David Pilling - Flame of the West

I stared at him, striving to read his expression. Was he serious? It was impossible. Belisarius had achieved extraordinary things, but to take back the whole of the Western Empire was a dream even Constantine the Great had not entertained. The Empire barely had enough soldiers to defend its own shrunken borders, and the expeditions to North Africa and Italy had been an astonishing gamble. Thanks to good fortune and the skill of Belisarius, the dice had landed in our favour.

And yet…we had watered the soil of Italy with the blood of thousands of Goths, and our own losses were trifling. If all the barbarian nations of the West came against Belisarius, united in arms, I would have given him an even chance of victory.

“Trust in me, Coel,” he said with an encouraging smile, “there is no limit to what can be achieved. God has granted us one victory after another. Your homeland may yet be saved.”

He said no more, and I left his presence in a daze, striving to make sense of this unexpected glimpse into the general’s secret character.

I had never credited him with any ambition beyond carrying out the orders of his master in Constantinople. He might have made himself King of Africa after defeating the Vandals, but declined the opportunity and hurried home to assure Justinian of his loyalty.

Your homeland may yet be saved. These words replayed, over and over again, in my mind that night. I could not sleep, and in the small hours of the morning cursed Belisarius for his vagaries. What had he meant? He was not a man to waste words, or honey them with lies.

Or so I thought.

Belisarius was soon active again. He sent John the Sanguinary away from Rome, despatching him north-east with two thousand cavalry to the town of Alba Fucens, beside the shores of the Fucine Lake.

John was instructed to observe the truce and refrain from the slightest act of aggression. If the Goths broke the treaty, he was to ride out without delay and overrun the province of Picenum, a region of Italy between the Appenines and the Adriatic Sea. In this way Belisarius anticipated the renewal of war, and planned in advance while continuing to negotiate with the Goths.

I was happy to see John go, and to enjoy an interval of peace in Rome. The city was still surrounded by a vast horde of Goths, but the morale of our garrison was high, and even the citizens – usually a miserable, cowardly, treacherous set – were buoyed by the recent influx of supplies.

“Give a man enough bread and wine,” Procopius remarked, “a woman in his bed, and a chance to score off his enemies, and you won’t hear much complaining from him .”

We had resumed our walks through the city whenever I was off-duty. He delighted in pointing out antiquities and filling my head with the long, complex and bloody history of Rome. I was happy to listen. Procopius had a passion for teaching and history, and it was easier to succumb to it than resist.

“There,” he said, indicating a familiar sight, “the sepulchre of Hadrian. You know it quite well, I believe.”

I did indeed. It had been the scene of some of the fiercest fighting for Rome, when the Goths had launched an all-out assault on the walls and chosen the sepulchre as a weak point in our defences. I had helped to repulse the assault, ordering my men to fetch the statues of old Roman gods decorating the terrace, and fling them down on the heads of the Goths. Exposed to a deadly hail of statuary, the enemy had retreated, leaving a number of their comrades crushed like insects under figures of Mars and Jupiter.

“Some of the citizens called my actions blasphemy,” I said, “there are those in Rome who still favour the old gods, and would happily abandon Christ. I have seen them, scowling and making the sign of evil at me in the street.”

“Madmen,” Procopius said with a shrug, “every city has them. Fear not. I imagine the Emperor Hadrian would have approved. He was a practical man.”

I paused to study the defences. The space between the sepulchre and the Flaminian Gate was marked by the flow of the Tiber, and the walls along the riverbank were low and unprotected by towers. There were men patrolling the ramparts, but they could have been scaled from outside without too much difficulty.

“The Goths were right to identify this as a weak spot,” I said, “Belisarius should strengthen the guard.”

“With what?” replied my friend, “even with reinforcements, our garrison is thinly-spread. Rome is a big city, and they have miles of wall to cover. In any case, the spirit of the Goths is broken. Why else would they beg for a truce? One more push will topple Vitiges from his throne.”

He was almost correct. The Goths, and Vitiges, were not quite done, and made two last-ditch efforts to recapture Rome.

Disregarding the truce, Vitiges sent a band of chosen soldiers to explore the old aqueducts outside the city walls. They crept into the tunnels at night and levered a piece of stone from the buttress that Belisarius had constructed to guard against just such an entry. The glimmer of their torches was observed by one of our sentinels, but he and his foolish comrades agreed it was nothing suspicious, and probably the eyes of a wolf glowing in the dark.

The Goths took the stone back to their chief as proof of their efforts. Vitiges might have sent them back into the tunnels with picks, to break down the buttress and gain access to the city, but sheer chance foiled his plans: Belisarius happened to overhear the guards talking of the phantom wolf in the night, and sent men to check the aqueduct. They found the discarded torches of the Goths, and the hole in the buttress, and so Belisarius immediately trebled the guard along this stretch of wall.

Frustrated yet again, Vitiges turned to deceit. Even now, after all our victories, there were those among the Roman citizenry prepared to betray their countrymen for a handful of barbarian gold.

Vitiges procured the services of two such traitors, named Cassius and Gaius, and paid them to offer drugged wine to the guards defending the weak section of wall between the sepulchre of Hadrian and the Flaminian Gate.

Meanwhile the Goths obtained some boats and crammed them with soldiers. When the guards on the wall were asleep, knocked out by the narcotic in the wine, Cassius and Gaius were supposed to raise a lantern. The Goths would then cross the Tiber, scale the undefended walls and open the gates to their comrades.

I knew all this because Cassius lost his nerve on the eve of the attempt, and came to my quarters to pour out his tale.

He was a tall, emaciated individual, a butcher by trade, and stank of offal. The stench mingled with the smell of his fear as he knelt before me and clutched at my legs with trembling, clammy hands.

“Please, sir,” he babbled, “you must save me. Speak for me with the general – they say he favours you, and you have influence with him.”

I had just finished supper, and was alone in the little room I had hired above a wine-shop near the Field of Mars, where my men were encamped.

“Curse the landlord,” I growled, thrusting the man back with the heel of my boot, “I told him to turn away strangers. Who in God’s name are you, and what do you want?”

He told me, snuffling out the details between sobs and whimpers. I never saw a man so frightened in my life.

“I have a wife and seven children, sir,” he pleaded, wringing his bony hands, “my trade has fallen away since this wretched siege began, and I have no money to feed them. I had no choice but to take the bribe. It was that or starve!”

“No-one starves in Rome,” I said, looking at him with distaste, “Belisarius has made sure of that. I think you were greedy for gold, but lack the stomach for treachery.”