The Scourge of God Read online

  The emperor’s face startled sentries.

  “Caesar! We didn’t expect—”

  “Get out of the way.”

  Honoria’s palace was quiet, the tapestries and curtains bleached of color by the night and the oil lamps guttering. Domes and vaults bore tile mosaics of saints who looked serenely down at the sins below, the air languid with incense and perfume. The emperor’s entourage strode down dark marble hallways too swiftly for any challenge; and Honoria’s chamber guardian, a huge Nubian named Goar, went down with a grunt from a crossbow bolt fired from twenty paces before he even understood who was approaching. He struck the marble with a meaty thud. A wine boy who startled awake, and who might have cried warning, had his neck snapped like a chicken’s. Then the soldiers burst into the princess’s quarters, knocking aside tables of honeyed sweets, kicking a cushion into the shallow pool of the bath, and butting open the door of her sleeping chamber.

  The couple jerked awake, clutching and crying out behind the gauze of the curtains as a dozen dark shapes surrounded their vast bed. Was this assassination?

  “Light,” Valentinian ordered.

  His men had brought torches, and they turned the scene bright and lurid. The steward, Eugenius, slid away on his backside until he bumped against the headboard, his hands seeking to cover himself. He had the look of a man who has stumbled off a cliff and, in one last moment of crystalline dread, knows there is nothing he can do to save himself. Honoria was crawling toward the other side of the bed, naked except for the silken sheet draped over her, her hip bewitching even in her terror, clawing as if distance from her commoner lover would provide some kind of deniability.

  “So it is true,” the emperor breathed.

  “How dare you break into my bedchamber!”

  “We have come to save you, child,” the bishop said.

  The exposure of his sister strangely excited Valentinian. He’d been insulted by her mockery, but now who looked the fool? She was on humiliating display for a dozen men, her sins apparent to all, her shoulder bare, her hair undone, her breasts dragging on the sheet. The situation gave him heady satisfaction. He glanced back. Goar’s prostrate form was just visible in the entry, blood pooling on the marble like a little lake. It was his sister’s vanity and ambition that had doomed those around her. As she had doomed herself! The emperor spied a golden cord holding the drapery around the bed and yanked, pulling it free. The diaphanous shelter dropped to the floor, exposing the couple even more, and then he stepped forward and began flailing with the cord at Honoria’s hips and buttocks as she flinched under the sheet, his breath quick and anxious.

  “You’re rutting with a servant and plotting to elevate him above me!”

  She writhed and howled with outrage, pulling the covering away from poor Eugenius in order to wrap herself. “Damn you! I’ll tell Mother!”

  “Mother told me when and where I’d find you!” He took satisfaction in the way that betrayal stung. They had always competed for Placidia’s affection. He whipped and whipped, humiliating more than injuring her, until finally he was out of breath and had to stop, panting. Both he and his sister were flushed.

  The soldiers dragged the steward out of bed and wrenched his arms behind his back, forcing him to his knees. His manhood was shrunken, and he’d not had time to muster a defense. He looked in beseeching horror toward the princess as if she could save him, but all she had were dreams, not power. She was a woman! And now, in gambling for her affections, Eugenius had doomed himself.

  Valentinian turned to study the would-be emperor of Ravenna and Rome. Honoria’s lover was handsome, yes, and no doubt intelligent to have risen to palace steward, but a fool to try to climb above his station. Lust had bred opportunity and ambition had encouraged pride, but in the end hers was a pathetic infatuation. “Look at him,” Valentinian mocked, “the next Caesar.” His gaze shifted downward. “We should cut it off.”

  Eugenius’s voice broke. “Don’t harm Honoria. It was I who—”

  “Harm Honoria?” Valentinian’s laugh was contemptuous. “She’s royalty, steward, her bloodline purple, and has no need of a plea from you. She deserves a spanking but will come to no real harm because she’s incapable of giving it. See how helpless she is?”

  “She never thought of betraying you—”

  “Silence!” He slashed with the cord again, this time across the steward’s mouth. “Stop worrying about my slut of a sister and start pleading for yourself! Do you think I don’t know what you two were planning?”

