Triumph (8 page)

Flavius, seeing what was happening, had the horns blown to order a general retirement, his intention being to re-form the whole behind the Isaurians, who would hold the Goths until he could renew his assault. With commendable discipline his centre and right divisions broke off in good order and successfully disengaged.

The trouble on the left was more acute; there the losses had been greater and the mixture of friend and foe more serious, which had rendered an increasing number horseless. They were straggling to the rear so there was no cohesion in the retirement on that flank, due to lack of numbers and enemy pressure. It broke into a near collapse and the disordered body of men retreated in some confusion, which would not have mattered if the Isaurians had held.

Seeing one-third of the cavalry before them in flight the mass reacted as infantry usually did: safety lay behind the moat and it was to that to which they now ran. This meant that without a shelter behind which they could re-form, the rest of the cavalry, albeit in proper formations, had no choice but to aim for the same sanctuary.

The greater mass of the Isaurians were now in a state of utter panic. They did not stop at the moat, instead making for the nearest gates, two placed at a point where they formed a tight angle into which the infantry now crowded, there to clamour at the mass of Roman citizens lining the walls. The gates, despite their pleading, remained closed.

Flavius, Constantinus, Bessas and all the other senior commanders
were not idle; with the flat blades of their swords, added to hoarse and repeated shouting, they were busy ensuring that the cavalry formed up behind the moat to repulse their enemies. Only when a modicum of order was restored did it become obvious why they were being gifted the time. Not all of the Isaurians had broken; out in the fields stood two tight squares of infantry who between them had broken up the Goth pursuit.

Led by Principius and Tarmutus, this diminished force was seeking to do that which should have fallen to the whole. That they could not hold was obvious but before he could give them support Flavius had to mount a defence with his back to the walls of the now closed city, any pleas to the citizens to open the gates denied.

‘Is there anything more treacherous than a Roman, father?’

‘Remember we are Romans, Photius, despite what those swine call us.’

Some order was emerging, infantry being pushed forward to line the inner side of the moat while others were moving to destroy the wooden causeway by which the army had advanced and now retreated. This was stopped by Flavius, who gave permission to Ennes that he should try to rescue those who could be saved, especially his brother, Tarmutus.

Leading three hundred of the heavily armoured
bucellarii
, Ennes thundered over those timbers and initiated a full charge so that their sheer weight would break the Goth encirclement. Their comrades watched as they crashed through the lighter Goth cavalry, to create an avenue by which the remaining Isaurians, and there were now few, could flee, that followed by a fighting retreat.

Ennes personally carried out his brother over his saddle. Principius suffered harsher treatment; being dead, he was dragged back over the moat and once the men who had effected the rescue were safe Flavius ordered the causeway to be hacked down, watching as his triumphant
enemy worked to get his forces into the proper formation to finish off what was now a trapped enemy.

‘Are we to die here?’ Photius asked, with a tremor in his voice.

‘If the citizens of Rome will not open the gates all we can do is cost the Goths dear. Now it is time to pray and comport your soul.’

How was it possible that so many thousands of men could be silent; if, like their general, they were praying there was no evidence, while over their heads the residents of the city also seemed to come to a collective holding of breath in anticipation of what was to come, a bloody massacre. Or was it in contemplation of the revenge Witigis would take upon their treacherous city?

Many were later to question the power of prayer, for no attack came; the Goths began to fall back, splitting up to return to their camps, which did nothing to break the silence, even when the fields on the eastern side of the moat were clear of everything but the dead and dying. Then from behind the defeated army came the sound of creaking as the great gates were opened.

That his troops began to cheer sickened Flavius; he had chanced everything to win a decisive victory and he had been beaten and then betrayed. It was a chastened general, his head hanging low, who rode back into the city.

‘Why did they not attack, Father?’

‘If you can communicate with God, Photius, ask him, for I have no answer. Ride to Valentinus and inform him of what has occurred. Whatever the state of his action he is to retire at once.’

‘And the occupants of the city?’

‘I cannot do to them what Witigis would have done, Photius.’ The voice lost its weary quality and became a hiss. ‘Much as it would give me pleasure to do so. Now go, time is pressing.’

On the Plains of Nero the orders issued by Flavius had been studiously obeyed. Valentinus had stood off and used controlled archery to pin the Goths in front of their camp but made no attempt to overcome them. If the men who led the Roman levies had been content to stay where they had been deployed all would have been well but, sure of their prowess and against orders, they marched out of the Porta Pancratia and, making their way through the abandoned building of an exterior suburb, debouched onto the plain.

