and would grow to be a powerfully-built man, assuming he survived that long. I noticed that his fists were swollen and callused with the marks of many fights, and his eyes had the wild, hunted look about them I had come to know well.

“No harm done,” I said, rolling up my sling, “they were only a pack of sheep. Perhaps they will know better than to hunt wolves in future.”

I offered him my hand, the first time I had offered my hand in friendship to anyone, and he warily took it.

“I am Felix,” he said. “You have a strange accent. Are you a foreigner?”

“Yes. I am from Britain. My name is Coel ap Amhar ap Arthur.”

His eyes widened. “More a chant than a name,” he replied with a quick grin. There was a fellow-feeling between us, and from time on we were firm friends.

In the following days Felix told me something of himself. His Roman parents had died in a recent plague, and he had no other family save some distant relatives in Nicomedia who had no interest in his welfare. Thus he had taken to the streets.

Felix and I took care of each other, avoiding the juvenile factions that ruled the underworld of Constantinople, much as the Greens and Blues ruled respectable society. Our backgrounds could not have been more different, but poverty and starvation are great levellers. In many ways he was the brother I never had.

God knows what we might have become in the end – gallows-bait, probably – but we were rescued by the lure of the Hippodrome.

Chapter 6

As the Coliseum was to Rome, so the Hippodrome was to Rome’s heir. I pity those who have never set eyes on that marvellous U-shaped structure next to the Great Palace, big enough to contain over a hundred thousand people in the stands. Here the Romans indulged their undying love for horse and chariot racing, regardless of the disapproval of the Church, which ever desires to curb ‘indecent’ entertainment.

To understand the importance of the Hippodrome, and the influence it exerted over the people of Constantinople, you must first understand something of the factions that ruled the city. I was a member of one of those factions for a time, so they have a double bearing on my story.

The Romans were fiercely partisan in their support for racing teams. The teams were traditionally identified by colour – Reds, Whites, Greens and Blues – and had been imported to Constantinople from Rome. By the time I write of, only the Greens and Blues were still significant. They had become hugely powerful in their own right, and were responsible for staging all forms of public entertainment: not only racing, but athletics, boxing, wrestling, theatre, wild animal displays and gymnastics.

Inevitably, the Greens and the Blues had acquired a political dimension. There was hardly a Roman citizen inside Constantinople that did not belong to one faction or the other, and wore their colours to advertise the fact. The factions were often used as a mouthpiece for public opinion, and would eventually come close to pulling down an Emperor and destroying the city.

That was all in my future, one I could not have imagined during my lost years of running wild in the streets. It was Felix who first suggested that we find work at the Hippodrome. We had barely survived a bad winter and a particularly vicious beating from a butcher we had tried to steal a leg of mutton from, and were nursing our bruises in an alleyway when he raised the idea.

“I have consulted the fates, syntrophos,” he said (this means ‘companion’ in Greek, and was our name for each other). “They tell me our stars are due to rise.”

The ‘fates’ were a group of coloured pebbles that Felix carried in a little drawstring bag. He claimed to be able to read our conjoined futures in them, and to derive meanings from the pattern they formed when he cast them on the ground.

“It does not feel that way,” I replied, grimacing as I massaged my neck. The butcher had thrashed me with a heavy stick, and there was barely a patch of flesh on my meagre body that was not tender.

“The fates direct us there,” said Felix, pointing at the Hippodrome, about a quarter of a mile away. Along with the walls and towers of the Great Palace, the stadium dominated the skyline.

“If we wish to thrive, syntrophos,” he went on, “then we must join a faction, or leave the city. Do you want to leave?”

I shook my head. Since arriving in Constantinople I had not once ventured outside the walls. It was my home now, and life beyond the maze of streets, alleyways and plazas that I had come to know so well seemed unimaginable.

“Join a faction, and learn a skill,” said Felix, “or several skills. We are young enough to learn. Horse-riding, chariot racing, anything we like. What do you say?”

“They may not take us,” I pointed out.

“Nonsense,” he replied airily, “the Greens and the Blues are always looking for new recruits, especially young ones. Many of their apprentices find the training too rigorous and drop out.”

Or were seriously injured, sometimes even killed, he might have added. I let myself be persuaded, and that same day we made our way to the Hippodrome and presented ourselves at the Black Gate.

The guard lounging by the gate was a bored veteran with a missing eye and little to do. He responded to our entreaties with a growl, and threatened to whip our hides if we didn’t make ourselves scarce.

“Our hides have been whipped once today already,” said Felix, who was fearless, “see for yourself.”

He tore off his filthy jerkin to display the livid welts on his back, some of which were still bleeding. The guard, evidently not so cruel a man as he appeared, blanched at the sight.

“For God’s sake, put your jerkin back on,” he begged, “so you want to join the circus, do you? Wait here a moment.”

We sat on the steps and waited. I toyed with a loose stone and watched the people passing the Palace of Antiochos, a large hexagon-shaped building opposite the Hippodrome. There was a group of orthodox Greek priests among them, tall black-robed figures with long grey beards, marching along like so many angry crows as they furiously debated theology with a pale little monk whom I assumed to be a visitor from Rome. The churches of Constantinople and Rome were forever at each other’s throats, wrangling about the true nature of Christ and the Divinity.

The guard came back with a tall, darkly handsome young man, of noble bearing and stature, but dressed in a torn and shabby tunic.

“Well, here they are,” said the guard, stopping at the top of the steps and gesturing at us, “what do you think? Skinny little brutes. Not good for much except fetching and carrying.”

“I will be the judge of that, soldier,” replied the youth. The guard, who was at least twenty years his senior, stiffened at the sarcasm in his tone.

The youth beckoned at us. “My name is Leo,” he said, “I am one of the principal trainers here. Let me have a closer look at you.”

We obediently trotted up the steps. I noted that Leo was muscled like an acrobat, and had something of the caged animal about him, an unpredictable loose-limbed vitality. He had difficulty standing still, and shifted from one sandaled foot to the other as he spoke to us.

He snapped his fingers to dismiss the guard, who wandered away with a thunderous expression on his face. “So, boys,” he said, “I understand you wish to join the circus. Better to earn a living wage and sleep with a roof over your heads than starve in the gutter, eh?”

“Yes, sir,” we chorused.

Leo smiled crookedly and folded his muscular brown arms. “We get hundreds of little street-rats like you two,” he said, “and turn away most of them. We’re a working circus, not a bloody orphanage. Impress me.”

His voice, which always possessed a soft and musical quality, had taken on an aggressive tone that made me bristle. “I can box,” I said, taking up what I imagined to be a fighter’s stance and balling my little fists, “and ride a horse.”

This was an exaggeration. I had not backed a horse for years, ever since Clothaire’s Sarmatians let me ride one of their beasts during the journey from Paris. I didn’t care. Something about Leo’s manner irked me, and I was determined that he would not turn us away.

“You have a strange accent,” he said, cocking his head and looking me up and down, “where are you from?”

Britannia, I told him.

“Interesting. We don’t get many of your people. What about you?”

He spoke to Felix, who copied me and adopted a fighting stance. “I can also box,” he said stoutly, “and anything else I turn my mind to.”

Leo’s smile widened into a toothy grin. “We shall see,” he said, “come. You have persuaded me into giving you a trial.”

We should have turned and ran away then, and saved ourselves a world of pain and grief. But we were not to know the future, or that Felix’s fate-stones had lied to him.

Leo took us through the passage beyond the Black Gate onto the race-track. I had occasionally wormed my way into the arena and watched the races from the standing area above the cheap stalls, but never stood on the track itself. That privilege was reserved for the athletes and performers, a few scattered groups of whom were in training as Leo led us out.

Seen from the track, the vast scale of the Hippodrome stole my breath away. It was based on the old Circus Maximus in Rome, but surpassed that in size and magnificence. The southern end was formed into a curved tribune or U-shaped structure, while the northern end was occupied by the Starting Boxes, from which the chariot teams would emerge at the beginning of a race. There were twelve boxes, one for each chariot, and the roof was crowned by a statue of four gilded horses cast in bronze.

Marble seats for senators and other wealthy dignitaries were located nearest the track, with wooden benches for the poorer citizens above. Above those were the standing-room only areas that I used to squeeze into. At the eastern end of the Hippodrome was the Kathisma or imperial lodge, which the Emperor and his family accessed via a passage connecting the lodge to the Great Palace. Here the Emperor had his own private box to watch the entertainment in the arena below. It was decorated with silken hangings and tapestries worked in gold and imperial purple.

During previous visits to the Hippodrome I had beheld the Emperor Anastasius in the imperial box, and was surprised and disappointed to find that the most powerful man in the Empire was aged and ugly, bent under the weight of years and perpetual duty.

All this my eyes took in as I stood and looked around at that huge enclosed space. Leo allowed me and Felix to stare awhile, grinning at our awestruck expressions.

The spine of the track itself was lined with bronze statues of horses and chariot drivers, as well as extraordinary monuments to imperial glory and excess. One was the Tripod of Platea, a massive stone tripod cast centuries before to celebrate an age-old victory of the Greeks over the Persians. The peak of the tripod was adorned by a golden bowl supported by a trio of serpent heads. The spine and edges of the track were also decorated with statues of the various gods, emperors and heroes of Greek and Roman legend.

“They put me in mind of you two,” remarked Leo, jerking his thumb at a statue of Romulus and Remus, the infant founders of Rome, suckling from the wolf that nurtured them in the wild, “just beware of the wolf’s jaws, eh?”

Chapter 7

Leo wasted no time in putting us on trial. Since we were young, the trials were more of courage and patience than ability. My claim to be able to ride was tested when he swung me onto the back of a lively Arab mare, and made her trot in a circle while I clung on. I was allowed no saddle or harness, and had to dig my fingers into the Arab’s mane to save myself from falling.

“Keep your back straight,” Leo called out. I did my best. If I had showed any fear, or laid flat across the horse’s back, I would have failed the trial.

Fortunately, I turned out to possess a natural affinity for horses and riding: after all, my ancestors were horse-soldiers. After I had successfully bounced up and down on the Arab for a few turns, Leo declared he would try me on a larger and more intimidating beast, a glossy black mare that was still being broken.

It was impossible to conceal my terror of the mare. A team of sweating grooms dragged her onto the track via ropes secured about her neck. They were careful to keep clear of her flailing hoofs as she reared and snorted, her mad eyes rolling in anger.

“Let’s see you stay aboard her, boy,” Leo said cheerfully, “her name is Tisiphone, after one of the Furies. The avenger of blood, I believe.”

He laughed, for I was trembling visibly. Felix, whose own trial was scheduled after mine, caught my eye and shook his head.

“I have to,” I whispered, and took a reluctant step towards the terrible horse. Her forelegs were skidding across the track as she plunged and fought her handlers. One of her plate-sized hoofs kicked up a cloud of dust that hit me in the face, blinding me.

Leo roared with laughter as I fell onto my backside and rubbed my eyes. He was so engrossed he didn’t notice as another man approached us.

“What in hell is going on?” demanded the newcomer in a harsh, gravelly voice that was used to being obeyed.

I wiped the last of the dust from my eyes and stared up at him. He was an ageing bull of a man, twice the size of Leo, and everything about him radiated crude strength and authority. I recall a large round head with hardly any neck to speak of, massive shoulders corded with thick slabs of muscle, and long arms, somewhat like an ape’s, ending in big, powerful fists.

The man’s voice was cracked and wheezing. He breathed heavily even when not speaking, as though something ailed his lungs. I judged him to be in his fifties. His hair was nothing more than a thin smear of grey on his scalp, his nose a squashed and much-broken horror, and his teeth reminded me of a broken fence. For all that, there was no malice in his expression, and he looked at me and Felix with genuine concern.

Leo started when he noticed the giant at his elbow. “Just putting two new volunteers through their paces, Aquila,” he said with bad grace, “they came to the gate this morning.”

Aquila rubbed his unshaven jaw and cast a sceptical eye at Tisiphone. “That monster will kill them,” he rumbled. “She broke Gallus’s leg a couple of days ago. Don’t be so bloody stupid, Leo. We are not in the business of crippling children. Have them trained on milder beasts.”

Leo’s face darkened with anger, but he submitted and ordered Tisiphone to be returned to her stable. Aquila gestured at us boys to stand in front of him.

“I am Aquila, chief overseer of the Blues,” he said, “it is my job to watch over our people and make sure they are being trained and looked after properly. Leo works for me. So will you, if you pass muster. Unless you would prefer to join our rivals?”

He referred to the Greens. Neither I nor Felix held any preference. We had always looked to ourselves rather than supported either of the factions.

“We are happy to join the Blues, Kurios,” I replied. He studied us gravely for a moment, and then gave a little nod.

“Be wary of Leo,” he said as he turned away, “he’s a good trainer, and you can learn a lot from him, but inclined to be over-zealous. If he gives you any trouble, come to me.”

We learned a great deal in the following days, not just about Leo, but the Hippodrome and the people who lived and worked in it. Below the arena was a large subterranean warren of storehouses and chambers. Here the Greens and the Blues stored costumes, props and equipment. We were surprised to learn that several branches of imperial government also had their departments here. Sombre clerks and officials in plain robes cheerfully rubbed shoulders with athletes, charioteers and the more flamboyant members of the circus, actors and dancers and gymnasts and the like.

Leo delegated one of the latter to show us around the Hippodrome, saying he had no time or patience for the task. I think we had angered him by passing our trials with ease – Felix gave each of the older boys he was placed in the boxing-square with a bloody nose – and his delicate pride was stung by Aquila’s reprimand. He gave the task to one of the actresses, a young girl no more than thirteen or fourteen named Theodora.

Placing Theodora in charge of a couple of innocents was, I think, Leo’s notion of a joke. I knew nothing of her, but was soon to learn of her reputation. Even then, it was a foul one.

It is only with difficulty that I set aside my hateful memories of Theodora. To glimpse her again as I first saw her, a slender, fresh-faced girl with ivory skin and a delightfully winning manner, is a severe effort of will and memory.

Theodora’s manner, which as a child I took to be natural and unforced, was mere artfulness, concealing the depths of a personality forged in Hell. Her waifish beauty and creamy skin were genuine enough back then, though in later years she fought a losing battle to preserve them with cosmetics.

Such was the true nature of the lovely young girl who escorted us, laughing and chattering, through the labyrinth beneath the Hippodrome. She confessed to adore children, and was especially amused by me.

“I have met few of your people before,” she said, gently caressing my hair in a way that reminded me, with a stab of pain, of my mother. “Though I have heard stories about Albion, that cold northern isle, and the courage of its inhabitants.”

Her voice was soft and teasing, and had a practised sensual quality that made me redden, even though I was still at the age where females were little more than a nuisance.

“Child of Albion,” she said with the gentle smile that drove legions of young men mad with desire, “we must give you another name. A proper, civilised name. Coel is nothing but a barbarous noise.”

I bridled at this, and for the first time in years was reminded of the pride of my ancestry. “I am named after my forefather, Coel Hen,” I replied. “He was a great warrior, and a great king.”

Her smile didn’t waver. “A king of mud huts and wet hillsides, no doubt, who hopped about in a suit of woad. However, I see you take some pride in your family. That is to be applauded.”

She paused to let a scribe with ink spots on his face shuffle past, almost bent double under a great heap of papyri.

“The Emperor Claudius named his son Britannicus, in memory of the Roman conquest of your country,” she said thoughtfully, tapping her delicate cheek, “it would not to do name you after an Emperor’s son, unless the inferiority is acknowledged. Let us call you, then, Britannicus Minor.”

I didn’t care for that, but it made Felix smile, and Theodora was amused enough by her own witticism to re-tell it until the name stuck. For the rest of my time at the Hippodrome I was known as Britannicus Minor, which served as a constant irritation and a reminder of Theodora’s persuasive arts. Further evidence of her unusual talents was not long in coming.

After Felix and I were formally bestowed with the blue garlands that marked us out as members of the Blues, we were considered proper members of the company and permitted to reside in the athlete’s quarters at the Hippodrome. This achieved our main object, of gaining food and shelter and employment. We had to work hard for the privilege of membership, and Leo and his fellow trainers wasted little kindness on their younger charges.

Having noticed my affinity with horses, Aquila instructed Leo to train me as a charioteer, which meant I would eventually participate in the races that were the main spectacle at the arena. The other traditional Roman games, such as the blood-stained gladiatorial combats, had long since been abolished. Felix, who was frightened of horses and preferred not to go near them, was marked for the lesser honour of being trained as a boxer and wrestler. Such contests took place during the intervals between races, along with the acting and gymnastic displays.

I was concerned that Felix would resent me for this, but he was too noble a spirit to harbour such petty jealousies. “God gave you a talent, syntrophos,” he said to me with a rueful smile, one eye closed and swelling from a brutal practice session, “you must take full advantage of it.”

To be indentured as a charioteer at the Hippodrome was just another form of slavery, and for most there were only two ways out: death or purchase. The most famous and successful charioteers, such as the famous Diocles, won enough money to retire from what was invariably a lethal and short-lived career.

From the beginning we junior charioteers were encouraged to think of our rivals in the Greens as mortal enemies. Injuries and even deaths were common in the races, which were fiercely contested and always featured a large degree of violence and foul play – unsurprisingly, since huge amounts of money were wagered on the outcome.

No-one in the city, even high-ranking senators and members of the imperial family, was above betting on the races. The high stakes involved led to bitter feuds and clashes in the streets between supporters of the rival factions. Constantinople was racing-mad, and what had started as a mere sporting contest was becoming a threat to the stability of the Roman state.

My training began with smaller versions of the full-size chariots, which were essentially wooden carts with two wheels and open backs. The smaller chariots were pulled by teams of four ponies each, in imitation of the standard four-horse teams. Leo trained us to drive in circles around the track, and how to guide the ponies with whips and shouted instructions. He also gave us instruction in the darker arts of competitive racing.

“The aim of a race,” he would say, having ordered his apprentices to sit cross-legged in a circle around him, “is not only to beat your rivals, but to humiliate them in front of the crowd. It is not enough to simply drive faster. You must strive to get in front of the opposing chariot and make it crash into the spine.”

The spine of the track was where the towering obelisks and many of the statues of gods and heroes were located. It was now that we learned their practical purpose. Any fragile chariot that careered into one of these mighty sculptures would be smashed to pieces. The drivers and horses would be lucky to get away with minor injuries.

“This,” he added, holding up the flail-like whip, “is both a tool and a weapon. You can use it to attack opposing drivers, and flick it at the eyes of his horses. There are very few rules, out on the track. All that matters is victory.”

He gave us his crooked grin. “The Greens, of course, will be trying to serve you the same way. It is my job to teach you to be faster and better than them. More ruthless. I am extremely good at my job, so those of you who want to reach old age will harken to me.”

Leo was a vicious character, and delighted in the bloody and underhand aspects of racing. From discreet enquiry with Theodora I learned that he was from the mountains of Isauria, the son of a peasant, and like me had come to the Hippodrome as a child.

“He was a skilled charioteer,” she told me, “but not quite good enough to be ranked among the best, and clever enough to quit before he came to harm. The life expectancy of a charioteer is not very high.”

“I wonder how long you will last, my dear little Briton?” she added, fondly stroking my cheek, “a glorious life, but a short one.”

I brushed her fingers away. “I am the child of kings, and not destined to die in the arena,” I replied stoutly.

My reply interested her, and some of her usual careless insouciance dropped away. “So you have a sense of destiny, and of a life beyond the Hippodrome. Clever boy. This place is a means to an end, nothing more. Do you dream, then, of returning to Albion and reclaiming your ancestral kingdom?”

I still trusted Theodora at this stage, and was fool enough to confide in her. “No,” I replied awkwardly, “my dreams are ruled by the shadows of my forebears, and the sword they wielded. The sword was mine, but I lost it.”

She frowned, and the mild interest in her large, expressive eyes faded. “You dream of regaining a sword. How dull. A sword is just a thing of wood and metal. What good can it do you? My dreams are rather grander than that. Unlike you, I have the means to achieve them.”

Chapter 8

Years passed, and I grew from a scrawny, underfed little boy into a wiry, leggy youth, strong and athletic thanks to the brutally disciplined regime I lived under. I gave my masters little cause for complaint, for one who has been a slave knows how to maintain a facade of obedience and humility. I was careful to keep quiet, make few friends save those whom I could absolutely trust, and train with all the diligence and commitment required of me.

I grew into a competent charioteer, and a good enough actor to feign hatred for the Greens. In truth I felt no real dislike for the opposing faction, though Leo and his colleagues did their best to drum it into me. Perhaps I was more independently-minded than the other boys, or the knowledge of my father’s susceptibility made me more wary of being told what to think.

I was fifteen and on the cusp of manhood when I participated in my first proper race. My performance that day, and the consequences of it, had a marked bearing on the course of my life.

I recall the excitement and the terror thumping in my breast as I drove my chariot out of the Starting Gate into the arena. As usual, twelve chariots were due to compete, six Greens and six Blues. Every driver wore an ankle-length robe, belted high at the waist and with heavy crossed straps attached to our upper backs, to prevent them from swelling with air during the race and dragging us backwards. Each robe was dyed with the colours of the factions. For protection, we wore leather helmets, shin guards and chest protectors, and carried whips and daggers.

The noise of the crowd hit me like a hammer as the gates were thrown open and I urged my horses onto the track. I had seen the Hippodrome full to capacity before, but always as a fellow spectator. To be the object of so many thousands of pairs of eyes, so much passion and hatred and vested interest, was a searing experience.

As always during a race, the Emperor was present in the imperial box. Anastasius was still clinging to life and power, though so old by now as to be fabulous. His white-haired, emaciated figure, weighed down by the heavy golden diadem on his brow, struggled to stand and salute the charioteers as we did the customary lap of honour around the track. He acknowledged the massed cheers of the crowd with a weary grimace and an offhand wave of his withered hand, and sagged back into his seat.

A herald announced our names in a booming voice that somehow floated above the din of the crowd and the incessant chants of “Caesar! Caesar! Caesar!” The announcement of each name named raised fresh storms of cheers, mixed with boos and insults from the supporters of the opposing faction.

“For the Blues – Britannicus Minor!”

The absurd name Theodora had bestowed on me echoed around the Hippodrome, taken up and repeated until my ears rang and my face burned with the excitement and embarrassment of a hundred thousand Roman citizens bawling at me.

My hand shook as I plied the whip. This was the day I had trained so long and hard for. The day I had to survive.

The Blues and the Greens were staggered, so I had a rival chariot either side of me as we traversed the track. I vaguely recognised the faces of the opposing drivers, though we were barred contact with our rivals, and remember thinking that in other circumstances we might have been friends. They didn’t even glance at me. Their youthful faces were hard and tense, and I knew their guts were churning with the same terror as mine.

When the lap of honour was completed, we returned to the tunnels of the Starting Gates. The gates were spring-loaded, and when the Emperor was ready he would drop a cloth to signal the race would begin. At that moment the gates would spring open, and the chariots burst forth.

The noise of the crowd rose to a delirious pitch and echoed like thunder inside the tunnel as the Emperor rose to his feet again. There was a pause and a drop in the noise, no doubt while the old fool looked for his cloth, and then the voices rose again and the gates flew open.

I had practised this countless times, but never in the grip of such fear. The horses surged out of the gate, and for a moment I lost my balance. Fortunately the reins were tied around my waist – this was the Roman style, unlike the Greeks who held the reins in their hands – and saved me from an ignominious end to my first race, the more so since I knew Aquila and Leo and Felix were watching from the stands.

There was another in the crowd whose good opinion I cared for. Her name was Elene, and she was a member of the company of female dancers that performed between races. She was about my age, a Greek from Athens and the first lover I ever took, though it was more a case of her taking me. Elene’s long, sinuous body was capable of the most extraordinary contortions, and the source of much private delight and exhaustion.

Like every young idiot who mistakes lust for love I was eager to impress her, and win enough prize money in the race to purchase my freedom from the Blues. The latter was a faint hope, for I was one of the least experienced drivers on the track, but determined to try.

Training and instinct took over, and my nerves quickly ebbed. The howls of the spectators dimmed to a meaningless noise as I roared and flogged my horses into a full-blooded gallop. The cart of the chariot rested on the axle, so I was shaken up and down like a pea on a drum as we flew around the first lap.

I made the unforgivable error of focusing all my attention on my horses, and paid for it as the Green to my right suddenly swerved his chariot into mine and lashed his whip at my face. The first I knew of it was the shriek of metal as our wheels ground together, and the burning sting of my cheek being carved open. I screamed in agony, but somehow kept control of the reins and jerked them hard to the left, swinging my chariot directly into the path of another Green surging up behind me.

Felix told me later that many in the crowd took this as deliberate strategy on my part, and split the skies with their approval. I paled at his account, which he recited with bloodthirsty relish.

“The Green panicked,” he said, “and hauled clumsily on his reins. The front pair of his horses stumbled, and the others crashed into them. You should have seen the chaos! They went down in a tangle of bodies, and the chariot flipped over. The driver was spilled onto the track. He failed to roll aside in time from a Blue that deliberately drove over him. Oh, it was glorious!”

The galloping hoofs and spinning wheels churned the luckless Green into mush. I was spared the sight of his messy demise, but heard the roars of triumph and despair that went up from the watching factions. I closed my ears to them and focused on catching up with the Green who had hit me with his whip. He was just a few feet ahead, flogging his horses for all they worth and exchanging insults with two Blues either side of him.

I waited until the Blues had raced clear – despite his best efforts, the Green’s horses were labouring – and then plied my whip until our chariots were roughly parallel. He glanced to his left, and his eyes widened as he recognised me.

A great cheer went up as we tore past the marker for the third lap. I urged my chariot ahead until I was within striking distance of the nearest of the Green’s horses. I struck out at the beast’s eye, as Leo had taught me, but missed and scored a deep graze down her neck. She instinctively swerved to her right, slamming into the horse next to her. The team panicked and plunged straight towards a gigantic obelisk of pink granite, so large the Emperor Theodosius had transported it from Egypt in three pieces and rebuilt inside the Hippodrome.

The base of the obelisk was carved with a relief showing Theodosius giving a laurel wreath to a victorious charioteer. That was the nearest the Green would come to winning any honours. His chariot smashed into the pedestal and crumpled like parchment. The axle parted, sending the wheels spinning away in separate directions, but the Green failed to draw his knife in time and cut away the reins wrapped round his waist.

He was dragged along the ground by his horses as they galloped away in mindless terror, until they slowed to a trot and a band of attendants were able to rush onto the track and cut him loose. By then he was cut to ribbons, though still alive, and had to be carried away on a stretcher. He survived, but his body was never whole again. Weeks later I saw him begging for his bread beneath the arch of the Golden Gate.

The remaining Greens were hot for revenge, and their two best and most experienced charioteers pursued me like a couple of hounds after a hare. They were flamboyant, those two, and much loved by the crowd. One had grown long curly hair that flowed to his waist, and decorated the manes of his horses with green ribbons and garlands. The other sported a luxuriant Persian-style beard and whiskers.

The Greens in the stands bellowed in rage and bloodlust as their chariots closed in on mine. We were on the eighth lap now, and I got no help from my fellow Blues: three were out of the race, one with a lamed horse and two with broken axles, and the remainder were too frightened of the veteran Greens to interfere.

My chariot occupied the middle of the track. The Greens were fast coming up beside me, one either side. They doubtless intended to make a show of my demise before their adoring supporters, and flog me to a bloody pulp before forcing my chariot into the spine. I could do little to avoid this fate except urge my tiring horses in a futile bid to outrun them. If that failed, all that remained was to steer my chariot into one of theirs and hope to survive a deliberate collision.

Fate chose this moment to guide the hand of one in the crowd. This person, along with hundreds of others, was equipped with a bag of lead amulets studded with nails, which they liked to hurl at the chariots of the opposing faction. The amulets were inscribed with curses and obscenities, and heavy enough to crack a man’s skull.

The Greens on the poor benches had already hurled a fair number of these in my direction, along with rotten vegetables and other bits of rubbish. So far their aim had been poor. One hurled his amulet now, just as the Green with the Persian whiskers was grinning and drawing back his whip-arm.

The missile crunched into the side of my flimsy helmet, piercing the leather and scraping hard against my skull. I was knocked off my feet, flopped over the side of my chariot and hung there. Stars wheeled before my eyes as the track hurtled past, just inches below my face. Hot, sticky blood flowed down the side of my cheek and left a red trail in the dust.

My chariot tilted sharply under the sudden shift in weight and for a few terrifying moments wobbled along on one wheel. My horses didn’t slow their pace, or else the cart would have overturned and crushed me under it.

My reins were jerked savagely to the left as I fell, and my horses followed suit. The Green with the long curly hair was forced to draw on all his skill to avoid the collision. He succeeded, just, and my chariot rattled away to safety.

It came to a halt just below the marble seats where the senators and other wealthy men of the city enjoyed a privileged view of the races. Attendants rushed to calm my horses and release them from the traces, while kind hands picked me up and laid me gently on the ground.

I was still dazed, and my vision took some time to clear as someone pressed a sponge soaked in vinegar against my bleeding head.

“Be careful with him,” said a rough, vaguely familiar voice – it was Aquila – and I was lifted carefully onto a stretcher. I blinked, and glimpsed a row of gorgeously-robed old men standing and clapping as I was carried out of the arena.

“Britannicus! Britannicus! Britannicus!”

The senators were not alone in applauding me. My nickname echoed around the Hippodrome like a storm. I tried to protest, but no-one heard my feeble bleats.

God threw a cloak of darkness over me. My eyes dimmed, and I knew nothing more until I woke in the sanatorium.

Chapter 9

The Blues and the Greens wisely kept their own sanatoriums in separate wings of the Hippodrome, or else the patients would have tried to do each other mischief. My head injury was not serious, and healed far quicker than the whip-mark on my cheek, which left a permanent white scar as a memento of my first race.

After examining my skull and stitching up my cheek, the Greek doctor ordered that I should keep to my bed for no longer than a week.

I had plenty of visitors during that time, mostly from fellow Blues eager to congratulate me on my part in the race. We had won, and one of our charioteers had finished half a lap ahead of the enemy. My role in eliminating two of the Greens early in the race, and then distracting their two best men, was deemed vital.

My first visitor was Felix, fresh from his own exploits in the arena, where he had beaten two Green boxers senseless and fought a third to a draw. He had grown into a squat, brawny young man, entirely suited to his trade. His face, which might otherwise have been handsome, bore the marks of years of pummelling, and his blocky fists were forever swollen and bruised.

“One half of the city sings your praises,” he said excitedly, “while the other half wishes you in the lowest circle of Hell. Do you know what I saw yesterday? People in the street making and selling clay dolls in your image for Green supporters to drive pins into. What do you make of that?”

“I think it is madness,” I groaned, lying back on my pillows and rubbing my head, “most of what I did in the arena was more accident than design.”

Felix patted my knee in sympathy. “I’m afraid it doesn’t matter. Passions are running very high at the moment, and the violence on the streets has worsened since the race. Some of our more extreme supporters are using your name to taunt the Greens. There are fights every night. One man has already died from a knife-wound.”

Clashes between rival gangs of Blues and Greens was nothing unusual after a race, but the knowledge that I had indirectly caused a man’s death distressed me.

“That was my first and last race,” I said weakly, “I am done with it.”

“I cannot comfort you there, either. The prize-money was considerable, but most of it has already been shared among the other charioteers. Leo will be along later with what is left.”

Leo did come, late in the evening when I was drowsing under the influence of some foul-smelling narcotic the Greek doctor had dosed me with. His insouciant manner was exaggerated by drink, and his darkly handsome features took on a malevolent appearance in the murky half-light of the sanatorium.

“Our latter-day Achilles,” he said, stopping at the foot of my bed, “slayer of more Greens than the plague. I salute you.”

I caught a whiff of strong wine on his breath, and he swayed slightly as he smiled that old crooked smile I had come to know and loathe. He carried a box of some dark polished wood in his hands.

“Aquila ordered me to bring this to you,” he added, lifting the lid so I could see the contents, “and Aquila’s word is law.”

Inside was a laurel wreath set on a purple cushion, and a number of silver coins. A very small number.

“I might have spent some of it on the way here,” said Leo, stifling a belch, “the wine-shops near the Black Gate are most distracting.”

He was mocking me, of course, and trying to make me lose my temper. It took an effort of will to deny him the satisfaction. We had never been friends, though he recognised my value to the Blues as a charioteer. Leo was a dark and subtle character, and kept his true motives well-hidden.

“My thanks,” I said with strained courtesy, “please leave the box at my bedside. I shall treasure the wreath.”

“I will see you soon, Britannicus,” he called out as he left, “very soon.”

I have no memory of what became of that wreath. Wretched thing. The Romans set great store by these symbols of victory, and crowned their Emperors with them. To me it was a worthless arrangement of leaves.

Elene, my Greek lover, did not come to visit me. This further soured my spirits, and I went in search of her as soon as I was judged fit enough to leave the sanatorium. Mindful of my unwanted celebrity, I borrowed a hooded cloak before venturing out into the streets.

Most of the athletes had quarters at the Hippodrome, but Elene was a mere dancer, and rented lodgings above a shop in a poor back-street not far from the arena. I looked there first, but the shutters were fastened and the shopkeeper claimed not to have seen her all day.

I eventually found her in a darkened corner of a nearby inn, picking moodily at a platter of bread and mizithra, a white cheese made from goat’s milk. Elene was picking listlessly at her food, and seemed more intent on listening to the doleful melody plucked by a lyre-player on the little stage.

She did not look at me as I fetched a spare stool and sat next to her. I was used to her unpredictable moods, and waited patiently for her to break the silence.

“I have lost you, Britannicus,” she said after several aeons had gone by.

“Lost me? What do you mean?” I demanded. Her narrow Hellenic features, which I was used to seeing alive with passion, wore a sombre, defeated expression that made her look old. She bit her lip and slowly shook her head.

“You did too well in the race,” she replied, still refusing to look at me, “four days ago I received a message at my lodgings. It was a warning. I am instructed to let you go.”

The thought of anyone warning or threatening Elene, whom I thought I loved, filled me with rage. “Who gave you this message?” I hissed, earning a black look from the musician onstage. “Was it from the Greens? Do they mean to strike at me through you?”

“No,” she replied calmly, “not the Greens. I would have scorned any threat from them. But I dare not ignore this.”

“Dare not? Who has the power to frighten you?”

Elene finally turned her face to mine. Tears glimmered in her eyes as she laid her hand on my wrist. “You must come with me, Coel,” she said sadly – she was one of the few who addressed me by my real name – “if I must hand you over, I would do it quickly.”

Baffled, I allowed her to lead me out of the taverna. She ignored my barrage of questions and led me through the streets towards a section of the waterfront known as the Harbour of Julian. Here there was a small port, much-used by merchants and visiting dignitaries due to its proximity to the Hippodrome and the Great Palace.

It was nearing midnight, but the waterfront was still packed with vessels, and their tired crews labouring to unload cargo and passengers. Elene led me through the chaos and towards a row of warehouses at the rear of the harbour.

We descended a narrow flight of steps leading to a stone archway. The archway was deserted save for a dead-drunk beggar lying in a pool of his own urine, but from somewhere I could hear music and laughter.

“Where are we?” I whispered. “Why have you brought me to this place?”

For a ghastly moment I thought she had betrayed me to the Greens, and half-expected dark figures to emerge from the shadows, moonlight glinting on their blades.

She placed a finger to her lips and crept towards a section of the wall entirely lost in darkness. I heard whispered voices, and then the jangle of keys and the scrape of timber. A thin line of light appeared in the wall and revealed a small doorway.

The music and voices suddenly grew louder and flowed into the night. A man stood in the doorway, short and powerfully-built, his face hidden under a hood. He said nothing, but I could feel his eyes fixed on me.

“You must go inside,” said Elene. The sadness in her voice made me indignant.

“I must do nothing,” I growled, and reached for the knife at my belt, “who are these people? Why do they want me so much?”

Elene drifted to my side. “Don’t do anything foolish, Coel,” she said, “there is great danger here. You must give them what they ask.”

