Raptor (137 page)

He said, “I know it is none of my concern, Marshal, but I cannot help being curious. How
did
you know so much about the source of the trains, that Haustaths?”

“In my youth I spent part of a summer in that beautiful place. The Place of Echoes.” I paused and mused. “I did not suspect, back then, that I would hear an echo of it again in my lifetime.”

“Blessed are the peacemakers.” In a hushed voice Theodoric quoted the apostle Matthew, as he wonderingly regarded me and the other four teamsters and Navarchus Lentinus and the captive prizes that we had waiting for him in Ariminum. “Tell me how you got them.”

“It was no great feat,” I said modestly. “The Ravenna sentries let our Trojan mule train into the city with no more than stares of scrutiny. At the city’s center there was quite a body of soldiers waiting to receive the mules from us. My men kept silent as instructed, and I was able to chatter familiarly about Haustaths to the optio to whom I relinquished the train.”

“What would you have done,” Theodoric asked amusedly, “if the soldiers had slashed open the Trojan bales then and there?”

“Happily for us, they did not. As might be supposed, they led the mules off to separate quarters of the city, so the provisions could be equitably apportioned and distributed. And by the way, during our brief visit there, I gathered that Ravenna still has a decent store of grains and other dry staples, but the trains were the only source of really
chewable
food and savor-giving oil. Anyway, as soon as the soldiers had the mules, they took no further interest in us drovers. We wandered off without restriction.”

Theodoric laughed. “Did you hear the howls that must have gone up when the bales
were
opened?”

“I was expecting to, at any instant. I knew we had to move quickly, before the outraged soldiers came looking for us. Well, we were too few to do any significant damage to the city’s defenses, even if we could have gone to ground and labored subversively for weeks. So our best hope was to steal something. Something that would come in useful as a pry bar, so to speak, when we got it outside the city walls. Of course, I should have
liked
to abduct Odoacer, but we had no time to search for him. Besides, I knew he would be heavily guarded, and we were unarmed. Then I espied the Basilica of St. John, and knew it to be Ravenna’s Catholic cathedral. Even the conscientious legionaries do not trouble to guard churches. So we entered and, resident in the presbytery there, we found these—our prizes.”

Theodoric looked at them appreciatively, appraisingly, lovingly. They looked not so lovingly back.

“By this time,” I continued, “there
was
some commotion going on. People running about and shouting. Probably some of them were the soldiers raging in search of us. But part of the confusion was supplied by the good navarchus here.” I deferred to Lentinus, and he said:

“As arranged, Theozoric, I had hastened back to my workers at the Padus, carrying fresh supplies of wood and fuel. I made the men work frenziedly at building more and more khelaí—even utilizing the swamp’s canes and reeds—and we began sending those in under Ravenna’s walls by day as well as night. Thorn tells me that several of them went up in blazes of wet fire, most fortuitously, just as he and his men and their captives emerged from the cathedral. So the crab-claws may have helped, but I believe the escape could have been effected even without them. Remember, a city’s guards are concerned with keeping enemies from getting
in.
These were going out.”

“And,” I said, “we tried to look utterly unconcerned, unhurried, as if we had legitimate business outside the gates. Anyway, it worked. Five travel-worn peasants and two shuffling priests—we got scarcely a glance from the guards as we departed. And the two priests obliged us by not shouting or even whimpering to be rescued. For maintaining silence, a dagger point in the armpit works better than a vow.”

“And here you are,” said Theodoric, shaking his head in open admiration.

“And here we are,” I said. “Allow me to introduce our priestly prizes. The younger and fatter one—at least we have been hospitably feeding him to fatten him up—the one who is trying so hard to look saintly patient and forgiving of his captors, he is Ravenna’s Catholic Archbishop John. The other, the wispy, frail and tremulous old man—he really
is
a saint, named a saint in his own time, probably the only saint that you and I, King Theodoric, will ever be privileged to see in
our
time. You have heard of him before. He is Odoacer’s lifelong mentor and tutor and confessor and personal chaplain, St. Severinus.”

“It is up to Odoacer,” said Theodoric. “Give up the city or the saint.”

