Now he withdrew his right hand hurriedly from under his lavish robes and leaped to his feet with a cry of indignation. The golden platter of truffles shot from his lap and fell clanging to the marble floor like a dropped cymbal.
‘Mother!’ he cried. ‘How many times have I told you…’
She ignored him, and ordered me to unroll the scroll on a large oak table. I did so, and a beautiful map of our beloved empire was revealed, all illuminated in a gorgeous array of coloured inks on venerable ivory-hued linen paper.
Galla placed a cool forefinger somewhere beyond the borders, in Trans-Pannonia. Then she traced it south, over the Danube and into the heart of Illyricum and Moesia.
‘Should an enemy army attack here, at this point,’ she said, ‘between Sirmium and Viminacium, say, whose responsibility would it be?’
‘Enemy?’ gabbled Valentinian. ‘What enemy?’
Again his mother ignored him. ‘Whose territory is it? Yours, or the Emperor Theodosius’?’
‘I, I…’ stammered the emperor, staring open-mouthed at her. To my shame, I saw his right hand creep between the folds of his long robe, like a little boy clutching himself for comfort in a moment of anxiety. I turned my face away. God’s appointed vice-regent upon earth. The Lord of Western Christendom.
‘Here!’ she cried icily, rapping her fingernail on the map.
Valentinian looked down where she pointed, his eyes swimming, uncertain.
‘Sirmium is, is…’ he stammered. He couldn’t think straight. His mind kept going back to his truffles. Where had they got to? It felt as if one had got stuck to the bottom of his sandal. ‘Sirmium is mine, obviously. At the junction of the Danube and the, what is it? I can never remember. The…’
‘The Sava,’ said Galla.
‘Is it?’ The emperor laughed, a manic, high-pitched giggle. ‘But then after that, this bit… I mean, it’s a bit vague, it’s… Singidunum is theirs, isn’t it?’
Galla Placidia looked at me for enlightenment.
‘Singidunum falls within the prefecture of the Praefectus Praetoria per Illyricum,’ I affirmed, ‘and therefore is also under Your Majesty’s rule.’
‘Is it?’ Valentinian looked like a child who had just been given an unexpected present. ‘It’s a while since we have toured our Danube borders, I confess.’
‘And from Singidunum eastwards to Viminacium and beyond is under Theodosius?’ asked Galla. She was talking to me. I nodded. ‘Viminacium, at least, is strongly fortified, is it not?’
‘Does it need to be?’ asked Valentinian. ‘Why?’ He looked very anxious again. ‘Why does it need to be fortified?’
At the risk of losing my head, I ignored the emperor and answered his mother. The words of the most recent report by the clerk-of-the-works at Viminacium still all too clear in my memory. Scarcity of funds… months of back-pay still awaited… consequent depletion of manpower… numerous desertions… labour costs and shortage of decent materials… decay of the Danube fleet
…lack of communication with Aquincum… walls in disrepair… gatehouse extremely unstable… bridge requires compete rebuild.. . crumbling river embankments causing dangerous subsidence of western walls… Nor was the story any better at Sirmium or Singidunum or Aquincum or Carnuntum or any other frontier fortification you cared to mention.
‘I believe,’ I said carefully, and truthfully, ‘that the capture of Viminacium would still require skilled siegework.’
Galla understood. No mere nomad army, however numerous, could capture a Roman legionary fortress.
‘And the Seventh is still stationed there?’
The Seventh. The once-legendary Legio VII Claudia Pia Fidelis. Like all the legions, it was a mere shadow of its former self. A handful of poorly equipped centuries, going to seed in a damp and decaying riverside fort. Playing dice, quarrelling, drinking cheap wine. No longer even able to seduce the local girls, not without their soldiers’ pay in their purses. Five hundred men at most, in place of the old five thousand. Aetius had done his best, but it was never enough. There was never enough time, enough money, enough urgency.