I felt the warm brush of her lips against my cheek. “Goodbye,” she whispered with a tremor in her voice. “When next we meet, it can only be as friends.”

She hurried away, back towards the steps. Part of me screamed to go after her, but the doorway exerted a strange lure. My heart started to thump as I took a step towards it, and another.

The doorman stepped aside to admit me. I spared him not a glance as I entered a narrow passage, lit by the flickering glow of a torch fixed to a sconce in the wall to my left. It ended in a stout timber door that trembled slightly under the sheer volume of noise from the chamber beyond. There was something uncontrolled and intimidating about that hellish cacophony, and for a moment I hesitated.

“This is shameful,” I muttered, “I am Arthur’s heir.”

Gathering the threads of my courage, I pushed the door open and stepped through into a large cellar with a vaulted ceiling. It was brightly lit by dozens of torches and candles and the leaping flames of a fire set in a stone hearth in the middle of the floor.

The cellar was full of people. With the exception of the musicians hammering away at drums and pipes in one corner, most were in a state of undress, and all under the influence of drink and narcotics. Random heaps of brightly coloured cushions were scattered about the floor. Naked couples writhed and copulated on them, careless of privacy, men and women swapping partners as the fancy took them. The faces of both sexes were heavily rouged and painted, a hideous effect that both repelled and fascinated me. A few wore leather masks in the shape of fabulous beasts.

One of the latter apparitions came lurching towards me, stark naked save for his mask, which was shaped like an eagle and had an immense curved beak. He carried an overflowing amphora of wine in each hand. This alone, along with his swagger, gave me some clue to his identity.

“Welcome, Achilles!” cried Leo, his voice heavily slurred, “come to collect your proper reward, eh?”

His grinning mouth was visible under the mask. Never had I felt such an urgent need to drive my fist into it. “I came because my lover has been threatened,” I replied curtly. “That was your doing, I presume?”

“None of mine. I can do without your dull face at these orgies. Your presence was requested by another. I strongly recommend you have a drink and relax.”

I declined his offer of wine. He shrugged and moved away, laughing as he almost tripped over a threesome.

The pounding din of the music, combined with the heat and the shrieks of laughter and the muggy stench of furiously courting lovers, made my head swim. The wound in my skull started to throb, and I flopped down on a heap of spare cushions to rest and wait on events.

Once the initial shock and thrill have passed, there is nothing quite as tedious as witnessing an orgy. I had no interest in taking part and politely rebuffed invitations to do so from several revolting individuals, male and female, their bodies still glistening with the marks of recent encounters.

A clash of cymbals announced a halt in proceedings. The band fell mercifully silent, and those who were still capable peeled themselves off the floor and each other.

The far end of the cellar was hidden by a heavy silk curtain. As the cymbals faded, this was ripped aside to reveal a wooden platform mounted on bricks, occupied by a male dwarf wearing an absurd parody of imperial dress: a long yellow robe and a diadem made of some cheap metal. His garish face-paint was beginning to run in the heat, making an already ugly visage almost too foul to look upon.

“Friends and lovers,” he simpered in a ridiculously high-pitched voice, “I trust our little entertainment has proved adequate so far?”

He was answered with drunken jeers and insults. The dwarf fluttered his little hands and ignored them. “You will be pleased to hear that your mistress has deigned to join us tonight,” he went on, “to perform for your delight and education. Grovel, you toads, for the Empress!”

This was met by a smattering of applause, and I saw genuine eagerness sketched on the debauched faces around me. Another clash of cymbals sounded from the alcove beside the stage, accompanied by a roll of drums.

The dwarf bowed and shuffled backwards offstage. From the opposite end emerged a woman. By the standards of the orgy she was fully-dressed in a black silken veil that covered the lower part of the face, and a black loincloth. Otherwise she was naked as a needle.

Theodora was no more difficult to recognise than Leo. She had put on weight and muscle since I first came to the Hippodrome, and now resembled a female gymnast more than a dancer. The music started up again, only softer and more rhythmic, and she started to grind and gyrate about the stage, slapping her hips in time to the drums.

In truth, it was pretty poor stuff. As a dancer she was far inferior to my Elene, and the sweating, fleshy lasciviousness of her routine held no charms for me. But then I was sober, and happily unaware of the dangerous influence this woman already wielded.

Nor was I aware of the depravity of which she was capable. I had heard rumours over the years, of course, but most seemed so incredible I dismissed them as hearsay. That night in the cellar, my eyes were opened.

Theodora’s dancing seemed to last an age, but finally the music faded and she flounced to a halt, soaked in sweat and greedily milking the applause of the spectators. Thinking that was the end of the entertainment, I rose to leave. Then the cymbals sounded again.

At first I thought the wine and opiate fumes had affected me. The dwarf re-emerged from the alcove, leading a gigantic white tigress on a red leash attached to a golden collar around the beast’s neck. He showed no sign of fear, even though she could have snapped his neck with one swipe of her paw, but smirked and blew soft kisses to the audience.

Frozen with shock, I fell back onto my seat. No-one else was capable of movement either, save the dwarf and Theodora.

It was now that she performed her greatest trick. Having removed her veil and her loincloth, she stood in the middle of the stage and slowly bent backwards until her palms were laid flat on the stage. Dropping his leash, the dwarf skipped over to her and produced a drawstring purse from his belt. He opened the purse, dipped his hand inside and theatrically held it aloft to reveal its contents – gold dust, I thought initially, but then realised it was brown sugar.

I watched in utter disbelief as the dwarf sprinkled the sugar onto Theodora’s exposed groin. When the last grain was deposited, he snapped his fingers at the tiger. She rose from her haunches and padded towards Theodora, who showed no alarm at the beast’s approach. Her eyes were closed and her painted lips parted, as if in anticipation of ecstasy.

Not a sound could be heard in the cellar, save the rapid drumming of my pulse and the lapping of the tiger’s tongue as she licked the sugar from Theodora’s vulva.

When every last grain was consumed, the tiger meekly allowed herself to be led away by the dwarf. Her eyes were slightly glazed, so I assume she had been drugged beforehand.

Theodora straightened up and executed a graceful bow. This was the signal for the musicians to start playing again. They did so rather clumsily, and their hands shook as they plied their instruments.

“Drink!” cried Theodora, raising her arms high, “dance, make love, give yourselves up to pleasure! Your Empress commands you!”

A few of the more prudent spectators started to clap. The applause swiftly rose to a storm as Theodora bowed again and strode confidently offstage. The dwarf returned to gather up her discarded mask and loincloth. After that he moved among the revellers, who had resumed their previous debauchery with a rather forced enthusiasm. He stopped beside two of the younger men, big and well-muscled and probably handsome under their disfiguring face-paint, and tapped both of them on the shoulder. They obediently left their partners and disappeared into the alcove.

Then the dwarf approached me. “Britannicus, the hero of the arena,” he piped, “your presence is required backstage.”

“By Theodora?” I asked. He smirked and nodded.

“Then you must send her my regards and apologies,” I said briskly, “I have no desire to see her, or to stay a moment longer in this hell-pit.”

I made to rise, but the dwarf placed his little hand flat against my chest. “You are best advised to come,” he warned. “The Empress has picked you out to enjoy her favours. She cannot be denied. It is her custom to choose the strongest and most successful athletes to service her needs. I have chosen two of the finest already, but she is never less than satisfied with three stallions at a time. You should be honoured.”

I felt sick. “I am dishonoured by her vile invitation, and Theodora is no Empress but a common prostitute. Take your greasy paw off me.”

“You are making a grave mistake, young man,” he whined as he backed away, “why do you insist on being so pure? The Empress’s favour is far preferable to her displeasure.”

I noticed that some of the revellers were looking at me with puzzled expressions. It was time to get out. “I am happy to risk it,” I said, and moved past him towards the door.

There was a hiss of steel on leather. I spun around just in time to catch the dwarf’s wrist as he slid a dagger from a hidden sheath in his sleeve. He squealed as I crushed his soft wrist in my grip until the bones ground together, forcing him to drop the blade.

“Vicious little brute,” I snarled, and gave him the back of my hand. He wailed and crumpled to the floor, blood spurting from his mouth and making an indescribable ruin of the already half-melted paint on his face.

The music clattered to a halt. A man reached for the fallen dagger. I stamped on his hand, making him scream, and dived for the door. Shouts of alarm and outrage erupted behind me. Strong arms locked around my legs, trying to bear me to the floor. I drew my own knife and stabbed wildly. The arms slackened their grip and another scream resounded in my ears. I broke free, put my foot to the door and rushed through into the passage.

There was nothing between me and freedom except the stocky figure of the doorkeeper. He was slow to turn as I pounded towards him and launched myself at his midriff. He grunted, and hot breath gusted into my face as I butted him in the chest and forced him back. I tried to stab him in the belly, but my knife got caught in the thick folds of his cloak.

I heard the door fly open again, and the sound of angry voices and racing footsteps. The doorkeeper was monstrously strong, with arms like knotted steel that clamped around my ribs and refused to let go. Panic surged through me. In desperation I head-butted him again, and felt the crunch of bone and cartilage as his nose snapped. He groaned and fell onto his back. I took one last stab at him with my knife, missed, and scrambled away on all fours.

The steps were just ahead, and beyond them the dim glow of harbour lights. There were people there, sailors and merchants and the like.

Something rebounded off the wall to my left – I believe it was a knife – and then I was hurtling up the steps, yelling like an idiot and expecting to feel the sharp kiss of a blade in my back.

It didn’t come, and I reached the safety of the crowds with no sign of pursuit. The naked degenerates in the cellar were hardly likely to chase me in public. I pushed and shoved and fought my way through the startled throng until I was several streets away and felt safe enough to pause for breath.

A fortunate escape, you might think, but I had only delayed Theodora’s vengeance. To her, revenge was an exquisite dish, and one to be savoured over a long period.

Chapter 10

I spent the next few weeks living in fear of assassins, but life at the Hippodrome continued as normal. No-one mentioned the orgy in the cellar, even though Leo and a number of the athletes had been present. I was careful to say nothing about that night to anyone, not even Felix, and became more withdrawn than ever. I was miserable as well as afraid, for Elene deliberately avoided my company and refused to listen when I tried to speak with her. In the end she secretly quit the city, leaving no word as to where she had gone.

In the meantime I was still chained to the arena, and obliged to take part in further races. My brief celebrity was thankfully forgotten as the exploits of other charioteers surpassed mine. I performed with deliberate caution, hanging back with the other stragglers and taking as few risks as possible. Aquila and Leo were dismayed by my apparent lack of effort, and for a time I hoped that they would expel me.

To my great relief, Theodora fled the Hippodrome and Constantinople in the company of a Syrian official named Hecebolus, whom she had doubtless seduced during one of her private performances. He offered her a better life as his spouse, and in return she milked his promises and affection for all they were worth. She did not return to the city for four years.

I thought I was rid of Theodora for good, but she left a reminder of the unsettled account between us. On the evening after she quit the city, the body of my dear friend Felix was discovered in an alleyway near the Golden Gate. His throat was split from ear to ear, and his tongue pulled through the dreadful wound. His murderers had dyed his tongue green, in a crude and successful attempt to place the blame on our rivals. Some half-hearted attempt was made at investigating his death, but the Emperor Anastasius was known to favour the Greens, and so it was quickly dropped.

I had no doubt that Theodora was responsible for Felix’s death, and blamed myself for it. Had I accepted her invitation, disgusting though it was, he might have lived to a ripe age.

I must turn from the memory of private sorrows to the general state of affairs in the Empire. These are vital to understanding how I finally obtained my freedom from the Hippodrome, and was able to resume my search for Caledfwlch.

Anastasius finally died and was replaced by Justin, an extraordinary man who had risen from the ranks of the peasantry to Commander of the Excubitors, the Emperor’s personal guard. At the age of seventy he was still as crude and illiterate as when he fled his father’s pig-farm, but did have the advantages of vast wealth and the command of most of the troops in the city. This was enough to secure his election as Emperor, and so he was crowned Justin I.

Justin might have achieved his life’s desire, but was too far gone in drink and years to do much with it. He delegated most of his duties to his nephew, Justinian, a clever and ambitious little man who was more than happy to labour at affairs of state while his uncle drank himself to death.

The old Emperor came from hardy stock, and for years his liver survived everything he could throw at it. Much happened in that time. In the East, the thinly-spread imperial garrisons struggled to repel the endless attacks of Sassanid Persia on Roman territory. In Constantinople, the simmering hatred between the Blues and the Greens grew steadily worse, spiced by religious as well as political and sporting rivalries.

Worst of all, Theodora returned to the capital. She came minus the Syrian lover who had abandoned her, and in the improbable guise of a respectable wool-spinner. She set up a little shop near the palace, where she sat on the step and made eyes at passing dignitaries. I didn’t believe the stories of her reformed character for a moment, and gave the shop a wide berth.

As for myself, I was not expelled from the Hippodrome for my increasingly mediocre performances, but demoted from charioteer to a lowly assistant trainer. That was Aquila’s decision, one of the last he made before a fever broke down even his strong frame. His body was barely cold before Leo was elected the new chief overseer of the Blues, largely thanks to his long service and ability to offer generous bribes.

Leo’s first act was to enter into talks with his opposite number in the Greens. The nature of these talks was revealed to few outside his immediate circle. Certainly not to me, for reasons he made clear.

“You could have been a good man, Britannicus,” he said – by which he meant I could have been his crony – “but your nerve went. A pity. These days you’re good for nothing but rubbing down horses and scolding trainees.”

Now, if ever, I waited for Leo to make reference to that dreadful night in the cellar beside the Harbour of Julian. But he said nothing, and I knew from long experience how difficult it was to read anything in that crooked smile of his.

“I am sorry to disappoint,” I replied humbly, hating myself and every word, “but am happy to serve the Blues to the best of my poor ability.”

He sneered and left me to polish saddles. Leo and his underlings thought me harmless, at worst something of a fool, and took little account of how closely I watched them. I suspected some conspiracy with the Greens, and it didn’t take a wise man to detect the rising tide of discontent and resentment in the city. Justinian openly preferred the Blues, and his naked partiality, combined with the increasingly severe taxes that he and the Emperor’s ministers screwed out of the people, added fuel to the fire.

In the midst of this dangerous and uncertain atmosphere, Theodora did something extraordinary. The demure wool-spinner was secretly weaving far more dark and complex webs, and in one of these she succeeded in entrapping Justinian.

He, poor fool, became enamoured of Theodora’s beauty and wit. Before long he fell hopelessly in love with her, and wanted to make the former actress, prostitute and dancer his wife. The law prohibited Roman officials from marrying courtesans, but Justinian was not to be denied, and eventually had the law repealed.

I witnessed these events with mounting horror. Justinian was in all likelihood destined to be the next Emperor, and Theodora would be his consort. That would make her the second most powerful person in the Empire, and in an ideal position to wreak vengeance on old enemies.

The Emperor Justin died after a reign of nine years. To no-one’s surprise, his nephew was elected to the vacant throne, and all my worst fears came to pass. Theodora, daughter of a bear-trainer and an actress, was now Empress of the civilised world.

I decided to quit the city. Apart from the threat of Theodora’s growing influence, and the rising tension between the Greens and the Blues, I was plagued more than ever by dreams of Caledfwlch, and desperate to go in search of my birthright. At almost thirty years of age, poor and alone and despised, it was time to shape my own destiny.

I knew Leo would never permit me to leave the Hippodrome, so I made secret plans to flee the arena and the city at night. It was a risky venture, and the skin would be flayed from my back if I was caught. Knowing Leo’s taste for the exotic, he might also subject me to more cruel and unusual punishments. The image of the white tiger’s jaws loomed large in my mind.

Then, in the winter of 532, the city exploded.

Chapter 11

By this time the tension between the Blues and the Greens had infected Constantinople with a kind of madness. The adherents of both factions risked their fortunes and livelihoods and braved the severest laws, all for the sake of their darling colours. Bitter skirmishes resulting in injuries or even death had become commonplace, and the palace guard and tiny city watch were inadequate to deal with the sheer number of disturbances.

Justinian and his ministers continued to ignore the threat, and the Emperor’s partiality for the Blues continued to fan the flames of civil revolt. The more fanatical supporters of the Blues took to growing their hair long and wearing loose garments, in imitation of the barbaric Huns, and pillaging the houses of wealthy citizens at night.

Most of these acts of robbery and violence were systematically planned and organised by the ringleaders of the Blues. I frequently witnessed Leo and his confederates return to the arena in the small hours of the morning, flushed with stolen wine and dragging heavy sacks of plunder. Like parasites, they grew fat on the blood and toil of their fellow citizens, but they had more then mere brigandage in mind.

Besieged by complaints, Justinian at last woke from his dream and took action to restore order to the streets. Too late. His guards arrested a few of the ringleaders, including Leo, and imprisoned them at the palace. In an effort to make all seem normal, he then allowed the January games to be held at the Hippodrome.

This proved an appalling mistake, as the Blues and the Greens clustered around the imperial box in the arena, demanding the release of the prisoners and bellowing their watchword of “Nika! Nika!” (Conquer! Conquer!). The Emperor was no coward, but in the face of such howling aggression he and Theodora had to retreat back inside the palace, though not before that vulgar woman had traded obscenities with the mob.

Up until now I was a passive spectator of events, and had given some thought to fleeing the city. Only my deep-rooted hatred for all forms of treachery, drummed into me by my mother, compelled me to stay.

Within days Constantinople was plunged into anarchy. The prisons containing Leo and his confederates were forced open, and the guards murdered. I saw the freed men being brought back into the arena, carried like heroes on the shoulders of their friends. Silence fell over the multitude as Leo climbed onto the back of an equestrian statue.

“Friends and former enemies!” he shouted, “the hour we have long planned for is here! Our corrupt Emperor and his cowardly ministers have run like cheeping mice back to their palace, leaving the city in our hands!”

He waited, grinning, for the deafening storm of approval to die down. “No more shall we endure the tyranny of Justinian! We who rule this city in all but name shall dictate its future, and the future of the Empire! Let us crown a new Emperor, chosen by us, the people. One who shall heed our desires and do our bidding!”

Now all became clear. The riots had been carefully planned with the aim of deposing the Emperor and installing a puppet in his place. No concern of mine, you might think, but I had lived in Constantinople for over twenty years. It was my home, and I was not prepared to leave it in the hands of self-serving traitors.

Another man was hoisted onto the statue beside Leo. I recognised him as Rufinus, a senior overseer of the Greens.

“You all remember the reign of Anastasius, who ruled this city with justice and fairness,” he bellowed through cupped hands, “let us choose a man of his blood to rule us. I propose Senator Hypatius!”

This was the signal for certain planted members of the crowd to cheer in approval. Their shouts were taken up by the rest, and soon the Hippodrome echoed to the name of Hypatius.

I knew of the senator, one of old Anastasius’s nephews, an unassuming no-mark who owed his rank entirely to his noble birth. Leo and his allies could not have chosen a better man to act as their dupe.

No-one in the baying crowd paid me any heed as I sidled through their ranks, ducked down a passage and left the Hippodrome via a postern gate.

I emerged onto the street facing the Palace of Antiochos. This was full of rioters charging to and fro, waving makeshift weapons and flaming torches and shrieking “Nika!”, while others set about beating up innocent citizens and stripping them of their valuables.

The air smelled and tasted of smoke and burned flesh. I glanced to my right, and saw the wooden roof of the basilica church of Hagia Sophia had been fired. Black smoke poured from the doorway, and the steps were littered with bits of plundered vestments and the broken bodies of priests who had tried to defend them.

Such shameless blasphemy made my stomach churn, and filled me with a desire for revenge on the perpetrators. I picked up a discarded bit of wood and ran up the street towards the Mese, shouting “Nika!” to blend in with the rioters. Fortunately, I wore a blue garland tied around my upper arm, and none gave me a second glance.

I headed for the Chalke or Bronze Gate that was the main entrance to the Great Palace. It was located on a corner of the Augustaion, the main ceremonial plaza of the city. I snatched up a fallen cloak and wrapped it around my face against the smoke from the fires that seemed to be springing up everywhere. The rioters seemed intent on burning the entire centre of the city to the ground. There was no-one to hinder them, for the authorities were paralysed with fear.

I saw no troops until I came within sight of the gate, which was guarded by a troop of Excubitors. They wore iron helmets and mail over padded leather coats, and carried large oval shields, spears and spathas. Despite being armed to the teeth, these men did nothing to deter the outrages being committed right in front of them. Instead they huddled together like a pack of frightened sheep.

“You, there,” their captain barked at me as I sprinted towards the gate, “keep your distance.”

I stopped and tore off the garland on my arm. “I’m not with the rioters,” I cried, throwing the garland away, “I am loyal to the Emperor, and have news that he must hear.”

“You might be a spy, or an assassin,” he said doubtfully, “give your message to me. I’ll make sure it reaches the Emperor.”

The captain was clearly not an advanced thinker. I didn’t trust him a bit. “No. I must see him myself. Look, here is my knife. I carry no other weapon.”

They watched me suspiciously as I plucked my knife from its sheath and dropped it on the cobbles. Even then, the captain ordered two of his men to search me.

“All right,” he said when they were done, “I will escort you myself. Helias, you’re in charge until I get back.”

He referred to his junior officer, who looked greatly put out at being left in command in such a dangerous situation. His men didn’t look happy either.

The captain took my arm and dragged me through a bronze portal set inside the gate. I had never set foot inside the palace before, and gaped in wonder at the interior passage, which was lavishly decorated with white marble and sparkling mosaics.

“Hurry,” the captain growled, and hurried me along the passage until it opened onto a huge parade ground occupied by rows of timber barracks. These were the quarters of the Excubitors, and the ground should have been full of purposeful military activity. Instead I saw soldiers milling about or talking urgently in little groups, with no sign of direction or discipline.

“What is going on?” I asked. “Why aren’t these men out on the streets, restoring order?”

The captain made no reply, and led me into a bewildering network of pavilions, corridors, gardens and galleries. The vast complex of the palace was divided into six rising terraces spread over a steeply sloping hillside. It was an entirely self-enclosed world, cut off from the sordid realities of the city. I passed through chambers big enough to house entire streets, gorgeously painted with frescos of religious scenes and exploits of past Emperors. Servants and guardsmen rushed to and fro, all of them in a state of near-panic.

I was gasping for breath and utterly disorientated by the time we reached a huge central forum. This was dominated by a mighty arched roof, supported by rows of marching pillars and painted with a stunning image of Christ and the Apostles.

The forum echoed to the sound of many conflicting voices. Senators and other officials stood about arguing with each other. From the snatches of conversation I heard most seemed intent on fleeing the city as soon as possible. There was no talk of marching out to confront the rebels.

My eye was drawn to a group in the middle of the forum. One of them was the Emperor himself. I had seen him on many occasions, in the imperial box at the Hippodrome or during public ceremonies. He was a short, plump man in his early forties, handsome in a cherubic sort of way, his curly hair already turning grey.

Beside him was Theodora. I had not seen her at close quarters for years. Her sinewy body was wrapped in purple silks and decorated with costly jewellery in place of the cheap bangles she had once worn, and her face was hard under its carefully-applied layers of cosmetic. Power and exalted rank, I reflected, had done little for the ex-dancer’s beauty.

Clustered around Justinian and Theodora were a group of the most powerful men in the civilised world. I knew them all from reputation and seeing them in the Emperor’s retinue on public occasions. They were: Narses, the Emperor’s steward and chief eunuch; John of Cappadocia, a venal and corrupt minister; Mundus, a tough German mercenary whom Justinian had appointed Magister Militum of the Roman forces in Illyria and along the Danubian frontier; Hypatius, the senator and rival for the imperial throne; and General Flavius Belisarius.

Let a shaft of light pierce the dark clouds of my narrative. Thus far it has featured a parade of fools and traitors, liars and degenerates. My own character was tainted by association with such people. I had sunk to the very depths of shame and dishonour, but God sent Belisarius to drag me out.

I remember being unimpressed by his appearance. The general looked rather like an underfed priest who had donned military uniform. He was tall and slightly stooped, with a bony, angular frame and a severe countenance. His face was hollow-cheeked and long-nosed, adorned by a neatly clipped black beard, and his hair thinning and fast receding from a high, domed forehead.

Belisarius and the others were deep in argument as we approached, and even the Emperor jumped in surprise when the captain clashed to a halt in front of him and ripped off a nervous salute.

“Captain Leontius,” Justinian exclaimed – he had a deep voice, with a slight tendency to lisp – “what are you doing here? You were detailed to guard the Chalke Gate.”

“Forgive me, Caesar,” Leontius responded, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere above the Emperor’s head, “your guards still hold the gate. This man came to us, claiming to have an important message for you. I thought it best to bring him personally.”

“You mean you thought it best to abandon your post,” Theodora said angrily. Her voice was somewhat huskier than I remembered, and her eyes widened in shock as she recognised me.

“Britannicus,” she hissed, “what pit have you crawled out from?”

I stiffened at the undisguised malice in her tone, and recalled my poor murdered friend Felix, his throat slashed by her hirelings.

“Caesar,” I said, suppressing an urge to accuse Theodora to her face, “I have come from the Hippodrome, and must inform you that the rioters have proclaimed Senator Hypatius as Emperor in your place.”

Hypatius was an elderly, dried-up stick of a man, and one of those pitiable characters destined to be a victim of fate. His eyes rolled in his head as I spoke. He started to snivel, and fell to his knees before the Emperor.

“Pardon, dread Caesar,” he whimpered, gathering up the hem of Justinian’s white robe and burying his face in it, “I had heard something of the plot, but was resolved to take no part in it. I swear on the bones of all the Saints, I am loyal to you, Caesar, loyal unto death, loyal…”

He went on protesting his loyalty, while Justinian gazed down at him with a mixture of bafflement and disgust. “Not loyal enough, it seems, to inform me of the plot,” he snapped, snatching away his robe, “why was that, senator?”

The babble of voices in the forum had died away, and all eyes were on the wretched figure of Hypatius. His voice seemed to catch in his throat, and he croaked something about being threatened with death if he betrayed the conspirators.

“Kill him,” said Theodora, “kill him now. Captain Leontius can do it. Let his head be delivered up the rioters on a purple cushion, so they may crown their new Emperor.”

“Sound advice, Highness,” remarked John of Cappadocia in his silken voice. The others said nothing, though I saw Belisarius and Mundus exchange glances.

Justinian rubbed his chin. “I am reluctant to shed royal blood,” he said. “It might create a dangerous precedent. Senator, you will quit the palace. At once.”

Hypatius didn’t seem to comprehend. He just stared, his eyes wide and brimful of tears, one corner of his mouth twitching violently.

A look of fury crossed the Emperor’s usually placid features. “Go!” he roared, his voice echoing around the forum. He stamped his foot and pointed at the door as though he meant to throw Hypatius out personally.

The senator jerked into life and stumbled away, sobbing like a frightened child.

“That was unwise,” said Theodora, “the mob may seize him and crown him Emperor, whether he wills it or no.”

“Dear heart, they may crown a monkey if they wish,” retorted Justinian, “at least we now know their intentions. Narses, are your agents in place?”

“They are, Caesar,” said the eunuch, “I should receive their reports by this evening.”

“Then we shall retire to our quarters and wait on events. Come, Theodora.”

The royal couple departed hand-in-hand, and the remaining senators bowed as they passed. Before she left, Theodora twisted her head around and shot me a glance full of venom.

Narses and John of Cappadocia pattered away on their own dark designs, leaving me with the three soldiers. Belisarius dismissed Captain Leontius back to his post and turned to me.

“Her Highness called you a Briton,” he said, “is that true?”

I replied that it was, and briefly told him my true name and something of my origins. Belisarius listened and nodded politely, as though what I had to say was fascinating. I knew the quality of the man. He had already won a brilliant reputation for his recent campaigns against the Sassanids, but there was nothing forbidding or lofty about him. He possessed the great gift of putting people at their ease.

Mention of my grandfather made him frown. “Arthur,” he mused, snapping his fingers, “I have heard that name before.”

“My father’s people heard stories about him from the Franks,” grunted Mundus in his guttural Germanic tones, “exaggerated tales of a great British warrior capable of slaying hundreds of men single-handed, and who fought demonic pigs and giants. This man might as well claim to be descended from Mars.”

The implication that I was a liar made me forget myself. “Arthur was flesh and blood,” I said indignantly, “he revived the old imperial title of Dux Bellorum, and for over twenty years defended the province that you Romans had so spinelessly abandoned! Yes, the stories of him are exaggerated, as they are of any great hero. Do either of you really believe that Romulus and Remus were suckled by a wolf?”

“As it happens, I doubt the twins ever existed,” Belisarius said mildly. He was not in the least put out by my outburst, though Mundus was glaring at me through narrowed eyes.

I subsided, breathing hard, aware that I had overstepped the mark.

“Tacitus said the Britons were fiery,” he added, looking me up and down with amusement dancing in his deep-set eyes, “they gave our legions no end of trouble.”

“This one lacks discipline,” grunted Mundus, “I would have the hide off any of my men who spoke his mind like that.”

Belisarius didn’t seem to hear him. “You said you came from the Hippodrome. Do you work there?”

“I was, lord,” I replied, remembering to address him by a title, “I was once a charioteer for the Blues, and in recent years have worked as a trainer.”

“Why did you choose to inform on your colleagues?”

All the mildness in Belisarius’s voice had gone. He was snapping out the questions, military-style, and I felt compelled to answer quickly.

“Because I am not a traitor to the state, lord.”

“How did a man of your noble birth fall to toiling alongside commoners in the Hippodrome?”

“By degrees, lord, and through necessity. Noble blood is no guarantee of a meal and a roof over one’s head.”

“What will you do now, since you have betrayed your former employers?”

“Leave the city, lord, and go in search of an heirloom that was once in my possession.”

Belisarius stroked his moustache for a moment, considering. “No,” he said, “I think your departure must be delayed awhile. Mundus, find an empty barracks-hut for this man and keep him there. Have him guarded by a couple of your Huns. I wouldn’t trust the palace guard to defend their own mothers.”

Mundus looked surprised, but gave a shrug of his heavy shoulders. “As you wish, general,” he rumbled, and took me away.

Chapter 12

I was held in a barracks-hut for two days, while the world outside continued to descend into chaos. The Hunnish mercenaries appointed to guard me were brawny, bow-legged savages from somewhere east of the Volga River. Expert horsemen, they wore stinking skins over their lamellar armour, and carried swords and axes. They spoke no Greek, and I had to glean news from the serving-man who brought me my meals.

“The Emperor tried to bargain with the rebels,” he informed me on the evening of the first day, “he agreed to dismiss some of his more hated ministers, and went out to the Hippodrome to swear an oath, with the Gospels in his hand, that he would rule more wisely in future.”

“Did it work?” I asked through a mouthful of the coarse bread he had brought me. The servant shook his head.

“No,” he said sadly, “the treacherous vermin jeered and threw stones, and Caesar’s guards had to rush him back to the palace.”

This was disquieting, but worse was soon to follow. The next morning he returned with breakfast and news that Hypatius had been declared Emperor.

“The rebels seized him and his brothers,” the servant explained, “and dragged them from their houses to the Forum of Constantine. Senator Hypatius begged them not to make a traitor of him, but they ignored his entreaties, and the tears of his wife, and crowned him with a collar of gold. His name now echoes through the streets.”

“What of Justinian?”

He shrugged. “Caesar has summoned a council, though few remain to attend it. Most of the senators have fled to the western bank of the Bosphorus, along with their families and servants. The palace is like a tomb. There is talk that the Emperor plans to abandon the city by boat, and flee to Nicomedia or some other safe refuge.”

He sat on the narrow camp bed opposite mine and watched me eat. I had little stomach for the food, but forced it down anyway, thinking I would soon need all the strength I could muster.

“Oh, and the palace guard have thrown in their lot with the rebels,” added this bearer of happy tidings, “some of them, anyway. The others are wavering between the two camps. General Belisarius ordered them to open the Chalke Gate and join him in a sortie, but they refused. If the rebels tried to storm the palace now, there wouldn’t be many to stop them.”

We sat in gloomy silence for a while longer, while I swallowed the last of my meal and listened to the distant sound of rioting in the city.

“If the capital falls,” I said, “then the Roman state is doomed. The provinces will have to govern themselves, and the Empire will split into dozens of little factions. There will be rival Emperors, and endless civil wars until the Sassanids or some other enemy swallow us up.”

My gloomy forebodings were interrupted by Mundus. The big German lumbered into the hut, an imposing figure in scale armour, greaves, gauntlets and a plumed ridge-helmet with cheek-guards. A small round shield was strapped to his left arm, and in his right hand he carried a fearsome battle-axe.

“You,” he barked, pointing his axe at me, “child of Albion, who claims to be so loyal to Caesar. Are you ready to prove that loyalty?”

I brushed the crumbs from my tunic and stood up. “I am, lord,” I replied.

“Good. Follow me. What about you, little man?”

“Oh, no,” the servant replied, holding up his hands, “my job is to serve men, not to fight them. But my prayers shall go with you both.”

I ran after Mundus and his Huns as they tramped across the parade ground. It was raining, and a strong wind whipped at their heavy furs. The barracks were virtually deserted, save for a few slovenly palace guards in half-armour.

“Hail Caesar!” one of them shouted as we passed.

“Ah, but which one?” riposted one of his fellows. He and the others fell about laughing.

Mundus didn’t even break step. “Drunken bastards,” I heard him growl. The Excubitors were indeed drunk. They had ransacked the palace cellars, and empty jugs and amphoras were carelessly littered about.

The servant had claimed there were hardly any loyal troops left in the palace. He was mistaken, for Belisarius had two hundred of his Veterans – soldiers who had performed well against the Sassanids and now served as his personal guard – quartered inside the grounds, while Mundus had managed to scrape together an equal number of Huns.

These troops were drawn up in a wide pavilion in the southern quarter of the palace. Belisarius was present. Like Mundus, he wore full armour, and exchanged grave salutes with the German as we approached.

“Coel,” he said, with the warm smile that lulled you into thinking he was your best friend, “come to join us for the last dance?”

I nodded, though some of my courage drained away as I looked at his men. Every one of them looked tough and well-armed, but they were pathetically few.

“Lord,” I said hesitantly, “there are thousands of rebels on the streets. Do you mean to fight them all?”

“I mean to strike at their heart,” he replied, beckoning to one of his aides, “victory is best achieved by the bringing of power to a point, not by sheer numbers alone. A few trained and disciplined men can easily overcome many times their number of disorganised peasants.”

His words sounded eerily familiar, and in my head I once again heard my mother describing how Arthur had won his wars.

The aide carried a spatha, a helmet and a small round shield. At a signal from Belisarius, he offered the gear to me.

“I know you were taught to ride in the arena,” said the general, watching me as I took the long, heavy blade and weighed it in my hand, “were you trained to fight as well?”

“A little, if only with wooden practice swords,” I replied, “but I understand the principle. You thrust the sharp end into another man’s flesh, and try and prevent him returning the favour.”

Belisarius gave a short, sharp bark of laughter. “The art of war, neatly summarised!” he cried, “take your place with my men. You have been a charioteer. Now you will be a soldier.”

I donned the helmet and shield and joined the end of the front rank of Veterans. The nearest soldier, a grizzled brute with a great scar running from his church to his jaw, gave me a reassuring wink.

The general clapped his hands and planted himself in front of his men.

“Remember Dara, lads?” he boomed, “and how we drove those Persian desert-rats before us? They outnumbered us twenty to one, and still we licked them. My God, I pity the poor bastards who have to face you lot in battle! Every one of you is worth ten, no, twenty of any enemy I care to name! Isn’t that so?”

The Veterans roared and stamped their feet in response. I was amazed at Belisarius’s cheerfulness and good humour in the face of apparently hopeless odds, and how his men reacted to him.

He turned to Mundus. “Will these fragrant savages follow you?” he asked, jerking his thumb at the Huns.

Mundus nodded his shaggy head. “To the gates of Hades,” he said confidently, “I whip them like dogs, and like dogs they love me.”

