Jack Ludlow: Vengeance

The two excubitors departed under safe conduct and the heartfelt gratitude of Vitalian. To say he was pleased ranked as understatement, for no man so hates a person as much as one who has been a friend and then betrayed him. Hypatius had been vocal in order to ingratiate himself and keep his head on his shoulders; he had laid bare the whole of the Vicinian chicanery.

Pentheus pleaded, claimed the emperor forced him to act but to no avail, and Vitalian made him grovel before throwing him into an open-to-the-elements cage where he was assailed by anyone in the camp who had filth of which they wanted to dispose.

‘So tell me, Flavius Belisarius, what it is I can gift to you that will serve as a fitting reward?’

‘Would I be correct General, in thinking that north of Marcianopolis, you represent the legal authority?’

‘I am not the magister but one is dead and his replacement is in my custody, so will do anything I tell him. But why do you ask?’

Flavius was disturbed about the way Pentheus had come to be here and concerned too that there might be a game being played in which he was nothing but a low-value gambling bone. Did he here, and with this man, have a chance to do that which he sought without relying on any sly foxes?

‘Only one thing, General. I would ask that I be given both Tribune Vigilius and Centurion Forbas to act under my instructions as well as a strong unit of soldiers and the right to command obedience and the truth. I have told you how my family, my father and brothers were betrayed and who was responsible. Let that man be obliged to pay for his transgressions and to suffer whatever punishment I decree.’

‘Why don’t you just kill him? For that you need only your own sword.’

‘To do so would sully the memory of my father. I must constitute a real enquiry, call forth those who will witness and prove to those who stood aside when they should have acted, year after year in their own regard, that justice eventually will come to those who transgress against God and their fellow citizens.’

‘Judge and executioner?’

‘No, I will ask Tribune Vigilius to act as judge.’

‘And that slug Pentheus?’

‘Do with him as you wish, he is your enemy, not mine.’

‘I will just remove his head.’

‘So be it. Do you grant my request?’

‘Have you asked those you wish to go to Dorostorum with you if they agree?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then choose the men you want, and may God go with you. I will get the new magister to compose an order conferring on you your official status. Thus you will be acting on behalf of the emperor, God rot his lying soul.’

The gloom that descended in the imperial palace was palpable, no one seeming to be unaffected by it from the emperor to the lowest sweeper. Vitalian had inflicted a grievous defeat on Anastasius and was now demanding a massive ransom for his nephew Hypatius. Justinus, who had been obliged to keep his own counsel for so long found the need even greater now. How had his ruler got himself into such a mess, only by his own folly?

‘You do not seem to share the present mood, Petrus?’

‘I am as downcast as the next man, how could I not be, Uncle?’

‘Let us say I know you too well to believe that. I am wondering if you will pass on to me the reasons why your step seems lighter than it was before we got news of the defeat of Hypatius.’

I cannot, Petrus thought, for you would be shocked, you might hate me, you might even dismiss me. But I have done you a service, for I have removed a man who had become a potent enemy in Pentheus Vicinus, whom Anastasius now thinks, since the news of his defection was delivered, first deluded him, then betrayed him. He would have found out how we sought to secretly bring down his cousin and, unlike you, he would have seen the need to kill to stop us.

I have engineered a major loss of face for one of the emperor’s nephews and the one best suited to succeed him; what hope now for a nephew who has lost an entire army, a modern-day Varus? I hope in time we will be able to satisfy the burden you carry for the deaths of Decimus Belisarius and his sons, and at no time have I endangered your standing with the man you are tasked to protect and who trusts you now more than he ever has.

‘What do you think made Flavius flee, Petrus, when you had him safely hidden away?’

‘No idea, Uncle, but I must say he was so animated with his desire for justice that I suspect he has gone back to Dorostorum with murder in his heart.’

‘Which might cost him his own life.’

‘Indeed, if only he had waited. Who knows, though, he may see sense and come back to us.’

The excubitor officers Petrus had engaged were returned but there was no sign of Flavius, for which Petrus had not calculated; he was supposed to be back in Constantinople.

‘How will it all end?’ Justinus sighed.

‘Who is to know how anything will ever end?’

‘We can pray for good outcomes, an ending in which all is resolved and everyone content.’

‘In that I will willingly join you, Uncle.’

Petrus said his prayers with his habitual fervour and he knew he had much to seek absolution for; he always felt he did. He had engineered the death of some men and the disgrace of others, those who had attached themselves to Pentheus seeking cover in new alliances. He had played a dangerous game and come out unscathed and if there was pleasure in that there was, too, a residual recollection of the moments of deep apprehension he had suffered in the process; it could all, his conspiracy, have so easily fallen apart, especially because it had all hinged on an innocent and easily biddable youth!

The power Flavius had was fully proconsular; he was, in Upper Moesia, the law for both church and state and one unknown to the citizens of Dorostorum. Given the road from Marcianopolis passed by the forum square and the basilica, his first act was to bypass the town in darkness with most of his men, leaving a detachment to surround and seal off the cathedral and the buildings attached, including the residence of Gregory Blastos, no one to exit on pain of death.

This set light to multiple rumours, multiplied when the rest of his troops headed east to the Senuthius villa, a compound of buildings he invested with near a full century of mounted and bloodthirsty Gautoi mercenaries. If they arrived without warning, their presence did not go unremarked, judging by the flaring torches that illuminated the panic caused within.

‘Tribune Vigilius, please send a message to the senator inviting those men he commands, on the order of the magister militum per Thracias , to lay down their arms or to come out and do battle. Do not use my name.’

They heard Senuthius, so carrying were his exhortations and commands, which turned to pleas that those he paid to defend him go out and fight, in time reduced to futile threats. It fell on ears that were not deaf but wise enough to see that what was being proposed was not just fruitless but suicidal. A professional body of soldiers surrounded his villa and he could not send for reinforcements; the numerous fighters who controlled his outlying farms and stood guard on his mills were cut off from any knowledge of what was taking place.

He tried to send a messenger, one fool who did not realise that his head, once detached from his body, would be slung into the villa compound, along with a second demand, one that was timed and aimed at the men who guarded Senuthius; come out now, throw down your weapons or not only will you die, but those who carry your blood will perish likewise.

For men who had once been soldiers but had settled, who had taken wives and bred children on farms looted in legal chicanery by their master, facing certain death was a powerful incentive, the loss of wives and children too great a sacrifice for a mere stipend or a ploughed field and low rent; they came out in their entirety and with them the cowering and terrified servants.