Jack Ludlow: Vengeance

‘There is one amongst you to whom I owe a great deal,’ Flavius called, once the two groups were separated, to what was now a tight knot of terrified people who had served Senuthius and in many cases felt the weight of his whip. ‘I do not now need to know who that is, who saved my life by advising me to flee, but if you come forward I will embrace and reward you.’

No one moved.

‘I suspect you wish to keep your identity hidden for fear that someone will make you pay for what they see as betrayal, and if that is true, then know this. I am in your debt and you may come to me at any time and lay a claim upon my gratitude.’

‘How will you know?’ whispered Vigilius.

‘A ladder,’ Flavius replied equally softly, which made no sense to anyone but him.

‘Our Gautoi are itching for slaughter,’ the tribune pointed out, watching them as they pressed in on and corralled the surrendered fighters.

‘They are not to be killed,’ Flavius shouted, making a statement that satisfied the barbarians. ‘I have in store a more fitting retribution in which they will shed tears as slaves, not merely their blood on a cross.’

‘Your senator is refusing to come out,’ said Forbas, who had been sent with a third demand and returned.

‘Then set fire to the place and see if he can hold to his refusal.’

‘There is much in there to loot, the swine is rich.’

Flavius got what Forbas was hinting; the foederati given to him by Vitalian would be looking for plunder. ‘Is he alone?’

‘There are two children with him, well not quite children judging by the amount of their flesh.’

‘A boy and a girl, I seem to recall.’ Forbas nodded. ‘Tell him they will be sold in the market at Constantinople, and to the worst of the owners he sold others to, the Sklaveni his paid henchmen snatched from their farms. It is him I want, not the innocents.’

Senuthius tried to negotiate, to secure some kind of terms, to no avail, his last request a palanquin for his son and daughter, to which Flavius replied that they would have to walk, given it was a mode of travel they would now be required to get used to. Eventually he sent them out and Flavius dismounted and went to face a man he so hated, the moment he removed his helmet and exposed his face one of pure pleasure.

‘You?’

‘A pagan would call me “Nemesis”.’

‘Your voice, I did not-’

Flavius cut right across him. ‘I have grown out of what you may recall and I have come so that you may answer for your crimes, not only against my house but the empire.’

He tried bluster; he had to. ‘Have a care, Flavius Belisarius, I have powers and influence you know nothing of.’

‘If you refer to your cousin Pentheus, I think you will find his head adorning the gate of the foederati camp north of Marcianopolis. He sought to betray Vitalian and play him for a dupe; now he has paid for his mistake, as you must in your turn.’

‘Then kill me.’

‘What, and deny myself the privilege of seeing you plead for mercy?’

‘I won’t,’ Senuthius growled, his whole being defiant.

Flavius smiled. ‘You will.’

The fat senator cried when his villa was torched, or was it the sight of his chest of gold being ransacked? His two children had been sent packing on foot and they did not walk, they ran. Every stick of Senuthius’s furniture, every statue and object of value was brought out to be stacked for later distribution and when Flavius led his men and his prisoner away they were backlit by the blaze of a house in conflagration.

There are occasions when a whole district can come to life, where a normally slow and sometimes moribund way of passing on news transcends itself, a heavy raid by barbarians being one. This was another and soon the tracks and the viae rusticae were full of flickering torches and very animated people. They tied Senuthius to the tail of a horse and dragged him into Dorostorum, the news that he was fallen from grace seemingly able to be transmitted without any consciousness of time or distance, so that well before they reached the first outlying dwelling, the route was lined with a jeering mob.

Sods of excrement, mostly equine but some human, were chucked at the senator to whom so recently the same people would have grovelled and Flavius found it hard to contain his disgust; this lot would have dunged his father given half a chance. Worse faced the prisoner when he entered the forum, with its missing stones and air of neglect. Hanging upside down from a hastily assembled frame was the naked body of Bishop Gregory Blastos, the red-hot poker with which he had been immolated still protruding from his anus, along with the rank smell of burning flesh.

The sight reduced Senuthius, hitherto defiant, to a jelly, the chanting in favour of Chalcedony rising and falling as an added threat to his being. This Flavius had neither foreseen nor left orders to prevent and if he hated the victim he was aware that he had failed; the men he left behind saw no reason to stop a fired-up mob hell-bent on the rights of their religion.

‘Kill me now, Belisarius,’ the senator shouted, and he was swung round in the centre of the forum.

‘No, Senator,’ Flavius replied, dismounting, ‘these people have to hear your crimes listed.’

‘Before you hand me over to their mercy?’

‘No, if you are going to die, it will be by my hand, for you must answer for my father and my three brothers.’

‘One was a fool and the others bred between a fool and a whore.’

‘If I could be provoked into killing you quickly, Senuthius, I have already enough cause.’

Vigilius had taken his place on the rostrum and was reading out the commission Vitalian had provided for Flavius, not that he was heard. Before him was a baying mob intent on blood and Flavius, observing it, was full of revulsion. It was mainly the low-born but not exclusively so, there being a goodly number of well-heeled citizens in the mix. He saw his own trio of friends – did they recognise him helmeted? – screaming as many a bloody imprecation as the meanest peasant.

Many of these same people had, by either silence or collusion, thwarted his father as he sought to contain Senuthius; now they were hoping to tear him limb from limb and no doubt also thinking that to do so was to expiate their own sins. That only increased as Vigilius read out, to a roar at each charge, the indictment against the prisoner, this accompanied by a multitude of presented and repeated cries of ‘I will witness’.

Flavius had to give Senuthius his due; he may have panicked at the sight of the body of Gregory Blastos but he had fought hard to regain his composure and succeeded. Knowing he was going to die, he stood square-shouldered and defiant, his eyes ranging around the forum and the crowd as if to say ‘I have marked you and will be waiting to greet you in hell.’ The man who had captured him was also watching those same faces and with growing abhorrence.

Collectively they could have done in a blink what Decimus Belisarius failed to achieve in six years of frustration. How many now yelling themselves hoarse had been active supporters of the man they now wanted dead? How many had known and just kept silent, while the rest, who must have at least supposed that crimes were going unpunished, hid their heads deep in their cellars?

‘Forbas.’

It took some time for him to respond, so loud was the crowd. ‘Sir?’

Flavius had to shout his reply, while indicating he should come close. ‘Sir? Will I ever get used to that?’

‘Enjoy it while it lasts.’

There was no questioning of the orders Flavius issued; Forbas rode off with an escort, while Flavius apprised Vigilius of what he intended, then formed up his remaining foederati in two lines so as to keep these irate citizens at bay, before tying a furious Senuthius over a saddle.