‘If the folk you seek are inside Constantinople, which I take leave to suggest they will be-’
‘Then,’ Flavius cut across him, ‘I must find a way to get within the walls and I hope I am with a body of men who might achieve that.’
‘And if they don’t?’
Flavius ignored that and produced a small slip of parchment, on the obverse of which was one of his father’s roughly composed letters to Justinus. ‘I have written down the place where her family villa is located.’
‘Which I cannot read.’
‘But which I will tell so you can recall it – the writing is to show anyone local who can aid you. I have done a drawing of the way from the Via Egnatia to her family farm as well.’ Flavius pressed a purse into the hand of Ohannes, the one Dardanies had returned to him. ‘With this you can rest in the post houses and be fed. I ask only that you do not tax yourself; proceed at a pace that suits your bones, but make your destination.’
‘And what am I to say?’
‘Stay where you are until I come for you.’
‘Will she take such a message from me?’
‘My father trusted you, Ohannes, and I have as much faith in you as I have in God. Go, if you can, to my mother and stay with her, protect her. A snake like Senuthius will not rest if he thinks she has the means to bring him down, any more than he will be content until he is sure that I am dead.’
‘And if I do not succeed?’
‘Lap of God, Ohannes, is it not? How many times have you told me to trust in that?’
‘Seems I will miss a battle.’
Flavius put his arms around Ohannes then, as much to hide his emotions as to demonstrate an affection which had deepened so much that love was not too strong a word to explain it.
‘I will fight for both of us.’
The clutch from the old soldier was just as tight and his voice was as cracked as that of Flavius had ever been these last months. ‘Then I pity those you face.’
‘We cannot be seen together again, Ohannes, it will smack of-’
‘No, I understand.’
‘Choose your moment with care, friend.’
The laugh was hearty, intended to reassure. ‘No need, this lot can’t see the wood for the trees.’
‘Till we meet again, then.’
The clasp then was the same as he had exchanged with his school friends, a grab of each other’s arm in a tight and truly Roman grip.
Flavius could not return to his tent without again visiting the area set aside for the camp followers and, of course, Apollonia. From that first tender touch of fingers he had moved her on to a holding of hands, able to ease her away from whatever duties she was required to perform in order to walk with him.
Yet her reserve made any attempt to take matters further difficult. Only in later life would Flavius come to see how selfish had been his actions, for if he had been asked he would have denied the truth, that he was fixated on only one goal, natural for his age, but utterly lacking in consideration for the consequences.
They ended up in the same woods in which he had talked to Ohannes and that led to a first out-of-sight kiss, followed by hands eager to explore and a diminishing resistance that they should. If what followed was a great deal of inexperienced fumbling there was a moment of which Flavius had dreamt too many times without realising the pleasure to be felt.
How soft it was, warm and so welcoming; the immediate tingle he felt and the sensation of flesh against his flesh and pubic hair entwined when he thrust forward made what followed seem the most natural and beautiful thing in creation. To add to this was the way Apollonia seemed to take equal enjoyment and employ matching physicality to their encounter, even her gasping and increasingly recurrent cries adding to their mutual pleasure, which had they timed it, would not have seen many grains of sand filter through the neck of glass.
Sated they lay together, letting their breathing subside as Flavius let himself be subsumed by his sense of wonder, until discretion demanded, after more tender kisses, he take Apollonia back from where he had fetched her. Did those who looked at them guess what had taken place? Certainly the harpies had a glint in their eye but no act of either let them have a hint, their parting acted out in such a chaste manner.
It was only when walking back to his tent with a real spring in his step – he had climbed a mountain this night, killed a lion single-handedly with a spear, swam the Inland Sea and conquered the Medusa as well as the Minotaur of legend, in short he had become a man – that Flavius realised that one thing his father had sought to advise him of had not happened.
Decimus had counselled a son sprouting spots and fluff on his chin of what was to come to him in time and of his family’s hopes, the first night with a new bride and the accepted pain he would inflict, which had to be borne and would lead to many a happier repeat. Why had Apollonia not cried out in pain? Why had she been so forthcoming in her responses? Who had penetrated where he had been so thrilled to go before him?
It could have been anyone, Timon, a companion of her years, some other soldier, but if it was enough to raise a question, did he care? With his thinking fixated upon more of what he had just enjoyed, he put aside any consideration of how Apollonia had been deflowered and by whom.
CHAPTER TWENTY
What was heading their way was no mystery to anyone in the imperial palace; the emperor knew from his advisers that the forces of Vitalian were close and would be without the walls of the city in a day, two at the most. The composition of his army and the numbers were likewise acknowledged, including the old-fashioned way it had been structured, not seen as a reason for any concern, quite the reverse; such things as centuries were thought of as not fit for the requirements of up-to-date battle. The only unknown was what Anastasius intended to do to counter it.
In terms of fighting strength, Vitalian had the numbers but Anastasius had the quality. To protect his person he had several four-hundred-men-strong numeri in his palace guard, commanded by Justinus, a man he trusted. To secure the city and its walls there were twenty more, formed into two numerus brigades and commanded by tribunes that would each man one of the seven landward gates, the three others set to protect the long sea defences that ran along the Bosphorus to the Golden Horn.
Justinus, carrying out his daily ritual of reportage, was able to say that according to the praefectus urbanus the populace seemed sanguine and not in the least restive; there was no evidence, even if many of them were strong for Chalcedon, of any move to support, by untimely rioting and threats to the imperial person, the aims of Vitalian.
Justinus had naturally been asked for a private opinion on what should be done to counter the rebellion. Unable to say what he really thought, that the imperial religious policy was misguided, he stuck to matters purely military. The number of troops in the capital he insisted, not including those he commanded, which numbered five full divisions, could hold the walls. How to counter Vitalian? As far as anyone knew he lacked any kind of shipping so the units allotted to the defence of the sea wall were spare. They should be sent out to disrupt his progress, retreating in front of him, though stopping to present occasional battle, so as to break the spirit of what must be a hastily assembled host.
That delivered, Justinus could not help but wonder from what other sources the emperor was receiving advice; his own had been acknowledged and from subsequent imperial reactions he assumed had been ignored. Anastasius was gifted with any number of people to tell him what he should do and by reputation he listened to them all. One was his wife and then there were his personal valets or his barber and the thirty courtiers who formed the silentiarius, tasked to ensure that no untoward noise disturbed the imperial repose.