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‘Yes,’ she said sadly. ‘It is coming. It is coming soon – if one believes it. Or: if one believes it, it is coming soon.’ She drew breath. ‘I know, I know, everyone talks in riddles these days. Forgive me. Prin-that is to say, the imperial powers-that-be ordered General Stilicho to destroy the Books, and leave no trace behind. “That the people might continue to believe,” they said. But… there is a storm coming. And much which was precious and beautiful, and which seemed sheer miracle to the multitude, will be torn down and washed away for ever.’

The boy did not understand all she said. But he understood it when she told him he must go, and now. Rome was no longer safe for him.

‘Where am I to go?’

She smiled and touched her hand to his cheek. ‘Where you have always wanted to go, little wolf-cub. Home.’ She stood. ‘The sword that General Stilicho gave you… ’

‘I still have it,’ said the boy. ‘It is safely hidden.’

‘Of course it is,’ said Serena. ‘And Stilicho had one other gift to bestow. God send he bestow it wisely. The last, most direful prophecy of all. O Cassandra, why did we sons and daughters of Troy not listen?’

She seemed to be speaking almost to herself, and as if in Sibylline riddles again, distracted with anxiety and murmuring softly as her eyes searched the ground before her. ‘The prophecy told of the end of the world, we thought, but we misread it. We misread it always, we sons and daughters of Troy. It foretold not the end of the world, but only the end of Rome.’

She seized his hand one last time, fixing his eyes with her own troubled, dark, searching eyes, as if trying to communicate to him something that was beyond communication and older than all the ages of the world.

‘All will be destroyed, and all will come again,’ she said. ‘A holy man taught me that long ago, and I was loth to believe him. But I believe him now. Gamaliel he was called – Sun-singer, Fire-bringer, last of the Hidden Kings. Where is his voice and his wisdom now?’ She let his hand drop and her eyes grew distant.

At last the bewildered boy asked, ‘How am I to escape?’

‘It will be done tonight,’ she said.

Violent shouting suddenly arose in a distant part of the palace. Serena started, and Attila saw to his dismay that she was shaking with fear. She turned back to him.

‘Now go,’ she said. ‘The guard at your door is loyal. Stay within your chamber. At the appointed hour of the night, he will unlock the door and will guide you to a – a way out of the palace. It will lead you to the Chapel of the Magdalen, and from thence you will be guided out of the city by a monk called Eustachius, and you will be given your freedom – and perhaps even a pony.’

‘A pony!’

She smiled and reached out and touched him again. ‘Ride like the wind, little wolf-cub.’

‘Like the autumn wind on the steppe when Aldebaran is rising in the Eastern sky will I ride,’ he murmured. ‘And like the pale birchleaves of the mountains will I ride, when they are driven like multitudes before the autumn wind.’

‘And they tell us that barbarians have no poetry.’ She smiled. Then her smile vanished. ‘Steal what you must. Speak to no one. Give no one your name.’

She turned away so that he would not see her tears. ‘Now go,’ she said.

He took a step towards her, his hands held out as if in supplication. ‘But… But I… ’

She did not look back. ‘I said go!’ she cried.

He flinched and took a step backwards, and then turned and ran, his eyes blurred with tears.

He returned to his room by flickering torchlight, to find that a couple of guards had overturned his bed, ransacked his linen chest, and were searching through his every possession. When he came running in, they barely spared him a glance.

‘Outside,’ they growled.

Attila stepped back outside, and slipped down the corridor towards the statue of Augustus – its mysteriously missing eye now replaced. He felt behind the statue and it was still there: his sword, the gift of Stilicho, in the last place the guards would think of looking.

He heard footsteps behind him.

It was Eumolpus. He raised one finely plucked eyebrow. ‘And what fresh destruction are you wreaking now, rat-boy?’

Without a word, his blood beating, Attila pulled the bundle out from behind the statue, drew the sword from its oiled cloth and turned it round and about in front of the eunuch’s eyes.

‘Isn’t it fine?’ he said.

‘Give that here.’

The boy smiled and shook his head.

The eunuch suddenly looked dangerous. ‘I said, give it here.’

Attila looked up, and then raised the blade to the level of his shoulder, arm crooked ready to strike, the long and lethal point aiming straight at his tormentor’s chest.

‘If you want it so much,’ he said, ‘take it.’

Eumolpus stared at him long and hard. Then he moved suddenly, stepping sideways and grabbing at the boy’s side. But the boy was faster, ducking under the eunuch’s outstretched arm and turning on the ball of his foot and holding out the sword towards him again.

‘Well, well,’ said Eumolpus in a low voice. ‘And what sort of person – what traitor – would give a little urchin such as yourself a gift as fine as that?’

Contrary to all expectations, Attila suddenly lunged forwards, and the startled Eumolpus stepped backwards, stumbled against the pediment of the statue of Augustus, and fell. Scrambling to his feet again, all composure lost, he cursed the boy furiously. He paused to brush his resplendent golden dalmatic clean of the barbarian touch, hissed some unintelligible Greek at the boy like a peevish viper, and departed.

‘Nasty cut you’ve got there, by the way,’ the boy called after him. ‘Round your throat.’

He rewrapped the sword in its oiled cloth and hid it in the folds of his tunic.

When Eumolpus fell, he had dropped a scrap of paper. Once he had vanished round the corner, the boy retrieved it. It was in code. He took it back to his room. The guards let him in, and then locked and bolted the door behind him. He settled down on the low bed to crack the code. He liked codes, but this one was hard. Soon his tired eyes began to close, and he fell asleep.

In his dreams, he continued to work on the code. He knew that it mattered somehow. He saw himself as if from a distance, in the dusk, straining his eyes by the guttering oil lamp. From one of the distant courtyards came a strange, high-pitched cry, like a bird in lamentation.

He dreamt that he leapt from his bed and ran to the Chamber of the Imperial Audience, to find Princess Galla Placidia seated on a painted wooden throne and surrounded by children, which was strange since she had none. And who, as they said in the backrooms of the palace, would want to marry her anyway? ‘Galla and husband,’ they quipped. ‘Virgin and martyr.’

Her brother, Honorius, sat at her feet, playing with a child’s spinning top. The princess stroked the goatkid in her lap and smiled. The kid smiled, too.

Stilicho was standing beside her. He wore an expression of puzzlement. He reached behind his back, and gave a low groan. Attila saw to his horror that the general had a big knife sticking out of his back, with gold scrollwork on the handle.

‘I must go home to my wife,’ said Stilicho.

The princess stroked the kid and looked at Attila and smiled.

He woke up numb with sorrow, and to the sound of screaming.

He lay wide awake and in a cold sweat, straining to hear again. Perhaps it hadn’t been a scream. Perhaps it had been the friendly guard knocking on the door, or even the monk Eustachius himself.

But then another scream came ringing through the night to his chamber, like the cry of one of the exotic birds in the imperial aviary, and he knew that things had begun to go terribly wrong. He knew in his heart that now there would be no friendly guard, and no kindly monk called Eustachius. He was alone.