‘His need is enough.’
‘Forgive me, Bishop Gregory, but you must know that no one can act in such an arbitrary fashion. If I learnt anything from my father, it is never justified to exceed the bounds of the law, and he stayed true to that even when he had the unquestionable authority of his command.’
‘I have God as my authority.’
Flavius crossed himself but the look he gave the bishop told him that too was insufficient. Blastos tried bluster but he could not carry it off for he lacked the means to be convincing and, realising that to be true, his expression became increasingly concerned as he sought a solution. No doubt Senuthius was waiting for the successful finale to this visit.
‘Then I must seek what I need and will do so.’
If they exchanged a mutual glare both knew one fact so obvious it needed no airing: Flavius could be allowed no freedom of movement.
‘Until then I command that you stay within these walls and that you touch nothing you may find. I will leave people here to ensure that is obeyed, and as a precaution I will also take from your stables what mounts you have.’
‘There is only one now,’ Flavius responded with a look of gloom. ‘Mine.’
‘A fine beast, I recall, which will serve to cover the first stage of my messenger’s journey.’
Bishop Gregory Blastos did like to think of himself as the equal of Senuthius Vicinus; only rarely was he disabused of this comfortable notion, so when he arrived at the villa of the man he held to be an associate and equal he was, even if concerned, ill prepared for that which he ran into: a torrent of highly personal abuse for his very obvious failure to find any evidence that either had cause for concern.
With anyone else he might have stood his ground, but not with the senator, who, despite the girlish pitch of his voice, never had trouble in making the cleric wilt. With his height and girth, he oozed power enough to match his temper.
‘No doubt you were too busy slavering over the Belisarius brat to properly carry out what you were sent to do. All that would be needed to put you off the task you were sent to carry out is a flick of those long, dark eyelashes of his and you would be billing and cooing like a pigeon.’
‘The lad has two black eyes and a damaged shoulder …’
‘As if that would stop you! It probably added to your dribbling.’
This dressing-down did not end there; Senuthius went on to list the ways in which his sexual preferences and inability to disguise them made him a fool, to point out that as a representative of God he was an embarrassment to his entire flock, delivered in a voice loud enough to carry throughout the largest dwelling in the borderlands. Worse for the clerical pride, it was done in front of the children of the house, a boy and a girl, golden-haired, plump and well-fed twins, who had not yet seen ten summers, their mere presence made doubly galling by the way their expressions seemed to mirror their father’s disdain.
‘It may be there is nothing …’
Blastos got no chance to plead that excuse; the large senatorial frame actually shook with irritation, and given Senuthius had a belly large enough to testify to his prosperity, it was obvious even under his richly threaded garments.
‘My cousin smells a rat in the imperial court and Belisarius has to be the cause. When he says I should be on my guard, I am not fool enough to ignore his advice, even if you are!’
‘But he has no idea what we have to guard against.’
‘We?’ Senuthius growled. ‘You, Blastos, have only to concern yourself that you do not end up in a remote dungeon for pederasty and the selling of forgiveness for gold. It is I who is at real risk and by that I mean everything I own, and for what – acting as my duty as a father and a citizen dictates?’
The senator then waddled over to embrace his children, standing between them and laying his hands on their shoulders, his voice becoming soft and mournful as he spoke. It was well known he doted on his offspring, which stood in sharp contrast to the way he had treated their late mother, a woman who had needed all her skills with paints and powder to hide the regular bruises inflicted on her by her violent husband. Sometimes she was so badly beaten as to be unable to appear in public for weeks and there were those prepared to readily believe that her death had not been from any natural cause.
‘These two innocents could be left as paupers by the malice of that Belisarius swine, and that I will not allow to happen.’
Quickly Senuthius bent to kiss each plump child on the head, before quietly telling them it was time to be about their evening studies, so as to be ready for their schooling come the morning. He watched them depart the main room of the villa with a look most men reserved for a favourite mistress and only when they had gone did Senuthius bellow for his domesticus. His senior household servant came scurrying into the room within seconds, to find his master talking to the bishop in a less irate tone, a haughty gesture having the man wait by the door.
‘We know letters were sent out under the Anastasius seal and not from the office of the imperial scribes. Some other hand composed them and in such secrecy that the only fact my cousin could glean was that they were to be delivered by a special messenger to Dorostorum, and since they did not come to you or I, they had to be for Belisarius. He would not throw them away, therefore they must be in his house, unless they went up in that stupid pyre his son built.’
The thought that they might have been consumed by the flames cheered Blastos up somewhat, until Senuthius dismissed the notion as not only fanciful but too risky to assume. The man rambled on as he waddled back and forth with that particular gait all men use who have been heavy from birth, the feet splayed wide to accommodate thighs that could not easily pass each other.
If he was telling the bishop things they had discussed before, Senuthius was in reality talking to himself and not without a dose of his habitual self-pity, based on the notion that the malice of lesser creatures would ever see his actions in the wrong light.
For all his strength and prominence locally and his ability to buy gubernatorial silence in what was a distant and little regarded corner of the empire, Senuthius knew that he operated too often outside the laws to feel entirely secure, hence his ongoing feud with the man who had the task of enforcing imperial edicts. If he had seen Centurion Belisarius as an irritant, the man had, until recently, been no more than a flea to his great beast and one moreover without influence where it truly mattered.
If that had changed, due to the shifting nature of power in the imperial palace, as related to him by the same relative who had hitherto nullified any complaints against him, it could leave him exposed. The emperor was a man to be swayed by the last voice that had his ear, and in many ways that had been an asset in the past: the people who had counselled him, when contacted by his cousin, were easily won over either by conviction or bribery. The former came from the feeling that as long as the border was kept secure at low cost, how peace was maintained seemed of little account, the latter requiring neither explanation nor principles!
What had hitherto been simple had grown more complex and the foremost cause was religion, or to be precise the interpretation of dogma, and that was fuelling a division that had existed since anyone could remember, made really serious by the action of Anastasius in promulgating the supremacy of the Monophysite position. If rumour came slowly to the borders of the empire, those that had recently emerged were worrying indeed.
The only substantial force of soldiers in the Diocese of Thrace, indeed between Dorostorum and the capital, barbarian foederati, were under the command of a general called Vitalian and he was threatening revolt to overturn the imperial edict. If that came to pass, the first city to feel the brunt of insurrection would be Marcianopolis and the magister militum, Conatus, a serious part of the Vicinian network of support.