“I require you merely to lead them to the gates at the rear of the Hippodrome. Take up position there while I approach the front. Your task is to block the retreat of the rebels when I drive them towards you. Understand?”

“Yes, general. None shall pass, I promise you.”

From my place at the end of the front rank of Veterans, I listened to this exchange with bemusement. They sounded like a couple of madmen. To try and storm the rebel headquarters at the Hippodrome with four hundred men seemed the very limit of insanity.

It was too late to escape now. Belisarius gave the order for the gates to be opened, and led his Veterans at a jog down a stone walkway wide enough for two men abreast. I had little choice but to jog with them, for Mundus and his Huns were bringing up the rear. I was unused to bearing arms, and felt heavy and ridiculous in my borrowed armour. The sword was different. Practice weapons aside, it was the first sword I had held since the loss of Caledfwlch, and a comforting weight in my hand.

The walkway ran straight down the hill, and opened via an unguarded postern gate onto a narrow side-street. Belisarius led us along it and down a connecting alley. The stench of fire and death drifted on the wind, and the alley opened suddenly onto the Augustaion, with the Chalke Gate to our left and the burned-out shell of the Church of Hagia Sophia to our right.

Some tents had been set up in the plaza, which was otherwise choked with random heaps of plunder and burning rubbish. A few rioters were sitting on upturned barrels outside the tents, or sprawled on the ground, drinking and playing at dice. They sprang up at the sight of the soldiers pouring out of the alley, and ran away in all directions when they saw who led them.

The Veterans spread out behind Belisarius. I found myself just behind him, struggling to keep pace with his long-legged stride. We carried on to the Mese and the imposing landmark of the Milion. Here our company divided, with Mundus taking his Huns to circle the Hippodrome while we approached the Black Gate.

Our way was impeded by swollen corpses, discarded plunder and piles of fallen masonry. Belisarius picked his way over the detritus, his men surging in his wake like bloodthirsty hounds after their master. This part of the street was deserted, but crowds were visible at the upper end, near the gates.

There were not quite so many as there could have been. The agents of Narses had been at work, enticing supporters of the Blues away with promises of pardon and reward from Justinian if they returned peacefully to their homes. Still, there were upwards of thirty thousand rebels gathered in and around the Hippodrome.

Belisarius drew his sword. “Charge!” he yelled, “Nika, Nika!”

His men took up the shout as they broke into a run. The use of the rebel war-cry proved a clever tactic, as those outside the gates showed no alarm until we burst from the smoking ruins of the street.

The sudden appearance of armed soldiers confused and terrified the rebels. Most fled in panic, but those few who were armed and sober tried to form a battle-line to oppose us. Belisarius loped straight towards them. I followed, my fears drowned by rising waves of excitement and bloodlust.

Belisarius knocked aside the clumsy thrust of a spear and drove his sword into the wielder’s groin. I glimpsed his victim’s face as it went white with agony, and recognised him as Victor, one of Leo’s chief cronies, a particularly arrogant charioteer who loved to bully his underlings. I had hated the man with a passion, and took the opportunity to stamp on his head as he lay squirming in his death-throes.

A big man wearing a butcher’s apron swung his cleaver at me. I met it with my spatha, the first time I had fought with a sword in anger. The blades scraped together with an impact that jarred my arm, but I was quick enough to duck under his next blow and slash at his leg. The broad, sharpened edge cut through his woollen smock and parted the flesh beneath until it ground on bone. He howled and did his best to cut my head off as I tried to wrench the spatha free. It wouldn’t come, but shuddered and bounced in my hands while gouts of blood splashed my face and tunic.

My problems were solved by one of the Veterans, who killed the man with a clean thrust to the heart from behind. I thanked him and struggled to wrench my spatha free. Meanwhile Belisarius and his men cut the rebels to pieces with brutal military efficiency. The survivors turned and fled back to the gates, where they joined the crush of fugitives trying to find refuge inside the arena.

The Veterans charged, and the area around the gates became a killing ground as they butchered defenceless men and women like pigs. I hung back, shaking with reaction from the fight I had just survived. Trumpets sounded a warning inside the Hippodrome, too late, and Belisarius and his men encountered no organised resistance as they forced their way in over a thick carpet of dead and dying.

The sight and sound of so much violent death awoke something feral inside me. I found myself bounding along in the wake of the Veterans, waving my sword and screaming my grandfather’s name.

A man rose from the piles of bodies strewn before the gates, blood pouring from his mouth. I stabbed him in the gut and relished his inhuman shrieks as I twisted the blade with all my strength.

“Traitors!” I spat as he died, “traitors!”

I record this killing, and the many others I committed that day, with no sense of joy or shame. God forgive me, but the memory of what happened at the Hippodrome arouses no great emotion inside me. The Nika riots had to be suppressed, and the Empire preserved from a fatally divisive civil war. But for the courage and prompt action of a handful of men – and Theodora, though I shall come to that later – the world might look very different today.

Belisarius allowed the rebels no respite. If any of the ringleaders had seen how scanty his numbers were, they might yet have rallied and overwhelmed his Veterans, but panic quickly spread through their ranks. They were driven like sheep across the track of the arena. Many tried to escape via the gates at the rear, only to find Mundus and two hundred grinning Huns waiting for them.

My arm grew tired of killing as I paid off a good number of old scores. All the slights and insults I had patiently endured over the years boiled over. I went hunting for familiar faces, and chopped them down with no more mercy than a wild beast shows its prey.

To my immense frustration, the scalp I craved most of all eluded me. Leo had escaped.

When he saw that the spirit of the rebellion was broken, Belisarius did his best to limit the massacre of Roman citizens. To no avail – the Huns were in an ungovernable killing rage, and his Veterans in no mood to spare those who had threatened the security of the state. The floor of the arena was piled high with corpses, and the foul reek of blood and excrement and spilled entrails rose to Heaven, so that God Himself might savour the vengeance of Justinian.

The killing lasted all through the night. When dawn broke, grey and timorous, the only living souls inside the Hippodrome were the gore-slathered figures of Belisarius and his troops.

I was leaning on my sword, breathing hard and wincing at the cramp in my muscles, when a heavy hand descended on my shoulder.

“Still alive, then,” grunted a weary but familiar voice. I glanced up to see the rugged, unlovely features of Mundus, in no way improved by a thick coating of other men’s blood.

Belisarius was standing nearby, drawn and pale after the night’s work. Like everyone else he was covered in gore. Narses was at his side. To my surprise the delicate-looking eunuch was garbed like a soldier in helmet and breastplate, and the sword thrust into his belt was stained and notched with use.

“I saw this one at work last night,” Mundus said to the general, slapping me on the shoulder again, “he’s a right bloody killer. A bit old for a recruit, maybe, but he could make a decent auxiliary.”

Belisarius nodded, though his mind was clearly on other matters. “Is the rebellion over, lord?” I asked, doing my best to straighten up.

“All bar the mopping-up,” said Narses before Belisarius could answer, “Hypatius and his brothers are in a dungeon, and their supporters have either fled the city or taken refuge. We shall soon smoke them out of their holes.”

“The Emperor shall use mercy, I hope,” said Belisarius, though judging from his expression he knew it was a false hope. Narses snorted, and waddled away to consult with a group of officers on horseback. I noticed a couple of senators among them. They had presumably crept back into the city now the danger was passed.

Belisarius pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes for a few seconds. He suddenly looked much older than his years – he was about my age – and utterly drained of energy.

“Coel,” he said, glancing at me, “I also saw you at work. No-one could doubt your strength and enthusiasm, but you wield that sword like an apprentice butcher with a cleaver. How would you like to learn to use it properly? I think we can assume that your contract with the Circus is no longer valid.”

He was offering me the chance to become a soldier. The prospect was not a displeasing one, though it meant my freedom would again be limited.

“I have sworn an oath, lord,” I said, “to find and recover my birthright.”

“I am not in the habit of forcing men to break their oaths,” he replied impatiently, “what is this birthright of yours?”

I felt awkward telling him, but under the gaze of those shrewd eyes it was impossible to lie or dissemble. “A sword that belonged to my grandfather, lord. It is all I had to remind me of my family and homeland. I lost it many years ago. A Roman officer named Domitius stole the sword from me and took it with him to Carthage. He never returned.”

Belisarius stared at me in silence for a moment, and then gave a dry little chuckle. “Join the ranks of my foederati, Coel son of Amhar,” he said, “and you may have a chance to find Arthur’s sword. A better chance, at any rate, than if you journeyed to North Africa on your own.”

I little knew what he meant, but the winds of fate were once again blowing me in a direction I could not resist. There, on the blood-soaked ground of the arena, I knelt before him and was sworn into the Roman army.

Chapter 13

The immediate aftermath of the revolt witnessed one more spate of killing. Left to himself, the Emperor might have spared the lives of the hapless pretender Hypatius and his brothers, but Theodora persuaded him otherwise. Such clemency, she argued, would only encourage further others to conspire against the throne. In this, as in so many other things, Justinian was her obedient slave, and so all three men were strangled in their cells.

I was enlisted into the foederati, mercenary horsemen bound by various treaties to serve in the Roman army. They served under the banners of their own tribal chiefs, but as the sole Briton I was placed among the Heruli, from a tribe in Eastern Germania. Five hundred of these warriors, along with other units, had been recalled from their outposts along the Danubian frontier after the Nika riots, to defend the city in case of another revolt.

The Heruli were cousins to the Saxons, whom my British ancestors had been fighting for generations. I accepted the placement – I had no choice in the matter – and had to smother my disgust at being forced to train and co-exist with coarse, flaxen-haired barbarians whom I regarded as racial enemies.

Life has often forced me to adapt, and I slowly learned to smother my prejudices and respect my new comrades. As soldiers, they were worthy of anyone’s respect. The Romans had started to recruit the Heruli as mercenaries after suffering a number of disastrous defeats against them in battle, and by the time of Justinian’s reign they were an integral part of the imperial army.

That army was very different from the Roman army of antiquity that had conquered much of the known world. The famous infantry legions were a thing of the past, as the diminished Empire no longer had the resources and manpower to maintain them. Instead the army was now divided into squadrons of at most twelve hundred men each.

The total fighting strength of the Empire was roughly three hundred thousand men. About two-thirds of these were lightly-armed garrison troops, the limatanei, whose task was to guard the frontiers. The rest made up the mobile field army or comitanenses, largely drawn from the tribes of Germania and Scythia or the bleak mountain regions of Armenia and Isauria. These regions produced tough, hardy men and ideal soldier material.

With such a denuded military, and surrounded by hostile nations eager to pick away at Roman territory, the Empire was hard-pressed to defend its borders. Still, successive Emperors dreamed of restoring the glory of the Western Empire and recapturing the Eternal City of Rome.

None cherished grander dreams than Justinian. I soon learned the extent of them, along with the meaning of Belisarius’ words when he took my oath in the Hippodrome.

The Heruli had their barracks and training ground outside the city, since they weren’t trusted enough to be quartered within the walls. At first I struggled to earn their grudging tolerance, as I struggled to learn their drill and how to use spears and javelins from horseback. They were raised in the saddle, like most of these nomadic barbarian tribes, and heartily despised anyone who couldn’t match their skill at horsemanship.

At meals I sat apart, wincing as I tried to force down the crude mess of beans, stew and black bread that made up their rations. The Heruli liked to wash down this ghastly repast with great draughts of foul-tasting ale. It was powerful stuff, and fights inevitably broke out, often resulting in serious injury or even death. Such incidents seldom met with any punishment. There was no-one to enforce it, and a few crippled or dead foederati were counted as no great loss. Such was the discipline of the Roman army in this degenerate age!

On the seventh day after my enlistment, a Roman officer came to the camp with orders for me to accompany him to the palace. The commander of the Heruli, a foul-mouthed veteran named Pharas, shrugged and gave me permission to go.

We rode into the city via one of the Military Gates and made our way along the Mese towards the palace. The thoroughfare was less densely-populated than usual, for the Nika riots and the massacre at the Hippodrome cast a long shadow. Guardsmen patrolled the streets, casting suspicious eyes on the citizens and making arrests on the slightest pretext.

The Hippodrome itself, once the heartbeat of the city, was dark and silent. Justinian had ordered the Circus to be closed down, and the surviving rebels either imprisoned or sold into slavery. Some of these wretches were forced to remove the rotting bodies of their former comrades from the arena, and to scrub it clean of blood. Even so, the Hippodrome still stank of death, and I had to clap a hand over my face as we rode past.

A dozen or so slaves were formed into a group outside the gates, chained together under the watchful gaze of a troop of Huns. The slaves bore the marks of slavery branded into their cheeks and shoulders. A few glanced up in surprise as I cantered by, and no doubt wondered how Britannicus had managed to avoid their miserable fate.

As we approached the Augusteum, I noticed a number of serious-looking men carrying charts and styluses and examining the charred ruins of the buildings destroyed by the rioters. These were Justinian’s architects, employed to plan his grand project to rebuild the centre of the city. Their labours would eventually result in the great domed cathedral of Hagia Sophia, built on the foundations of the old basilica church, and one of the wonders of the world. The Emperor’s grand vision, shared by few at the time, was typical of the strange mixture of capacity, spite, wisdom, foresight and envy that made up his character.

We entered the palace via the Chalke Gate, where the officer exchanged salutes with the Excubitors on duty. I noticed how young and fresh-faced they were, and that Captain Leontius and his men were absent.

“Leontius and his fellow waverers were stripped of their rank after the riots,” the officer explained in response to my query, “and sent to the Eastern front. The men at the gate are raw recruits. They are young and inexperienced, but at least their loyalty is not suspect.”

He led me to the upper levels of the palace, up flights of stairs and through a warren of halls and corridors, until we reached a suite of private rooms guarded by a couple of Belisarius’s Veterans. They stood aside to allow us through into a large, sparsely-furnished chamber that opened onto a balcony with a splendid view of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara.

Belisarius and Narses were sitting at a table in the centre of the room, poring over a scattered heap of maps. Neither of them looked up as we entered.

“Sirs,” announced the officer, “as instructed, I have brought the Briton from the camp of the Heruli.”

“Thank you,” murmured Narses, “go and attend to your duties. I’m sure you must have some.”

He flapped a plump hand vaguely in the direction of the officer, who saluted and marched out. The eunuch and the general scraped back their chairs and turned their attention to me.

“How is the life of a soldier suiting you, Coel?” asked Belisarius, “I trust the company of the Heruli is not too unbearable. They are rough souls, but among the best fighters we have.”

“It is hard, sir,” I admitted, “but no harder than I expected.”

“I am impressed by your forbearance,” said Narses, lacing his fingers together over his protruding belly, “the Heruli are a smelly, undisciplined pack of savages. I could not bear their company for an hour, let alone a week.”

I said nothing, and wondered at their reason for summoning me. These men were the twin pillars that the Empire rested on. Everything they did was for the sake of Rome – mingled, in the case of Narses, with private ambition.

“Come closer,” said Belisarius, “and take a look at this map.”

I approached the table. The map he indicated showed the coastline of North Africa, with the cities of Carthage and Hippo Regius marked out in red.

“You must have heard,” he added, “that the Emperor has designs on reclaiming North Africa for Rome.”

I nodded. It was common knowledge that Justinian wished to retake the former Roman province, though his plans had been interrupted by the riots. Two years previously, the reigning King of the Vandals, Hilderic, had been deposed and imprisoned by his cousin Gelimer. Seeing an opportunity to exploit discord among the Vandals, Justinian had wasted no time in protesting at Hilderic’s treatment and demanding his release and restoration. Secure in his power and contemptuous of the Romans, whom he regarded as degenerate, Gelimer ignored him.

That was the situation as I, and most Roman citizens who took an interest in the world outside Constantinople, understood it. Justinian’s interference in North Africa seemed another of his vain follies. Sixty years previously, a previous Emperor had tried to reconquer the province with a fleet of ten thousand ships and an army of over a hundred thousand men. The fleet and the army were both exterminated by the Vandals, and the Roman military had never truly recovered. Certainly the Empire could never hope to mount such a vast expedition again.

“Now that order has been restored to the capital,” said Belisarius, “Caesar is determined to resume his plans. The invasion of North Africa will go ahead, and I have been appointed to lead the expedition. Close your mouth, Coel, you might catch flies.”

I stopped gaping and racked my brains for something to say. There was nothing positive to be said about the proposed expedition. It was madness, sheer vanity, though at least now I understood why Belisarius had recommended I join the army.

Narses was watching me closely. “Belisarius has told me about your lost property,” he said in the ridiculous high-pitched trill that masked his formidable intellect, “a sword owned by your grandfather. Arthur, wasn’t it? Some barbaric name. He assumed an old Roman title and governed your island for a time.”

“Careful, Narses,” Belisarius warned, only half-mockingly, “Coel is delicate on the subject of his grandfather. Arthur was a good soldier, and succeeded in defending Britain from the pirates and renegades that wished to plunder it. Something our legions failed to do.”

Narses ignored him. “What were you told about this sword?” he asked. His eyes, dark oversized orbs under heavy brows, bored into mine.

I cleared my throat. “Everything I know about it I had from my mother, lord,” I replied truthfully, “the sword is called Caledfwlch in our tongue, though it has other names.”

“Caledfwlch,” Narses echoed, rolling the name around his mouth, “how does that translate? What are these other names?”

“It means Hard Cleaver, lord. The other names translate as Red Death or Grey Death. You Romans had your own name for the sword.”

“Crocea Mors,” Belisarius said softly, “Yellow Death.”

Narses sighed and kneaded his brow. “As I understand it,” he went on, slowly and deliberately, “you and your mother came to this city, many years ago, and brought this accursed pig-sticker with you. You were then sold into slavery. Your new owner took the sword with him on some mission to Carthage. He never returned.”

I replied that this was so.

Narses and Belisarius looked at each other. “It fits,” said the eunuch, “I wish it did not, but it all fits.”

He turned back to me. “I try to be a rational man. I place little faith in auguries and soothsayers, and even less in long-lost magic swords. I do, however, believe in the power of belief. And symbols. So does the King of the Vandals.”

“You may as well know that Domitius died in Carthage,” said Belisarius, “he caught a fever shortly after his arrival in Africa. No foul play was suspected at the time, but recent events shed new light on his death. Gelimer has united the Vandals behind him, from North Africa to their provinces in Tripoli and Sardinia. His panegyrists are speaking of him as a new Genseric, one who will unite the barbarian peoples and lead them to destroy the Roman Empire, once and for all.”

Genseric was the half-legendary Vandal chief who had first led his people from Spain to North Africa, sacked Rome and founded the line of Vandal kings, of whom Gelimer was the latest.

“Our ambitious little barbarian has acquired a sword,” said Narses with a bitter smile, “the sword of Caesar, so Gelimer claims, carried by great Julius when he conquered Gaul and Britain. The sword wielded by Aeneas, who fled the sack of Troy and founded Rome. The sword forged by Vulcan in the smithies of Mount Olympus.”

“The sword wielded by Arthur, who held Britain in the teeth of barbarian invasions,” put in Belisarius, “anyone who wields such a remarkable blade could rally all the nations of the world under his banner.”

They looked at me expectantly. I had nothing to say. The whole thing seemed too incredible. My birthright had somehow fallen into the hands of a power-mad Vandal warlord.

It occurred to me that the situation was partially my fault. For one terror-struck moment I wondered if Narses and Belisarius also held this opinion. I had seen what they were capable of, and knew there was little they would not do to preserve the Roman state.

“Gelimer must be defeated,” said Narses, “and Julius Caesar’s sword brought back to Constantinople for safe keeping. You, Coel, are going to help us get it.”

Chapter 14

The public announcement of the expedition to North Africa restored much of Justinian’s popularity. There is nothing so guaranteed as a war to unite people in mutual hatred of an enemy, especially if that enemy is comfortably distant.

However popular the war might have been with the rabble, it had the opposite effect on the Emperor’s financiers and generals. The financiers, led by John of Cappadocia, that sly and subtle man, complained that such a campaign would be ruinously expensive, and beggar the Empire. Their real purpose, of course, was to conceal their own corruption and incompetence, which had so depleted the imperial treasury.

With the exception of Belisarius, the generals warned that the Roman army was no longer capable of conducting overseas campaigns, especially against an enemy so numerous and well-armed as the Vandals.

These were persuasive arguments, and Justinian might have called off the expedition but for the interference of a Catholic priest. This pious meddler approached the Emperor in council and exhorted him to stand forth as a champion of Christ.

“Hark to the very words of the Lord,” the priest urged, “He said, I will march before him in battles, and make him sovereign of Africa!”

The revelation that God was on his side greatly appealed to Justinian’s famous vanity. Without further delay he ordered a fleet and an army to be gathered for this now sacred enterprise.

The preparations for the campaign required many months of labour and planning. During this time I continued to learn my trade at the camp of the Heruli. Their commander, Pharas, drilled his men relentlessly, and I spent countless hours learning to ride in step, exercising with sword and spear and casting javelins at straw targets.

If I was a handless clown, the Heruli at least appreciated my commitment, and I made some friends among them. As Narses said, they were rough and undisciplined, but brave and expert fighters. One Roman historian referred to the Heruli as a “shadowy, funereal host,” after their strategy of painting their shields and bodies black and launching sudden ambushes under cover of darkness.

“Our ancestors worshipped the wolf-god, Wodan,” said my friend Girenas, “and would draw on his power to enter a battle-frenzy. They fought naked, and while under the god’s influence were virtually impossible to kill.”

“That was before the Christians found us,” remarked his brother Girulis, “the priests told us that our old ways were sinful, and commanded us to abandon them.”

“My brother is born out of time,” laughed Girenas, giving Girulis a sly look, “he longs for the days when our people ran naked through the forests. Wodan was not like Christ. The wolf-god cared little what men did on this earth…even if they were inclined to couple with other men.”

Girulis went red in the face and dived at his brother. The table was overturned as they fell onto the rushes in a struggling, snarling heap. I sighed, picked up the scattered remains of my supper and found a quieter table to reflect on what Girenas had told me.

From his words and later enquiry I learned that the Heruli had at one time practised sodomy as a way of forging bonds between warriors. The ancient Greeks had done the same. It was a practical measure as much as anything, for an army of lovers is not easily conquered. Some isolated Heruli tribes still followed the old ways, regardless of the Christian church and her threats of sin and damnation.

After several months among the Heruli, learning their customs and manner of soldiering, I started to think of myself as one of them. I grew my hair and beard, and wore the bronze torcs and arm-rings that were presented to me as gifts. Girenas gave me a sword-belt, made of cheap metal but with each of the links skilfully fashioned into the shapes of bears, horses, wolves and stags. My gift for languages helped me to assimilate, and by the winter of that year I was reasonably fluent in their tongue.

I saw little of Belisarius during this time, unsurprisingly since he was responsible for gathering the army as well as leading it. He threw his entire being into this purpose, but money and men were limited. After a year of feverishly mustering and recruiting troops from all parts of the Empire, he had assembled an army of no more than fifteen thousand men. Of these, ten thousand were infantry of wildly varying quality. Belisarius placed his faith in the five thousand cavalry, which consisted of foederati troops and his guards, the bucelarii.

There were fifteen hundred bucelarii. They were the elite core of the army, and the proof and product of Belisarius’s genius. Raised, trained and equipped at his private expense, they were intended to be both shock troops and skirmishers.

He spared no expense on their gear. The riders were protected by mail corselets that reached to the knees and elbows, iron bucklers strapped to the upper part of their left arms, conical helmets with cheek-guards, and reinforced thigh protectors and greaves.

The general trained them to skirmish from long distance, and to launch devastating charges. To these ends they were armed with lances, Hunnish-style composite bows and spathas. For good measure they also carried five throwing darts apiece, strapped to the insides of their shields. Their horses were protected by coats made of quilted leather, thick enough to afford some protection against arrows but not cumbersome enough to slow the beasts down.

During my spare moments I watched Belisarius drill these extraordinary troops on the plain beyond the landward walls of Constantinople. I marvelled at their discipline and skill at manoeuvring, even at full gallop, and thanked God I was on their side as I watched them practise on lines of dummies stuffed with straw. The horsemen were required to put at least four arrows into the dummies as they charged, and then close in and impale or behead them with lances and spathas. High rank and pay went to those soldiers who displayed the most skill.

Hundreds of ships were needed to convey the army to North Africa, and upwards of twenty thousand men drafted from Egypt and Cilicia to build and man them. One day Narses summoned me to the harbour of the Golden Horn, where we could watch the fleet being constructed.

“Five hundred transports for the troops,” the eunuch remarked, pointing out where some of the larger ships were clustered, “varying from thirty to five hundred tons. They will be escorted on the voyage by ninety-two dromons – you see those smaller vessels?”

To me the dromons appeared too small and flimsy for warships, though I refrained from saying so. They were only big enough to contain twenty sailors and a single bank of oars, protected from enemy missiles by a wooden covering.

Narses seemed to share my opinion. “In the days of antiquity,” he sighed, drawing his furred cloak about him tighter against the morning chill, “Rome would have assembled a mighty fleet of biremes and triremes. You should have seen those ships, Coel. Multi-decked monsters stuffed with legionaries and armed with battering rams and ballistas.”

“As for the army,” he said ruefully, “we have come to depend on a rabble of foreign mercenaries. Belisarius has done his best, but it is a poor show, Coel, a poor show.”

“Fifteen thousand men, lord,” I ventured, “is still a host to be reckoned with.”

“Three legions. That is what fifteen thousand men amounts to. In the days of her glory, Rome would have not have sent anything less than twelve legions to conquer a territory as vast as North Africa. We are pygmies, standing on the shoulders of giants.”

I knew Narses had not summoned me to pour out his doubts and fears, and waited patiently for the dagger-thrust.

“The Empress wishes to see you in private,” he said abruptly, “I cannot imagine why, and there is not much that escapes my imagination. You knew her in a former life, is that not so?”

“Yes, lord,” I replied cautiously, “when I was at the Circus.”

Narses sniggered. “How Theodora hates to be reminded of her past. I try not to mention it in her presence more than two or three times a day. Perhaps she wishes to discuss old times with you. Were you friends?”

He placed a slight emphasis on the last word, and raised one of his carefully plucked eyebrows.

“Not as such, lord,” I said, “I had the opportunity to befriend her, but rejected it.”

His eyes widened, and he gave a low whistle. “Rejected,” he repeated, “oh dear. Not many dare to reject Theodora. She nurses grudges like her own children. Rather better, in fact. Is there anything else I should know?”

I hesitated, but only for a moment. “She had a dear friend of mine murdered. I have no proof of her guilt, but am sure of it.”

He placed a finger to his lips. “Hush. You are not the first to make such accusations. One does not rise from the gutter to an imperial throne without stepping over a few bodies on the way. Whatever ill-will you bear the Empress, I advise you to smother it.”

I nodded sullenly.

“Good. Now listen. I have told her that your presence on the expedition to Africa is necessary, but not why. The less that woman knows is better for everyone. The Emperor also knows nothing of your connection with the sword. Caesar possesses many virtues, but keeping secrets from his wife is not one of them. If the Empress asks you why Belisarius values you so much, tell her that he wishes to interrogate you about Britain and the customs of its people.”

“But I left my homeland when I was just a child,” I protested, “and remember little of it.”

Narses shrugged. “Then make it up, Coel. Invent. Theodora is an ignorant woman in many ways, and will not be any the wiser. Tell her the Britons like to paint their backsides purple, and go into battle wielding clubs made of dried dung. Appeal to her prejudices. Anything you like. Just don’t tell her the truth.”

He gave me a reassuring pat. “This is politics,” he said, “a dirty business, and one I spend my life wallowing in. Just do as I say, and you might get out of the audience chamber alive.”

I was escorted to the palace by a troop of guardsmen. Within an hour of meeting Narses I found myself standing in an upper-level chamber similar to Belisarius’s, and again overlooking the sea. Unlike the general’s sparse furnishings, this room was decked out like the chamber of a rich whore – which, of course, Theodora was.

The walls were covered in silk hangings and tapestries that depicted hunting scenes, the exploits of Achilles and Hector, and lovers walking naked among sylvan forests and ivy-grown ruins. Religious and devotional scenes were noticeably absent. Thick Persian rugs covered the floor, and a number of comfortable couches were arranged in a square in the middle of the room. The air was thick with the heady smell of incense. A silver door at the southern end of the room led to the Empress’s private bedchamber.

Theodora herself was spread out on one of the couches, and gazing out of the doorway that led to the balcony. The soft winds blowing in from the sea stirred the clingy purple gauze she was wearing and accentuated the well-fed curves of her body. She didn’t seem to notice our entrance until the captain of the guard stamped his feet and saluted. Only then did she turn her face away from the sea. Her eyes looked heavy, and she had clearly been drinking.

“Wait outside with one of your men,” she said to the captain, “dismiss the others, and don’t eavesdrop.”

Theodora’s voice was throatier than ever, and she stifled a little yawn as the soldiers filed out.

“Britannicus,” she said with a little smile, shading her eyes to get a better look at me, “is that really you? How different you look.”

I said nothing. She stretched out one bare arm and beckoned me closer.

“Don’t be so stiff,” she said crossly when I took a few hesitant steps towards the couch, “sit beside me, and have a cup of wine.”

“I prefer to stand, Majesty,” I replied, resorting to the soldier’s trick of not looking directly at a superior officer.

Theodora raised herself onto one elbow. Her thin robe was slashed almost to the waist, exposing the curve of her thigh. Doubtless she was used to men slavering over her body, but I found myself suppressing an urge to retch.

“What a dull man you are,” she said, stretching and giving another little yawn, “Belisarius should have recommended you for the church rather than the army. Why did he want a worn-out charioteer for a soldier?”

Crude and direct, you see, and typical of her. “I volunteered to fight for him during the riots, Majesty,” I replied, “perhaps he was impressed with my loyalty.”

Cold sweat prickled on my skin. My composure was starting to slip. I thought I could hear the shade of Felix, urging me to avenge his murder.

Theodora’s slender neck was within reach. Her guards had taken my sword, but the Heruli had taught me how to kill with my bare hands. Her death would be swift and easy. Mine, at the hands of the Emperor’s torturers, would be slow and agonising.

She sniffed, and poured out some more wine. “You and Belisarius are a pair,” she said contemptuously, “stiff-backed, dutiful bores. I daresay you will be very happy together. Why have you grown that ridiculous beard?”

“It is the custom of the Heruli to grow their beards, Majesty. I am one of them now.”

“How adaptable you are. First you were a Briton, then a Roman, and now a Germanic savage. You seem able to cast yourself in any mould. A man of many layers. Not so dull, perhaps.”

I swallowed, and decided to try and force the issue. “Majesty, I apologise if I ever caused you offence. It was unintended.”

She slugged down her wine. “I know what you refer to,” she said, belching and wiping the spillage from her bosom, “a certain cellar, on a certain night, during a former life. I have not forgotten. I forget nothing.”

Now her voice was hard as steel, and the mazed look had vanished from her eyes. “Nor do I forgive. I have endured many insults, Britannicus, and make it a point of honour to avenge them. Our account remains unsettled.”

Save for the body of Felix, fifteen years rotting in a shallow grave, I wanted to scream. I bit down hard on my lower lip, and dug my nails into my palms.

“I am a capricious woman, I know,” she said in a softer tone, “and have a deplorable tendency to toy with my victims. Like a cat. It would be amusing to have you consigned to the rack. To watch your life being wrung from you an inch at a time.”

“However, I am the Emperor’s consort, and must behave like one. Did you know it was I who persuaded my husband not to flee the city, during the riots? All those senators and soldiers were standing around, fouling their small-clothes in terror, and only I encouraged him to send Belisarius and Mundus out to fight. Thus the Empire was saved by a courtesan. Delicious, isn’t it?”

I assumed she was lying, but later discovered that the story was true. Theodora deserves credit for it, the first and last time she behaved in a manner befitting her station.

“An Empress must show clemency,” she said, “I am willing to forget past misdemeanours, if you agree to do something for me in return.”

“What is that, Majesty?” I asked, dreading the response.

“Spy on Belisarius for me. God knows why, but he seems to have some special regard for you. I can use that to my advantage. Get as close as you can to him during the voyage to Africa. Divine his secrets, read his private letters. Bring me back something that increases my knowledge of the man. Assuming, of course, that any of you return from this insane sortie.”

Her shameless proposal rocked me, and for a moment I struggled to speak.

“No, Majesty,” I said, striving to keep the rage out of my voice, “I will not be your spy.”

Her eyes narrowed to slits. “I am offering you a chance to save yourself, Britannicus. One chance.”

“I care nothing for your offer, or your threats. I am a soldier of Rome, not a traitor.”

I was beginning to enjoy myself. Like old Julius, I had crossed the Rubicon, and the rest was up to fate. It was worth dying, I decided, just to see this appalling bitch shaken out of her complacency.

“A soldier of Rome,” she said, her nose wrinkling in disgust as she looked me up and down, “the shades of our noble ancestors must be weeping in shame.”

That was rich, coming from one who had no more noble blood in her veins than a horse. I almost said so, but restrained myself.

Theodora flowed to her feet with a dancer’s grace. “I know where you derive this courage,” she said, folding her arms, “you think you can hide behind Belisarius’s shield.”

Our eyes locked. “Kill me, Majesty, or let me go,” I replied. I took a deep breath and stood poised, ready to spring.

Perhaps she sensed the danger, or realised that I had called her bluff. Even she could not simply have a man tortured to death on a whim, especially not one favoured by Narses and Belisarius. She might have him arraigned on some trumped-up charge, but there was no time for that. Besides which, she didn’t want me blurting out her disgusting proposal in court, before the Emperor and all his justices.

Even so, the halls of Hell would freeze over before Theodora admitted that she had lost. “Dismissed,” she said, with a flick of her finger, “go away, Britannicus. Far away.”

I gave a bow, turned on my heel and marched out, painfully aware that my back was exposed.

“It won’t be far enough, I promise you,” she cried, and then the door closed behind me.

Chapter 15

The fleet finally sailed from Constantinople on a blazing hot day in June, and I remember the funeral atmosphere among the citizens gathered on the harbour to watch the last troops file aboard the transports. The Emperor and the Patriarch came in procession down to the docks – thankfully, Theodora stayed in the palace – to watch us depart. Choirs marched behind them, waving holy icons and chanting solemn Latin dirges that did nothing to lift the atmosphere.

Many of those who witnessed the fleet depart thought that it would never return. There was good reason to be pessimistic. Ahead lay a journey of over a thousand miles of ocean into enemy-controlled waters, with no possibility of relief or reinforcement. If the fleet somehow managed to fight through the Vandalic battle-fleets, the army was then faced with the task of conquering and holding an entire continent. This would have to be achieved in the teeth of resistance from King Gelimer’s armies, estimated to number some thirty to forty thousand warriors.

The task appeared impossible, and Belisarius’s commission little more than a death-warrant. However, Justinian was not a fool, and his agents had been hard at work stirring up civil discontent in the Vandal provinces of Sardinia and Tripoli. With the help of a few secretly dispatched Roman troops, they encouraged pro-Roman uprisings that succeeded in driving out the Vandal governors and garrisons.

Gelimer took the bait. He split his forces and sent his brother Zano with a large army and a fleet to recapture their lost territories. This left the coasts of North Africa undefended, and reduced the Vandal military presence on land.

Justinian’s artful diplomacy also succeeded in driving a wedge between the Vandals and the Goths that ruled Italy. Believing Rome to be their friend, the Goths even granted our fleet permission to dock in Sicily on the voyage to Africa.

All this was so much rumour and hearsay to me as the fleet set sail. The doleful sound of the choirs and the wails of the multitude slowly faded away as the first of the transports glided down the straits of the Bosphorus.

I was aboard one of the Heruli ships, and very quickly discovered that a sailor’s life did not agree with me. The fleet was barely out into the open sea before the first pangs of sickness started to gripe in my belly. By the time it anchored at Heraclea to take on board a supply of horses, I was prostrate, unable to do anything except lie groaning on deck or retch feebly over the side. Many of my comrades were also affected, for the Heruli were not a seafaring people. Our ship soon became rank with the stench of vomit and excrement. The Egyptian sailors laughed at our weakness, and wondered aloud at how such mighty warriors would cope if the Vandals attacked us at sea.

