Belisarius thanked Rufinus for his invitation, but excused himself, as being a White; and Armenian John did the same. So Rufinus laughed. He did not appear insulted, but said: 'If your huge White army needs help against the Blues, you know what allies to summon to your aid.' The affair ended more quietly than it had begun, and when the boys heard that it was Belisarius and Armenian John who had fought the pepper-battle against the Cappadocians, grown men, they treated them with respect. With both Uliaris and Rufinus separately Belisarius became friendly; and even succeeded in making them work together when he was leader in some adventure. They played an important part in a famous snowball battle fought under Belisarius's generalship against the boys of a monastic school near by.
The story, though a boyish one, may be of interest. The monastery pupils were oblates- that is to say children dedicated by their parents to the monastic life. There was a breach in the monastery wall from which the oblates, armed with clubs like the Egyptian monks of the Sinai desert, used to descend and waylay boys of the Imperial school returning to their midday dinners, and beat them viciously. One snowy day Belisarius, with Armenian John and Uliaris as decoys, drew a large number of these oblatcs into an ambush – a timber-yard belonging to the father of Rufinus. There the Blue and Green factions, at peace for the occasion, nearly smothered them with snow and made prisoners of twenty boys, locking them in the wrestling-shed in the Imperial schoolyard. But unfortunately Uliaris had been captured, close to the breach in the wall.
Among those who fought along with Belisarius on this day was a small body of 'allies', namely four or five satchel-bearers, Andreas among them, and half a dozen poor boys known as 'servitors'. These were not regular scholars, but were allowed to sit apart at the back of the schoolroom and receive free instruction. In return they performed certain menial services: such as cleaning the school privies, and scrubbing out the classroom when the lessons were over, and distributing ink when it was needed, and smoothing out the wax on the used wax-tablets of the other scholars, and minding the furnace which in winter heated the rooms with pipes under the floor. These servitors were looked down upon by the ordinary scholars and treated as interlopers. But Belisarius had promised them privately that if they fought well and obeyed orders he would sec that their condition was improved.
He now put himself at the head of these allies and led them at a run towards the monastery, to the postern-gate behind the kitchen. It was here that at this time of day a few poor persons of all ages were admitted to gratuitous meals of soup and stale bread and broken meats. Belisarius and his band entered quietly, pretending to be beggar-boys, but then skirted round the kitchens and passed through the monks' cabbage-garden, meeting nobody, and reached the schoolhouse beyond. There they came upon Uliaris in a shed, bound hand and foot, and with a bloody head. He was not guarded; for the enemy were now all anxiously gathered at the breach of the wall, wondering about their friends. Uliaris urged an immediate attack on the oblates from the rear. But Belisarius considered the suggestion dangerous, because of the difficulty of escape should the oblates call for help to the monks and lay-brothers. He was for retiring quickly again by the way that they had come.
So they escaped, taking with them, as legitimate plunder, apples and nuts and honey-cakes and spiced buns from a line of satchels hanging in a row in the shed. (This was Shrove-tide, when the oblates were given a dole of dainties to reconcile them to the coming rigours of Lent.) Singing the paean of victory, they returned to their own school and there made a fair division of their plunder among the scholars. But Belisarius allowed nothing to be given to those few boys who had held back from the fighting; and one of these, by name little Apion, Malthus's most industrious pupil, treasured a lasting grudge against Belisarius. As for the twenty captured oblates, they were released by Malthus's orders, but excommunicated by their Abbot for a full month.
