2. Thinking of Home and of War
This morning at sea was the 18th day of November in the year of our Lord 541, the fifth indiction and the 15th year of the reign of the August and Pious Emperor Justinian. Aulus had long been a military officer, and a successful one, in the service of that dreadful ruler. Now, he thought as he looked out at the strange African mountains, I am aging, and I bear the scars of more battles than I can recall.
He remembered once again that summer when he was 14 years old and lived with his father Dorus and Pulcheria, Dorus' second wife, on their estate outside the prosperous hill-town of Trebula Mutuesca. He liked to sit there in their shady cool garden and look out at the sun shining hot on their Sabine vineyards. He had spent mornings there, reading the geography of Strabo and dreaming of travel to the ends of the empire.
He had gone there. He had entered the empire's army at 18, after spending two years at Alexandria studying classical writers with increasing boredom. In his first five years of service, he had been stationed in Sardinia, in Thrace, in Egypt, and in Mesopotamia. In that short time he had fought in three wars and many smaller skirmishes. He was soon viewed as an able officer, and after a dozen years in service he had been promoted to merarch. His men were braver than the Persians and more skilled than the barbarians, who were only part-time soldiers.
Two years ago he had gone from command to a staff job, serving as a senior officer on the staff of the great general Flavius Belisarius. Before that, he and his meros had been with Belisarius throughout the long and bloody wars with the Persians, and the bloodbath of the year 531, a decade ago now, when the Blue and Green factions rioted senselessly in Constantinople, the heart of the Empire. His and Belisarius's other mere had cut down 30,000 rioters on a sunny Saturday at the Hippodrome, saving the throne of Justinian who lay all day crouching and afraid in his grand palace.
Aulus could never forget how he marched his men into the arena and deployed them in four ranks facing the mob that stood shouting and gesturing on the sandy ground.
He called out "Parati," the old Latin command to be ready. The mob heard his call, looked at the soldiers, and grew quiet—deadly quiet. In ten seconds more his adjutant, Godilas the Goth, shouted "Adiuta," Help us! In unison his 5,000 men responded, loud and clear, "Deus," and the carnage began.
During his army years Aulus had not killed many men himself, perhaps a dozen. It had never been murder, he thought; it had not been a sin; it had been kill or be killed. No one could say how many thousands more his troops had killed, over the years, in wars to defend an empire that, though headed by a tyrant, was the home of civil life... but never had he seen as much blood on a battlefield as that day inside the empire's capital. It was not war but butchery. Within minutes thousands lay dead, bleeding, dismembered. The sand in the arena turned red. In minutes it was over and the few survivors had fled. Thank God, he had written in his journal, his men had not been called on to haul away and burn the tons of corpses.
After the riots Aulus had accompanied Belisarius across the sea to Africa, where in a short campaign the Byzantine army of just 18,000 men defeated the far larger army of the Vandals and brought Gelimer, the Vandal king, and his generals back to Constantinople in chains. That victory did not solve the problems the empire faced in Italy, much of which was in the hands of the Vandals' distant cousins, the Goths. Soon Belisarius sailed with a great fleet to Sicily and captured it quickly from a far larger Gothic force.
After this, Belisarius was forced to spend much time in Sicily. Too much time. The story put out in Constantinople was that the troops needed more training, but in fact many units were on the verge of mutiny. The unrest had not started in the lower ranks; several of Aulus' fellow tribunes, Italians by birth, were overheard muttering about a change in leaders, and were sent to Constantinople in chains. One of them, a certain Rufus, was like Aulus from a Sabine family, and was his friend. For some time Aulus felt Belisarius might be suspecting his own allegiance. Eventually, it seemed, the general decided there was no reason to distrust him.
It was not until the summer of 536 that the army finally crossed over from Sicily to southern Italy, marched north, took Naples, and went on to Rome. Belisarius took with him a force of just 5,000, including Aulus and 1,000 cavalrymen from the meros he commanded, leaving the rest of the army in the south for a continuing campaign of pacification. They easily occupied the ancient city but were soon besieged there, behind the great walls built two centuries earlier, by a much larger Gothic force.
The fat was in the fire. Better said, there was no fat. The siege of Rome lasted a full year, and in that year Aulus, who was ever trim and muscular, lost 30 pounds. Still, though both rations as well as water were short, no one starved.