Mercifully, the fleet remained at Heraclea for five days while the horses were taken on board. This gave me time to recover a little. From there we proceeded to Abydos, where a sudden drop in the wind delayed us for another four days.

At Abydos Belisarius made clear his intention to instil some old-fashioned Roman discipline into his ragbag army. Three of the Huns got into a drunken brawl, in which one of them was killed. As I have mentioned, such incidents were by no means uncommon among the foederati troops, and most Roman commanders let them go unpunished.

Belisarius had the culprits taken to the summit of a hill above the harbour, and there, in plain view of the fleet and army below, they were beheaded. This aroused the rage and indignation of their comrades, and a full-scale mutiny was only prevented when Belisarius personally harangued the troops from the foredeck of his galley.

“Those who allow a murder to go unpunished,” he bellowed, “become accomplices to guilt and partners to infamy. The criminals were drunk, which is no defence but an aggravation of their crime. Drunkenness, even when it leads to no harm, is outside the bounds of military discipline. I will march and fight alongside no man who has the blood of a comrade on his hands. Any further such crimes will meet with the same punishment. We are an army set on conquest, not a rabble.”

His words echoed around the harbour as they were taken up and repeated by the captains on the other ships. The speech was effective, though the Huns still grumbled, and Belisarius took advantage of a sudden breeze to put to sea again.

My sickness worsened as the fleet navigated around the headland of Cape Malea. It was unbearable. The endless pitching and rolling of the deck, even in a flat calm, the cramping of my empty guts, the dry retching, all made me pray for death. Dreadful as it felt at the time, my inability to eat might well have saved my life.

When the fleet reached the port of Methoni, Belisarius decided to give his fatigued and sickness-ravaged soldiers a few days of rest. He ordered the bread-sacks to be opened, only to discover that the bread had mouldered into a foul-smelling, virtually inedible paste.

This disaster was entirely due to the greed of John of Cappadocia, Justinian’s corrupt financial minister. He had been responsible for supplying the provisions of the fleet, and had ordered the bread to be only lightly baked in the fires of the public baths in Constantinople. Army bread was usually baked twice into a hard, biscuit-like substance. The loss of weight that the baking process caused was accounted for by a deduction of one fourth. By ordering the bread to be lightly baked, John kept for himself the deducted amount and also the fuel that should have been used in the fires.

Consider that this man, who placed his own profit before the health of the Roman army, was a chief minister of the state! The Empire was corrupted in body and soul, and the rise to office of such parasites as John of Cappodocia is proof of that corruption.

The soldiers were starving, and so the spoiled bread was foolishly distributed anyway, with predictably catastrophic results. Hundreds of men died from consuming it. Those like myself, still afflicted by sea-sickness and unable to keep any food down, were spared. Worse might have followed, and the entire expedition dissolved, had not Belisarius dipped into his own purse and hurriedly procured supplies of fresh bread in the town.

From Methone the fleet headed to the island of Zante, where it was delayed for another sixteen days. Our demoralised, half-starved, sickness-ridden soldiers were subjected to fresh hardships when the boiling heat of midsummer spoiled the casks of fresh water.

Fresh water was the only thing keeping me and my sick comrades alive. I can still taste the sour, lukewarm tang of the tainted stuff they made us drink instead. I clung to life by a miracle, but fresh sickness ravaged the Heruli and carried away a few more to the afterlife. My friend Girenas and his brother were among the casualties. Their bodies were consigned to the watery deep and their souls to Christ, though I suspect they would have preferred to spend eternity in Woden’s feasting halls.

Our fleet limped on to the island of Sicily and made landfall at Caucana. The landing place, a rocky plain of lava that stemmed from the base of Mount Etna to the sea, was a bare and exposed spot. Belisarius was resolved to advance no further to the coast of Africa until he had some idea of where the Vandal armies were camped.

In this he was wise, for his little army was in a shocking condition. The hardships of the voyage had combined with a growing terror of the Vandals to reduce many of the soldiers to a pitiful state. Even the warlike spirit of the Heruli was all but extinguished, and I overhead many an alarming conversation between my comrades.

“If we are attacked by the Vandal fleet, then we must take to flight,” I remember one saying to his friends, “the Vandals are the best sailors and sea-fighters in the world, and I lack the strength to stand, let alone fight.”

This met with a general murmur of agreement from the pale, washed-out men around him. “Even if we make to land, what then?” croaked another, “a long march in the desert, with no cover, and two or three Vandal armies to fight at the end of it.”

“There are more of them than us,” added a third man, “besides, they will be well rested and fed, and fighting on their own territory.”

I heard a great deal more in this gloomy vein while the fleet dithered at Sicily. Belisarius resorted to sending out a spy, in the person of his secretary Procopius, to gather intelligence on the whereabouts of the Vandals. Procopius, an eager and dauntless young man who hero-worshipped the general, returned a few days later with reliable information that Gelimer had left Carthage to spend the summer at his inland palace at Hermione. The Vandal king, it seemed, was unaware that the Roman fleet had sailed, and there was nothing to stop us from landing and marching on his capital.

Belisarius was not the sort to ignore such an advantage. On receiving the news he immediately put to sea again. A Heaven-sent wind blew the fleet to Malta, and hence to within sight of the African coast.

The fleet drew near to the shore of Caput Vada, a narrow spit of land that projected a long distance from the mainland out to sea. Belisarius held a council of war on his galley to decide whether a landing should be attempted here. I know little of what passed between him and his officers, save that Belisarius prevailed against the general opinion, and gave orders for the army to land that same day.

Three months had passed since we departed Constantinople. I was lifted onto a boat, and then obliged to wade ashore on legs that shook under me like those of a new-born calf. The African sun beat down mercilessly as I tripped and stumbled through the warm water, using my spear as a crutch.

Fifteen thousand soldiers and six thousand horses, along with their arms, war engines, stores, water and equipment, made an appalling mess of the previously spotless African beach. The landing was chaos. All discipline and order were forgotten as this host of sick, frightened and exhausted men and beasts struggled to shore. If the Vandals had attacked then, they would have straightaway tossed us back into the sea. Fortunately, Gelimer and his army were a long distance away and blissfully unaware of what had just crawled onto their coast.

Belisarius knew how vulnerable his army was. He and a group of officers galloped away in search of a suitable place to build a fortified camp. They soon returned, heralded by a cloud of dust, and to groans and curses from the men gave orders for work to begin on a ditch and rampart, about half a mile inland.

Several hundred reluctant infantry were detailed for the task and marched away with a troop of Hunnish cavalry for an escort. Wary of attack from sea, Belisarius also ordered the fleet to re-form into a semicircle with a guard of five archers stationed aboard each ship.

Meanwhile I lay on the warm golden sand, blinking up at deep blue skies and wondering how in God’s name I had come to be washed up here, at the furthest reaches of the earth.

I had not lingered long before I felt a boot nudge against my ribs.

“Get up, Coel,” rasped Pharas, the commander of the Heruli, “I saw you walk ashore, so you can walk to the camp. Shift, you lazy bastard.”

Pharas was a flat-faced, mean-eyed brute, and best obeyed. I picked up my spear and painfully struggled to my feet. My horse was among the beasts still being disembarked from the ships, so I joined one of the straggling columns of infantry making their way towards the camp.

Chapter 16

After just a day’s rest, Belisarius ordered the army to break camp and advance on Carthage, which lay some ten or twelve days’ march to the north. His advance guard seized the town of Syllectus, which was unguarded by walls and lay close to the sea on the road leading to Carthage. The citizens and country folk made no attempt at resisting our spearmen, and meekly gave up the keys of the town.

“God grant that all our conquests are so easy,” I overheard Pharas remark to one of his officers.

I was considered fit to ride, and so rejoined the Heruli. Belisarius decided to send three hundred foederati a few miles ahead of the main army as a vanguard, while double that number of Huns covered our left flank. The sea guarded our right, and the mass of infantry were left to struggle along in the rear. The general regarded speed as vital, and wanted to reach Carthage before Gelimer had to time to react.

He was careful to hug the coast as we marched north, and to stay in close contact with the fleet, which was commanded to keep the army in sight at all times. To that end the sailors used oars to match the pace of the army during calms and slight breezes, and the minimum of sail if a strong wind blew up.

My spirits began to recover, as well as my guts, helped by the lack of resistance the army met with on the march north. Those African locals we encountered showed no hostility, and were happy to sell us fresh fruit and other much-needed provisions. Belisarius ensured they were paid a fair price, and had a couple of Armenian soldiers who stole from an orchard flogged in sight of the whole army.

This was the signal for another of his impassioned public harangues, in which he warned his soldiers to learn from this example, and of the importance of making allies of the natives. Afterwards I heard the culprits complain bitterly of their harsh treatment while a surgeon rubbed liniment onto their bleeding backs.

“Be thankful,” the surgeon remarked, smiling nastily at their howls as he rubbed with unnecessary vigour, “in the old days of the legions you would have been executed for such a breach of discipline. Belisarius can be hard when necessary, but he is no Tiberius.”

The army marched at a rate of about twelve miles a day, which was slow going, but Belisarius was cautious and determined not to leave the infantry too far behind. Every night, unless we had reached a fortified settlement to take shelter inside, we built a camp defended by a ditch and a stockade.

So far the campaign had been more like a pleasure trip, and never more so than when we reached Grasse, just fifty miles from Carthage. Here the supposedly barbaric Vandals had built a country palace surrounded by exotic gardens, watered by a cunning irrigation system.

The garrison had abandoned the palace in the face of our advance, and it was like stumbling on a deserted Paradise in the middle of parched desert. Belisarius allowed his weary men a few hours to wander among the shady woods and groves, pick ripe fruit from the trees and drink crystal-clear water from sparkling fountains.

It was here that I first met Antonina, Belisarius’s wife, who had insisted on accompanying her husband on campaign. I had heard much about her during the voyage, mostly from sex-starved mariners and soldiers with a tendency to let their imaginations roam free. She was a former courtesan, like Theodora, and had also made her fortune by catching the eye of a great man. Antonia and the Empress were said to be great friends, and to indirectly rule the Empire through their husbands.

I had not forgotten Theodora’s parting threat. She meant to harm me, and I was fearful that Antonina would be her instrument. The lady herself showed no interest in me when I met her walking in the gardens, arm-in-arm with Belisarius. I noticed that he hung on her every word, laughed when she laughed, and gazed on her with slavish adoration.

In person she was tall, willowy and fair-haired, with an athletic gracefulness that reminded me painfully of Elene. Her beauty was of a more natural sort than Theodora’s, and not so reliant on paint and cosmetics to sustain it. She was dressed like a respectable Roman wife, in an ankle-length white robe and a white head-cloth to protect her against the glare of the sun. Her modest clothing only served to make her more alluring, and drew attention to the superb body concealed underneath.

I stood to attention and saluted the general. He returned the salute in an offhand sort of way, and then stopped when he recognised me.

“Coel,” he said in a tone of pleasant surprise, “so you survived the voyage, then. I’m glad.”

“Thank you, sir,” I replied, impressed that he even remembered my name. The Emperor had given Belisarius supreme responsibility for the African campaign, a clever way of avoiding blame if it failed, and I suspect he hadn’t given me a second thought since leaving Constantinople.

“This is the Briton I told you about, my dear,” he said, turning to his wife, “do you remember? He was once a charioteer in the Circus. They called him Britannicus.”

At the mention of my Circus name I thought I detected a flash of recognition in Antonina’s lovely eyes, quickly masked.

“I remember,” she said in her soft, breathy voice, “a Briton. How singular. He doesn’t look very well.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Belisarius agreed, studying me with a look of genuine concern, “there is considerably less of you than when we last met, Coel. Are you ill?”

“Touch of sickness on the voyage, sir,” I replied, “turns out the sea doesn’t agree with me. On the mend now though.”

“Good. Make sure to build up your strength. You will need it.”

“To retrieve the sword, sir?”

Some of the warmth drained out of the general’s agreeable smile. “Indeed,” he said awkwardly, “though it will mean wresting the blade from Gelimer’s own hand.”

Antonina had listened to this exchange with interest. “What sword, husband?” she asked, “not Crocea Mors, surely? You led me to believe that King Gelimer was a liar, and that he didn’t really have it.”

Belisarius winced at the edge in her voice. “There may be something to Gelimer’s claims,” he admitted, giving me a dark look, “it was supposed to remain a secret.”

“Really? And why should General Belisarius confide a secret to one of his soldiers, but not his wife?”

There was real venom in her tone now. I could well believe that she and Theodora were friends. Belisarius’s mouth worked as he groped for a reply that might placate her.

“The sword is mine, my lady,” I ventured, “I inherited it from my father.”

Antonina looked at me in astonishment. Her agile mind quickly filled in the gaps. “Old Julius campaigned in Britain, didn’t he?” she said slowly, “and this Britannicus, or whatever his name is, comes from that island…”

She gave a little laugh. “Christ save us, you don’t mean to say the story is true? But how did Gelimer come to have the sword?”

“No time for that now,” Belisarius said firmly, “this is not something to be discussed in the open, where all might hear. God be with you, Coel.”

“Wait,” said Antonina as he tried to lead her away, “if this man does succeed in taking Caesar’s sword from Gelimer, does he get to keep it?”

“No,” Belisarius replied brusquely, “it is the property of Rome, and will be taken for safe keeping to Constantinople.”

“He will at least be compensated?” asked Antonina. She was enjoying herself immensely, dragging the truth from her husband and embarrassing him in front of one of his soldiers. Not for the first time, I gave thanks that I was a bachelor.

“Of course,” Belisarius said with a flicker of anger, “do you think I mean to rob him? In exchange for his birthright he will be offered an officer’s rank in the army, or money for his passage home to Britain. Or he can name his own price, within reason. Any man who plucks a sword from the hand of a Vandal king deserves to be rewarded. We have said far too much. Come.”

He took his wife’s arm again. This time Antonina made no objection as he half-dragged her away.

I was left to nurse bitter thoughts. To retrieve Caledwlch from the Vandals would be difficult enough. To have it taken from me again might be unbearable. I still frequently suffered from bad dreams, in which the giant figure I took to be my grandfather re-fought his battles and regarded me balefully from beyond the grave. His shade was watching me. Judging me.

Belisarius was a noble man, or so I hoped. If I did manage to win the sword, then perhaps he would let me retain it: after all, that would be some feat.

When the army was sufficiently rested, it marched away from the unexpected pleasures of Grasse and further along the coastal road that led eventually to Carthage. As we moved out, several of our scouting parties ran into groups of Vandal horsemen, and a few sharp skirmishes were fought before both sides retreated.

I saw the Roman survivors galloping to the head of the column to inform Belisarius, and soon the whole army knew that the enemy was near. Gelimer had finally received word of the invasion and sped from his palace at Hermione to defend Carthage, gathering up what troops he could on the way.

What followed, my first experience of battle, must count as one of the strangest and most confused affairs in the history of war.

Chapter 17

Shortly after leaving Grasse, our army was compelled to turn away from the coast and march inland, in the direction of Tunis. This meant we became separated from the fleet. Belisarius instructed the admiral to work his way around the mountains of Cape Bonn and maintain a distance of at least thirty miles between the fleet and Carthage, unless he received further news from the army.

We marched in the same order, with three hundred cavalry again acting as a vanguard and riding several miles ahead. The infantry were left behind in their entrenchments at Grasse, with orders to stay and guard the baggage. Belisarius also left behind his wife, though given the choice she would have donned a shield and helmet and ridden with him into battle. Whatever sins Theodora and Antonina stand accused of – and the list is inexhaustible – let no-one accuse them of lacking courage.

Like every other man in the main body of cavalry, I had no idea what was happening beyond my line of sight. We rode in column, some four thousand horsemen, through a wide, dusty plain that steadily narrowed to a rocky defile to the north, surrounded by a range of barren hills. The mountains blocked our view of the sea to the east, and another range of hills lay to the west.

The slopes of the defile were occupied by a village called Decimum, the name of which indicated the tenth milestone from Carthage. The milestone itself, a large stone pillar, lay on the outskirts of the village. It was here that Gelimer planned to fight. His plan was to divide his army into three parts in order encircle and entrap the Roman cavalry. It was a bold plan, original and brilliant in conception, and from the start it unravelled.

Belisarius allowed the vanguard to get too far ahead. They were led by his friend, John the Armenian, a capable officer, but fixated on plunder and far too inclined to take matters into his own hands. Fearful that John had committed some folly, Belisarius sent the foederati in search of the vanguard, while he followed with his bucelarii.

Unknown to us, the Huns on our left flank were already engaged with a much larger squadron of Vandals under the command of Gibamund, Gelimer’s nephew. The Vandals should have crushed our flank, but the ferocity of the Hunnish counter-charge took them by surprise. They were routed and pursued across a desolate plain known as the Field of Salt, where Gibamund and hundreds of his men were slaughtered.

Completely unaware that the battle had started, the foederati galloped merrily into the rugged hills that lay to the north. I rode among with them with a detachment of Heruli. There was no enemy in sight, and I had sunk into the delusion that warfare amounted to little more than splendid exercise in fresh air.

We reached a field between two hills, littered with the mangled bodies of men and horses. Pharas, whom Belisarius had placed in overall command of the foederati, ordered a halt to examine them. To our surprise and encouragement, we discovered just twelve dead Romans among scores of fallen Vandals.

This was my first proper look at the enemy. I found that they much resembled the Heruli and other Germanic peoples. Slightly darker-skinned, perhaps, from living in the baking deserts of North Africa, but otherwise there was little to distinguish them.

Pharas was at a loss. “The vanguard must have fought here,” he said, scratching his beard, “but where the hell did they go?”

I pointed out that the trail of corpses led away to the north before petering out. “Perhaps they routed the Vandals and then rode after them in pursuit,” I suggested.

Pharas didn’t like taking advice from mere troopers, but nodded in agreement.

“That would be just like the Armenian,” he spat, “the selfish bastard will chase them all the way to Carthage. He’s a brigand, not a soldier.”

I heard shouts behind us, and twisted in the saddle to see a number of our soldiers galloping up from the rear.

“Sir!” one of them shouted at Pharas. “Look there!”

He pointed his spear to the south, back the way we had come. Pharas snapped at me to go and investigate, but there was no need. A rapidly growing cloud of dust became visible on the horizon, accompanied by the thunder of galloping hoofs and the shrill blast of trumpets.

“It’s Gelimer, sir!” another man yelled. “His whole army is coming up the road, straight at us!”

Pharas swore horribly. “Up there, lads,” he cried, pointing at the nearest hill, “we’ll make a stand at the top and hold them off until the general arrives.”

All our months of discipline and training melted away. Less than half of Pharas’s command followed him up that hill. The rest flung away their weapons and scattered in all directions.

Gelimer himself was indeed riding towards us at the head of seven thousand cavalry. Somehow he had bypassed Belisarius’s column, and now his entire host into a full-blooded charge against the foederati.

The Vandals came on at a furious gallop. Their forward line crashed into our flank as we were still struggling up the slope. I caught a brief glimpse of their horse-tail banners before I had to haul savagely on my reins and wheel my horse to avoid a couple of fleeing Heruli.

Pharas screamed at his men to re-form, but the Vandals had smashed our formation all to pieces. There was no end to them, wave upon wave of mailed and helmeted horsemen. The pick of our men stood and fought doggedly, chanting their death-songs as Vandal swords and spears bit into their flesh.

I would have fled with the others, but then I saw King Gelimer. He was an unmistakable figure, tall and spare and mounted on a beautiful chestnut stallion, his helmet surmounted by a golden crown. He was less than twenty feet away, watching the unequal fight at the head of his personal guards.

His sword was still in its leather sheath. The hilt was made of ivory and stamped with golden eagles.

There is a fine poem in the British tongue, composed in the north, which praises the valour of my grandfather. The poet describes the exploits of a warrior, Gwawrddur:

He fed black ravens on the rampart of a fortress,

But he was no Arthur…

Even Gwawrddur, says the poet, cannot match Arthur, who was an incomparable warrior. The same could not be said for his grandson. I am not a particularly brave man, and was never more than an adequate fighter. But the sight of Caledfwlch, so many years after it was taken from me, roused a fury in my breast that I have rarely experienced before or since.

Nor am I a vain man. A fit of madness, not courage, made me turn my horse and ride straight at the Vandal king.

A horseman threw himself into my path. I threw my spear at him. It struck the middle of his helmet with sufficient force to snap his neck and knock him from the saddle. My horse screamed as a javelin sliced into her belly, but I spurred her on through the swirling dust and knots of fighting men, grimly determined to reach Gelimer and take what was mine.

His guards saw me coming. One of them rode at me with his spear. I drew my spatha, took the spear-thrust on my shield and cut at his face as he galloped past. That was one of the finest blows I ever struck. He dropped his spear and reeled away, clutching at the terrible gash I had opened across his left eye, through his nose and down to his jaw.

I plunged on towards Gelimer, who was pointing in my direction and shouting something I couldn’t hear. More of his guards came at me – too many for one man to fight, even I had been Achilles himself. One of them drove his spear into my wounded horse’s neck. The poor beast shrieked and recoiled onto her haunches.

Another spear struck against my shield with enough force to knock me down. I tumbled to earth, tried to stand, slipped on a patch of entrails, almost impaled my leg with my sword, and felt the prick of sharp iron against my breast.

“Be still,” said a Vandal horseman in Greek with a guttural Germanic accent, “or die.”

The red mist lifted from my eyes. I gazed up at him, fierce and bearded under his helmet of corrugated iron, and slowly became aware that I was soaked in blood and sweat. My pulse was fluttering like that of a frightened bird, and my breath came in deep gasps.

I was surrounded by dead and wounded men, most of them foederati. The survivors had fled, Pharas among them, back down the road towards Decimum.

King Gelimer trotted towards me, followed by his guards. He was a tall, thin man, of the sort who does not carry fat, with an anxious, dried-up look about him. He was in his early fifties, his sparse fair hair turning white, but his most notable feature was his eyes. These were large and blue, flecked with gold, and had a dreamy quality that reminded me of the stylites I had seen in Constantinople. It was easy to see why his people took him be to a sort of prophet as well as a king.

“You,” he said, pointing at me, “are the bravest man in the Roman army. When all your comrades ran away, you alone tried to kill me. I salute you.”

He raised his arm in a clenched-fist salute. Several of his guards rattled their spears against their shields in approval. My face burned, but with embarrassment instead of rage.

“You are my prisoner,” added the king, “and shall be taken back to Carthage when this battle is done. You shall be treated with all honour, and the price of your ransom sent to Constantinople. Justinian, I think, will appreciate the safe return of at least one of his soldiers.”

It dawned on me that Gelimer thought the battle was as good as won. The reason why became apparent when one of his officers came galloping up from the road to the south.

“The Romans are retreating, lord!” he exulted, “not only their mercenaries, but the guards also. They have cast down their banners and are running like whipped dogs!”

He spoke only part of the truth. Our routed foederati had indeed met with a forward detachment of Belisarius’s guards, some eight hundred men. Instead of rallying the beaten fugitives, these cravens joined them in flight, and the whole lot went stampeding back down the road. Had Gelimer pressed his advantage at that moment, I doubt even Belisarius would have been able to withstand him.

While I was being disarmed and my wrists bound, Gelimer walked his horse down the hill to inspect the slain. The men around me jumped as their king uttered a sudden howl and tumbled from his saddle.

He knelt on all fours, grovelling and weeping like a babe, beside the body of one of the dead Vandals. This man wore ornate scale armour and a golden helm, and had clearly been a noble of some sort. The helm was split in two by some powerful stroke, and his brains leaked out from his cloven skull.

“God save us,” whispered one of my guards, making the sign of the cross, “Prince Ammatas is dead.”

Ammatus was one of Gelimer’s brothers. He had been in command of the detachment of Vandals ambushed and routed by our vanguard under John the Armenian.

Gelimer was inconsolable. His men looked on in dismay as he clasped his brother’s body to his own, rocking back and forth and weeping bitter tears.

One of his officers dared to approach the distraught monarch. “Majesty,” he said nervously, “you must put aside your grief. The Romans are not yet driven from the field.”

“Must!” Gellimer screamed, ripping off his helmet and hurling it at the officer. “You little man of no consequence, dare you tell a king what he must do? Here lies my noble brother, whom I have loved and cherished all my days, lying dead at my feet. Damn the Romans. Someone must ride back to Carthage and fetch a priest, so that Ammatus can be given the proper rites.”

I could scarcely believe my ears. Gelimer’s grief had overpowered his wits, and he cared for nothing save that his brother should be buried with dignity. His officers begged and pleaded with him – one actually went down on his knees in the dust – but he took no notice.

Eventually a rider was despatched to fetch a priest. The Vandals stood idle, resting their horses and waiting for further orders. I was hoisted onto a spare horse, but otherwise nothing happened.

A strange calm fell over the field. Dismounted Vandal soldiers wandered about, stripping corpses of valuables and finishing off the Roman wounded. Others settled down to eat their rations.

Then a sound like distant thunder reached my ears. I had been waiting for it, and craned my neck to gaze south. Some of the Vandals heard it too. They looked up from their suppers, cocking their heads to listen and exchanging worried glances.

The thunder grew louder, accompanied by a wall of dust billowing up from Decimum and a cacophony of trumpets and war-horns, echoing and re-echoing through the hills.

“Belisarius!” someone wailed.

Roman banners came in sight. Thousands of horsemen were streaming up the road, formed into a single phalanx led by the general on his distinctive white-faced bay. His bucelarii rode behind him, with the Huns and the foederati on the wings.

I surmised that our fleeing cavalry had encountered the main body of the army advancing across the plain below, where Belisarius managed to rally them. He then formed all his men into a single body and led them on at the gallop, staking the fortune of the battle on an all-or-nothing charge.

The Vandals were caught unawares, and Gelimer was still too embroiled in his grief to take command. His officers panicked and ran around in disarray, shouting a host of conflicting orders. Their voices were drowned by the thunderous din of galloping hoofs and screaming trumpets and the war-shouts of Belisarius’s riders.

The Romans were outnumbered, but Gelimer’s men were stationery, taken by surprise and demoralised by the behaviour of their king. I saw two Vandal officers seize Gelimer, tear him away from his brother’s body, and throw him over the back of a horse. Then the dust kicked up by the charging Roman cavalry rolled over the field and hid them from view.

My wrists were bound, so I used my knees to goad my horse towards them. One of the bucelarii charged into view. The massive armoured horseman galloped over two dismounted Vandals foolish enough to oppose him and drove his lance through the body of another.

Trumpets bawled, signalling the retreat. Fleeing Vandals rushed past me, some on foot, others dragging their terrified horses in circles as they tried to mount before the Romans struck.

Panic, the death of all armies, infected the Vandal host. Only a few of Gelimer’s guards held their nerve and closed up around the protesting figure of their king. One of their officers, curse him, had sufficient presence of mind to seize my bridle.

“Let me go!” I yelled, “I am no use to you – release me, damn you! Help me, comrades! A rescue, a rescue!”

No-one heard me, and he would not relinquish his grip. I could have taken a risk and deliberately tumbled out of the saddle, but lacked the courage.

There was a good chance of being trampled in the rout.

Still bleating, I was led away from the battlefield as a captive.

Chapter 18

I expected the Vandals to flee north, to take shelter inside Carthage, but instead they turned west into the deep deserts of Numidia. The reason for this, as I was curtly informed by the man who had dragged me from the field, was that the walls of Carthage were in a state of disrepair.

“The city is no sanctuary,” he said, “we neglected to rebuild the old Roman defences. God has punished us for our complacency.”

God was never far from his thoughts, or from those of his comrades. After the first mad dash from the battlefield it became clear that the Romans were not in pursuit, and so they halted to rest the horses. Every one of the guardsman knelt in the sand and folded their hands in prayers, while their captain exhorted the Almighty to deliver them from evil.

Gelimer did not join in their devotions. He sat drooping in the saddle, looking every inch a defeated man. Tears plodded down his cheeks and formed runnels in the coating of dust from the rout. His extraordinary eyes were red-rimmed and contained a world of misery.

“Do you wonder why I do not pray with them?” he said to me, “it is because I cannot. Like so many of my subjects, they follow the Arian heresy, while I am of Rome.”

He referred to the bitter divide between Arianism and Roman Catholicism. The followers of the teachings of Arius, a heretical Egyptian priest, believed that the Son of God was essentially inferior to God the Father, and denied the sanctity of the Trinity. Most of the Vandals were devout Arians, but Gelimer had converted to Catholicism. Thus with one stroke he had alienated a large portion of his subjects, and could only regain their love by being successful in war.

His defeat at Decimum would, I thought, surely finish Gelimer and force him to abdicate and flee into exile. The king he had deposed, Hilderic, would be restored to the throne and the war ended, for Hilderic had always been a friend of Rome.

In the meantime I pondered some way of recovering Caledfwlch from the defeated king. My mind was fixed on this object as we rode deeper into the trackless desert. The great copper orb of the sun slowly sank into the west, and its dying rays cast a spectral red glow over the endless sand dunes. We might have been in another world.

Gelimer’s army was scattered to the winds. Only sixteen loyal guardsmen remained with him in the desert, and even these did not seem to bear much love for him. They resented his Catholicism, and blamed him, with some justice, for the defeat at Decimum. But he was not finished yet.

When we made camp that night, huddled in our cloaks around a spluttering fire, he ordered me to sit with him, out of earshot of his guards. My wrists were still bound, and while we talked he fed me bits of bread and dried meat from his own rations.

“The desert is cold at night, eh?” he began, crossing his long legs and staring up at the vast purple arch of the evening sky, already dotted with stars.

“Yes, lord,” I said cautiously. My attention was all on Caledfwlch. I prayed silently for the strength to burst the tight leather cords that secured my wrists.

For a man who had just suffered a catastrophic defeat, Gelimer was in good spirits. His sorrow for his late brother Ammatus, which had seemed so all-consuming, had vanished.

“My men are talking about me,” he said with a little laugh, “some of them were Hilderic’s guards before they were mine.”

I moistened my lips, wondering if I dared try and sow a little discord. “Perhaps they want Hilderic back as their king,” I murmured, “old loyalties tend to die hard.”

“They can’t have him. As soon as I heard that your army had landed on African soil, I had my dear cousin and his chief supporters killed. I should have done it months ago, but was reluctant to anger Justinian. He sent Belisarius against me anyway.”

This rocked me a little. With Hilderic gone, so too was any hope of peace between the Vandals and Rome. I marvelled at Gelimer’s folly, and his blithely callous tone.

“Tell me your name, Roman,” he asked, “and something about yourself. What was the reason for your extraordinary behaviour today?”

“My name is Coel ap Amhar ap Arthur,” I replied, “I am a Briton, not a Roman citizen, though I have spent much of my life in Constantinople. I tried to kill you because I want that sword you carry. It is mine by right of inheritance.”

Gelimer looked at me with an expression that reminded me of my brief conversation with Antonina. It said: you are an animal barely deserving of my notice, but you just performed a trick. Can you do another?

“This,” he said, tapping Caledfwlch’s hilt, “is Crocea Mors, the Yellow Death, once owned by Julius Caesar. How can you possibly have any claim to it?”

I told him, of my grandfather and my mother’s flight to Gaul from Britain after the disaster of Camlann, and how we had journeyed to Constantinople. He listened with interest. When I mentioned Domitius his mouth dropped open.

“I thought you were just a clever liar,” he said, fingering his scrubby little beard as he studied me, “but your story rings true. The Roman officer named Domitius did come to Carthage, many years ago, as part of a diplomatic mission sent by the Emperor Anastasius. Hilderic recognised the sword he carried for what it was, and offered Domitius a casket full of gold coins for it. Domitius refused, so Hilderic poisoned his food – a clever, subtle poison that induces symptoms akin to malaria. As he lay dying, thieves in the employ of my cousin stole Crocea Mors and hid it until Domitius was safely buried and his colleagues had sailed back to Constantinople.”

He drew Caledfwlch and held the blade up to the fading light. I was reminded of Owain doing the same thing, in the cavern by the shores of Less Britain, a lifetime ago. The sight of that silvery blade made the breath catch in my throat, and filled me with a deep longing that overrode my fear of Gelimer.

“Great king,” I said hoarsely, “I am a poor man, alone in the world, and am like to always be. No-one cares whether I live or die. Very little is mine, but that little I would have. To me that sword is more than just a tool for killing. It is the missing link in the chain of my life. I beg you, if you have any sense of justice and mercy, let me have it, and let me go.”

This was the most impassioned plea I could muster, but Gelimer wasn’t listening. His eyes were fixed on Caledfwlch. As I spoke his lips moved silently.

“I read the future in the depths of the blade,” he breathed, “God speaks to me through hand-forged steel. This is a holy weapon. A gift from on high.”

He abruptly stood up and rammed Caledfwlch back into its sheath. “At dawn we shall make for the plain of Builla,” he barked at his guards, “there we shall send out riders to rally our scattered forces. We have enough yet living to oppose the Romans, and my brother Zano still has an army in Sardinia. Belisarius may have won a victory, but soon he shall have to face the entire Vandal nation in battle!”

After a freezing and virtually sleepless night we set off west at the break of dawn, further into the desert. The plain of Builla lay on the road leading to Numidia, some four days’ march from Carthage. It was as bare and desolate a spot as any in Africa, but often used by the Vandals as a rallying point.

A few of Gelimer’s soldiers were already encamped there, and cheered him as he rode out of the wilderness.

“The war has but started,” he cried as they gathered around him. “I still have Caesar’s sword, and God marches with us!”

He ordered a tent to be erected for him, and sat under the canvas scribbling a torrent of letters. These he gave to the most loyal and willing of his men, who sped away on horseback to summon Gelimer’s surviving allies to Builla.

Gelimer also dispatched spies to assess what was happening at Carthage. They brought back news that Belisarius’s army had occupied the city, which drove him into a passionate rage.

“Did they not bar the gates against him?” he fumed, “we left enough soldiers inside the city to defend it, at least for a few days.”

“The native Africans opened the gates to admit him,” said the spy, who trembled as he spoke, “and removed the chains across the entrance to the port to allow the Roman fleet to enter the harbour. Those of our people who were still inside abandoned the city or took refuge in churches. The Africans lit fires to mark the joy of their deliverance.”

The pathetic surrender of Carthage only sharpened Gelimer’s temper, though he should not have been surprised. Africa had been a Roman province once, and the people still had fond memories of living under the benevolent rule of the Caesars.

Gelimer entertained hopes that the Roman soldiers would alienate the populace by looting and pillaging as soon as they entered Carthage. Such was the usual behaviour of victorious armies. Belisarius, however, wisely kept his troops outside the walls until their hot blood had cooled. Mindful of how severe his discipline could be, they were mild as lambs to the citizens, and marched through the streets with a display of order and discipline unmatched since the days of the Republic.

Belisarius’s first act was to enter Gelimer’s palace, seat himself on Gellimer’s throne, and eat the victory feast that had been prepared for Gelimer and his officers.

Word of these humiliations soon reached the king, and drove him to ever more desperate stratagems. Hoping to stir up the African peasants against the enemy, he placed a price on the head of every Roman soldier, to no great effect since all the Romans were safely inside Carthage. He also wrote a pitiful letter to his brother Zano in Sardinia, a copy of which I later read in Constantinople:

“It would seem (he wrote) that your expedition has tended less to the conquest of Sardinia than to our overthrow in Africa. The Vandals have lost their courage, and with their courage their prosperity: our supplies, our arms, our horses, even our capital itself, all are in the possession of the Romans! Nothing is left to us but the field of Builla and the hope which your valour still inspires. Resign, then, all thoughts of Sardinia, and join me. Here, with united forces, we may either restore our empire, or at least not be separated in adversity.”

