Count Belisarius (3 page)

In my story there are likely to be many Johns besides these Armenian and Cappadocian Johns, John being the name that foreigners commonly take when baptized into the Christian faith (calling themselves either after John the Baptist or John the Evangelist), or that Christian masters give their slaves. It is also frequent among the Jews, with whom it originated. So we shall distinguish these Johns either by their country of origin or, if that happens to be insufficient, by their customary nick-names: John the Bastard, John the Epicure, and Bloody John among the rest. But there is only one Belisarius in my story, and he as unusual as his name.

It appeared, then, from the boasts of the Cappadocians and the complaints of this wretched Simeon, that he had gone boldly with an armed body of constabulary to the castle of Cappadocian John, intending to overawe him into paying at least a reasonable part of his debt, but had been set upon with swords and clubs by the armed guard
at the gate-house. The constabulary had deserted Simeon at once, so that he was captured. Then Cappodocian John himself, who was spending the autumn on his estate for the hunting and fowling, had come swaggering out and asked the sergeant of the guard who this fellow might be. They made a low obeisance to John, who exacted from them the sort of respect a patriarch or the governor of a Diocese is usually given, and answered: ‘A sort of strange tax-gatherer, if it please your worship.' Cappadocian John cried: ‘Give him a sort of strange end, so that no tax-gathered may trouble me again on my Thracian estates.' Then six of them, led by the Sergeant, bound Simeon hand and foot and put him across a horse and rode off with him at once, hoping to please their master by their alacrity.

As they rode, they discussed the fate which their captive should suffer. The Sergeant invited his men to make suggestions. One said: ‘Let us tie a stone to his neck and throw him into a pond.' But Simeon objected loudly: ‘It is a crime before God to poison water. My corpse would spread a pestilence. Besides, what you propose is not a strange death: it is the common death that slave girls give to puppies. Think again!' The Sergeant agreed that Simeon was right, and they rode on farther.

Then another of the Cappadocians proposed that they should lash him to a tree and shoot him full of arrows. Simeon again interrupted: ‘Would you blaspheme by inflicting on a mere tax-gatherer the very death suffered by the holy martyr Sebastian of Milan?' This also seemed an objection to be respected, so they rode on farther yet. A third man suggested impaling, and a fourth flaying, and the fifth was for burying Simeon alive. But each time Simeon poured scorn on these suggestions, and told them that they would certainly be punished by their master if they were to return and report that they had put him to death by so commonplace or trifling a means. The Sergeant took his part and said at last: ‘If you can tell us a sort of death that is strange enough, I shall be grateful to you and carry it out just as you wish.'

Simeon replied: ‘Let your master pay his debt voluntarily. Then, be sure, I will die of astonishment, and no stranger death will ever have been recorded in the Diocese of Thrace.'

The Sergeant struck him on the mouth for his impudence, but was still undecided as to the manner of his death. It came on to rain, and the Cappadocians saw a light burning in the inn, so they tied up their
horses in the stable and came inside for a drink of wine and further consultation.

Palaeologus now heard them mention their master's name, and knew him by reputation for a rancorous and quarrelsome man, so was anxious to do nothing to affront these servants. He asked them whether they would do him the honour of drinking wine at his expense.

The unmannerly Sergeant made no reply, but, finding himself near the cooking-pot, which was giving off a very savoury smell, turned to his companions and cried: ‘We are in luck, bullies! This old bearded fellow has foreseen our coming and cooked a hare for us.'

Palaeologus pretended to take this in joke. He said to the Sergeant: ‘Best of Greeks, this hare is not sufficient for ten grown men and two boys, one of whom, moreover, is a nobleman. But if you yourself, and perhaps one other, care to join us.…'

The Sergeant replied: ‘Impudent old beard, you are well aware that this is not your hare. It is a stolen one, doubtless the property of my master John, and you shall have no share in it at all. What is more, when our meal is over you shall pay me, on my master's account, a fine for your theft. You shall hand over ten gold pieces or as much more as I find in your pockets. As for your nobleman, he shall wait on us. Bullies, guard the door! Now disarm the two slaves!'

