Attila the Hun (24 page)

Maximinus could remain to draft letters, and as for the rest of you – hand over the presents, and get out.

B
ack at their tents, the Romans worked over what had happened.

‘I can’t understand it,’ says Vigilas. ‘Last time, he was so calm and mild.’

Priscus sighs. ‘Perhaps he had heard about you calling Theodosius a god and him a man.’

Maximinus nods. That must be it.

Vigilas remains perplexed. He’s sure he’s in the clear. The Huns would be too scared to report that loose talk at supper (and, he must have thought, Edika would
never divulge the assassination plot, and condemn himself as a traitor).

Just then Edika himself comes in. He beckons Vigilas aside and mutters something. As Priscus learns later, Edika tells Vigilas to make arrangements to go and get the gold for the conspirators.

This is the only time Edika has appeared since he told Attila the purpose of the embassy. He can only have come at the behest of Attila himself, who must therefore have decided Edika is not a traitor after all. Edika’s gamble has worked.

So now there are two plots – the planned assassination and Attila’s revenge – in both of which Edika is central. He has compromised the first, and has now kick-started the second.

What was that about? someone asks as Edika leaves. Oh, nothing much – Vigilas waves an arm dismissively – just that Attila is still angry over the fugitives and the rank of the ambassadors, that’s all. Fair enough; everyone knows that Edika was given authority over Vigilas before they set out from Constantinople.

He is saved from further questions by a bevy of attendants from Attila, bringing new orders. None of the Romans is to buy anything – no Roman prisoners, slaves, horses, nothing except food – until all disputes are settled. Vigilas is to go back to Constantinople with Eslas and sort out the fugitive question. Everyone else stays. Onegesius, on his way back from overseeing Attila’s son crowned King of the Akatziri, is the next designated ambassador to Rome, and he will certainly wish to pick up the presents he’s owed.

Now Attila has everyone where he wants them. The Romans are virtually under arrest, while Vigilas – as Attila very well knows – is off to fetch the gold for Attila’s assassination. On his return, the trap will spring.

T
he day after Vigilas leaves, Attila orders everyone back to his main HQ. There will be no hunting south of the Danube after all, for there are more important matters to attend to. A chaos of folding up tents, packing and spanning wagons, and saddling horses gives way to ordered columns – wagons, outriders, bowyers and grooms and cooks all trailing deferentially after Attila’s entourage, all winding north over the grassland of what is now northern Serbia.

After a while, the column splits: Attila is sidetracking to a village where he is to pick up yet another wife, the daughter of one of the local
logades
. The rest continue over a plain and across three large rivers and several smaller ones. Sometimes there are locals with dug-outs, sometimes, while the rank and file swim with their horses, the VIPs cross with the wagons on the rafts carried for just this purpose. Along the way, villagers supply millet, mead and barley-beer. (Note that these people are villagers: no longer pastoral nomads, but making their living as settled farmers living in huts of wattle, daub and thatched reeds.)

After a hard day’s travel, they camp near a small lake. In the middle of the night they are awoken from their exhausted sleep by one of those summer storms that sweep the Hungarian
puszta
, one so violent it flattens
the tent and blows the spare clothing and blankets into the pond. This is a Roman tent, not designed for wilderness living; not like the round Hunnish yurts, which remain snug in the coldest weather and can shoulder a hurricane. Blinded by rain, deafened by thunderclaps, the Romans find their way by lightning flashes to the village, yelling for help. Villagers waken, light reed tapers and lead them inside to the welcome warmth of reed fires.

It turns out that the village has a matriarch. Even more surprising, she is a widow – one of several – of Bleda, the brother Attila killed. Apparently she has been allowed to keep her own enclave on Bleda’s territory, where she is still in effect queen. Although it’s the middle of the night, she arranges for food to be sent. Then, when they are dry and fed, there troop in a number of attractive young women, who, Priscus is told, are
for intercourse, which is a mark of honour among the Huns
. ‘
Attractive women
’, Priscus calls them: what has happened to those racist opinions that the Huns were so revolting in their looks and behaviour that they were scarcely human? Wiped out by the reality of being confronted by hospitality and beauty. A bit embarrassing, this, for Christians, civil servants and diplomats, especially as the women had been chosen for their looks. Polite reserve was the answer. ‘
We plied the women generously with the foods placed before us, but refused intercourse with them
.’

The next day is fine and hot. The Romans retrieve their sodden baggage, dry it in the sun, pay a courtesy call on the village matriarch to thank her with a gift of
three silver bowls and some dried fruit, and are on their way.

So it goes, for a week and probably something over 200 kilometres. They come to another village. Here there is something of a traffic jam. Everyone has to wait because Attila is to rejoin the convoy, and he has to lead. And here, too, by an astonishing coincidence, is another embassy, this one from the western empire, from Rome, with some familiar and eminent faces: a general and a governor; a returning envoy, Constantius, the secretary originally sent by Aetius to Attila; a count named Romulus and his son-in-law, who is none other than the father of Orestes. It seems that being part of embassies to Attila is a family business.

The western envoys have their own story, which centres on the golden bowls of Sirmium. These had once belonged to the bishop who, when the city was besieged by the Huns in the early 440s, gave them to one of Attila’s other secretaries for safe keeping, thinking the gift might come in handy if he were captured. That made the bowls Attila’s. But the secretary pawned the bowls to a banker in Rome. When Attila learned of this, he had the man crucified. Now he wants either the bowls or the banker. Here was a whole embassy come to tell Attila that, since the banker had received the bowls in good faith, they were not stolen goods and the Hun leader cannot now claim either them or the innocent banker.

At last Attila turns up, and the swollen columns proceed across an open plain until they reach
a very
large village
– Attila’s capital, which, as suggested in the previous chapter, is probably some 20 kilometres west of present-day Szeged, well away from the meandering and flood-prone Tisza.

