Evolution (76 page)

If the Scythian was a social disappointment, Papak was a success, as Athalaric had sourly expected. Bringing a whiff of the exotic, the Persian moved smoothly among Theodoric’s guests, barbarian and citizen alike. He flirted outrageously with the women, and captivated the men with his tales of the peculiar dangers of the east. Everyone was charmed.

One of Papak’s most popular innovations was chess. This was a game, he said, recently invented to amuse the court of Persia. Nobody in Gaul had heard of it, and Papak had one of Theodoric’s craftsman carve a board and pieces for him. The game was played on a six-by-six grid of squares, over which pieces shaped like horses or warriors moved and battled. The rules were simple, but the strategy was deceptively deep. The Goths— who still prided themselves on their warrior credentials, even though many of them had not been near a horse in twenty years— relished the sublimated combat of the new game. Their first tournaments were fast and bloody affairs. But under Papak’s tactful tutelage, the better players soon grasped the game’s subtleties, and the matches became drawn out and interesting.

As for Honorius himself, he was irritated that the parlor games of a Persian were so much more compelling than his tales of old bones. But then, Athalaric thought with exasperated fondness, the old man never had been much of a one for social niceties, and still less for the intricacies of court life. Honorius insisted on sticking to his usual games of backgammon, played with his cronies from the old landed aristocracy— “the game of Plato,” as he called it.

After a few days of the stay, Theodoric called his nephew into a private room.

Athalaric was surprised to find Galla here. Tall, dark-haired, with the classical prominent nose of her Roman forebears, Galla was the wife of one of the more prominent citizens of the community. But at forty she was some twenty years younger than her husband, and it was well known that she was the power in his household.

A grave expression on his bearded face, Theodoric placed his hand on his nephew’s arm. “Athalaric, we need your help.”

“You have a job for me?”

“Not exactly. We have a job for Honorius— and we want you to persuade him to take it. Let us try to explain why—”

As Theodoric talked, Athalaric was aware of Galla’s cool eyes appraising him, the slight opening of her full mouth. There was a myth among some of these last Romans that the barbarians were a younger, more vigorous race. Galla, in exploring intimacy with men she saw as little better than savages, might be seeking a muscular excitement she must lack in her own marriage to an etiolated citizen.

But Athalaric, a mere five years older than Galla’s own twin children, had no desire to be the toy of a decadent aristocrat. He returned her gaze coolly, his face impassive.

This subtle transaction was played out completely beneath the attention of Theodoric.

Now Galla said smoothly, “Athalaric, a mere three decades ago, as even I can remember, this kingdom of Euric’s was still a federate settlement within the empire. Things have changed rapidly. But there are strict barriers between our peoples. Marriage, the law, even the Church—”

Theodoric sighed. “She is right, Athalaric. There are many tensions in this young society of ours.”

Athalaric knew this was true. The new barbarian rulers lived by their traditional laws, which they saw as part of their identity, while their subjects clung to Roman law, which for their part they saw as a set of universal rules. Disputes over differing rulings made under the two systems were common. Meanwhile, intermarriage was forbidden. Though all parties were Christian, the Goths followed the teachings of Arius and were met with hostility by their mostly Catholic subjects. And so on.

All of this was a barrier to the assimilation the imperial Romans had practiced so successfully for so many centuries— an assimilation that had led to stability and social longevity. If this place were still under Roman rule, then Theodoric would have had an excellent chance of becoming a full Roman citizen. But the sons of Galla were forever excluded from being accepted as equals by the Goths, forever denied true power.

Athalaric listened gravely to all of this. “It is difficult, but Honorius has taught me nothing if not that time is long, and that in time everything changes. Perhaps these barriers will ultimately melt away.”

Theodoric nodded. “I myself believe it is so. I sent you to study in a Roman school, and later with Honorius.” He chuckled. “
My
father would never have allowed such a thing. He didn’t believe in schools!
If you learn to fear a teacher’s strap now, you will never learn to look on a sword or javelin without a shudder.
To him, we were warriors before anything else. But we, these days, are a different generation.”

