Khosrou seemed impressed by this argument and, recalling Wittich’s envoys, gave them the promise to do what they asked of him.
Returning to Italy, these priests re-entered Ravenna, pretending that they had merely been on a pilgrimage to the Holy Places, and gave Wittich their hopeful news. But Barak went to Pavia and there told Uriah, as a joke, of the ingenious lie that he had invented for Khosrou’s benefit.
Justinian had spies everywhere, even in the Persian Court, and he heard the story long before Uriah did. Believing that Belisarius was indeed about to betray him, he grew very troubled. He immediately called Narses and Cappadocian John and Theodora to a consultation.
Theodora said: ‘That is a mere Syrian tale and without foundation. Because you choose to surround yourself with liars, rogues, and cheats at Court, do you refuse to recognize that such a thing as honour can exist among the officers of your armies?’
But Narses said: ‘I suspected this very thing, Majesty. That is why I withheld my obedience from Belisarius.’
And Cappadocian John: ‘He has been planning this for many years. Why else did he put the responsibility on Your Clemency for refusing Wittich’s peace-terms during the siege of Rome? It was partly to draw more reinforcements to his standards and partly to discredit Your Clemency; so that when he at last proclaims himself Emperor his mildness will be contrasted with your severity.’
Narses said: ‘The Italian levies he is raising are another proof of his intentions.’
And Cappadocian John: ‘He was planning this revolt six years ago when he was at Carthage, as Constantine and his brother-officers wrote to warn your Clemency. He delayed it then for strategical reasons, considering that while Sicily and Italy were in Gothic hands Africa could not be safely held. But now that the Goths are so near defeat he aims higher.’
Justinian asked: ‘What shall we do, friends? Advise us. We are in great fear.’
Narses answered: ‘Without delay, offer King Wittich such easy terms as he will be glad to accept. Then Belisarius will not dare to proclaim himself Emperor, being unable to out-bid your Clemency in generosity to the Goths. As for our own officers in Italy, they are weary of war. It is all one to them what treaty you sign with King Wittich.’
Cappadocian John agreed. ‘Allow King Wittich to keep one-half of his treasure and all his Italian dominions that lie to the north of the Po.’
But Theodora said: ‘Truly it surprises me that with so many false friends and open enemies in the East, Belisarius does not in fact do what he is unjustly accused of planning to do. Count Boniface long ago was forced to treachery in Africa by similar libels against him at the Emperor’s Court. So Africa was lost to us.’
Justinian replied softly: ‘My dearest, do not meddle in this matter, we beg. Our mind is made up.’
Thus it was that ambassadors arrived from Constantinople with such terms as Wittich was overjoyed to accept. Belisarius, leading them to the gates of Ravenna, inquired of them what precisely the terms were; but they said that they were forbidden to tell him as yet. When they came out again and showed him the treaty signed by Wittich and merely needing Belisarius’s own signature for ratification, he was aghast. He could only think that the Emperor had been misinformed as to the hopeless military situation of the Goths. He refused to sign until a confirmation in writing, duly sealed, should arrive from Constantinople.
Then Bloody John and Martin and John the Epicure and Valerian and even Bessas began criticizing him behind his back for prolonging the war unnecessarily. Belisarius, hearing of this, called them all to a conference and asked them to speak frankly: did they really consider that the terms were appropriate ones?
They all said: ‘Yes, we think so. We cannot capture Ravenna, and it is too much to ask our men to stay encamped on the fringe of these marshes for who knows how many years. In any case, the Emperor has evidently decided to end the war as soon as possible.’
‘Then I do not wish to implicate you in the apparently disloyal action that I am taking in withholding my signature from this treaty. As you are aware, the Code makes the infringement of orders by an officer in war-time a capital offence, and His Serenity the Emperor is my supreme commander. I shall ask you to put in writing the view that you have just expressed.’ But he meant equally that, if he could force Wittich to sign a treaty more favourable to ourselves, this document with their signatures would be evidence to Justinian of the difficulties that he had to contend with among his own staff. For he still held the view that Justinian trusted him to act according to his discretion.
They consented to sign.
