William Napier: Attila

At last his eyes settled upon a girl huddled in the corner, buried in woollen wraps drawn up round her shoulders and even over her mouth. Her long hair spread out over them and her eyes were lowered. Then she looked up, and he saw her large, haunted eyes in the gloom, her narrow face, and he thought back to another girl, many months ago. He reached out and touched her, and slowly she let the woollen wraps fall and got up from her couch.

Some of the other women had gathered round, cooing and giggling, and the eastern woman with the painted nails was already beckoning them towards a fur-covered couch. As if it was the custom for a man to take his pleasure here with any woman he chose, while the other women gathered round and praised him, their eyes shining with fake lasciviousness, driven only by their desperate desire to be moved from one tent to another: from the herdlike Tent of the Women to one of the private tents of the wives and concubines.

Attila, flushed though he was with koumiss, balked at the idea of such openness. He shook his head at the other women, took the girl’s pale hand, led her away behind one of the hangings where they slept, and drew it across behind them.

The other women returned to their couches and waited. They would spend their whole lives waiting, until they were too old, when they would be sold as household slaves for less than the price of a horse’s corpse.

Attila drew the girl’s shift up over her head and looked at her for a long time. She looked steadily, silently back. At last he pushed her down onto the couch and began to kiss her. He paused for a moment, raising his head and looking down at her. Still a little overawed by the entire experience of the Tent of the Women, he began to mumble something about they didn’t have to… everything, if she, and he was sorry…

She reached up and pulled him down again. He was surprised and thrilled to feel her kissing him back with ardour. Then she placed her hands on his chest and pushed him aside hard.

‘What?’ he said bewildered, sitting up.

She laughed softly. ‘We don’t have to… everything…I’m sorry… ’ she mimicked cruelly.

She leant over him and pulled at the lacing on the front of his shirt. ‘How do you know I don’t want to as well?’ she said, arching her eyebrows. Then she ripped his shirt off over his head, rolled on top of him and straddled his bare chest with her naked thighs. ‘I might enjoy it sometimes, too,’ she said.

The boy stared up at her open-mouthed. Then her mouth closed on his, and he could think no more.

Attila had his own tent, and the girl to warm his couch for him from then on.

‘It’ll soon be the raiding season again,’ said Ruga, slapping him violently on the back. ‘I expect you to ride out and bring me back ten more whores to replace her. She was a nice bit of flesh.’

The boy smiled politely.

Nearly a month later, a single rider, naked to the waist, with his hair worn long and oiled and his moustache luxuriant, rode into the city of Ravenna. The guards blocked his path at first, but when he said who he was from they reluctantly allowed him to pass, albeit accompanied by an armed escort.

At last, deprived of his horse, thoroughly searched for weapons – he carried none – and obliged to don a white cloak over his sinewy shoulders for the sake of decency, he was allowed into the presence of the Emperor of Rome.

The emperor’s sister was also present. A woman – seated on her own throne, as if the equal of a man! These Romans, thought the warrior with distaste.

He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, and instead of keeping his eyes respectfully bowed to the elaborate mosaic floor he dared to look the Divine Emperor Honorius in the face.

These barbarians, thought the emperor with distaste.

‘ Asla konusma Khlatina,’ said the warrior. ‘ Sizmeli konusmat Ioung.’

There was some uncourtly confusion while the palace chamberlains scuttled about looking for an interpreter who could understand the ugly language of the Huns. An awkward silence reigned meanwhile in the vast, dimly glittering Chamber of the Imperial Audience. The messenger’s eyes never left the face of the emperor. It was intolerable. Honorius looked down into his lap. His sister stared coldly back at the Hun messenger. His bold, slanted eyes reminded her unpleasantly of the eyes of another, younger visitor from the steppes.

At last an interpreter was found, and arrived in the Chamber looking frankly terrified. He stood trembling, some steps behind the Hun warrior, and waited for him to speak again. When the warrior repeated his words, the poor man looked even more stricken at the unenviable prospect of having to translate such impertinent words to the frosty Imperial Throne.

‘ Asla konusma Khlatina,’ repeated the warrior. ‘ Sizmeli konusmat Ioung.’

The translator stammered, ‘He says, “I do not speak Latin. You must speak Hun.”’

‘We had already surmised his ignorance of the learned tongues,’ cut in Galla Placidia.

The emperor glanced nervously at his sister, and then turned to the messenger and, via the interpreter, offered his greetings.

‘Likewise,’ said his sister, ‘our greetings to your king, the noble Ruga.’

The warrior did not offer greetings in return. There was a further silence, further moments of excruciating embarrasment, for all, it seemed, except the warrior himself.

At last Princess Galla said to the interpreter, ‘Do you think you could trouble him to inform us why we are so blessed with his gracious presence, on this particular day? I can’t imagine that he has ridden all this way from God knows what lawless outer darkness, just to tell us that he knows no Latin.’

Looking shakier than ever, the interpreter prompted the Hun.

The warrior remained inscrutable. At last he said, ‘My name is Chanat, the son of Subotai.’

Galla arched her eyebrows. ‘I’m afraid I have not had the pleasure of your father’s acquaintance.’

Chanat ignored her sarcasm. ‘I come with a message from my king.’

The emperor quivered a little. His sister’s lips tightened, becoming more bloodless than ever, but she said nothing.

‘One moon since,’ said Chanat, ‘the king’s nephew, Attila, son of Mundzuk, returned home to the camp of the Huns, beyond the Kharvad Mountains.’

There was silence.

‘He told us that he had escaped from being a hostage in this land, that you Romans had plotted to kill him.’

‘He lies!’ cried Galla Placidia.

Reluctantly, Chanat supposed that, if the woman addressed him, he must address her. These Romans… ‘He is a prince of the royal blood,’ he said calmly. ‘He does not lie.’

For a long while the icy eyes of Galla and the slanted eyes of the Hun warrior met across the vast, brittle space of the Audience Chamber. It was Galla who, at last, looked away.

‘In all the moons and years and generations henceforth,’ resumed the warrior, addressing Honorius, ‘the Hun nation will never ally with Rome again.’

The emperor looked up from his lap, where he had been watching his sweaty fingers writhe around each other in perplexity. ‘You are going to come and attack us?’

Galla winced with irritation.

Chanat remained motionless. ‘What I have said, I have said.’

Honorius looked down at his writhing fingers again, thinking how horribly they looked like maggots, and then he cried shrilly, ‘I could have you killed!’

Galla was about to signal to one of her chamberlains to come and escort them away, for the audience was clearly at an end, when the warrior spoke again.

‘Nothing you could do to me,’ he said, smiling broadly, as if at a joke, ‘would be so terrible as what my lord and king would do to me if I failed him.’