‘You could if you were willing to try, which I sense is not your intention.’
Flavius was thinking of John the Cappadocian and his hints of the previous day. He had been foolish not to listen; at least he would have been prepared for this travesty of a trial, though he knew the outcome to have already been decided. Vicinus was not finished, as for the first time he consulted his papers and the list of further accusations poured out.
‘There is the matter of misappropriation of part of the Vandal treasure of North Africa, the tardiness of campaigning in Italy and questions regarding whether pay due to the army was instead diverted to your own coffers.’
On and on he went, there seeming to be no part of the past decades’ service in which Flavius had not either lined his own purse or, as a general, acted in a way inimical to the needs of the empire. It was odd to be so described and hear the disbelieving sighs of a group of men who were, unlike him, usually guilty of such crimes. It raised the nature of the word hypocrisy to heights never before achieved.
‘How do you plead?’ Vicinus demanded, holding up the list of supposed transgressions.
‘My conscience is clear,’ Flavius replied with slow deliberation, ‘but your own, Ancinius Probus Vicinus, is as clouded as that of the man from whose loins you sprang.’
‘Fellow senators,’ was the shouted response, those papers waved with fury this time. ‘Am I to be so traduced, and you with me, by such an ingrate? What honours has the empire bestowed on him only to find their faith misplaced?’
It was necessary for Flavius to detach himself from the proceedings as they continued, he refusing to grace the accusations with a reply, which carried on until the point where the ex-consul Decius asked that he remove himself while the chamber deliberated on how to respond. That he prayed was hardly surprising but it was not for forgiveness, if you discounted his own known sins, or for his life or eyesight, because he had to believe that not even Theodora would dare to be so vindictive with a man who was such a hero to the citizenry.
‘I beg not to be dishonoured.’
He begged for that in vain; the first act, sonorously pronounced by Decius but surely previously decided by the Empress, was to strip him of his title of magister. Next came the sequestration of nearly everything he possessed in terms of money and goods, though he was allowed to keep his villa south of Galatea. Lastly he was stripped of his comitatus, the best soldiers in the empire, they to be put up for auction to anyone seeking a military command and who had the means to fund their pay.
‘Finally, Flavius Belisarius, you are to attend daily the imperial palace so that at his own convenience the Emperor may call upon you to explain your manifest crimes and failures.’
If Flavius could not fathom the need for the last it soon became plain as, wandering the corridors with no real purpose, he was exposed to endless ridicule from anyone who chose to employ it; he was a pariah now and he would not be allowed to forget it, yet he harked back to Marcus Aurelius and the stoicism he had preached, so that when insulted he could smile in response, which did much to discomfit those seeking to diminish him.
The real problem was that he was barred from the audience chamber and had no contact by which he could apply pressure to Justinian to reverse the malice of his wife.
Of Antonina there was no sight; she made no attempt to contact him and he responded in kind. It was deeply wounding that part of the case presented by Vicinus must have been formed by her malevolence; no doubt she blamed him for the death of Theodosius, as if he could have fought off the disease that killed him. Or was it that she was such a dupe as to provide testimony coloured by her own twisted logic without a thought to the consequences?
Even ignored he was able to garner news of the state of fighting in the various theatres of war. In the east it was stalemate, which was of credit to Martinus, who had continued the Belisarian policy of containment. Matters were going well in Hispania, but in Italy the Goths had revived under a new king called Totila and his successes, allied to Byzantine losses, made for grim telling.
On leaving Ravenna his replacement, a patrician imperial administrator called Alexander had been appointed to rule Italy as a province of empire. He had turned out to be rapacious to an alarming degree, even going so far, it was reported, as to debase the coinage, the gold thus removed from the edges being split between himself and the imperial treasury, which kept quiet those stealing from that same sum of money in Constantinople.
His other acts, also condoned, were equally grasping. Alexander levied fines for the smallest perceived infringement and added to this was his accusation that the troops for whom Flavius had been responsible had been overpaid and thus must make restitution. He accused the Italians of underpaying Goth taxes going back to their invasion a century before and demanded such sums be made good, which infuriated the native citizens. In short, Alexander had undone all the good work Flavius had achieved in keeping the local population as supporters of Byzantine rule.
Worse, Alexander’s inferior commanders took their cue from him so that all over Italy there was now discontent at Byzantine rule and that had allowed the Goths to revive their military fortunes. The king who had taken the sceptre from Witigis, Ildibadus, had immediately sought to reverse the gains made by Flavius but with little success and part of that was brought on by an endemic Goth problem of internal dissension.
The ramifications of their disputes were tedious to relate and almost too tangled to comprehend but one fact was plain: Idilbadus had so alienated some of his close followers that one of them had taken advantage of his position to stab him to death and he was replaced by a tribal chieftain called Eraric.
In that leader they had seemingly found a fitting replacement for Theodahad, though his manoeuvres were aided by the inactivity of those who should have contained him, the numerous military commanders who now seemed more interested in fleecing the citizens of the towns over which they had control than fighting the Goths.
Even a pariah picked up gossip, although a good source of information was John the Cappadocian, who seemed willing to risk the displeasure of Theodora to openly communicate with him. Thus he knew of Eraric’s open request that he be granted the peace offered to Witigis, which involved the Goths surrendering all the lands south of the River Po.
‘I swear,’ John had informed him, ‘that these Goths make us look like saints. This Eraric has secretly offered to sell Justinian the whole of Italy.’
‘I can imagine the price to be high,’ had been Flavius’s jaundiced reply.
The price had proved too high for the Goths as well; Eraric should have known such an offer could not be kept from gossip and that proved to be the case. Murdered by his own troops the kingship had devolved onto Totila and in that king they had found a leader worthy of the title.
The moribund military commanders in Italy, prompted it was said by a furious Justinian, had finally roused themselves to react. Gathering in Ravenna they had set out to confront Totila who held Ticinum, the Goth city in which their rulers were chosen. Verona was on the way and it seemed sensible to take it first, but what the army in Italy now suffered from was the curse of divided command and it was not just two generals but several.
What followed, as passed to Flavius by John, had been an unmitigated disaster, yet at first the matter seemed easily settled. An imperial supporter resident in Verona had offered to surrender one of the gates and after much discussion and seeming reluctance to be responsible for taking advantage, one man had taken up the gauntlet. He was Artabazes, the former Governor of Sisauranon, who had entered Byzantine service with the men Flavius had sent back to Constantinople.