My mistress said much the same to Narses. He had replied soberly to her chaff and told her his life-story, which explained why he was not contented with his sexual estate. He had been captured in battle when he was eleven years old, and had already at that tender age killed a man with his little sword – for he came of a well-known military family in Armenia. He detested office-work, he said, and hoped one day to persuade the Emperor to give him a military command; he had studied strategy and tactics intently all his life, and if he were only allowed the opportunity he believed that such royal gifts as he was now bearing to Belisarius would one day be brought in gratitude to him, or even perhaps greater!
It is well known that almost everyone in the world is discontented with his trade or profession. The farmer would like to be an emperor, the Emperor would like to plant cabbages; the lean captain of a trading-vessel envies the big-paunched wine-shop proprietor – who returns the envy, dissatisfied with his stay-at-home life. But it is wise not to laugh at such men when they pour out their dissatisfaction as a confidence: my mistress first learned this rule of tactful behaviour when working at the club-house in the old days. So she affected to realize that she had been mistaken in talking to Narses as to an ordinary unwarlike eunuch from Colchis, and to sympathize with his discontent. If ever he were rewarded for his great services to the State by a high military appointment she would be the first to congratulate him, she declared, and to wish him success. For the rest of that journey they were at peace; and he became a good friend of hers. A quarrel, an apology, and a reconciliation are as favourable an introduction to friendship as any. But you may imagine that my mistress could not take his military ambitions very seriously, even when he proved by his conversation with the two Guards captains who commanded his escort and hers to know a great deal more about the theoretical side of soldiering than they did. For though he had perhaps killed a man with his little sword at the age of eleven, that was forty-nine years ago, and since then he had hardly set foot outside the Palace; where for a long time, until his education was complete, he had worked at a loom in the company of the Palace women.
We went by sea, for the first part of our journey, in a warship with three banks of oars. It was a pleasant but not eventful voyage past the usual green hills and white cities. When at last we disembarked at Seleucia and came by road to Antioch I was delighted to see how quickly the ravages of the earthquake were being repaired: it was our dear, bustling, luxurious, old Antioch once more. Narses and my mistress were entertained by the local Senate and by the Blue-faction officials, who were very obliging to my mistress – and she to them. Then we took the paved road to Zeugma, famous for its pontoon-bridge, 120 miles away; from which it is another 200 miles, through mainly fertile country watered by four principal tributaries of the Euphrates, to Daras and the frontier. We travelled in post-gigs and found the heat very trying, in spite of awnings and briskly trotting ponies. From Edessa, where we halted for two days, we sent fast riders ahead to announce our approach.
When we arrived at Daras, etiquette demanded that the letters should be delivered not directly to Belisarius (and to the Master of Offices, who was also honoured with a letter from the Emperor) but to his domestics. My mistress greatly regretted that this should be so, because she knew the contents of Theodora’s letter, which had been written in her presence. She would have given much to watch Belisarius’s face as he read it. It went as follows:
‘Theodora Augusta, spouse of Justinian, Vice-regent of God and Emperor of the Romans, to the Illustrious Patrician Belisarius, Commander of the Victorious Armies in the East: greeting!
‘Tidings have come to my royal husband, the Emperor, and to myself, of your well-deserved success over the Persians. You are enrolled now with the heroes of the past, and we praise you, because you have greatly benefited us, and we wish you well. Two of the Emperor’s presents, the bowl and the missal, do honour to your religious nature, and the third, the cloak, is a foretaste of the appreciation in which you will be held at our Court on your return from duty and victories. It becomes me therefore – for a lady’s presents to a retainer should be complementary to those given by her lord – to send you three other gifts by the hand of my trusted Lady of the Bedchamber, from which you may derive an altogether different sort of pleasure. The first of these gifts I have chosen for you because he wears your household badge and is, moreover, the most excellent of his race in our dominions; the second I send you because your plunder will have put you in need of it; and as for the third it is a present above rubies, and you will greatly incur my displeasure if you presumptuously refuse it. For it is a characteristic of Theodora that in gratitude she always gives of her best. Farewell.’