Fortunately the Gothic besiegers encountered serious problems. Belisarius sent 2,000 men eastward around their flank to attack the camps along the Adriatic Sea where the Goths had left their supplies and their women and children. As he had hoped would happen, the Goths then diverted some of their force from Rome to protect their rear. The Gothic army had planned to live off the countryside, but there was little to be gleaned from the fields around Rome after Belisarius had cut and confiscated the crops. Then, too, the Gothic generals were not careful about sanitation in their camps; disease hit them hard. Aulus himself led a small company of horsemen out from the city walls on a number of successful dawn and even late-night sorties, and each time they wasted a Gothic company caught unaware.
Nevertheless, the siege had its effects inside the city. People were near starvation. It was only after many months that reinforcements reached Rome, the siege was lifted, and the imperial army marched north to the Gothic capital, Ravenna. That, too, could have been a long siege, but the Gothic leaders sent word out from the city that they were prepared to acknowledge Belisarius, rather than Justinian, as the Emperor of Italy. Belisarius sent back word that he would agree.
On a fine day in May of the year 540, the Goths opened the gates and let the besiegers into the city. Once in, Belisarius took control—not in his own right but as the always faithful general of his emperor.
Although peace had now been restored in Italy, the empire still faced turmoil on the Persian frontier. Aulus longed to go home, if only briefly, to the Sabine country, to learn what had happened to his family and their lands.
He went to Belisarius and told him of his concerns. "Excellency, you know I am the only Italian on your immediate staff. I am worried about my family in the Sabine country. Given the fact that there is a lull in fighting, at least for the moment, could the general spare this merarch for a few days?"
Flavius Belisarius was a tall man, taller than Aulus, with a trim beard and piercing blue eyes. He looked at Aulus for a long minute, then smiled slightly and said "You can have ten days' leave of absence, but no more."
"Thanks, Excellency. I will hope to return in a week."
In an hour Aulus had packed and saddled his white stallion and was on his way south from Ravenna. It felt good to ride free for a bit, away from the army, but he was full of apprehension.
The former merarch sat now on the deck of a vessel that had brought him these many thousands of miles away from Byzantium—and from his home country. He still remembered clearly that day when he had ridden Cerus the stallion down the old consular road, the Via Salaria, that passed through the Sabine forests, hills, and mountains on its way southwest to Rome and war.
When he came to the byroad to Trebula Mutuesca, he saw that the wars of recent years had not bypassed these green valleys. It was afternoon, and the sun shone warm on the walls of the old stone inn at the turnoff, but the inn had burned and was empty and roofless, as were the two nearby farmhouses. No human was in sight, nor any animals. There was no sound in the windless air. Aulus turned leftward up into the hills, and passed a few houses still intact but empty. Perhaps the main fighting had been down along the Via Salaria. After riding uphill three miles, he saw two peasants on the road, the first humans he had seen in many hours.
In ten minutes more he came to the stone-walled town of Trebula, lying far above the highway. Thank God, it looked like it had been left relatively untouched. On the narrow cobbled main street he saw a man he knew, a grizzled fellow named Martinus, one of his father's foremen.
"Salve, Martinus," said Aulus. "I have come home from the wars. Are you well?"
"I am well, Domine, but all is not well."
"What do you mean?"
"Mummius can tell you all. I think he is at your villa now."
Aulus galloped through Trebula and out into the countryside, and in a mile reached his family's large villa built of good yellow stone. There by the gate, talking to a peasant, was Claudius Mummius, the husband of Aulus' half-sister, Anna. Aulus dismounted. As he approached Claudius, he thought he saw tears forming in the eyes of his brother-in-law. Tears of joy, or something else?
"Salve, Mummius, my brother. How are you and the others?"
"I will tell you."
They embraced and sat down in the villa's courtyard to talk. Aulus smiled at Mummius, who had indeed been not just a brother-in-law but almost a brother to him. In turn Mummius smiled, but weakly. Clearly he was sad. It took him little time to tell the story.
"Your dear father, Aulus, is gone. He died here, died peacefully in his sleep—after all, he was an old man in his 70s—soon after the siege of Rome began. I thought you must be there with Belisarius, but there was no way I could send word to you. After his death, and with Pulcheria's agreement, I continued to serve, as I had of course done for so long under Dorus, as the manager of the family farms and the peasants who still work our lands—only 100 of them, now. That's only half as many, you know, as there were before the war. It's enough people for us to make do; but if you find the vines and olives not so well kept, that's why. Fortunately the market for both oil and wine has come back to life since the war. Prices are not bad."
