The Scourge of God (5 page)

“The minister Chrysaphius invites you to supper,” Bigilas said now in the guttural tongue the Hun spoke. Compared to Greek or Latin, it sounded like the grunting of animals.

The fortifications were the thickest Edeco had ever seen.

“You will have to leave your horse outside the city,” the translator added.

This, at least, got a response. The Hun peered down. “I will ride to the palace.”

“No one rides in Constantinople except the emperor,” Bigilas insisted. “It’s too crowded. It would frighten your horse.” The Huns lived on horseback, he knew. They fought there, parleyed there, ate there, sometimes slept there, and for all he knew they made love there. They’d ride a hundred paces if it would save them a walk, and fitted their mounts so easily that they seemed a single beast. They also had to be manipulated like petulant children. “If you’d prefer, I can call a litter.”

“A litter?”

“A couch, carried by slaves. You can ride that way.” Edeco sneered. “Like a baby or a woman?”

“It is three miles to the palace.” He looked deliberately at the Hun’s bandy legs.

The Hun scowled. “What did you do to get here?”

“I walked. Even our senators and generals walk, ambassador. It will make it easier for me to show you the glories of our capital.”

The Hun shook his head. “Why live where you can’t ride?” But he slid off his pony anyway, not as surprised as he pretended. Previous envoys had warned him that if he allowed it, his horse would be stabled outside the city in a box just like the Romans lived in, a confinement that would make the pony fat and weak. These were an insect people, and they swarmed in their cities like maggots. The trick was to get your presents and get out.

Bigilas was pleased the Hun was not making an issue of his horse. It was an unexpected characteristic of these slaughterers that they would actually negotiate. He had begun to learn their tongue when taken captive in Attila’s raid of seven years before, and after being ransomed he had learned more when his skill won him jobs as a trader. His ability to translate had brought him to the attention of the imperial government and eventually to Chrysaphius himself. Bigilas knew the Huns without liking them, which was just the quality the chief minister wanted.

The translator watched the Hun give his reins, bow, and quiver to an attendant he called Skilla. Edeco instructed the young man and another ranking Hun, a Roman-born lieutenant and turncoat named Onegesh, to wait outside the walls. If he did not return when expected, they were to report to Attila. “Do not let them box my horse and do not let them box you. It will cost you strength.”

“But we’ve arranged a villa and stables,” Bigilas said. “Our roof is the stars,” the young man replied just a little too proudly. Skilla, like his uncle Edeco, was looking at the triple walls of Constantinople with a mixture of contempt and envy. “We will camp at the river and await you there.” Chrysaphius wouldn’t like the Huns keeping to themselves, outside Roman control, but what could Bigilas do? “Do you want food?”

“We will get what we need.”

What did that mean? Were they going to poach from farms, steal from pilgrims? Well, let them sleep in the dirt. “Come then,” he said to Edeco. “Chrysaphius is waiting.” As they walked to the great gate he looked back at the two Huns left behind. They appeared to be counting the towers.

The new capital of the Eastern Roman Empire was a triangle, the apex that jutted into the water containing the imperial palaces, Hippodrome, and the church of Hagia Sophia. The triangle’s base, to the west, was the four-mile-long triple wall. The two watery sides of the triangle were also walled and lined with artificial harbors crowded with shipping. All of the world’s commerce now seemed to pass through this funnel; and the Eastern emperors had imported statues, art, marbles, and mosaics to give their new city instant respectability. There were probably as many Romans in Constantinople as there were Huns in the entire world, Bigilas knew; and yet it was the city that paid tribute to the barbarian, not the other way around. It was an intolerable situation that must come to an end.

The Golden Gate was a triple archway, the arch in the center being the highest and broadest; and its wood-and-iron doors were reinforced with a relief of enormous brass elephants polished to a golden sheen. The portal passed through all three walls in a tunnel that would be a corridor of massacre for any army that broke through: Its ceiling was peppered with kill holes through which arrows could be shot or hot oil poured. Moreover, the third and innermost wall was the highest so that each barrier overlooked the one in front, giving the appearance of a forbidding mountain range.