“And the better for it,” said Galla. “The empire will never come back. But I truly believe that some day, out of the union of our peoples here and across the continent, new blood will arise, new kinds of strength and vision.”

Athalaric raised his eyebrows. Something in her tone reminded him unfortunately of Papak, and he wondered what she was trying to sell his uncle. He said dryly, “But in the meantime, before that marvelous day comes to pass—”

“In the meantime I am concerned for my children.”

“Why? Are they in peril?”

“In fact, yes,” Galla said, letting her irritation show. “You have been away too long, young man, or else you have your head too firmly buried in Honorius’s teachings.”

“There have been attacks,” Theodoric said. “Property damage, fires, thefts.”

“Directed against the Romans?”

“I am afraid so.” Theodoric sighed. “I, who remember how it was, would like to preserve what was best about the empire— stability, peace, learning, a just system of law. But the young know nothing of this. Like their forefathers who lived simpler lives on the northern plains, they hate what they know of the empire: power over the land, the people, riches from which they were excluded.”

“And so they wish to punish those who remain,” said Athalaric.

Galla said, “
Why
they behave as they do scarcely matters. What is important is what must be done to stop them.”

“I have raised militia. The disturbances can be quelled, but they erupt again elsewhere. What we need is a solution for the long term. We must restore the balance.” Theodoric smiled. “It is a paradox that I should come to believe it is necessary to make our Romans strong again.”

Athalaric snorted. “How? Give them a legion? Raise Augustus from the dead?”

“Simpler than that,” Galla said, unmoved by his mockery. “We must have a bishop.”

Now Athalaric began to understand.

Galla said, “Remember, it was Pope Leo who persuaded Attila himself to turn back from the gates of Rome—”

“So that’s why I’m here. You want Honorius to become a bishop. And you want me to persuade him to do it.”

Theodoric nodded, pleased. “Galla, I told you the boy is perspicacious.”

Athalaric shook his head. “He will refuse. Honorius is not— worldly. He is interested in his old bones, not in power.”

Theodoric sighed. “But there is a shortage of candidates, Athalaric. Forgive me, madam, but too many of the Roman gentry have proved themselves fools— arrogant, greedy, overbearing.”

“My husband among them,” Galla said evenly. “There is no offense to be given by the truth, my lord.”

Theodoric said, “It is only Honorius who commands true respect— perhaps
because
of his lack of worldliness.” He eyed Athalaric. “If it had not been so I would never have been able to release you to his tutelage.”

Galla leaned forward. “I understand your misgivings, Athalaric. But will you try nevertheless?”

Athalaric shrugged. “I will try, but—”

Galla’s hand shot out and grabbed his arm. “As long as he lives, Honorius is the only candidate for the position; no other can fill the role.
As long as he lives.
I trust you will try very hard to persuade him, Athalaric.”

Suddenly Athalaric saw power in her: the power of an ancient empire, the power of an angry, threatened mother. He pulled himself free of her grip, disturbed by her intensity.

Honorius prepared for the last leg of the epic journey he had first conceived on meeting the Scythian on the edge of the eastern deserts.

A traveling party formed up. The core was Honorius, Athalaric, Papak, and the Scythian, just as it had been before. But now some of Theodoric’s militia traveled with them— away from the towns, the country was far from safe— along with a handful of the more inquisitive young Goths and even some members of the old Roman families.

So they journeyed west.

As it happened they were all but retracing the steps taken by Rood’s hunting party, some thirty thousand years earlier. But the ice had long retreated to its northern fortresses— so long ago, in fact, that humans had forgotten it had even come this way. Rood would not have recognized this rich, temperate land. And he would have been astonished at the great density of people living here now— just as Athalaric would have been astounded if he could have glimpsed Rood’s mammoth herds gliding across a land empty of humans.

At last the land ran out. They came to a chalk cliff. Eroded by time, the cliff looked out over the restless Atlantic. The grassy plateau at its top was windswept and barren, save for a skimming of grass littered by rabbit droppings.