"I am very sorry my father has gone. He was a good man, and I loved him well. I trust he is with our Lord. But I am not surprised. He was old. I received a letter from him some months ago telling me he had dropsy and felt himself declining.
"I am sure you have done well with our properties, Mummius. I would like nothing better than to come back to Trebula and work at your side. But I cannot for now give up my military duties. I am well seen by Belisarius. He is the mainstay of our empire, while the emperor... you know my feelings."
"I do, and I share them. And I fear the rule of Justinian may continue for many years. But the yoke of the empire is bearable and not so heavy in these parts, and, I'd say, better to have this empire than chaos. And I am glad you are helping to protect it."
The two agreed Mummius should continue to administer the properties on behalf of Aulus' stepmother. Pulcheria had never seemed to understand the intricacies of business or even the value of money.
Mummius told Aulus that Pulcheria was away at the moment. She had left in the family carriage two days earlier, to visit the bishop of Sabina in Reate. Just why she had gone, Mummius did not know; perhaps, he said, to arrange for Masses to be said for her husband.
Mummius and his family lived in another villa, some distance away, and in an hour he went home and left Aulus in the care of Nonus, the grizzled old retainer who had served the family for decades. Aulus ate a simple early dinner that Nonus fixed him and, tired from his long ride, went soon to bed.
He woke at dawn and felt relieved the land he loved—but could not, for now, live in—would be in good hands. He walked into the bright triclinium and ate a little fruit. How should he spend the day? It was a good morning for a walk through the countryside. This Sabine world was verdant and sweet-smelling, as the spring slowly turned toward hot summer.
He saw from the triclinium that a girl, a pretty girl, was walking into the adjacent atrium. In a moment he recognized her: his niece, or perhaps better said half-niece, Claudia, the daughter of Claudius Mummius and Anna. She was, he saw, no longer the child that he remembered, but a young woman. She must be 17 now.
Aulus greeted her. He told Claudia he was very happy to see her. "I am planning a walk this morning, and I would welcome your company if you do not have better things to do."
"I will be happy to come with you, Uncle... may I call you Aulus?"
"Yes, of course." He looked steadily, happily, at this young half-niece. She was a slim and pretty girl with light brown hair. Until now he had remembered her as an intelligent but somewhat shy little girl whom he had seen just two or three times, years ago. She had matured. If she was not beautiful, thought Aulus, she was very attractive. Soon he found she was also happy and good-natured.
As the two walked out from the villa, Aulus could see the vines and the olive groves were well tended despite the late war. The olive trees were gnarled and ancient. Some, he supposed, might date to the time of Virgil, who as his father had so often reminded him, had praised "olive-bearing Mutuscae" in his Aeneid. Beside the olives, the pollarded thick trunks of beeches stood peaceful along the small road. Equally peaceful were the occasional stone houses of the peasants; but although most of them were occupied and a shy child would pop out of a doorway and then dart back on seeing the man and girl, several of the houses they came to were a sad sight, pillaged and half-ruined by some squadron in the war, still empty.
They passed near the barracks of the estate guards. Two of them stood there outside and waved at them politely: aging Goths with fading blond hair. Dorus's part-Gothic ancestry had helped protect his estate from detachments of the Gothic armies who had taken over so much of Italy—but it was the 40 guards, most of them veterans of these armies, who now protected the estate from occasional bands of pillagers. Aulus wondered how much of the revenues from what the estate produced was being expended on the guards. Well, Mummius would tell him, and it had to be done.
Two miles down the quiet lane from the family's villa, Aulus and Claudia came to the church of Santa Victoria. This was a modest-sized and rather crude stone building, named for one of the local martyrs two centuries earlier, that occupied only a part of a long grassy terrace on which a great temple of Diana had once stood. A half-dozen old temple columns still lay on their sides on this terrace.
Aulus had brought a backpack with cheese, bread, dried figs, and wine. He and Claudia sat down on a fallen column to eat an early lunch. He looked across the fields and groves at the heavily wooded ridges rising to the north and east. A warm spring sun was shining in a sky of small white clouds. And now he looked at Claudia.
