Angry as he was there was no way to gainsay that and maintain any worth, self or otherwise. The ox-like brute looked at the coins in his hand and took long enough about it to allow Flavius to slip by him and flee. At the place occupied by the camp followers the news had been spread of what was to come and it was not something to make everyone ecstatic, though the harpies were enjoying a bounty. Many here lived off the existence of the host and they would march back with it to uncertainty.
Apollonia was one of those, as was her ‘father’ Timon and the woman he had taken in as a wife, really a pair of hands he could exploit and live off while toiling not himself. The sudden visit of Flavius caught him out; normally Timon fled when the youngster came for Apollonia. He was lying on a straw palliasse, his great gut bare as usual and sticking up, but that did not last.
At the sight of Flavius he rolled over and with some difficulty got onto his stout knees. The struggle to actually rise was too great, which left him looking up with a pleading look seeking mercy in his eyes, unable to actually speak when Flavius asked where his paramour was. That only got a finger to direct him.
He found her with her arms, up to her elbows, in water, scrubbing against the rough side of a tub to get clean some stranger’s garments, her mother, stick-thin and looking like a crone, toiling likewise. The look she gave him as he dragged her daughter away was full of hate, something that again only made sense long afterwards – when he knew that she would pay the price for what he was about, and with pain.
Apollonia he led to the woods where they had enjoyed their trysts and he explained to her what he intended to do, but he told her not to fear, once his business was complete he would seek her out and rescue her from Timon, all this listened to with his eyes on the top of her blonde hair and bowed head. Then he embraced her and that stirred in him feelings that needed to be dealt with, his conduct, as he pressured her gently to the ground and indulged his pleasure, taken with the passivity that had become habitual.
Sated, Flavius rolled to lie beside her, where he reiterated his promise, and wiped the tears from her eyes that he knew to be sorrow at their parting. There, with her head crooked in his arm and talking of an imagined future, he fell asleep and when he awoke it was to the blast of the horns sounding dawn. There was no sign of Apollonia and his first thought, one that shamed him when he recalled it, was to ensure his purse was still tied to his belt and there was something within to clutch at.
He had intended to gift Apollonia that which he had received in bounty but sleep had taken away the chance to give her any of his own money in its place; now there was no time, for the camp might break and the host might begin its march to the north before he had retrieved his weapons and, from the century baggage cart, his prized breastplate, still in its sackcloth wrapping.
‘She will manage till I rejoin her,’ Flavius reassured himself as he ran, ‘and then she will see the last of that swine Timon.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Flavius handed in equipment he had been issued, plain breastplate and greaves, and recovered his own, placing the roll of letters that had never left proximity to his skin inside the sacking. He then watched the host of Vitalian march away with something of a sinking feeling, realising if it was not as acute as that which he had felt on returning to his empty family home, the emotion was similar, as if some part of his being had become detached from the whole.
In part it was what they left too, a field scarred by their presence, the grass where they had walked, marched and exercised bare and brown, with green patches where tents had been pitched added to the slashed black trenches of too many latrines. Long before the last soldier had upped and left, the traders who had set up their stalls had dismantled their ramshackle constructs, before heading back to a city that now had open if still well-guarded gates, they too leaving behind them the blot and filth of their presence.
Having been camped near the sea, the gate by which Flavius chose to enter was in itself astounding at a distance and even more so close to. His father had described the fabled Golden Gate and fired his youthful imagination with talk of his youngest son being granted a triumph, this being the route used by a victorious general when he entered the city. The notion had been scoffed at by Atticus, his brother correct when he insisted that things like triumphs were never granted now, emperors being too jealous to grant honours to military men who might become excessively popular.
The Golden Gate was set back from the main walls and protected by a pair of towers topped by twin statues of winged victory. There were three entrances, the two smaller openings allowing people to enter through one and exit through the other. The centre gate was the one that a new emperor would ride through in procession and in his mind’s eye Flavius could conjure up the figure dressed in purple robes, a glorious diadem on his head, stood on an eight-horse chariot driven by a slave, traversing the whole of the Triumphal Way to the Great Palace that would be his residence.
If Vitalian had been a threat, no single person, even armed with a spear, was seen as such. He approached under the watchful eyes of the guards from one of the city regiments, in highly polished breastplates over red tunics, atop the battlements. Flavius passed their gaze without trouble and he was likewise looked over by men in different clothing, chain vests over green tunics whom he took to be city prefects. No one sought to impede him and he passed without hindrance, and beyond that gate the vista opened out into a great wide thoroughfare, colonnaded on each side with shaded walks lined with shops, and into the distance stretched a panorama that had him thinking he had come across one of the Seven Great Wonders.
No description of a city like Constantinople, however comprehensive, could prepare a person for the entering of it and Flavius was no exception; compared to Dorostorum the buildings were larger and more magnificently decorated, with bas-reliefs and statuary. In trying to calculate the dimensions of the Triumphal Way, marked out as some thirty paces, it was hard to be precise. His measurement could take no account of how hard it was just to cross, it being crowded with both horse-drawn traffic and humans who seemed to have no notion to give way to one another, let alone some bumpkin now dressed in rough country clothing. Nor did they do any more than disdain his apologies as he bumped into them.
Later he would say to others that it was never a good notion to look like a stranger in the capital city, to walk along, head back, to gaze at every sight that took your wondering and astounded eye. The slight tug at his belt destroyed his daydreaming in an instant and he shot a hand out to grab that of the urchin who had just sliced through the tie on his purse with a tiny but obviously sharp knife and was seeking to run off.
The thief was not one to give up easily; he swung the knife in a vicious arc seeking to stab the hand that held him, forcing Flavius to likewise swerve abruptly, which sent the sacking-covered breastplate swinging round to his side, that partially impeding the swipe he aimed at the fingers holding the knife, this while he pulled hard to put the brat off balance.
The combination saved him but the pause was only temporary as he realised the little toad who had tried to rob him was shouting that he was the victim of a thief, this as he tried to stab his so-called assailant in the chest. This was no time for finer feelings; using his free hand Flavius thumped him round the ear with a buffet that would have felled an adult, yet still the little swine would not drop the purse.