A most strange thing now happened. Uriah, thinking over the ingenious lie which Barak had told King Khosrou, decided that it would be an extremely happy solution if Belisarius did indeed proclaim himself Emperor! No nobler or more capable man existed, and it would be fatal for Italy to be ruled not from Rome or Ravenna but from distant Constantinople: Africa had already felt the cruel disadvantages of a lost independence of government. With Belisarius as Emperor, the Goths would naturally remain the dominant military power, the Italians being unfit for any but civil duties, and would have the benefit of Belisarius’s instruction in the art of winning battles. Uriah smuggled a message into Ravenna to his Aunt Matasontha, whom he knew to be disaffected to his Uncle Wittich, telling her that if the Gothic nobles inside the city invited Belisarius to become their sovereign, he could answer for those outside. She called a secret Council, at which Uriah’s suggestion was voted upon and carried by a large majority. The nobles despised Wittich and held Belisarius in admiration; besides, Ravenna could not have resisted long in any case, because of the destruction of the granaries.
Thus Belisarius received a secret invitation from the Gothic Council to become Emperor of the West. Their messenger was soon followed by another from Wittich, who had heard of the Council vote. Wittich declared that he was perfectly willing either to resign his monarchy or pay homage to Belisarius as Emperor.
Belisarius informed nobody of this offer except my mistress Antonina. He cried indignantly: ‘How can they mistake me for a traitor to my Emperor? What have I ever done to earn such an insult?’
Antonina laughed and said: ‘But the Emperor himself is of their opinion.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Read this!’
The letter she gave him to read was one that she had just received from Theodora. It gave a sour account of the meeting between Justinian, Narses, Cappadocian John, and herself. Theodora was greatly angered at Justinian’s ill-mannered rebuke to her in the presence of the two councillors, and had evidently written the letter as a sort of revenge. The letter closed in something of this style: ‘My dearest friend Antonina, if it is true after all, which I greatly doubt, that you husband contemplates this bold step, do not in loyalty to me dissuade him from it. If he has never contemplated it, persuade him to it. For he is the only man alive who is capable of restoring law, order, and prosperity to Italy and Africa, and thus defending our western flank. Only let him send back to us his Eastern troops when he can spare them, and remain at peace with us. Do you be my royal cousin at Rome, and think tenderly of me, and send me frequent news of yourself, and for the sake of old times favour the Blue faction in your Hippodrome. Then I shall continue to love you as always. To explain shortly: my Sacred Husband is jealous of your Illustrious husband’s victories. I cannot promise that he will not do him some great injury one day. If Belisarius were to break his allegiance now it would be a wise and justifiable act, and of great benefit to the world.’
Belisarius’s eyes flashed as he thrust Theodora’s letter into the live coals of a charcoal brazier; he did not speak until the parchment was wholly consumed. Then he said: ‘The faith of Belisarius is worth more to him than fifty Italies and a hundred Africas.’
Then he called his officers together. ‘Tomorrow,’ he announced, ‘we enter Ravenna in peace. Warn your men.’
They all stared at him. Justinian’s ambassadors were present too.
‘Does this not please you?’
‘Oh, my lord! But the Goths? Do they surrender?’
‘How else should we enter?’
Belisarius secretly assured the Gothic envoys that none of the citizens of Ravenna should be either robbed or enslaved, and swore an oath to that effect on a copy of the Gospels. But he said: ‘As to the title of Emperor, give me leave not to assume it by proclamation until I am inside your city. When King Wittich does homage to me, that will be the sign for the trumpets to sound the Imperial salute.’
The next day we marched along the causeway into the city and took possession of it. As our men passed through the streets in close order the Gothic women, watching in their doorways, spat in their husbands’ faces, saying: ‘So few, and such miserable little men! Yet you always allowed them to defeat you.’
The husbands answered: ‘No, it was not they! It was that handsome tall general who rode by at their head on the white-faced bay. He did everything. He is to be our new ruler. He is the wisest, noblest, boldest man who ever lived. He is Belisarius.’
