‘An army that believes in its cause will always defeat an army of unbelieving savages, who believe only in the flame and the sword. Remember that, Attila.’
The general stood and resumed his usual aloof demeanour. ‘You have to believe in something. So believe what is right.’
He stepped towards the door of the boy’s chamber, and threw a last glance back. He nodded at the package on the bed. ‘You can open it now,’ he said.
The door closed behind him.
The boy unwrapped the package and found inside the wrappings of fine oiled linen a most beautiful sword, as long as his arm, with gold scrollwork in the handle and a honed double blade that was sharp even to the lightest touch. It was of finest carburised steel, and rather old-fashioned type, the gladius hispaniensis or Spanish sword, a beautifully sinuous and dangerous shape with a swelling then tapering blade and an exceptionally long point. No shield or armour known to man could withstand a straight under-arm thrust from a sword such as this. He wrapped it in its protective oiled cloth again and laid it under his pillow, and daydreamed.
When he finally arose and went out into the courts of the palace, he found that the other hostage children had heard of his escape. They were fascinated. Hegemond, the fat Burgundian boy with the sleepy eyes, waddled up to him in the palace gardens, where they were playing beneath the mulberry trees, and asked if it was true.
Attila was wary. He had heard enough questions from these lumbering, slow-witted German children before. Is it true that the Huns coat themselves in animal fat and never take baths? Is it true that the Huns eat only meat and drink only fermented mare’s milk? Is it true that the Huns are the offspring of witches, who were driven out of Christian lands and coupled with the demons of the wind and the desert? ‘Yes,’ he used to nod solemnly. ‘It’s all true.’
Hegemond made it clear to Attila that he was invited now to join their gang. ‘Even if you are a Hun.’
But the boy kept his distance and his proud aloofness, as he always did. He watched the German children shout and play at soldiers for a while, amid the Paestum roses in the hot Italian sun. Then he turned away.
That evening, he had a visitor very different from the morning’s. He was drifting off to sleep when there came a knock on his door. The knock was clearly a formality, however, as the door then promptly opened and a tall, lean figure stepped inside. It was Eumolpus, one of the head palace eunuchs.
He stood at the end of the boy’s bed. ‘A message from Serena,’ he said coldly. ‘You are to have no more converse with her. Neither with General Stilicho, should you ever meet again.’
Attila stared at the eunuch. ‘What do you mean?’
Eumolpus smiled thinly. ‘I am so sorry, perhaps your Latin is still not good enough for you to understand even so simple a command as that. I repeat: you are to have no more converse with Serena. Ever again.’
‘By whose order?’ said the boy, pushing himself up on his elbow.
‘By the order of Serena herself,’ shrugged Eumolpus. He added, for his own personal amusement, ‘She says she finds your company… distasteful.’
He had gone too far.
There was a split second of deafening silence in the little room, and then Attila, screaming ‘You lie!’ sprang from his low bed and hurled himself at the startled eunuch with his teeth bared and his fists flying.
The guard heard the eunuch’s screams and rushed in, tore the raging boy away from the wailing Eumolpus and knocked him smartly to the floor. Then he turned back to the eunuch, who was lying speechless across the bed, and gave a low whistle.
‘Jupiter’s brazen balls,’ he gasped.
The eunuch looked as if he’d been savaged by a Caledonian hunting dog.
‘Well, don’t just stand there swearing,’ blubbered Eumolpus through the blood that spilt from his battered mouth, and with a shaky hand held to his throat where the boy had bitten deeply into it. ‘Get a physician.’
That night, for the first time, Attila was locked and bolted inside his chamber, and a guard of three was posted on his door.
He couldn’t sleep anyway. His heart thumped with a black rage that would keep him awake for years.
Stilicho was abruptly summoned the following morning to the Chamber of the Imperial Audience before his departure for Pavia.
When he got there he found not the emperor seated upon the throne, but Princess Galla Placidia. Honorius had already departed for the safety of his palace amid the marshlands of Ravenna.
Galla sat resplendent in robes of gold and – most shockingly of all – imperial purple. Flanking her over-decorated marble throne of purest Carrara marble were two of her most trusted palace eunuchs, Eumolpus himself and Olympian. Stilicho tried not to stare but he could see, even from the lowly and distant place where he stood, a humble suppliant at the bottom of the steps up to the dais, that Eumolpus had several stitches across his cheek, and an unusual kind of linen swaddling round his throat. In addition, both he and Olympian were wearing… make-up. Their eyes were rimmed with kohl like those of whores from the backstreets of the Suburra, or of Oriental despots, or Egyptian pharaohs of old, whose downtrodden people believed their ruler to be a god.
As we hold our emperors to be now, thought Stilicho.
When the men in power start wearing make-up, it’s time to start worrying. And Galla’s eunuchs were very much in power. He bowed and waited.
At last, Galla addressed him. ‘You have been to the temple building and destroyed the last of the Books?’
‘I have, Your Majesty.’
‘Pagan superstitions such as that can have no place in a Christian empire such as ours. Do you not agree?’
Stilicho gave a tilt of his head.
‘We will have an audience with the Bishop of Rome and all his principal deacons,’ Galla continued. ‘We will make it clear to them that they must preach an end to such pessimistic superstitions of the past. Rome is a Christian empire now, and under the protection of God. Those ancient scrolls are nothing but the raving of a harridan in a cave.’
There followed an awkward silence. Galla enjoyed awkward silences. They affirmed her power. In the Chamber of the Imperial Audience, no one could speak until they were addressed by the Imperial Throne.
What would Cicero have said? thought Stilicho sourly. That great orator. For all his pomposity and his self-regard, the last great voice of Free Rome. Who died for his oratorical pains, his severed head and hands delivered in a sack to Mark Antony, that sozzled lecher and braggard. His wife, Fulvia – now on her third marriage – had snatched Cicero’s head from the sack, spat on it, then yanked out its tongue and stabbed it with one of her hairpins. A fine example of Roman womanhood all round.
Stilicho waited, nursing his thoughts.
At last Galla said, ‘Remind me, Stilicho, what was the name of the barbarian chieftain who destroyed Publius Quintilius Varus’ three legions in the Teutoburg Forest, in the otherwise glorious reign of the Emperor Augustus?’
‘Glorious indeed,’ replied the general, ‘for in the reign of Augustus Christ was born.’
Galla closed her eyes slowly and then opened them again.
Stilicho regarded her warily. ‘He was called Arminius, Your Majesty, which is the Latin version of his real name, Herman, meaning “Man of War”. “Herman the German”, the troops called him.’
‘Arminius,’ Galla nodded. Of course, she knew it already. ‘As many as twenty thousand soldiers, along with their families and attendants, cut down in the dark forests of Germany, over the course of two or three days. It must have been terrible. The worst disaster ever to befall Roman arms.’