Zano obeyed, and made all speed with his army to come to his brother’s aid. Thousands of Vandals responded to Gelimer’s summons, along with a number of Moorish desert tribes that he employed as auxiliaries. Much of his treasure had been stored at Carthage and was now lost to the Romans, but the generosity of his people supplied him with sufficient funds to assemble and feed this new army.

As I have said, many of the Vandals had no love for Gelimer, but they knew as well as he that this had become a war of national survival. The Romans, so he preached, were bent on the conquest of their territory and the extermination of the Vandal race.

I was kept in his entourage as a sort of pet, and an example of what Gelimer would do to Belisarius when he took the general captive.

“He shall serve me thus,” Gelimer would declare, as I was forced to kneel so he could use me as a foot-stool to mount his horse, “and be tethered at all times. At night the great general shall sleep in a kennel with the other dogs.”

His troops would laugh at my ritual humiliation, and spit and kick at me as I grovelled in the dirt. My hands were kept tied, save to relieve myself or at meals, when I was obliged to serve Gelimer his wine. At other times he treated me with unnerving courtesy – his mind was cracked, no doubt of it – and more like the honoured captive he had promised I would be.

He only seriously threatened my life once. As part of his attempts to stir up rebellion, Gelimer had sent conspirators into the city to encourage the Arian and Vandal citizens to rebel, and bribe the Hunnish mercenaries into deserting the Romans. A Vandal scout came galloping into the camp to inform Gelimer that the Romans had discovered and arrested one of these agents.

So far Belisarius had behaved with the utmost mildness and conciliation, to the point where the Vandals jeered that he must be a woman in military dress. Now the gentle mask was ripped away. He had the captured agent, whose name was Laurus, taken onto a hill outside the gates of Carthage and slowly impaled on an iron stake.

Word of this atrocity, which was meant as a warning and an example, caused Gelimer to temporarily lose his reason. He raged and swore and babbled incoherently, tore at his clothes, clawed his face and struck out wildly at any that came near him. When he saw me, standing in my usual position just behind his chair, he drew Caledfwlch and pressed its edge against my cheek.

“I shall stab out your eyes,” he hissed, “and send you to Belisarius, strapped to the back of a pony. Or cut off your privy parts and make you carry them to him in a bag. That would be justice for the death of faithful Laurus, would it not?”

If I blinked, or avoided his gaze, I was lost.

“Wanton abuse of prisoners does not become the great,” I said with forced calm, “Belisarius’s treatment of Laurus has revealed himself to be a lesser man than you.”

The wild look flickered and died in Gelimer’s eyes. “Yes,” he said slowly, and took the blade away from my skin, “he is the lesser man. You are right. And he has the lesser army. His time shall come.”

He was correct in one regard. The Vandal army that mustered at Builla was huge, and over the course of several weeks swelled to over forty thousand fighting men.

Belisarius wisely made no attempt to sally out and attack this multitude, but devoted all his efforts to repairing the defences of Carthage. The ditches that surrounded the city were deepened, the gaps in the ancient walls filled, and the crumbling ramparts shored up and strengthened. His fleet patrolled the seas, but was unable to prevent Zano’s army from landing on the African coast, at a point between Mauritania and Numidia.

Zano’s arrival at the camp instilled a sense of euphoria in the Vandals, and fuelled their belief that God meant them to defeat the Romans. The royal brothers embraced wordlessly and clung tightly to each other while the troops roared and chanted their war-songs.

I experienced a growing sense of dread as I gazed out over that sea of flushed, hairy faces and waving banners, and pitied the Romans holed up inside Carthage. If the Huns accepted Gelimer’s bribes and deserted, Belisarius would be left with less than thirteen thousand men. Of these, ten thousand were infantry, a good number of which were unfit for anything but standing in a line.

Gelimer and Zano were fully aware of the plight of the Romans, and determined to make the most of it. When their combined army was fully rested, they decided to march on Carthage and retake their capital by storm.

Chapter 19

The Vandals advanced to within twenty miles of the city, and encamped near a village called Tricamarum. Stamped forever on my memory is the sight of that vast host, squadron after squadron of horse and foot, an entire warrior nation on the march. Thousands of Vandal women and children followed in the wake of the men, and stubbornly refused to obey when Gelimer ordered them to turn back.

His Moorish auxiliaries fascinated me. The fierce desert tribesmen made for ideal light cavalry. They wore little armour over their head-scarves and long, flowing robes, and were armed with long knives and a single javelin apiece. Most were mounted on tough desert ponies, but a few rode camels – stinking, obnoxious beasts, which their riders boasted would induce panic in the Roman cavalry, for horses hate the smell of camel. They certainly alarmed the Vandal horses, and were obliged to keep a distance from the main army.

At Tricamarum Gelimer ordered the destruction of an aqueduct that supplied Carthage with water, as part of his plan to force the Romans to give battle.

“They cannot hide behind their walls for long without water,” he gloated, “Belisarius has the option of taking to his ships and fleeing back to Constantinople, or of marching out to face his destruction.”

“The general will not run, Majesty,” I said, “that is not his way.”

He regarded me balefully. “And you know him so well, do you?” he mocked. “Tell me, then, what sort of man is he? I know he is a good soldier, and what happened at Decimum proves that he enjoys the luck of the gods. But of the inner man, I know very little.”

“His watchword is duty,” I replied simply, “that is my reading of him. The Emperor has given him a task, and he will fulfil it or die in the attempt. He cannot be bribed, or dissuaded against his better judgment.”

We rode on in silence for a while, and the steady thump-thump of infantry drums masked the pounding of my heart.

“I think you speak the truth,” said Gelimer, “and I understand Belisarius better now. Look at the Empire that he fights for. It is like a conjoined twin, one member of which has died and rotted away, leaving the other sibling to live on as best it can. The glory has passed. Rome is degenerate and corrupt. She relies on mercenaries to defend her borders. Every year a little more of her territory is lost, snatched away by the younger and more vigorous races she once ruled.”

“Belisarius, now,” he added, wagging a finger at me, “is a man born out of time, a throwback to the days of antiquity, when Rome was an enemy worth fighting. He should have lived in the time of Scipio Africanus, or Julius Caesar, or even Aetius. His destiny is to die fighting for a cause that is already lost. A pity.”

I felt like laughing in his face. The Romans had already beaten Gelimer once, and were in possession of his capital and much of his treasure. But that would have meant my death – or perhaps not, since Gelimer’s moods were so unpredictable. Overall, I thought it best to agree with him.

While the Vandals were camped at Tricamarum, their scouts raced back to report that Belisarius was on the march. He had left a garrison of just five hundred men to hold Carthage, and sallied forth at the head of his army to face the Vandals in the field.

“Did I not say he would?” cried Gelimer, before going on one knee to thank God for delivering the enemy on a platter. His officers did likewise, Arians and Catholics in a rare moment of unity. Their prayers were led by Zano, the king’s brother, who somewhat resembled Gelimer physically but was the more constant character and a better soldier.

According to the Vandal scouts, Belisarius was marching straight towards Tricamarum. This was soon confirmed, and the sandy plain became frantic with activity as the enormous Vandal host broke camp and readied for battle. Gelimer ordered the women and children to stay behind, and had his Moors shift at spear-point those who refused to go. He and Zano harangued their troops, urging them to remember the glory of their ancestors, who had carved out the Vandal kingdom of North Africa, and consider the fate of their families if the Romans prevailed.

The Vandal host was hurriedly drawn up into line, with most of the cavalry on the wings and the mass of infantry in the centre. Zano had the command of the latter, while Gelimer took charge of the mounted reserve and the auxiliaries.

The King kept me close by his side, so I might witness his glorious deeds and the number of Romans he personally slew with Caledfwlch.

“Remind me, Briton, how many barbarians your grandfather slew in one battle with this sword?” he demanded, raising his voice above the din of drums and war-horns and thousands of marching feet.

“Nine hundred and sixty, Majesty,” I shouted back, “so my mother told me.”

“Today I shall make it a round thousand!” he laughed, and featly tossed the sword in the air. I watched it fall with greedy eyes, longing for the blade to puncture Gelimer’s throat, but he caught it by the hilt and grinned at my expression.

The clamour eventually died down, and the Vandals stood ready, some forty thousand men arrayed in perfect order. A light breeze swept across the plain, whipping up the sand and snapping at their pennons and banners. Gelimer disliked the eerie silence and ordered his drummers to beat constantly. The sound of drums, he claimed, would smother the fears of his men and fill their hearts with martial ardour.

Belisarius did not come. The horizon to the west remained empty, and no distant sound of trumpets pierced the air. Gelimer peeled off his gauntlets and gnawed his fingernails in frustration.

“Enough!” he shouted at last, “I will not be kept waiting. Sound the advance.”

He threw up his arm, the war-horns again boomed out their song, and the Vandal host lurched into life. They tramped west in the direction of Carthage, sending out parties of scouts and skirmishers to look for any sign of the Romans.

Belisarius was too clever to advance into the lion’s mouth. Instead he had halted some thirty miles from Carthage and drawn up his little army on the banks of a small river, a confluent of the Merjerda that runs through Algeria and Tunisia. His bucellarii were drawn up in the centre, my old comrades the Heruli on the right along with the rest of the foederati, and his infantry in the rear. The unreliable Huns, whose loyalties were still far from certain, had taken up position some distance from the main army.

My heart sank. The Romans were pitifully few, and a ripple of laughter passed through the ranks of the Vandal infantry as they beheld the enemy. Gelimer was exchanging jokes with one of his generals – they were merrily debating whether to employ the captured Belisarius as a groom or a cook – when Roman trumpets sounded from across the river.

Belisarius had fooled the Vandals into thinking he intended to fight a defensive battle. Instead he seized the advantage and threw his bucelarii, all fifteen hundred of them, at the Vandal centre.

The forward squadrons of Zano’s infantry were still deploying. His mounted officers charged back and forth, screaming at their men to get into line as the heavily armoured Roman horsemen splashed across the river and stormed towards them.

“Archers!” shouted Gelimer, though none could hear him besides me and his immediate guards. Some of his captains were alive to the danger, and a few hundred Vandal horse archers spurred from the wings. They might as well have shot flowers, for their arrows pattered harmlessly off the thick Roman armour.

The bucelarii crashed into the Vandal spears like a tidal wave against a flimsy sea-wall. I felt the collision in my gut and winced at the carnage as scores of infantrymen disappeared under the churning hoofs. Then the Romans were in among the shattered Vandal ranks, spitting men on lances and striking right and left with their spathas.

Somehow, despite their appalling losses and the nerve-shredding impact of the Roman charge, the Vandals did not break. Their sheer press of bodies slowed the impetus of the bucelarii, and they fought back with the suicidal courage of men who knew the fate of their families and their country was at stake.

Trumpets sounded the retreat, and the Romans turned and retired in good order back across the river, leaving bloody chaos behind them. Entire squadrons of Vandal infantry had ceased to exist. The broken bodies of dead and dying warriors lay strewn in heaps, while the few survivors staggered among the human rubble in a daze, bleeding from terrible wounds.

Gelimer sat like a statue, struck dumb by what he had just witnessed. His active brother sent gallopers tearing up and down the line to summon troops from the wings and reserve of the Vandal army to reinforce his battered centre.

There was no time for the Vandals to think of launching an attack of their own. Almost as soon as the bucelarii had re-formed, the trumpeters signalled another charge, and they rumbled forward again.

Belisarius clearly had but one object in mind. I can best compare his tactics at Tricamarum to a smith beating away at an inferior piece of metal. The metal may resist for a while, but will eventually yield under the blows of the hammer.

The Vandals were better prepared this time to receive the charge, but it made little difference. Again their ranks were burst to pieces by that avalanche of iron and horseflesh, and again only their raw, desperate courage prevented the centre of the Vandal army from total collapse.

“Damn them!” screamed Gelimer, clawing at my arm. For one awful moment I thought he meant to lead his reserves into the fight, which would almost certainly mean my death: my reins were tied to his via a length of silver chain, I had no weapons or armour, and my wrists were bound.

The Romans fell back a second time. Here and there among the corpses scattered about the plain lay the still, gleaming forms of a dead Roman horseman and his mount, but their casualties were minimal. By contrast, hundreds of Vandals had died, and I knew the bucelarii could happily launch after charge and charge until sundown. Their horses were of the finest, and the men that rode them had undergone years of training and conditioning. Many were hardened veterans of Belisarius’s Persian campaigns.

At this point the Moors decided they had seen enough. They turned their camels about and fled the field, pursued by Gelimer’s enraged screams.

“Cowards! Traitors!” he railed, “you have taken my pay and eaten my bread, and now you abandon me? Run back to your holes, then, you desert filth! May your souls be flayed forever in the pits of Hell!”

Gelimer carried on in this vein until the Moors were out of earshot. He seemed to have lost his wits completely, and effective command of the Vandal army devolved onto his brother. To give him credit, Zano was equal to the task, and did his best to shore up the broken lines and spirits of his troops.

The disparity in numbers between the armies was still huge, but the Vandals reminded me of a boxer I had once seen Felix defeat at the Hippodrome, struggling to rise despite the fact he was spitting teeth and both his eyes were swelling. One more punch from Felix had been enough to finish him, and here one more Roman charge would surely be enough to hand Belisarius the victory.

Zano’s best hope lay in the Huns. If they turned traitor and fell on the Romans from the rear, then he might yet be able to reverse the fortunes of the day.

The Huns, however, could see which way the tide was turning, and chose to return to their former allegiance. When the bucelarii launched another charge, this time with Belisarius at their head, they did so with squadrons of Hunnish and Heruli cavalry on the wings. They were supported by the Roman infantry, long lines of swordsmen and spearmen, which until now had stood idle. Belisarius had thrown his entire army forward in an all-out effort to break the Vandals.

By now I was utterly deafened by the noise of battle, and felt rather than heard the thunderous drumming of hoofs. The vibration came up from the ground, making my horse shudder.

If I had been a Vandal spearman in the front line, my fragile body protected by nothing more than a little round shield, an iron cap and a padded leather tunic, I would not have stood my ground in the face of that final onslaught for all the treasure in Constantinople. They were braver men than I, and so was their commander. Zano rode up and down the ranks, roaring at his men to lock shields and hold fast against the oncoming tide.

I averted my eyes just before the impact. There was a moment of dislocation, when the screams of men and horses and trumpets and the thunderous collision of bodies penetrated even my ruined hearing.

When I dared to look again, the Vandal battle-line was smashed beyond repair. The Romans had punched straight through it like an iron fist. Here and there small groups of Vandal warriors stood and fought to the end, but there was no longer any trace of organised resistance.

Zano’s standard was down, hacked from its staff, and the Vandal prince lay dying under his fallen banner. A Roman lance had impaled his belly and thrust out of his spine.

Once again the death of a brother completely unmanned Gelimer. He uttered a great shriek, as though the lance had entered his own body, and slumped in the saddle.

I thought his heart had failed. One of his officers reached out to touch his shoulder, and he jerked like a scalded cat.

“The battle is lost, Majesty,” shouted the officer, “but we shall not let the Romans take you.”

Mention of capture brought Gelimer back to his senses. “Taken?” he exclaimed in horror, “to be a prisoner – to be paraded like a wild animal before Justinian? Never!”

He turned his horse around and spurred away, so quickly it took me and his guards by surprise. I was dragged along in his wake, and just had time to turn my head and witness the death-throes of the Vandal army.

The worst moments of a battle are the last, when one side breaks and turns to flee. This is when the real killing begins. Tricamarum was no different. Belisarius had beaten the Vandals twice, and now he had to destroy their capacity to fight him a third time.

Normally he kept his troops on a tight rein. Now he unleashed them. His cavalry under John the Armenian set off in merciless pursuit of the fugitives, while his infantry overwhelmed and slaughtered those that were too proud to run.

The Vandal nation, that had conquered Spain and North Africa and sacked Rome, died by inches in the blood and dust outside Tricamarum. Its king escaped from the field, as he had escaped from Decimum, accompanied by a few guards and one hapless prisoner.

Chapter 20

I was at a loss to know where Gelimer could go. His capital was lost, and there were no fortresses he could take refuge in: when they conquered North Africa, the Vandals had deliberately destroyed all the fortified places in the province, so they could not be occupied by rebel garrisons. This policy now proved disastrous, for it meant Belisarius did not have to waste the limited strength of his army on lengthy sieges.

I had forgotten that there was one other major city in the province still held by the Vandals. This was Hippo Regius, some sixty miles south-west down the coast from Carthage.

That headlong gallop through the desert at night was one of the strangest experiences of my life. Thunder rolled in the inky depths of the African skies, and flashes of greenish fire played around the lance-heads of Gelimer’s guards. Some of them cried that this was a sign of divine displeasure, and that the Vandals no longer enjoyed the grace of God.

They also took it as an excuse to desert their king. The company steadily grew less and less as we rode westwards, until only the most loyal men remained with him – and I, of course, who had no choice in the matter.

Gelimer called a halt before the horses could founder. The thunder had faded away to the east, and the freezing tranquillity of the desert at night made for a stark contrast to the chaos and slaughter of the battlefield. I could hear the crashing of waves half a mile or so to the north, and thought longingly of the green homeland I could barely remember, hundreds of miles away across land and sea.

There was no sign of the Romans, though initially a squadron of foederati had come thundering after us in hot pursuit. Unknown to us, John the Armenian had somehow got into a fight with one of his soldiers, and the soldier had struck him a mortal blow. This farcical occurrence halted the pursuit, and the foederati turned back to carry their commander’s body to Belisarius.

“This is not the end,” panted Gelimer, “the deaths of so many of my kin, and of my brave soldiers, must be avenged. God wills it. We shall go to Hippo Regius, where I have stored a reserve of my treasure, and send emissaries to the King of the Visigoths in Spain. He shall give us troops to create a new army, one that shall sweep the Romans out of our land for good.”

His face looked haggard and ghastly in the pale light of the half-moon, and his words lacked conviction. The game was up. I knew it, and so did Gelimer’s guards.

“God has turned His face from us,” cried one of his officers, whom I had never previously heard utter a word of criticism against his sovereign, “and handed victory to the Romans, our ancient enemies, as a punishment for your heresy!”

He pointed his lance accusingly at Gelimer. His comrades – there were only a handful of them left, maybe nine or ten – took up his cry. The Vandals were a fearsomely proud race, and it was far easier to blame one man for their defeat at the hands of a people they regarded as degenerate.

Gelimer’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times, putting me in mind of a startled fish, but he had nothing to say. His well of speeches had run dry, and he could no longer count on the automatic loyalty of his subjects. Belisarius had destroyed his credibility.

“Farewell, Majesty,” said the officer, “I have followed you as far as I can, and must make my own way in the world. May God forgive you, and guide you to some peaceful haven.”

He turned his horse and rode away into the desert. After easing their consciences with similar noises of regret, the others departed singly or in little groups.

Gelimer watched them go in silence. He had the wretched look of a man whose spirit had flowed out of him, leaving a broken and useless vessel. No-one else remained besides me and a twelve-year old boy named Euages, his last surviving nephew.

“Majesty,” I said, hoping to take advantage of his weakness, “cut my bonds.”

He nodded dumbly at Euages. The boy trotted over to me, drew his dagger and slit the leather cords that bound my wrists. I gasped and doubled up in pain as the blood flowed back into my numbed hands.

While I recovered, Gelimer slid from his horse and went down on his knees in the sand. Then he slowly drew Caledfwlch and offered it to me, hilt-first.

“Take it,” he said, “the sword is rightfully yours. God has punished me for assuming that it was mine, and would lead me to dominion over the earth.”

I could hardly believe what was being offered, after so many years and hardships. Caledfwlch’s hilt glinted in the moonlight. All I had to do was reach out and snatch it.

“Promise me this,” the king went on, “when you take the sword, let your first act be to plunge it into my breast. I would do so myself, but lack the courage.”

Euages cried out and half-drew his dagger, but Gelimer raised a hand to still his protests.

“Patience, nephew,” he said with a wry smile, “let this man do one clean thing, and you shall be King of the Vandals. I wish you joy of your crown. King of a conquered people, of dust and ashes!”

Gelimer’s extraordinary eyes yearned up at me, willing me to murder him. He offered the sword again. I could have simply taken it and ridden away, but lacked the presence of mind. A ghostly voice seemed to whisper in my ear, urging me to kill the man kneeling before me.

“I am many things, Majesty,” I said, “but not an assassin. Give me the sword freely, without condition, or not at all.”

The king’s face screwed up in rage. “Will no-one obey me?” he howled, “am I to be mocked and insulted by former slaves?”

I was unmoved. His tantrums no longer had the power to threaten. He made for a wretched, laughable sight, like an overgrown infant wailing for his rattle.

“No insult was intended,” I replied calmly, “but I will not put an end to you.”

Gelimer made a whining noise in the back of his throat and started to crawl towards me on all fours. “Please,” he begged, “if you carried my head back to Belisarius, he would heap honours and riches on you! Think of what you are throwing away!

His nephew had heard enough. “Shame!” cried Euages, putting himself between us, “for shame, uncle. Get up, and stop making a spectacle of yourself.”

Suitably admonished, Gelimer slowly rose to his feet and slid Caledfwlch back into its sheath.

“We shall go to Hippo Regius,” said Euages, “and send word to the Visigoths. As you said, uncle, this war is not over.”

I was amused by his assertiveness, and how meekly Gelimer allowed his nephew to take control. Euages was barely twelve years old and already cut a more royal figure.

Two days later we reached Hippo Regius, which was like a smaller version of Constantinople basking on the African coast. It was a prosperous place, or had been, with a number of splendid Roman-style villas near the city gates and the seafront. Like Carthage, the walls were in a ruinous state, and I doubted they could withstand one determined assault from Belisarius’s infantry.

Gelimer, whose spirits had revived a little, made himself known to the guards on the gate and told them to fetch Boniface, the Vandal officer he had left in charge of the city.

Boniface soon appeared on the decaying rampart above the main gates. He was a big, fleshy man, and instead of armour wore light silken robes embroidered with gold. More gold flashed around his neck and on his fingers as he leaned on the parapet and squinted down at us.

“Majesty,” he said, “one of your former guards brought us the news a couple of hours ago. It seems your campaign against the Romans has not been a resounding success.”

Gelimer swallowed hard before replying. “Open the gates,” he cried, “the Romans will soon be here, and we must put the city in a state of defence.”

“A state of defence, Majesty? The city garrison is a rabble of citizen militia and watchmen. It is all I can do to keep them sober. The walls are falling to pieces. That boy who rides with you could put his fist through them.”

He spread his hands to indicate the vast empty space behind Gelimer. “Where are your legions, dread king? Where are your lancers, your spearmen, your mighty engines of war? All gone. Scattered to the four winds, or food for vultures.”

Gelimer’s neck suffused with angry blood. “I am not interested in your rhetoric, Boniface,” he yelled, “open these gates, I command you!”

Boniface sadly shook his head. “No,” he said, “you command nothing anymore. When the Romans come, I shall open the gates to them, and bargain for whatever concessions they are willing to yield. There has been too much bloodshed. Not one more Vandal shall die for the sake of your vanity.”

The fallen king went berserk. He reached new heights of eloquence in his condemnation of Boniface, and promised violent and disgusting retribution. The reason for his anger was twofold. Not only had Boniface defied him to his face, but the last of the royal treasure was inside the city. The treasure was Gelimer’s only means of raising a new army to fight the Romans, and of buying the support of the Visigoths.

Boniface waited patiently until the king had to pause for breath. “You must leave now,” he said, “the Romans will be here soon – I fancy I can see the dust of their cavalry on the horizon – and I am not used to being threatened. Go, before I permit my archers to use you for target practice.”

Gelimer railed and cursed some more, to no avail. As a last resort he burst into tears, which earned him nothing but the laughter of the men on the walls. With a final curse and a shake of his fist, he turned away from the city and spurred his horse west, towards a distant range of mountains.

His nephew and I followed, though there was nothing to stop me from leaving them and riding to join the Romans that were undoubtedly advancing on Hippo Regius.

I did stop for a moment, and shaded my eyes to peer east. There was a cloud of dust visible on the horizon, and I glimpsed sunlight reflecting off advancing spearheads.

I was torn between two possible futures. To follow Gelimer was by far the least desirable option, but the madman still had my sword.

With a heavy sigh, I turned my face away from the east and rode after the king.

Chapter 21

Gelimer took us deep into the mountainous region known as the Khroumirie, near the border of Tunisia. This was no rocky desolation, but mostly covered in thick forest and well-watered by a network of rivers flowing into the sea to the north.

The king had fallen into one of his black moods. During the journey he was a silent, hangdog figure, and did not respond to any of my questions. His nephew, a brave and lively youth and deserving of a better kinsman, was more forthcoming.

“Do you see that peak?” he said, pointing to a particularly steep and craggy peak, its high summit wreathed in clouds, “that is Mount Papua. There is an ancient town on its northern crest, now in ruins and inhabited by a tribe of Moors. I believe my uncle means to take refuge there.”

“The Moors?” I exclaimed. “But they deserted him at Tricamarum. He surely cannot trust them.”

“Perhaps not, but my uncle has been generous to this particular tribe in the past. They may be savages, but they have their own code of honour. A little crude and warped by civilised standards, maybe, but it exists. His only other choice is to leave Africa and travel to Spain, in the hope of raising support there.”

“I will not abandon my kingdom,” growled Gelimer. Those were the first words he had uttered since we were turned away from Hippo Regius.

“Majesty,” I said, spurring my horse alongside his, “what use is further resistance? The Romans have broken your army in two battles, and Boniface has stolen your treasure. You have nothing left to fight with. Belisarius will offer you honourable terms of surrender.”

Gelimer’s face, which had aged years in a few days, creased into a bitter smile. “Take another look at that mountain,” he said, “it cannot be accessed, save by a narrow ravine that is easily defended. Up there, a handful of men could hold off the world in arms.”

I looked at Mount Papua. Gelimer was right, it seemed defensible enough, and a lot of men would die attempting to storm it. More wasted lives, in a war that had already wasted too many.

A war that could be ended at a stroke, said an inner voice.

My eyes strayed to Gelimer’s skinny neck. The Heruli had taught me how to throttle a man with my bare hands, and in the case of Gelimer I reckoned it would take very little effort. Euages would try and stop me, but a twelve-year old boy wasn’t much of a threat.

Arthur would have done it. He slew his own son. He did what was necessary.

But I was not Arthur. I was not forged of his metal. Did that make me degenerate or enlightened? I could not be certain. All I knew was that I could not kill in cold blood, even for the good of others.

We reached the lower reaches of the mountain, and from there led our weary horses on foot. The way became ever more steep and narrow, until we were walking in single file along a trail that wound on endlessly until it vanished into the mists.

“See there,” cried Gelimer, indicating the jagged walls that rose up either side of the trail, “there will be Moorish sentries watching us from the summit of those, depend on it. If they don’t like the look of us, expect a sudden shower of rocks.”

He sounded almost cheerful at the prospect of being stoned to death from above. It was not courage that drove him, I reminded myself, but madness: the same madness that had driven me to try and kill Gelimer at Decimum instead of fleeing with my comrades, and had brought me to this lethal desolation.

We had not progressed much further before someone whistled up ahead, and figures emerged from cover. They turned out to be Moors, an even poorer set than those I had seen at Tricamarum, barefoot and clad in cloaks and tunics made of coarse wool.

Gelimer gave a cry when he saw them, and ran towards the leading Moor with his arms spread wide. I half-expected them to cut him down with their javelins, but instead the Moorish chief grinned and accepted his embrace. They spoke rapidly in a language I did not understand, punctuated by much laughter and hand-clasping, while the chief’s warriors ran suspicious eyes over me and Euages.

“Come,” said Gelimer, beckoning at us, “this tribe are my friends, and will make us welcome here.”

I was still wary, and remained so as I laboured up the increasingly difficult slope, trying not to look at the sheer walls that dropped away to unfathomable depths on either side. Mount Papua was as impregnable a natural fortress as one could wish for, and surely immune from any direct assault.

“If Gelimer hopes that Belisarius will break his teeth on these jagged cliffs,” I said to Euages, “then he is doomed to disappointment. The general is a pragmatist. He will starve us out.”

“His soldiers will grow old and grey before that happens,” the boy replied confidently, “the Moors know how to sustain themselves, even up here. They have endured many sieges, and every one has failed.”

I could see why, especially during the final stage of the ascent, when the trail ran out and the Moors employed ropes and iron braces to reach Medenes.

This had once been a walled town of some import, though I could not understand why or how anyone would choose to build a town in such a remote and inaccessible spot. Euages pointed out to me another road that led to the bottom, wider and easier than the trail we had used, but entirely fallen away in places and blocked by piles of rubble.

“The Moors deliberately blocked the old road,” he explained, “so the only way to reach Medenes is to climb. Or fly, but I doubt even the Romans have mastered that.”

The town itself was in a ruinous state. Most of the encircling walls were broken and decayed, and the roofless buildings home to nothing save nesting birds. The Moors preferred to squat inside their camel-hide tents. Clusters of tents were scattered about the otherwise empty streets, little enclaves of barbarism amid the ruin of civilisation.

I made the best of these rough lodgings, hoping that Gelimer could not possibly hold out for more than a few weeks. Winter was coming on, and the Moorish scouts reported that the Romans were encamped at the foot of the mountain. From the description of the Roman soldiers they gave to Gelimer, I found that we were besieged by Pharas and his Heruli.

“Belisarius has left them to starve me into surrender,” the king said, gloomily poking at the charred remains of a fire, “while he conquers the rest of my kingdom.”

He clenched his fist. “The Romans will not find it so easy, even if I am blockaded in here. There are still thousands of my people in arms, led by captains who will not renounce their allegiance, even for Justinian’s gold.”

The king over-estimated the will and the capacity of the Vandals to resist Belisarius. While we were holed up in Medenes, Belisarius had dispatched squadrons to reduce the rest of North Africa while he marched on Hippo Regius. That city was surrendered without a fight by the treacherous Boniface, who in return was permitted to sail away unmolested with a portion of Gelimer’s captured treasure.

Vandal resistance crumbled inside a matter of weeks. Their provinces of Corsica and Sardinia offered their surrender as soon as they received the severed head of Zano, Gellimer’s brother, which Belisarius had despatched to them inside a basket. The Vandal-held fortress of Septem in the straits of Gibraltar was stormed and occupied, and the Balearic Islands reduced by one Appolinarius, a Vandal deserter in Roman service. That left only Medenes and a few other scattered outposts in Vandal hands. Belisarius was able to send word to the Emperor in Constantinople that North Africa was once again a Roman province.

All the while, as the victorious Romans dismembered his kingdom, the defeated Gelimer sat and suffered on Mount Papua. I suffered with him. Winter was coming on, and the slopes of the mountain were draped in snow. The bone-cracking cold and icy winds did not seem to affect the Moors, who cheerfully slept on the bare ground outside their stinking tents, but I was in danger of freezing to death. Our supplies of food steadily dwindled, and what there was consisted of goat’s cheese and coarse grain. The grain was eaten raw, or pounded and baked into a type of unleavened and scarcely digestible bread.

Several weeks into this miserable ordeal the Heruli made their one and only effort to storm Medenes. Pharas was impatient to end the war and earn the praise of Belisarius by bringing him the Vandal king in chains. Even so, Mount Papua presented a forbidding obstacle, and he was a good enough soldier to know that a direct assault would almost certainly end in disaster. Against his better judgment, he allowed his officers to persuade him into making an attempt at night.

I was crouched under a heap of cloaks in a corner of a ruined outbuilding, trying in vain to ignore the numbing cold and the dreary howling of the wind, when Euages came to rouse me.

“Up, Coel, and arm,” he shouted, prodding me with the butt of a javelin, “the Romans are attacking.”

He hurried away, while torches flickered in the darkened street outside and high-pitched Moorish voices yelled in alarm. I got to my feet, none too quickly, and tried to gulp down my excitement. The Heruli were coming.

I had to find Gelimer before they killed or captured him. If not, Caledfwlch might be lost to me forever.

Snatching up a javelin and a shield, I padded out into the street. A few Moors ran past me, heading towards the sound of a bull-horn from the direction of the gate. I followed them, and saw Moorish warriors lining the walkway or standing on the ruined battlements, hurling rocks and javelins and screaming war-cries in their unintelligible tongue.

Gelimer and the Moorish chief were helping to pile loose rocks and bits of timber onto the heap of rubble that blocked up the gateway. The Vandal king beckoned me over to help.

“Come, Briton,” he shouted, eyes bulging from his sweating, dirt-smeared face, “there is plenty of work for idle hands here. Help us shore up the gate.”

I was exhausted from lack of food and sleep, and weary of taking orders from this madman. For a moment I hefted the javelin in my hand. Gelimer wore no armour, and his back made for a temptingly exposed target. I could tear Caledfwlch from its sheath as he lay dying, and die with Arthur’s sword in my hand, cut down by enraged Moors while the Heruli stormed their pathetic defences.

Patience, patience. There was no need for such futile heroics. Laying aside the javelin, I half-heartedly picked up some crumbling bits of masonry and added them to the pile under the gate. My heart started to thump as I heard the sound of Heruli war-horns from outside.

I wanted to see them, the men I had lived and trained alongside for so many months until I had adopted their ways and almost felt like one of them. Ignoring Gelimer’s shouts, I scrambled up the heap of rubble until my face was level with the parapet over the gate, and peered down into the valley.

The night was black as pitch, but the line of Moorish torches along the wall cast some light on the men struggling up the narrow mountain trail. As was their custom, the Heruli had painted their shields and their bodies black, so they were once again the “shadowy, funereal host” that excelled at night ambushes. Thus camouflaged, they had succeeded in getting two-thirds of the way up the trail before the Moorish sentries spotted them and raised the alarm.

They would get no further. There was nowhere to hide on that trail, and the Heruli were exposed to missiles raining down on them from the town and the surrounding peaks. They had huddled together and locked shields over their heads in poor imitation of the ancient Roman testudo. This provided some protection from the storm of rocks and javelins and arrows, but the Heruli lacked the discipline and leadership to advance.

I cursed and smacked my fist against the rampart. Stricken warriors were tumbling from the path into the fathomless chasms below, and the rear of the column was disintegrating as men turned to flee back down the mountain.

“Run, you curs, you faithless mercenary swine!” I heard Gelimer scream, “run back to Belisarius and tell him of the whipping you have received! Tell him that the King of the Vandals still has teeth, and shall out tear out his throat if he comes too near Medenes!”

From the way the king capered and ranted, you might have thought he had won a signal victory, but the rout of the Heruli only delayed the inevitable. Gelimer lacked the men to pursue and destroy them. His Moors numbered no more than fifty or sixty warriors, and were unwilling to risk their lives against a thousand or so of the enemy.

For his part, Pharas was too wise to try another assault. He settled down to starve Gelimer out, secure in the knowledge that no Vandal armies remained in the field to try and break his blockade.

Three months dragged past. The hardships of the siege started to affect even the Moors, and a few of the weakest succumbed to cold and starvation. I might have gone that way too, but Gelimer seemed to regard me as some kind of symbol of good fortune, and insisted that I share with him the best of the remaining food.

Several times I tried to persuade him to surrender, but he was inflexible, and mistook stubbornness for courage. He insisted that with the coming of spring the war would be renewed, and he would be borne in triumph back to Carthage.

“Like this sword, my people are forged of true steel,” he said, holding up Caledfwlch, “they are used to hardship and misfortune, and cannot be broken by one lucky Roman general and his little army of foreigners and sell-swords.”

I saw my face reflected in the blade, illuminated by the dying glow of the fire. It was hollow-eyed, pale and sunken, half-covered by a scrubby growth of beard like dirty moss clinging to my chin. A few more days, I thought, and the spirit shall depart from this cadaver.

God intervened before I finally took it into my heart to murder Gelimer. He sent a vile rash that appeared on the king’s face and hands, and rendered him near-blind by causing his eyelids to swell.

For a day or two Gelimer bore the pain and disfigurement, but the sign of God’s displeasure was too obvious to be ignored. He sent for me, this pitiable, emaciated wretch of a man, and expressed his desire to make peace with the Romans.

