Count Belisarius (5 page)

They explained, surprised at his words, that every boy must be either Blue or Green, or a turn-coat, or a trimmer. It was true that there were originally Red and White factions at the Hippodrome, representing the colours of summer and winter, just as the Green represented spring, and the Blue autumn. But chariot-races are now run two charious against two, and not all four chariots each against the others; so White and Red no longer exist as independent factions, having long ago become affiliated, respectively, to Blue and Green, and disappeared.

Belisarius realized that he had said what sounded foolish, but none the less decided to abide by his words. He answered: ‘If there are not yet any Whites at this school, Armenian John and I must make a beginning.'

They grew angry then, Blues as well as Greens, and told him that it was a strict rule of the schoolyard that knives or stones or other dangerous weapons should not be used in their tussles, but hands and feet only, and soft missiles like mud or snow.

Belisarius mocked at them for this and said: ‘And it was you who called me a girl-boy!'

This provoked a noisy rush against him and Armenian John. But Andress dropped the satchel and ran to their rescue. Meanwhile Palaeologus had gone to fetch aid; the undermaster soon appeared and prevented further mischief, for he induced Rufinus to make his peace with Belisarius.

Rufinus had recovered from the blow and, being a noble-minded boy, said that he admired Belisarius for avenging what seemed to be an insult to his tutor. He told Belisarius: ‘If you and your comrade care to join the Green faction as members, you will be welcome.'

Uliaris shouted: ‘No, let them come to us. We were the first to ask.'

It was unheard of that two faction leaders, such as Uliaris and Rufinus, should be competing for the support of a new boy. Usually it was only with difficulty and bribes that such a one obtained full membership in a faction: he had to wait for many months as a mere hanger-on to the faction that he favoured.

Belisarius thanked Rufinus for his invitation, but excused himself, as being a White; and Armenian John did the same. So Rufinus laughed. He did not appear insulted, but said: ‘If your huge White army needs help against the Blues, you know what allies to summon to your aid.' The affair ended more quietly than it had begun, and when the boys heard that it was Belisarius and Armenian John who had fought the pepper-battle against the Cappadocians, grown men, they treated them with respect. With both Uliaris and Rufinus separately Belisarius became friendly; and even succeeded in making them work together when he was leader in some adventure. They played an important part in a famous snowball battle fought under Belisarius's generalship against the boys of a monastic school near by.

The story, though a boyish one, may be of interest. The monastery pupils were oblates – that is to say children dedicated by their parents to the monastic life. There was a breach in the monastery wall from which the oblates, armed with clubs like the Egyptian monks of the Sinai desert, used to descend and waylay boys of the Imperial school returning to their midday dinners, and beat them viciously. One snowy day belisarius, with Armenian John and Uliaris as decoys, drew a large number of these oblates into an ambush – a timber-yard belonging to the father of Rufinus. There the Blue and Green factions, at peace for the occasion, nearly smothered them with snow and made prisoners of twenty boys, locking them in the wrestling-shed in the Imperial schoolyard. But unfortunately Uliaris had been captured, close to the breach in the wall.

Among those who fought along with Belisarius on this day was a small body of ‘allies', namely four or five satchel-bearers, Andreas among them, and half a dozen poor boys known as ‘servitors'. These were not regular scholars, but were allowed to sit apart at the back of the schoolroom and receive free instruction. In return they performed certain menial services: such as cleaning the school privies, and scrubbing out the classroom when the lessons were over, and distributing
ink when it was needed, and smoothing out the wax on the used wax-tablets of the other scholars, and minding the furnace which in winter heated the rooms with pipes under the floor. These servitors were looked down upon by the ordinary scholars and treated as interlopers. But Belisarius had promised them privately that if they fought well and obeyed orders he would see that their condition was improved.