Belisarius sent word that the representatives of their Majesties were welcome, and presently received Narses and my mistress in the cool, arched tribunal-hall where he dispensed discipline and gave daily audiences to his subordinates and allies. Narses was admitted first, as emissary of the Emperor. Belisarius, it seems, greeted him affably, inquiring first after the health of his royal Master and Mistress and of the principal Senators and then for news of affairs in the City and Empire. They drank a cup of wine together on the tribunal, and Narses asked searching questions about the details of the battle. Belisarius answered, not in an off-hand manner as to a mere Palace eunuch, but considerately and in detail, weighing every word. Narses wished to know why Belisarius had temporarily dismounted the Massagetic Huns to defend the central trench. Belisarius replied: because the attack was a formidable one, and because nothing so greatly encourages hard-pressed foot-soldiers (‘the latrine-men’ as they are sometimes contemptuously called because of the many thankless tasks that they are called upon to perform) as when mounted comrades nobly renounce their opportunity for flight, by sending their horses back a little way under charge of grooms, and fight for once, cut and thrust, on their own legs.
Then the Emperor’s presents were delivered, admired, and given thanks for; and soon Narses bowed and withdrew.
Meanwhile my mistress Antonina was sitting in the ante-room at the end of the hall, and Rufinus, who was now Belisarius’s standard-bearer, was most attentive to her. But she answered his polite remarks in a confused, random manner, because, for once in her life, she was feeling altogether ill at ease. The matter had seemed simple and certain when Theodora and she discussed it at the Palace; but now, as she rose at the summons from the tribunal-hall, her knees were trembling and her tongue dry.
She stood half-way down the hall and signalled to her guards to lead forward the first of Theodora’s three presents, which was a tall, fiery three-year-old bay stallion with a white blaze on its forehead and four white socks. It was to these marks that Theodora had referred when she wrote that her first present wore his household badge. A murmur of applause went up from the cuirassiers of the Household, who were standing at attention along the walls of the hall with their lances held upright at their sides, and from all the cavalry officers ranked around the tribunal. My mistress overheard Rufinus, who stood near her, muttering to himself: ‘This one gift of the Empress’s outweighs by itself the Emperor’s three.’ For it was indeed a superlative animal, of the famous Thracian breed of which the poet Virgil makes mention in the fifth book of his Aeneid.
The stallion was led off to the stable, and my mistress Antonina beckoned for the second present to be brought forward. My mistress had been anxious lest this might perhaps not arrive in time, though we had sent it ahead from Antioch as soon as we had disembarked and overtaken it a day out from Edessa; but here it was – a consignment of 500 complete suits of cavalry mail-armour from the arms factory at Adrianople. Theodora knew that Belisarius’s plunder included a large number of Persian horses, and inferred rightly that he would enrol in his own forces the sturdiest of the 3,000 prisoners that he had captured and make cuirassiers of them. But the Persian cavalry-armour which had fallen into his hands was not suitable, being both too thin and too complicated for use in the field; so these 500 suits were
a most welcome gift. Again a murmur of applause arose, for it was seen that the steel helmets all carried white plumes. The Empress clearly understood the art of giving appropriate presents.
Then at last my mistress found her voice and spoke: ‘The third gift, Illustrious Belisarius, is, by the order of Her Resplendency, my royal Mistress, to be delivered to you in private.’
Belisarius had not recognized her, she felt sure, because his voice was cool and natural as he replied: ‘As my Benefactress wishes. But you, my lords and gentlemen, pray do not retire! The Illustrious Lady of the Imperial Bedchamber will perhaps be gracious enough to meet me in the ante-room from which she has just emerged, and deliver the third present to me there in the privacy that her Glorious Mistress requires of us.’
