‘You are Roman? Answer.’
‘I was.’
The newcomer frowned, his horse curvetting skittishly in the dust. The warrior wrenched the reins so fiercely that its head was pulled round almost to touch his legs, and the skittishness subsided.
‘Was?’ he rasped. His voice was deep, hoarse with dust, but powerful. ‘Can a man change his tribe? Can Roman become not Roman? Can Goth become Saxon or Frank? Can man disown father and mother, even people? Answer.’
‘My name is Lucius,’ he said. ‘I am from Britain.’
‘Britain,’ repeated the newcomer. ‘It rains.’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Often. Always. But grass is green. Answer.’
Lucius nodded. ‘Grass is green.’
The warrior grinned suddenly from under his bushy moustache. He sliced his hands at the walls of Rome. ‘After Rome burns,’ he said, ‘we come to Britain. We graze our horses where grass is green.’
Lucius shook his head. ‘The grass of Britain for my people. Our land.’
The warrior’s grin vanished as abruptly as it had appeared. He rode in alongside Lucius and stared at him closely. ‘You not afraid, Was-Roman?’
Lucius shook his head again. ‘Not afraid.’
‘Why not afraid? We kill you. Answer.’
Lucius remembered the words of the Greek philosopher: ‘How marvellous it must be for you to have as much power as a poisonous spider.’ But Lucius was not a man to borrow another man’s words. He spoke his own words, simple and true.
‘I am not afraid, because I am not your enemy. You will not kill me. I will ride into Rome. I have business there. Then I will sail home to Britain.’
‘Where the grass is green.’
‘Where the grass is green.’
The warrior stared into Lucius’ eyes a little longer. Lucius returned his gaze without blinking.
‘You are strange, Was-Roman,’ said the Goth at last.
‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Lucius.
Then the warrior wheeled away and threw his arm out wide to his men, roaring at them in the Gothic tongue. They parted, and Lucius rode on between them.
Several hundred yards separated the perimeter of the Gothic camp from the walls of Rome, well out of missile range for both. Lucius rode up under the shadow of the Porta Salaria and shouted for entrance. No questions were asked, and there was only a brief delay before the door in the centre of the great oak gates was opened. He dismounted and stepped through it, leading Tugha Ban behind him. He wondered why it had been so easy, but when he saw the guard on the gate he wondered no more. He was starving. His eyes were hollow and red, and his hair had fallen out in clumps from his white scalp. Spittle had dried and crusted round his mouth, and his lips had almost shrunken away with starvation. In such a condition, a man can barely think straight. The city was in a desperate situation.
Lucius led his horse up the street, and everywhere there was the stench of starving, unwashed and, even worse, unburied bodies. He saw people huddled along the edges of the streets or in the shadows of the darkened alleyways, sometimes holding out a clawed hand in beggary. He stopped only once, when he came upon the body of a child in rags, no more than four or five years old, its face of parchment, eyes rolled up in its head, flies settling already around the shrunken lips and the flaking nose. The child would be the same age as his own…
He bowed his head sorrowfully and could walk no further. He let go of Tugha Ban and leant down and gathered the dead child up in its rags. He covered its face – it was impossible to say even whether it was a boy or a girl – and laid the featherlight bundle at the side of the road, brushing away the flies and hiding the drawn, ashen face with a corner of ragged cloak. It was not enough, it was never enough, but it was as much as he could do. Then he and Tugha Ban walked on.
The whole city lay under an ominous silence, except for perhaps a long-drawn-out, barely audible sigh as it settled into enervation and death. The bodies of the dead were everywhere, and the clouds of breeding flies. It was still August, and in this heat Disease would soon make his appearance, close on the heels of his beloved bride, Starvation, and add to the manifold miseries of Rome.
Lucius and Tugha Ban walked for half an hour through the starved and haunted streets, the huddled groups of the dying sometimes stirring and chattering as they passed, eyeing with glittering, half-mad eyes the plump, grass-fed flanks of Tugha Ban. Lucius patted her on the nose.
At last they came to the Palatine Hill and the gates of the Imperial Palace. The guards here looked better fed. He demanded entrance, saying he came from Count Heraclian, from the column that had been despatched to Ravenna earlier in the month, and he gave the correct passwords. There was a long delay, and then at last he was admitted. He insisted on an audience with Princess Galla Placidia, saying that he had a confidential message for her from Count Heraclian himself. He was told to wait, and he waited for two hours. He waited until the evening. And then they said that the Princess Galla would receive him.
‘Look after my horse,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘I’ll be coming back for her.’
They gave him their word.
He was escorted by four armed guards into the Chamber of the Imperial Audience, and there in regal splendour on her throne of finest Carrara marble sat Princess Galla Placidia. Close by her stood the eunuch Eumolpus.
The princess let her pale eyes settle upon him for some time. Then she said, ‘So Heraclian is safe in Ravenna.’
‘He is. Along with his beloved Palatine Guard.’ The soldier’s tone was peculiar, sarcastic.
‘Address the Throne as “Your Excellency”,’ hissed Eumolpus.
Lucius turned and gazed at him steadily. Then he turned back and looked at the princess with equal steadiness. He said nothing.
Galla was astonished, but she betrayed nothing. A princess must never betray any emotion, which is weakness; she must never raise her voice, and she must walk with a slow stateliness at all times, as if a cup of water were balanced on her head.
Besides, perhaps this filthy, tousled, bare-legged soldier, whose malodorous presence she must endure for the sake of his communication from that fool Heraclian, had sunstroke, or was weak with hunger or something. No matter. For once, palace protocol could be put aside. All she wanted to know was: ‘And the rest of the column?’
‘Dead.’
She nodded. ‘And the Hun boy?’
‘Apart from the boy. He is free now.’
She smiled. ‘As you put it.’
Lucius nodded. ‘He will be well on his way back to his people by now.’
Galla hesitated. ‘You mean… his ancestors?’
‘No, I mean his people. Out on the Scythian plains. That’s clear enough, isn’t it?’
‘Your Excellency!’ cried Eumolpus, snatching up his skirts and hurrying out into the centre of the chamber. ‘This impertinence is grotesque! I must abjure you’ – he swung round to the deranged soldier who dared to address the Imperial Throne in such a way – ‘I must abjure you…’ Uncertain of what exactly he must abjure the soldier from, he raised his hand angrily.
‘Slap me,’ said the soldier quietly, ‘and I will break your neck where you stand.’
‘Oh!’ cried Eumolpus, backing away. ‘Your Excellency! Guards!’
But Princess Galla waved the guards away. ‘Bring this man some wine.’
‘I have no need of your wine,’ said the soldier. ‘It might make me puke.’
Galla’s face began to show signs of revulsion, uncertainty and fear in equal measure. When she spoke, it was with further hesitancy. ‘What is your message, soldier?’
Lucius fixed her unblinkingly. ‘“If Satan cast out Satan,”’ he said, ‘“how then shall his kingdom stand? For then he is divided against himself.” The Gospel of St Matthew, chapter twelve, verse twenty-six.’
Eumolpus retreated to his mistress’s side, and the two of them stared at the strange, sun-maddened soldier.