  “Valentinian, stop!” Honoria begged. “It’s not what you think. It’s not what you’ve been told. Your advisers and magicians have made you insane.”

  “Have they? Yet what I expected to find I found—is that not right, bishop?”

  “Yours is a brother’s duty,” Milo said.

  “As is this,” the emperor said. “Do it.”

  A big tribune knotted a scarf around Eugenius’s neck. “Please,” the woman groaned. “I love him.”

  “That’s why it is necessary.”

  The tribune pulled, his forearms bulging. Eugenius began to kick, struggling uselessly against the men who held him. Honoria began screaming. His face purpled, his tongue erupted in a vain search for breath, his eyes bulged, his muscles shuddered. Then his look glazed, he slumped; and after several long minutes that made sure he was dead, his body was allowed to fall to the floor.

  Honoria was sobbing.

  “You have been brought back to God,” the bishop soothed.

  “Damn all of you to Hell.”

  The soldiers laughed.

  “Sister, I bring you good news,” Valentinian said. “Your days of spinsterhood are over. Since you’ve been unable to find a proper suitor yourself, I’ve arranged for your marriage to Flavius Bassus Herculanus in Rome.”

  “Herculanus! He’s fat and old! I’ll never marry him!” It was as hideous a fate as she could imagine.

  “You’ll rot in Ravenna until you do.”

  Honoria refused to marry and Valentinian held to his word to confine her, despite her begging. Her pleas to her mother were ignored. What torture to be locked in her palace! What humiliation to gain release only by marrying a decrepit aristocrat! Her lover’s death had killed a part of her, she believed; her brother had strangled not just Eugenius but her own pride, her belief in family, and any loyalty to Valentinian. He had strangled her heart! So, early in the following year, when the nights were long and Honoria had entirely despaired of her future, she sent for her eunuch.

  Hyacinth had been castrated as a child, placed in a hot bath where his testicles were crushed. It had been cruel, of course, and yet the mutilation that had denied him marriage and fatherhood had allowed him to win a position of trust in the imperial household. The eunuch had often mused on his fate, sometimes relieved that he had been exempted from the physical passions of those around him. If he felt less like a man because he’d been gelded, he suffered less, too, he believed. The pain of emasculation was a distant memory, and his privileged position a daily satisfaction. He could not be perceived as a threat like Eugenius. As a result, eunuchs often lived far longer than those they served.

  Hyacinth had become not just Honoria’s servant but also her friend and confidant. In the days after Eugenius’s execution, his arms had comforted her as she had sobbed uncontrollably, his beardless cheek against hers, murmuring agreement as she stoked the flames of hatred for her brother. The emperor was a beast, his heart a stone, and the prospect of the princess’s marriage to an aging senator in tired Rome was as appalling to the eunuch as it was to his mistress.

  Now she had summoned him in the night. “Hyacinth, I am sending you away.”

  He blanched. He could no more survive in the outside world than a domestic pet. “Please, my lady. Yours is the only kindness I have known.”

  “And sometimes your kindness seems the only that I have. Even my mother, who aspires to sainthood, ignores me until I submit. So we are both prisoners here, dear eun
uch, are we not?”

  “Until you marry Herculanus.”

  “And is that not a prison of another sort?”

  He sighed. “Perhaps the marriage is a fate you must accept.”

  Honoria shook her head. She was very beautiful and enjoyed the pleasures of the bed too much to throw her life away on an old patriarch. The reputation of Herculanus was of a man stern, humorless, and cold. Valentinian’s plan to marry her off would snuff out her own life as effectively as he had snuffed out Eugenius’s. “Hyacinth, do you recall how my mother, Galla Placidia, was taken by the Visigoths after the sack of Rome and married to their chieftain, Athaulf?”

  “Before I was born, princess.”

  “When Athaulf died, Mother returned to Rome, but in the meantime she had helped civilize the Visigoths. She said once that her few years with them were not too terrible, and I think she has some spicy memories of her first husband. The barbarian men are strong, you know, stronger than the breed we now have in Italy.”