My mistress Antonina bowed and retired to the ante-room, and presently he entered and closed the door.
They stood facing each other without speaking, until at last she said in a low voice: ‘It is myself, Antonina. Do you remember me – the dancing-girl at the banquet that your Uncle Modestus gave at Adrianople?’
Either he had never forgotten or else the memory now leaped suddenly back to his mind. He answered: ‘And this is still myself, Belisarius.’ He clasped her hands in his, and the third gift was taken.
Then Belisarius said: ‘Tell your royal Mistress that never, I believe, in the whole course of history have such welcome gifts been given to a subject by his Imperial Mistress; and that I accept them in loving wonder at her marvellous divination of my needs and desires. But, O sweet Antonina, tell her that enjoyment of the third gift, immeasurably the best of the three, must be postponed until my recall from the wars; for I have a vow to keep.’
‘What vow can that be, my dear Belisarius?’ she asked him.
He replied: ‘My officers and men have taken a vow upon the Gospels, in which I have joined them, that they will neither shave their chins, nor fall into the sin of drunkenness, nor either marry a wife or take a concubine, so long as they remain here on active service against the Persians.’
‘Could you not appeal to the Patriarch for a dispensation from this vow?’ she asked.
‘I could do so, but I would not, because of the others, who must remain still bound by it. My beloved Antonina, whose image has lingered in my heart these fifteen years, be patient and wait! To know that when I return to the City the greatest reward in the world will be awaiting me, this surely will hasten the victorious return that the Emperor has wished for me.’
Though my mistress Antonina could not press him in a matter which touched his honour, neither could she conceal her disappointment. She asked: ‘Oh, Belisarius, are you sure that you are not making excuses to gain time?’ But this was pure rhetoric, for never was delight written so plainly on any man’s face as on his.
Belisarius and my mistress returned to the tribunal-hall, and both resumed their official looks and accents. Belisarius recalled Narses, and invited both him and my mistress, and the officers of their escort, to a banquet with himself and his staff that night. My mistress had no further opportunity to speak to Belisarius in private, and both of them were careful not to reveal by word or look the great love that each felt for the other. The banquet was a sober affair, because of the vow against drunkenness which nearly everyone present had taken, and because table-delicacies are not easily procured at Daras. On the next morning Narses and she returned home, armed with letters of humble gratitude to their royal Master and Mistress. But Narses had guessed my mistress’s secret, and whispered to her as soon as they were seated privately together in a gig: ‘May he be as fortunate in your love, most Illustrious Lady, as you in his!’
My mistress replied in words that pleased him as much as his had pleased her: ‘And may you, Distinguished Chamberlain, be as successful when the general’s purple cloak flaps from your shoulders as you have been these many years while dressed in the stiff crimson silks of your Palace appointment.’
When we were back again at Constantinople my mistress found two letters from Belisarius waiting for her that had come by a quicker route. They were written in such simple, elegant language and indicative of such honest ardour that, since this love was not only sanctioned but positively enjoined upon the two of them by Imperial orders, she broke a life-long rule, and committed her own amorous feelings to writing. Many scores of long letters passed between them until his return to her some eighteen months later.
The next phase of the war was a Persian invasion of Roman Armenia; but it was energetically checked by Sittas, Belisarius’s former comrade, who was brother-in-law to Theodora. The Roman name being now held in greater respect than formerly, a number of Christian Armenians from the Persian side presently deserted to the Imperial armies. Kobad also lost the revenues of the gold-mine at Pharangium, a town situated in a fruitful but almost inaccessible canyon on the border between the two Armenias; for the chief engineer there elected to put the city and mines under Roman protection. Kobad, with the obstinacy of old age, refused to withdraw his troops from the neighbourhood of Daras, though Justinian sent an embassy to re-open peace negotiations. Each side tried to fix the moral responsibility for the conflict on the other. Kobad told the Roman ambassador that the Persians had done meritoriously in seizing and garrisoning the Caspian Gates, which the Emperor Anastasius had refused to buy from the owner even at a nominal price; since, by doing so, he had protected both the Roman and Persian Empires from barbarian invasion. The garrison was costly to maintain, and Justinian should, in justice, either pay a half-share of the expenses or, if he preferred, send a detachment of Roman troops there sufficient to permit half the Persian garrison to withdraw in their favour.
