Текст книги "Empire"

Автор книги: Steven Saylor

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 45 страниц)

“The empress is your muse, then?”

“My saviour, certainly.” Seneca cocked his head. “And then, of course, there are dreams.”

“Dreams?”

“As a source of inspiration. Do you not dream, Titus Pinarius?”

Titus shrugged. “Hardly ever.”

“Perhaps that’s a blessing. My dreams are very vivid, full of noise and blood and violence – louder and brighter and more startling than anything in the waking world. Sometimes I can scarcely stand my dreams. I wake in a cold sweat, then reach for the wax tablet at my bedside and scribble notes for a scene – Oedipus tripping blindly over the body of his mother, or Thyestes agape at the sight of his sons severed heads.”

Seneca raised an eyebrow. “Do you know, a dream has just come back to me. I’d forgotten it until this moment. I had it the night after Claudius told me I would have the honor of tutoring Nero. Odd, how one can forget a dream completely, and then it suddenly comes back. I dreamed I appeared at the imperial house, in this very room, ready for my first day, but when my young pupil turned to face me – it was Caligula! What a shock! And so nonsensical, since Nero is nothing like his uncle. Caligula was raised in army boots and had hardly any education, while Nero loves learning.” Seneca shivered. “Did you ever meet Caligula face-to-face?”

“Only once,” said Titus.

“Lucky you!”

Vespasian strolled over to join them. His wife, Domitilla, was beside him, still carrying the newborn Domitian, who had quieted down. Paulina left her husband’s side to have a closer look at the baby.

“Did I hear you mention the departed Caligula?” Vespasian said.

Seneca eyed the general condescendingly. “Yes, I was telling Senator Pinarius a story about-”

“Who doesn’t have a Caligula story to tell?” said Vespasian. The general was more used to talking than to listening. “I suppose my tale is pretty harmless compared to most. Caligula was emperor; I couldn’t have been more than thirty – that’s right, because my Titus had just been born – and I’d just been elected aedile. One of my responsibilities was keeping the city clean. I thought I was doing a pretty good job, until one day Caligula summoned me to meet him on a muddy little back road on the far side of the Aventine – not a paved road, mind you, but a narrow dirt alley behind some warehouses. He asked me why the street was so dirty. ‘Because it’s made of dirt?’ I said.” Vespasian laughed. “Caligula was not amused. He was furious. By Hercules, it’s a miracle I didn’t lose my head on the spot! He ordered his lictors to scoop up handfuls of mud and to cram it inside my toga, until I was covered all over with mud and loaded with the stuff like a bursting wineskin. Then Caligula laughed until he wept, and off he went. Mind you, later, a soothsayer told me the incident was actually a good omen, something about the very soil of my homeland being next to my skin and under the protection of my toga. Ha! But these soothsayers can turn anything to a fellow’s advantage, can’t they?” He laughed, then stopped himself. “Oh dear, is that a rude thing to say to an augur?” He laughed again, louder. “Ah, but have you met my son Titus, Senator Pinarius? He was just here, with his friend Britannicus – oh, there they are, having a laugh with Nero.”

The boys were indeed nearby, but they were no longer laughing. Something had gone wrong. Nero’s face, naturally ruddy and prone to blemishes, turned a darker shade of red and was twisted by a sudden fury. He hurled his wine cup at Britannicus. The boy dodged and the cup went hurtling past Vespasian’s nose. Startled, the baby Domitian began to wail again.

Britannicus put on an exaggerated expression of shock. “But, Lucius Domitius,” he said, addressing Nero by his birth name rather than his adopted name, “I merely wished you a happy birthday-”

“You will address me by my proper name, brat!” cried Nero. His ringing voice penetrated every corner of the room. The guests fell silent.

Britannicus raised an eyebrow. “But how can I do that, big brother? Earlier today, the augur explained that ‘Nero’ means ‘strong and valiant’ – and you, Lucius Domitius, are weak and cowardly.”

Britannicus’s friend Titus stifled a giggle.

“That’s a lie, you little bastard!” said Nero. “What are you doing here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be eating in the other room with the children?”