Palaeologus saw that it was useless to resist. He told Andreas and the porter to give up their arms peaceably, and they did so. But Armenian John and especially belisarius who had shot the hare and was eager for a taste of it, were greatly enraged. But they said nothing. Then Belisarius remembered the cave of the Cyclops and decided to make these ruffians as drunk as possible, so as to have the advantage of them if it came to a struggle.

Very politely he began acting as cup-bearer, pouring out the wine without any admixture of water, and saying: ‘Drink, gentlemen, it is good wine, and you have nothing to pay.' Because the pepper made the soup very hot for the Cappadocians, they drank more wine perhaps than they otherwise would have done. They toasted him as their Ganymede, and would have kissed him, but he eluded them. Then one of them went into the kitchen to catch the slave girl and began pulling off her smock, but she ran out of the house and hid among the bushes, where he could not find her; so he returned.

The Cappadocians began in their cups to discuss religious dogma.
This is the disease of the age. One would expect farmers, for instance, when they come together, to talk about animals and crops, and soldiers about battles and military duties, and prostitutes perhaps about clothes and beauty and their success with men. But no, wherever two or three are gathered together, in tavern, barracks, brothel, or anywhere else, they immediately begin discussing with every assumption of learning some difficult point of Christian doctrine. Then, as the main disputes of the various Christian churches have always been concerned with the nature of the Deity, that most tempting point of philosophical debate, so naturally these drunken Cappadocians began, not without blasphemy, to lay down the law on the nature of the Holy Trinity and especially of the Second Person, the Son. They were all Orthodox Christians, and seemed to hope that Palaeologus would raise his voice in dispute. But he did not, for he held the same opinions as they.

However, Simeon soon revealed himself as one of the Monophysites. The Monophysites were a sect powerful in Egypt and Antioch, and during the last generation or two had brought the Empire into much danger. For the Emperors at Constantinople were obliged to choose between offending the Pope of Rome, who was the recognized successor of the Apostle Peter and had condemned the sect as heretical, and offending the people of Egypt on whose goodwill Constantinople depended for its corn. Some Emperors had inclined to the one view and some to the other; some had tried to find grounds for a compromise. There had been destructive riots, and wars, and scandals in the Churches because of this dispute; and at the time of which I write there was a clear schism between the Church of the East and the Church of the West. The reigning Emperor, old Anastasius, tended to favour the Monophysites; therefore the burgess Simeon, to annoy these Cappadocians, made his loyalty to the Emperor equivalent to his Monophysitism.

Simeon proved too eloquent for them, though all shouted at once; so they called on Palaeologus as a scholar to defend the Orthodox point of view on their behalf, which the gladly did. Armenian John, nudged by Belisarius, plied them with more drink as they listened to the disputation.

Palaeologus quoted the words of Pope Leo, which I forget myself, if I ever heard them, but which I gather were to this effect: that the Son is not God only, which is the view of the insane Acuanites; or
man only, which is the view of the impious Plotinians; nor man in the sense of lacking something or other of the divine, as the foolish Apollinarians hold; but that He has two united natures, human and divine, according to the texts ‘I and My Father are one' and also ‘My Father is greater than I' and that the human nature, by which the Son is inferior to the Father, does not diminish from the divine nature, by which the Son is the equal of the Father.

The Cappadocians cheered Palaeolougs when he recited this decision, rattling their cups on the table or banging with their beech-wood bowls. They did not notice that Belisarius, under the table, was tying their feet together with a length of tough twine – not so tightly that none of them could stir his feet for comfort, but tightly enough to incommode them greatly if they all tried to rise together; for he had tied them in a narrow circle.

Then Simeon ridiculed Palaeologus, and said that to brush aside false doctrine of Acuanite or Apollinarian or Plotinian was not by any means the same as stating true doctrine; and that for a priest to be elected Pope of Rome did not give him a right to lay down the Christian law finally; and that a Pope might say and do things for political reasons that were injurious both to his God and to his Emperor. Simeon also said that the Son's nature could not be split into two as a man splits faggots with an axe. The Son's doings and sufferings were neither wholly divine nor wholly human, but all of a piece – Goodman-like. Thus: the Son walked on the waters of Galilee, which was an act performed through the flesh but transcending the laws of the nature of flesh.

