Justinian (30 page)

‘A thousand apologies, Lady,' declared the officer in halting Greek. ‘That a man under my command should have behaved so bestially is a stain upon my honour and my conscience.' He shifted uncomfortably. ‘Did he . . .' he began.

‘Rest assured, sir,' Macedonia replied tremulously, covering her semi-nakedness with a blood-spattered sheet. ‘You intervened in time.'

‘Bactrian scum,' declared her rescuer, an edge of bitter anger in his voice. ‘We recruit them for their horsemanship and scouting skills, but I sometimes wonder if they're not more trouble than they're worth. In charge of a billeting party of them in advance of the king's main army, I was careless enough to leave them unattended while I checked the stabling for my horse. I should have known better. I hope you can forgive me, Lady, for I find it hard to forgive myself.'

After promising to arrange for armed protection for her house when the army should arrive, the officer departed with his troop – chastened after receiving a savage tongue-lashing.

The first intimation of the Persians' approach was a wall of dust extending along the horizon to the north-east. At last the van could be distinguished – company after company of cataphracts in glittering armour; before it,
borne by white-clad priests, flew the
Drafsh-i-Kavyan
, the huge Sassanian royal flag, its gold and silver cloth encrusted with gems.

For hour upon hour the Persian host streamed onto the level ground before the city, not being finally assembled until mid-afternoon, its presence indicated by a sea of tents extending from the banks of the Orontes to the fringes of the coastal plain. Khusro himself, accoutred as a cataphract (following the custom of Persian commanders), his silvered carapace of articulated plates blazing in the sun, advanced with his entourage of satraps, generals and attendants to the suburb of Daphne. Here, villas had already been commandeered by advance parties for their residence, and Prudentius and his staff were already installed.

The latter group, plus the citizens of Daphne (which included Macedonia, whose house was now under guard, as the Persian officer had promised), were invited to meet the Great King. Fearful yet curious, they obeyed the politely veiled command, finding the king seated on a throne before his retinue, a short distance from the city walls, its ramparts crowded with excited Antiochans. The throne was flanked on one side by a curious iron tripod, on the other, ominously, by a gibbet.

A formal exchange (couched in terms of flowery politeness) followed between Prudentius and Khusro. The Roman informed the king that, in obedience to Justinian's command, the people of Antioch were determined to resist any Persian attempt to take their city. Khusro thereupon gave assurances that should the Antiochans change their minds and pay the thousand pounds of gold agreed upon, the city would be spared. He would give them until the following morning to decide. The inhabitants of Daphne (unless they chose to join their fellow citizens inside the walls) would not be affected by the consequences of any siege.

Persian intermediaries, mingling with the citizens of Daphne, then asked them (in Greek and with impeccable courtesy) if they had any requests or enquiries to make of the king. Macedonia, full of gratitude towards the Persian officer who had saved her, commended him warmly for his timely action. A short time later she was summoned to appear before the king himself. Suddenly nervous and regretting her impulse to speak out, she found herself facing a strikingly good-looking young man, whose welcoming smile helped to put her at her ease.

‘What unit was this officer in charge of, Kalligenia
*
?' the king asked politely, in the purest Attic Greek.

‘I think he said his men were Bactrian scouts, Your Majesty.'

The king rapped out an order to one of his attendants who instantly departed, then, turning back to Macedonia said, ‘I can only apologize for the failure of one of my officers to keep better discipline among those whom he commanded. Failure for which you nearly lost your virtue. Rest assured, he will be duly punished.' And he inclined his head in dismissal.

Macedonia, who had assumed that the officer was to be congratulated or promoted, was shocked. Opening her mouth to protest, she was confronted by an official who placed a warning finger to his lips, then led her from the scene.

Soon after, the unfortunate officer was conducted under escort to the iron tripod, to be questioned brusquely by the king. Khusro then issued a command, whereupon two brutal-looking menials seized the officer by the arms and hustled him roughly to the gibbet. His hands were bound behind his back, a noose whipped round his neck, and, before the horrified gaze of the assembled Romans, he was hauled aloft, kicking frantically as the cruel rope choked his life away.

