‘I am not greatly interested in the finer points of philosophy and theology, as you know,’ said Lucius. ‘So-called wise men drowning in the swamp of their own words, words, words.’
Gamaliel sighed. ‘I came to that conclusion myself a while back,’ he said. ‘I think it was when all Athens got excited over the logical paradox of the Pseudomenos – The Liar.’
Lucius looked blank.
‘Quite,’ said Gamaliel. ‘That is to say: if I say, “I am lying,” then if I am lying, I am telling the truth. And if I am telling the truth, I can’t be lying. And yet if it is the truth, it must be true that I am lying. And yet again, if I am-’
‘Stop, for pity’s sake. My head’s hurting.’
‘Well, you see my point.’
Lucius wasn’t sure he did, but he said nothing. He was used to the old vagabond’s ways, as rambling and discursive as his wanderings over the wide earth; and with their own kind of foolish, ungovernable wisdom, somewhere underneath the patched old cloak and the moth-eaten Phrygian cap.
‘My old friend Chrysippus,’ Gamaliel went on, ‘not a bad philosopher in his way – a Stoic, you know, and pupil of Cleanthes – wrote six books on the matter of the Pseudomenos. And another, Philetas, wasted himself to death with anxiety over it. I think it was then that I began to feel sceptical about the… the purely intellectual approach to life. There was much to be said for the more pragmatic wisdom of my old friend Crates. A sensitive young student of his, one Metrocles, once – there is no polite way of putting this – once broke wind thunderously in the agora one day, to the general mirth and ridicule of hundreds of his fellow citizens. They could be very cruel in their humour, those Athenians. They even began to suggest that he might have to quit Athens altogether in his shame, and nicknamed him???????s????s.’
Gamaliel chortled to himself, a little shamefacedly.
Lucius looked unimpressed.
‘Never mind,’ said the old man. ‘It’s a Greek pun.’
The soldier shrugged. ‘It’s all Greek to me. But – not wishing to be rude or anything – but does this story have a point, at any point?’
‘Ah, yes, well. You see. Now. So there’s Metrocles, covered in shame at having – emitted such a stercoraceous effluvium in this unfortunate manner. Fundamentally embarrassed, you might say!’ Again, Gamaliel chuckled. ‘So Crates, to show how ridiculous it is for any man to be ashamed of what is, after all, a perfectly natural bodily function, promptly devoured five pounds of lupins – which, as you know, are powerfully flatulofacient, if not downright poisonous – and went about eructating at all the greatest men of Athens for the next week. Metrocles saw the point, and ceased to feel any shame.’
‘Hm.’ Lucius still wasn’t quite sure that he saw the point.
‘Anyway,’ resumed Gamaliel. ‘Philosophy aside, you were wondering
… what?’
‘I was thinking about what you said about helclass="underline" that a man may still be redeemed by good deeds, even a man such as that murderous Saxon there.’
Gamaliel too grew serious. ‘How could eternal punishment treat with justice?’ he said gently. ‘I knew one of those theologians you speak of once – a man better than most, in fact. A neat little Egyptian; Origen, he was called. He is principally remembered now for having emasculated himself with a knife, the better to serve Christ.’
‘Idiot,’ said Lucius.
Gamaliel ignored this untheological interjection. ‘He took the teachings of the Son of Man a little too literally, perhaps. But far more interesting was his own teaching on hell. He said that eventually, all would be forgiven. He said that even the Devil himself would one day repent, and his shriven soul be admitted to the mansions of heaven.’
‘Well.’ Lucius gouged his knife into the wooden bulwark of the boat. ‘I learn something new every day.’
‘Keep your eyes open and your heart humble,’ said Gamaliel, ‘and you will learn a thousand new things every day.’
One morning, as they passed Augusta Vindelicorum on the southern shore, Gamaliel found Lucius staring down into the brown and turbid waters of the great river. When he raised his eyes, Gamaliel saw that they were bright with tears. The old man laid a hand on his shoulder to comfort him, but Lucius only shook his head and smiled and said he was not sure if he had dreamt it or not, but he thought he had heard a boy on the farther bank of the river whistling a certain tune. It was the same tune that Cadoc used to whistle every morning, as he pottered around in the yard at home, scattering meal for the chickens, or as he sauntered through the woods and fields of Dumnonia, hand in hand with his sister.
Lucius looked up at Gamaliel. ‘Is it possible?’ he said. ‘That we are following even the trail of a song?’
‘Anything is possible,’ said Gamaliel, ‘except for a one-armed man to touch his elbow.’ He slapped Lucius jovially on the back. ‘Perhaps it has been laid down for us, even to follow a boy’s whistle.’
Led thus by strange and unexpected clues, they followed the river east. To starboard lay the empire, and to port stretched the tribal lands of the north: the contested and warlike lands of the Hermunduri and Marcommanni, the Langobardi and Cattameni, and still other tribes whose names were yet unknown. They passed through the frontier towns of Lauriacum, Vindobona and Carnuntum, their mighty legionary fortresses rising sheer from the banks of the southern side, and they came to the great bend in the river where it turns south into Illyria, with the wild lands of Sarmatian Jazyges and then vast and unmapped Scythia beyond. There they disembarked, having heard another clue which seemed to Lucius both tantalising and terrible but barely seemed to surprise Gamaliel at all.
‘These things happen,’ he said equably.
In a smoky wine-shop full of drunken frontier soldiery, they had heard a blind Scythian beggar singing a haunting tune. They questioned him, and found out his name, and heard that he had been blinded by his own people for spying on the king’s concubines when they were bathing. He had been driven out into the wilderness to die like an animal, but had found a refuge of sorts here in the borderland between Scythia and Rome, singing cracked tunes in taverns and brothels for coppers.
Gamaliel and Lucius looked at each other over their cups of foul wine, and Lucius said he had had dealings with some of that tribe before.
Gamaliel nodded. ‘So have I.’
They tightened their belts, hitched up their packs, and set off across the grassy plains of Scythia, for the famed black tents of the most dreaded tribe of all.
16
Throughout the heart of the bitter winter, Attila and Orestes struggled on through the towering white mountains of Noricum, lips chapped and bleeding, snowflakes on their eyelashes, their hands and feet bound with no more than rags. Whenever they found wild berries or trapped game, they divided every mouthful precisely between them, so that even if they were both slowly starving, they would at least starve at an equal rate. Every night, crawling into whatever shelter they could find or improvise – usually no more than a rough bivouac of silver fir branches – they unwrapped the sodden cloths from each other’s feet, and rubbed life back into them. Then they slept side by side, shivering through the night. In the freezing dawn, their bodies were as stiff and unbiddable as old men’s. They said nothing, but each dreaded waking one morning to find the other dead. They both prayed that if one should die, the gods would take the other, too, in the same instant, to the sunlit lands beyond the dark river.
One morning, as they brushed past under the low branches of a firwood, there came a soft, slithering sound from above, and an entire shelf of snow was dumped on Orestes’ head and shoulders. When he had pushed back his hood, and wiped the stinging snow from his eyes, Attila was grinning at him.