Vengeance

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

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.

‘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.

It was strange to ride the same road as he had that fateful day with Ohannes, when, if his nose was sore and his eyes blacking, his world was bright with promise. Why did it look smaller and less significant now? He crested the rise to look at what he had last seen as a field of battle; now it was once more verdant farmland and there in the distance was the blue and slow-flowing Danube.

They moved down the slope, eventually coming to the very spot, now overgrown, where he had lit the pyre for his family. There he stopped, dismounted and knelt to pray, while everyone, including the noisy, trailing crowd, as well as his prisoner, fell silent. If they joined him in his supplications he did not want them to; Flavius desired his memories to be unsullied and entreaties for their souls to be pure.

Forbas had acquired a decent-sized boat and, devotions over, a protesting Senuthius was forced aboard, into the bottom and his bonds extended to lash him to one of the thwarts. It was plain to a person who had grown up here that such activity would not go unnoticed and he was not wrong. Long before they reached the northern shore a strong body of Sklaveni warriors had gathered, and with them, Flavius could see, were the very tribal elders who had spent so much time haggling over his fate. More pleasing was the sight of Dardanies.

‘I come in peace,’ Flavius shouted, ‘and with a gift of great value.’

A gesture indicated he should come to land and the boat was brought to lay by a small jetty. Flavius climbed out and came face to face with Dardanies, who, after a moment’s hesitation, embraced him.

‘What has brought you here, Flavius, and,’ he held him at arm’s length, taking in the quality of the garb, ‘seemingly much elevated since I saw you last?’

‘A long tale and for another time Dardanies. I have a request to meet once more with that monk of St Basil who talked with your elders.’

‘Best acknowledge those elders first, for they are proud.’

That got a grin. ‘Then lead me to them so I may flatter their arrogance.’

‘There is not enough of that in the world.’

If it was said with a laugh, there was an underlying seriousness, proved by the time Flavius spent telling them how puissant and wise they were as one-time warriors and present leaders. Finally, when Dardanies felt he had greased their conceits enough, it was he who asked for the monk, who, once brought forward – he was in the crowd – Flavius took off for a quiet talk.

‘I have a man who was rich and will now be poor, a great sinner who, on this side of the river will be given little opportunity to transgress more, indeed he may die for many of his crimes were visited upon the tribe with which you live. It will take all of your blessedness to keep him alive, as well as all the power you possess to bring him to a realisation of the peril to his soul. His name is Senuthius Vicinus.’

The monk crossed himself; even to him the man was Lucifer.

‘It may be you will fail and he will be slaughtered, for he has visited much harm on the Sklaveni.’

‘More on you and your family, that is known on this bank.’

‘My desire to take his life is strong, I grant you, but where would I stand with God if I succumbed to that temptation? I would condemn my soul in order to take as forfeit his body. I will hand him into your care, with the instruction only that he must not be allowed to escape. If it is necessary to scourge him to bring him to realise his peril then that is for you to prescribe, but no man is beyond God’s grace, even the greatest villain. Will you do this for me?’

‘I will do that which is my calling,’ the monk replied, in a very soft tone of voice, ‘not for you but for the poor miscreant of whom you are giving me charge. But if you are true in your faith, you too must pray for him.’

‘That will be hard.’

‘God will demand it of you, for did not Jesus say to turn the other cheek from those who offend you?’

Dragged from the boat, the appearance of Senuthius brought forth gasps from those who recognised him, followed by an outbreak of screaming not much different from what had been heard in the forum of Dorostorum. It was those tribal elders, made aware of what was intended, who saw the senator through the mob to a place of safety, this not witnessed by Flavius, who had boarded the boat once more and had himself rowed back to the southern bank.

‘You will regret that,’ Forbas insisted.

‘Perhaps.’

‘What now?’

‘You and Vigilius to remain here, to sequester and sell all of the property of Senuthius Vicinus, the proceeds to be passed to General Vitalian to do with as he wishes.’

‘Surely you should have it?’

‘No, Forbas, it is too tainted for me; I will settle for the value of my family home, which I also ask you to undertake to dispose of for me. I will set foot in the city of Dorostorum again one more time only, if I have my way. I must go now and fetch my mother to this place so that we can properly grieve for my father and brothers and erect, as I promised I would, an obelisk to their memory at the place they gave up their lives.’

It was while riding out of the city, on the road to Marcianopolis, that Flavius recalled his father’s other wish and one he would fulfil by placing a plaque on the city wall, detailing the life, titles and service of Decimus Belisarius, as befitted a proud Roman soldier. For the rest there was nothing ? not even his friends ? so damaged was his heart by what had happened here.

On the way south, before he turned for Illyricum, he searched for Apollonia, but to no avail; the life of a camp follower was an itinerant one and if he picked up a trace it soon went cold until finally he knew he had to leave such a thing to fortune or God. It was only years later and by chance, while on campaign, he found out she had died in delivery and when he enquired as to when it had happened, it was reasonable to suppose the child might be his own.

They had performed the obsequies by the banks of the Danube, with an obelisk to mark the spot where the other men of the family had perished. Their last act was to set in stone and dedicate, near to the gate by which the inhabitants entered Dorostorum, the promised plaque after which she had naturally enquired as to what he would now do.

‘I was born to be a soldier, Mother and that is my destiny, to live like my father did as a Roman. May God aid me to prosper in my choice and I hope the soul of my father and brothers will be there to guide me.’