Raptor (153 page)

“Nevertheless,” he grumbled, “ever since that time I have wondered. Could Boethius possibly be now in the secret employ of foreign powers?”

“Akh!” I said. “Old friend, what has become of your belief in a perspective of sympathy? Of your wanting to view other men with insight and understanding? Of your respecting each man’s being the center of his own universe?”

“I still try to look at men so,” he said, but darkly. “And I see some men greedy to
expand
their universes—to gulp and engulf and engorge others. I intend to take care that no one encroaches on mine.”

“Theodoric was always impetuous of action,” I said to Livia, “as witness the way he struck down Camundus and Rekitakh and Odoacer—sometimes with unhappy consequences. But now his whole character is changing. He is almost never cheerful any more, but wary and misgiving. It troubles me enough when he merely mopes in despondency, but in one of his seizures of vehemence, who can say what folly he may commit?”

Livia thought about that, while her maid set on the table between us a tray of sweetmeats. Then she said:

“You and Theodoric’s other friends and counselors must emulate the ancient Macedonians.”

“Eh? How is that?” I said as I bit into a small cake.

“The Macedonian king Philip was a drunkard, alternately demented by wine and deranged by its withdrawal. His much abused courtiers and subjects, it is said, had only one resort—appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober.”

I smiled at her, appreciative and admiring. Livia had been bright and clever even as a child. Evidently, during the years that had put gray in her hair and lines in her face, she had also got an education.

“And wisdom too,” I murmured. Then I frowned at the sweet I was eating. “I thought, Livia, you long ago abandoned your intended vengeance on me. For a honey cake, this tastes uncommonly bitter.”

She laughed. “No, I am not trying again to poison you. Quite the contrary. The cakes are made with Corsican honey, and that is tart, because the island is all yews and hemlocks. But it is well known that the Corsicans live to a great age, so their honey is highly recommended by the medici as an aid to prolonging one’s life.” She added, with mischievous good humor, “You see? Since you keep me prisoner here, and you alone come to visit me, I am trying to keep you alive forever.”

“Forever?” I put the cake down, unfinished, and said, more to myself than to her, “Forever? I have already lived long. I have seen much and done many things—not all of them pleasant. To live forever? To have always as much in prospect as is past? No… that is rather daunting to contemplate. I think not.”

Livia was watching me with the warm concern of a wife or sister, so I went on. “In truth, that is what is so sad about Theodoric. He has simply lived too long. Everything good he has done, all his greatness, is in danger of being overshadowed and blotted out by some foolish act that his age, not his will, may impel him to commit.”

Still looking wifely-sisterly, Livia said, “I told. you. What he needs is the care of some good woman.”

I shook my head. “Not this woman.”

“Why not? Who better?”

“I swore my auths to Theodoric as Thorn. If, as Thorn, I should sometime be compelled to do something contrary to that auths, I would be dishonored and damned in all men’s regard, including my own. However, as Veleda, I never swore any such auths…”

In some alarm, Livia said, “I almost fear to ask. What do you have in mind?”

“You are a literate woman. Do you know the real meaning of the word ‘devotion’?”

“I think so. Nowadays it means an emotion, an ardent attachment. But originally it referred to an
act,
did it not?”

“Yes. The word derives from votum, a vow, a consecration. On the battlefield, a Roman commander would pray to Mars or Mithras, promising to court death for himself in the combat if that god of war would grant victory and survival to his army, his nation, his emperor.”

“Giving up one life that others might live and prevail,” said Livia in a hushed voice. “Oh, my dear, my dear… are you planning an act of devotion?”

In the year 523 there appeared in the sky, visible all over the world, even in daylight, for the space of more than two weeks, that kind of star that some call a smoking star, and others a long-haired star, and others a star bearing a torch. In consequence, every Christian and Jewish priest, every pagan augur and wise-sayer cried, “Woe!”—that God and the other gods were warning us of dire calamities to come.