Agrippina approached the boys to stop the row. Claudius remained on his couch and seemed hardly to notice what was happening.

Britannicus left the room, followed by a small coterie of freedmen and attendants, the remnants of Messalina’s faction in the imperial household. He carried himself with remarkable poise for a nine-year-old.

Young Titus looked to his father. Vespasian nodded, and the boy left the room with Britannicus. Vespasian shook his head. “That Britannicus – willful and wayward, just like his mother! I should go after the boy. Perhaps I can persuade him to apologize to Nero. I managed to broker a peace between those Celtic tribes up in Britannia, you know. Maybe I can do the same thing here.” He departed along with Domitilla and the infant, who continued to wail.

Paulina returned to her husband’s side. Agrippina joined them. “What am I going to do about that boy?”

“I suppose you mean Britannicus,” said Seneca. “But more to the point, what are we going to do about Nero? He can’t call the emperor’s son a bastard in public. It won’t do.”

Agrippina nodded. “And yet… one does hear rumours about Britannicus.”

“Rumours?” said Paulina.

Agrippina looked sidelong at Titus, as if deciding whether to confide in him, then went on. “Not that the child is a bastard – though we all know what a whore Messalina was. No, there are some who believe that Britannicus is the child of neither Messalina nor Claudius, that their baby was stillborn and Messalina substituted some other child in the crib, eager to present Claudius with an heir. I ask you, does Britannicus look like either of his purported parents?”

“A changeling, you mean?” Seneca snorted. “That’s the sort of thing that happens in old Greek comedies.”

“When it happens in real life, the results are far from comic.” Agrippina turned to Titus. “Senator Pinarius, I make no secret of the fact that I favour astrology and know little about augury. But I wonder, in this case, could augury be of help?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Might there be a way to interpret the auspices so as to determine the true identity of a particular child? Your skills at divination are so great, and Claudius has such complete confidence in you…” Agrippina peered at him intently.

Unnerved by her scrutiny, Titus glanced at Claudius. His cousin had sunken deep into his couch and was gazing slack-jawed at his wine cup. Then Titus looked at the young Nero, who was over his tantrum and was flirting with one of the younger female guests. Claudius was the past; Nero was the future. Agrippina seemed to be asking for Titus’s help on behalf of the young man who would almost surely be emperor one day, perhaps sooner rather than later. Titus’s first loyalty would always be to his calling as an augur, to strive for the correct interpretation of the will of the gods; but could he not do that and please Agrippina at the same time?

“To determine whether a given individual is a changeling, traditional augury might be of little use,” said Titus carefully, “but there are other forms of divination to which one might draw the attention of the emperor, who is interested in all forms of prognostication. Cousin Claudius recently charged me with compiling a list of every omen and portent reported in Italy, and together we review that list at regular intervals. Only yesterday, in Ostia, a pig was born with the talons of a hawk. Such an occurrence is invariably a message from the gods. Freakish weather, swarms of bees, rumblings in the earth, strange lights in the sky – all require careful interpretation. I have a secretary who closely examines the registry of deaths, looking for any unusual patterns; on a given day, perhaps every man who dies in Roma has the same first name, for instance. You’d be amazed at all the connections you begin to see, when you look for them.”

“Remarkable!” said Agrippina. “But how does one correctly decipher these signs?”

Titus smiled. “The judgement of an augur begins with training but grows with experience. I’ve spent many years studying manifestations of the divine will.” He looked at Nero, noting his large head and prominent brow. “Tell me, has a physiognomist ever examined Britannicus?”

“Not to my knowledge,” said Agrippina.

“Nor to mine,” said Seneca.

“Their branch of science is very specialized. Based on precepts laid down by Aristotle and Pythagoras, they examine the face and the shape of the head for indications of a person’s destiny. Physiognomists talk mostly about the future, but perhaps they can see the past as well. If there is, as you suspect, something… untoward… about the origin of Britannicus, the truth might yet be revealed to the emperor. Yes, I think the first step to discovering the truth might be to summon a physiognomist. I know an Egyptian practitioner – ah, but here comes your son.”

