The Scourge of God Read Free

curtains bleached of color by the night and the oil lamps guttering. Domes and vaults bore tile mosaics of saints who looked serenely down at the sins below, the air languid with incense and perfume. The emperor’s entourage strode down dark marble hallways too swiftly for any challenge; and Honoria’s chamber guardian, a huge Nubian named Goar, went down with a grunt from a crossbow bolt fired from twenty paces before he even understood who was approaching. He struck the marble with a meaty thud. A wine boy who startled awake, and who might have cried warning, had his neck snapped like a chicken’s. Then the soldiers burst into the princess’s quarters, knocking aside tables of honeyed sweets, kicking a cushion into the shallow pool of the bath, and butting open the door of her sleeping chamber.
    The couple jerked awake, clutching and crying out behind the gauze of the curtains as a dozen dark shapes surrounded their vast bed. Was this assassination?
    “Light,” Valentinian ordered.
    His men had brought torches, and they turned the scene bright and lurid. The steward, Eugenius, slid away on his backside until he bumped against the headboard, his hands seeking to cover himself. He had the look of a man who has stumbled off a cliff and, in one last moment of crystalline dread, knows there is nothing he can do to save himself. Honoria was crawling toward the other side of the bed, naked except for the silken sheet draped over her, her hip bewitching even in her terror, clawing as if distance from her commoner lover would provide some kind of deniability.
    “So it is true,” the emperor breathed.
    “How dare you break into my bedchamber!”
    “We have come to save you, child,” the bishop said.
    The exposure of his sister strangely excited Valentinian. He’d been insulted by her mockery, but now who looked the fool? She was on humiliating display for a dozen men, her sins apparent to all, her shoulder bare, her hair undone, her breasts dragging on the sheet. The situation gave him heady satisfaction. He glanced back. Goar’s prostrate form was just visible in the entry, blood pooling on the marble like a little lake. It was his sister’s vanity and ambition that had doomed those around her. As she had doomed herself! The emperor spied a golden cord holding the drapery around the bed and yanked, pulling it free. The diaphanous shelter dropped to the floor, exposing the couple even more, and then he stepped forward and began flailing with the cord at Honoria’s hips and buttocks as she flinched under the sheet, his breath quick and anxious.
    “You’re rutting with a servant and plotting to elevate him above me!”
    She writhed and howled with outrage, pulling the covering away from poor Eugenius in order to wrap herself. “Damn you! I’ll tell Mother!”
    “Mother told me when and where I’d find you!” He took satisfaction in the way that betrayal stung. They had always competed for Placidia’s affection. He whipped and whipped, humiliating more than injuring her, until finally he was out of breath and had to stop, panting. Both he and his sister were flushed.
    The soldiers dragged the steward out of bed and wrenched his arms behind his back, forcing him to his knees. His manhood was shrunken, and he’d not had time to muster a defense. He looked in beseeching horror toward the princess as if she could save him, but all she had were dreams, not power. She was a woman! And now, in gambling for her affections, Eugenius had doomed himself.
    Valentinian turned to study the would-be emperor of Ravenna and Rome. Honoria’s lover was handsome, yes, and no doubt intelligent to have risen to palace steward, but a fool to try to climb above his station. Lust had bred opportunity and ambition had encouraged pride, but in the end hers was a pathetic infatuation. “Look at him,” Valentinian mocked, “the next Caesar.” His gaze shifted downward. “We should cut it off.”
    Eugenius’s voice broke. “Don’t