We domestics were led away to the prison and put to the torture, one by one – both slaves and freedmen, from the youngest foot-page to Andreas and myself, who were both close upon seventy years of age. We were racked and scourged; and twisted cords were bound tightly around our foreheads, and our feet were burned in a charcoal brazier. For some the torture was made more severe than for others. I was chained in a cell with Andreas before we were taken out to the torture. He had witnessed the arrest of Belisarius, and was hot with fury against Apion. 'The Public Prosecutor has followed a most glorious career while his schoolfellow was commanding the armies of the Emperor – quills, ink, parchment, humility, bribery! After twenty years as spare clerk, he attains the dignity of shorthand writer to the Crown; twenty years more and he is Assistant Registrar-General. Five more and he is Public Prosecutor, waited upon subserviently by the whole tribe – copy-clerks, messengers, process-servers, gaolers, policemen. A little copy-clerk boasts to his comrades: "The Distinguished Apion honoured me with a smile today, and remembered my name." Now bribes are taken, not offered; humility is laid aside. He is the fearful Torture-Master – lord of chains, scourges, racks, branding-irons, the taste of which now awaits us.' Andreas also said: 'That snivelling little Apion! I can still sec him crouched in a comer of the schoolroom, glowering at us because he was given no spiced bun – having shirked the snow-battle with the oblates. O bun of discord! I think we must persuade the President of the Streets to remove the Elephant from his pedestal and set up a statue of the distinguished Apion in his place.'
Andreas died under the torture, but in order to vex Apion he did not utter a single cry. I yelled and screamed without ceasing. I knew that to do so would cither satisfy the officer of the torture chamber or else disconcert him, so that he would say to the slave:' Enough for the moment, fellow: relax the cords, unscrew!' All my cries were: 'Long life to his Gracious Majesty!' and 'I know nothing, nothing.' So I escaped. Of the bodily injuries that I received that day I shall not trouble you. I am a person of no importance.
The inquisitors asked me again and again: 'Did you not hear the traitor Belisarius in conversation with Marcellus the Patrician – did he not utter treasonable phrases? Sec, here are written the words which your fellow-domestics heard him speak one evening at dinner with your mistress. Are you sure that you did not hear the same words yourself? They all swear that you were present.'
I denied everything and maintained that Belisarius was the best and kindest and most loyal of men. However, others confessed to all that was necessary, because of the torture.
I was not present at the trial, which took place in the month of January behind closed doors. They say that Belisarius made no reply to any of the charges except to deny them. There were wilder ones than those of treason. For he was accused of committing sodomy upon his adopted son Theodosius and filthiness upon his stepdaughter Mattha. He asked leave to cross-examine the witnesses for the prosecution – Herodian, John the Epicure, and Procopius; but this was refused by Justinian, who judged the case in person. They say also that when Justinian taunted him with the mockery of a fair trial, by asking: 'Are there any reputable witnesses whom you would wish to call, my lord, to testify that you are no traitor?' he replied: 'There are four.'
'And who are they? Arc they present in the city?'
'No, Clemency.'
'Name them, nevertheless.'
'Geilimer, formerly King of the Vandals; Wittich, formerly King of the Goths; Khosrou, the Great King of Persia; Zabergan, Grand Cham of the Bulgarian Huns. These know to their cost that I am no traitor.'
My mistress Antonina was charged as an accomplice. They say that when she was brought into Court she spoke in a rambling way, as if already in her dotage, bringing up foul memories of Justinian's life before he became Emperor. Her talk, they say, was very fanciful and sarcastic. She said: 'My friend Theodora of the Blue club-house had a little lap-dog, most gluttonous and lecherous. She used to talk theological nonsense to him all night and feed him with lumps of raw meat; and he was a fawning, inquisitive little dog and would lick every foot in the city and sniff at every street comer. We called him Caesar, but he had a barbarous Gothic name before that.'
She also said: 'Your worship, I knew a little, smiling, rosy-checked man once who committed fornication with three generations of women.' (She meant the Lady Chrysomallo, her daughter, and granddaughter.) 'He offered prayers to Beelzebub and never learned to speak good Greek. But in pity I was courteous to such a little, smiling, rosy-checked man.'