Next morning, the Daphne Gate was opened and, to the jeers of the Antiochans and the laughter of the Persians who opened ranks to let them through, the six thousand Roman reinforcements sent by Justinian fled, heading north for the Cilician border. Persian heralds then rode up below the walls and repeated the terms that Khusro had specified to Prudentius. On these being greeted with yells of defiance, the heralds withdrew and the Persian host rolled forward to commence the siege.

First to the attack, advancing to the beat of drums and cymbals, were the
Jan-avaspar
– ‘the men who sacrifice themselves' – assault troops carrying scaling-ladders. Time and again the ladders were sent crashing to the ground, spilling their human cargo, the defenders shoving the topmost rungs from the ramparts with long, forked poles. But so vast was the perimeter of the walls that it proved impossible to repel all such attacks, and gradually the Persians began to infiltrate the city, meeting desperate resistance from the citizens who knew that they were fighting for their very lives.

Meanwhile, Persian miners dug tunnels beneath the fortifications from which they began excavating galleries. Listening for the tell-tale clink of picks on rock beneath their feet, the citizens dug counter-mines, breaking into some of the subterranean passages where, in pitch-blackness, they fought bloody hand-to-hand battles with the enemy. But they could not
detect every man-made cavern; in the largest of these, the Persians ignited the wooden beams supporting the roof. Minutes later, with a rumbling crash, a section of wall collapsed in a vast pall of dust and smoke.

Into the gaping breach charged a mass of cataphracts, scattering any defenders foolhandy enough to contest their passage. The heavy cavalry was followed by the Sogdian Brigade. These mailed giants from beyond the Hindu Kush were armed with heavy battle axes that inflicted fearful damage on the Antiochans, severing heads or limbs with nearly every stroke. With the cutting edge of the Persian army driving all before them, a torrent of infantry now poured through the gap and began a systematic slaughter of the citizens, suddenly reduced to a demoralized mob possessed of but one thought – escape. However, for the fleeing, huddled crowds and screaming women and children corralled inside the bulwarks, there could be no escape. For the remainder of that day and through the night, the killing continued, the Persians hunting down every man, woman, and child that they could find . . .

Several mornings later, accompanied by Prudentius whom he had ‘suggested' might care to join him, Khusro looked down upon Antioch from the wooded slopes of Mount Casius. Fanned by a strong wind blowing onshore from the sea, fires now raged throughout the city, the distant crackle of flames and the crash of falling masonry mingling with a faint hubbub of despairing cries, as the slaughter carried on unchecked.

‘Stop them, Great King!' cried Prudentius, aghast, his previous complacency destroyed by an object-lesson in the grim realities of war, and now replaced by disbelieving horror. ‘In the name of humanity, I beseech you – put an end to this.'

Khusro shrugged and spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘Even I, the
Shah-an-Shah
of the mighty Empire of Iran, am not omnipotent. My soldiers' blood is up, and their fury must be allowed to run its course. If I commanded them to desist, would they obey me? As well instruct a tiger not to rend its prey.' He smiled and shook his head with a smile of gentle irony. ‘You see, my friend, unlike Justinian, who has God upon his side, I am but a man, who must act within his human limitations.' He gestured to the conflagration below. ‘You seem to imply that this is somehow my fault. Perhaps you should reflect,' he went on in tones of mild reproof, ‘that it could so easily have been avoided, if only . . . Well, I'm sure I need not recapitulate.'

‘To see Antioch destroyed!' cried Prudentius in a stricken voice. Choking back a sob, he whispered, ‘It is unbearable.'

‘Courage, friend.' Khusro placed a reassuring hand on the other's shoulder. ‘Antioch will rise again. For those who survive this unfortunate event, I shall build a new city on the banks of the Tigris, where they may live in peace and freedom as honoured guests of Persia. Greeks have long been welcome in my realm – an ornament to our society, like those professors from Athens when Justinian closed the Schools.'