So far, both my accounts agree as to the order of events, but at this point there comes a difference. First let me give the story as I heard it from a man of Adrianople a great many years later; who had heard it, he said, from Simeon's elder son.

According to this Adrianopolitan, Simeon closed his exposition with the following words: ‘But Pope Leo also remarked on this head – I can quote his very words: “
Ardescat in foco ferrum. Sunt vincula mea solvenda. Mox etiam pugionibus et pipere pugnandum est. Tace!
” How can you be obedient to such gross folly, men of Cappadocia?'

The Sergeant of the Cappadocians, pretending to understand Latin, cried out recklessly: ‘The Blessed Pope Leo spoke very good sense. He was right in every word. Out of your own mouth you are confuted.' For they were all unaware that Simeon had conveyed a secret
message to Belisarius to heat the spit in the embers, to cut his bonds, and to be prepared to do battle with daggers and pepper.

But, according to the version that I heard from Andreas not many years ago, it was Belisarius who spoke the Latin words, pretending to confute Simeon, and crying out: ‘
Ardescit in foco ferrum manibus tuis propinquum. Vincula solvam. Mox etiam pugionibus et pipere pugnabitur
' – at which (Andreas said) the ignorant Cappadocians cheered the boy as a stout champion of the true faith. These words of Belisarius, if spoken, conveyed a message to Simeon that the spit was already heating in the fire close to his hands, that he would cut his bonds, and that a battle would soon be fought with daggers and pepper.

Against the acceptance of Andreas's account is the well-known tendency in old people to exaggerate or distort the experiences of their youth, especially when telling of a person afterwards famous. Thus, St Matthew learned from certain old gossips that the infant Jesus once restored a dead sparrow to life for them when they were playmates together; and has recorded this in his second Gospel with such other extravagances as that He spoke from His Mother's womb and reproved His stepfather Joseph. But in favour of this version I can say that it came to me not at third but at first hand, and that I knew Andreas as a man of confidence. Nor must it be objected that so young a child as Belisarius then was could not have spoken good Latin, the Latin of Rome: for good Latin was his mother's native tongue. Her own father had been a Roman Senator who left Italy with his family, fifty years before this time, when the barbarian Vandal, King Geiserich, plundered the temples and noble houses of Rome; he came to the Eastern part of the Roman Empire for security, and his family remained true to good Latin. So it was that Belisarius spoke three languages already: the Thracian vernacular of his family estate, and Latin, in which his mother and her chaplain always conversed with him, and Greek, the common language of the Eastern Empire – but Greek not fluently as yet.

Well, whoever it was who acted as general on this occasion, I can tell you at least how the battle went. First, Belisarius secretly cut Simeon's cords with his dagger. He was unperceived by the Cappadocians, who had finished their meat by now but were still seated drinking at the table. Then, nudging Armenian John to preparedness, he took a great fistful of ground pepper and came up to the table and whirled it in their faces, blinding all six of them. Up jumped Simeon
with a roar, brandishing the red-hot spit which Belisarius had put to heat in the hearth; and the Thracians, Andreas and the porter ran to catch up their weapons, which had been stacked not far from them.

The Cappadocians roared like bulls with pain and helpless anger. They were fuddled with wine, entangled with the cord at their feet, blinded with pepper, and paralysed by sneezes. Simeon at the first onset struck two of them terrible blows on the head with the red-hot spit; so that even though Palaeologus took no part whatsoever in the fight, the Cappadocians were now outnumbered, four by five. Their stools were pulled from under them, and they fell sprawling to the ground. The boys and the slaves stood over them with drawn swords and daggers raised.

Simeon hurriedly fetched some pieces of harness from the stable and bound them one by one – he was a saddler by trade, and handy with knots. He, as it were, knotted each bond with a Monophysite argument, saying: ‘Escape this logical predicament, Sir, if you can' or ‘That text draws tight on your conscience, does it not?'

They answered piteously: ‘For Christ's sake, best of men, bring sponge and water, or we shall go blind with this fire-dust.'