A crowd had begun to gather and it was obviously confused, from the little Flavius could truly make out, as to who was victim and who was felon. Another swing of that blade ended with the second wrist being held, which got the new arrival to the city a hard kick in the shins, one he had to counter by using his own boot. That took the urchin’s legs and allowed Flavius to spin him and cross his arms so that he was holding him back against his chest.
Having not gotten far from the gates the hullabaloo had alerted the city prefects and two of them came bustling through a crowd that had done no more than spectate and comment, in a situation which, in Dorostorum, they might have stepped in to clout the obvious thief as well as disarm him. As it was, Flavius felt a very strong hand on his own collar, followed by a command to let the little fellow go, vaguely noting the strong accent of the city, so very different from his own.
The boy began to moan as soon as he was released, to be immediately grabbed by one of the prefects, a fellow who also had a twang to his voice, a sort of lazy drawl as he demanded to know what was going on.
‘He dropped his knife, Your Honour,’ the urchin cried.
He then began to weep copious tears, either from the pain Flavius had inflicted or a sheer aptitude for drama, the streaks running down a filthy puckish face that at another time Flavius might have seen as lively. Looking down, there it was, right at Flavius’s feet.
‘He tried to nab my purse, cut through the tie as easy as you like.’
There was a moment then, so convincing was this childish play-acting, when Flavius saw himself being had up as a criminal, a split second when he could imagine being dragged off in chains to be incarcerated in a deep cell with water dripping off the walls. He was brought back to reality and the sun creating shadows by laughter, this from both the city prefects, one of whom responded.
‘You got to hand it to the little turd, he does magic a story so easily.’
‘You know him?’ Flavius asked.
‘Surely do.’
‘But it was him, Your Honour, honest,’ cried the boy wriggling to get free and failing.
‘Goes by the name of Ivo and a right menace he is.’ The prefect leant over to look the urchin in the eye. ‘Picked the wrong mark this time, didn’t you, Ivo? Fellow with a sword too, which you are lucky he did not get loose or we’d be picking your head off the paving stones.’
The other prefect spoke from behind him. ‘I will accompany you to the office of the urban prefect, young sir, where you can swear against the boy. See him in the mines, if I’m not mistaken.’
‘And not afore time,’ the one holding Ivo added, handing Flavius his purse. ‘By your mode of speech you’re a stranger to the city I suspect?’
Flavius was about to say yes and, he had been part of Vitalian’s army, but he stopped himself and merely nodded.
‘Then have a care, lad; for every honest citizen in our capital, there’s a wrong ’un to match them and if you don’t keep your wits about you then you’re meat for villainy. It’s lucky you was on the Triumphal Way, which is patrolled. Had you been in an alley you would have been in real trouble.’
‘Do I have to accompany you? I have business to attend to at the imperial palace.’
First the eyebrows went up a good two fingers, then the man before him looked up and down and what he saw did not fit with what he had heard said. Then he smiled, the way a person does when they are favouring an imbecile.
‘With the emperor, no doubt?’
‘No, with his count of the excubitors.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
The amused look evaporated and he shook Ivo, who wailed. ‘Well, that will have to wait a while, for if you do not come and swear that this little sod tried to lift your purse, which we cannot do for we did not see it, then how are we to have this complaint filed?’
It was amazing to Flavius the way the crowd that had gathered to witness the event obviously had no intention of hanging around to be a witness against Ivo; they dispersed as soon as the prefect mentioned the need for someone to swear.
Flavius looked at Ivo, the tears, which had now dried up, leaving clear lines on his grubby cheeks. ‘The mines you say?’
‘Too much of a mite for the galleys, though maybe he will grow into them if he lives long enough.’
‘And that will be for life?’
‘A short one, such labour kills you young.’
‘Do you have a mother, Ivo?’ A shake of the head. ‘A father?’ Negative again.
‘He lives in the gutters, young fellow, can you not see that by the filth on him?’
He sensed Ivo had sniffed his reluctance, which turned the malevolent look to which he had hitherto been subjected to one of soulful supplication, that in a blink of an eye, making him think this little toad should be with a troupe of performers, so quick were his wits. Flavius reasoned that if he went along and swore against this mite, who was stunted in his growth, Ivo would die as a slave and not long into the future. He knew little of mines but they were places of toil deadly to grown men.
‘Is there not a place where such children can be cared for?’
‘Six feet of good earth is best,’ said the prefect, ‘but saving that there is an order of St Basil monks who take in urchins and bring them back to God, though not without someone gifts them the means.’
‘Then let us go there, for I cannot swear as you ask me to. I could not, as a Christian, condemn this boy to the life you promise for him.’
‘You are from the country,’ came a voice from behind and it was not a compliment. ‘Have to be.’
‘I have been foolish, as you say, leaving myself exposed by my behaviour.’
Ivo had a gleam in his eye now, one that indicated to Flavius that if he was taken in by monks, he would not be with them for long. But that was not his concern – he was thinking that his need for divine aid was great and how could he ask for mercy on his aim if he was to deny it to another soul? It was also, he had good reason to believe, what his mother would have done, for she always took the side of the poor against authority and that had sometimes included her own husband.
‘Soft in the head, are you?’
‘Naw,’ said the second prefect, ‘a fellow like this can’t keep waiting the Count of the Excubitors.’
Flavius let the sarcasm pass without comment. ‘I would be obliged if you would guide me to these monks of St Basil.’
‘Not likely,’ came the response, as he was less than gently handed Ivo, forced to take his collar. ‘This turd knows the way, let him direct you.’
Both prefects departed, leaving a passive boy in Flavius’s hand. There was a second after he let him go in which Ivo had no idea what to do; it did not last. He made a dash for it but not before he had a last attempt at swiping the purse.
Flavius continued on his way, still wrapped in wonder at the sights, passing through the various forums built by successive emperors, all of them described to him by his father; the Forum of Arcadius, then of Bovis and on to the great open space where the road split in two, overseen by a tetrapylon. Next came the great Forum of Theodoric, he of the mighty walls, rectangular instead of round, and last that of the man after whom the city was named and the first forum built. It was the Forum of Constantine, where sat, square and imposing, with its Doric columns, one of the city’s senate houses.
It was impossible to keep his eyes from looking skywards as he came within sight of the Hippodrome, trying to image it in the whole of its oval shape, which trended away for near a milia, as well as its tiered seats inside that could accommodate thousands. How could anything so massive be built and was there no end to human ingenuity aided by the divine hand of God? If he knew the Great Palace was at the end of the Triumphal Way that was where his memory of parental recollection ran out, which obliged him to seek to ask the citizenry how he might contact the comes excubitorum.