Belisarius accepted the submission, not the homage, of Wittich; and, though the Goths expected him at any moment to proclaim himself Emperor, he gave no sign. But they were satisfied to wait, because he kept his oath about not enslaving or plundering the people of Ravenna, seizing only the royal treasures in the Emperor’s name, and because he brought in a few ship-loads of provisions. Further, he allowed all the Goths who owned lands to the south of the Po to leave the city and return to cultivate them. This was a safe step, for all the fortified towns in the South were now garrisoned by his troops.
For the first few days Belisarius was certainly allowing the Goths to believe that he would, before long, accept the Diadem. My mistress Antonina, growing hopeful, asked him: ‘Have you then taken the wise decision?’ To which he replied: ‘Yes, that of continuing loyal to my oath as a general. It would have been wrong to let slip any opportunity for occupying the enemy’s capital without loss of life.’
My mistress Antonina was so angry with him for respecting an oath sworn long ago to a scoundrel that she would hardly speak to him. Theodosius seemed angry too, perhaps because he had been promised by her the governorship of Rome when Belisarius became Emperor. He told Antonina in private: ‘In order that Belisarius may keep his faith virginal, Italy must be destroyed.’
She asked: ‘How destroyed?’
Theodosius answered: ‘Belisarius will be recalled, and the destruction will come about through greedy tax-gatherers, unjust laws, stupid generals, wilful subalterns, mutiny, revolt, invasion. You will see.’
CHAPTER 18
A COLD WELCOME HOME
RAVENNA is a city of paradoxes. It is built on piles in a lagoon. ‘The frogs in Ravenna greatly outnumber the citizens,’ they say, ‘and its mosquitoes outnumber even the angels of Heaven.’ The sea, however, is gradually receding from the coast, so that the harbour which the Emperor Augustus built is now orchard land. ‘Apples grow on the masts in Ravenna harbour,’ they say. A yard or two below the surface of the soil water is always struck, which is inconvenient for the building of walls and the burial of corpses; but the water is brackish, and the inhabitants rely on rain-catchment for drinking and cooking. They say: ‘Here the dead swim and the living go thirsty. Here waters stand and walls fall.’ A colony of retired Syrian traders is settled at Ravenna, all very pious; whereas the local priests are mercenary and inclined to disregard Canon law. ‘Here Syrians pray, but priests practise usury,’ they say. There is no hunting to be had in the neighbourhood, and no sport but hand-ball at the baths; nevertheless, because of the damp a man must take vigorous exercise to keep in health. As a result, many wealthy civilians belong to a militia and practise military exercises on the parade-ground and in the tilt-yard; but the garrison-officers, from sheer boredom, join literary clubs in order to improve their education. ‘Here men of letters play at being soldiers, and soldiers at being men of letters,’ they say. To these many paradoxes was now added a man who could have been a sovereign but would not, and a man who would have liked to remain a sovereign but could not.
Paradoxical, too, was the discovery that my former master Barak, so knowledgeable in relics, had been piously adoring in a local church a relic of St Vitalis which, as any historical expert would tell you, cannot possibly have been his: I found a votive offering hanging in the church to commemorate Barak’s miraculous cure from gall-stones by means of this relic. And for Barak a whole series of paradoxes was in store. He came to Ravenna to claim a great reward from Belisarius for having suggested to the Goths that he should be invited to become Emperor of the West. But Belisarius, so far from rewarding him, arrested him at my instance on that thirty-three-year-old charge of forgery, and sent him under guard to Constantinople to stand his trial. However, in his report on the case Belisarius did not mention Barak’s part in the plot to make him Emperor: he regarded the whole transaction with such distaste that he preferred to suppress all reference to it. At Constantinople Barak secured an honourable release by bribery, and though by now seventy years of age, resumed his long-interrupted task as overseer of monuments in the Holy Places. It was his pleasure to refresh the blood-marks on the pillar of scourging; and to renew the hyssop-sponge at Golgotha, which the piety of pilgrims had worn almost to nothing; and to discover at Joppa, buried in an old chest during the persecutions of the Emperor Nero, a startling number of early Christian relics of the first importance and in an agreeably sound state of preservation.
