Finally, Galla spoke again. Her skin and her pale red hair looked paler than ever. ‘You are telling me the boy got away?’
‘The boy got away. Heraclian and the Palatine Guard got to Ravenna. And the rest of my century – my entire century – got wiped out. By a detachment of Batavian cavalry from the Danube station, disguised as a Gothic warband.’ Lucius kept his eyes on Galla all the time, his voice rising now in volume and anger. ‘I don’t have a message for you from that scumbag Heraclian, may he rot in hell. I only came here to ask you a question. One simple question, to which I trust you will give a straight answer. Is it true that this whole disgusting business – this massacre – was merely a-’
‘Your Excellency!’ cried Eumolpus, unable to contain himself any longer. ‘This is outrageous! You, an unwashed hooligan, do not put questions to Her Imperial Majesty, and you do not -’
Lucius took two deliberate steps towards Eumolpus. ‘Shut the fuck up,’ he said. ‘I want to hear an answer from the one who gives the orders, not a fucking eunuch.’
‘Guards!’ yelped Eumolpus. ‘Arrest this man!’
This time, the princess was so shaken that she did nothing to stop them. Two burly Palace Guards soon had Lucius’ arms locked up painfully behind his back, but he appeared not even to have noticed. His eyes never left Galla’s porcelain-white face.
‘If you do not answer,’ he said, as he was dragged back from the throne, ‘I will assume that my century was destroyed on your orders, as part of a plot using the Hun boy as a pawn. Am I right?’
Galla said nothing, but her lower lip trembled, and she clenched one small white fist in the palm of her other hand.
‘ Am I right? ’ roared Lucius, and his voice echoed deafeningly around the cavernous chamber like an angry missile.
Still there was nothing from the throne but an aghast silence.
‘Then I pray to God that you are punished for it,’ said Lucius, his voice quiet again but perfectly clear. ‘And that the line of Honorius die.’
At last it was too much for Galla. She leapt to her feet, all regal diginity and slow stateliness gone, and she raised her voice and cried with considerable emotion, ‘Take this man away! Have him beaten – and executed within the hour!’
And Lucius was dragged from the room.
‘So the Huns will not come?’ said Eumolpus, once the obnoxious soldier had been dragged away.
Galla resumed her seat, still shaken. ‘If what that madman has just told us is correct, the Huns will not come. The plan has failed.’
‘What must we do now, Your Excellency?’
Galla scowled in fury. ‘We must negotiate with the Goths. At first light tomorrow.’
‘And the boy? We do not know how much he really knows. If he makes it home to Scythia – unlikely, I know, but if he does – and tells his story, we will make mortal enemies of the Hun nation as well.’
Galla turned such a look on Eumolpus that he quailed where he stood.
‘Kill him,’ she said. ‘Send out orders. Scour all of Italy, and all of Pannonia beyond, to the very banks of the Danube. He must be destroyed. He must not get away. Rome itself may depend on it. Find him. And kill him.’
After ten lashes from the knotted rawhide whip, his back was streaming with blood. After thirty lashes, the flesh hung from his back in ribbons, and soon after that he lost consciousness. By the time the guards were done, the white of his ribs showed through the flesh.
He was not aware of the appearance of two Palatine officers in the cell beside him, nor of the low, urgent conversation they had with the prison guard. He did not hear them say ‘… from Heraclian’s column. .. the sole survivor… sweet Jesus… not ours to ask questions, soldier… be criminal to… No one will ever know.’
Then the two guards who had tied him up and lashed him tended him as he lay belly down for three days not moving. He tried to speak but they told him to shut up. They told him they knew who he was, and he would not be executed. He muttered that they could be put to death themselves for this disobedience. They shrugged.
They sewed up his wounds, where there remained enough skin on his back to do so, and they bathed him every hour, day and night. Sometimes the officers of the Palatine Guard came into his cell and looked him over. Not a word was exchanged. And then the officers left again. They, too, could be put to death for this.
The guards bandaged him with fine linen bandages, and made compresses of antiseptic herbs such as garlic and figwort, known to prevent the poisonous miasma that seeps into open wounds from the infected air, and turns the flesh of even the young and the healthy into a stinking pulp like rotting fruit.
He was strong. On the third day he insisted he could sit up. When he did so, some of his stitches burst apart and he began to bleed again. They bawled at him and told him what a dumb bloody idiot he was, and they laid him down again and undid the bandages and sewed him up and redressed him with fresh compresses of herbs and bandaged him up again.
He lay on his belly and complained that he was bored.
They grunted, unimpressed.
It was another week before he reckoned he was really well enough to stand. He stood there tottering in the dank cell to prove it.
‘But not to travel,’ they said.
‘Out of my way,’ he said.
‘No,’ they said. ‘We’re not seeing all that work going to waste. You’re not well enough. You need another week at least.’
He challenged the bigger of the two to an arm-wrestle to prove he was well enough. They declined. He argued with them. He argued with them for over half an hour, by which time they felt as if they were beginning to suffer from exhaustion. At last they shook their heads wearily and opened the gates of the cells.
‘And my horse,’ he said, ‘Tugha Ban. Where is she?’
The two guards looked uncomfortably at each other and then back at him. ‘You serious?’
‘Yes.’
They shook their heads. ‘You lead a horse into a city dying of starvation, and you expect to lead her out again? You’re old enough to know better than that – with respect, sir.’
Lucius stared at them. ‘The guards on the gate gave me their word.’
They shrugged.
‘Words, words,’ said one.
‘When food is scarce, so is friendship,’ said the other.
Lucius stared at them a little while longer. Then he turned away, and they watched him walk stiffly up the narrow steps into the darkened street above. There he stopped and called back softly, ‘Thank you both anyway. I owe you everything.’
‘Madman,’ they called after him. ‘Now scoot.’
8
It was night. He leant against a wall and tried to still the thumping of the blood in his head by force of will. He gave a low moan and rubbed his forehead against the flaking, ancient wall. The air around him stank, and a huddle of rags nearby emitted a low gurgle, but he did not even look round.
Hopes may deceive, but none deceives like despair. Despair is the lowest cowardice of all.
He straightened up against the wall, feeling the tug of the fine flaxen stitches in his skin. He took a lungful of fetid air, pushed himself away from the wall and began to walk.
In a nearby alley, he stooped, holding his arm across his nose, and pulled at a pile of rags. An emaciated corpse rolled out, eyes staring, the nearly bald skull clunking horribly on the ground as if hollow with hunger. He shook the black rags violently again, and a rat ran free with a squeal. The corpse’s belly had been eaten open.
He pulled the black, stinking winding-sheet round his shoulders, half covering his face, he tied another strip of rag around his head like a Barbary pirate. Then he walked unsteadily round the eastern gate of the Palatine.
The guard saw him coming.
‘The answer’s no,’ he shouted. ‘Now shove off.’