Nero, having sufficiently charmed the young female guest, gathered the folds of his purple-and-gold toga and approached them.

“Brothers!” he said, rolling his eyes, as if to explain his altercation with Britannicus. “You have a brother, don’t you?” he asked Titus. “A twin, Seneca told me.”

“Yes.” Titus sighed. Yet again, Kaeso was being forced into his thoughts.

“Are you identical twins?” asked Nero. The young man’s curiosity appeared to be entirely innocent, but Titus still cringed.

“In appearance, at least when we younger. Otherwise, we’re so different that I should like to think he was… a changeling.” Titus glanced at Agrippina.

“Why do we never see him?” said Nero. “You’re always coming by to see the emperor in his study. Yet we never see your twin.”

“My brother is…” This was not the first time Kaeso’s unsavoury behaviour had caused Titus embarrassment, yet he had never come up with a good way to explain his brother’s complete withdrawal not just from public life but from decent society. How could anyone in the imperial household possibly understand Kaeso’s bizarre beliefs and perverse behaviour? What excuse could Titus make this time for Kaeso? Should he say that his brother was insane? A drunkard? Crippled by illness?

“My brother is…”

Seneca finished the sentence for him: “A Christian.”

Titus turned pale. “How did you know?”

Seneca laughed. “The tutor of the emperor’s son must know a great many things, Senator Pinarius.”

Agrippina frowned. “How can a Roman patrician be a Christian? I thought that was the name for a sect of the Jews.”

“So it is,” said Seneca. “But here in Roma, as in many other cities around the empire, they have recruited others to join their cult. Mostly slaves, one presumes. The Christians actually welcome slaves, and you can imagine why the less reputable sort of slaves find such a cult attractive – Christ-worship is yet another activity they can carry on in secret behind their masters’ backs. But they are not all slaves. I’m told there are a few Roman citizens among the Christians. They teach that this world is a terrible place, dominated by evil men – indeed, they believe that Roma and all it stands for is evil – but they also think this world will soon end, to be replaced by another world, in which their dead god shall come back to life and rule for eternity. A suitable religion, if one can call it that, for disgruntled slaves, but hardly for citizens of the city whose destiny is to maintain order in the world and uphold respect for the gods.”

“It sounds seditious,” said Nero. “If these Christians hate Roma so much, let them go back to dusty Judaea and await the end of the world there. Didn’t Claudius banish the Jews?”

“That edict proved to be impractical,” said Seneca. “It was short-lived and only haphazardly carried out, but it did serve as a warning to the Jewish sects in the city to keep the peace. They no longer stone each other in public, much less riot in the streets. They’ve learned to keep their feuds to themselves, at least here in the city. As a result, you don’t hear much about the Christians these days.”

“And that includes this mysterious Christian brother of Senator Pinarius,” said Nero. “But of Titus Pinarius I suspect we will be seeing much more in the years to come.” Nero bestowed on Titus his most charming smile.

AD 59

On the day in late March that news reached Roma of the death of the young emperor’s mother, Titus Pinarius lit candles in the vestibule of his house and whispered a prayer before each of the wax masks of his ancestors, thanking them for his good fortune.

Long ago, his late cousin Claudius had scolded him for knowing so little of his family’s past. “A man must honour his ancestors,” Claudius had said. “Who else made us, and how else did we come to exist?” Since that time, Titus had devoted himself to studying his ancestors, discovering all he could about them, learning from their examples, and paying homage to them like a dutiful Roman, trying to make his own life something of which his forebears would be proud.

At the age of forty-one, Titus was more prosperous and well regarded than ever – and glad to still be alive. It had not been easy in the six years since Claudius had died, navigating the treacherous politics of an imperial court split between a ruthless mother and a young son struggling to break free of her.

But now Agrippina was dead. In some ways, her death was a more profound event than the death of Claudius, for Claudius seemed to fade gradually away, while Agrippina still had her wits about her and might yet have regained control of Nero and the court. What a woman she was, and how little she allowed her womanhood to limit her ambitions! Titus recalled the incident when Armenian envoys had pleaded their cause before Nero, and Agrippina emerged from behind the screen where she customarily remained hidden and actually seemed about to mount the emperor’s tribunal and preside along with him; while the whole court was paralysed with alarm, Seneca hissed at Nero to intercept his mother, and so a scandalous scene was averted.

