Jack Ludlow: Triumph

Having played a careful hand, Flavius had kept his overriding purpose well hidden. The city he needed to take possession of was not Naples but Rome. To do that he must get to the city before Theodahad reinforced it to such a degree that a siege would be difficult, if not impossible – the Eternal City, well defended, was too huge a task for an army of the size he led.

Naples mattered only in that, like Rhegium, he could not leave it behind and hostile on what was his line of communication and his possible line of retreat in case of failure. Outside a very tight circle of senior commanders such an eventuality was never discussed, but it would be a poor general who did not consider the possibility. Every one of his inferior commanders had been just as circumspect as he, but they too would keep it in mind, the object in falling back being to keep the army intact so as to fight another day.

‘Stephanus, I feel you have been honourable in this.’

‘I seek only that which is best for my city, magister .’

‘Tell me, if I accede to these demands will that get me what I want?’

The envoy, a plump and prosperous-looking individual with greying curls and rounded cheeks had the good grace to look embarrassed, which prompted Flavius to look kindly upon him.

‘I bid you go back to your council of notables and tell them I agree.’

Flavius looked at the list once more so did not see the surprise on the face of Stephanus. He was being told that he would be required to pay a huge indemnity in talents of gold; that his soldiers could not enter the city and he could only do so by invitation, while the Goths in the fortress would be given the option to remain or depart unharmed, added to which his fleet must return to Sicily, this to be verified by a Neapolitan escort vessel.

‘ Magister , I-’

Flavius held up his hand to stop the clearly uncomfortable envoy, who even with his plump cheeks seemed to suddenly age, so concerned was his expression, which underlined what Flavius supposed: accept these demands and more would follow.

‘You are an honest man, Stephanus and I suspect that you are singular in that regard, but tell your fellow citizens this. My design on their city is one in which I seek to secure my own safety and that of my men. I have no wish to fight to attain that but if I must I will, and do not let them think their walls will be enough to protect them. I bid them consider this. Naples is not the first fortified place to defy the kind of men I lead, so I suggest they consider the fate of those which did so in the past.’

Stephanus tried to speak but he could not find the words to respond; he merely bowed low and left. Flavius followed him out of the tent and looked south to where the great volcano of Vesuvius smoked from its cone, that sending out a larger belch of sulphur, which seemed to him, as he crossed himself, to be a harbinger of something awful.

‘Solomon, a call to my officers, if you please, to assemble here so we can finalise the plans for the assault on Naples.’

‘They will not surrender?’ Photius asked.

‘No. They think they can keep us talking and to no purpose.’

As was supposed, the acceptance of such conditions did not satisfy the likes of Pastor and Asclepiodotus or the factions they led; such men had made up their minds to resist from the very beginning, fearing the Goths more than Flavius Belisarius. Put upon Stephanus was again the unfortunate bearer of this news, at which point Flavius gave him the option of staying within the Byzantine camp or returning to Naples. Dignified as ever, he chose to go home.

The first aggressive act was the cutting of the aqueduct, but it was imparted to Flavius by a sympathetic citizen that there were too many wells in the city for this to be totally effective. Time being of the essence – with winter coming the place of safety lay within the walls of Rome – Flavius could not depend on starvation to bring about a surrender, which meant a costly assault on the well-maintained walls, repulsed by Goths aided by armed Neapolitans.

He lacked the men with the skills required to construct a siege tower or the luxury of time to do so, which meant yet more assaults by ladder and that faced all the options open to defenders outside mere arrows and spears, which included rocks dropped onto the heads of those climbing.

Even worse, if the location of the attack was anticipated they had time to move into place their ballistae, which meant a barrage of stones faced just to get to the base, where they would be subjected to great urns of boiling oil, this tipped over the battlements to scald the skin. Flavius was losing men and that he could ill afford.

To take a city like Naples required a force at least three times the size of that available, one that could so threaten a single section as to leave another part of the parapet short on defence. Flavius was everywhere, both in these attacks and afterwards, to reassure and cajole but in his heart he knew that some coup would be needed to bring on success, that or a change of heart within the city.

Accompanied by Photius and a personal escort, he spent every passive moment inspecting the defences, seeking some as yet unseen flaw. It was his stepson who clambered up a supporting pillar to stand on the undamaged side of the broken aqueduct, his call for his stepfather to join him one Flavius was reluctant to ignore; he would never concede agility even to one so young. Once alongside Photius, they splashed down the gentle slope of the waterway to the point where it had been broken, the water falling into a line of barrels set below.

On the other side of the gap the arched roof that prevented evaporation was still intact and defenders had used the rubble from the destruction to block access, creating a wall of fragmented stone that seemed impassable. Had Photius asked to be allowed to jump the gap permission would have been refused; he did not. The youngster just ran and leapt, leaving Flavius with his heart in his mouth, his anxiety made worse when the lad landed badly and had to roll to avoid a fall backwards.

He then stood up and grinned to reassure his stepfather, the shout of admonition Photius acknowledged with a backwards wave as he closed with the blockage and began to claw at the unmortised stones, in his efforts managing to create a small opening, one that he began to enlarge. In this he seemed to be succeeding, at which point his stepfather called softly that he should cease his furious scrabbling.

Flavius was not up to the leap achieved by Photius; he had to clamber down one side and up the other, this time followed by his guards, issuing instructions when on the sloping surface that the attack on the masonry should be carried out with quiet care. Two things were obvious apart from what was before him, the most evident being one he had already recognised: silence, which denoted the lack of any guards on the inner side. The second was that they were far enough from the city walls to be able to work unobserved, hidden by what remained of the arched canopy of the aqueduct.

Stones were being removed gently now and it was obvious the construction had been haphazard, relying on depth rather than mortar or the skilful interlocking of dry stonework that was really required. It took a long time to get a result but the sudden feeling of cold air on the face told a now filthy and dust-covered Photius that they had made a breakthrough.

‘Enough,’ Flavius commanded. ‘Replace that last rock and rebuild something behind it to cut out any light.’

‘We will be coming back?’

‘Most certainly, but this needs to be thought through.’

‘If we do assault by this route I ask to be given command.’

It was pure inspiration that made Flavius ask if his stepson spoke Goth, it was the shake of the head that allowed him to decline the request and he was not about to say that which was as yet only an idea; if what he had in mind went wrong, it was a route to certain death.