The sheer number of that body, five thousand men setting up a huge cloud of dust, had to be the cause of what followed. The horns before Valentinus blew and suddenly his enemy melted away, abandoning their camp to occupy the nearest set of hills to the rear where they could mount a defence.

Seeing the enemy retreat, the Roman levies, hitherto in untidy lines, ceased to march in any kind of order. They began to run and did not stop until they were within the wooden rampart that protected the Gothic encampment, where they immediately fell into an orgy of looting. Not to be outdone and in fear of losing out, the Moorish mercenaries likewise set to, seeking to ensure they got their just share, their behaviour immediately copied by the mounted archers.

Valentinus had been in command of a well-disciplined force; within a few grains of sand he was seeking to impose some kind of order on a rabble, while the condition of that which had caused him to flee was not lost on his opposite number. Seeing the chaos before them the Goth cavalry began to advance, which immediately alarmed the Romans.

Attempts by Valentinus to get them to form up fell on deaf ears; men who had been looting now had only one aim, to get back within the walls of the city with everything they could carry. The Moors were now so muddled as to be useless, while the archers, who knew
they could not stand alone, took the only course open to them and began to flee as well.

If the well mounted got to safety that was not an opportunity afforded to many of the others. Men on foot running from warriors on horseback had little chance and the slaughter was great. Nowhere was that more than at the gate itself, open but so crowded with panic-stricken Roman levies that it became a charnel house.

The last command Valentinus could issue, once he and his personal bodyguards had forced their way through the rabble, was to get that gate shut and let everyone still outside it pay for their greed. That was where Photius found him, tears streaming down his cheeks.

M
orale naturally plummeted following such a reverse and the only method by which Flavius could counter that was by a return to his previous stratagem, that of a controlled sortie and then retire. This enjoyed only limited success, due to the higher spirits of the Goths and the way they had learnt to counter his tactics. The fact that preyed on his mind was not the nature of his own failure – in war such things had to be accepted – but the way it had nearly turned into disaster.

If the Goths had put in a final charge it was possible, with the gates of the city shut against him, he would have lost his entire army and the image of those Roman citizens lining the walls in silent contemplation of such an outcome caused a near apoplexy, just as much as the indiscipline of their levies on the Plains of Nero had multiplied his own difficulties on the east bank of the Tiber.

The need to know how such a set of circumstances had come about was a task for Procopius. He agreed with his master that the Roman mob were not capable of such behaviour on some collective natural instinct. Yes, the common people could riot as could any mass of citizens; Flavius had seen that very thing in Constantinople in the so-called Nika riots against Justinian and Theodora, an uprising that had ended in the
massacre of thirty thousand citizens in the Hippodrome.

There had been furtive leadership then seeking power for themselves and many had paid the price for mere suspicion of involvement; something of the same must exist in Rome and future security demanded that whoever was responsible be unmasked, a demand easier made than satisfied, as Procopius sadly reported. He lacked the sources among the Romans that he enjoyed within the army.

‘It’s like walking the sewers, leaving me wading in filth but with no clarity. Hint to one senator that there has been treachery is to invite him to name with certainty his chief rivals and they are just as keen to condemn the source.’

‘So it could be any of them?’ Flavius asked.

‘Or all!’ Procopius snapped, before modifying that. ‘Not all, but who the culprit might be, I am at a loss to say.’

‘Silverius?’ Flavius asked. ‘He was quick to betray Witigis, perhaps he will be just as swift to do the same to us. I daresay he hoped that with us in possession the Goths would leave Rome be.’

That received a jaundiced look, which obviated the need for Procopius to state the obvious: when it came to wading through ordure the denizens of the Church were worse by a wide margin than their lay brethren. They lied with a facility that flew in the face of their stated occupational godliness. Having seen that look Flavius went to his desk and fetched a scroll, which he handed to his secretary.

‘Read this.’ His secretary complied, not once, but judging by the cant of his head, twice and both times so slowly as to make his employer impatient. ‘Well?’

‘It is damning enough,
Magister
, but is it true?’

‘You have reason to doubt it?’

‘There’s a certain crudity to the accusation, it seems too explicit,
too lacking in uncertainty. Silverius could very well be engaged in treachery but he would not be such a fool as to leave himself so open to discovery, and I cannot be certain, but I would say this draft of a letter is not in his hand.’

