Theodoric Read Online Free Page A

volunteers? Well, let’s start with George. Your thoughts, please.’
    An open-faced boy with an eager-to-please expression rose. ‘Pigs eat acorns, don’t they, sir? Perhaps he was a pig-farmer. Barbarians probably like pork, so naturally he’d be worried.’
    A murmured, derisive cheer rippled round the class.
    â€˜Thank you, George. An imaginative contribution, if nothing else. You may be seated. Julian, perhaps we might have the benefit of your opinion?’
    A tall, stylishly dressed youth stood up. His chiselled features bore a remarkable resemblance to those of Alexander the Great when a boy. So much so that his classmates had nicknamed him ‘Alexander’, a soubriquet he played up to by cultivating long, carefully disordered locks.
    â€˜Perhaps the old fool hoped to hide from the Goths among his oak-trees,’ drawled Julian with a smirk. ‘And if they found him, well, he could always pelt them with acorns. Couldn’t he, sir?’
    A delighted titter greeted this sally, not on account of any humour it contained but because it laid down a challenge to the master’s authority.
    â€˜Sit down!’ snapped Demetrius, a spurt of anger bringing red to his cheeks. Arrogant young lout. It had been a mistake to ask him, of course – he’d simply handed the boy a chance to show off. With his wealthy family connections, subversive attitude and air of cool confidence, Julian was, unfortunately, something of a hero to many of his classmates. Aware that he must rescue the situation before it slipped out of control, Demetrius turned towards his favourite pupil, Theoderic Amalo. Though shy and awkward, the young Gothic prince could usually be relied on to come up with an intelligent answer. ‘Theo, perhaps you could shed some light where all seems darkness?’
    Stooping slightly, as if to avoid drawing attention to his great height, Theoderic rose. In his mind, he reviewed the lines Demetrius hadquoted. The message that Claudian was trying to get across was surely to do with familiar memory. Unbidden, a vision from his Pannonian homeland flashed into his mind, filling him with a sudden, sharp nostalgia: Bakeny Forest with its scented glades of noble trees – oaks, pines and cedar; the air filled with the plash of hidden waterfalls and the cooing of rock-doves. All at once, he knew what that old man had felt: affection for the trees, contemporary with himself; and fear that he might lose them through depredation by the Goths – his, Theoderic’s, own kinsmen, he thought with a pang of guilt.
    â€˜Those trees were planted as acorns at his birth,’ he said, speaking slowly and with a kind of passionate conviction, something he had never before expressed. ‘He had grown old with them, as they matured. They had become part of his life. Almost friends. I think he . . . loved them. So he was anxious in case the barbarians should carelessly destroy them.’
    The class sat up, visibly impressed. Who’d have thought old Yellowknob could hold the floor like that? Suddenly self-conscious, Theoderic shuffled and looked down.
    â€˜Well done, Theo,’ declared Demetrius warmly. ‘There’s nothing I can add to that.’ He breathed a mental sigh of relief. With the class now quiet and receptive, the lesson could proceed on an even keel.
    Then Theoderic clapped a hand to his cheek as something struck it a tiny, stinging blow. A wax pellet dropped to the mosaic floor and rolled to the foot of the master’s throne-like chair.
    â€˜All of you, hold up your tablets –
now
!’ thundered Demetrius. Cowed, the class promptly obeyed. Their genial master could, if pushed too far, change in a flash to a terrifying autocrat. A brief inspection exposed the culprit: Julian’s
codex
showed a hollow where a lump of wax had been gouged out. Rolled into a ball and flicked from the flattened erasing end of Julian’s flexible ivory stylus,