A
s the royal procession winds between the wooden buildings, women give a ritual welcome, lines of them holding up long strips of white linen that form a canopy under which walk a procession of young girls, all singing. They lead the way between the compounds, and then straight into Onegesius’ enclosure.

Second only to Attila’s, Onegesius’ compound contains a surprise – a bath-house made of stones brought all the way from Pannonia, 150 kilometres to the south. It was built by a Roman architect taken prisoner in Sirmium. Priscus does not mention the furnace and hot water,
sine qua non
for a bathhouse, nor does he explain how the water got to the bath – there was no aqueduct, of course, because this was a mere village in Roman terms; a ditch, perhaps, or just pot-carrying Roman prisoners trooping back and forth to the river at bath-time. In any event, in this barbaric setting the bath is a terrific status symbol for Onegesius, for baths were temples to civilization, bath-water its very essence. He would have approved a poem by one of the greatest poets of the age, Sidonius, who wrote in praise of his own baths in southern Gaul, baths of which we shall hear more praise later, and of which Attila himself might hear rumours in two years’ time:

Enter the chill waves after the steaming baths,

That the water by its coldness may brace your heated skin.

Priscus makes no mention of Attila taking a bath, but it is inconceivable that the work would have gone forward without his permission, even encouragement. The unnamed Roman architect had no doubt provided Onegesius with
tepidarium
,
calidarium
, hypocaust and perhaps even
laconium
, a sweat-room, complete of course with furnace. Not much point in a bathhouse, he would have argued, if you freeze in winter. He hoped it would win him his freedom. No such luck: as Priscus notes, he is the bath attendant.

In the enclosure, overseen by Onegesius’ wife – his senior wife, perhaps – servants from many households offer the horsemen food and wine from silver plates and goblets. Attila deigns to take a delicacy here, a sip there, and the servants hold up the plate and cup to boast of the honour to the surrounding throng. Then onwards, out of Onegesius’ compound by its other entrance, up a rise to the palace.

This is the Romans’ first view of their destination, though all they can see for the moment are the wooden walls made of smoothly planed boards so well set by the Gothic or Burgundian carpenters that the joints are hardly visible. Only the size of the walls shows it to be the royal palace. Attila vanishes inside, into instant audience with Onegesius on the subject of the Akatziri and their new young ruler. In fact, it is quite urgent: Attila’s son has fallen and broken his right arm.
No doubt a healer must be called to set it, with the correct rituals.

Meanwhile, after dinner provided by Onegesius’ long-suffering wife, the Romans set up camp between the two compounds, ready for their summons into the royal presence next day. They wait. No-one comes. Maximinus sends Priscus down to Onegesius’ place, with servants carrying the presents both for the king and for his right-hand man. The doors are still closed. It’s going to be another long wait.

A
s Priscus wanders about outside the stockade, a Hun approaches, dressed, as Huns usually are, in jerkin and felt trousers. To Priscus’ amazement, the Hun hails him in Greek:
Khaire!
The Huns are a mixed bunch, both Hunnish and Gothic being spoken routinely, while those used to dealing with westerners – like Onegesius himself – also have reasonable Latin. But not Greek. The only Greek-speakers around are prisoners taken in the recent wars, the ones the Romans want to ransom. You can tell them at a glance, oppressed and tousled down-and-outs. This man, in his forties I imagine, is smartly dressed, with his hair neatly clipped in the Hunnish style, confident, relaxed.

‘Khaire!’ replies Priscus, and fires off a string of questions. Who is he? Where does he come from? How is it that he’s adopted barbarian ways?

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘You speak Greek! Of course I’m curious!’

The man laughs, and must surely have introduced himself, though Priscus avoids giving us his name, for
reasons that will become clear. Yes, he’s Greek, a businessman who had set up in Viminacium, had married a rich wife and was doing well when the Huns attacked eight years before and burned the place to the ground. He had been among those led away into captivity. The business was ruined, of course, but because of his wealth Onegesius had chosen him as a prime hostage. It turned out well for both. He had shown valour in fighting the Romans and the Akatziri, which probably means he had supplied and commanded his own troops. In whatever way, he had acquired enough booty to buy his freedom. Now he is part of Onegesius’ entourage, with a new Hun wife and children, and once again doing very well.

In fact, life is better here than it was in Viminacium. He should know; he is in a unique position to compare the two cultures. In the empire, he says, ordinary people rely on their leaders, so have lost their fighting spirit. But the generals are useless cowards, so we’re bound to lose wars. In peace, we’re at the mercy of tax-men and criminals. There’s no such thing as justice any more. The rich bribe the judges, the poor languish in gaol until they die. Faced with incompetence, insecurity, corruption and oppression, no wonder it’s better here.

Priscus, remember, is a civil servant, writing an official report. His ears are open to criticism, because no-one can deny that the empire is going to the dogs for just the reasons given by this Greek-turned-Hun. But it would not look good officially to let this sort of thing go unchallenged. So he writes himself a prim reply. The men who framed the Roman constitution were good
and wise. They ordained that there should be soldiers, good military training, fair taxation, fair-minded judges, independent lawyers to defend the rights of the common people. If trials last a long time, it is only because the judges want to make sure they come to the right conclusion. How unlike the barbarians are the Romans, who treat their slaves as fathers do
and punish them, like their own children, if they do wrong, so that they are restrained from improper behaviour
. Even in death, a Roman can provide for increased freedom, because wills are legally binding. Why, even the emperor himself is subject to the law. It is a very long speech, which would all be in direct quotes if ancient Greek had direct quotes. It has them in Blockley’s translation. And what was the result of this peroration?

‘
My acquaintance wept and said that the laws were fair and the Roman polity good
.’