Edeco stopped just short of the outer entrance, peering up at statues of emperor, victory, and fortune. There was Latin lettering above. “What does it say?”

Bigilas read aloud: “‘Theodosius adorns this place, after the doom of the usurper. He who constructed the Golden Gate brings in the Golden Age.’”

The barbarian was silent a moment. Then, “What does it mean?”

“That our emperor is a god and that this is the new center of the world.”

“I thought you Romans only had one god, now.”

“I suppose.” The translator frowned. “The divinity of the emperor is still under theological debate.”

The Hun grunted, and they passed through the darkness of the triple walls to the bright sunlight on the inside. Edeco stopped again. “Where is your city?”

Bigilas smiled. Here the immensity of Constantinople first struck the barbarians. “The central city remains behind the original walls of Constantine.” He pointed at a wall nearly a mile ahead. “This new area, walled by Theodosius, is reserved for cisterns, gardens, monasteries, churches, and farmers’ markets. The Lycus River flows under our walls and we have enough water and food to resist an invader forever. Constantinople can never be starved or conquered, Edeco, it can only be befriended.”

The Hun said nothing for a while, his gaze rotating. Then, “I come as a friend. For presents.”

“The chief minister has presents for you, my friend.”

At the smaller, older, single-width wall of Constantine there was a marketplace before the Gate of Saturninus where Edeco eyed the goods with a predator’s appetite. Nova Roma had become the world’s new crossroads and every product, every pleasure, every smell, and every taste could be found here. His wives would quiver like excited geese to see booty such as this. Someday he would carry it back to them, spattered with the blood of the merchants who had owned it. The thought pleased him.

The pair went through the gate and entered the urban hub of the Eastern Empire, a raw, bustling capital of gilded churches, ostentatious palaces, crowded tenements, and teeming streets. Edeco suddenly felt shrunken and entirely too anonymous. If the Hun evoked fear outside the walls, he elicited only curious glances inside them. To Constantinople came all the peoples of the world: black Africans, blond Germans, dusky Syrians, shrouded Berbers, migratory Jews, glowering Goths, copper-hued Iberians, industrious Greeks, proud Arabs, clamoring Egyptians, and bumpkin Illyrians and Dacians. They pushed, threaded, and jostled one another, crying out bargains, negotiating prices, shouting for passageway, and promising pleasure. The Hun felt caught in a vast river he did not control. There was a heady stench of spice, perfume, sweat, charcoal smoke, food, and sewage and a cacophony of tongues. It made him want to vomit. Bigilas was gesturing to it all with pride.

The road they followed was stone, that Roman custom that Edeco believed was hard on feet and harder on hooves. The middle was open to the sky but on either side was a marble portico that offered shade and shelter and was just as crowded as the lane’s center. The tops of the pillars were carved into fronds and leaves, as if to mimic trees. The Romans used rock instead of wood and then tried to make the rock look like wood! In the shadows beyond the portico was an endless line of shops tunneling into buildings so high that they made the street a canyon. The Hun could not keep himself from scanning the eaves, wary of ambush, and yet these Romans thronged without any apparent feeling of entrapment. In fact, they seemed to take comfort in this closeness. It was an unnatural way to live and it had made the Romans strange: loud, overdressed, the painted women either too veiled or too exposed, the men too rich or too beggared, gamblers and whores beside monks and nuns, all of them clutching and calling and complaining with gusto. It was an ant’s nest, Edeco thought, and when it all finally burned it would be a blessing to the earth.

Bigilas chattered like a girl as they pushed ahead through the confusion, saying this marble was from Troad and their street was called the Mese and that forum was called Arcadius, as if Edeco cared. The Hun was instead tabulating the wealth on display: the stalls of gold jewelry, the small hillocks of carpets, the linens from Egypt, the woolens from Anatolia, the jars of wine, the fine boots, and the metallic luster of aristocratic weapons. There were cups and bowls, bedding and pots, copper and iron, ebony and ivory, and fine carved chests to put it all away. How did the maggots make such things?

Periodically the Mese opened to wider places that Bigilas called forums. Many had statues of frozen men, for what purpose Edeco didn’t know. Tall columns jutted to the sky but held nothing up. One was topped by a frozen man called Constantine. This was the emperor who had founded the city, Bigilas explained.