Well, numerous untoward things did happen during that year, but I could see no touch of God or the gods in them; they were all the doings of mortal men and women. To illustrate, Justinian and his concubine, Theodora, finally, with the connivance of the Church, managed to promulgate the “glorious repentance” law that enabled the two of them to marry. Then, no longer having to concentrate his energies on tidying his personal affairs, Justinian turned to what he saw as his major mission in life: tidying all the rest of the world to fit the precepts of the established Christian Church. The edicts were still, of course, ostensibly issued by Emperor Justin, but the words were Justinian’s. For example, when he decreed that henceforth no pagan or unbeliever or heretic would be allowed to hold any office in the Eastern Empire, either military or civil, he added, “All men will now perceive that, from those who do not properly worship the true God, not only the blessings of the afterlife but also this world’s material goods are withheld.”

That mandate did not—or not yet—extend westward beyond the province of Pannonia, but Theodoric understandably regarded it as ominous. By the terms of his long-ago agreement with Zeno, he was still, at least nominally, the eastern emperor’s “deputy and vicar.” If and when Justin should ever issue such an obnoxious decree aimed at the inhabitants of Theodoric’s domain, then Theodoric would have to yield to it or declare himself in open rebellion against his acknowledged overlord. And Theodoric and his Arian subjects were not alone in seeing trouble in the offing. The more sensible Catholic Christians in the Gothic Kingdom and the senators at Rome were also disturbed. After all, the senators considered themselves the caretakers of what remained of the Western Roman Empire, and the Western and the Eastern had for two hundred years been vying to outdo the other in authority and influence.

So had the Church of Rome been vying with the Church of Constantinople. It might be supposed that all devout Catholic Christians should have been delighted by an imperial edict that—anywhere in the world—worked evil to Jews and pagans and heretics. But remember, every patriarch bishop in Christendom had long been striving for recognition as
the
patriarch, the primus inter pares, the sovereign pontiff, the Papa. Almost simultaneous with Justin’s publication of his decree, Rome’s Patriarch Bishop Hormisdas died and was replaced by a man named John. As can be imagined, John was mightily disgruntled to find himself assuming a bishopric that had, in effect, just now been eclipsed by the one in Constantinople. The complaisant Emperor Justin had given a considerable escalation to the power and prestige of
his
patriarch bishop, Ibas. John had no hope of getting any such help from Theodoric. So, naturally, John and his clerics and his loyal laymen had one more grudge to hold against Theodoric. But they were only the
most
hostile of Theodoric’s adversaries. If there was one thing that united in brotherhood all Christians everywhere who adhered to the Anastasian creed—the Orthodox in the Eastern Empire, the Catholic in Africa and Gallia and the Gothic Kingdom—it was their determination to put an end to Theodoric and his fellow Arians and the Arians’ abominable tolerance of pagans and Jews and heretics and everything else unChristian.

Still, the clouds around the horizons of our Gothic Kingdom were not yet so dark as those looming right overhead. We who were closest to Theodoric had, for some time now, been fearful that one of his spells of irrationality might mar or disastrously undo the achievements of his entire reign. But even if Theodoric had been still at the zenith of his mental and physical prowess, there was no denying the fact of his age. In no very long time, he was going to die. Even if, mercifully, that happened before his increasing senility might harm the kingdom,
who
was to succeed him? Who was capable of carrying on the noble work he had done? Was there anyone, anywhere, in prospect fit to don the fallen mantle of a king rightly called “the Great”?

The heir apparent, of course, was Theodoric’s grandson in Ravenna, Athalaric. But in this year of which I am speaking the crown prince was only seven years old. If he succeeded to the throne any time soon, the kingdom would have to be ruled for some years by his regent-mother, and—as I believe I have indicated—Amalaswintha was about as lovingly regarded in the Gothic Kingdom as Theodora was in the Eastern Empire. Even supposing that the kingdom should survive her regency until Athalaric came to his majority, what kind of king would
he
make? I can offer one adumbration:

I and Theodoric’s three senior generals were in an antechamber of his palace, waiting to have audience with him. We were amusing ourselves meanwhile by trying to outdo each other’s war stories, when a door opened and young Prince Athalaric came shuffling in. Evidently he and his mother were also visiting the palace, probably on one of her errands of petulance. Anyway, the prince was blubbering and sobbing, one of his hands rubbing his red eyes and running nose while the other hand rubbed his backside.

General Tulum said gruffly, “Here, here, lad. What ails you?”