When the blood-lust of his soldiers was eventually slaked, Khusro continued his progress through northern Syria, exacting tribute from city after city (all paid promptly, encouraged by the fate of Antioch), returning to Persia in the autumn,
*
well-pleased with the fruits of his campaign against the Romans. These included promises by Justinian to pay an annual subsidy in gold towards ‘protection' – ostensibly for both Romans and Persians – against the nomads of the steppes.

Accompanying the mighty host as it headed homewards beside the Euphrates was a long, long train of captives (among them Macedonia) – the survivors of the Sack of Antioch.

*
The title of the Shah's chief minister and plenipotentiary.

**
How curiously the wheel of history revolves. All these territories (for Lazica read Georgia, for Mesopotamia, Iraq), for centuries mere pawns in the ‘Great Game' between powers such as Rome, Persia, Russia, Britain, the Ottoman Empire, and more recently, America, are all now independent nations. (Perhaps, in the case of Iraq, that should be ‘semi-independent'!)

†
See Notes.

*
See Notes.

**
Aleppo.

*
Or White Huns. (Gibbon refers to them as Nephthalites.)

*
One-who-is-born-beautiful – a complimentary mode of address. (The title was originally bestowed on the priestess supervising certain ancient Greek rites.)

*
Of the year 540.

*
The same Liberius who, nearly sixty years earlier, had masterminded the division of land in Italy between the Romans and Theoderic's Ostrogoths – an immensely challenging and delicate task.

The ground over a wide area being thus waterlogged . . . had turned the
whole area into a quagmire . . . covered by swarms of gnats and flies

Ammianus Marcellinus (referring to terrain near the western end of
the Naarmalcha Canal
*
),
The Histories
, c. 390

As the booming of the horns signalled the end of that day's march, the long line of captives shuffled gratefully to a halt. To their left – a ribbon of gold in the late sun – rolled the broad Euphrates, to their right, thanks to the network of irrigation channels, fields of standing crops, bordered in the distance by a line of low and arid hills. Accompanied by Pelagia, a strapping kitchen-maid, and a tough old nun called Sister Agnes, Macedonia joined one of the queues forming at the various distribution points where rations (usually barley or wheaten bread, and dried fish) for the next twenty four hours were being issued.

The three women, who had all lost friends, colleagues, or loved ones in the destruction of their city, had become close companions in the course of the long journey south-east from Syria. They were now in the Persian zone of Mesopotamia, having left Roman soil two days previously after passing the border city of Circesium. Unlike the majority of their fellow captives (who had reacted with relief and gratitude to the news that they were to be given a new home in Persia), the three friends, each for their own personal reasons, had formed a pact to escape from the column and make their way back to Roman territory. Pelagia was betrothed to a young baker in Apamea (one of the cities spared by Khusro after it had paid the ransom price); to Sister Agnes, the thought of breathing sacrilegious air for the remainder of her life was anathema; while Macedonia could not bear to contemplate never seeing again the love of her life, Theodora.

Their plan, based on Macedonia's knowledge (gained from conversations with suppliers in her previous business) of the terrain they would eventually traverse, was, like all the best schemes, simple. Three hundred miles downstream from their present position, the Euphrates entered a
marshy region – a vast area of reed-beds and waterways, which should offer an excellent chance for the trio to slip away undetected. As the captives were neither to be ransomed nor sold into slavery, their value to Khusro was not commercial, rather a measure of his great-heartedness; thus the glory of his soubriquet – Nushirvan, ‘the Just' – would be augmented. In consequence, the Antiochans were only lightly guarded, more in fact for their own protection against lions
*
or the occasional band of brigands, than to prevent escape. After entering the marshes, the three would then head back to Roman territory, keeping to the marshland for a time in order to avoid detection, then following the Euphrates upstream back to the Syrian border. For food against the journey, they had regularly saved part of their daily rations; water, thanks to the initial topography and the excellent irrigation systems maintained by the Persians, which they would encounter thereafter, should not be a problem – barring the risk of infection. Pelagia, however, had managed to pilfer a strike-a-light and pannikin; provided they could find dry fuel, they would be able to boil their water.