He and we officers and the two newly acquired guests were reclining at refection in the triclinium of Theodoric’s borrowed Ariminum palace. We were being lavishly regaled with succulent viands but, while Bishop John was eating with two-fisted vigor, St. Severinus was only indifferently picking at things with his quivery old fingers.

“Teodoric, my son, my son…” the bishop said, with the Roman pronunciation of the name. He swallowed a huge mouthful of meat, and then indicated me. “This person is already damned to be miserable for the rest of his life, and afterward to suffer the torments of Gehenna throughout eternity, because he laid hands on the sainted Severinus. Surely you, Teodoric, will not likewise imperil your hope of heaven by doing harm to a Christian saint.”

“A Catholic saint,” Theodoric said imperturbably. “I am not a Catholic.”

“My son, my son, Severinus was sanctified by the sovereign pontiff of
all
Christendom.” John piously sketched the sign of the cross on his forehead. “Therefore every Christian must revere and respect a saint who—”

“Balgs-daddja,” General Pitzias rudely grunted. “I should expect a saint to be punishing our impieties at this very moment with a divine thunderbolt. But he is not even uttering harsh words.”

“Or any words,” said Bishop John. “The saint no longer talks.”

“Is he injured? Unwell?” asked Theodoric. “I do not want to lose him beforetime. Shall I summon a medicus?”

“No, no,” said John. “Since some years now, he has not spoken, nor seemed to hear, nor availed himself of any of his other senses. If he were an ordinary mortal, one would suppose him merely far gone in senile decay. But it is clear, Severinus being a saint, that he is emulating a fellow saint, following Paul’s injunction to mind only the things that are above, not the things that are on the earth. You will notice that he even refrains from eating anything except a crumb now and then. To us in Ravenna, since we have
had
to live on crumbs, the saint’s serene self-denial has been an inspiration for our imitation.”

“If you value and adore him so much, then,” said Theodoric, “you will not want anything to happen to him.”

“My son, my son,” John said yet again, wringing his hands. “Do you really wish me to go back and tell Odoacer that you threaten injury to the sainted Severinus, unless—”

“I do not care
what
you tell him, Bishop. From what I know of Odoacer, he will not risk his skin to save that of even his favorite saint. The man cravenly hid himself among a crowd of his subjects in order to flee unnoticed from Verona. He had several hundred unarmed and helpless captives butchered rather than chance their hindering his flight into Ravenna yonder. Ever since then, he has been subjecting that whole city’s populace to deplorable privation, just so he can keep on hiding in there. That is why I doubt that any threat to any other person on this earth would make him surrender Ravenna to me. Yet that is what he must do.”

“But… but… if he does not?”

“If he does not, you will learn, Bishop, that I can be as ruthless and brutal as Odoacer. So, if
you
care what becomes of the sainted Severinus, you had better concoct a very persuasive argument, an irresistible argument, with which to sway Odoacer. And do it quickly. You will be escorted back to Ravenna tomorrow.” He paused to calculate. “Two days to get there, two days back. I will give you until tomorrow week to return here with Odoacer’s unconditional surrender. Ita fiat! Be it so!”

It was I who rode with Bishop John out of Ariminum along the Via Popilia, giving him safe-conduct through our siege lines. And, holding aloft a white signum indutiae, I accompanied him all the way to Ravenna’s outer guard lines south of the Classis port. During the two-day ride, I refrained from inquiring how John had decided to put our demands when he faced Odoacer. (And of course I was not going to point out to him that Theodoric never really had said that he
would
harm the fragile and dotard old Severinus.) When I handed over the bishop to the Roman guards, they gave me very sour looks, because by then every last person in and around Ravenna knew of the humiliating Trojan-mule incident.

I returned to our line and waited, not at all sure what to expect next. If any of our soldiers there had proposed a wager on the outcome of this enterprise, I would have been uncertain whether to lay my money on success or failure. Even when a legionary came, riding with a signum indutiae and with Bishop John riding beside him, I still would not have known which way to wager. John
had
returned from the enemy’s lair, at any rate, and not carrying his head on his saddle horn. Was that a hopeful sign? His face gave me no hint.

When it was only he and myself riding back along the Popilian Way, I could no longer resist saying, “Well?”

