He chewed some kernels.
‘In the summer of 390, eight years before my birth, the great city of Thessalonika stood the mother city of all Illyria. The people of the city, we chattering Greeks, ever argumentative, volatile, full of life and bustle. And the city was well walled around, well garrisoned. The captain of the garrison was one Botheric, a German by birth. Among his slaves was a boy, a beautiful boy – you understand. One of the Circus charioteers loved this boy. He lured him home and raped him. Botheric had the charioteer thrown in prison.
‘The common people of Thessalonika, who like the common people of any city love their sport before all else, and will forgive their sportsmen any crime, corruption or rapine so long as they perform well and give them pleasure – the common people were furious at being deprived of their favourite charioteer, the boy-rapist. They rioted. Botheric and one of his most senior officers were spat on, dragged through the streets, butchered. You know what the mob is like when their moral indignation is up: all on behalf of a boy-rapist. Emperor Theodosius the First – the Great, grandfather to both today’s emperors – residing in Milan, heard news of the uprising, and in his fury ordered a punitive massacre. We know all about the Roman urge to commit punitive massacres of civilian populations, do we not? It is an old habit.’
I said nothing.
‘Only after the order was sent did the Christian bishops manage to persuade Theodosius to remit his bloody sentence, so against the teaching of Christ. He despatched a second message but it was too late. The garrison at Thessalonika, already enraged at the murder of Botheric, took their revenge with alacrity. In the name of their emperor, the games-mad people were invited to more games – a little joke. Once in the circus, the gates were barred and they were slaughtered, all of them, without distinction of age or sex. The carnage continued for three hours. Some say seven thousand were slaughtered that day, some say more than fifteen thousand, “sacrificed to the manes of Botheric.” After the massacre in the circus, the troops spilled out onto the streets and continued their work.
‘Among their victims was a father who pleaded with them, offering his own life for that of his wife and two young sons and his daughter. You have guessed it. My family. The troops were unimpressed. They killed the father, the two sons, the infant daughter, and the howling mother all together. Except the mother survived, wounded and bleeding, beneath the bloody corpses of her family.’
He paused for a while, mastering himself.
‘My mother survived. That is the correct word. She endured. She drank. She sold herself. When pregnant she administered her own abortions. Later she failed and bore another son. Miraculously, he was a healthy infant, grew to healthy adulthood. Later there was a daughter, Pelagia, always thin and weak. Her brother loved her deeply.’
Again he stopped. I waited. He swallowed and started again.
‘She, the mother, died when her children were still very young. She was no longer drinking, no longer selling herself. She was trying to care for her two children by unknown fathers. But she was so broken that not even her children could heal her. Of course not. There is no healing for what she experienced. The two children, then aged no more than six and four years old or so – they remembered their birthdays, but not the year of their birth – had no choice. The boy took his sister’s hand and walked out of the wooden shack where their dead mother lay, and went down to the port, and sold himself and his sister into slavery. They were taken to Italy. Their owners maltreated them. They ran away. On a road going north out of Italy, they met up with a runaway Hun boy, a savage. A little while later, Pelagia died and they buried her in the mountains.’
Another silence. I dared to look at him and his face was streaked with tears. But, when he resumed, by supreme effort of will his voice remained low and steady.
‘As for the slaveboy and the savage, they stayed together through many adventures. The rest… The rest you know.’
‘Great God.’
‘As for Theodosius the Great, Archbishop Ambrose was so disgusted with the massacre that he refused to give the emperor communion, refused even to admit him into his cathedral. A brave act. Eventually Theodosius got down on his knees, and begged for forgiveness. The Christian Church had conquered the Emperor.
‘But you see why my feelings about Rome must needs be… qualified.’
Yes. I saw.
10
In my last encounter, I was summoned to speak with Attila himself. This came as a great shock to me. But he had heard I was the official Byzantine recorder, and so, as he said dryly, ‘History is in your hands.’ He wanted me to know some things – many things. We met after breakfast, and he was still talking, I was still writing, trembling less than at first, when the sun went down. Many of the things in this chronicle came from his lips: his boyhood, his struggles, his uniting of the Scythian tribes. It was a grand and terrible story, and the hours passed without my noticing. He expressed few opinions, and he asked no questions; but he answered mine willingly enough. One thing I wanted to know was his date of birth. I was there to assist the recording of the truth, as he saw it, and so he told me. At the end, he said I was free to talk to anyone in the camp, for he trusted his people’s discretion; then he gave me a small gold coin and dismissed me. He never even asked my name. The coin was beaded round the rim, and bore a crudely stamped eagle. It was an authentic and very rare Hunnic solidus.
At dinner that night we were offered koumiss, the Hunnish drink made from fermented mare’s milk and very strong. The wolf-lords drank deeply as always, and yet even after their eighth or ninth goblet seemed barely affected. I, on the other hand, could feel a foolish smile spreading across my face after only the second goblet, and my loins beginning to stir and warm again at the thought of my flaxen-haired Burgundian girl. I wondered if it might be possible.. . again… tonight…
Then suddenly I was very sober indeed.
Attila had taken the floor in the middle of the tent. We paused in our eating. Everyone fell silent. It was time for his address to us; but not, alas, the address we had hoped for.
‘We came together in peace and friendship,’ he began.
We all applauded, our collective dishonesty breathtaking. Our applause soon died away.
‘But alas, our guests had other plans. For tonight,’ – and he took some bread and broke it, in dumbshow blasphemy – ‘I am to be betrayed, and handed over to my enemies. Except that’ – he popped a morsel of the bread in his mouth, though he reviled the stuff as fit only for farmers, and chewed as he spoke, his eyes glimmering, for he was enjoying this – ‘except that, unlike your god Christ’ – he spat the bread out – ‘I have an exceptional spy network.’
He was joined by his warlords, the clever Geukchu and the wary Greek, Orestes.
Aetius beside me laid down his knife and said softly, ‘What is this?’
The weapons of the wolf-lords were outside the tent, far away. Within the tent, Huns had already unsheathed their swords.
‘He would not dare,’ I said.
‘Oh, he would dare,’ said Aetius, clearly unafraid. ‘But it would serve little purpose.’ He looked on, curious rather than afraid. Myself, I was already wondering how I might slip away to the privy.
Attila strode around the tent, his voice strong and commanding, his whole figure with the bearing of absolute power. Never have I seen such bearing – except in Aetius. They were like brothers in that.
‘Our guests, you see, these noble Byzantines, planned that I should be assassinated tonight. As if my death alone would save them. Ha!’
He was the only one in the tent, among a hundred, who laughed, albeit with a laugh as harsh and excoriating as sharkskin. Everyone else remained frozen.