"Claudia," he said, "When I was a child, those ridges there were the borders of my world. It was a happy world, I would say a peaceful, a sufficient world. Now..."
"This is still all that there is of my world," she said. "I have gone as far as Rome just once, with my parents. That was two years ago, when the fighting approached Trebula and we fled to the city for several weeks. Someday... someday I think I would like to travel farther, to sail the sea. I hope I can take a long voyage. You've done that, I know..."
"Well," he said, "In fact I have. I have traveled far beyond the borders of this Sabine world of ours. I have sailed, and ridden, and walked out to the very edges of the empire. But I have never found a place prettier than this."
He looked at pretty Claudia sitting on the fallen column, the sun shining in her hair. He thought to himself, How she adds to the beauty of this quiet valley! Her young beauty began to stir him, but he said nothing to her of that. She was after all his niece, or anyway half-niece. And, he thought to himself, she was hardly more than a child.
Now the thought came to him that soon he would be traveling far from this place. Who knew if he would ever again return here? He would be sorry if he did not... Claudia smiled and said he seemed solemn.
"Come, my dear," he said, "I do not mean to be solemn. Let us go look at more of this warm world around us. "
"Willingly," she said; and Aulus saw she was still smiling at him. Then, to his surprise, she added "You know what Horace wrote about this country:
Come hither, and the fields and groves
Their horn shall empty at your feet.
Here, sheltered by a friendly tree,
In Teian measures you shall sing
Bright Circe and Penelope,
Love-smitten both by one sharp sting...
"You know, Horace's villa was not so far from here... You told me how much you have traveled, dear Aulus, more even than Ulysses, I suspect. But tell me, have you known as many loves as he did?"
She had said this in a pretty but, Aulus thought, mocking way. He looked at her. "I have indeed traveled far," he said. "But as I told you, there is no prettier place than this. I do revere Horace. He has another ode, if you remember:
Place me where none can live for heat,
Beneath Phoebus' very chariot plant me,
That smile so sweet, that voice so sweet,
Shall still enchant me.
Claudia blushed. Had he gone too far?
Late that afternoon, when they had returned home from a long walk up into the beech woods below the mountain ridges, Claudia excused herself to go into town. Her parents, she said smiling, would be wondering if someone had abducted her. She had enjoyed their walk, she said. And so had he, said Aulus. He embraced her and kissed her cheek as an uncle might properly do. She smiled again and left. He watched her walk down the garden path, her dress swirling about her legs... her lovely legs.
After she had left, Aulus went looking for the big oaken chest that years ago had sat in a back room of the house. It was still there. He pulled out the old books he remembered, bound with clasps to keep the parchment pages from buckling, and leafed idly through them, sitting in the late sun by the big oak in the garden. In the worn copy of Strabo, he found on the first page, written in an adolescent hand, this: "May I become a leader of men, and lead a life of adventure!"
A quarter of a century had passed since he had written that. He smiled now, sitting in the Sabine garden, thinking of the gawky boy who had put down those words. He had become no Belisarius. It did not matter. He was content, at least for the moment.
Now, skimming the book, he found what the great geographer said about Ethiopia and the mysterious places beyond: the country of the Troglodytes, and Saba in southern Arabia where Aelius Gallus had marched with a Roman legion on orders from Augustus, and finally, across the Erythraean Sea from Arabia, that last cape known as the Horn of the South. Beyond the cape stretched southward strange lands of which Strabo, in his time, had known nothing... and Ptolemy knew little more. These were the lands that some called Far Barbary, lands he himself had never seen in all his travels. What marvels this world contained! His thoughts turned again to Claudia. When would he see her again, once he left Trebula?
That was the last time Aulus had seen either Trebula or Claudia. He started north, back toward the army, the next day. He might have stayed a little longer, but he told himself he was needed at headquarters.
There was peace for now in the West, but serious trouble for the empire in the East. Chosroes the Persian, a proud man who called himself the King of Immortal Spirit, had crossed the frontier the previous autumn, a year ago now, with a huge army. He had struck westward through Syria, reaching the Mediterranean Sea—our sea, thought Aulus—and had taken both Aleppo and Antioch. Soon after Aulus returned to Belisarius's headquarters, a dispatch arrived from the capital. The Persian army had marched north into Lazica and established a foothold on the Black Sea. This was intolerable. Justinian ordered Belisarius and his army to Asia.