Fortunately we left Ravenna before the mosquito season began. Bloody John had written a warning letter to Justinian as soon as he became aware that the Goths had offered the Diadem to Belisarius. Justinian immediately recalled Belisarius, commending him warmly for his magnificent services and hinting that he would soon be employed in a yet wider field. Belisarius would have wished first to settle accounts with Uriah’s army, now reduced to a mere thousand men, but he would not risk Justinian’s displeasure by any further act of apparent disobedience. He therefore ordered his household to begin packing up, preparatory to moving. When Uriah at Pavia heard of this he was surprised and greatly disappointed; for he had believed that Belisarius still intended to proclaim himself Emperor. He concluded that Belisarius, weighing the strength of the Imperial troops hostile to him against that of the Gothic armies, considered that the step was too risky. He therefore persuaded his fellow-nobles to elect as Gothic king a certain Hildibald, who was a nephew of the Visigothic King of Spain; the prospect of a military alliance between the Goths of Italy and the Goths of Spain would perhaps tip the balance of Belisarius’s judgement in favour of accepting the Diadem. Hildibald undertook to go to Ravenna and there do homage to Belisarius at once.
But Belisarius scornfully refused this renewed offer, and in the spring of the year of our Lord 540 we set sail for Constantinople again, leaving Pavia still untaken. Justinian meanwhile appointed eleven generals of equal rank – including Bloody John – to command the armies in Italy; these were united only in their jealousy of Belisarius and in their greed of money and power. At Belisarius’s departure they proved incapable of concerted action, and did not even make any serious attempt to capture Pavia. However, Bloody John arranged for Uriah’s murder by the new king, Hildibald; and then Uriah’s death was avenged on Hildibald himself; and then one Erarich was elected but soon assassinated. Finally, the dangerous crown passed to Hildibald’s young nephew Teudel. Thus in seven years seven monarchs had reigned over the Goths.
The civil governor appointed to rule Italy for Justinian was Alexander, surnamed ‘The Scissors’; formerly a money-changer, he had first come to the attention of the authorities at Constantinople as an adept clipper of the gold coinage. From every fifty coins that passed through his hands he would clip the equivalent of five, and this without making the coins seem any smaller. Cappadocian John, so far from punishing him for this fraud, had employed him in increasing the face-value of the gold in the Military Treasury by the same methods, and in oth
er dishonest transactions. The Scissors soon showed such ingenuity in finding new ways of raising taxes that he was adjudged worthy of the highest offices. He had recently acted as chief tax-gatherer under Solomon in Africa. The problem of procuring money for Justinian’s enormous expenditure was more pressing than ever now, because of the Bulgarian raids which had impoverished so wide an extent of country. The Scissors practised his usual extortions on Italy; and whatever treasure the war had spared he contrived to seize for his royal Master, who allowed him to retain five per cent of his takings as commission. Moreover, nobody could accuse The Scissors of partiality: he snipped away not only the fortunes of the Goths and Italians but the pay and rations of the Imperial troops as well. Theodosius’s gloomy forecast of the future of Italy was proving correct in every article. But of this more will be told later.
Just before we had sailed King Khosrou of Persia had begun his threatened invasion of Syria. It was not an altogether unjustified one, because Justinian had been in secret treaty with the White Huns who live beyond the Caspian Sea, trying to bribe them to invade Persia from the North; and with the old King of the Saracens, trying to detach him from his allegiance. Being dissatisfied with the terms he offered, they had put Khosrou in possession of both sets of correspondence. Khosrou tried the southern route once more, marching along the right bank of the Euphrates from the plains of Babylon, and crossed the frontier unopposed. Having only cavalry with him, he reached Sura after six days’ march; and captured it by a trick during a truce arranged for the discussion of capitulation terms. After a conference with the Imperial representative, the bishop of the town, he had escorted him back with honour to the principal gate – then sent a party of men rushing forward with a baulk of timber to block the gateway. Before the people of Sura could remove the baulk a squadron of Persian cavalry had swept in and down the main street. Sura was sacked and burned to the ground; its inhabitants enslaved and taken away to Persia.