Theodoric beckoned me forward through the wood railing to stand where we could talk without being overheard. I bowed, trying to remember the formal manners of Maximinus, my diplomatic mentor, and marveling at the odyssey that had brought me here. “I bring you greetings, King Theodoric, from your friend and ally Flavius Aetius. Great happenings shake the world, and great deeds are needed.”
“General Aetius has already sent me such greetings a hundred times in missives this winter,” the barbarian replied with a deep, skeptical voice. “The greetings always come with tidings, and the tidings with requests. Is this not so, Hagan?” He turned to his scribe.
“The Roman wants us to fight his battle for him,” the scribe said.
“Not for him, with him,” I corrected. “Attila is marching on the West, and if we don’t stand together, all of us will perish separately, frightened and alone.”
“I have heard this talk from Aetius before,” the king replied. “He is a master at playing on the fears of the tribes.
Always there is some dire peril that requires us to muster our armies for Rome and shed our blood for his Empire. Yet even as he begs for our help, he is reluctant to promise how many legions he will muster or what other tribes will join.
Nor can he explain why Attila should be my enemy. I have no quarrel with the Huns.”
This would be difficult. “The world has changed, sire.” I recited what Theodoric already knew: the plea of Honoria, the accession of Marcian in the East, and the claim of the Frankish prince Cloda in the north. He listened impatiently.
“And then there is the matter of the Greek doctor Eudoxius,” I tried.
“Who?” The king turned in curiosity to Hagan.
“I think he is referring to the man who stirred up the Bagaudae in the north,” the scribe said, “an intellectual who led a rabble.”
“In the revolt that Aetius crushed a few years ago,” I added.
“Ah, I remember this Greek now. What about him?”
Theodoric asked.
“He fled to Attila.”
“So?”
“He persuaded Attila to send him as embassy to Gaiseric in Carthage. It was when Eudoxius came back from the Vandals that the Huns decided to march on the West.” At these words something moved in the shadows, jerking as if startled. It was a shrouded figure, I realized, listening from an alcove. Who was that?
“Gaiseric?” Theodoric’s gaze narrowed at mention of the Vandal king. “Why is Attila talking to the Vandals?”
“An equally pressing question, sire, is why are the Vandals talking to the Huns?”
I had at last struck a nerve. Attila was distant, and the Roman emperor Valentinian impotent, but Gaiseric and his haughty Vandals were the one group the Visigoths truly feared. They were a powerful tribe of Germanic origin like themselves, lodged in Africa, and no doubt they coveted Aquitania. I could see that this news had a powerful effect.
I remembered hearing that the Vandals had humiliated the Visigoths by rejecting and mutilating Theodoric’s daughter.
“Gaiseric is marching with the Huns?” he asked.
“Perhaps. We don’t know. We only know that to wait and do nothing is folly.”
Theodoric sat back on his throne, fingers drumming as he thought. Gaiseric, whose warriors were the equivalent of his own. Gaiseric, who alone matched Theodoric in age, longevity of rule, and list of bloody victories. Gaiseric, who had shamed him as no man ever had by scarring Berta, his beloved child. He squinted at me, this young Roman before him. “What proof do you have of what you say?”
“The word of Aetius and the favor of God.”
“The favor of God?”
“How else to explain my possession of the sword of Mars? Have you heard of this relic? I stole it from Attila himself and carried it to Aetius. It is reputed to be a sword of the gods that Attila has used to arouse his people. Now Aetius is using it to rally the West.”
Theodoric looked skeptical. “That’s the sword there, on your belt?”
I smiled at this opportunity to cite more evidence, and lifted out the knife I had taken from Eudoxius. “This is a dagger I took from the Greek. For the sword, imagine something a hundred times larger.”
“Humph.” He shook his head. The hooded figure in the shadows, I noticed, had disappeared. “The Huns are advancing on Aetius, not the Visigoths,” Theodoric insisted.
“What proof do you have of Vandals? I want to know about Vandals, not Huns.”
I hesitated. “Eudoxius himself told me that Gaiseric had pledged to make war with Attila, meaning the Huns and Vandals are one. Gaiseric hopes Attila will crush you.”
“Yet how do you know this?”
“We captured the doctor. I was captive in the Hun camp, and when we made off with that sword we took the Greek with us.”
“So this Greek could tell me himself.”
Here I dropped my head. “No. The Huns pursued us, and there was a fight at a Roman tower. He escaped.”
The Visigoth king laughed. “See? What proof for any of what Aetius claims!” His secretary Hagan smiled scornfully.
“The whole Empire and world are in peril!” I exclaimed.
“Isn’t that proof enough? With you, Aetius can win.
Without—”
“What proof?” Theodoric demanded softly.
My jaw was rigid with frustration. “My word.”
The king looked at me quietly a long time, and finally softened just a little. “I do not know who you are, young man, but you have spoken as well as you could for a master who is notoriously elusive. My frustration is not with you but with Aetius, whom I know too well. Go, let my stewards show you lodging, while I think about what you have said. I do not trust Aetius. Should I trust you? I tell you only this: When the Visigoths ride, it will be for a Visigothic cause, not Rome’s.”
I was depressed. Theodoric’s faint praise seemed only to presage failure. That happy moment when my father first announced that I had an opportunity to accompany an embassy to Attila seemed an age ago. What I had hoped would make my future seemed only to cloud it. Our diplomacy with the Huns had been a disaster. My attempts to win or rescue Ilana had come to nothing. Now, here I was again, a fledgling diplomat, and the one proof I needed to persuade the Visigoths—the testimony of Eudoxius—I had lost at the tower.
So this embassy seemed unlikely to be any more fruitful than the earlier one! I’d never really persuaded anyone, now that I thought of it, from the fetching Olivia in Constantinople to this barbarian king. What a joke that I was an envoy at all!
I could wait here in Tolosa for the end, I supposed. My presence would make little difference to the poor army of Aetius, and it would take a while for Attila to ride this far.
Or I could return and hurl myself into battle and end things sooner: There was a certain finality in that. There would be no unity against the Huns; Rome was too old and too tired.
There would only be hopeless battle, fire, oblivion. . . .
A knock came on the door to my chamber. I was in no mood to answer, but it came again and again with insistence.
I finally opened the door to find a servant bearing a tray with dried fruit and meats, a gesture of hospitality I hadn’t expected. The figure was wearing a long gown with a hood pulled over her head. “Sustenance after your journey, ambassador,” a woman’s voice said.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Even for company?”
I was wary. “What kind of offer is that?”
“To hear more of what you know.”