‘Only two weeks ago,’ said the general, very slowly and softly, ‘on the orders of the Princess Galla Placidia, I went to the Temple of Capitoline Jove, which is now a Christian place of worship, of course. And I took up the Sibylline Books, and I burnt them. I scattered the ashes off the Tarpeian Rock like dead leaves. And when I looked back, this one scrap had fallen from the brazier and survived. One of the priests emerged – not a man I had ever respected for his spiritual fervour or intelligence. A fat old senator called Majoricus. In earlier days he was actually one of the quindecemviri – the Fifteen Men – who guarded the Sibylline Books with their lives. But once Theodosius shut the pagan temples for good, Majoricus knew pretty quickly which side his bread was buttered and became the most vociferous and fervent of Christians overnight. So he never had to leave the temple at all, it was said. A kind of holy sitting tenant, whom the new landlord – the God of the Christians – couldn’t have got rid of even if He’d wanted to.’
The two men chuckled.
‘So there I was, burning the last of the Books, when Majoricus came waddling over and retrieved this scrap of parchment from the floor. He looked it over and then he pressed it into my hand, saying that this was the very last Sibylline prophecy of all and that I must keep it. He didn’t know why, but he said it must be meant. He said, mysteriously, that “God has a thousand and one names.”
‘Now I had only reluctantly burnt the Books in the first place. Galla had said they were a wicked pagan superstition anyway, and they would sap the morale of the Roman people, with their endless foretelling of doom and destruction. But, with some surprise – at myself, you understand, for I am not a man who is generally much influenced by what fat old senators tell me to do-’
‘I imagine not, sir.’
‘All the same, at this moment, I did as that fat old priest commanded me, and I kept this last scrap of parchment. But it troubles me what I should do with it now. I do not know if my time will last much longer.’
‘Sir, you seem to me a very fit man.’
Stilicho hadn’t meant that at all. But he said nothing. Instead, he pushed the scroll across to the lieutenant. ‘I want you to have this. Guard it with your life.’
Lucius frowned. ‘Why? Why me?’
‘Call it a hunch. I’ve lived all my life listening to my hunches. My wife says it’s a female gift, but it’s one I’ve always received with gratitude. I usually get it right. Hunches tell us things that nothing else can. Here. It’s yours.’
Lucius gazed down at the scroll. There were two columns of verses, written in ancient temple-hand, in ink now yellowish-brown with age. Some lines were in long, bombastic hexameters, and others were brief, even vulgarly rhyming riddles, like the rhymes of barbarian peoples, which surprised him.
‘Read one,’ said Stilicho.
By the light of the candles beside him, Lucius read out in his deep, clear voice: ‘One with an empire,
One with a sword,
One with a son,
And one with a word.’
The general nodded. ‘And read those last hexameters.’
The lieutenant read, ‘When Romulus climbed to the rock,
Brother Remus stumbled below.
The dead man saw six, the king twelve,
And the book of Rome is closed.’
He looked up again. ‘This is… this is the prophecy that gives Rome twelve centuries to stand?’
‘And in our time… ’ said Stilicho. He opened his great hands wide. ‘In your hands is the very last prophecy of the Cumaean Sibyl, before she vanished for ever from our history. These are the verses regarding the end of Rome. They are difficult and obscure, like all the Sibylline verses; and they say that whoever seeks to interpret them will do so only to misunderstand them. Nevertheless, I pass them on to you.’
‘To me? Why?’
‘I feel somehow – I do not know why – that these last and most terrible verses must not be destroyed after all, but must be taken far, far away from Rome, beyond the frontier. For in some strange way, as yet unforeseen, they may yet save Rome. Or the spirit of Rome, if not the monuments and the temples and the palaces.’
The general leant forward passionately, his dark eyes blazing afresh. ‘Do your duty, man: take them back to Britain with you.’
‘But I have thirteen years yet to serve, sir, unless I get leave.’
‘You go when you go,’ said Stilicho vaguely. ‘A burden they are, but remember them. Galla fears them, and the Church fears them, and yet I think it need not. For they are things of power if rightly used, and may yet save Rome in some way I cannot foresee. The Books have never been wrong – only wrongly interpreted.’ He sat back and looked suddenly like a weary old man. He passed his big hand across his brow. ‘I could not destroy that last Book. It seems to me that those who start out by burning books end up by burning men.’
The two men sat in eerie silence for a while. The camp outside was all but silent. An owl hooted, the sound carrying through the still, airless night. But within the tent, the two troubled soldiers seemed to feel the wind of the centuries pass by, brushing their very skins like a ghost. They felt both small, and burdened with something far greater than they could comprehend. The end was coming, they knew, but it was not an end whose shape they or any mortal man could see clearly. And it was all the more terrifying for that.
The lieutenant saw in his mind’s eye a woman in a long white robe walking sightlessly through a thick sea-fog towards a cliff edge like the green and windswept headland of Pen Glas, above the beloved Dumnonian valley he called home. He wanted to cry out, but was dumb and helpless, and he saw the woman walking on with a stately dreaminess towards that teetering edge and the black-fanged rocks far below. And he thought that the woman was Clio, the Muse of History herself.
‘You see things.’ It was the general’s voice cutting in sharply.
The lieutenant came back from his reverie with an effort. ‘I… ’
‘Unusual for a soldier.’
‘My… my people in Britain have often been fili, barda – poets and seers and such – as often as they’ve been soldiers.’ Lucius tried to laugh it off. ‘You know what a reputation we Celts have.’
Stilicho made no comment. Instead he said, ‘There’s another thing I want from you.’
‘Sir?’
‘I’m sending you back to Rome tomorrow.’
‘But, sir, the Palatine Guard have requested no Frontier Guards within the city precincts. That was why me and my lads were packed off with you to Pavia, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so. And we’re up for it, too – crack at the Goths and all that. But I don’t think-’
‘And the whores of Rome beginning to wear your men out too, eh, soldier?’
Lucius grinned. ‘Lads were beginning to say they were a bit exhausted, yes, sir. Said that, after Rome, going back to the Pictish frontier would be a holiday.’
‘Well, the Pictish frontier is abandoned for good,’ said Stilicho grimly. ‘But there are plenty more frontiers still to fight for. The Rhine and the Danube must be held.’
‘Sir.’
‘Anyhow, I am well aware of the tensions between the Palatine Guard and Frontier troops who get stationed back in Rome. But those are my orders, and I am, as the Palatine Guard might need to be reminded from time to time, master-general of all Rome’s armed forces. So never mind those nancy-boys. You and your century will return to Rome tomorrow. I want you to look out for someone for me.’
‘Sir?’
‘Among the hostages there’s one who really matters – for obvious reasons just now. The Hun lad, name of Attila.’
The lieutenant grinned. ‘I’ve met him.’
The general was startled. ‘You have?’
‘It was my squad who brought him in, that night he escaped from the Palatine after cracking the codeword.’
Stilicho stared hard at the lieutenant. ‘That is no coincidence, I feel sure,’ he said quietly. ‘Well, as you may have gathered, there’s something special about the lad. I don’t know what.’