‘He will not write his own words any more than I do.’

‘No man in his right mind would dictate a missive in which he openly alludes to secret dealings with Witigis. At the very least he would employ a simple code. Added to that, whoever brought you this claims to have read the final missive. Can that too be accurate?’

‘You know Theodora has demanded I remove him?’

That gave them both pause; one of the matters that had plagued the empire over several decades had been a dispute on dogma between those who adhered to the creed of Monophysitism. This went against the agreed decision reached by the Synod of Bishops at Chalcedon, all based on an interpretation of scripture. Could Jesus be both man and God? Was there a Holy Trinity of equals? Chalcedon decided yes but many refused to accept the agreed conclusion.

Theodora was strong for the Monophysites while Silverius, who occupied the senior office in their shared religion, was openly opposed to that position. She wanted him removed and replaced with a deacon called Vigilius, who was clearly her creature. So far Flavius had not acted upon the demand, his excuse for delay being that his orders came from the Emperor not his consort, however powerful she thought herself to be.

It was a dangerous game and had his wife been present in Rome it would have been doubly so, for she would have acted not only as an advocate for Theodora but as her partisan, even if he fundamentally disagreed, a fact which was wounding in the extreme. Yet even without her presence, prevarication could only last so long; here was an excuse to act that met with his needs as well as those of Theodora.

‘Silverius could be our perpetrator, could he not? Someone – perhaps more than one – gave orders that those gates be kept closed against us and was prepared to see us destroyed. Only Witigis did not finish us off and I still have no idea why, excepting divine intercession.’

‘But you must guard against a repeat for we may not be so lucky in future?’

‘To the point, Procopius, as always. Send a party of my bodyguards to arrest Silverius—’

‘To do with him what?’

‘We’ll send him to Constantinople. Let the man who rules, not I, decide to please or displease his wife.’

‘And Vigilius?’

‘He is here in the city, is he not?’ Procopius nodded. ‘Then he shall become the Bishop of Rome until Justinian says otherwise.’

‘Which leaves the senators,
Magister
, and Silverius might be innocent.’

‘I doubt he is wholly that, none of them are.’ Flavius paused for some time, to think. ‘The senators are to be expelled from the city. Let them reside in the country where they can plot to their heart’s content, but uselessly.’

At the next meeting of the military council, if that action met with universal approval it was clear that the reputation of the man in command had taken a dent. It was an undercurrent rather than manifest, a feeling not a fact that Flavius’s generals had lost a degree of belief in him, the most obvious evidence being in the more forthright way that his second in command felt he had the right to hold forth and act as if he was equal. Not that he proposed any other course than his superior had intended to put forward himself.

Much as Flavius wanted to check his presumption he let
Constantinus have his moment; the last thing needed was an open dispute between the two senior commanders, and if disagreements were allowed to break out into the open between the top men, it would lead to the taking of sides, which would be fatal to the enterprise: a divided army could only hope for complete defeat. So it was with a high degree of diplomacy and a frustrating touch of humility that Flavius gave him full agreement.

‘We cannot sit idle, so we must do as Constantinus suggests and keep up our raiding. To his claim to take the command of such operations I can only say I fully support it and thank him.’

As ever, when the conference broke up Flavius was left with his secretary, who had on his long, thin face one of those enigmatic smiles that left anyone observing it to wonder if they were caused by amusement or mental superiority.

‘Constantinus suggests?’

‘He wants to take responsibility for the tactics we have no choice but to employ.’

‘And if they begin to work, he can claim the credit—’

‘Which,’ Flavius interrupted, ‘he will further use to undermine my authority.’

‘Wise,
Magister
?’

‘Necessary,’ was the snapped reply.

Being clearly in search of a degree of personal popularity drove Constantinus to seek outright success, but that was not granted to him; if he employed the right commanders and the right troops, some of whom just happened to come from the Belisarian
bucellarii
, he was successful. When he employed other formations and thus avoided the opprobrium heaped on his commanding general for perceived favouritism, the results were less rewarding and sometimes risked being disastrous.

Flavius allowed him to have his head; let the army find out for themselves that only one man knew the right way to fight. It became clear that such pressure told on his second in command. The day came when Constantinus declined to give the task of mounting a raid to another; he proposed to lead it personally, yet he did so at the head of the only other troops who could be said to be fit for the purpose.

