Count Belisarius

Theodosius made no apology for the joke that had offended his godfather. All that he would say was: 'I hold no brief for any heresy. I grant you that Orthodox doctrine can be logically defended against all heresies – especially given certain mystical premises, such as that the Pope at Rome holds the keys of Heaven in succession to St Peter.'

Belisarius replied, stiffly:' I do not sec that logic has any part in true religion.'

Theodosius laughed. 'A sceptical comment indeed, Godfather.'

Belisarius explained, his temper still unruffled:' Religion is faith, not philosophy. The Ionian Greeks invented philosophy to take the place of religion; and it made a cowardly and deceitful race of them.'

Then my mistress Antonina asked: 'But is not philosophy needed to steel one against possible injuries? Is it good to keep faith with those who may injure one?'

'It is good to keep faith and to forgive injuries. To break one's faith is to injure oneself.'

Theodosius remarked: 'But the weaker a man's faith, the less he will injure himself by breaking it.'

Belisarius replied gently: 'Do not let that concern us, Godson. We are all people of honour here.'

Here I intercepted a swift glance that passed between my mistress and Theodosius, as if to say: 'Ah, dear Belisarius, you flatter us. Perhaps our sense of honour is not so fanatical as yours.'

I have never forgotten that conversation, and that glance, in the light of my mistress's subsequent relations with Theodosius. This at least is sure: that Theodosius had allowed himself to be baptized only as an aid to personal advancement, and was no more a Christian than I or my mistress. He once confessed to her: 'The only writer on Christianity that I have ever read with satisfaction was Cclsus.' This Celsus is anathema. Me lived in pagan times, and wrote about the early Christians with witty severity. He even went to Palestine to investigate the parentage of Jesus, and claimed to have found Him recorded in the military records as the son of one Pantherus, a Greek soldier of Samaria. 'And it is noteworthy,' Theodosius said, 'that, according to the Evangelist John, Jesus did not deny His Samaritan origin when the priests chargcd him with it.'

Everyone is entitled to his own faith or opinions, as Belisarius maintained. But Theodosius concealed his thoughts from everyone but my mistress Antonina – if indeed he revealed them to her. Although I did not believe the stupid servants' gossip about my mistress and Theodosius – such as that they had once been observed kissing behind a screen and, on another occasion, emerging together from a dark cellar -1 nevertheless felt a strong presentiment that one day passion would seize hold of my mistress and the young man and bring ill luck both on Belisarius and on themselves. For being an atheist, or at least a sceptic, what moral scruples had Theodosius? As for my mistress, she had lived a very loose life in the old days, and had not by any means been faithful to her husband the merchant, looking upon her body as her own possession to dispose of as it best pleased her. Her love for Belisarius was undeniable; but whether it would restrain her from indulging any passion that she might feel for Theodosius I could not foresee.

When Belisarius said: 'We are all people of honour here,' I was sad. I loved him as a noble hero, and my loyalty to him was only second to the loyalty that I felt for my mistress, in gratitude for the great consideration with which she had always treated mc.

It was at this moment that Solomon was announced. He came panting into the room, hardly able to speak. My mistress sent mc for a nip of wine to revive him, which he presently drank. My discretion being beyond question, I was permitted to remain and hear the story that he told us.

The Vandal women were at the bottom of the trouble, Solomon said. They had persuaded their new husbands that the Emperor had defrauded them of their marriage-dowries – of the houses and lands that belonged to them in their own right. These same women had also stirred up indignation against Justinian's oppressive religious edicts: all Arians being strictly debarred from the Sacraments and even forbidden a little holy water with which to sprinkle their children for baptismal purposes. There was now a whole crop of newly born Arian children who, if they happened to the without baptism, would be damned everlastingly; and this caused their fathers, Thracian Goths and Herulian Huns, great concern. The mutiny had been agreed upon for Easter Sunday, which fell that year on the twenty-third day of March. The conspirators decided to assassinate Solomon as he was attending a ceremony in honour of the Resurrection of Christ, in the Cathedral of St Cyprian. Solomon did not have the least suspicion of his danger, because the secret had been extraordinarily well kept. Yet half the soldiers of his own bodyguard were in the plot, being married to Vandal wives and wishing to share in the distribution of land and houses.