Rome was a city of hills, on which great buildings sprawled—palaces and temples, arches and columns. But even at the center, two centuries after the last of the western emperors, white marble was scorched by fire, many of the buildings lacked roofs, and he could see grass and weeds thrusting through the pavement, and ivy and vines clinging to crumbling stone. Away from the central area much of the city within the walls was demolished altogether, flattened and burned out, and given over to green. Cattle and goats wandered amid bits of masonry that poked through the grass.

The many new churches, though, were fine and bright.

He wandered to the Forum area. It was dense with stalls selling food and drink, and many, many Christian tokens and relics. And people were buying. Some must be pilgrims like himself—he saw iron rings around necks and arms, marking out fellow criminals—but others were well dressed and evidently wealthy.

There was a blare of trumpets.

Suddenly he found himself being shoved along by a great swarm of bodies. Confused, scared, he kept his hand over his chest where, inside his tunic, his leather purse dangled on its bit of rope, for he had heard of the criminality of the Romans. He strained to see over the heads of the crowd.

A procession passed: a series of swarthy slaves, soldiers stripped to the waist with shield and trumpets, and a gilded sedan chair. In the dense Italian sunlight it was a dazzling, glittering vision, and Totila cast down his eyes.

“You’re blessed,” a voice whispered in his ear.

He turned, startled, to see a small dark man smiling at him. “Blessed?”

“It’s not every pilgrim who gets to see the Emperor himself. After all,” the man said dryly, “the great Constans does not grace us with his presence very often, preferring the comforts of Constantinople, where there are no goats nibbling your legs, so I’m told . . .”

These days Rome was once again under the sway of Constantinople, capital of the Empire in the east—much good it did anybody. Constans was staying in one of the old palace buildings on the Palatine, crumbled and roofless though he found it. But the Emperor had brought nothing to the city. On the contrary, he seemed intent on stripping it of such treasures as statues and marbles, and even the gilded bronze tiles on the roof of the Pantheon.

There was a scattering of boos as the Emperor passed.

“My name is Felix,” the strange man said to Totila. “And you look lost.”

“Well . . .”

As the crowd broke up, Felix took Totila’s arm. Totila let the man lead him away, lacking any better idea; he had to speak to somebody.