  “Your mother had many strange travels and adventures before assuring the elevation of your brother.”

  “She is a woman of the world who sailed with armies, married two men, and looked beyond the palace walls as she now looks to Heaven. She always urged me to do the same.”

  “All revere the augusta.”

  Honoria gripped her eunuch’s shoulders, her gaze intense. “This is why we must follow her brave example, Hyacinth. There is a barbarian even stronger than the leader of the Visigoths. He is a barbarian stronger than my brother— a barbarian who is the strongest man in the world. You know of whom I speak?”

  Now the eunuch felt the slow dawning of dread. “You mean the king of the Huns.” Hyacinth’s voice was a whisper, as if they were speaking of Satan. The entire world feared Attila and prayed that his plundering eye would fall on some other part of the Empire. Reports said that he looked like a monkey, bathed in blood, and killed anyone who dared stand up to him—except for his wives. He enjoyed, they said, hundreds of wives, each as lovely as he was grotesque.

  “I want you to go to Attila, Hyacinth.” Honoria’s eyes gleamed. Strong women relied not just on their wits but also on their alliances with strong men. The Huns had the most terrifying army in the world, and mere word from their leader would make her brother quail. If Attila asked for her, Valentinian would have to let her go. If Attila forbade her marriage to Herculanus, Valentinian would have to accede. Wouldn’t he?

  “Go to Attila!” Hyacinth gasped. “My lady, I scarcely go from one end of Ravenna to the other. I’m not a traveler. Nor an ambassador. I’m not even a man.”

  “I’ll give you men as escort. No one will miss you. I want you to find your courage and find him, because both of our futures depend on it. I want you to explain what has happened to me. Carry my signet ring to him as proof of what you say. Hyacinth, my dearest slave, I want you to ask Attila the Hun to rescue me.”

  II

  THE MAIDEN

  OF AXIOPOLIS

  Father, what have you done?”

  Seven hundred miles east of Ravenna, where the valley of the Danube broadens as that great river nears the Black Sea, the Hun were finally inside a small Roman colonial city called Axiopolis. Like all such Roman cities, it had initially been laid out in the neat grid pattern originating with the legionary camp, its forums, temples, and governing houses placed like board pieces in their logic. Like all such cities, it had been walled in the third century, when wars of unrest grew. Like all such cities, its pagan temples had become churches in the fourth, after Constantine’s conversion to Christianity. And like all such cities it had trembled with unease at each sacking of brethren settlements up the Danube.

  Now the Huns were here. Their entry was like the advent of a storm: the sound a rising wail of terror that spread outward from the gates in a siren wave. With the sound came the false dawn of fire, orange and pulsing. In her family’s dining room Ilana tried to shut out what she had dreaded so long to hear: oaths and cries, the clatter of unshod horses on stone paving, the desperate grunts and clangs of futile resistance, and the low hiss and rumble of fire. She glimpsed from the corner of her eye the birdlike flash of an arrow winging down the street, having missed its mark and now on its way to another target at random, a humming hornet in stygian gloom. Her neighbors were running as if from the gates of Hell. The apocalypse had finally come.

  “I think I have saved us, Ilana,” Simon Publius said, his voice’s quaver betraying his doubt. The plump merchant had developed a thousand-year-old face in recent weeks, his jowls sagging, his sleep-robbed eyes hollow, his pink skin sweaty and mottled like rancid meat. Now he had bet his family’s survival on treason.

  “You opened the gates to them, didn’t you?”

  “They would have broken through anyway.”

  The street was filling with horsemen shouting in a harsh, ugly tongue. Strangely, she could make out the particular noise of swords cutting through the air that sounds like rending fabric and then a deeper thunk when they struck. It was as if all her senses were heightened and she could hear every cry, every whisper, and every prayer. “But we were going to wait for the legions.”

  “As Marcianopolis waited? Then there would be no mercy, daughter. I have Edeco’s promise that by aiding him, some of us will be spared.”

