Jack Ludlow: Vengeance

With some effort and still on his knees Flavius scrabbled forward to ensure their eyes were closed and to kiss each blood-coated cheek in turn, his father the last and longest, mouthing as he did so a quiet prayer, before whispering a wish based on many intimate moments he had shared with the object of his supplications.

Decimus Belisarius had never ceased to remind his offspring of their birthright as full Roman citizens, a gift, to his thinking, beyond price and that included the rituals of what had been a pagan society, one he had refused to condemn as worse than its Christian successor. Added to that was an oft-expressed wish to die like one.

‘I want them to have a proper Roman funeral, it is for that my father would have wished, something of which he spoke many times.’ Ohannes was confused as Flavius continued, a fact made obvious by his silence. ‘I will remain with them and pray for their souls. You I would ask to return to the villa – the servants will come back as soon as they know the threat has receded. Fetch the males to this place and bring with them saws and axes.’

‘In God’s name, why?’

The reply was firm for the first time since the boy had fallen to his knees, forced through his troubled larynx. ‘So they can be given the funeral rites of Romans. Fetch pitch too, and oil as well as terebinthus. I intend that a pyre should be built and that they should be laid upon it and cremated.’

‘Am I allowed to say, young sir, that such a thing is blasphemous and is forbidden?’

‘Say nothing to anyone!’ Flavius rasped. ‘Bring what I ask here for this is where I want their ashes to remain. As for blasphemy, is not the bishop who resides in his basilica the very living expression of that sin? I would not have that swine say a single word over their bodies, for any prayer from him is a profanity.’

‘Sir, I-’

The youngster cut across Ohannes and he did so looking him hard in the eye, though his voice lacked any note of censure, being gentle.

‘You must do as I ask, for I am master of the house now and though you are a freeman, you’re still a family retainer. I cannot command you as I would a slave to obey but I can ask you, as one who was loyal to my father and his sons, to do for him what I insist he would have wished.’

‘You could be consigning them to hell.’

‘God, I am sure, will forgive me, and how can he place against their salvation an act of which they have no part? Better he be entreated over by those who esteemed him than a man he thought an apostate.’

All around them the militiamen were moving enemy bodies, having first searched them for booty, before carrying them to the riverbank and throwing them into the flowing waters, which would take them downriver to rest on some sandbank as carrion, perhaps even to be carried all the way into the Euxine Sea as food for the fish. The soldiers Decimus had led were being piled up like slaughtered cattle. One group approached Flavius to remove those killed by members of his family and, that completed, hinted they would help with the four bodies over which he was mourning, only to recoil at his glare, as well as his grating command to get out of his sight.

There he knelt praying quietly as the sun began a slow, shadow-making descent. He was obliged to take from his relatives anything of value they had carried into battle, rings and personal talismans, most tellingly his father’s keys. Even without any of the twelve books to hand, the oft-memorised reflections of Marcus Aurelius came forth, to remind him of the transience of existence, that death comes to us all and what comes from nature will return to it.

Normally a source of consolation, even such a wise voice failed to ease his feelings now and he wept until no more tears would come.

As he made his way back to the villa, Ohannes passed men digging a long trench, which he assumed to be a communal grave, for the raiders had indulged in much casual slaughter of any citizens they had come across. As he strode along he reasoned that with so many farms now without owners or folk to occupy what houses still stood, there must close by each be a pile of already cut timber.

On arrival at the family villa he found that the household slaves had indeed returned and they were first ordered to cast into the road the bodies of the two thieves, as much to see if anyone would claim them as to clear the entrances, this while the poor guard who had been murdered was laid out in the servants’ quarters, there to remain until his relatives, if he had any, came to claim him.

That done he led the male staff, freedmen and slaves alike, back to where their master had met his end, gathering on the way such timber as they came across, carrying it to a spot near to where Flavius still knelt, before sending them to scour for more. The wood, both gathered and cut down, was raised into a decent pyre onto which, once it was soaked in inflammables, the four bodies were laid, Flavius, unable to take part in any lifting, only able to watch.

An ex-soldier never went anywhere without his flints and it was Ohannes who gathered the long, dry grass and kindling that allowed him to ignite some straw then make that into a proper fire. One cloth-covered pole was soaked in oil and resin and this was handed to Flavius who stood in silent prayer before setting it alight.

Devotions complete he walked to the edge of the pyre where he thrust the torch into the heart of the timber. The soaked brushwood at the base showed an immediate flame, then the first of the logs ignited and soon the blaze began to spread and lick upwards, this as the sun dipped out of sight in the west, leaving a clear sky and a gilded edge to the horizon, that disappearing by the time the pyre was fully alight.

The darkness, aided by a palpable wind, made the flames appear furious as with red and orange flicks they began to wrap themselves around the quartet of bodies, sparks emerging from any unseasoned wood to fly into the night air. If the flames appeared angry, that was as nothing to the feelings of Flavius Belisarius, who saw in the shapes created the faces of the men who had betrayed his family, and there and then he swore two things.

He would erect here an obelisk to his father and brothers inscribed with their names and the manner of their demise. The second vow was even more heartfelt and filled his thoughts as he made his way, with a heavy tread, back to the Belisarius villa: the creatures that had caused their deaths would suffer a worse fate.

On his return home, the silence drove home the loss in an even more telling way than either the sight of the mutilated bodies or the act of cremation. From a busy and raucous household-cum-military-headquarters it was now as silent as what it had become, a graveyard if not of actual corpses, certainly of hopes, aspirations and activity. Just the day before the building had resounded with the sound of endless callers: soldiers seeking orders, citizenry in search of advantage or more often justice; now those who came would do so as mourners.

His family had been a noisy presence, their needs catered to by people who no longer bustled about the rooms and corridors but crept around in near-total silence, giving Flavius on any encounter a quick and sad look, before ensuring that apart from that first fleeting glance they avoided his eye. Their bickering, an ever-present part of life, was utterly muted now, while the schoolroom remained empty, so the daily noise of the pupils coming and going was likewise absent. When Flavius wandered from room to room it was as if it was already a place of ghosts, which in a sense it was; lacking an imperial centurion it had lost its function.

Exhaustion had got him through the first night; the next, even if he was just as tired, was very different. Sleep seemed impossible and when it finally came he was troubled by wild dreams. The advent of first light and awakening was a moment of confusion, turning to dread and disbelief, slowly maturing into the realisation that what had happened was true; Flavius was on his own and only the need to act as his family would have wished kept him from breaking down completely.