No one admired the Hun way of fighting more than Flavius Belisarius; indeed, when creating his own heavy units under Justinian he had modelled much of their mode of fighting on that race. They were the people who had first evolved a way of making war on horseback as mounted archers, albeit on swift and agile ponies instead of heavy steeds and that had given them a fearsome fighting reputation.

There was thus no ill feeling in the breast of Flavius as he watched them exit the western gates and head for the Plains of Nero. His prayers were for success and if he found the behaviour of Constantinus an irritation it was a minor one: the man was ambitious but so he should be. God aid him if he led inferiors who lacked belief in their own abilities.

The Goths came out from their camp to oppose Constantinus, who immediately deployed his Huns to face them. The chosen battlefield was too far off for the whole action to be in plain view, though the general outlines were visible. At first, matters proceeded as they should, the Huns doing that at which they were superbly proficient, riding forward in fast and loose groupings to engage and thin the enemy ranks with arrows.

It was Photius, with his young eyes, who first spotted that matters might not be panning out as well as they should; the twin forces seemed to be getting closer to each other, a concern quickly laid to rest by his stepfather.

‘Constantinus knows when to break off, Photius. He saw what
happened in the recent battle and will not allow the Goths to get too close to his lines.’

‘They are doing that very thing, slowly but successfully.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I can only relate what my own eyes tell me.’

A cold feeling gripped Flavius then; for all the mixed fortunes of recent forays the balance had been towards success and not failure. When his men had got into difficulties and had been forced to flee it was for gates now under Byzantine control. If they had incurred losses, they had not been serious and as a result the dented morale of his army had begun to repair. Right of this moment the last thing he needed was a major reverse.

The sound of the distant horns did nothing to relieve that feeling, especially as the masses of men began to move and their composition became easier to observe and comprehend. Constantinus had broken off the engagement but it was clear even through the dust that he and his Huns were not headed towards the city gates, while the advancing Goths were hard on their heels, which meant Photius was right.

He looked along the parapet to observe the faces of his other senior commanders and was not reassured; Valentinus was clearly praying, Bessas staring, his expression one of concern, Martinus and Valerian the same. Ennes, now leader of his bodyguard, was looking at him in a way that presaged doom, doubly evidenced by a quick break off from eye contact.

‘I cannot support him,’ Flavius murmured. ‘I dare not.’

Such words were pointless anyway. In order to reinforce Constantinus he would require his own
bucellarii
to be ready to act at once, they being the only troops he could rely upon to effect a good outcome. Having ceded tactical control to his second in command
that was far from the case; neither they nor their horses were armed, saddled and ready.

Photius now reported that Constantinus had swung away to the west and he and his Huns were making for an abandoned suburb, then that they had got in amongst the buildings and he could no longer see them. This being a place Flavius had reconnoitred, he knew to call them buildings was overstating their condition. Like every suburb of Rome outside the walls it had been subjected to Goth savagery. Most of the houses that made up what was a farming community had been torched and in many cases their walls had collapsed in on themselves.

‘That might give us time,’ Flavius cried. ‘Ennes, get our men mounted.’

‘The light, General,’ came the concerned reply. ‘By the time they are ready it will be near to dark.’

Ennes had made a calculation that took into account the time it would take to close with Constantinus and in that he was correct. It would be under moon and starlight by the time Flavius and his
bucellarii
would be in a position to fight and that was a bad notion. The feeling that he had to do something faded for the very good reason it would only be to show others he was not being passive in the face of the possible massacre of his Hun mercenaries and their general. Ennes got a nod of agreement, which served to rescind the previous instruction.

The light did fade and in the distance there was a mass of torches, with no one having any clear indication of their locality. Were they in that village or without? Finally they faded to leave only the silver light of the moon and stars as well as anxiety, for the lack of those torches could have two meanings and one was total annihilation.

It was near dawn when Constantinus, at the head of his troops, asked to be allowed to re-enter the city. He and his Huns, covered
in dust and exhausted, looked a sorry lot in the light of the torches by which they made their way down the roads that led to their encampment. Constantinus did not accompany them; he was required to report to his commander.

‘They crept forward, Flavius Belisarius. It was not an obvious movement, given it was so slow, but by the time we wanted to break off they were too close.’

The temptation to reply ‘You should have seen it, fool’ had to remain unsaid but the spoken reply was hardly less damning. ‘It is a tactic by which we lost in our one major battle. I think we agreed it was one we must guard against in any future engagement.’