Now, months later, Aulus sat on the deck of Valida, remembering how in the spring of 541 he had been with Belisarius, who had taken his army east from Italy and was marching through Syria into Mesopotamia. They had besieged the fortress of Sisaurana, near the Tigris River. On the second day of the siege, Belisarius, watching the battle from a nearby hillside, turned to Aulus:
"Why has Romanos not turned his fire machines onto the walls? Aren't his men experienced? They're not green troops. Quick, run tell Romanos he's got five minutes or I'll remove him."
Aulus threw off his helmet and started running toward where he could see Romanos standing 300 yards forward. Before he got there, the first Greek fire machine went into operation, aimed at one of the Persian towers and reducing its defenders to charred flesh.
The Persian commander saw that happening and quickly surrendered the garrison, but not before Aulus had caught a Persian arrow in his left shoulder. In an hour they got him to the doctors, who said no bone was broken. Soon, though, the wound produced a high fever. The fever receded after ten days, but his muscles were badly torn and for weeks he could not use his left arm or walk far without becoming faint.
He went finally to see his general.
"Excellency," he said to Belisarius, "I am back on my feet, but I sense it will be a long time before I can ride or march. I will, I hope, fully recover, but I think the time has come to retire from service. I think..."
Belsarius said, "Sit, man, before you fall. I do not want to lose you, but I see I must. You have done good—and always faithful—service to me for many years. Come see my clerk in the morning, and he will give you the letter of commendation I shall address to the Emperor, along with my formal request that you be honorably retired from the imperial service. I wish you God's blessings. Your comrades and I will miss you."
Aulus, still in pain and feverish, went west to the sea at Caesarea in a provisioning wagon. Waving Belisarius' message to the Emperor to clerks in the port, he quickly got passage onward to Constantinople in a swift dromon propelled not just by wind but 50 oarsmen. The weather was good, and he felt slightly better. What future lay ahead? He could not think, beyond hoping to become the beneficiary of a modest pension.
At Constantinople he arranged his affairs and secured his pension, not easily, after spending hours dealing with officious clerks of the Praetorian Prefect of the East. Then he walked out into the great busy city—perhaps, he thought, for the last time. He came to the Augustaeum and stood for some minutes in that magnificent square, looking about him at the baths of Zeuxippus, and the marble walls of the Senate, and the gate of the Great Palace, and the immense new church of St. Sophia. In the center of the square stood the tall column bearing the bronze equestrian status of Justinian. Aulus thought to himself, I shall soon be far from this ugly Emperor, and I shall be glad of it.
His military career, he thought as he stood there, had been honorable but not brilliant. Others younger than he had been promoted to strategos, had commanded whole armies, had won positions that enriched them. Despite all the victories, despite all the enemies his soldiers and he had killed, he had probably not been ruthless enough. Perhaps he had not been ambitious enough. And he had hated the corrupt system. Perhaps his feelings had sometimes been evident.
It did not matter now. Henceforth he would lead with pleasure a quiet and rural life, writing and working the family fields and riding through the Sabine countryside—if only that part of Italy remained peaceful. He thought of Claudia. Was she safe? Was she, he hoped, still at Trebula?
He walked in sunshine, slowly, out the broad noisy avenue called the Mese full of horse-drawn carriages and carts pulled by slaves, and with many people strolling and many vendors calling out their wares—foods, bright flowers, pots and pans—under the great long porticoes. Then he turned northwest toward the Gate of Charisius. In an hour's slow walk he reached the old church dedicated to the two physician saints Cosmas and Damian. Justinian himself had come here once when he was seriously sick, and, thought Aulus, he had been healed; I trust I can be, too. He stood in a corner of the high cool nave, which, all knew, the emperor had lately had refaced with this pure white marble in gratitude for his recovery.
Aulus felt tired from his walk. The wound was not entirely healed; he had a slight fever. He rested against a pillar and prayed. He prayed he might soon be fully healed, so he might continue on his way toward the unknown future. A future in Italy, in his own Sabine country.
Mummius came from Trebula to seek him out in Rome, soon after Aulus arrived there from Constantinople, feeling rested after a peaceful voyage of three weeks. Aulus paled, though, when he heard the story Mummius told him.
"Things are very bad," said Mummius. "Pulcheria has never quite recovered from the loss of her husband, your father. Not long after you and I reached agreement on my continuing to manage the family properties, Pulcheria was visited by the bishop of Sabina, Castorius, whom she had gone to see earlier. Do you know him?"
