The boy pondered for a while. Then, ‘What else is Britain like? Your country?’
‘My country?’ The lieutenant’s voice softened again. ‘My country is beautiful.’
‘Mine too,’ said the boy.
‘Tell me about it.’
So they passed the time on the return march describing to each other in loving detail their respective countries.
The boy liked the sound of Britain: plenty of space, good hunting, and no fancy cooking.
‘Well,’ said the lieutenant as he watched his men untie the boy and hand him over to the Palace Guard. ‘Just remember, next time: keep your pride and your anger to yourself. Patience is a great military virtue.’
The boy gave a wan smile.
‘Shake,’ said the lieutenant.
They shook hands. Then the lieutenant barked an order, and his men fell into line. ‘Well, lads, our nightwatch is just about over. In two days’ time we march to Pavia, under the command of General Stilicho. So make the most of Rome’s glorious whores while you can.’
At that glorious news, all the men raised their fists in the air and roared their hurrahs. Then they wheeled and marched away into the night. The boy looked down the street after them for a long time.
He was taken and bathed, and escorted to his cell, and a guard was posted permanently outside his room. He drifted into a light, twitching sleep.
6
In the hot morning he lay in an uneasy doze when he was woken by low voices by his bedside. He opened his eyes.
Beside his bed stood Serena and, behind her, General Stilicho himself.
‘Well, my young wolf-cub,’ said the general, smiling. ‘And what headaches have you been causing the empire this time?’
Attila said nothing. He didn’t smile.
Serena reached down and laid a cool hand across Attila’s forehead. ‘Foolish boy,’ she said.
He wanted to glare at her but couldn’t. Her eyes were so gentle.
‘Here,’ said Stilicho, tossing something onto the bed. ‘This is for you. But only if you promise me never to try to escape again.’ Now he was stern, soldierly. ‘Do you promise, lad?’
Attila stared down at the package by his side, and looked up again and met the general’s eye. He nodded.
Stilicho believed him. ‘Open it when we’ve gone.’
Serena bent and kissed him, nodded to her husband, and departed.
Stilicho hesitated for a moment, then sat down on a small wooden stool, a little awkwardly for a man of his soldierly frame. He rested his elbows on his knees, rested his chin on his clenched fists, and scrutinised the boy long and hard. The boy waited expectantly.
‘I’m riding north for Pavia tomorrow,’ said Stilicho. ‘Serena will remain here in the palace.’ He fell silent a while, then said, ‘The Gothic armies are regrouping under Alaric. You have heard of him?’
Attila nodded. ‘He’s a Christian, too, though.’
‘He is. If he sacks Rome, he has promised to touch not a stone or a tile of any Christian building.’ Stilicho smiled. ‘Some chance. The Gothic armies won’t be sacking anywhere soon, least of all Rome. But. .. ’ The great general sighed. ‘We live in difficult times.’
Attila looked down. He felt obscurely guilty.
Stilicho was searching for the right words. He felt somehow that it mattered, deeply, what he said to the boy at this moment. Almost as if… almost as if he’d not be seeing him again. As those ancient Sybilline Books had said… He put all thought of those haunting Books from his mind, and said, speaking as slowly and carefully as he would to Galla at her most predatory, ‘Difficult times. Strange times.’ He looked hard at the boy, and said simply, ‘Do what is right, Attila.’
The boy started. The words surprised him.
Stilicho went on, holding the boy’s eye. ‘I have always served Rome, though I am of barbarian blood. But then, we were all barbarians once. What was great Rome herself, in the days before Numa and Romulus and the Ancient Kings? A village on a hillside.’
The boy smiled uncertainly. He was unaccustomed to hearing the general speak in this way.
‘What else is there but Rome, to hold back the blood-dimmed tide? To continue… History itself? Without Rome, the world would be again a place of dark forests and witchcraft, legends and ghosts, horned warriors, human sacrifice, those terrible Saxon pirates… Without Rome, the world would fall back again into the world before history. Do you see what I am saying, boy?’
Attila nodded hesitantly. The two stared at each other and then the boy’s gaze dropped.
‘Someone said to me,’ he said hesitantly, ‘someone said that the Romans are all hypocrites, and no better than anyone else. They go on about barbarians doing human sacrifices, and how disgusting it all is, and how they need Roman law and civilisation and all that – but what is the Roman arena but one huge human sacrifice?’
‘Who told you that?’ asked the general, frowning.
Attila shook his head.
Stilicho knew better than to try and wring it out of the little mule. He sighed and said, ‘We have lived through centuries of struggle, we Romans. We are not a soft people. No society is perfect; but judge it by its ideals. We have made laws, we have set limits. There are no more gladiators, you know that. The Christian faith has introduced us to guilt – and no bad thing, perhaps. Only criminals and prisoners of war are now executed in the arena, which they fully deserve. Likewise, a master no longer has the power of life and death over his slaves. He can even be tried in court for their murder. Over centuries of struggle, things do get better. Can you say that of life and law in the barbarian lands?’
Attila said nothing.
Perhaps it was fruitless. Stilicho brooded for a while, and then he started again, in a vein the boy barely understood.
‘Prophecies fulfil themselves.’ He spoke softly, with deep sadness. ‘And in our time, the twelve hundred prophesied years of Rome will come to an end. We might destroy all evidence of the prophecies themselves – we might indeed burn the Sibylline Books, as has been commanded by the powers-that-be. But the prophecies would remain. They are not confined by a single scroll of vellum, nor ended by its burning. Prophecies are things of power. Beliefs are things of power, of real power, in the world. An army that believes in something will always destroy an army that believes in nothing – no matter how great the odds against it. But what do we still believe in? Do we still believe in Rome? Or do we believe in those ancient and implacable Books, which tell only of Rome’s allotted twelve hundred years?’ He shook his head. ‘I should have burnt them all and had done with them.’
There was a silence.
‘But that cannot be the end of everything. It cannot all have been for nothing. It cannot!’ Stilicho’s voice was raised almost to a cry of anguish, his fists tightly clenched. ‘Those twelve long centuries of suffering and sacrifice cannot all just be lost in time, like dead leaves in the wind. The gods could not be so cruel. Something must survive of them.’
He lowered his voice. ‘I am sorry, I – I am making little sense.’ He compressed his lips, and then started again. ‘The believers, those who defend what they know in their hearts to be right, will always triumph. I have seen a small, weary group of bloodied and battle-weary soldiers, surrounded by ten, twenty times as many of their enemy. But those outnumbered men were loyal to each other. They trusted in themselves, and in each other, and in their god. I have seen a band of no more than sixty men, infantry only, protected only with light mail and leather, armed with only shield and spear and sword – no javelins, no missiles, no artillery, no cavalry back-up or reconnaissance, no archers or slingers, nor even the time to set staves and put out caltrops. But still I have seen them lock shield to shield, clutch their spears in defensive undergrip, and I have seen them hold themselves proudly against as many as a thousand mounted warriors – and walk from that field bloodied but unbowed. Undefeated.’ Stilicho nodded. ‘I know, because I was one of them.