  There was a shriek and then a gabble of hopeless pleading, making clear that not everyone would be spared. She peeked out. The dark below was filled with fleeing and thrashing forms and the occasional moonlike appearance of a human face, mouth agape in the glare of a torch before it was sucked away. Ilana felt numb. She’d been afraid for so long that it seemed an eternity of fear: frightened for years, really, as horrid tales filtered down the river. Then the paralyzing dread when the Huns and their allies finally appeared under a plume of smokelike dust, just two weeks ago. They had surrounded Axiopolis at a gallop and threatened annihilation if the city did not surrender.

  No such surrender had come, despite the pleas and urging of some. The inhabitants had the pride of Moesia and the fire of Thrace in their veins, and most wanted to fight. There had been brave Roman resistance since: fierce stands; moments of encouraging heroism; and even small, momentary victories. But there had also been a growing hopelessness as the dead and wounded were carried down off the walls, each day seeming grimmer, each night longer, each rumor wilder, each heartbroken widow and orphaned child adding to the city’s fatalism. Incense curled in the churches, prayers echoed up to heaven, priests paraded on the walls, messengers tried to creep away to summon help, and yet no relief arrived. The modest stone walls began to come apart like crumbling cheese. The roofs were pockmarked with fire. Outside, crops were burned and boats destroyed. Inside, doughty old men who had been given spears were picked off the walls because they stood too long, trying to see enemies with aging eyes. So Ilana’s mind had taken refuge in dull despair, welcoming an end instead of fearing it. What was so good about this life anyway? She only hoped death would not hurt too much. But now her father, the city’s most prominent merchant, had betrayed them.

  “They would have killed us all, once they stormed the walls,” he said. “This way . . .”

  “They’re cavalry,” she replied numbly. “They lack skill...”

  “Their mercenaries know sieges and siege engines. I had to do something, child.”

  Child? How long ago that seemed! Child? Her great love, Tasio, the man she was to marry, had died on day three, shot through the eye with a Hun arrow and succumbing after four long hours of screaming agony. She had never dreamed the body could leak so much blood so ceaselessly. Child? That was a word for blessed ignorance, creatures that still had hope, innocents who might someday have children of their own. Now . . .

  “I’ve hidden some coin. They have promised safe passage. We’ll go to Constantinople and find new lives there. Your aunts, the servants . . . his spies promised all of us could go. More will be spared, too, I’m sure. I’ve saved many lives this night.”

&nb
sp; She wanted to believe him. She longed to believe in an elder, and in the future. But now there was only an endless furious now, that storm wind of screaming, the pattering hail of arrows, and the pitiless grunts of warriors taking what they wished. “Father . . .”

  “Come.” He jerked her into reluctant action. “We’ve to meet the chieftain by the Church of Saint Paul. God will protect us, child.”

  The streets were a surf of churning humanity that their own frightened little group breasted by pushing like a phalanx past groaning bodies, smashed doorways, and lurid flames. They clutched useless things: an ancestral bust, an old wedding chest, a sheaf of accounts from a business now destroyed, a frightened dog. The sacking was anarchic, one home invaded and another passed by, one group of refugees slain and another ignored as its members huddled in the shadows. Here a pagan claimed that Jupiter had saved him, there a Christian rejoiced that Jesus had saved her, and yet people of all faiths were equally butchered. Everything had become random chance, death and life as whimsical as a butterfly’s wing. The Huns galloped into sacristies and kitchens without fear of resistance, shooting arrows as if at timid game, and contemptuous of anyone slow enough to be trampled under. The only mercy was that night made impossible the identification of her friends, relatives, shopkeepers, and teachers. Death had become anonymous. The city was being snuffed without names being called out.

  When Ilana and her father arrived in the forum, the church was being crammed with citizens seeking miracles from a God who seemed to have forsaken them. A cluster of Huns watched the Romans run inside the sanctuary without interfering, instead conferring on horseback with each other as if commenting on a parade. Occasionally they’d send messengers galloping down the streets with orders, suggesting there was more discipline to the sacking than the young woman had assumed. The fires were growing brighter.