"I do. I remember him well: a thin and ugly, red-haired type with a grating voice. My father always viewed him as deceitful and indeed sinful. Castorius was a man who lived openly with a wife for some years. So do many priests, I know. It has always been so. I believe St. Peter and the other Apostles were all married men. But the Popes now don't want priests to marry. When the Pope wrote to Castorius about this—do you know the story?—Castorius cruelly drove his wife out of his house. He claimed she was only a housemaid whom he was discharging for incompetence."
"I do know the story," said Mummius. "Everyone does. But let me go on. For some reason Pulcheria could not see the evil in this man. He became her friend and spiritual adviser. This wretched country bishop preyed on your stepmother for weeks. I tried to tell her the fellow was evil, but she would not listen. She said Castorius was a saint.
"One afternoon when I went to see her, Pulcheria informed me that she had decided to establish—in her, in your, own family villa—an oratory in memory of Dorus, her deceased husband, your father. She had given all the property—all of your property—to the church. I remonstrated with her. I argued and argued. And it did no good."
Aulus was shocked to hear this. He had loved and honored his father in life; he did so after his death. His father would not have wanted to see their property given over to the church so that priests could pray for his soul.
"I learned then," Mummius continued, "that the bishop had drawn up deeds, which Pulcheria signed, conveying all the land, all the movables and fixtures and livestock, to Castorius himself for the use of the oratory. The usufruct was reserved to Pulcheria for the rest of her life, but she was, she is, now reduced to living in a small apartment in what had been her villa—what should have in time become your villa, Aulus. Some fat presbyter whom Castorius sent to Trebula moved into the villa. Now this bishop is reigning over the properties your ancestors put together over centuries, the lands they held onto despite all the wars and invasions."
"What does this mean for you, Mummius? Will you continue as overseer?"
"No. Anna and I and young Claudia are no longer welcome there. The three of us are living in our modest villa outside Trebula. We are all right. I have a vegetable garden, 100 olive trees, a small vineyard, and I have found some work managing other properties."
Aulus asked after Claudia. "She will be all right," said Mummius briefly, "She is to marry Ancus Annius."
"What? Who is that?"
"A well-to-do merchant; a widower with two grown children. He moved here recently from Reate. He is on friendly terms with the bishop. He is also, I believe, a decent man. I know you like Claudia. I think this is the best possibility for her."
Well, thought, Aulus, I too am a decent man. A man with no prospects. I have lost all my inheritance. I have lost Claudia, but I can say nothing of that to Mummius. He left Mummius, distraught.
Perhaps, he thought after a bit, he might go from Rome back to Trebula, to seek out Castorius and try to regain the properties—and see Claudia. But Claudia is promised to another, and Pulcheria is, in a sense, of sound mind. Or is she? What to do?
Aulus had a cousin in Rome named Peter, who was the pastor of the great round church of St. Stephen on the Celian hill. Once Mummius had left to return to the country, Aulus went to see his cousin. Peter was two years younger than he. They had been good friends since childhood. This was an ascetic and a holy man, in a time when, Aulus thought, all too many priests, and laymen, too, were fat and corrupt. When Aulus told him what had happened at Trebula, Peter commiserated with him.
"Dear Aulus," he said, "I loved your father well. He was always my kind and generous uncle. And I could never understand why Dorus took that woman, I mean Pulcheria, as his second wife... but perhaps something can be done."
Peter sent Aulus to see two lawyers who worked in a half-crumbling building under the Palatine hill, on a silent street overgrown with grass and refuse. The vast complex of the emperors' palaces loomed above, now empty except for the Curator of the Palace and his few dozen guards. Here below was just a quiet office with two polished and sharp-looking men, a blackbird singing loudly outside in an old oak tree. These lawyers' business had mainly to do with properties of the Church, which had become the greatest landowner in central Italy. Their opinion, they told Aulus after hearing him out, was that his stepmother had the legal right to dispose of their properties as she had done. They knew of a similar case that had been decided not long since: a wealthy woman of Perusia had established a foundation for the church, and her children had contested the deed in vain. In brief, nothing could be done to overturn Pulcheria's action.