“But it must be on my terms,” he said, “I will not allow Belisarius to boast that I came crawling to him, begging for my life.”

“The general does not boast of his victories,” I replied, “he receives all that comes his way with humility and gratitude, like a good Christian should.”

The pointed nature of this remark was wasted on Gelimer. “You have stayed by my side, Briton, when you might have deserted me months ago. I do not flatter myself that you have done so through misplaced loyalty. I know what you want.”

Caledfwlch lay in its sheath by his side. He picked it up, weighed it carefully in both hands for a moment, and tossed the sword at my feet.

“Yours,” he said, “I give it to you freely, and without condition.”

Chapter 22

I descended Mount Papua alone with a verbal message from Gelimer for Pharas. Caledfwlch hung from my hip inside its leather sheath. Not once, all the way from Medenes to the outskirts of the Roman camp, did my hand relinquish its grip on the hilt.

In typical Roman style, the Heruli had built a fortified camp at the base of the mountain, complete with a timber palisade and defensive ditch lined with stakes. Two of their sentries stepped out from the trees with lowered spears as I approached, but the suspicious glowers on their faces dissolved when they recognised me as Coel, the adopted Briton they had given up for lost. With much back-slapping and congratulations on my survival, they escorted me to the tent of Pharas in the middle of the fortified compound.

He was no less surprised to see me alive and well, if slightly less effusive. “Coel,” he said, eyeing me warily, “I last saw you at Decimum, just before the Vandals struck our flank. I thought you died there.”

“I was taken prisoner, sir,” I replied, “for some reason Gelimer took a liking to me, and dragged me about like a piece of baggage. He agreed to release me, in return for three gifts.”

Pharas scratched his wiry beard. “Gifts? What do you mean?”

“He asks for a lyre to be sent up to him, with a sponge and a loaf of decent bread. The lyre is so he can once again hear music, to soften the desolation of his heart. The sponge is to treat the swellings on his eyes, and the bread as a palliative against the coarse Moorish stuff he is forced to eat. Those are his words, not mine.”

“Quite the bloody poet, isn’t he? Well, I suppose we should return the great favour he has shown us. I don’t know how the army would have coped without you.”

His heavy sarcasm was tinged with suspicion. “Why did the Vandals take you prisoner?” he demanded, “they don’t usually, especially not Romans. What makes you so special?”

He kept me on my feet, even though I was half-starved and croaking with thirst, while I poured out the story of why I tried to kill Gelimer at Decimum, of my treatment as a prisoner afterwards, my presence at Tricamarum, and the long, painful weeks on Mount Papua. It was an extraordinary tale, and Pharas might not have believed it, had I not drawn Caledfwlch and held it up for his inspection.

He stared at the sword for a moment. “Give it here,” he said finally, holding out his hand.

It took a major effort of will to disobey an order from Pharas. His word had been law during my months of training in the camp of the Heruli, and I had seen soldiers flogged or even executed for defying him. But I would not give up Caledfwlch again. I was prepared to die rather than allow it to be taken from me.

“Are you deaf?” he rasped when I made no move. “Hand it over. Now.”

I pushed Caledfwlch back into its sheath. “No, sir,” I replied, “the sword is mine. I claim it, not as booty, but as my birthright. General Belisarius will know what I mean.”

Mention of the general’s name stemmed the angry blood that had flowed to Pharas’s cheeks. “Will he, now?” he said, “I remember you being summoned to the palace, just before the expedition sailed. And you were seen speaking to the general and his wife at Grasse.”

He poured himself a cup of wine and drank deeply from it. “You stink, Coel,” he said, wiping his lips, “and not just because you haven’t washed recently. You stink of politics. So does that sword. A rank odour. One I have never learned to appreciate.”

I waited, trembling with cold and hunger, while Pharas considered the best and safest course of action.

“First, you can have a bath,” he said, “and a shave. A Roman soldier may be bearded, but he has no business looking like a vagrant. Then we had better get some food inside you, and find you a fresh set of clothes. When you are presentable again, you can go to Belisarius at Carthage. He can decide your fate.”

I sagged with relief, but kept a tight grip on Caledfwlch as Pharas’s guards took me away to be cleaned up. The food was the usual basic soldier’s fare, but I wolfed down the coarse bread and beans as though it was ambrosia, and wallowed in a tub of steaming water until all the dirt and stress of the recent past had seeped from my body. I was given a clean tunic, breeches and a cloak, once the property of a Heruli soldier killed at Tricamarum.

Pharas allowed me no further time to rest, though I craved sleep, and despatched twenty soldiers to escort me to Carthage. A messenger was sent ahead of us to warn Belisarius of my coming.

We rode out of the camp, me aboard a spare horse and scarcely able to keep my eyes open, and headed east towards the capital. The journey was uneventful, for the country was largely pacified and my guards well-armed. The city was two days’ ride away, and I had never felt more grateful when we halted for the night. I fell asleep almost as soon as I slid from the saddle, and knew nothing more until a soldier shook me awake, not unkindly, and grunted that we had to move on.

I had never set eyes on Carthage, perhaps the most famous city in the civilised world after Rome and Constantinople. As at Hippo Regius, the Vandals had allowed its defences to fall into a ruinous state, but Belisarius’s men had strengthened the walls and widened the defensive ditch with impressive speed.

My first impression, when we arrived on a summit overlooking the Numidian Gate, was of a city deserving of its fame. The Emperor Augustus had ordered Carthage to be rebuilt on the ashes of the city destroyed by Scipio Africanus, and the Vandals had preserved its internal splendour and grace. An ancient citadel dominated the harbour, which was strongly defended by towers and iron chains.

The city was divided into two halves. The lower half was a maze of narrow streets, shops, storehouses and poor dwellings, packed together next to the harbour and the coast. The upper half, centred on the Roman Amphitheatre, was more salubrious. Here the streets were broader, and crowds bustled around ancient pagan churches that had been converted into Christian basilicas. The wealthiest citizens strolled beside fair gardens and pools decorated with beds of flowers and flourishing palms, nourished by an aqueduct. Other than the sunlight gleaming on the helms of Roman soldiers patrolling the walls, there was little to indicate that Carthage was a conquered city.

Gelimer’s royal palace was situated close to the Amphitheatre. I found it easy to imagine his tall, spare figure, striding through the colonnaded walkways and shadowy halls, chewing his nails and barking nonsensical orders at subordinates. Soon, assuming he had surrendered to Pharas, he would be brought back to his capital in chains and paraded before his people as a trophy of war.

We entered the city through the Numidian gate and rode through a widely-spaced suburb towards the palace. My escort handed me over to the guards on the gate, whom I recognised as belonging to Belisarius’s Veterans.

The Veterans took me to an inner courtyard surrounded by a covered archway. They marched with the brisk, purposeful tread of men who knew they weren’t marching anywhere dangerous. These were no longer soldiers on campaign, but victors basking in the reflected glory of their commander’s triumph.

There was a garden in the middle of the courtyard, watered by a stone fountain and decorated by a statue of a Carthaginian soldier. His armour was in an antiquated style, and his javelin was drawn back ready to throw.

Belisarius sat on a marble seat opposite the statue. He had put off his armour, and wore a loose white toga against the baking heat. I had not seen him for months, and thought that the vigours and stresses of the campaign had aged him. His sparse hair was virtually rubbed from his scalp, and his long face had acquired a clenched, humourless look, that of a man who had carried too much responsibility for too long. Thankfully, his wife was not present.

He was gazing at the statue when I was marched into the courtyard. Two of his Veterans remained to ensure his safety, but kept a discreet distance when he beckoned me to his side.

“Look at this, Coel,” he said, nodding at the statue, “it might be a likeness of Hannibal himself.”

I glanced over the statue. The soldier wore a muscled cuirass and an ornate Thracian-style helmet with a monstrous plume that swept down almost to his waist, indicating that he was meant to be no ordinary infantryman. His bearded face was contorted in an expression of righteous fury. I could well imagine Hannibal, the great Carthaginian general, looking such when he led his motley armies against the legions of the Republic.

“Hannibal almost destroyed Rome,” added Belisarius without waiting for my answer, “at Cannae he slaughtered so many of our soldiers that hardly enough men could be found in Italy to replace them. The citizens of Rome gave way to panic and despair, and twice buried innocent people alive as sacrifices to their pagan gods, believing that was the only way to avert the fury of Hannibal. They went so far as to drown a baby in the Adriatic.”

Belisarius seemed fascinated by the statue. He looked on it for an uncomfortably long time, frowning and tapping his fingertips together.

“For all his triumphs, Hannibal died alone, rejected and despised by his people and hounded by his enemies. Of all the men on earth, only the Roman general who had finally conquered him, Scipio, made an effort to ensure Hannibal was allowed to die in peace. Scipio was a wise man. He knew his turn would come. In the fullness of time he too was abandoned by the people he had saved, and tasted the bitterness of exile.”

He gave an involuntary shudder, and his thoughts were plain: my turn will come, one day.

“All is vanity, Coel,” he said with a dismissive gesture of his hand, “your grandfather would have appreciated that. As he would have appreciated the remarkable achievement of his grandson.”

I coloured. “I did nothing but survive, sir.”

“As I said, remarkable. Not only did you survive months of captivity, but you relieved Gelimer of Caesar’s sword. Come with me. There is something you should see.”

Belisarius rose and walked away. I followed, along with the guards, and we struggled to keep up with his long-legged stride as he led us through a doorway and along a wide corridor with a vaulted roof.

We moved deeper into the bowels of the palace, along further corridors and down many flights of steps. On the way we passed guardsmen on sentry duty that stiffened and saluted Belisarius, and serving-men that cringed and prostrated themselves.

“The Carthaginians think of me as a tyrant,” he murmured as we passed two cup-bearers who had laid aside their burdens to kneel and knock their heads on the marble floor, “even though I have taken pains to treat them with kindness and mercy. Scipio the Younger lined the streets of Carthage with crucified citizens. It seems they expect me to do the same.”

Eventually we reached a solid cross-timbered door, guarded by ten Veterans who stamped their feet and saluted at the approach of Belisarius. He ordered their captain to unlock the door, and that only I was to follow him inside.

We stepped through into a vast strongroom, lit by torches set high in sconces in the walls. The light they cast was shadowy, but enough to reveal the heaped royal treasure of the Vandals.

“Look upon it, Coel,” said Belisarius, his voice echoing in that huge space, “look upon the spoil of our campaign.”

The treasure was mingled in careless confusion. My eye roved over chairs made of solid gold, a golden chariot, versions of the Gospels encrusted with jewels and precious stones, a silver table service that must have weighed thousands of pounds, and countless weapons and bits of armour from Gelimer’s armouries. Added to these the spoil of past Vandal wars and conquests, captured Roman banners and eagles from Genseric’s sack of Rome, crested Roman helmets, Germanic boar helmets, Moorish shields covered by panther and leopard skins, breastplates made of dried crocodile skin…it was too much to take in, and the blinding gleam of gold and silver made me blink and look away.

“My scribes have only begun to make an inventory of all this,” said the general, “look there.”

He pointed to a corner, where a space had been cleared for an altar and a six-branched lampstand. Both were made of beaten gold, and seemed to have an internal glow that made them stand apart from the glittering rubble of defeated nations.

“The lampstand is the Menorah,” added Belisarius, “which God directed Moses to use in his sanctuary in the wilderness. Along with the other Jewish holy relics, it was taken from the church in Jerusalem by the legions of Titus, and paraded through Rome as a trophy of war. The Vandals under Genseric took it from us, and now I have taken it back again. God knows what will happen when the Jews find out we have recovered the Menorah. The Nika riots might seem a minor disturbance by comparison.”

My awe was tempered by suspicion of why Belisarius had brought me here. “You wish to add this to the pile,” I said, curling my fingers around Caledfwlch’s hilt, “you mean to lay it at the Emperor’s feet, as the crowning glory of your conquest.”

“There are many glories here,” replied Belisarius, “many of them will be melted down and re-cast as coin to fill the imperial coffers. The Empire cannot afford to be sentimental. But Crocea Mors shall be spared, and given pride of place in the palace armoury.”

I took a step towards the door. “Pharas tried to take it from me, but I refused. I will fall on the blade rather than let it go again. Caledfwlch does not belong to anyone but me.”

My hand tightened on the grip. It was suicide to draw in the general’s presence, but I had meant every word.

“You are a soldier of the Empire,” he warned. “You took the oath of allegiance. To break the oath is treason, and punishable by death.”

“Without Caledfwlch, I am dead,” I replied simply.

A long moment passed, and then Belisarius grimaced and rubbed his jaw. “I must be a cruel man,” he said, “to put you through such suspense, especially after all you have suffered. You may keep the sword.”

I stared at him. “Keep it?”

“Yes. Depriving you of it would clearly lead to your destruction. No man-made thing of metal and ivory is worth a life.”

“What of the Emperor?”

Belisarius smiled thinly. “The Emperor will have more important matters on his mind, such as the administration of North Africa. I have seen too many men die in agony to have any illusions about the nature and purpose of a sword. Crocea Mors has of no real value save as an heirloom.”

I was stung by that, and sufficiently emboldened to question him. “You call it a mere thing. What of your devotions? When you kneel before an image of Christ, do you regard that as a thing of wood and paint?”

“The purpose of an icon is merely to act as a reminder,” he replied, “the truth and love of Christ is found in the heart.”

He smiled wanly, and folded his arms. “Now I find myself confiding in a servant, if a rather unusual one. You are a servant, are you not? A servant and a friend of Rome. I would be happy to know that Caesar’s sword was in the possession of such a man.”

He might have added, and less than happy to know it was not.

“Here and now, I am Rome,” he went on, “the Emperor gave me the title of Autocrator, with sole authority over the fleet and army despatched to North Africa. I have the power to appoint and break men as I see fit. You are a useful man, Coel. I want to appoint you as an officer in my personal guard.”

He frowned at my stricken expression. “Most men have to wait years for such a commission. Do you reject it? Come, give me your answer. I do not have the luxury of time to waste.”

My mind was struggling to make sense of this sudden upturn in my fortunes. Belisarius’s offer was indeed honourable, but there was policy behind it. He was generous enough not to take Caesar’s sword from me, and shrewd enough to realise the worth of having the one who carried it for an ally. Better still, a subordinate.

That said, if I had to serve anyone, I would rather it was Belisarius. I had no notion of freedom, or what I would do with it. My only ambition had been to recover my birthright. Now that was fulfilled.

For the time being I was content to let another dictate my future, and so I accepted Belisarius’s gift.

Chapter 23

Gelimer finally quit his mountain refuge and gave himself up to the Heruli. They brought him and his nephew back to Carthage, not with any great triumph, for Pharas was not the type to gloat over captives, but with honour.

The king did his best to humiliate himself. He declined to enter his former capital on a horse or a camel, but insisted on walking all the way in the tattered garb of a penitent. He even asked for a penitent’s girdle to wear, lined with barbs on the inside to mortify his unworthy flesh as he walked. Pharas refused to supply it, so Gelimer made one for himself from a discarded bridle and the thorns he plucked from a desert acacia.

For the sake of peace, Pharas went along with this folly, and his soldiers had to march behind the crazed figure of Gelimer as he stumbled barefoot through the desert, mumbling prayers in Latin.

His strength failed as he neared the gates of Carthage, and he collapsed onto his face. Pharas raised him up again and shoved him through the Numidian Gate into the square beyond, where the citizens and a large portion of the Roman army were assembled to receive the defeated king.

Belisarius had arranged for a raised platform to be set up opposite the gate. He sat on Gelimer’s royal throne on the platform, dressed in full armour with the imperial field standards fluttering above his head, every inch the conquering Roman general. Antonina lounged elegantly on a smaller chair to his left, dressed in white silk and smirking like a cat upon the discovery of a bathtub full of fresh cream.

The platform was otherwise occupied by military officers, Carthaginian bishops and priests, and other great men of the city, all come to witness the humiliation of their former monarch. They were beneath contempt, most of them, jackals who would not have dared meet Gelimer’s eye in the days of his power.

I stood behind the throne as part of Belisarius’s honour guard, hot and uncomfortable in heavy chain mail and a crested helmet. The other guardsmen were baffled by this stranger among their ranks, and cast occasional wary glances at me and the old-fashioned gladius I carried at my belt.

Three sides of the square were packed with Roman infantry and mounted squadrons of bucelarii. Behind them were the mass of ordinary citizens. The day was warm and still. Despite the crowds a strange silence had fallen over the square, as though the city held its breath for the arrival of Gelimer.

He came, a bedraggled and shambling figure, leaning on the broad shoulder of Pharas and mumbling to himself, apparently unaware of the thousands of eyes fixed on him.

The way to the platform was lined with a carpet made from the scarlet cloth of captured Vandal banners; scarlet being their preferred colour. Gelimer limped along the carpet. When he reached the midway point some of his old royal dignity and poise returned to him. He straightened, gently pushed away Pharas and advanced towards the dais.

A great heap of his captured treasure lay on a purple sheet to the left of Belisarius’s throne. Gelimer paused at the foot of the steps and gazed on the gold and silver, the jewels and the captured armour, all gleaming like fire in the blaze of the African sun.

It was only then that I, and all the others crowded on the platform, saw the blood trickling down his legs, caused by the girdle he wore. Some of the more impressionable souls gasped and recoiled in horror, but Belisarius was unmoved.

He offered Gelimer his right hand. “You are welcome, Majesty,” he said in a kindly tone, “Rome accepts your surrender.”

It occurred to me that Belisarius looked rather more like an Emperor than his master. His gracious and forgiving manner combined with his tall, imposing frame and gleaming armour, lent him the aspect of a living god. The appearance of Justinian, that stunted and fussy little man, made for a stark contrast.

I wasn’t the only one to appreciate this, and false rumours would soon filter back to Constantinople of treacherous ambitions lurking in the general’s breast.

Along with the others closest to the throne, I was able to hear what passed between Gelimer and Belisarius. The king did not take the proffered hand, but tore away part of his filthy tunic to expose his neck.

“Finish me off,” he demanded, “have me strangled, as Caesar did to Vercinegetorix. Do it, but quickly. This world is done with me.”

Belisarius was nonplussed, and I thought I heard Antonina smother a giggle. “You were not brought here for execution,” said the general, slowly and deliberately, as though he spoke to a child, “there is no question of that. Rome shall spare your life, and treat you with the honour and dignity due to a king.”

Gelimer laughed. “Honour and dignity? You mean to parade me through the streets of Constantinople in a chariot, like some captured animal, for your citizens to mock and throw dung at.”

“There shall be a procession, true. You must play your part in it. Afterwards, the Emperor has assured me you will be offered an estate near the city to live on, and servants to attend to your needs.”

Gelimer’s face creased into a hideous mask, and he spat at the general’s feet. “A gilded cage!” he snarled, “I will dash my brains out against the wall, rather than suffer such humiliation.”

The general drew in a sharp breath. I could sense the tension in him. He had made every effort to treat his beaten enemies with kindness, and all they did was throw it back in his face. It must have been supremely tempting to give the Vandals what they wanted, assume the mask of a tyrant, and drown the remnants of their nation in fire and blood.

“While you are committing this act of self-destruction, for which God shall not forgive you,” he said, leaning forward until his face was just inches from Gelimer’s, “what of your nephew? Will you leave him alone in the world, stripped of all his kin, to be raised among strangers?”

“He is a pretty boy,” put in Antonina, “I have a mind to keep him as a pet. He is a little old to be made into a eunuch, but the surgeons at Constantinople are skilled in every medical art.”

She spoke with characteristic insouciance, but her words had their affect. The suggestion that Gelimer’s only surviving nephew, the last male heir of the Vandal royal bloodline, might be castrated and compelled to serve as a Roman lady’s pet eunuch, shocked Gelimer to his senses.

“Very well,” he said, “for the sake of Euages, I consent to these terms.”

His shoulders sagged, and he sounded like a tired and defeated old man.

“The wheel of fortune has lifted you to the heights, Belisarius,” he added, “but look at me now, and remember. The wheel shall turn.”

“I know,” Belisarius replied quietly, “all is vanity.”

Gelimer slowly dropped to his knees and bowed his head before the throne he had once occupied.

That was the signal for the tension in the square to break, and suddenly the air was full of deafening cheers and wildly blowing horns and trumpets. The war in North Africa was finished, thank God, and I had come through it with a whole skin.

Chapter 24

We did not embark for Constantinople for several weeks. During this time Belisarius was embroiled in arranging the government of the new province in his absence, and fending off accusations of treachery. A number of his subalterns, envious of his success, had secretly deserted and made their way back to the imperial capital, where they reported that Belisarius meant to make himself King of Africa. Justinian was naive enough to listen to their lies, and dispatched a eunuch, Solomon, to negotiate with the general.

As an officer in Belisarius’s personal guard, I was kept none too busy, and divided my time between the palace barracks and watching the transports being loaded and refitted. I was privy to none of what passed between Belisarius and Solomon, but spent long hours on guard duty outside the royal apartments in the palace. When I saw the general, he had acquired a wan, exhausted look, and no wonder since the candles in his chambers were kept burning all night.

In such idleness, and the relief of having survived the campaign and recovered Caledfwlch, lay the danger of complacency. I had all but forgotten Theodora’s threat – that North Africa was not far enough to escape her malice – and was contemplating my future. A comfortable berth in the retinue of a supremely successful Roman general seemed a good start to a new life.

All the while, Theodora’s coils were slowly tightening around me.

As I have said, the duties of Belisarius’s guards were light. We were even allowed the luxury of one or two nights off a week to amuse ourselves. I generally took myself to a wine-shop frequented by Roman soldiers, since the citizens of Carthage were by no means friendly and it was dangerous for a Roman to walk the streets at night alone. Here I diced and drank away my boredom, before staggering back to barracks in the early hours accompanied by several comrades.

I was lonely as well as bored, and like most soldiers eased my loneliness with the company of prostitutes. One of the girls who plied their bodies at the wine-shop, a slender black-haired Macedonian, reminded me forcefully of Elene. She was happy to take my money, if less so to listen to my drunken ramblings about the woman I had lost. After a few nights she vanished. The innkeeper smilingly refused to tell me where she had gone, and encouraged me to drown my sorrows in yet more of his indifferent wine.

I was sitting alone one night in this sorry condition, staring mournfully at the dregs in my cup and the handful of pennies in my hand, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. Glancing up, I saw a pale slice of face half-hidden under a dark blue hooded mantle. The face belonged to a young girl with eyes like green crystals and a nervous look about her.

“You’re a new one,” I said, reaching up to pull her onto my lap, “but you need not play the startled faun. Some men find that arousing, but not me. I prefer confident whores.”

She batted away my hand. “I am no whore,” she said in a voice with ice and daggers in it, “but was sent here to summon you to the palace. Your presence is required.”

My first thought was that Belisarius must want me, though it seemed strange to use a serving-girl as a messenger. On the other hand, I was aware of his present difficulties, and like Pharas had learned to detect the smell of politics.

“Lead on, then,” I said, rising, “my purse is nearly empty anyway. There is little joy in watching other men drink and make fools of themselves.”

She led me through the groups of off-duty soldiers, laughing and drinking and dicing, and out onto the street. The night was warm, and the hour late. I leaned on the wall for a moment to compose myself, breathing in fresh air and wishing I had eaten before pouring bad wine down my throat.

“Hurry,” the girl snapped. I didn’t like her tone. It was arrogant and impatient, that of one used to being obeyed.

You are no serving-girl, I thought, but said nothing and meekly followed her along the street and through an adjoining forum to the steps of the palace.

We entered via a side-entrance, guarded by a soldier who nodded and stepped aside when the girl whispered in his ear. Wary of receiving a blade in the back, I kept a firm hold on Caledfwlch as we entered a narrow passage and the door slammed shut behind us.

“Politics, politics,” I mumbled to myself. She gave me a nasty look and hurried on down the passage and through an archway. I followed, aware of her slender, tight young body under the blue robes and regretful that I was unlikely to get better acquainted with it. The wine fumes were still swilling around my head, and like a fool I paid no attention to where we were going.

The bare stone corridors widened out into spacious hallways, the walls decorated with mosaics and tapestries showing the triumphs of Genseric and his descendents. There was no-one about, and the girl flitted noiselessly over the marble floors.

We came to a doorway, twice as tall as me and made of some red lacquered wood, that stood ajar before us. The girl halted by the door and gestured at me to enter. Stifling a belch, I gave her a wink and stepped through.

The interior was a large, shadowy chamber, heavy with a pleasant if slightly overpowering smell of incense and perfume. Somewhere a lyre was playing a delicate, haunting melody that added to the soporific atmosphere. There was no furniture, save for a few marble busts of constipated-looking Carthaginian generals, and a thick coverlet was spread over the middle of the floor.

I heard the door slide shut and felt warm, gently spiced breath on my face. The next thing I knew a tongue was playing about my lips, and a small but strong hand had taken a firm hold of my crotch.

As female advances went, this was welcome but impolite. I seized a pair of slender arms and pushed my would-be seducer away. At first her face was lost in the gloom.

My heart skipped a beat as I recognised the pale, kittenish features of Antonina.

“Coel,” she breathed, “have I shocked you? I do apologise. I have waited a long time for this.”

I fought for words, but my throat had dried up. I released her arms as though they were made of hot lead and tried to retreat. My back pressed against the door.

Antonina swayed towards me. Her superb dancer’s body was wrapped in a shift made of some thin white gauzy stuff that accentuated her curves and willowy grace. She looked like an impossibly beautiful ivory statue come to life. Torn between lust and drunkenness and terror and revulsion, I cringed when her fingers reached out to stroke my cheek.

“How beautiful,” she murmured, tracing with her forefinger the line of the scar imprinted on my cheek by a rival charioteer’s whip, so many years ago, “a man should carry scars. They are proof of his courage. You are a brave man, are you not, Coel? My husband says so.”

I slid away and fled to the middle of the room. “What is this?” I croaked. “I am nothing to you.”

Antonina leaned against the door and folded her hands together, as demure as any Vestal Virgin. “I take my pleasures where I can,” she said, “life on campaign is very dull for a woman, who can take no part in strategy and fighting. Belisarius regards me as an ornament, a pretty face to encourage the troops.”

I looked around, half-expecting him to emerge from the shadows. “Where is he?” I demanded, “my God, if he knew what was happening here…”

“Both our lives would be forfeit. Mine, certainly. It is a game of chance I like to play.”

She advanced on me again, and the rustle of her silken robe was like a death-rattle in my ears.

“Keep away,” I warned, reaching for Caledfwlch, “I will not be party to any betrayal of your husband.”

“No?” Antonina stopped. She was almost unbearably beautiful. My head filled with a vision of me striding across the room and seizing her, tearing away her garment and bulling her for all I was worth.

“No,” I managed, “you underestimate me, madam. I am not so stupid as to imagine that you desire me for my own sake. You are great friends with the Empress. She has instructed you to destroy me.”

Antonina’s laugh was as light and cruel as the rest of her. “Theodora instructs me to do nothing,” she said. “We are equals, and share the same ambitions. But she has nothing to do with this. Belisarius speaks of the exploits of few of his officers. You are one. There is some vitality about you, a different and fascinating quality. I like to take such men to my bed. It makes a change from slaves and guardsmen.”

My jaw dropped at this shameless admission of infidelity, but I would not be fooled. “You lie, madam,” I said. “Every word you utter is loaded with deceit. Let me pass.”

I moved towards the door, hoping to God she wouldn’t call my bluff. If she chose to make a scene, to scream and call for her guards, I was lost. Belisarius was slavishly devoted to his wife and would believe her word over mine, even though he was fond of me.

Antonina stepped aside. “Run away, then,” she said softly. “And think on what might have been, the next time you wake up next to some foul dockside slut. I do not offer myself twice.”

“I count on it,” I said, and thrust the door open. I expected to find the girl who had brought me here on the other side, but she had gone. There was nothing, save darkness and a faint draught that made the torches flicker and cast alarming shadows on the walls.

Chapter 25

I stumbled through an unfamiliar part of the palace, startling a number of dozing servants and hounds, until I found my way to barracks. There I was admonished by the officer on duty for disappearing into the night on my own.

“You’re lucky not to have ended up in the gutter with a knife in your liver,” he grumbled, but thankfully he asked no questions.

Naturally, I declined to tell him where I had really been, and spent the remainder of the night lying awake in my narrow camp bed, mulling over what had occurred and the potentially dreadful consequences.

Men are at their lowest ebb in the cold grey hours just before dawn. Exhausted, drunk and frightened out of my wits, I briefly considered deserting, but the idea was impractical. Where could I go that would be beyond the reach of Theodora and Antonina? I had no money, and nothing of value save the sword I had spent so long trying to retrieve.

In the end, my better nature prevailed. If I ran, it would be an admission of guilt, and I had done nothing wrong. Antonina could hardly accuse me of anything without exposing herself to suspicion, and her reputation was hardly stainless. I resolved to trust to the good fortune that had preserved me so far, the favour of Belisarius, and the power of Caledfwlch.

With the sword in my possession, I felt like a different man: Arthur’s true heir, instead of a bewildered fugitive living off whatever scraps the Romans deigned to throw my way.

Fool. Had I known what lay ahead, I would have crept out of the palace and fled into exile. To hide my head under some distant foreign sun might have been preferable to the trials that lay in store for me.

While his wife was busy making a cuckold of him, Belisarius laboured to clear his name of the taint of treachery. Having realised that his enemies meant to bring him down, he had the port of Carthage closely watched, and his soldiers seized a messenger in the act of boarding a ship. The man was searched and found to be carrying a letter full of vile allegations against Belisarius, claiming that he meant to claim Africa as his own private fiefdom.

Belisarius knew the envious nature of Justinian, and that the Empress would be dripping honeyed lies into his ear. The only sure method of proving his loyalty was to embark and sail for Constantinople with all speed, carrying his captives and plunder with him to place before the Emperor.

For several days the port was a frenzy of activity. All hands were required to prepare the fleet for departure, even those belonging to the general’s personal guard. Most of my comrades grumbled at having to set aside their weapons and help with the loading of supplies, but I was glad of the distraction and the opportunity to do some honest, mindless work.

To my great relief, I heard nothing from Antonina, though I occasionally glimpsed her sitting under an awning on the balcony of a large house overlooking the harbour. She was invariably surrounded by attendants and hangers-on, sipping wine as she listened to their flattery and watched the men work.

We embarked on a cold winter’s day and sailed for home, leaving the eunuch Solomon to govern the reconquered province, with the secretary Procopius and a strong garrison to help him.

I stood on the foredeck of the general’s flagship and felt my spirits lift as the African coastline dwindled to nothing. My fervent prayers against the dreaded sea-sickness paid off, and I was miraculously unaffected during the long weeks of sailing.

The voyage home was uneventful. An air of elation hung over the fleet, for our transports and dromons were full of men who had survived a campaign that promised nothing but disaster. Not only that, they had triumphed, and were confident of being greeted as heroes at Constantinople. True, there was less joy to be found on the transports that carried the sick and wounded, but that only made the whole men more thankful for their deliverance.

For most of the voyage Belisarius did not speak to me, or so much as acknowledge my presence. He was eternally busy, spending long hours closeted below deck with his officers and advisors, and any spare time was eaten up by the demands of his wife.

He made a point of treating Gelimer as an honoured guest instead of a prisoner of war, and often invited the captive king to dinner. The ruthless Vandal king, who would have treated his enemy very differently had their roles been reversed, was no doubt baffled by such generosity. I smiled to think of him picking at his food and trying to be polite to the man who had destroyed his armies, conquered his kingdom and trampled his crown into the dust.

Some idea of the welcome that awaited us in Constantinople was given when the fleet entered the Sea of Marmara. I was on the foredeck, huddled in a thick cloak against the winter breeze, when I heard a shout from the look-out in the crow’s nest.

“Boats to the north!”

Belisarius was nearby, deep in conference with a group of officers. He frowned at the interruption, and then stalked over to the rail to shade his eyes and gaze north. His officers followed, and soon the deck was full of men talking in excited voices and pointing towards Constantinople.

I strained to look, and glimpsed a number of black shapes on the every edge of sight. As they came closer I made out boats, a whole fleet of them, galleys and fishing vessels and dromons.

“Silence!” shouted Belisarius. The deck fell quiet, and from over the choppy waters drifted the sound of voices raised in song.

Some of the approaching vessels were imperial warships, intended to act as an official escort for the fleet. Alongside them were dozens of boats manned by civilians, who had put to sea for no other reason than to welcome us home. Most of the noise was coming from these, and the people aboard waved and blew kisses and generally made a rapturous din. I remember one lumbering vessel crammed with black-robed priests, many of them green with sea-sickness, waving holy banners and icons and attempting to sing a Te Deum as their boat rocked alarmingly in the choppy waters.

The people roared at the sight of Belisarius. News of his victory had reached the city weeks ago. His role in the bloody suppression of the Nika riots was all but forgotten, buried under a wave of patriotic fervour and hero-worship. For a time at least they regarded him as a new Caesar, Scipio and Aetius all rolled into one, the man who would restore the glory of the Empire and roll back the hordes of foul barbarians that threatened to engulf it.

Belisarius looked taken aback by their acclamation. Modesty was one of his attractive traits, and he knew that this reception would do nothing to quell the Emperor’s jealous suspicion. He turned on his heel and hurried back to his quarters below deck, leaving orders for the fleet to follow the escort into the harbour of the Golden Horn.

His fears of the Emperor’s jealousy were soon allayed. One of the imperial vessels drew alongside the flagship, and a white-haired senator stood in the bows and bellowed through a trumpet that Belisarius had been awarded a triumph. This drew gasps from every man aboard ship. No Roman general had been awarded a triumph since the days of Trajan, some four hundred years previously.

“The Emperor has listened to reason, then,” remarked the captain of the guard, “good for him. He knows that our general commands the loyalty of the army and the people. Pity, really. I was looking forward to sticking my sword up of a few of his ministers.”

“That bastard John of Cappadocia, for one,” agreed another officer, “Belisarius should demand his balls on a platter, as the price for not sacking Constantinople.”

I should have been shocked at their treasonous words, expressed so casually in the open where anyone might hear, but it was nothing new. The easy victory in North Africa had filled our soldiers with a new confidence and swagger, bordering on arrogance. The discipline Belisarius had imposed on them during the campaign had long since slackened, and they might have posed a serious threat to the city if Justinian had insisted on pressing charges against their hero.

We soon learned there was no danger of that. The harbour was crammed with people, and the noise and singing and general ecstasy of the Roman populace is one of my most powerful and enduring memories. Many had thought the fleet would never return. To see it arrive, safe and whole and laden with the spoil of a victorious campaign, was beyond their wildest hopes.

The name of Belisarius echoed around the harbour as the flagship glided into dock, and tripled in volume when the man himself emerged with Antonina on his arm. She looked radiant, as ever, but he looked pensive as they were lowered on chairs into a longboat to be rowed to shore.

Antonina briefly turned her head to wink at me as I clambered down a ladder into the boat. That was the first time she had even acknowledged my existence since that dreadful night in Carthage.

The Emperor and his consort were waiting on the harbour, surrounded by guards and senators, along with the bent and wizened figure of the Patriarch. Justinian’s smile seemed warm and genuine, though it was always impossible to know what was happening behind those placid grey eyes.

Theodora was dressed in a manner calculated to draw some of the attention away from the returning heroes of Empire. She wore a tall silver crown with strings of pearls hanging to her breast, and carried a broad jewelled collar on her shoulders. The hem of her purple robes were decorated with images of the Magi bringing gifts to the Christ Child, and her white tunic underneath was bordered with bright colours of gold, red and green. She looked more like an imperial statue than a living person, and formed a shining contrast to her dumpy husband and the drab, almost apologetic figure of Belisarius.

Further proof of the Emperor’s trust in his victorious general was soon forthcoming. He ordered gold medals to be struck, stamped with an image of himself on one side and Belisarius in full armour on the other. The pick of Belisarius’s Veterans and personal guards, including myself, were allowed to wear these medals tied to ribbons slung around our necks during the triumphal march.

