Jack Ludlow: Triumph

Yet in one area he found himself powerless against her. The betrothal of his daughter Ioannina, arranged by Theodora, no longer found favour with Antonina; how quickly had her old companion gone from saint to sinner, to be lambasted for matters in which Antonina had previously been her stout supporter. The betrothal was to be called off, which had Ioannina come to her father, whom she barely knew, asking him to intercede, given she had formed a genuine affection for the imperial nephew. Here she was before him, a sweet child of tender years, in tears and her apparently so powerful parent was in no position to help her.

‘It was your fortune Theodora was after, don’t you see? Ioannina is your sole heir. The whole thing was arranged when she gave it back to you. That woman, when I think of some of the things she did!’

‘The child is unhappy,’ Flavius pleaded.

‘For now,’ Antonina scoffed. ‘Take it from one who knows, when you clearly do not. She will get over it.’

If there were matters of religion to occupy him, Flavius did not forget the military, and Justinian always consulted him when such matters were raised. The enmity with Narses was barely disguised and it proved to be something Justinian could not settle, even if he made his displeasure known. The old eunuch would counter any proposal advanced by Flavius and that applied to the continuing running sore of Italy.

‘Narses is ever badgering me for a military command and I weary of you two fighting like cats in a sack.’

‘Not as much as I do, Autokrator .’

‘I am minded to send him to take command in Italy now that Germanus is gone.’

An imperial nephew, Germanus had been proposed by Flavius as a fitting man to take command in Italy. On his way he was obliged to divert and repel a large incursion by the Slavs. That achieved and on his way to Italy once more, Germanus had fallen ill and died. A replacement was urgently required.

‘He could be a good choice.’

‘Flavius, he’s your sworn foe.’

‘What bearing does that have?’

‘Of course, he would be out of your hair.’

‘What’s left of it,’ came the reply, which got an imperial frown. Justinian was well ahead of Flavius in hair loss. ‘But that has nothing to do with my opinion, though I will say this. It matters less who you send to Italy than that they are given the means to ensure success.’

‘The cost, Flavius,’ Justinian moaned.

‘Not to spend now is foolish. And if anyone can conquer Italy completely think of the taxes that will produce. Besides, Narses is your Treasury Chamberlain. If anyone can find the money he can, perhaps in the coffers in his cellar.’

Did the eunuch ever learn that his subsequent successes had come from the arguments advanced by Flavius Belisarius? Did he know that when he made such slow progress – it took him a whole year to get from Illyria to Italy proper – that the same man calmed Justinian and prevented his recall? Narses arrived in the peninsula with that which Flavius had never had, a huge army and over the three years of his campaign he utterly destroyed Goth power.

The war was going well in Hispania too, with the Visigoths being driven back from places they had held for two hundred years. On the eastern frontier Martinus was repaying the faith placed in him. After a long campaign he took Petra and beat a huge Sassanid army to finally bring peace to the frontier, albeit not without a huge payment of gold from the imperial treasury.

At the side of Justinian, advising him was the man most of the citizens of Constantinople still considered to be the empire’s best general. Flavius Belisarius could still walk the streets without an escort, was still greeted and applauded for his known probity. In the imperial bureaucracy and the courtiers surrounding the Emperor he was hailed as the only one not engaged in endemic theft.

The man who refused to see himself as such, went about those duties that his emperor demanded of him, was honest as he had always been, never shrinking from telling Justinian when he thought him mistaken, always with his mantra that if he spoke offensively it was for the good of the empire.

He was the envoy of choice in any dispute, and that extended to dealing with Pope Vigilius, a man he would happily have sliced in two. Without Theodora to protect him Vigilius found himself at odds with Justinian and that was a battle he could not win. He was finally deposed and sent into exile on an island that at least had food and water, which Flavius was not sure he deserved.

To say there was peace never could be true with such long borders. There were incursions all the time as various barbarian tribes sought to plunder the wealth of Byzantium. Narses had been obliged to put aside Italy to repel a Hun invasion and it was ever the case that the most porous frontier was in the area of land within which Flavius had grown up.

The Danube could never be anything other than porous; the number of points at which it could be crossed made utter security impossible. It had been like that when Flavius was a youngster and it was still like that now, held by a thin screen of small detachments based on the various riverbank cities. They were not strong enough to prevent serious incursions and had no choice if they faced one but to withdraw into their strongholds and wait for succour from the capital.

As long as the numbers of invaders could be counted in the hundreds all was well. When they came in thousands that left the borderlands at their mercy. Concern was mitigated by their limited aims: plunder until checked and then a swift withdrawal across the river with their booty, knowing they would not be pursued.

‘The leader is a Kutrigur Hun called Zabergan, Autokrator , and he leads a force calculated at twenty thousand men.’

‘Cut that in half,’ Flavius advised.

‘Half is still a great number,’ was Justinian’s response, before he turned back to the fellow who had brought the unwelcome news. ‘Do we have any notion of his intentions?’

‘All we know is that Zabergan is heading for Thrace, while another part of his force has taken a path that will bring them to Greece.’

Maps were produced, instructions despatched to Narses, still in command of a huge army, to tell him of what was happening in his rear, but the problem lay in Constantinople. The size of the army was not as it had been on Justinian’s accession. Everything that could be mustered was on the various fighting fronts so there was no readily available force to send into Moesia against Zabergan. It was a case of wait and see what this Hun would do.

He came on; there was no retiring back to the Danube with his spoils and if the city itself was safe – nowhere had walls like Constantinople – that did not apply to the hinterland. Intelligence came hinting that Zabergan was intent on crossing to Asia Minor, tempted by a land that had not been plundered for centuries and was dripping with possibilities.

To get there he would ignore the capital of the empire; all he had to do was get across the narrows of the Hellespont and the men to stop him did not exist. The various companies that were quartered in the city had become the domain of the rich and idle, men who looked very martial in their fine liveries but would be of no use in a real fight.

Given all of his experienced generals were away fighting, when Zabergan reached Melantias, a mere sixty leagues from the capital, Justinian had only one man to turn to. If he had few soldiers he at least had a brilliant man to command what could be cobbled together.

‘A poisoned chalice,’ was Antonina’s vociferous opinion. ‘So the mob will stop howling at him.’

‘Yet one I cannot refuse.’

‘You’ll get yourself killed. Do you intend to face these devils on your own?’