As the porters unpacked the party’s belongings from their carts, the Scythian walked alone to the edge of the cliff. The wind caught his strange blond hair, whipping it about his brow. Athalaric thought it a remarkable sight. Here was a man who had peered into the great sand ocean of the east, now brought to the western fringe of the world. Silently he applauded Honorius’s vision; whatever the Scythian made of Honorius’s enigmatic bones, the old man had already crafted a remarkable moment.

Though the members of the party were wearied by the long journey from Burdigala, Honorius was impatient to conclude the jaunt. He would allow them only a brief respite for meat, drink, and the necessary attention to their bladders and bowels. Then, capering gauntly, Honorius led them toward the cliff face. The rest of the party followed— all but Papak’s two porters, Athalaric saw, who seemed intent on making a trap for the rabbits that infested this chalky cliff top.

As they walked together, Athalaric tried to reason with Honorius again about the offer of the bishopric.

It made a certain sense. As the old civil administration of the empire had broken down, the Church, enduring, had proven a bastion of strength, and its bishops had acquired status and power. Very often these churchmen had been drawn from the landed aristocracy of the empire, who had learning, administrative experience drawn from running their great estates, and a tradition of local leadership: their theology might be shaky, but that was less important than shrewdness and practical experience. In turbulent times these worldly clerics had proved able to protect the vulnerable Roman population by pleading for the protection of towns, directing defenses and even leading men into battle.

But, as Athalaric had expected, Honorius refused the offer flat. “Is the Church to swallow us all?” he railed. “Must its shadow extinguish everything else in the world, everything we have built up over a thousand years?”

Athalaric sighed. He had very little idea what the old man was talking about, but the only way to talk to Honorius was on his terms. “Honorius, please— this has nothing to do with history, nor even theology. This is all about temporal power. And civic duty.”

“Civic duty? What does that mean?” From a bag he fished out his skull, the antique human skull that the Scythian had given him, and he brandished it angrily. “Here is a creature half human and half animal. And yet it is clearly
like us.
What, then, are we? A quarter animal, a tenth? The Greek Galen pointed out two centuries ago that man is nothing more than a variety of monkey. Will we ever walk out of the shadow of the beast? What would
civic duty
mean to a monkey, what but a foolish performance?”

Hesitantly Athalaric touched the old man’s arm. “But even if that is true, even if we are governed by the legacy of an animal past, then it is up to us to behave as if it were not so.”

Honorius smiled bitterly. “Is it? But everything we build passes, Athalaric. We are
seeing
it. In my lifetime a thousand-year-old empire has crumbled faster than the mortar in the walls of its capital buildings. If all passes but our own brutish natures, what hope do we have? Even beliefs wither like grapes left on the vine.”

Athalaric understood; this was a concern Honorius had rehearsed many times. In the last centuries of the empire, educational standards and literacy had fallen. In the dulled heads of the masses, distracted by cheap food and the barbaric spectacles of the coliseums, the values on which Rome had been founded and the ancient rationalism of the Greeks had been replaced by mysticism and superstition. It was— Honorius had explained to his pupil— as if a whole culture was losing its mind. People were forgetting how to think, and soon they would forget they had forgotten. And, to Honorius’s thinking, Christianity only exacerbated that problem.

“You know, Augustine warned us that belief in the old myths was fading— even a century and a half ago, as the dogma of the Christians took root. And with the loss of the myths, so vanishes the learning of a thousand years, which are codified in those myths, and the monolithic dogmas of the Church will snuff out rational inquiry for ten more centuries.
The light is fading,
Athalaric.”

“Then take the bishopric,” Athalaric urged. “Protect the monasteries. Establish your own, if you must! And in its library and
scriptorium
have the monks preserve and make copies of the great texts, before they are lost—”

“I have seen the monasteries,” Honorius spat. “To have the great works of the past copied as if they were magical spells, by dolts with their heads full of God— pah! I think I would rather burn them myself.”