“Amma,” whimpered the boy, between sniffs and gasps. “Amma spanked me with her sandal.”

Tulum looked scandalized, but not sympathetically so.

General Witigis growled, “I hope, Athalaric, you had done something really heroically wicked to deserve it.”

“All I did”—snuffle, slobber—“was get a reprimand… from my Greek tutor… for misspelling the word ‘andreía’… and Amma overheard…”

Still blubbering and rubbing himself, the prince drifted on out of the room. There was a moment of silence while the warrior generals looked at each other in blank astonishment. Then Thulwin said unbelievingly:

“By the great leather balls of Allfather Wotan! Have I just seen an Amaling Ostrogoth—a
male
Ostrogoth—puling and mewling in tears?”

“After a whipping by a
woman!”
said General Tulum, equally appalled. “After
letting
a woman whip him!”

“Ne, ne,
spanked
he got,” said Witigis wonderingly. “With a woman’s sandal. By the Styx, when my brute of a father used to belt
me,
I was happy enough if he did not use the
buckle
end.”

“At that boy’s age,” said Thulwin, “I was breaking my first horse to the saddle, and breaking the nose of my drillmaster in cudgel practice.”

“Ja,” grunted Tulum. “Men-children should shed blood, not tears.”

Witigis said, with distaste,
“This
man-child is being
tutored.
In Greek. And being reprimanded. By a Greek.”

Thulwin asked, “What kind of word is ‘andreía,’ anyway?”

I said, “It means manliness.”

“Liufs Guth! And he does not even know how to
spell
it!”

Theodoric did have another grandson still living: Amalaric, the son of the Visigoths’ late King Alaric and Theodoric’s daughter Thiudagotha. That prince, now sixteen years old, could have been considered an acceptable alternate to the milksop brat Athalaric. However, he was not even being seriously expected to succeed his own father as King of the Visigoths—and, sad to relate, this was again the fault of Theodoric’s overprotection and overindulgence of his offspring. Ever since King Alaric’s death in battle, his queen, Thiudagotha, had been regent of that kingdom, and she had gratefully relegated the regnancy to her father, and Theodoric had all these years done the actual ruling, by means of the deputies he appointed there in Aquitania and Hispania. In other words, that Crown Prince Amalaric in Tolosa had grown up devoid of kingly responsibilities, devoid of kingly experience and apparently devoid of the least ambition to
be
king of anything. All in all, as a putative ruler of the entire Gothic Kingdom, he had to be judged about as inadequate as his cousin in Ravenna.

There was yet one other candidate: Theodahad, the son of Theodoric’s sister Amalafrida by her first husband, who had been an Ostrogoth herizogo. In truth, Theodahad could have made a very plausible claim to precedence as Theodoric’s successor, on the ground of close Amaling blood-kinship. Also, he had the requisite maturity for kingship, being now a man of middle age. However, in addition to lacking training and experience, Theodahad lacked the
moral
qualities for any post higher than that of a money-gouging tradesman. This was the Theodahad whom I had disliked when he was a pimply, surly youth, the Theodahad whom his uncle the king had publicly discredited in the matter of one of his land-grabbing transactions, the Theodahad who since then had done many other questionable dealings to his own aggrandizement, and thereby earned the contempt of many other people.

There was only one person in high circles who seemed to think Theodahad might have a slight chance of Fortune’s favor—and that was, unlikely though it would seem, Theodoric’s own daughter, unquestionably his direct heir, Princess Amalaswintha. She could not have helped knowing of her own unpopularity at court—indeed, throughout the kingdom—and, even as a doting mother, she must have been aware that her son, Athalaric, was no better loved. So she sought out and made friends with the cousin Theodahad that she, like every other respectable person, had long shunned. Amalaswintha’s reasoning was clear. She and her son and her cousin were Theodoric’s closest relatives and likeliest claimants to his crown. If all three of them clung together, they could repel any more distant pretenders, the Gothic Kingdom would
have
to accept one of them as Theodoric’s successor, and whichever one succeeded would share the spoils with the other two.

So, in that year of the daytime star, anno domini 523, ab urbe condita 1276, fifth year of the reign of Emperor Justin, thirtieth year of the reign of King Theodoric the Great, the situation was this: