June to August 477 AD
Pope Simplicius wrote his last great letter in early June, when the summer heat began to creep in through the windows of the Lateran Palace and caused the ink to dry too quickly on the parchment.
His hands trembled. They had been trembling for weeks, but this morning was worse than usual. His thin and wrinkled fingers, fingers that once raised the communion chalice before thousands of worshippers with undeniable strength, were now barely able to hold a quill without dropping it. Felix offered to write on his behalf. Simplicius refused.
"This letter must be written by my own hand," Simplicius said, his age-clouded eyes staring at the empty parchment before him like an old sailor looking at the sea for the last time. "If they see someone else's handwriting, they will know that I am too weak to hold a pen. And if they know I am weak, they will not listen."
So he wrote slowly. Every letter was a small battle between his will and his aging flesh. The ink left an untidy trail, wavy lines where they should have been straight, letters that were too large in one place and too small in another. But his words were clear. Words he had arranged in his head for weeks, during the long nights when his body refused to sleep and his mind refused to rest.
Two copies. One for Ravenna. One for Milan. The exact same words for both parties, because Simplicius believed that if you spoke to two quarreling children, you had to use the same voice for both or they would think you were taking sides.
To all the flock of Christ in Italy, from Simplicius, the unworthy servant of the servants of God, greetings in the name of Christ who suffered for us all.
I write this with trembling hands and a heart that trembles even more. I write this not as a ruling Pope, but as a pleading father. Because what I see happening in Italy today is not a dispute among men. It is a wound on the body of Christ Himself. And every sword raised in His name only deepens that wound.
I ask, not command, all parties: lower your swords. Return the spears to their scabbards. Let the wheat grow without being trampled by iron boots. Let the children play in the streets without the fear that their fathers will not come home.
Don't let Christian blood stain the land guarded by Peter.
I am not asking you to love one another. I know that is too much to ask right now. I only ask you to stop killing each other. Give me that. Give me a truce. Give me time. Let me find a path that does not pass through a graveyard.
If there are any among you who still respect the Throne of Peter, even a little, even a fragment, then honor this request. Not for my sake. For the sake of Him who died on the cross so that we would not have to kill each other.
In the unceasing love of Christ, Simplicius
The Pope sprinkled sand over the wet ink. His hands stopped trembling for a few seconds, as if writing those words had taken the last of his muscular energy and now there was nothing left to tremble.
Felix stood behind him, reading over the Pope's shoulder. His face showed no approval. Felix wanted lightning, not pleas. Felix wanted excommunication and a holy war and the destruction of Milan down to its foundations. But he saw those old hands that had stopped trembling not out of recovery but out of sheer exhaustion, and he swallowed his words of rejection.
"Send it," Simplicius said without looking back. "Send it before my hand changes its mind and writes something harsher. Because I am tempted, Felix. Very tempted. But the temptation to act harshly usually stems from fear, not wisdom. And I am too old to let fear hold my pen."
Felix took the two parchments. He sealed them with red wax and the Fisherman's ring. He handed them to the two couriers who were already waiting outside with impatient fresh horses.
One courier headed south to Ravenna. One courier headed north to Milan.
Two identical letters. Two different hands would open them. Two pairs of eyes would read them through different lenses.
And one old Pope who sat in his chair after the couriers left, staring at the open window where the Roman sky was a perfect blue that cared nothing for human affairs, praying that his words were heavy enough to halt the swords that were already half drawn across Italy.
The letter arrived in Ravenna first, for Ravenna was closer than Milan and the southern courier had better roads.
Gelasius read it aloud in the Strategy Hall before Romulus, Vitus, Spurius, and Paulus. His usually measured and dignified voice trembled slightly on a few sentences, not out of excessive emotion but because he recognized the hand that wrote the letter and he knew how great a physical sacrifice it took for the old man to hold a pen.
The reactions in the room could be mapped across four faces.
Paulus closed his eyes when the sentence about not letting Christian blood stain the land guarded by Peter was read. His lips moved in silent prayer. The young bishop, who had already lost his mentor on the road to Rome, understood the weight of Simplicius's plea in a way that could not be understood by anyone who had never watched a loved one die for words.
Spurius nodded slowly. It was not an enthusiastic nod. It was the nod of a man who had fought too often and who knew that a truce, however fragile, was still better than one more day standing at the edge of the abyss.
Vitus sat with his arms folded across his chest and his jaw locked. He did not nod. He did not shake his head. He just sat, listening, and in his eyes was a calculation that never stopped spinning even though the Pope's words pleaded for all calculations to cease.
And Romulus sat in his chair, listening to every word, and when Gelasius finished reading, he asked a single question.
"Will Theodore accept?"
Gelasius placed the parchment on the table.
"Theodore is a calculating man," Gelasius answered. "He knows that his army is not yet strong enough for open war. He needs time to fortify his position, to recruit more bishops, to acquire more gold. A truce gives him that time."
"So he accepts not out of respect for the Pope, but because it benefits his strategy."
"Motivation does not matter if the result is the same," Gelasius said. "What matters is that as long as the truce holds, no one dies. And as long as no one dies, there is still a possibility that a peaceful solution can be found."
"Or," Vitus said from the corner of the room, his voice as flat as iron, "as long as the truce holds, our enemies grow stronger every day."
"And so do we," Spurius replied.
Romulus stared at the map on the table. The red pieces in the north. The blue pieces in the south. The invisible line between them that would now be marked by a truce.
"We accept," Romulus said. "But we will use every day given by this truce. Every hour, every minute, every second."
He turned to Vitus.
"Strengthen the defenses. Train the troops. Build up the supplies. If the peace holds, we will be more prepared for peace. If the peace breaks, we will be more prepared for war."
Vitus looked at Romulus. And for the first time in weeks, something in the general's face changed. Not full agreement. But an acknowledgment that the sentence which had just come out of the mouth of a sixteen-year-old boy was a sentence that could have come out of the mouth of a general who had fought for thirty years.
"As you command, Caesar," Vitus said. And this time, the words did not feel like broken glass in his mouth.
• •
The negotiations took place in Bononia, a city located right on the borderline between the north and south, the very same place where two patrols nearly started a war two months prior.
It was not Romulus who went. Nor Nepos. Both emperors were too proud and too cautious to meet in person. Emissaries were sent instead. From Ravenna, Gelasius led a small delegation consisting of Tribune Drusus and two legal advisors. From Milan, Theodore sent a bishop named Laurentius who was known as a slippery negotiator with an easy smile.
They met in a small church at the edge of the city. The Church of Saint Stephen, a simple stone building that was already too old to be beautiful but was still sturdy enough to hold twelve people who distrusted one another.
The negotiations lasted for three days.
The first day was spent measuring each other up. Gelasius and Laurentius sat across from each other at a narrow wooden table, both delegations on their respective sides, and they spoke without saying anything for six hours. Diplomatic phrases swirling like water in a stagnant pool. We desire a just peace. We also desire a just peace. Then we agree on peace. We agree on the desire for peace, not on the peace itself. Round after round of words that went nowhere but fulfilled their function: allowing both sides to assess who they were dealing with.
The second day was more substantive. Gelasius laid Ravenna's terms on the table: a full truce across Italy, no troop movements across the borderlines, free trade between north and south so the people would not starve, and a prisoner exchange if applicable. Laurentius laid Milan's terms: recognition that the Council of Milan was a legitimate ecclesiastical body, recognition that Nepos was the legitimate emperor over the northern territories, and an end to all propaganda from Rome calling Theodore a rebel.
Gelasius rejected two of Milan's three terms. Laurentius rejected one of Ravenna's four terms. They argued for eight hours. Voices that sometimes rose and sometimes fell, hands pointing at maps and striking the table, fingers counting imaginary coins of the losses borne by each side.
Drusus, sitting behind Gelasius as the military representative, yawned seventeen times during those eight hours. He counted them himself because there was nothing else a soldier could do at a negotiation table other than count his own yawns and hope that someone in this room would finally draw a sword so he would have a reason to do something he understood.
The third day produced a compromise. A compromise that satisfied no one, which was the surest sign that the compromise was fair. A full truce with no time limit. No troop movements across the Bononia line. Free trade for basic necessities. No recognition of each other's legitimacy. The status quo was maintained: two emperors, two churches, one Italy divided, but not bleeding.
Gelasius and Laurentius signed the treaty at the altar of the Church of Saint Stephen, over a small silver cross standing between two candles. They did not shake hands. They merely nodded, rolled up their respective copies of the treaty, and walked in opposite directions through the same doors.
For me Aelius Tacitus, that peace was born not out of love or respect, I write. That peace was born out of exhaustion and calculation. Both parties were too tired to fight and too wary to make peace. So they chose a middle path that satisfied no one but allowed everyone to keep breathing.
While the diplomats were negotiating in Bononia, Vitus visited Theron's workshop.
This visit was not recorded in any official journal. No witnesses were called. No secretary took notes of the conversation. Vitus came alone, after sunset, through a side alley usually used by kitchen servants to dispose of trash. He did not want anyone other than Theron to know of this visit.
Theron was bent over a workbench when Vitus entered. Before him, twelve clay spheres were arranged neatly in a wooden box lined with straw, like deadly eggs waiting to be hatched. Beside the box was a new bronze tube smaller than the original Ignis Dei tube, featuring a directional nozzle and a handle designed for one hand.
"Progress?" Vitus asked without preamble, his eyes sweeping across the workbench.
Theron took off his crystal spectacles and wiped them with the edge of his already dirty tunic, which only made them dirtier.
"On schedule, Magister," Theron answered. He picked up one of the clay spheres and turned it in his hands. "Twelve units of fire projectiles are completed. The clay shells are thicker than the first prototype. The fuses are longer to give the catapult operators time to adjust the distance. And I have improved the mixture ratio inside, more Calx Viva, so the reaction to moisture is faster and hotter."
He carefully placed the sphere back down, as if setting down a sleeping infant.
"And this one," Theron said, lifting the small bronze tube with a pride he could not hide even if he tried, "is the portable version. One person can hold it. The range is shorter, perhaps thirty paces, but enough to spray Ignis Dei in close-quarters combat. For defending gates or corridors."
Vitus took the tube. He held it. He weighed it. He aimed it at the empty wall and imagined what would happen if he pulled the release lever.
"How many can you produce before autumn?" Vitus asked.
"The projectiles? Fifty units if the supply of raw materials is not interrupted. The portable tubes? Perhaps eight. Each tube requires precise bronze workmanship and I only have two blacksmiths skilled enough."
"I will send four more blacksmiths next week. From the garrison's armory."
Theron nodded. Then he hesitated. His fingers squeezed the edge of the table.
"Magister," Theron said, his voice quieter. "I have to ask. Does... does Caesar know about all this?"
Vitus placed the bronze tube back on the table. A slow and measured movement.
"Caesar knows that we are strengthening the defenses," Vitus said. "That was his own order."
"But does he know the specifics? About these projectiles? About the portable tubes? About..."
"Theron." One word. A tone that stopped the sentence as effectively as a sword stopping a stride. "Caesar knows what he needs to know. Technical details are our business. This is a truce, not a peace. And a wise man never takes off his armor simply because the enemy stops shooting arrows."
Theron stared at Vitus. Something uncomfortable stirred. The shadow of a conversation that had occurred weeks ago, when Gelasius visited his workshop and asked with the same tone about the exact same things, and to which he had answered in the same way.
Two different men asking the same questions, Theron thought. One asking because he wanted to keep watch. The other asking because he did not want to be watched. And I stand in the middle, holding a weapon that could burn them both.
"As you command, Magister," Theron finally said.
Vitus nodded. He turned around. He walked out through the same alley he had entered. His massive shadow swallowed the lantern light and disappeared into the darkness of the corridor.
Theron stood alone in his workshop. Before him, twelve fireballs and a portable bronze tube waited with the patience of inanimate objects that cared not whose hands they ended up in nor for what purpose they were used.
The months of the truce became the most intensive season in Romulus's education.
Gelasius, who had been teaching patiently and gradually, now increased the tempo. Not out of impatience. But because he felt something he had not revealed to anyone except in his letters to the Pope: a feeling that the available time was not as plentiful as hoped. The truce was a window, and a window could close at any time.
The mornings in the small library changed. It was no longer just reading Marcus Aurelius and discussing. Gelasius introduced Romulus to Cicero. To Tacitus. To Livy. To the writings of the Church Fathers: Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome. Every text was read, discussed, and debated.
"Augustine wrote that a just war is a war waged to restore peace," Gelasius said one morning. "What is your opinion?"
"I think that everyone who starts a war says that their war is just," Romulus answered, his eyes not leaving the open page. "Nepos believes his war is just because he feels his throne was usurped. Theodore believes his war is just because he feels the Church was betrayed. And we believe that our war, if it happens, will be just because we feel attacked."
"Then how do we distinguish a truly just war from a war that only claims to be just?"
Romulus fell silent and thought. His fingers tapped the pages of the book in a slow rhythm.
"Perhaps we cannot," Romulus finally said. "Perhaps every war feels just from the inside. And only a person standing on the outside, who sees both sides from afar, can judge."
"And who is that person?"
"A historian?" Romulus guessed. Half asking. Half answering.
Gelasius smiled. A small smile that rarely appeared on his usually sharp and professional face.
"Or God," Gelasius said. "But since God rarely gives His opinion directly, a historian is the best substitute we have."
Besides philosophy and theology, Gelasius taught more practical matters. Law. Administration. Diplomacy. How to read a letter written by someone intending to deceive. How to write a reply that gave away nothing but sounded like giving away everything. How to recognize when someone was lying from the way they constructed their sentences, not from what they said.
"A bad liar avoids your eyes," Gelasius taught. "A good liar stares into your eyes for too long. The first is afraid of getting caught. The second wants to convince you that he is not lying. Both give signs. You only need to know which sign you are looking for."
Romulus absorbed all this with an intensity that made Gelasius write to the Pope: This boy is not brilliant in the sense of the philosophers. He does not possess the abstract intellect that makes a man write books. He possesses a rarer and more useful intellect, an intellect that understands humans. He reads people the way others read texts. With enough practice, he will become a better diplomat than anyone I have ever met.
In the afternoons they trained.
But the training had changed. It was no longer just about swords and fists and leg sweeps. Between the strikes and parries, conversation flowed. About everything and about nothing. About the color of the evening sky being different every day. About the taste of bread being different depending on who baked it in the kitchens. About dreams and fears and little things that were never discussed by emperors and warriors but were spoken of by two children who discovered that their world was too lonely to endure alone.
"My mother once sang a song about a wolf," Gisela said one afternoon, after they were both lying on the training yard grounds warmed by the summer sun, their breaths panting from a sparring session that was too intense. "An old Gothic song. About a she-wolf who lost her pack and walked alone through an endless forest."
"What happened to the wolf?" Romulus asked, his eyes staring at the clouds drifting over the courtyard.
"She found a new herd. But not a pack of wolves. A herd of deer."
"Deer?" Romulus turned his head with raised eyebrows.
"The deer did not know she was a wolf because she did not act like a wolf. She ate grass with them. Slept with them. Ran with them. And slowly, she forgot how to howl. She forgot the taste of meat. She became something that was neither wolf nor deer. Something new."
"And was she happy?"
Gisela fell silent. Staring at the same clouds that Romulus stared at. Clouds moving slowly to the east, indifferent to questions that had no answers.
"The song does not say," Gisela answered. "The song ended before the question was answered."
Romulus turned his head. Looking at Gisela lying beside him, her short hair messy on the ground, her eyes staring at the sky with an expression that was a mixture of longing and a peace she did not yet fully believe in.
"Perhaps the song ends there," Romulus said softly, "because the answer does not belong to the singer. The answer belongs to the wolf."
Gisela turned her head. Their eyes met. Golden brown met deep dark. The distance between them was only an arm's width, but that distance felt as if it stretched across the entire history separating Rome from the barbarian tribes, across wooden fences and stone walls and ditches and red tents and seven slashes of a butcher's knife and green fire on a dark sea.
Neither moved to close that distance. They were too young. Too full of scars. Too afraid that touching something beautiful would destroy it.
But they also did not look away.
And in that stillness, in the courage to keep staring without touching and without running away, something grew. Not a flower blooming in splendor. More like moss growing on a stone. Slowly. Unseen. But with a tenacity that could split rock if given enough time.
Foolish but worthy, Gisela thought, and a small smile she could not stop appeared at the corner of her lips.
Water piercing through stone, Romulus thought, and he smiled back without knowing why.
In Rome, on the same night, Pope Simplicius wrote a different letter.
Not an official letter. Not a decree. Not a plea for a truce. A private letter. Written in his bedroom, on a small table that only fit one parchment and one candle, with hands that were already trembling too much to write more than a few lines.
The letter was addressed to one person.
Gelasius,
I am writing this on a night that may be one of my last. I don't mean to exaggerate all of this my friend. This body has already told me in a language that cannot be misunderstood that the time is near. My legs are swollen. My chest tightens every time I breathe. And my dreams, which used to be full of clay and vessels and a commanding voice, now only contain a quiet darkness.
I am not afraid to die. I am afraid of leaving an unfinished work.
Shape him, Gelasius. My time is almost up. Shape that clay before the world hardens around him.
I know what will happen after I am gone. Felix will rise. Felix is a good man and a hard man, and those two traits sometimes cannot coexist in one body without one defeating the other. I pray that his goodness wins. But I prepare myself for the possibility that his hardness wins.
If that happens, and if Felix chooses war over peace, then Romulus will need you more than ever. Not as a teacher. As a compass. Because without a compass, even the strongest ship will be lost in the calmest sea.
There is one more thing I want to convey. About that dream of the two tables. I have pondered it for months, and I have come to a new understanding. The first clay that shattered in my hands was not just Nepos. The first clay was the old way. The hard way. The way that believes power can only be maintained with violence and that the Church can only survive with curses and excommunication. That way shattered in my hands because it was indeed time for it to shatter.
And the second clay that I formed into a vessel was not just Romulus. The second clay was a new way. A way that does not yet have a form. A way that may require three attempts before it is perfect, just like in my dream. Romulus is the vessel. But the contents of the vessel are not just him. The contents of the vessel are the future whose shape we don't yet know.
Shape him, Gelasius. But don't shape him into what you want. Shape him into what he is supposed to be. And trust that the God who showed me that clay will also show its form to you.
Your friend and brother in Christ, Simplicius
The Pope sprinkled sand over the ink. He rolled the parchment. Sealed it with red wax. Wrote Gelasius's name on the outside with barely legible handwriting.
Then he blew out the candle on his table. Darkness embraced the room. And in that darkness, Simplicius, Bishop of Rome, Successor of Peter, the man who once dreamed of clay and the voice of God that never stopped commanding, closed his eyes.
Tomorrow he would wake up again. And the day after tomorrow. And a few days after that. But he knew, with a certainty that only belonged to those who already stood very close to the finish line, that every morning he opened his eyes was a countdown gift.
My time is almost up, he thought as sleep began to pull him into a darkness that increasingly felt like home. But the clay was still soft. It could still be shaped. As long as that was true, I have not failed completely.
Not completely.