For a minute he wondered if the lawyers were telling the truth. After all, they represented the Church. Then he shrugged. They must be right, as regarded the law. His foolish stepmother had been free to give away the family's whole estate.
Later that day, walking aimlessly through the city, Aulus decided he must go to Trebula without delay. He found a stable and rented a sturdy mare for the next five days. For a moment he thought, too, of trying to find a few of his old friends in the city, to see if they would go with him and help him give a thrashing to Castorius and his fat presbyter. Or more than a thrashing? Once he had seen a fat man flayed alive, in Lazica... No, he could not go; anyway, would not. It was no use. It was no use at all. He spat on the ground and returned the mare to the stable. He would not return to Trebula... but what of Claudia?
He thought again of Claudia, Claudia with the shining brown hair, whom he had not seen for months. The vague idea he had had, of spending his golden years in those golden hills—with Claudia—was impossible now. He had lost her, and he had lost his inheritance. He wandered through the decrepit, depopulated streets of Rome, wondering where to go, what to do.
He found himself under the Viminal hill in the Suburra. Many of the old tenement buildings were empty, some collapsed. It was very quiet in the streets. He saw more cats than people. A number of Romans had returned in the year or more since the Gothic siege had been lifted, yet he wondered if there could be as many as a 100,000 people now in what had once been a metropolis of a million.
The great oval Flavian amphitheater, where mobs and emperors had watched gladiators fight one another and lions devour Christians, was utterly deserted and quiet. It had been two decades since the last games were held there. Part of the southern arcades had tumbled years ago in an earthquake, and great stone blocks fallen from above were still lying on the pavement. The empire could no longer repair its former capital. And who cared? No one was around except for two thin blond pilgrims with long staffs, Germans no doubt, standing nearby, looking up at the huge old structure.
He came to the Forum and began to walk along the Sacra Via. It was still lined by some fine statues, but there were empty pedestals; thieves had been at work. Two great bronze elephants were visibly lacking repair and nearing their end. The trunk of one was gone, stolen no doubt, and both elephants' metallic bellies drooped dangerously. The gutters of the street were full of trash. It was a shabby scene.
He encountered few people as he walked, but then as he passed by a hall at the Forum of Nerva, he saw a group of several dozen men engaged in what seemed a serious discussion. He stopped to listen. They were literati, he thought, and he was right. After listening for a minute, he realized they were discussing Virgil's Georgics. Two were even wearing togas. Well, he thought, why not imitate ancient days if one was discussing ancient books?
One speaker, a thin tall fellow, was in a dramatic and pompous way drawing a contrast between the hopeful days of Augustus, when Virgil predicted the coming of Christ, and the sad present state of Rome. Aulus asked another bystander who the speaker was. The famous poet Arator, he was told.
O Arator, he thought to himself, do not praise the old times to me. Rome was great then, and Christ came, but it was Augustus and the generation before him who destroyed our Republic. They built up a city in marble, but they were cruel beasts and not good men. Aulus could never forget reading how that gracious and courteous first Princeps had himself torn out the eyes of some quaestor whom Augustus suspected—wrongly—of wanting to assassinate him.
A wave struck the bow of the Valida now and suddenly changed his train of thought. He thought that he could almost smile now, as their ship neared the edge of Africa. This was the age of Justinian, a clever peasant from a Thracian village who had become a corrupt and cruel emperor, who had a cunning ex-whore for a wife. It was also the age of the Goths, at least in Italy.
Indeed Aulus's own grandfather had been the son of a Gothic chief named Respa. Respa, from what Aulus knew, had been no savage but a just and civil man, who married a Sabine lady and became the patriarch of their family. He had died at Trebula years before Aulus was born, but old people there still spoke of him fondly.
In his own lifetime, Aulus thought, he had seen so many changes, so much violence and bloodshed and injustice. And yet this was a world whose wisdom, accumulated in the great libraries, made mock of old Athens and Rome. And so did the Christian faith, that had been watered in the past by so many martyrs.
He remembered one Easter when he had stood in the Liberian Basilica on the Esquiline hill with the air full of music, the choir of 100 raising their voices to God, the mosaics above the altar bright in the sunlight but softened a little by the sweet smoke of the incense. He had looked up at the golden mosaic of the chancel arch depicting the Redeemer and the Mother of God and so many saints. At the bottom were a dozen sheep, the flock of Christ the Good Shepherd, and farther up were the figures of several warriors. That was him: not a sheep, but the faithful warrior with a spear among that group of good Christians.