Agrippina! The world would not be the same without her. A new age would begin.

So deeply did Titus feel the impact of the news that he found himself unable to contemplate the activities of a normal day. Only some unplanned and irregular activity would be suitable to such a strange day. Following this impulse, he decided to discharge an onerous duty that had long been weighing on him. On this day, he would visit his brother.

Once every year or two he forced himself to see Kaeso, to offer his brother yet another chance to return to a normal, respectable way of life. Titus felt he owed that duty to the shade of their father, if not to Kaeso, who always refused him.

He left his house with a small retinue, as befitted a senator of his standing. There was a scribe with a wax tablet to take down memoranda. There was another slave who was versed in all the streets and byways of the city, so that Titus need never wonder where the closest tavern or silver shop or eatery might be. There was another slave who knew the names not just of every senator and magistrate in the city but of every person Titus was likely to meet, no matter how important or inconsequential, so that Titus need never search his memory in vain for a name or a title. And of course there were a number of brawny bodyguards, well-behaved fellows whose sheer size was so intimidating that they seldom had to use force to defend their master or to clear a way for him through a crowd.

The day was typical of late March, bright and spring-like one moment, blustery and overcast the next. Titus found the changeable weather invigorating and walked with a spring in his step. Agrippina was dead! The news had not taken Titus completely by surprise. Recently, Nero had summoned Titus to consult him about omens regarding his mother’s and his own immediate future; the young emperor said nothing of what he had in mind, but he was clearly desperate to finally rid himself of Agrippina. Thank the gods it was Nero who trusted and consulted Titus at that precarious stage of the power struggle, and not Agrippina! Like many in the court, Titus had walked a tightrope between mother and son for years, afraid to offend either party or to irrevocably throw his lot with one or the other.

The story of Agrippina’s demise had played out like a comedy of errors. According to rumours, Nero had tried on more than one occasion to poison her, but each time Agrippina had either been forewarned or had taken an antidote to save herself. Then the ceiling had fallen in above her bed – surely not by accident – and Agrippina escaped being crushed only because she happened to have been lying next to the headboard.

Then, saying that he wanted to patch things up with her, Nero invited Agrippina to his seaside villa at Baiae to celebrate the feast of Minerva. There he presented her with a splendid pleasure barge and persuaded her to take a cruise on the bay despite the blustery weather. But this was not an ordinary ship: one of Nero’s engineers had devised it to collapse on itself and sink without a trace, a circumstance that could be blamed on the choppy waves or a sudden squall but surely not on the young emperor. The ship duly collapsed and sank, but Agrippina – who had once supported herself by diving for sponges – was such a strong swimmer that she made her way to shore. Nero decided that his desperate mother, like a wounded tigress, needed to be disposed of straightaway. In the beach house where the bedraggled Agrippina took refuge, assassins arrived and did away with her once and for all.

An astrologer had once told Agrippina that her son would become emperor, but that she would have to pay for his greatness with her own life. Agrippina had flippantly replied, “Let him kill his mother, then, so long as he is emperor.” So it had come to pass.

Walking along the riverfront and through the Forum, Titus let himself be distracted by the sights and sounds of the city. Despite the constant tension and turmoil within the imperial household, for Roma and the empire the last few years had been a golden age. Seneca had taken charge of the actual running of the empire and had done a splendid job. Taxes had been reduced even as the services of the state had been improved. Nero’s love of music and poetry, his youthful enthusiasm, his theatrical personality, and his love of spectacle pervaded the culture. He had devised extraordinary entertainments for the populace, made all the more extraordinary by the fact that they were bloodless; though gladiator games were still a part of many holidays and festivals, Nero had decreed that no one should be put to death in the arena, not even criminals.

Roma thrived. It seemed to Titus that the world had never known a better moment. And now that the discord in the imperial house had come to an end with Agrippina’s death, who could say to what glorious heights Nero might ascend?

