This was my first exposure to their odd beliefs. I peered around the villa corner to get a glimpse of them, but all I saw was the smoke of a cooking fire. The distance was disconcerting. “It seems an odd way to begin a partnership,” I said.
“You and I will be sleeping on the ground with them soon enough.”
I suppose their invisibility was fitting. I’d hoped for some immediate panoply that would give me recognition among my peers in the city, but there had been no announcement of our embassy. This mission, it seemed, was a quiet one.
Chrysaphius was unpopular for the payments to Attila, and no doubt he didn’t want to call attention to further negotiation. Better to wait until we could announce some kind of success.
So I went inside the villa to meet our ambassador. Maximinus, the emperor’s representative, was examining lists of supplies in the courtyard, his head exposed to the sun and bright birds darting among the climbing roses. He was one of those physically blessed men who would rise by appearance even had he lacked ability. His thick white hair and beard, piercing black eyes, high cheekbones, and Grecian nose gave him the look of a marble bust come to life. He combined this handsomeness with the care, caution, and slow gravity of the diplomat, his voice deep and sonorous.
When he was a thousand miles from Constantinople it would be his bearing alone that would convey the might of the Eastern Roman Empire, he knew; and he told me once that an effective diplomat was also an effective actor. Yet Maximinus had the reputation of being able as well as dignified and intelligent as well as connected. His greeting was gracious, without presuming friendliness or warmth. “Ah, yes, Jonas Alabanda. So you are to be our new historian.”
“Secretary, at least.” I gave a modest bow. “I make no pretense at being a Livy or Thucydides.” My father had coached me not to put on airs.
“Sensible modesty. Good history is as much judgment as fact, and you’re too young to make judgments. Still, the success of a mission often hinges as much on how it is reported as what it accomplishes. I trust you intend to be fair?”
“My loyalty is to you and to the emperor, ambassador.
My own fortune depends on our success.”
Maximinus smiled. “A good answer. Maybe you have a talent for diplomacy yourself. We’ll see. Certainly we have a difficult task and need to support one another as much as we can. These are perilous times.”
“Not too perilous, I hope.” It was an attempt at a small joke.
“You’ve lived your life inside the walls of Constantinople. Now you’re about to experience the world outside them.
You will see things that will shock you. The Huns are brave, gracious, cruel, and unpredictable—as clever as foxes and as wild as wolves. And the omens of recent years have not been good, as you know.”
“Omens?”
“Remember the killing winter of seven years ago? The floods six years past, the riots in the city just five years back, the plague a mere four, and the earthquakes just three? God has been trying to tell us something. But what?”
“It has not been a lucky time.” Like everyone, I had heard the speculation from priests and prophets that this wretched string of woes foretold the biblical end of time. Many believed that the Armageddon the Church constantly expected was at last on the horizon and that the Huns represented the Gog and Magog of religious lore. While my hardheaded father derided such fears as superstitious nonsense—“The more ordinary a man, the more certain that his time must be the culmination of history”—the constant assaults on the Empire had given Constantinople an atmosphere of foreboding. One couldn’t help but be affected.
“All that misfortune is combined with Attila’s victories, crippling tribute payments, the loss of Carthage to the Vandals, the failure of the Sicilian expedition to get it back, the quarrels with Persia, and the refusal of the Western Empire to come to our aid. While Marcianopolis was burning, the celebrated general Flavius Aetius preferred to sit in Rome, leaving Moesia to her fate. So much for the promises of Valentinian, emperor of the West!”
“But the earthquake damage has been repaired,” I pointed out with the optimism of youth. “The Huns have retreated. . . .”
“The Huns know our weaknesses better than any nation, which is why you and I can never afford to be weak. Do you understand what I’m saying, Jonas?”
I swallowed and stood straighter. “We represent our people.”
“Exactly! We come not with strength but with the wit to manipulate a people simpler than ourselves. I’m told Attila is a great believer in prophecy, astrology, omens, and magic.
He claims to have found the great sword of the god of war.
He thinks he is invincible until someone convinces him oth-erwise. Our job, with no weapons and no tools, is to do that convincing.”
“But how?”
“By reminding him how long Rome and Nova Roma have prevailed. By reciting how many chieftains have been smashed, like waves, upon the rocks of Rome. It will not be easy. I hear he is aware of the vision of Romulus, and that is just the kind of thing to give barbarians courage.”
“I don’t think I recall the vision of Romulus.” I was less familiar with the legends of the West.
“Pagan nonsense. Still, I suspect Attila is crafty enough to use it to his advantage. The legend is that Romulus, the founder of Rome, had a dream in which he saw twelve vultures over the city. Soothsayers have long contended that each bird represents a century and that Rome will come to an end at the end of the last one.”
“Twelve hundred years? But—”
“Precisely. If our historians have counted correctly from the city’s founding, the prophecy calls for Rome’s end in just three years’ time.”
It was a strange party that set out to reach Attila. Maximinus I have already described. Rusticius was more acquaintance than friend, but an earnest and well-meaning fellow who greeted me warmly. He was in his thirties, widowed by the plague, and, like me, viewed this mission as rare opportunity for advancement. He’d been captured by the Huns while on a trade mission from his native Italy and ransomed by a relative in Constantinople. At school, he had shared tales of his life in the West. Since we were natural allies and I felt somewhat in his debt, we immediately decided to share a tent. Though not particularly quick nor a leader, Rusticius was consistently good-humored and accepted new situations with equanimity.
“Had I not been captured I would not know Hunnish, and had I not known Hunnish, I would not know you or be on this embassy,” he reasoned. “So who but God is to say what is good and what is bad?”
He would become my closest friend on this expedition, humble and steady.
The other translator was unknown to me and somewhat aloof: not from shyness but from self-importance, I judged.
He was an older, shorter, and rather oily Roman named Bigilas, quick to talk and slow to listen, whose manner had the false sincerity of a rug merchant. This fellow, who had been a captive and done some bartering with the Huns, carried himself with an odd presumption of rank. Didn’t he know his place in the world? He even pretended to some secret familiarity with the Hun leader, Edeco, and talked to him like a comrade. Why the Hun tolerated this self-importance, I didn’t know, but the barbarian made no move to put Bigilas in his place. I found his cultivation of mystery irritating, and he in turn ignored me unless to give unsolicited advice about what I should wear or eat. I decided he was one of those people who think constantly of themselves and have no empa-thy for others, and I took mean satisfaction in noticing he had fondness for the grape. This man, I thought early on as I watched him drink, is trouble.