“As Teodoric demanded,” he said, not very joyously, “Odoacer capitulates.”

“Euax!”
I exclaimed. “Gratulatio, Bishop John! You have done a good thing, both for your native city and for your native land. But allow me a shrewd and sly conjecture. Odoacer was more than ready to surrender, am I right? His pretending now to do it only for the sake of dear old St. Severinus saves his losing countenance. Even gives him a specious air of noble self-sacrifice. Is that not how it seemed to you?”

“No,” he said, rather sulkily. “Teodoric was right. Odoacer would not have done it for the sake of Severinus. I had to offer him more than a saint.”

“Then you did employ some additional argument? Well, if it served to sway Odoacer, I applaud your powers of invention.”

John rode on for several paces without commenting, so I added, “You do not seem very happy about your success.”

He still did not comment, so I said, frowning, “Bishop, what
did
you offer Odoacer? His life? Safe exile? A competence? What?”

He blew out a sigh that made his jowls shake. “Co-rulership. Equal kingship with Teodoric. The two of them to reign henceforward side by side, as do the brother-kings of the Burgunds.”

I stopped Velox, reached for John’s reins and hauled his horse also to a stop, saying in a hiss, “Are
you insane?”

“Teodoric said—you were there; you heard him—he said that he did not care
what
I proposed.”

I stared at the man, aghast. “Theodoric was under the misapprehension that you had good sense. When he learns how wrong he was, he will be exceedingly dismayed. So will you. Eheu. I can see it now.”

His heavy underlip quivered, but he said stubbornly, “I have given my word. Odoacer accepted it. So must Teodoric. I am, after all, an archbishop of Holy—”

“You are an imbecile! Theodoric would have done better to send that drooling dotterel Severinus. Who ever heard of the vanquished dictating terms to the victor? Look you. Here stands Theodoric, triumphantly astride this whole land. There lies Odoacer, supine, flattened, crushed—but shaking his fist and crowing—‘I am your equal, by order of the Archbishop John!’ ” Disgustedly, I tossed the reins back. “Come along, then. I can hardly
wait
to see this.”

He said again, but shakily now, “I have given my word. The word of a reverend arch—”

“Hold a moment,” I said, halting Velox once more. “You must have made some arrangements for the meeting of these two peculiar brotherly kings—the sealing of their comically peculiar partnership. What arrangements?”

“Why, an occasion of great pomp and ceremony, of course. Teodoric marches into Ravenna at the head of his troops. He is accorded the triumph, with all the customary formalities. I myself deck him with the laurel and the toga picta. The defending forces pledge him their oath and their arms. The people lining the streets prostrate themselves in token of submission. After victory prayers at the cathedral, Teodoric proceeds to Odoacer’s residence, the palace called the Laurel Grove. There is a banquet laid and waiting. The two men embrace in amity and—”

“That will do,” I said, and he sat silent while I pondered on those things. Then I said, “Yes, that will do admirably. Theodoric enters the city; the defenders and the inhabitants submit. That is all he will expect, because that is all you will tell him, Bishop John. Let him believe that when he meets Odoacer it will be only to accept his sword in surrender.”

John recoiled in horror. “You are suggesting to an archbishop the commission of sin! I would be lying to Teodoric! I would be breaking my pledged word to Odoacer!”

“You would do neither. I suggest only that you trim an edge off the truth. If you were to tell Theodoric the incredible terms you have negotiated, he would certainly have you disemboweled on the spot. But more than that. He is a man of honor. He would refuse to march into the city, even though Odoacer throws it wide open before him. Therefore, Bishop John, you simply omit to mention the equal-king stipulation of the surrender, and you run out of breath before you finish telling of the ceremonial arrangements. After Theodoric’s entry and acceptance of the city’s submission, he proceeds to the Laurel Grove palace to meet Odoacer. That is all. Stop there. If, at that point, something should occur to blemish your pledged word… well, it is hardly your fault, is it?”

“You are still asking of me the sin of omission. And I am an archbishop of Holy—”

“Console yourself with this. A wise abbot once told me that Mother Church allows her ministers occasionally to assist her cause with the aid of pious artifice.”