‘Does that cause resentment?’
‘Not with me but I daresay there are those who see how young you are and wonder how you can achieve the title of tribunos so quickly.’
‘Precocious ability,’ Flavius responded, though with enough of a grin to ensure it was not to be taken seriously.
‘Our newly elevated ruler obviously has great faith in you?’
‘Why do you never call him Emperor? I have heard you use every other possible word to refer to Justin but not that.’ It was the fact that Vigilius blushed and was plainly uncomfortable that made Flavius press the point. ‘Is it that you think him unfitted to the office?’
‘There must be many who do.’
‘Must?’
‘Where has he come from, Flavius? And is it fitting that a man who cannot read or write should rule over men who are trained in the arts of composition and rhetoric?’
‘Arts which they employ to confuse.’
‘These are matters that are beyond me.’
Sensing a desire not to get embroiled in a discussion that must, by definition, be insulting to his host, Vigilius changed the subject and began to talk about possible trouble on the frontier. If he was aware that he left Flavius feeling uncomfortable it did not show; perhaps his patrician upbringing had provided him with a carapace of protection against discomfiture.
‘The Gautoi will not react well to the heat.’
‘We are past high summer now and by the time we reach the border we may face rain and even snow so they are more likely to be at home than you or I.’
‘No fighting for a time, then?’
‘Not unless the Sassanids change their ways.’
The subject that Vigilius was keen to avoid was one Flavius took up with Petrus later the same day. The patrician class had never really supported even Anastasius, who had come to his eminence through the bedchamber of his predecessor’s widow, but they were probably even less enamoured of Justin. What worried the nephew was the increasingly open way those who held positions at the palace were making their disdain known.
‘A situation I could end within a day if he would allow me to.’
‘He will take you back into his confidence soon I am sure.’
‘Don’t patronise me, Flavius,’ Petrus spat back.
‘I didn’t mean it that way. If your uncle is foundering he cannot but be aware of it and who can he trust except you to remedy that?’
‘Perhaps he will elevate Vitalian,’ was the equally jaundiced response. ‘From what I am told he allows that stoat much licence.’
There was no point in even seeking to refute that description or to say that Justin probably reposed more trust in the views of a fellow soldier than he did in men who had risen to prominence through the known to be corrupt imperial bureaucracy, a body he had been unhappily observing for years.
‘He certainly trusts you now more than he does me.’
‘For which I do not accept any blame. And can I say that I was not pleased to be some cog in your scheming, either.’
‘Could I have trusted you to stay silent?’
‘You will never know, Petrus, because you never tried.’
‘You’re too like my uncle.’
‘Thank you for that. If it is a fault to you it is a compliment to me.’
Flavius was afforded another private audience with Justin before he departed for Asia Minor and one in which, given he had a licence to speak granted to few, he decided to plead the case of Petrus, not because he had forgiven him but because if Justin was having difficulty then his nephew was, even as a habitual intriguer, the person he could most rely on.
‘Not an opinion my wife would share.’
Tempted to respond by pointing out that pillow politics were a bad idea, Flavius asked instead how the lady was adjusting to being the Empress Euphemia.
‘She never took to living in the palace before, as you know, but she seems content now that we occupy the imperial apartments and no one dare look down their nose at her.’
‘Apartments within which she proffers to you political advice?’
‘Careful, young man! That is not a territory to stray into.’
Flavius did not know Euphemia well but he was aware she was strong of mind, a person not afraid to express her opinions and she would be doing that to her spouse regardless of his new eminence. She was also deeply religious, with a particular fondness for the saint whose name she had adopted. Her lack of regard for her nephew sprang from a deep and genuine piety; Petrus appeared too cynical for her, a man who used religion rather than adhering to it.
Justin too was religious but without being so fervent as to be blinded. He came across as one who trusted God to see into men’s souls and make his decisions as to the rightness of their beliefs, hence his pardoning of Vitalian, not to mention the way he had embraced him, and not only physically. Was he too trusting? Did he, Flavius, have the right to pronounce upon such a matter? If Justin had become like a surrogate father to him it was his real parent that counted now. Decimus Belisarius had been adamant that a true Roman never wavered from the need to speak truth to the powerful.
‘It must be confusing to go from comes Excubitorum to where you are now, Highness.’
‘Such formality, Flavius, when we are alone?’
‘Would it trouble you to know that I have concern for you, for the burden you carry?’
Justin favoured him with an avuncular smile. ‘If you have a worry, Flavius, make it that you survive another bout with the Sassanid.’
‘I would not presume to advise you-’
‘But you are about to,’ came the sharp interruption.
‘Petrus?’
‘We are back to that?’
Aware that he was either causing discomfort or sailing very close to the wind, probably both, Flavius spoke with some haste. ‘He is committed to you.’
‘He is committed to himself.’
‘Do they not complement each other?’ That got a grunt. ‘He served you well previously and he would do so again if you will allow him.’
‘A period in the wilderness will do him no harm, it might even temper his behaviour, especially in the matter of his social life.’
Justin did not have to say where that objection came from but it did confirm to him that the Empress was putting her stamp on the way in which things were run.
‘He fears for you.’ The look that got obliged that he add something. ‘And he has said so.’
‘Let him fear for himself for I am not beyond behaving in a manner he would approve of.’
Flavius took that for what it was, an empty gesture; Justin would never threaten or harm his own blood. ‘Can you test him, give him a chance to show you what he can do to ease your burden, to take the weight off your shoulders?’
‘They are broad enough.’
By the tone of that response Flavius knew that to plead more would achieve nothing. He had done his best and adding more might risk his own standing with a man he had come close to loving.
‘I hope you will bless me as we set out on campaign.’
‘I will bless you, Flavius, even as I will miss you. Petrus does not know what he has in his advocate.’
It was often the case that when trouble began to brew the cause was hidden from the people destined to deal with it. Messengers had come from Constantinople warning of the need for extra preparedness so the frontier army knew that the Sassanids were stirring, not that they were entirely unaware. Lacauris, the magister militum per Orientem, had his own informants, mostly traders who criss-crossed the borders and no doubt gave similar service to the Kavadh or his satrap in Nisibis regarding the Romans.
Discussion of such matters did not filter down to the rank of tribunos; they were given orders to march and could do no more than obey. Once more the pillars that marked the boundary of the empire set the point beyond which Lacauris had no desire they should go, which was military folly to more than Flavius, granting as it did their potential enemy the time to choose when to act. It was the general opinion that, if they were not to cross into Sassanid territory, it would have been better to stay at Dara and invite an attack on ground they could easily protect.