On later occasions, too, in Constantinople, Aulus had attended the divine liturgy at the grand new church of St. Sophia, and the services were yet more heavenly. At such times the truth and beauty of their faith raised him up in a way he knew pagans could never understand. It surpassed, he thought. After all was said and done, our faith surpassed; it surpassed even the defects of the faithful... even the falsity of country bishops. It soared and swelled, just as the seas swelled under him now as he sat on deck and thought long thoughts.
His thoughts went back to Italy again. The day after he had consulted the lawyers about his family's properties, he had gone wandering by the ramshackle warehouses along the Tiber, accompanied by Secundus, his servant and indeed friend for many years, a middle-aged Cappadocian with a slight limp who had just come from Byzantium to rejoin him.
There along the river he chanced to meet another stroller. The two began to talk and soon to compare experiences. The other was a black-bearded man named Cosmas and, he said, a sea captain. Soon Cosmas was telling Aulus of his next voyage. He was to take a cargo to Barbary, where he had traveled and traded before. He did not own his own ship, but he had been given command of a good vessel, the property of two members of that richest of Roman families, the Anicii. As the Anicii knew, he said, no captain in all the empire had traveled more widely than he. "You know," he said, "I am called Indicopleustes, because I have sailed to India, and more than once."
A sea voyage, Aulus thought as the two talked by the quiet brown river, might help to bring him back to perfect health. Nor had he any better thing to do, nor any better place to go.
"Captain Cosmas," he said, "let me tell you something of my own background..."
In a few minutes Cosmas had agreed he could use Aulus, his experience, and his sword; Aulus could train train his crew to defend the ship with swords and lances, bows and arrows.
"Thanks, Captain. I will tell you frankly, I will want to be paid well for such a voyage."
"I understand. And I will be generous if we come home safe. You shall have 200 gold solidi after the voyage is completed successfully. But I cannot guarantee we will come back alive."
"And I, too, understand. For two decades I have lived a life with no guarantees and many losses. But we can pray for a safe return."
Two hundred solidi was enough, he thought, for him to live on for more than a year when he returned to Italy. If he returned.
"How soon," Aulus asked, "Are you sailing?"
"The day after tomorrow. From Portus. Will you do it? I can use you."
Aulus thought for a minute and said yes. He could ask his cousin Peter to send a message to Mummius. And to Claudia? He glanced at Secundus, who looked worried. Aulus told Cosmas that this was his servant, a freeman who had been with him for a decade. "Bring him along," said his new captain. They shook hands and parted.
Here he was now, weeks later, propped against the mainmast of Valida. The ship was plowing a strange sea, and he was plumbing the farthest limits of the known world, and he realized he was enjoying it although only God knew what lay ahead. Cosmas had a curt way, but Aulus had soon found he was a good captain. He had his crew's respect, and he kept discipline without resorting to cruelty as many captains did. He had given one crewman 20 lashes for insubordination a few days into the voyage, but since then there had been no whippings—indeed, no need for them.
Aulus had also found Cosmas was an ascetic and religious man who liked to quote at length from the Book of Job and other Scriptures. Often at dawn he would remind Aulus how the Preacher had written, "The sun riseth and the sun goeth down, and draweth to his own place." Listening to him, Aulus had learned more than one verse of the Old Testament on this voyage, more indeed than he cared to know. The important thing, though, was that beyond Scripture Iessons, Cosmas was a skilled mariner—and a man who, incidentally, tolerated no use of alcohol by the crew, although the ship was heavily laden with amphoras of Italian wine as well as oil.
The wind was fresher now, blowing from almost aft over the port side. The heavy vessel heeled to starboard as they slid along the sea. He sat against the mainmast, having finished his porridge, and looked toward the mountains of Barbary. What would come next?
In his cabin, in his small sea-chest, was his icon of St. Eustace, a soldier saint with his spear held firm in his right hand and a look on his face of calm determination. His young wife Agatha had given him that icon in Alexandria, many years ago, when he was no more than 28 and he left her to rejoin Belisarius and the army on the Black Sea coast. Always since then he had kept the icon with him when he traveled. He was no Eustace, no saint, he thought, but the composed figure of that old Roman officer helped his own composure, his determination and his spirit, in strange new places—places like this sun-drenched sea.
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