Chapter 18
I expected the Vandals to flee north, to take shelter inside Carthage, but instead they turned west into the deep deserts of Numidia. The reason for this, as I was curtly informed by the man who had dragged me from the field, was that the walls of Carthage were in a state of disrepair.
“The city is no sanctuary,” he said, “we neglected to rebuild the old Roman defences. God has punished us for our complacency.”
God was never far from his thoughts, or from those of his comrades. After the first mad dash from the battlefield it became clear that the Romans were not in pursuit, and so they halted to rest the horses. Every one of the guardsman knelt in the sand and folded their hands in prayers, while their captain exhorted the Almighty to deliver them from evil.
Gelimer did not join in their devotions. He sat drooping in the saddle, looking every inch a defeated man. Tears plodded down his cheeks and formed runnels in the coating of dust from the rout. His extraordinary eyes were red-rimmed and contained a world of misery.
“Do you wonder why I do not pray with them?” he said to me, “it is because I cannot. Like so many of my subjects, they follow the Arian heresy, while I am of Rome.”
He referred to the bitter divide between Arianism and Roman Catholicism. The followers of the teachings of Arius, a heretical Egyptian priest, believed that the Son of God was essentially inferior to God the Father, and denied the sanctity of the Trinity. Most of the Vandals were devout Arians, but Gelimer had converted to Catholicism. Thus with one stroke he had alienated a large portion of his subjects, and could only regain their love by being successful in war.
His defeat at Decimum would, I thought, surely finish Gelimer and force him to abdicate and flee into exile. The king he had deposed, Hilderic, would be restored to the throne and the war ended, for Hilderic had always been a friend of Rome.
In the meantime I pondered some way of recovering Caledfwlch from the defeated king. My mind was fixed on this object as we rode deeper into the trackless desert. The great copper orb of the sun slowly sank into the west, and its dying rays cast a spectral red glow over the endless sand dunes. We might have been in another world.
Gelimer’s army was scattered to the winds. Only sixteen loyal guardsmen remained with him in the desert, and even these did not seem to bear much love for him. They resented his Catholicism, and blamed him, with some justice, for the defeat at Decimum. But he was not finished yet.
When we made camp that night, huddled in our cloaks around a spluttering fire, he ordered me to sit with him, out of earshot of his guards. My wrists were still bound, and while we talked he fed me bits of bread and dried meat from his own rations.
“The desert is cold at night, eh?” he began, crossing his long legs and staring up at the vast purple arch of the evening sky, already dotted with stars.
“Yes, lord,” I said cautiously. My attention was all on Caledfwlch. I prayed silently for the strength to burst the tight leather cords that secured my wrists.
For a man who had just suffered a catastrophic defeat, Gelimer was in good spirits. His sorrow for his late brother Ammatus, which had seemed so all-consuming, had vanished.
“My men are talking about me,” he said with a little laugh, “some of them were Hilderic’s guards before they were mine.”
I moistened my lips, wondering if I dared try and sow a little discord. “Perhaps they want Hilderic back as their king,” I murmured, “old loyalties tend to die hard.”
“They can’t have him. As soon as I heard that your army had landed on African soil, I had my dear cousin and his chief supporters killed. I should have done it months ago, but was reluctant to anger Justinian. He sent Belisarius against me anyway.”
This rocked me a little. With Hilderic gone, so too was any hope of peace between the Vandals and Rome. I marvelled at Gelimer’s folly, and his blithely callous tone.
“Tell me your name, Roman,” he asked, “and something about yourself. What was the reason for your extraordinary behaviour today?”
“My name is Coel ap Amhar ap Arthur,” I replied, “I am a Briton, not a Roman citizen, though I have spent much of my life in Constantinople. I tried to kill you because I want that sword you carry. It is mine by right of inheritance.”
Gelimer looked at me with an expression that reminded me of my brief conversation with Antonina. It said: you are an animal barely deserving of my notice, but you just performed a trick. Can you do another?
“This,” he said, tapping Caledfwlch’s hilt, “is Crocea Mors, the Yellow Death, once owned by Julius Caesar. How can you possibly have any claim to it?”
I told him, of my grandfather and my mother’s flight to Gaul from Britain after the disaster of Camlann, and how we had journeyed to Constantinople. He listened with interest. When I mentioned Domitius his mouth dropped open.
“I thought you were just a clever liar,” he said, fingering his scrubby little beard as he studied me, “but your story rings true. The Roman officer named Domitius did come to Carthage, many years ago, as part of a diplomatic mission sent by the Emperor Anastasius. Hilderic recognised the sword he carried for what it was, and offered Domitius a casket full of gold coins for it. Domitius refused, so Hilderic poisoned his food — a clever, subtle poison that induces symptoms akin to malaria. As he lay dying, thieves in the employ of my cousin stole Crocea Mors and hid it until Domitius was safely buried and his colleagues had sailed back to Constantinople.”
He drew Caledfwlch and held the blade up to the fading light. I was reminded of Owain doing the same thing, in the cavern by the shores of Less Britain, a lifetime ago. The sight of that silvery blade made the breath catch in my throat, and filled me with a deep longing that overrode my fear of Gelimer.
“Great king,” I said hoarsely, “I am a poor man, alone in the world, and am like to always be. No-one cares whether I live or die. Very little is mine, but that little I would have. To me that sword is more than just a tool for killing. It is the missing link in the chain of my life. I beg you, if you have any sense of justice and mercy, let me have it, and let me go.”
This was the most impassioned plea I could muster, but Gelimer wasn’t listening. His eyes were fixed on Caledfwlch. As I spoke his lips moved silently.
“I read the future in the depths of the blade,” he breathed, “God speaks to me through hand-forged steel. This is a holy weapon. A gift from on high.”
He abruptly stood up and rammed Caledfwlch back into its sheath. “At dawn we shall make for the plain of Builla,” he barked at his guards, “there we shall send out riders to rally our scattered forces. We have enough yet living to oppose the Romans, and my brother Zano still has an army in Sardinia. Belisarius may have won a victory, but soon he shall have to face the entire Vandal nation in battle!”
After a freezing and virtually sleepless night we set off west at the break of dawn, further into the desert. The plain of Builla lay on the road leading to Numidia, some four days’ march from Carthage. It was as bare and desolate a spot as any in Africa, but often used by the Vandals as a rallying point.
A few of Gelimer’s soldiers were already encamped there, and cheered him as he rode out of the wilderness.
“The war has but started,” he cried as they gathered around him. “I still have Caesar’s sword, and God marches with us!”
He ordered a tent to be erected for him, and sat under the canvas scribbling a torrent of letters. These he gave to the most loyal and willing of his men, who sped away on horseback to summon Gelimer’s surviving allies to Builla.
Gelimer also dispatched spies to assess what was happening at Carthage. They brought back news that Belisarius’s army had occupied the city, which drove him into a passionate rage.
“Did they not bar the gates against him?” he fumed, “we left enough soldiers inside the city to defend it, at least for a few days.”