He now put himself at the head of these allies and led them at a run towards the monastery, to the postern-gate behind the kitchen. It was here that at this time of day a few poor persons of all ages were admitted to gratuitous meals of soup and stale bread and broken meats. Belisarius and his band entered quietly, pretending to be beggar-boys, but then skirted round the kitchens and passed through the monks' cabbage-garden, meeting nobody, and reached the schoolhouse beyond. There they came upon Uliaris in a shed, bound hand and foot, and with a bloody head. He was not guarded; for the enemy were now all anxiously gathered at the breach of the wall, wondering about their friends. Uliaris urged an immediate attack on the oblates from the rear. But Belisarius considered the suggestion dangerous, because of the difficulty of escape should the oblates call for help to the monks and lay-brothers. He was for retiring quickly again by the way that they had come.

So they escaped, taking with them, as legitimate plunder, apples and nuts and honey-cakes and spiced buns from a line of satchels hanging in a row in the shed. (This was Shrove-tide, when the oblates were given a dole of dainties to reconcile them to the coming rigours of Lent.) Singing the paean of victory, they returned to their own school and there made a fair division of their plunder among the scholars. But Belisarius allowed nothing to be given to those few boys who had held back from the fighting; and one of these, by name little Apion, Malthus's most industrious pupil, treasured a lasting grudge against Belisarius. As for the twenty captured oblates, they were released by Malthus's orders, but excommunicated by their Abbot for a full month.

*

Belisarius (whose mother died about this time) grew to be a tall, strong lad, with great breadth of shoulder. His features were noble and regular, his hair black, thick, and curly, and he had a frank smile and a clear laugh. Only from his cheek-bones, which were somewhat
high, would his barbarian descent have been guessed. At school he satisfied his masters with the lively attention he gave his studies, and his schoolfellows with his courage and skill in wrestling and football. He was also a strong swimmer. He formed a small troop of young cavalrymen from the elder boys of the school, supplying them with cobs from his estate if they could not afford to mount themselves, and trained them in his uncle's park. They exercised chiefly in archery and lance-work upon stuffed sacks hung from the boughs of an oak. But they did not omit to engage in tourneys and skirmishes with one another, using blunt weapons; and even in miniature sea-battles from boats on the River Hebrus that runs past the city of Adrianople. Thus they became proficient soldiers before they went to train at the cadet-school at Constantinople, as they all did in a body – disdaining to enter the Civil Service. Some of them, the sons of tradesmen and debarred by decree from leaving their hereditary occupations, had first to buy exemption with bribes at the Palace.

I
HAVE
already written something about Belisarius's uncle, Modestus, with his Roman ways and his strained rhetorical talk full of puns and recondite allusions. I met him once only, nearly sixty years ago, but my memory of that occasion was often afterwards refreshed by Belisarius, one of whose favourite diversions in private was to mimic Modestus and make my mistress Antonina laugh. I have also inherited a volume of Modestus's poems and another of his painfully composed letters, in the style of Pliny, both of which are inscribed with a dedication to Belisarius. Moreover, when I was in Rome during the siege I met many noble Romans who spoke and behaved in very much the same manner as he, so I know the type well.

The scene is the dining-room of Modestus's villa. There are present: Modestus himself, the burgess Simeon, Malthus the schoolmaster, three other local dignitaries, Bessas (a big, tough Gothic cavalry officer quartered in the town), Symmachus (an Athenian professor of philosophy), Belisarius, now fourteen years of age, with Rufinus and Armenian John and Uliaris and Palaeologus the tutor. Everything is arranged exactly in the old Roman style, for Modestus is an antiquarian and makes no mistakes: he can justify everything by quotation from some Latin author or other of the Golden Age. His guests feel a trifle self-conscious, especially Simeon, who is a convinced Christian and somewhat scandalized by the lasciviousness of the painted frieze that runs between windows and ceiling – the subject being Bacchus, God of Wine, on his drunken return from India. In deference to the wishes that Modestus has expressed in his letter of invitation, most of his guests are dressed, Roman-fashion, in long, white, short-sleeved woollen tunics. But the burgess Simeon is true to the smoky woollen blouse and loose pantaloons that every ordinary inhabitant of Thrace wears, who is not a cleric; and Bessas wears a linen tunic with broad vertical stripes of yellow, green, and red, and breeches of sewn skins, because he is a Goth. Bessas also wears a brownish-yellow military cloak fastened with a large amethyst brooch that sparkles magnificently when it catches the light.