‘Its numbers are not what they were,’ I said. ‘But yes, the Seventh is still stationed there.’
Galla knew it all. She also listed the XIV at Carnuntum, the I at Brigetio, the fierce IV Scythica at Singidunum, and the II at Aquincum, along with the Danube fleet, or the dispirited remnants of it.
She looked at the map again, and tapped the barbarian lands beyond the river, the rich plains between the Danube and the Tisza. On the map this land was still called by its ancient name, derived from the people who once lived there, and Valentinian, craning over, read it out loud.
‘Sarmatian Jazyges,’ he repeated slowly, almost lovingly. ‘Sarmatian Jazyges. I like that name.’ He looked at me and smiled in way that I can only describe as witless. ‘I wish I had a friend called Sarmatian Jazyges.’
‘It is right on the border,’ his mother snapped at him, ‘and for a reason. And that reason is called Attila.’
Valentinian stared at her.
‘I have gathered the intelligence I required,’ she said crisply. ‘Attila is indeed their king. His brother, Bleda, is already dead, who would have been our ally, or at least our neutral feoderatus. Attila will not be our ally. Attila will be our enemy. That is why he has come and camped with his vast horde, in’ – she almost spat the words at her startled son – ‘Sarmatian Jazyges. He will invade across the river shortly, at the precise intersection between our two empires, to confuse us and set us against one another. I know that he is no fool. He is a man of the utmost cunning. He will attack here, at Singidunum, or close by. We will dither. He will ride on. He will ride at the head of a hundred thousand horsemen, and we had better be ready.’ She was nearly trembling with suppressed rage as she looked her son in his quavering eye. ‘Your Majesty.’
Suddenly Valentinian snapped. There was danger. He did not understand, he was bewildered and frightened. He even trotted round in a little circle, and when he spoke it was in something of a wail.
‘Why? But why? Why do they want to attack me? Who are they? What do they want?’ Then he grew angry and tyrannical, his abject fear turning to aggression and then to cruelty, as is often the case with cowards. ‘We will attack them! We will march against them! See how they like it!’ He tried to draw himself up, and he touched his fingertips to his purple stole and affected a grander style. ‘How dare they insult Our Imperial Majesty or impugn Our Sovereign Territory!’
‘We should recall General Aetius,’ said Galla Placidia, trying to remain calm, ‘no matter what offence he has caused Your Imperial Majesty in the past. He still commands great loyalty among the legions, and he knew this Attila in boyhood. He was a hostage in the camp of the Huns. They are of the same age.’ She tried to conceal her distaste. ‘The general even speaks some of their barbaric tongue.’
Valentinian looked darkly at his mother. ‘He is as much of a threat as any Huns.’
Galla shook her head. ‘No, he is-’
Valentinian’s tantrum was instantaneous. ‘Do you contradict me, woman? Remember who you are! And who we are!’
Galla bit her thin lip.
‘That Aetius is nothing but trouble! He has never been anything but brusque to me!’ He slapped his hand down on the map. ‘I will not have him back. I’ll not!’ He stamped his foot, and when he moved away again, a single white truffle remained behind, squashed flat upon the marble. ‘Where is he now? With the Goths? With those great hairy lairy Germans he gets on so well with, who stink of onions and rancid butter?’ He looked rapidly between the empress and me, his tongue stretched right out, for some reason, the tip almost touching his chin, and his forefingers waggling on the top of his head, perhaps to resemble horns. ‘Hm? Hm?’
I tried not to betray myself. ‘At the court of Theodoric, Your Majesty, that is correct.’
‘They must be punished! And the Huns, too, they must be punished! They must be punished first. They must be warned – given a warning shot, like an arrow, like a flying arrow.’ Valentinian was babbling now, pacing up and down the chamber, pulling the fingers of his left hand with his right and chewing his lips to ribbons. In a moment I feared he would start dribbling. ‘We are not afraid, that is the thing. A punitive expedition, that is the thing. Eutropius!’