Then King and Ambassador discussed the breach of an ancient treaty regarding frontier fortifications. The Roman fortification of Daras, Kobad pointed out, had made it strategically necessary for the Persians to keep a strong frontier force at Nisibis; and this again was an unfair tax on his country’s resources, and was one injustice too many for him to accept. He now offered Justinian three alternatives to choose from: contributing to the defence of the Caspian Gates, dismantling the fortifications of Daras, renewing war. The ambassador understood the King to mean that a money tribute, speciously disguised as a contribution to common defence against the barbarian menace, would end the conflict.
Justinian could not yet decide whether or not to offer a money tribute. While he deliberated, Kobad was visited by the King of the Saracens, his ally, with a plan for a severe blow at the Romans. The Saracen was a tall, lean, vigorous old man, whose Court was at Hira in the desert, and who for fifty years had been raiding Roman territory between the Egyptian and Mesopotamian borders. He would appear suddenly from the wilderness with a force of a few hundred horsemen, plunder, burn, massacre, take prisoners – by the thousand sometimes – and then disappear again as suddenly as he came. Several punitive expeditions had been made against him, but all had been unsuccessful; for the art of desert warfare is only understood by those born to the desert. He had cut off and captured two strong Roman columns operating against him and held their officers to ransom.
This old king, then, suggested to Kobad that instead of campaigning as usual among the head-waters of Euphrates and Tigris, where the Romans had a number of walled cities to fall back upon if attacked, he should take a southerly route, which no Persian Army had ever taken before, following the Euphrates. At the point where the river-course turns from west to north he should strike across the Syrian desert. For here, beyond the desert, the Romans, trusting to the natural defences of waterless sand and rock, had built only few fortifications, and these were manned by no troops worth the name. If vigorously attacked, Antioch would fall into their hands without a struggle, because – he was justified in this comment – Antioch is the most unserious city in the entire East, the inhabitants having only four interests, namely wine, sex, Hippodrome politics, and religious argument. (Trade is not an interest, but a disagreeable necessity to which they submit in order to keep themselves in funds
for the active prosecution of these four exciting interests.) What a magnificent city to plunder! And the raiders could return safely with their spoils long before any rescue could arrive from Roman Mesopotamia.
Kobad was interested but sceptical. If no Persian Army in the past had found this approach feasible, in what way had conditions altered to make it so? How would an army, unaccustomed to temporary starvation and thirst, maintain itself in the parched, pastureless desert?
The King of the Saracens replied to the first question that hitherto the Great King had never called upon an experienced Saracen for advice. As for the second question: the Persian force should consist entirely of light cavalry – infantry and heavy cavalry were ruled out – and they should make their expedition in the spring, when there would be ample pasture, even in the wildest desert, for those who knew where to look for it; and they should travel light; and the Saracens would be waiting for them, at a point on the river well within the Roman territories, with sufficient food and water for the last and most difficult stage of the journey.
Kobad was persuaded by the King of the Saracens, though Saracens are a notoriously faithless race; because he could surely have no motive in making these suggestions but to obtain Persian help in a profitable raid which was on too large a scale for himself to undertake alone. All that Kobad needed to guard against was treachery during the return journey, and he would therefore insist on the King of the Saracens leaving his two sons and two grandsons as hostages at the Persian Court at Susa until the campaign was over. The Saracen agreed to do so, and by March of the next year – the year following the battle of Daras – all preparations had been made. The expedition assembled at Ctesiphon in Assyria, 15,000 strong, under the command of an able Persian named Azareth.