The Hun was more intrigued by a monumental four-sided arch at an intersection called the Anemodoulion. At its top was a weathervane, and the Hun watched in amazement as its eagle pointed this way and that. What foolishness! Only Romans needed a toy to tell them which way the wind blew.

Bigilas also pointed out the arches of what he called an aqueduct. Why, Edeco wondered, did the Romans build rivers instead of simply living by one? The Earth Mother gave people everything they really needed, and yet the Romans toiled their whole lives to duplicate what was free.

As they advanced toward the apex of the peninsula, the houses, palaces, and monuments grew grander and the noise even worse. The clanging from the copper factories was like the heavy hail of the steppe, and the whine of the marble saws was almost unbearable. Only the gates of the Hippodrome were more appealing, giving a glimpse of open sand surrounded by a huge oval enclosure made of steps that went up to the sky. “What is this?”

“The place of chariot races and games,” Bigilas replied. “When they compete there are eighty thousand people here. Have you seen the scarves and ribbons? Those are our factions, the Greens the common folk and the Blues the nobles. There’s a great rivalry, betting, and sometimes riots and fights.”

“For what?”

“For who wins the game.”

So they spent their energies on pretend war instead of the real thing.

And with that they came to the palace of Chrysaphius.

The chief minister of the Eastern Roman Empire lived, in the manner of all beings in such exalted positions, on his wits, watchfulness, and ruthless calculation. Like so many in this new era of Roman government, Chrysaphius was a eunuch. It was his early service to, and access to, the emperor’s beautiful wife, Aelia—made possible because of his castration—that had started his own precipitous rise. He was now, by some accounts, more powerful than the emperor himself. And why not? Having observed the cunning of women his entire life, the minister had long concluded that the absence of balls did nothing to subtract from courage and everything to improve clarity of mind. The emperor Theodosius was normally equipped but was a hapless general and clumsy negotiator who had been dominated his entire life by his older sister, a woman so aware of the proper ranking of things that she had foresworn sex and devoted her life to religious chastity. Such purity made her as formidable and revered as it made her prickly and vindictive. What a contrast the dangerous Pulcheria was to the dim and lustful sister of the emperor of the West, a girl named Honoria, reportedly so stupid that she had been caught in bed with her palace steward! If only Pulcheria would exhibit such weakness. But, no, she seemed as immune to such feelings as Chrysaphius himself, which made her dangerous.

Pulcheria had first gotten rid of lovely Aelia by accusing her brother’s wife of adultery, driving her in humiliation to Judea. Chrysaphius had barely escaped being caught up in that scandal himself, since Aelia had been his patroness. Yet his skill at negotiation had made him so indispensable, and his emasculation had made him so immune to sexual chicanery, that even Pulcheria could not dislodge him. Nor could the minister, in turn, persuade the emperor that his sister’s public holiness was only a mask for private spitefulness. Now she was Chrysaphius’s most implacable enemy. The minister’s own greed and treacheries had made him many foes, and he knew his unsexing added to his unpopularity. He needed a dramatic achievement to fortify himself against Pulcheria.

This was why the oafish barbarian Edeco was now rudely stuffing himself at Chrysaphius’s table.

So far, the political seduction had gone as planned. Bigilas had met the Hun outside the city walls and had escorted him through Constantinople, the translator confirming that he had dazzled the tribesman with the glories of Roman architecture, the richness of Byzantine markets, and the density and vigor of the population. The futility of assaulting Nova Roma should be evident by now. Edeco had then come into Chrysaphius’s palace, gaping like a peasant at its marbles, brocades, tapestries, carpets, pools, fountains, and carved cedar doors. Sunlit courtyards were filled like a meadow with flowers; bedchambers were seas of silks and linens; and side tables groaned under mountains of fruit, bread, honey, meat, and gleaming olives.

The Hun had grazed like a bull from room to room.

Chrysaphius had tried to get two of his tittering slave girls to coax the barbarian into one of his baths, a divertissement that would have made the creature more bearable at close range, but the Hun had suspiciously refused.

“They fear water spirits,” the translator had whispered in explanation.