The triumph itself took place several weeks after the return of the fleet. It was the most splendid event I have ever witnessed or participated in, a dying echo of the glory of Ancient Rome.

Belisarius marched on foot from the door of his villa, along the Mese towards the Hippodrome. The road was lined with exulting citizens, held back by lines of Excubitors in ceremonial uniform. I was one of a thousand guardsmen that marched in step behind the procession of Vandal prisoners and wagons piled high with Vandal treasure. There were also captured chariots and carriages made of pure gold, pulled by teams of horses. Pride of place was given to the Menorah and other items of sacred Jewish worship, taken by Genseric from the Church of Peace in Rome, and now restored to Rome’s heirs.

How the Romans cheered for Belisarius, how they screamed and roared his name! Women and children threw bouquets of flowers at his feet as he strode down the Mese, priests loaded him down with blessings, and choirs of schoolboys and white-robed maidens sang his praises. He made for a brave figure, his armour painted gold for the occasion and sparkling in the brisk sunshine, his helmet with its stiff purple plume tucked underarm.

Behind him was Gelimer. The Vandal king was clothed in purple, as was his nephew Euages. They walked at the head of the long line of Vandal captives. His brief conversation with Belisarius at Carthage had clearly made a deep impression on Gelimer, for as he walked he shrieked repeatedly:

“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!”

As he had feared, the Romans jeered and pelted him with insults and refuse. It mattered little, for his wits were gone. He leaned heavily on Euages as he walked, and several times stumbled and almost fell flat on his face.

The pride and respect of the decimated Vandal royal line was invested entirely in his young nephew. I pitied the boy, who did his best to look unafraid, and hoped he would not be condemned to a life of gentle captivity.

The procession moved on to the Hippodrome, filled with crowds for the first time since the Emperor had closed it down after the Nika riots. Justinian and his consort sat enthroned on a wooden platform in the middle of the arena, surrounded by an honour guard.

The cheers of the citizens rose to a deafening storm as Belisarius marched into the arena. At the foot of the platform he halted, saluted the Emperor and went down on one knee, bowing his head in a gesture of submission.

As we had been instructed, I and another guardsman seized Gelimer by his arms and marched him towards the dais. He looked at us in dazed confusion, but I thought I glimpsed a spark of recognition in his bloodshot eyes when he beheld me.

“I am not your footstool now, Majesty,” I whispered, unable to resist the jibe. Gelimer’s mouth flapped open and shut a couple of times, but no sound came out. Fortunately, my comrade did not hear me.

We brought Gelimer to a halt beside the kneeling figure of Belisarius, and tore away the purple garment he wore, leaving him in his underclothes. To renewed cheers, we forced him down until he was on his knees and his forehead was pressed against the ground.

“Behold, Caesar,” we chorused, stamping our feet and raising our arms to salute the Emperor, “your general and your enemy both kneel before you.”

Justinian signalled at the two men to rise. I risked a glance at Theodora, and was unnerved to see her glaring at me with a mirthless grin pasted to her heavily made-up features. She had not forgotten me. That malicious woman never forgot a slight, no matter how small, or ceased plotting how to avenge it.

The triumph was not the end of the honours heaped on Belisarius, for the Emperor named him as Consul for the following year. This office, once the highest and most powerful in the Roman state but long fallen into disuse, still had a ring of power and glory to it. No higher rank could be conferred on Belisarius save the imperial crown. It may be that Justinian still entertained some slight suspicion of the general’s ambitions, and sought to divert them with this lesser dignity.

As for Gelimer, the Emperor held to his promise of clemency and gave him a considerable and well-guarded estate in Galatia to live out his days on. I never saw him again after the triumph, though I occasionally heard stories of a harmless madman walking the gardens and orchards of his gentle prison, babbling in Latin and weeping over his lost kingdom.

His brave nephew Euages requested and was allowed to join the Vandal soldiers captured in North Africa and brought to Constantinople. These were divided into mercenary squadrons and sent to the eastern frontiers of the Empire, to serve as auxiliaries against the threat of Sassanid Persia. Thus the Emperor skilfully turned his enemies against each other.

I did not see Belisarius’s second triumph, held to mark his consulship, when he was carried on a chair on the shoulders of captured Vandals and showered the adoring crowds with gold and silver pennies.

The triumph was held during the January of 535 AD, by which time I was languishing in prison with a charge of treason hanging over my head.

Chapter 26

From the moment I stepped off the boat in Constantinople, I had been wary of danger lurking around every corner. My enemies were powerful, and could have my life snuffed out like a candle. I am convinced that only the favour of Belisarius protected me during the weeks leading up to his first triumph.

I recalled the fate of my childhood friend, Felix, done to death in an alleyway by Theodora’s lackeys, and took steps to guard myself. Belisarius’s personal guards were quartered near his private chambers in the Great Palace, where I felt safe from the knives of hired assassins. I rarely ventured out alone, especially at night, and wore my armour during all waking hours, even when off-duty. Some of my comrades thought this a great joke. Others knew that Belisarius favoured me, and made wry comments about the fate of poor soldiers who meddled in politics.

“A word of advice,” one officer confided to me over supper. “Apply for a transfer to one of the garrisons along the Danube, and get out of the city. It’s cold there, and you will have to suffer the company of Thracians, but a little discomfort and boredom is better than ending up dead.”

“I’ll not leave,” I replied through a mouthful of bread, “the city is my home, and I have no desire to freeze on some isolated border outpost. At any rate, the Danube is not far enough to escape my enemies. I would have to quit the Empire.”

The officer shrugged and said I was a fool. He was right. I should have fled Constantinople when I had the chance. My experiences in North Africa had led me to believe I could weather any storm, and I reckoned without the arrogance and cruelty of Theodora.

It was impossible to walk in company at all times, and as a natural loner I resented the claustrophobic atmosphere of life in guardrooms and barracks. As weeks turned into months, and still my enemies made no move, I started to think that my fears were imaginary. The Empress was co-ruler of a significant portion of the known world, and surely had higher things on her mind than me. As for Antonina, she was the most notorious adulteress in Constantinople. According to popular rumour she took entire legions of lovers to her bed, while her husband allowed himself to be cuckolded. Belisarius’s slave-like devotion to his dreadful wife, and apparent willingness to turn a blind eye to her infidelities, was the one black mark on his shining reputation among the people.

No, I persuaded myself, one man more or less was unlikely to mean anything to Antonina. Hundreds of acres of male flesh must have covered her since Carthage. She would have forgotten all about me.

In short, I let my guard slip.

Late one summer’s afternoon I was walking back alone from the Forum of Theodosius, where I had spent a few hours in the market, tasting food from distant lands and inspecting the slave-market. The sight of those poor wretches, shivering and virtually naked as they stood on the blocks waiting to be sold, reminded me of my first days in Constantinople. I found it difficult to believe that I had stood on the block myself, next to my poor mother, and that we had been sold like a couple of choice sweetmeats by Clothaire. I had not thought of him for years, and had to drink an extra cup of Spanish wine to rinse out the foul taste of his memory.

The forum was situated beside the Mese, and on the way back to the palace I strolled along one of the porticoed streets, gazing idly into shop windows. Street-hawkers and prostitutes attempted to sell me their wares, in vain since I had no money left. It was pleasant just to walk in the pleasant afterglow of a baking summer’s day and listen to the chatter of dozens of languages.

I was still mindful of security, and wore my helmet and chain mail. Caledfwlch, as always, sat snug in my sword-belt. Army life had filled out my spare frame. Few would have dared to try and tackle me, big and broad-shouldered as I was in those days.

Those few were waiting for me in an alley halfway down the street. They waited until I was almost past and then sprang out, five burly figures in dark grey robes, hooded mantles and masks that covered the lower part of their faces. They carried long white truncheons and ignored the panicked shouts of nearby citizens as they set about me.

Taken unawares, I reacted with the sharpness of one who had been waiting for this moment for months. I had no time to draw Caledfwlch before the nearest truncheon was swinging at my face. I ducked, kicked its wielder under the knee and whirled around with the sound of his muffled scream and the crack of bone still ringing in my ears.

The second man was equally fast. His truncheon smashed into my shoulder before I had a chance to react. My chain mail absorbed the worst of it, and I punched him in the throat, not wanting Caledfwlch to get tangled in his robes.

He staggered away as two more men came at me. I dived at the one to my left, ran him against the wall, grabbed his throat with my left hand and drew Caledfwlch, ready to stab into his gut.

That was a mistake. A hand gripped my wrist from behind. A heavy blow rang against my helmet. Dazed, my grip on the man’s throat slackened. Clumsy fingers tore at my chin-strap. More blows rained down on my head and body. Finally the strap loosened, and my helmet was wrenched off.

“Now!” someone hissed.

The edge of a truncheon cracked against my temple, and I was plunged into darkness.

I surfaced to find myself in the blackest depths of Hell. My head throbbed abominably and I could taste dried blood on my lips. All was darkness. I was flat on my back on some hard surface and could scarcely move. My back felt strangely warm, and my wrists and ankles were tightly bound by leather straps that only grew tighter if I struggled.

“He’s awake,” said a male voice. I gasped as the cloth over my eyes was ripped away, and blinked as my eyes adjusted to the sudden light.

I was in some dank underground cellar with rough stone walls, lit by a smoking brazier and a torch set in a bracket on the wall to my left. To the right was a narrow flight of steps, leading to a large iron-bound door.

The room was filled with an acrid stench, the source of which only became apparent when I looked down to see what I was lying on.

An involuntary scream ripped from my throat. I was naked and strapped to a rectangular iron griddle. The griddle was set on top of a stone base, about four feet high, with a vent in one side. Under the griddle was a bed of charcoal. The purpose of the gently smoking brazier was obvious, as was the intent of the three men standing either side of my hellish bed.

They wore dark grey robes, the same worn by those who had attacked me in the street, and had pushed their hoods back to reveal tough, scarred faces – the faces of men who would do almost anything for money. My scream was cut off as I looked up at their grim expressions.

“Well met, Coel,” said Theodora.

The Empress sat on a wooden chair at the opposite end of the cellar. Her hair was pinned up, but otherwise she was dressed plainly by her standards in sober black. A fluted wine jug and a bowl full of glazed fruit rested on a little stool beside her chair.

God knows where my clothes and armour had gone, but Caledfwlch lay across her lap inside its leather sheath. I howled again, and strained uselessly against my restraints until my eyes bulged from their sockets.

“It is my understanding,” she said, popping a piece of fruit into her mouth, “that the bread baked for the army was ruined by the time it had reached Methone. John of Cappadocia was in charge of that undertaking.”

She smiled languidly. I noticed she was wearing no cosmetic. “John is a fine minister, but a poor baker. I am rather better. Baking is not a talent you might expect to find in an Empress, is it?”

I swallowed, desperately trying to suppress my panic and find words. This mad bitch that Justinian married in an evil hour intended to bake me alive on her foul griddle. I had to say something, anything, to deter her until help arrived.

Help from where? Who was going to come and rescue me? Theodora’s hirelings would have taken care to bring me here in secret. Doubtless I was not the first of her enemies to be brought here and done to death, while she watched and relished every moment.

“Majesty,” I babbled, “why are you doing this? I am not your enemy.”

She stretched luxuriantly, like a black cat. “No? You might have been my friend. I gave you the opportunity, but you threw it back in my face. That is twice you have insulted me. Recently you insulted my friend Antonina. You are impertinent, Britannicus. It cannot be tolerated.”

“Antonina tried to seduce me,” I protested, “she wanted to use me to cuckold her husband, and I was not the first! She is a whore and an adulteress!”

Theodora rested her chin delicately on her fist. “She was a whore,” she replied, “and a good one. I should know. We worked together sometimes, servicing the great men of this city. And those who were not so great, when times were hard. Women do what they must to survive in this world. Feed the fire.”

One of her bullies picked up a little shovel and dug some charcoal from the brazier. Then he emptied the shovel into the little vent on the side of the stone base. A moment later the bed of charcoal under my griddle flared with heat, and I yelped as a leaping flame scorched my naked back.

“I have done nothing wrong!” I bawled. “How could I agree to spy on Belisarius, whom I had already sworn an oath of loyalty to? Why should I have coupled with you, years ago, just because you demanded it?”

“Life is all about compromise,” she said, as I squirmed and arched my back against the intensifying heat, “honour and loyalty are outdated concepts. To prosper, one must learn to bend like the willow. To stand upright is to risk being snapped in half.”

She stood up, drew Caledfwlch and tossed away the sheath. I drew a morsel of strength and courage from the blade, which shone like a glimpse of Heaven in that shadowy vault.

“You value this, don’t you?” she said, turning the blade this way and that as she studied it, “what fools men are, to revere such objects. It’s just an old sword.”

“Caledflwch was forged by the gods, and wielded by some of the noblest men who ever lived,” I panted, “your hand is unfit to hold it.”

Theodora gave a little laugh. “Another insult. You might as well save your breath. Very soon from now, your skin shall start to blister and burn. You will scream and beg to be released.”

She stood up and walked closer to the oven. “There shall be no release. I promise you that. No release, until you crack under the pain and go mad. I have seen it happen before. It is fascinating to look into a man’s eyes, just as his mind reaches the limits of endurance.”

More charcoal was shovelled into the vent. I felt a gust of searing heat and tried unsuccessfully to stifle another scream. The iron griddle was hot now, not unbearably so, but would only get worse. My bowels churned, and I almost vomited at the thought of what was going to happen to me.

“Belisarius will notice I have gone!” I yelled desperately. “He will ask questions, and want to know what has happened to me!”

“We shall feed him lies,” was her response, “if the day comes that I cannot fool General Belisarius, then I shall open my veins in the bath. That man believes what his wife tells him, and she tells him what I want her to.”

She stood a few inches from the oven, Caledfwlch naked in her hand. If I could just slip one of my bonds, I might have been able to snatch it from her.

Theodora smiled in pure delight as she watched me suffer. Her bullies wore the blank, dispassionate expressions of men doing a job. A dirty and unpleasant job, perhaps, but one they were being well paid for.

The heat was now almost intolerable. I could only bear it by screaming, and felt my strength and will leeching away. My last hope was that I would pass out with the pain.

Theodora disabused me of that hope. “There is a bucket of cold water ready,” she whispered, her face so close to mine I could smell her perfumed breath, “to wake you when you fall unconscious. My men are skilled at keeping their subjects awake until the end. I have a mind to cut your heart out and hold it up before your living eyes. It is possible, you know.”

She pressed the tip of Caledfwlch against my sweat-soaked chest. Her eyes gleamed like the Devil’s when Christ had his moment of weakness.

“Grandfather!” I shouted. Through a haze of pain, I saw Theodora purse her lips in distaste.

“Ancestor worship,” she muttered, “and I thought you were a Christian. Feed the fire again. It’s hungry.”

One of her men bent to retrieve the shovel, and hesitated. There was a jangle of iron keys in a lock, the whine and scrape of a door being pushed back on rusted hinges, and the clatter of heavy footsteps.

The eunuch Narses appeared at the top of the steps. He wore a bowl helmet and a short sword strapped to his hip. Otherwise he was unarmed, but a cluster of enormous guardsmen loomed in the shadows behind him.

Chapter 27

Theodora whipped around at this intrusion. “Why are you here?” she shrieked, pale and trembling with fury, “get out, eunuch! This is no affair of yours!”

Narses ignored her and pattered lightly down the steps, followed by his guardsmen. There were six of them, tall Armenian brutes wearing helmets and mail corslets and armed with axes and daggers.

“This is very much my affair, Majesty,” he said lightly in that comical high-pitched voice I remembered so well, “I must ask you to release that poor devil before he is cooked to a turn.”

Theodora went rigid, and for a hopeful moment I thought she might have a seizure.

“Do you dare to give me orders, Narses? I am the Empress. No-one commands me save God and my husband.”

“Such is usually the case,” the eunuch replied blandly, “but the circumstances here are exceptional. I have six armed men to your three. Who knows? Perhaps your men will be lucky.”

I had done my part to reduce the odds, by incapacitating two of Theodora’s men when they abducted me. Silence rolled over the cellar, while Theodora and Narses locked wills and I bit my lip until it bled against the roasting agony in my back.

“I will not forget, Narses,” Theodora said softly. She stepped away from the oven and ordered her men to stand down.

“You will remember and learn, Majesty,” Narses replied, “no-one may act outside of the law, not even an Empress. We in the civilised world in general must cling to that premise, or descend into barbarism.”

Her fragile composure broke. She spat at him, and called him a viper and a neutered dog and other names I shall not repeat. But she was outnumbered, and unprepared to risk a brawl that might go badly for her and certainly come to the attention of her husband.

Narses ordered two of his men to release me. They cut through my bonds, all the while keeping a wary eye on Theodora’s hirelings, and lifted me carefully onto the floor. I lay there, gasping and retching and unable to prevent tears of pain rolling down my face. My back was badly burned, and I was unable to smother a yell as one of the Armenians dashed the bucket of cold water over me.

“Gently, for God’s sake,” Narses said reprovingly, “get him on his feet. Coel, can you hear me?”

I mumbled my thanks as his men lifted me up. One of them draped a cloak over me, and I gasped at the touch of rough-woven cloth on my scalded flesh.

“My sword,” I managed, “I must have my sword. She cannot have it.”

“Ah yes, the famous sword,” he said. “We will take Crocea Mors as well, Majesty, if you please.”

He held out his hand to Theodora, who looked at it as though she meant to bite it off. Slowly, and with pure hatred radiating from every inch of her, she raised Caledfwlch and dropped the hilt into his palm.

Narses gave a little bow from the waist and snapped his fingers, which was the signal for two of his Armenians to carry me up the steps between them. The rest followed, with the eunuch at their heels.

“Hurry, hurry,” I heard him mutter. “We must be gone before the spell breaks. The Empress in a rage is capable of anything.”

I was carried out into a darkened corridor, and had to be lifted over the prone figure of another of Theodora’s hirelings – presumably he had been guarding the door when Narses and his men came upon him. One of my bare feet slipped on a pool of warm, sticky blood that flowed from the fatal knife-wound in his gut.

Narses heaved the door shut with a bang and contemplated the bunch of heavy iron keys in his hand.

“It’s tempting to lock her in and throw these away,” he mused, “but it wouldn’t do. The Emperor would not thank me for starving his wife to death in a cellar.”

He dropped the keys on the floor and padded away with my sword in his hand. I stumbled in his wake, leaning heavily on the stout shoulders of the Armenians.

I was taken to the eunuch’s suite of private rooms, even more opulent than those of the Empress and Belisarius. The central chamber was a beautifully decorated and pillared hall, furnished by couches draped with zebra and tiger skins. Narses had me laid out on one of them and sent for a physician while he sat behind a desk and poured wine from a gilded silver jug.

“Can you manage a little wine?” he asked, “it might help the pain.”

I took the proffered cup with a trembling hand and slopped down his excellent wine. Alcohol flowed through me and dulled the burning in my back. I held out my cup for more.

“Where there is thirst, there is life,” remarked Narses. He poured out another generous measure and waddled back to his chair. There was an orderly heap of papyri on the desk, which he spread out and read through while I gulped down the sweet, life-giving liquid.

“Why did you save me, lord?” I asked when my cup was drained.

Narses sniffed and sat back in his chair. “Several reasons,” he replied, and started to tick them off on his fat fingers, “firstly, you have succeeded in angering Theodora. I always have time for anyone who does that. Secondly, you have proved yourself to be a useful servant of Rome, and it is a pity to waste useful men. Thirdly, Theodora must learn that she cannot play the tyrant. The rot of the Western Empire stemmed from the brutality and incompetence of its rulers. I will not allow some latter-day female Caligula to run amok in Constantinople, torturing and murdering as she pleases.”

“You will not be surprised to learn that I employ many spies,” he went on, “for years now I have kept a close watch on Theodora, even before she snared Justinian. She has always been vicious, and power-hungry, and looking for the next advantage.”

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Watched, and made a list of her crimes, and did nothing. I should have had her disposed of, when she was still dancing and selling her body for a living. Too late now. The Emperor is besotted with her. At least I have acted in time to rescue you.”

Doubtless it was in your interest, I thought, but held my tongue.

There was a soft knock at the door. The Armenian guard opened it to admit a plump, elderly man carrying a leather bag.

“There he is, Kleinias,” said Narses, jerking his thumb at me, “his back resembles a half-roasted ham. Get to work.”

The man nodded and approached the couch. He made little tutting noises as he examined my burns, and knelt beside me to rummage inside his bag.

“You are in excellent hands, Coel,” added Narses, “I can afford to pay for the best in all things, and Kleinias is the best Greek physician my money could buy. He will heal your back quick and clean.”

I lay quiet while the physician rubbed various greasy unguents on my burns. Their strong herbal smell, along with the wine and my general exhaustion of body and mind, made me feel light-headed. I started to drowse.

“What will happen to me?” I asked thickly, allowing my cup to slip from my fingers and fall onto the thick goatskin rug.

“For now you will rest here, and then we shall have to ponder,” Narses replied, “it may be best to smuggle you out of the city.”

His voice echoed strangely in my ears, and seemed to mingle with the distant crashing of waves on a moonlit African shore. Or was it the sound of men fighting and dying on the plain of Tricamarum? I could not be sure. I could not even stay awake.

“No…” I mumbled as my eyelids closed, “will not leave the city…this is…my home…home.”

I woke to find myself in darkness again, but warm and comforting darkness complemented by clean linen and soft sheets. The fire in my back had cooled and the upper part of my body was wrapped in fresh bandages.

Reluctant to surface too soon, I opened my eyes a crack and saw a fire burning low inside a grate. The sight of fire took me straight back to Theodora’s vile oven. I moaned and tried to crawl away, and gasped as a bolt of pain shot up my spine.

The burns were going to take time to heal. I forced myself to be calm, lie quietly on my front and wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I glimpsed moonlight lancing through the apertures of the closed wooden shutters on the window. Pieces of dark, heavy furniture were arranged neatly about the room, and a tall gilded candelabrum stood in one corner. The bed was small, barely wide enough to accommodate me. I smiled wryly as I realised it must belong to Narses. This was the eunuch’s own bedchamber.

It was uncommonly generous of him to lend me the use of his bed, which made me wonder where such generosity sprang from. The likes of Narses did nothing for reasons of sheer charity.

I slept for another hour or two, until grey morning light started to filter through the shutters. At some point the door opened and Kleinias crept in to check on me. He walked with a light step for a big man, and I hardly noticed his presence and the gentle probing of his fingers as he unpeeled a bandage to inspect my back.

“He will do,” I heard him say in a low voice. He spoke to a shadow in the doorway, no doubt Narses, who nodded and flitted away. I cared little, and sank back into a blessed sleep.

I woke properly to find the room flooded with light, the shutters opened and flung wide, and Narses standing at the foot of the bed.

“Good morning,” he trilled, “and what a glorious morning it is. God shines his lamps upon us. A new day beckons, and with it all manner of possibilities.”

I had rarely heard him sound so cheerful, and suspected it boded ill. “I am in no position to appreciate it,” I said, wincing as I shifted slightly, “my back hurts like the devil.”

Narses ran a hand through his neatly clipped bear and moved over to the window. “You may not have the leisure to recuperate,” he said quietly, “there are rumours sweeping through the palace. Theodora has declared war on us. On me.”

“War?” I exclaimed. “Has there been any fighting?”

He shook his head impatiently. “Don’t be so literal. I didn’t mean that kind of war. Our bodyguards are not hacking each other to death in the corridors of power. She has more subtle weapons.”

I slowly crawled out of bed, gasping at every stab of pain. There was a robe folded on a side-table next to the bed. I carefully put it on.

Caledflwch stood leaning against the wall inside a new scabbard of red leather. “My thanks for allowing me to keep this,” I said as I buckled on the sword-belt, “I know you wanted it for the imperial treasury.”

He shrugged. “It was Belisarius’s decision. Just keep the wretched thing safe. We have other things to worry about. I ask you again, will you consent to be smuggled out of Constantinople? I can find you a safe berth in some distant garrison. Or money and an escort to take you beyond our borders, if you prefer.”

“No,” I said firmly, “I have run away too often in my life. Here I stand, come what may.”

“I could force you to go. Your disappearance might draw the sting from Theodora’s anger.”

I refused to be intimidated. “Belisarius appointed me to his personal guard. He wants me here by his side. He is the most popular man in the Empire. You would not want to make an enemy of him.”

“He need not know,” Narses shot back, “he doesn’t know you are here, or what happened last night. So far as the general is concerned, you vanished yesterday with no explanation. Those citizens who saw you abducted by Theodora’s men have kept their mouths shut. Very wise of them.”

I waited, wondering if he meant to throw me to the wolves after all. It seemed pointless, considering the risks he had taken to snatch me from their jaws. If it came to it, could I overpower Narses and fight my way past his Armenians?

Not a chance. He might be easy enough to dispose of, but his guards were powerful-looking men. Even when fit I would not be confident of taking on any one of them.

It was then I realised that Narses didn’t know what to do. For once the sly, calculating eunuch, who always gave the impression of having the world’s knowledge at his fingertips, was at a loss. He had rescued me in order to spite the Empress and teach her a lesson in humility, but with no thought to the consequences.

“Stay in my quarters,” he said, as though I had a choice, “my servants will attend to your needs, and Kleinias is on hand to tend your injuries. I will be back by sundown.”

He left me to anxiously chew my nails and wait for news. At midday the soft-spoken Kleinias changed my bandages and rubbed on fresh ointment, but otherwise I had to amuse myself.

Narses kept a number of old books and papyri stacked on shelves in his study, histories for the most part, and I slew a few hours reading about the Etruscans.

I had read seldom during my adult life, and made excruciatingly slow progress. The Etruscans seemed a dull, silly lot, so I quickly lost patience and skipped to the end. It came as no surprise to discover they were eventually conquered by the Romans.

“Like everyone else,” I muttered, and returned the book to its shelf.

As he had promised, Narses returned as the afternoon of a golden day was sliding into dusk. He looked drawn and tired, and fiddled nervously with the ruby ring on his little finger as he informed me of the latest.

“I have nothing good to tell,” he said wearily. “The Empress employs her own network of spies and agents, a few of whom also work for me. She has recalled all of them and diverted their energies towards your destruction. What do you know of a man called Leo, a former trainer of the Blues?”

This took me aback. I had not thought of Leo since the end of the Nika riots in the previous year.

“The Leo I knew was one of the chief organisers and leaders of the riots,” I replied, “he escaped the massacre in the Hippodrome. I assumed he had fled the city.”

Narses subsided onto a couch. We were alone in his study, and he had dismissed most of his servants for the night.

“Theodora’s agents have dug him up from somewhere,” he said, “I don’t know what use she intends to make of him, but he is currently closeted in her chambers. The Emperor is busy enthusing over the building of his new church, and takes little interest in his wife’s private affairs. Was Leo a friend of yours?”

“The opposite,” I said vehemently, “he taught me how to ride and to drive a chariot, but never had any love for him, nor him for me. He is a traitor, and I would gladly see him hanged.”

“He is a weapon. One that Theodora means to use against us. Against you.”

Narses ordered supper to be brought in. We ate in pensive silence. I could feel the walls closing in around me, and wondered how anyone could bear to live in the palace, with its greasy, claustrophobic atmosphere of paranoia and treachery. I came to the conclusion that people like Narses thrived on intrigue, just as soldiers thrive on action.

The eunuch picked moodily at his fish stew. He was clearly waiting for something, and leaped from his chair when there was a knock at the door.

“Come in!” he cried. One of his Armenians entered with a little ferret-faced man in tow. Narses excused himself and hurried out to confer with them.

I had lost my appetite by the time the low murmur of voices ceased. Narses returned, walking slowly and chewing his lip. He closed the door and leaned his short back against it.

“You mind I told you that some of Theodora’s agents work for me?” he said. I replied that I did.

He laughed and clasped his hands together. “Well, it seems that one of the duplicitous bastards has been playing us for fools. Someone has been leaking information. Theodora knows you are here.”

I shot to my feet. “I must get to the barracks,” I said, “now, before she sends men to get me. She can try nothing once I am safe with my comrades.”

“Too late. The guards cannot protect you. Belisarius himself could not. The Empress has no need to stoop to bloodshed in the corridors. She has issued a charge of treason against you.”

“Treason?” I shouted. “What treason? She must be insane!”

“Her mind is in perfect working order. It is all wheels and gears. Much like mine, I suppose. Oh, she is clever. This man Leo has been prevailed upon to accuse you of a leading role in the Nika riots. He is going to claim that you were one of the chief conspirators.”

“But that is madness! I was the one who came to the palace to warn the Emperor of the revolt. You saw me speak to him in person!”

“True, but it might count for little. According to my spy, Leo is going to claim that you deserted the rebels in the hope of a reward from the Emperor. That is not enough to clear you of the charge of helping to stir the Blues into open revolt. Leo has other witnesses to support his words. Other survivors of the massacre.”

I started to pace up and down the room, and may have even torn at my hair in frustration.

“And the word of these men, these known traitors and rebels, is going to be valued above mine?” I demanded.

Narses shrugged helplessly. “People have short memories, especially if the Empress wants blood. It is much easier to let her have it. There will be a trial. The Emperor himself may sit as your judge. I will speak for you, and so will Belisarius. He must know where you are by now. If not, he is the deafest man in the palace.”

It was monstrous. More than that, it was absurd. I was to be put on trial for my life against a trumped-up charge of treason, the crime that I had always reviled. The crime that had brought down my grandfather, led my father to his death, and destroyed the peace and stability of my homeland. God, it seemed, had a wicked sense of irony.

“You should have run when you had the opportunity,” said Narses, “it will be impossible to get you out of the palace now. All the ways are guarded, even the secret ones.”

I was enmeshed. The trap had closed around me.

For a moment I had to fight for breath. I could almost feel the burn of a rope around my neck, and hear the jeers of the crowd as the stool was kicked away from under me. I would dangle in mid-air, caught between Heaven and Hell, and my last sight on this earth would be the lazy smile on Theodora’s hateful face.

Chapter 28

The trial was held in the Praetorium, a Roman law-court, close to the central forum of the Augusteum. Theodora was intent on making my destruction as public an event as possible. She insisted that the trial be staged here, though it might have been kept a private affair inside the palace.

It took time for her to persuade the Emperor that such a course was necessary, and to tear his attention away from his pet project, the construction of the new church of Hagia Sophia.

He had lavished money on this, and hired thousands of expert foreign labourers and craftsmen to make his dream into a reality. The walls and minarets were already rising into the sky, but as yet few suspected that Justinian meant to break with tradition and cap the church with a huge cupola or dome instead of the usual basilica design.

While this increasingly magnificent edifice took shape, I was taken from Narses’ quarters and consigned to one of the prisons under the palace. There I was held, in cold and darkness and total ignorance of what was going on above my head. The burns on my back continued to pain me for a time, but Kleinias had done his work well and they healed quick and clean, despite the clinging damp and unclean air of prison.

Theodora knew that my fate was not sealed. Though she loathed and despised Narses, she might hope to induce him not to speak for me. He was as bribable as anyone in the imperial court. Belisarius was a different matter. She could count on Antonina to influence him in most things, but he would consider it a matter of personal honour to support me. I was one of his soldiers, and he trusted me.

The verdict was not quite a foregone conclusion, so the Empress committed her able mind to ways of making it so. Typically, the strategy she chose was both cruel and unexpected.

There was no way of telling day from night in the subterranean gloom of my prison. I had languished there for God knows how many days, when I received a visitor. The bolts on the heavy cross-grained door squealed as they were drawn, and the guard ushered a slender figure through.

My unexpected guest wore a dark blue cloak with a hooded mantle and carried a candle in an iron holder. I winced at the light of the candle, and had to blink and shield my eyes as the newcomer carefully placed it on the floor, straightened, and pushed back the hood.

Over ten years had passed since I last saw Elene. The years had painted a little grey in her unbound black tresses, but otherwise she was unchanged. She moved with the same lithe, easy grace, and her long, narrow face still possessed the same charisma and almost-beauty that had captivated me at the Hippodrome.

I groaned, and the heavy iron fetters on my ankles clanked as I turned to look away from her.

“Coel,” said Elene, “I will not waste time. We have a son. His life is in danger.”

This second blow, so soon after the first, was intended to break me. I reluctantly turned my head to look into her eyes. I read nothing but fear in their depths, and knew she lied.

“A son,” I repeated. “If he is mine, he must be eleven or twelve by now. A strong boy?”

She smiled. “Yes. Strong and handsome, like his father. His name is Arthur.”

I could not help but laugh. A hollow, bitter sound, and quickly smothered by the dead air of the cell.

“I thought I owed you that,” she added hastily, “naming him after your grandfather was a way to honour you ease my conscience. I am sorry I ran away.”

“Theodora must be desperate for ideas,” I said, “and she was mistaken to send a dancer to do the work of an actress. There is no son, Elene. You are lying.”

I leaned forward. “You have been coerced into this. I know Theodora’s ways. How did she find you? How much money did she offer you?”

Elene stuck gamely to her role. “You must plead guilty at the trial, Coel,” she said. “Otherwise Theodora will kill Arthur. She will have him strangled in front of me.”

I snorted, and then Elene was on her knees beside me, pawing at me, tears welling up and streaming down her sallow cheeks. “I swear, on my life, on my immortal soul, it is true!” she cried. “The boy lives, and the Empress has threatened to put him to death if I cannot persuade you to plead guilty! You say you know her ways. Then you will know she delivers on her threats.”

I would not listen, and turned my face to the wall while Elene babbled on. She tried to convince me of Arthur’s existence by listing his physical characteristics, his fondness for dogs and horses, his pretty manners, and other such rubbish. It was painful to hear, but not enough to break down my gates.

In the end Elene’s temper broke. She railed at me, calling me merciless and unnatural and self-serving, an unfeeling devil rather than a man, who would happily save himself rather than his son. There was something behind her fury, and genuine fear, but still I knew she was a liar.

When the storm had blown itself out, she sat on the edge of the bench and cried. Her hopeless weeping reminded me of my mother’s despair, on the night Clothaire announced he meant to sell us into slavery. I allowed room for a little pity, and reached out to touch her shoulder.

Elene shrugged me off. “Where have you been, all these long years?” I asked. “Why did you never come back?”

She turned her face to mine. Her eyes were wet and red-rimmed. “I am the Empress’s plaything,” she whispered, “her servant in all things, and have been since she came to the throne. Like many others, I go where she bids me, and do what she bids me. That is why I did not come back. To protect you.”

Another lie. She was a hopeless liar, but I let it pass. “I sometimes wonder if the entire city is in her thrall,” I said, staring at the backs of my hands, “everyone, from the Emperor downward, seems terrified of her. Belisarius is the exception, but he is terrified of his wife, and she is Theodora’s creature.”

Elene wasn’t listening. She wept a little more, and her pathetic choking sobs were unbearable to hear. If she had pleaded again, I doubt I could have withstood it.

Fortunately, she still retained a flicker of her old pride, and this saved me from the scaffold. Wiping her eyes, she stood up and looked down on me with a mixture of scorn, hatred, and (I like to think) a tinge of regret.

“I will leave you the candle,” she said. “You have need of some light on here. Watch the flame as it dwindles to nothing, and think of me.”

She turned to leave, but there was something I needed to know. “Do you really have a son?” I asked.

Elene hesitated before rapping her fist on the door to summon the guard.

“Yes,” she replied, “but he is not yours. I have been married to a good man for five years.”

That hurt me more than anything. Even though it was naive, I had always nursed the faint hope that Elene would one day return to me. The certain knowledge that she had married another, and borne him the son that should have been mine, was like an invisible blade passing under my ribs.

“Now I have failed to break you,” she added in a hard voice, drained of emotion, “Theodora will punish me by killing them both. Goodbye, Coel.”

She rapped on the door. A moment later there was the sound of keys rustling in the lock.

“What is the boy’s name?” I asked.

“I told you. Arthur.”