They recline on couches at a round table of ancient sumach-wood; which Bessas finds awkward, being accustomed to sit up to the military board on a hard bench. He envies the boys, who, since they are not yet of age, are provided with chairs, not couches; they sit at a side-table. It is four o'clock now, by Modestus's water-clock, of which he is so proud and which keeps such poor time, and Greek servants bring in the appetizers – dishes of olives, chopped leeks, young onions, tunny-fish in vinegar, prawns, sliced sausage, lettuce, shell-fish. Mal-thus has been appointed wine-master, but Bessas's high military rank entitles him to the consular seat at the tip of the crescent in which they recline. Symmachus the philosopher resents that the principal honours should go to the brownish-yellow cloak of Bessas, a barbarian, rather than to his own grey professorial cloak; but does not dare to show his feelings openly.

Malthus's duty is to see that every man's cup is filled and to regulate the proportion of wine to water: it is a duty that he has often performed for Modestus. He can be trusted to whisper to the man with the wine-jar and water-pot ‘More wine', when conversation is formal and frigid, and ‘More water' when the conversation is becoming too free or quarrelsome and spirits need cooling. A hired dancing-girl supplied by the Theatre at Constantinople, with a wreath of roses on her head, bare legs, and a very short tunic, hands the cups around, making pretty jokes as she does so.

Now Simeon the burgess says something in a low tone to Palaeologus (who is reclining on his left), indicating the frieze with a critical inclination of his head. Palaeologus replies with a warning frown, and Modestus calls out: ‘Hey, Sirs, is this proper banquet comradeship? Did not Petronius the Arbiter lay down hundreds of years ago in his famous satirical novel that at a courteous table all offensive comments should be made aloud? Come, let us have it! What do you find amiss with my frieze? It is a reproduction by a gifted contemporary copyist of a major work of Gorgasus the mural painter. The original was at Corinth, but is now destroyed, which makes this doubly precious to me and to all connoisseurs.'

Then he goes on, in a chanting voice: ‘Observe how Bacchus, having ravaged India, the land where the sages, called fakirs, nude but for a loin-cloth, sleep (praying to their gods) supported by nothingness three feet above the parched serpent-haunted ground – how great Bacchus, ever youthful, is harnessing the tigers to his triumphal
chariot, wreathed with vine-clusters, with vines for bridles! From his curly head sprout golden horns, symbol of valour, which themselves sprout lightning – that very lightning in which Jove begat him on astonished Semele. His smooth temples, you will notice, are adorned with poppies…'

‘If I may be pardoned such a rude interruption of your charming and eloquent speech,' Malthus puts in – he sees that the guests, having drunk little so far, are growing restless at the prospect of a long, dismal, classical recital, and he knows the only way to silence Modestus – ‘those are not poppies, they are intended for asphodel. Poppies are proper to Morpheus and to Ceres and to Persephone; but asphodel to Bacchus, Gorgasus was too well-informed an artist to make such an error in floral attributes.' Then, hastily to the servant: ‘Boy, pour again, and let it be all wine!'

Modestus apologizes: he meant asphodel, of course – ‘A slip of the tongue, ha, ha!' But his confidence is shaken; he hesitates to resume his recital.

Simeon considers that the half-clothed women of the frieze, in attendance on Bacchus, are not proper ornaments for a Christian dining-room. Looking up at them, one might imagine oneself inside a brothel at Tyre or Sidon or one of those heathen places, he complains.

‘I was never a customer at any such haunt,' says Modestus sharply, ‘but perhaps you know best. At the same time let me tell you that I regard the attitude to nudity as one of the tests of civilization. The barbarians hate the sight of their own unclothed bodies: just as the singing, illiterate, savage fraternities of monks do.'

Nobody takes up the challenge on behalf of the monks, not even Simeon, but Bessas answers stiffly: ‘We Goths regard the sight of a person unclothed as ridiculous – just as you, Modestus, laugh at a person who cannot sign his own name – as many a noble Goth cannot do, I among them.'

Modestus, in spite of his crotchets, is a good-humoured man and does not want to pick a quarrel with a guest. He assures Bessas that he is surprised that a man with so noble a name cannot record it on paper or parchment.