Then she was gone, and the prison door slammed behind her. The echoes took a long time to die away.

I languished alone in my prison until it was finally time for my trial. The door rumbled open, and a troop of Excubitors marched into my cell. They unfastened the fetters on my ankles, placed fresh ones on my wrists, and dragged me out into sunlight and fresh air.

News of the treason trial had spread throughout the city, though the details of it were obscure to most folk outside the palace. The prospect of scandal and an execution was enough to cause a ripple of excitement, and the Mese was lined with spectators as I was marched to the Praetorium. Many recognised me as the former charioteer turned soldier who had briefly gained the favour of General Belisarius, and a few ironic cries of “Britannicus!” followed me down the street.

Not one voice was lifted in protest on my behalf. The Romans are a ruthless people. Their sentiment can quickly turn to spite, and they will happily see yesterday’s hero hanged for the sake of entertainment.

The Praetorium was originally built to accommodate soldiers. It was still a formidable building, three floors high and protected by an exterior wall and strong gates. A double line of Excubitors guarded the gates. The Emperor himself was inside, and the imperial standard fluttered over the gatehouse.

All this for me, I thought, and allowed myself a little smile in the midst of despair.

More soldiers were drawn up inside the courtyard. They stood stiff and silently to attention, their polished helmets and chain mail shining in the bright morning sun. I was taken past them, into the main entrance of the central building, a square block with thick walls and divided into government departments.

The courtroom was an airy, vaulted chamber on the ground floor, big enough to accommodate the senators, justices and assorted officials who would preside over my trial. Long benches lined the walls for all these worthy souls to sit upon and argue, while one end of the chamber was taken up by a wooden platform for the Emperor and his consort. The public were excluded, and the doors guarded by more grim-faced Excubitors.

I could hear the buzz of voices before I entered the chamber, and was strangely gratified when it ceased and scores of faces turned to look at me. The sin of pride is one of the many flaws in my character, and I have always taken a guilty pleasure in being the focus of attention.

The Emperor sat on a carved wooden throne. My first thought was that he looked more like an ageing cherub than ever. He also looked bored, and drummed his fingers impatiently as the tribune of the court, a tall, imposing figure in full military regalia, stepped forward to the edge of the dais.

“Bring forth the accused,” he barked, and motioned at my guards. They seized my arms and pushed me into the middle of the floor, where I was made to face the Emperor.

All the great ones of the city were present. Theodora sat on a throne to the right of her husband, her face taut and emotionless under an unusually thick layer of powder and paint. The thin, saturnine figure of John of Cappadocia stood next to her. It did me no good to recall that he was rumoured to have imprisoned many of his political enemies in dungeons under the Praetorium, where he tortured and abused them as the whim took him.

I looked for support, and saw Narses seated on one of the benches to my left among a gaggle of senators. He briefly met my eye and gave a sort of one-shouldered shrug, the meaning of which was clear: shift for yourself.

My dying hopes were restored a little when I saw Belisarius. He stood by himself in a corner, a lonely and isolated figure, clad in drab fatigues and with a battered helmet tucked under his arm. His appearance made for a stark contrast to the military splendour of the Excubitors. I suspect it was deliberate. Here I stand, Belisarius silently proclaimed, the plain, unaffected soldier. Trust in me.

My heart leaped as I saw Caledfwlch strapped to his hip. Narses must have given it to him. I allowed myself to believe that the pair of them had cooked up some scheme to save me.

Belisarius nodded curtly at me, and returned to his intense study of the floor.

“Silence,” boomed the tribune, though the chamber was already silent, “silence for the conqueror of the Vandals and of Africa, the Pious, Happy and Illustrious, Victorious and Triumphant Justinian, Emperor of the Romans!”

Having pronounced these absurd and vainglorious epithets, he stepped aside so that all eyes might rest on the Emperor. Justinian stifled a little yawn and cleared his throat.

“Senators, lawyers, and other distinguished men of Rome,” he said, “I have many important affairs of state to attend to. This is not one of them, so let us be done with it quickly. I am given to understand that this man standing before us…”

He paused. “Remind me of his name,” he said irritably.

One of the clerks of the court shot to his feet. “Coel,” he squeaked.

“Britannicus,” said another at almost exactly the same time.

Justinian glared at them both. “Coel, Britannicus, which is it?” he demanded, “I can’t try the wretched man if I don’t know his name.”

“His name is Coel,” said Theodora in a flat and lifeless monotone, “Britannicus is a name I gave him, long ago.”

“Coel ap Amhar ap Arthur,” I said, louder than intended. I stood a little straighter, despite the weight of my manacles, and shrugged off my fear.

It was surprisingly easy. My contempt for most of the people in the room helped: the vain little Emperor, clothing himself in borrowed glory; his cruel, degraded consort; the mob of self-serving politicos and pinch-faced lawyers. They were all vermin, fighting for their place on the dungheap of the Empire. Only Belisarius stood apart, and even he was tainted by association.

“That’s a noise, not a name,” Justinian grumbled, “still, let’s proceed. Bring in the accuser.”

The tribune bellowed out a summons, and three men appeared in the doorway. Two were Excubitors, and the third was Leo.

I drew in a sharp intake of breath. He had aged in the year since I had last seen him. His black hair was now white as snow, and his roughly handsome face marked by deep lines of suffering and privation. His body had lost none of its wiry muscularity, though, and he still carried himself with the same insufferable arrogance and damn-you air.

Like me, his wrists were bound by iron manacles, but he swaggered into the courtroom as though he owned it. His guards marched close behind him, and behind them filed a wretched group of men in torn and soiled rags. They were also manacled, and their ankles tied together by lengths of chain.

Some of my old fear returned as I recognised them as men I had known in the Hippodrome. One was Rufinus, the senior overseer of the Greens who had stood beside Leo in the Hippodrome and exhorted the rioters to burn Constantinople.

I glanced at Theodora, but she was far too subtle to allow any look of understanding to pass between her and Leo. Like the consummate actress she was, she maintained her stony expression, a mask of aloof and impartial judgment.

Leo took his place beside me without even acknowledging my presence. My wrists itched with the desire to swing my manacles at his head and dash his treacherous brains all over the floor, but one of the Excubitors stepped between us.

Rufinus and the other men were made to stand behind us. I could feel their venomous glares boring into the back of my head.

“Now,” said Justinian when all was quiet again, “I am informed that this man Leo, known as Leo the Armenian, was one of the chief agitators of the riots that afflicted our city, and threatened our person, last summer. Those wretches behind him were his accomplices. Since then they have been in hiding, and only recently gave themselves up on the promise of safe-conduct.”

He glanced anxiously at Theodora. “That is correct, Caesar,” she said. “By their own admission they are all guilty of conspiracy and treason. They surrendered to my mercy, on the pledge that their sentences might be reduced to exile or military service.”

“Why should I spare their lives?” asked Justinian.

“On the grounds that they have identified one who was as great a traitor as they. One who has not only escaped punishment but achieved officer rank in the army. They accuse Coel of conspiring with them to murder you, Caesar, and replace you with the late Senator Hypatius.”

The Emperor had clearly been well-drilled before the trial by his wife, and was merely going through the motions, but still he looked uncomfortable. The situation was most irregular, and when Theodora had finished speaking a buzz of discord rose from the packed benches.

One of the senators rose to his feet, a magnificent creature, grey-haired and gorgeously dressed, and so smoothly fat I half-expected him to roll away.

“These men are condemned out of their own mouths,” he cried, pointing an accusing finger at Leo and his cronies, “as such they are in no position to accuse others. Why should we put faith in the testimony of criminals who sought to bring down the state?”

There was a low murmur of agreement, though it quickly died away as Theodora swept the benches with her basilisk eyes.

“I have heard their testimonies in private, and am satisfied as to their validity,” she said, “does anyone here question my judgment?”

That was a direct challenge, and my low opinion of everyone present was only confirmed by the silence that rolled over the chamber. Even the obese senator was cowed, and resumed his seat. I looked to Belisarius, but his eyes remained fixed on the floor, his mind apparently elsewhere.

“Let each of them come forward,” said Justinian, “and say before us what they said to my wife. Leo the Armenian, you first.”

Leo stepped forward with a smirk, gave a brief duck of his head in respect to the Emperor, and launched into a tirade of appalling lies. To hear him, it was I who had first hatched the plot to depose the Emperor, I who had organised the temporary alliance between the Blues and the Greens, I who had permitted, even encouraged, the plundering of the homes of innocent citizens…the list of charges went on and on, spoken with eloquent conviction by a man who had (I suspect) been assured of Theodora’s protection.

When Leo was done, Rufinus was called forward to support his lies, followed by the others. As I studied their haggard, unshaven faces, I realised that none had ever been my friends, but nor had I counted them as enemies. I was merely a convenient scapegoat, whom they meant to use to save their own unworthy skins.

While they stepped forward, one by one, to speak against me, I tried frantically to think of a way out. I thought of falling back on the physical evidence of torture, of dramatically tearing off my tunic to reveal the half-healed burns on my back. To accuse the Empress of torturing me was an enormous risk, and would only succeed if Narses spoke up as a witness to it.

That was a futile hope. Narses had already indicated that he would give me no support. I couldn’t be certain if Theodora had bought his silence, but it seemed likely. Added to that, the Emperor’s boredom was clearly mounting. If I accused his beloved wife of anything improper, he might make a show of indignant rage and have me condemned as a simple means of bringing the trial to an end.

When the last of the false witnesses had spoken, a senator asked that they be cross-examined by the court. Justinian quashed that with a growl that he wasn’t going to sit and listen to interminable hours of interrogation.

“It’s almost time for lunch,” he added, patting his round belly, “I had hoped for an end to this business before I ate. Is there any physical evidence of this man’s guilt to go with the verbal testimony?”

“None, Caesar,” replied Leo, “save the damage done to your noble city. The scars left by the riots shall take time to heal.”

“As you should know, since you helped to inflict them,” said Justinian with a scowl, “I don’t like your manner, Armenian. I don’t like your face either. If the accused is found guilty, you shall be sent to fight Rome’s enemies somewhere far away. Very far away indeed, very hot and very dangerous.”

“If there is to be no cross-examination, the judgment is submitted to you, Caesar,” said Theodora. I detected a slight note of triumph in her voice, and saw her slender hands curl tighter about the arms of her chair.

The Emperor hesitated, and tugged at his lower lip. He was an intelligent man, and must have appreciated that his wife was twisting and bypassing Roman law for base purposes of revenge. He had recently completed his compilation and re-codification of Roman law, destined to be his most enduring work.

As a result Justinian now enjoyed a reputation as a great law-giver. If he allowed me to be convicted of treason, based on the slanderous allegations of a pack of self-confessed traitors, he risked destroying that reputation.

If there was one thing the Emperor valued, it was his reputation. He was aware that posterity would judge him, and determined to go down in the annals of history as a great man and a great ruler, fit to be counted among the greatest of Caesars. Hence the ridiculous and self-serving titles he gave himself.

On the other hand, his domestic life would be Hell itself if he didn’t give Theodora what she wanted. I could see him weighing all this up as he stroked his chin and studied myself and Leo.

Belisarius chose this moment to intervene. “This trial is absurd,” he said, “the senator was right. There can be no just conviction on the evidence presented.”

He spoke quietly, but his calm, authoritative voice filled the room. I found it difficult to suppress a grin as I watched the Emperor go red in the face, and Theodora’s mask of white paint crack into an angry frown.

“This is none of your affair, General,” she rasped, “you were summoned here as a mere formality. Step down.”

“I shall indeed step down,” he said, “if this brave and loyal officer is condemned without being given a chance to defend himself. I shall resign my commission and retire into private life.”

A gasp rippled around the chamber. Justinian sat bolt upright in his chair, and his mottled face turned a ghastly shade of grey.

“Resign?” he said in a strangled voice, “what in God’s name are you talking about? You would sacrifice your career for the sake of one man?”

Belisarius now indulged his own taste for the dramatic. “Yes,” he said, his words punctuated by a clang of iron as he allowed his helmet to fall to the floor, “but not just for his sake.”

He drew Caledfwlch and held it up before the assembled throng. “This is Crocea Mors, the sword wielded by Aeneas and Julius Caesar and said to be forged on Mount Olympus. Coel recovered it for us, at great risk to himself. How do we repay him for this service? By placing him on trial for his life. I will not stand for it.”

“I summon the shade of Scipio Africanus to witness this farce,” he roared. “He knew us Romans for what we are. Remember the words he had carved in his tomb. Ingrata patria, ne ossa quidem habebis. Ungrateful fatherland, you shall not even have my bones!”

A storm of voices rose in the chamber, some in protest, some in support, as Belisarius raised the sword high above his head and threw it at the Emperor’s feet.

Justinian had seconds to react to this challenge, and to mull over the consequences if Belisarius delivered on his threat to resign. The suspicions over Belisarius’s loyalty must have flared again in his mind. His all-conquering general was too popular to be punished. Much of the North African army had been disbanded, but there were still the Veterans, now swollen to seven thousand men, to be reckoned with. They were by far the largest body of troops in the city.

If Belisarius was using my trial as a pretext to rebellion, there was virtually nothing to stop him seizing the throne for himself. The people would acclaim him, and the city watch and the Excubitors stood little chance against the general’s battle-hardened troops.

I could see beads of sweat glistening on the Emperor’s forehead as his mind wrestled with all this. Theodora was glaring at him, but for once he paid her little heed.

He gestured at the tribune, who stamped his feet and bawled until he was puce for silence. Eventually he got it, and a sort of nervous calm rolled over the courtroom.

Justinian stood up. “Since you choose to turn Roman justice into a circus,” he said, looking hard at Belisarius, “then a circus you shall have. You demand that your officer be given a chance to defend himself. Very well. He shall have it.”

“I am advised that I cannot rely on the testimony of traitors,” he went on, “and there is something in that. I find that the accused cannot be acquitted or condemned on the evidence given. Since the law has failed to determine his guilt, the judgment must be submitted to God.”

I quailed, thinking he meant to turn me over to the Patriarch and his torturers for interrogation. Priests were said to observe little restraint when it came to wringing information out of people, perhaps because they believed Christ would redeem their actions.

“According to the law of God,” Justinian thundered, “no man who is false can defeat another who is true. I judge that the accused shall meet his accuser in single combat in the Hippodrome, a week from now. If Coel wins, then he shall be cleared of all charges and allowed to return to the army. His accusers shall be strangled before the imperial box. If Leo the Armenian wins, the lives of he and his accomplices shall be spared, and they shall be sent to serve in garrisons on the Persian frontier. Coel shall be executed in their stead and his body hung in an iron cage over the city gates, as an example and a warning to all who conspire against the throne.”

Chapter 29

The Emperor was a sophisticated man. He could not really have believed that God decided the fate of mortals in single combat. His real concern was to dispose of me as quickly as possible, and in such a way that would satisfy Belisarius. He needed the general more than ever. The Empire was threatened by enemies on all sides, and Justinian lived in constant fear of another popular uprising.

He calculated that a trial by combat would appeal to Belisarius’s martial soul. Staging it in the Hippodrome would also please the people. It would give them a public spectacle unknown since the church had outlawed gladiatorial combats, and sate their lust for blood.

He was right in both cases, though I tremble to think what Theodora had to say in private. Of all the men in Constantinople, I suspect only Justinian suffered more sleepless nights than myself during the week leading up to the combat.

I was taken under guard to the Hippodrome and held in one of the old store-rooms under the arena. Leo and his accomplices were kept in the palace, in the care of Theodora. In the mornings I was taken out and allowed to exercise for an hour or two in the arena, under the supervision of Belisarius and a troop of his Veterans.

Belisarius insisted on sparring with me, and so every morning I found myself engaging in mock combats with the conqueror of North Africa. He was easily the better swordsman, and gave me good advice as we fenced back and forth across the arena, the dull clashing of our wooden practice swords echoing through the empty stands.

“You need to move faster,” he remarked one morning as he herded me like a sheep, his sword stabbing at my chest and face with blinding speed, “not stand rooted to one spot. Pharas and his drill-instructors should have taught you better.”

We were stripped to the waist, the sweat rolling off us in waves. I could scarcely draw breath to reply, and waited for the inevitable moment when he knocked the sword from my hand and placed his against my throat.

“Dead,” he said with a grin, and let his sword drop, “fortunately, you won’t be fighting me. I had a good look at Leo. He’s at least twice your age, and as far as I know has never served in the army. Have you ever seen him use a sword?”

I gratefully accepted a cup of cold water from one of the Veterans. “Once or twice,” I replied, gulping it down, “but only with practice weapons like these, never in earnest. He trained as a charioteer.”

“Then you should find it easy enough to kill him,” said Belisarius, “I recommend you do it quickly, without fuss. A single thrust to the heart. The crowd will want you to draw it out, to hack him to pieces for their entertainment. Ignore them. The sooner Leo and his friends are dead, the better.”

One of his men passed him a towel, and he wiped the sweat from his face while I worked up the courage to speak.

“Thank you for defending me in court, sir,” I said awkwardly, “I would have been condemned otherwise. I have no way of repaying you.”

“There is no debt between us. That trial was a farce. I’ve never witnessed such a crude attempt at entrapment in my life.”

His eyes flickered briefly at his Veterans. I understood his meaning. There were spies everywhere, even among his guards, and he could not say too much.

“My own subalterns betrayed me in Africa,” he said quietly, “and bore false tales to the Emperor. The heart of the Empire is rotten with corruption. There is only one cure. A proper example must be made of traitors, in public. Kill Leo. Not just to save yourself, but all of us.”

Belisarius had promised to return Caledflwch to me on the morning of the combat, so I could use it in the arena. I felt confident that my task was a simple one, made simpler by the knowledge that I would have my grandfather’s sword to do it.

We had reckoned without Theodora. Aware that her champion was not up to the task of killing me in a straight fight, she allowed her husband no rest until he agreed to change the rules.

I learned of this from Belisarius on the fifth morning before the combat. “No sparring today,” he said as I was brought out into the sunlit arena, “there’s no point.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. His long face was suited to grave expressions, and he had seldom looked graver.

“Last night the Emperor changed his mind, or rather the Empress changed it for him. Instead of a combat on foot, fought with swords and shields, you and Leo will compete in chariots. With javelins.”

I gaped at him. “Chariots? But that is absurd!”

“I know, but it gives your opponent more of a chance. He was a trainer for the Blues, is that not so?”

“Yes. One of the best. He taught me everything I know, including all the dirty tricks used during races.”

“Well, the Emperor has spoken, and there are only two days until the duel. It cannot be called off now. There would be riots in the streets, and I have no wish to lead Roman troops against Roman citizens a second time. You were a charioteer for a time. Can you beat him?”

I chewed my thumb-nail and thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” I admitted, “I was better than I pretended to be, but he was one of the best. And I am out of practice.”

“So is he, and there is little time for either of you to train. We must do what we can.”

Belisarius turned to his guards. “Fetch a sheaf of javelins,” he ordered, “and a straw target to set up in the arena.”

He also gave orders for one of the chariots to be brought out of storage, and a team of horses to be found.

Most of the beasts had been either slaughtered for meat or sold into private ownership after the Hippodrome was closed down. Belisarius’s men succeeded in tracking down two pairs owned by a retired doryphoroi turned horse-merchant, and after much bargaining persuaded him to part with them.

“Be thankful I am a rich man,” the general grumbled, “the old bastard charged me three or four times their actual worth.”

“Worth the money, sir,” I said, “it gives me an advantage that Leo doesn’t have.”

That was rather too optimistic. Leo had forgotten more about chariot-racing than I would ever know, and a day or two of practice wouldn’t do much to close the gap in skill between us.

Still, my spirits lifted as I watched a team of slaves drag out a dusty chariot from storage, and the horses placed in harness. The memory of my first race came flooding back to me – the Hippodrome packed with spectators, the venerable Emperor Anastasius standing up to salute their cheers, and the feel of the light wooden chariot shuddering under my feet as the spring-loaded gates flew open.

The roar of the crowd echoed faintly in my mind as I cautiously mounted the chariot brought out from storage.

“The rules are this,” said Belisarius, handing me a javelin, “you and Leo will each have three of these. One in your hands when the duel begins, the others held by attendants.”

I examined the javelin. It was a type of plumbata used by imperial infantry, a light throwing dart with a fletched iron tip weighted with lead. Plumbatae had replaced the heavier pila, used by the old Roman legions, since they had a longer range and were cheaper to produce.

Belisarius walked to a section of the track directly below the imperial box. “You will start here,” he called out, “with your chariots facing in opposite directions. When the Emperor gives the signal, you will go one way, Leo the other. At the point your chariots meet, you cast your javelins at each other.”

“Are we permitted armour?” I asked.

“Helmets and light mail. It would not do for the entertainment to be over too quickly. You must aim for Leo’s face.”

I nodded doubtfully. To control a chariot pulled by galloping horses was difficult enough with both hands. To do so with one, whilst bracing to throw a javelin at the same time, would be a severe test of skill and co-ordination.

“Assuming you do not kill or disable each other at the first pass,” Belisarius went on, “the attendants will throw you a second javelin here, when you reach the starting line. And a third, if necessary, though I doubt it will be. Even a handless cripple like you should have managed to hit the mark before then.”

He smiled, but I was in no mood for levity. “What happens if we survive all three passes?”

“Swords and shields. After all, one of you has to die. Leo will do his best to finish you off before it comes to that. I am confident that he won’t.”

Belisarius approached the chariot and stroked one of the horses. “Fine beasts,” he said, though in truth they were a pack of nervous, ageing brutes, “if only that old sword of yours could speak, eh? What glories it must have seen.”

I looked down at Caledfwlch. “God willing,” I said, “it will soon see the colour of Leo’s innards.”

Belisarius hesitated, and rubbed his long jaw. “Sentiment is often a fine thing,” he said, “but it has no place in a fight to the death. Leo is taller than you, and will be armed with a spatha. Crocea Mors is just a gladius. You are giving him the advantage of reach as well as height.”

He patted the hilt of the spatha he wore at his hip. “Use this instead,” he offered, “I have plenty of swords. One less makes no difference.”

There spoke the practical, level-headed soldier, but I had a streak of vanity and rashness in my soul, probably inherited from my mother.

I refused his offer. “Thank you, sir, but Caledfwlch once drank the blood of over nine hundred Saxon warriors in a single day. It will soon drink Leo’s.”

Chapter 30

I spent most of the night before the duel in prayer. Sleep was denied me. Every time I closed my eyes the old dreams that had plagued my youth rushed back, shadowy images of men locked in battle on some misted battlefield.

As before, the giant with the blazing eyes whom I knew to be my grandfather dominated the scene. Caledfwlch flashed like a deadly star in his hand. As he hacked men down the terrible sword grew brighter and brighter until it was too blinding to look upon.

I woke with a cry, my skin prickling with sweat. It was pitch-dark, but Arthur’s eyes seemed to hang in the night like a pair of burning coals.

Naked and trembling, I knelt on the stone cold floor and prayed for God to preserve me from the shade of my ancestor as well as Leo’s javelins. I felt certain that Arthur was watching me from whatever Otherworld his warlike soul dwelled in.

“You had your vengeance on my father,” I cried out, “must you hunt me as well? Amhar’s sin is not mine! Leave me be!”

There was no answer. I returned to my prayers until the cold was unbearable and I had to crawl back under the rough woollen blankets.

At last my exhausted mind sank into the deepest fathom of sleep. The next thing I knew the light of morning was shining through the bars of the narrow slit window, and a guardsman was shaking me awake.

“Time to go,” he grunted, and stood patiently while I rose and pulled on my tunic and braccae. When I was dressed he escorted me out into the corridor, where three other guardsmen were waiting. One wore the purple cloak and segmented armour of an officer. He held a sword-belt attached to the red leather scabbard Narses had given me. Inside the scabbard was Caledfwlch.

“General Belisarius said this was yours,” he said, handing me the sword, “make sure you use it well today. The general has taken a great risk in supporting you. If you fail, it reflects badly on his soldiers as well as him.”

“I heard that his wife didn’t like it,” remarked the guardsman who had woken me, “Antonina wants you dead for some reason. I wouldn’t like to have your enemies, Briton.”

The officer silenced him with a furious rebuke. I thanked him for returning Caledfwlch to me, and meekly allowed myself to be marched up the steps to the ground floor of the Hippodrome. The place was alive again, as it had been before the Nika riots, and the din of the people in the stands outside made the walls tremble.

“Filling up already,” I remarked.

“People have been queuing outside the gates since dawn,” said the officer, “I’ve seldom seen the like. The church might have outlawed the gladiatorial games, but it can’t outlaw the Roman spirit. We like blood. We demand blood. It’s in our nature.”

He seemed extremely proud of this attribute, and strutted like a peacock as I was taken through the cluster of empty stables and storehouses behind the Starting Gates. My chariot was waiting under the arch of the central gate, and a team of slaves were wrestling the reluctant horses into their harness.

“Where is Belisarius?” I asked, disappointed. I had hoped he would be there to give me a few last words of encouragement.

The officer raised his eyebrows at me. “In the imperial box, of course. Where else? His place is by the Emperor’s side.”

He snapped his fingers, and two of the slaves came forward with a helmet and a shirt of light mail. I took the helmet and weighed it carefully in my hand. It was heavy, and made in an ancient style, with cheek-pieces and a protruding iron rim above the brow.

“The past has come to life,” said the officer as I donned the helmet and mail and buckled on Caledfwlch, “you look like an auxiliary from Julius Caesar’s time.”

“That suits me,” I replied, and startled him with a grin, “I carry his sword, after all.”

The horses were finally manoeuvred into place, though not before one of them stamped on a luckless slave’s foot and broke several of his toes. They were the same animals Belisarius had bought from the horse-merchant. It did nothing for my confidence to know they were ill-tempered as well as old and nervous.

I stepped into the chariot. A slave handed me the reins, and I had to close my eyes for a moment and take in a few deep breaths. It was years since I had last been at the Starting Gates, my pulse hammering with fear and excitement and my ears clanging with the din of a hundred thousand Roman voices. Fate had brought me back here, not to race, but to fight for my life against a man I loathed.

“I’m ready,” I said aloud to no-one in particular. Seconds later a majestic blast of trumpets sounded outside, briefly drowning out the crowd, and the officer gave word for the gates to be opened.

I gave the reins a twitch and stirred the horses into life. The chariot rattled out from under the gateway into the broad, sunlit expanse of the arena and a wall of noise that buffeted me with almost physical force.

“Britannicus! Britannicus! Britannicus!”

They had not forgotten that accursed name, or my exploits on behalf of the Blues. The wearing of team colours was forbidden since the Nika riots, but I glimpsed splashes of blue and green in the crowd, where people wore them in defiance of Justinian’s law. Sport is tribal in nature, and its loyalties and rivalries are even harder to stamp out than religion.

I looked for my opponent and saw his chariot emerging from the furthest gate to my left. Like me, he wore chain mail, but carried his helmet underarm so the crowd might see his face better.

If Leo hoped they would cheer him, he was disappointed. His failed rebellion had brought too much death and misery to the city, and most of his friends and supporters were either dead or scattered. Boos and jeers sounded throughout the Hippodrome, though his critics wasted their breath. It would take more than angry voices to penetrate his iron self-regard. I fingered the hilt of Caledfwlch and reflected that I had just the tool for the job.

I guided my chariot at a steady trot to the imperial box, where the Emperor sat surrounded by his family, courtiers and personal guard. For once Justinian was not outshone by his wife. He was a picture of imperial glory, in robes of purple and gold and a light silver crown on his brow. He also wore an imperial scowl. I guessed that he would much rather be somewhere else, poring over his legal reforms or overseeing the construction of his darling church.

The chants of “Caesar!” resounded through the Hippodrome as he stood and raised his left hand in the time-honoured salute to those who were about to slaughter each other in the name of public entertainment. Leo and I saluted in response, while I ran my eye over the others in the box.

Belisarius sat to the left of the Emperor, with Antonina beside him. He looked pensive, as he often did in his domineering wife’s presence. Theodora was seated to the right of her husband, freshly-painted and richly-dressed and wearing her most regal expression.

Underneath she must have been seething with frustrated spite and bloodlust, and eager to see my guts spilled in the arena. Narses and the rest of the courtly rabble were obliged to stand at a respectable distance behind the Emperor’s chair.

Justinian muttered something to the steward, who gestured to a line of musicians standing at the foot of the imperial box. They blew a shrill fanfare on their bucinae, which was the signal for us to turn our chariots and drive to the starting line.

Until now I had not so much as exchanged a glance with Leo. Our eyes met, and he said something that I couldn’t hear above the roar of the crowd. In return I sent him the curses of the Gods. The insolent bastard winked and blew me a kiss, which earned him a few cheers from the stands.

Theodora had made sure he was well-equipped. His chariot shone with fresh black and gold paint, and his horses were muscular, high-stepping thoroughbreds. They wore purple plumes on their brows, a blatant sign of the Empress’s favour.

We took up our positions at the starting line, which was marked out in white paint. Two soldiers stood either side of the track. They each held three plumbatae, and handed one apiece to myself and Leo. I tucked mine into my belt, so I had one hand for the reins and another for my whip.

Relative silence fell over the Hippodrome as the Emperor rose from his seat again. He held aloft a white baton instead of the usual cloth.

My senses seemed to heighten as I waited for it to fall. In those brief seconds I noted the dull, heavy look in Theodora’s eyes, and a scratch-mark on Justinian’s cheek. Domestic strife, thought I, and then the baton came down.

The roar of the crowd burst the heavens as I whipped my horses into action. All my old training took over as they surged into a gallop. The barrage of thousands of Roman voices faded to a dull, meaningless buzzing in my ears. The light body of the chariot bounced and shuddered beneath me, and I had to concentrate to keep my balance.

I plied the whip a little a more, but speed was not important here. As the chariot rounded the first curve, I shifted the reins to my left hand, thrust the whip into my belt and withdrew the plumbata. I carefully weighed the savage little dart and drew it back ready to throw. The Heruli had trained me in their use. Now it seemed that the long hours on the drill-yard outside Constantinople were about to come to fruition.

Leo’s chariot came in view when I reached the straight. His horses were going at a hell of a pace, and he was still plying the whip on them until our chariots were less than twenty feet from each other. A born showman, he placed his reins between his teeth, took out his dart and cast it at me, all in one smooth movement.

I was partially blinded by the sun and almost too late to duck as the slender missile arced towards my head. The iron tip struck my helmet with an almighty clang, just an inch or so above my left eye. It spun away harmlessly, and in sheer panicked reaction I cast my own dart as Leo’s chariot thundered past.

My throw was wild and hopelessly wide of the target. I knew Pharas was in the stands, and imagined him cursing my shameful lack of nerve and accuracy. It could not be helped, and I had enjoyed a fortunate escape. Taking out my whip again, I flogged my horses to try and reach the line and gather the second plumbata before Leo.

He was a better charioteer, and his horses were superior to mine. His chariot was racing across the line while mine was still entering the straight, and I had to steel myself to drive straight at him and hope his aim was as poor as mine.

Leo must have had ice in his veins. His throw was strong and precise, and I only avoided the worst by hurling myself to one side. The lead-weighted dart hit my breast and stuck fast in the links of my mail, but failed to penetrate.

I tried to right myself before the chariot overturned. Too late I saw Leo’s whip arm come up – he had placed his reins in his mouth again – and the knotted leather flails slicing at my face. I managed to turn my head aside in time, so they scored against the cheek-piece of my helmet, but the impact was enough to make me lose my footing. My fingers were jerked loose from the reins, and I tumbled backwards into thin air.

I twisted as I fell and landed badly on my right arm. A hot tingling sensation spread from my elbow to my shoulder. There was no pain, not at first, but a wave of terror and despair hit me when I struggled to my feet and tried to flex the fingers of my right hand. They refused to move. My elbow was splintered, and my forearm and hand hung limp and useless.

Leo could have finished me with off his third dart, or simply had his horses gallop over me, but I was saved by his vanity. While I clumsily tugged out Caledflwch with my left hand, he brought his chariot to a halt and slowly stepped out of it, raising his arms to draw the acclaim of the fickle crowd.

His part in the riots was forgotten now. The Romans thought they had a new champion, and cheered themselves hoarse as he drew his spatha and advanced towards me. He wanted to kill me on my own terms, in single combat, to prove himself the better swordsman as well as charioteer. The better man.

I backed away from him, willing myself to ignore the triumphant smirk on his face and concentrate on his movement. He made a sudden rush, raising his sword double-handed above his head, and chopped at my shoulder.

The blow was slow and amateurish. I avoided it easily, and had my right arm been whole I could have stabbed at his throat. As it was, I had to back away and look to get on his blind side. He was right-handed and had no idea how to defend himself. Whether that was down to lack of training and experience or overconfidence, I cannot say, but it gave me my best chance.

Leo chopped again at my upper body, trying to beat me down with the heavy edge of his spatha. I caught his blade on Caledfwlch, turned it away with a roll of my wrist and backed away again, unwilling to risk a thrust with my weaker left hand. He spat at my apparent cowardice and came in at a run, this time thrusting his sword like a spear at my leg.

I let him come, deliberately exposing my flank. At the last moment I stepped aside, let the blade slide past and pinned his wrist with my arm. His sword-hand was now trapped between my hip and forearm, and I took the opportunity to butt him in the face with the protruding ridge of my helmet.

Leo was no stranger to street-fighting. White-hot agony shrieked through my genitals and lower abdomen as he brought his kneecap up into my groin.

The pain was almost enough to make me vomit. I released him and staggered backwards. Through a mist of tears I saw his nose now resembled a burst tomato, and blood drooling from his mouth. He must have accidentally bitten his tongue when I butted him.

His eyes were full of wild rage. He came at me again like a bull, his spatha raised to chop me clean in half. Sheer terror overrode the pain in my groin. I lurched sideways to avoid the blow, felt the wind as the long blade whipped inches past, and tried to stab Leo’s exposed flank. The thrust was feeble and awkward, and Caledfwlch scraped harmlessly against his mail. His spatha whirled at my head. I ducked and received his knee again, this time to the underside of my jaw.

I grunted, and felt teeth crunch and splinter as I fell onto my back. Leo loomed above me like the shadow of an avenging spirit, his spatha raised in both hands to plunge down into my gut.

The Heruli had taught me never to give up a fight as lost, even if I was on my back in the dirt. I kicked out with both legs, a move Pharas had shown me, and swept his left leg from under him.

Leo fell on top of me. His face smacked into mine, and for a moment we struggled in an obscene parody of a lover’s embrace. I tasted his blood on my lips. His screams were dreadful to hear, the more so for being so close, and my left hand and wrist were suddenly warm and soaking.

He bucked and shuddered and went still. His mouth gaped wide in a silent howl, his eyes stared at nothing. I looked down and saw he had impaled himself on Caledflwch, which I had held upright when he fell. The sword had burst through the links of Leo’s mail and drilled through the layers of wool and flesh beneath. Its bloody tip protruded from his back.

With a final burst of strength I rolled his dead weight off me. The fight had probably lasted less than a minute, but it seemed like hours since I had tumbled from my chariot. I had forgotten all about the arena and the crowd.

Reality came flooding back as the Hippodrome erupted in wild applause. The Romans had wanted to see blood. They had got it, and now rose in acclamation of the supplier. I looked to the imperial box, and saw Belisarius rise from his seat.

He pointed at me and mouthed my name. Not the false name attributed to me by Theodora, but the name my parents gave me. My true name. The crowd took up his shout. It spread like fire through the stands.

“Coel! Coel! Coel!”

I felt sick and weary. My legs shook, and it took a huge effort of will to remain standing. Caledfwlch was still buried inside Leo, its blood-spattered hilt standing upright and gleaming in the warm sun.

“Coel! Coel! Coel!”

Behind the shouts of the Romans I thought I heard the triumphant shouts of British warriors. They were chanting my grandfather’s name on the slopes of Mount Badon. Somewhere in Heaven or Hell or the Otherworld, Arthur’s grim countenance broke into a smile of approval.

I was free of him at last.

Content

David Pilling
The Red Death

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30