Titus left behind the gleaming marble and travertine monuments of the Forum and entered the Subura with its narrow, filthy streets. He was glad to have his retinue around him, especially his bodyguards. As a younger man he had dared to walk through the Subura at all hours alone and unarmed, but those days were long past. Yet even here, he thought, conditions had improved since Nero had taken power, thanks to the general prosperity of the empire and Seneca’s efficient city administration.

It occurred to Titus that the general well-being of the world made his brother’s hateful attitude towards existence all the more perverse and inexplicable. How could Kaeso detest the world so much when there was such joy and beauty in it? And of all places on earth, surely Roma was the most beautiful – though as he stood before the tenement where Kaeso lived, Titus had to admit that this was a gloomy-looking place, even worse than his brother’s last residence. If Titus had been reduced to living in such squalour and, like Kaeso, had to make his living as a common labourer – back-breaking work for a man of forty-one! – perhaps he would hate the world, too.

Titus left his retinue in the street, gave the bodyguards permission to play dice, and ascended the stairs to the highest floor. Why did Kaeso always live up so many flights of stairs? The stairway itself was littered with debris and filth – a discarded shoe, broken bits of pottery, a child’s wooden doll with its limbs missing, and at one landing not one but two rats, whom Titus interrupted in the act of copulation. How could Kaeso stand to live in such a place?

Titus knocked on the door. He heard movement within; in such places, the walls were so thin that one could hear everything. Kaeso opened the door. He smiled broadly. “Greetings, brother!”

Kaeso was as ill-groomed as ever – a bird’s nest could have been concealed inside his bushy beard – but in high spirits. Titus took this for a good sign. Perhaps their meeting would go well. He noticed that Kaeso was wearing the fascinum on a bit of twine around his neck.

“Greetings, brother,” he said.

“Come inside.”

Artemisia briefly looked in from the other room and perfunctorily greeted him, then disappeared. How plump and plain she looked, without make-up and with her hair unwashed. Chrysanthe was holding up much better, despite having given birth to their son and three daughters. Poor Artemisia had not even become a mother because her husband saw no point in bringing new life into the world.

“You seem happy, Kaeso.”

“l am.”

“May I ask why?”

“You won’t like the answer.”

“Probably not. But try me.”

“I am happy because the end of the world is very close now. Very close! Perhaps it will happen within the year.”

Titus groaned. “And this idea makes you happy?”

“Of course. It’s what we long for, to shed the trapping of this foul place and be reunited with Christ, to see the naked face of God revealed in all his glory.”

Titus sighed. “And how will the world end, Kaeso? How could such a thing even happen? What fire could be big enough, what earthquake terrible enough, what tidal wave high enough to wipe out all of creation? Will the stars come crashing down? Will the sun burn out, and the moon explode like a dandelion? The very idea of the world ending is nonsense!”

“The one God is omnipotent. He made all of creation in six days, and he can destroy it all in the blink of an eye.”

“If this god is omnipotent – and if there are no other gods to stand in his way – why does he not simply fix this world to his liking, likewise in the blink of an eye, and put an end to the evil and suffering you say is all around us? What sort of god is this you worship, who plays a cruel waiting game with his worshippers?”

“You simply don’t understand, Titus. It’s my fault; I lack the power to explain it to you. If you would come to one of our gatherings, there are men far wiser than I-”

“No, Kaeso, Senator Titus Pinarius will not be seen at a gathering of Christians!” The idea was so ludicrous, Titus laughed out loud.

“You mock me, brother, but of what are you so proud? Of your special status in the world, your friendship with the emperor? You were friends with the last emperor, too. Yet you did nothing, said nothing, when cousin Claudius was murdered.”

Titus felt the blood drain from his face. “You don’t know that Claudius was murdered.”

“Of course I do. Everyone knows. Ask your senator friends. Or ask my neighbours. The niece he took in his incestuous marriage – violating even Roman standards of decency – put poison in his mushrooms, and when that failed to act quickly enough, Agrippina called for a physician to treat him, and the physician put a feather down Claudius’s throat to make him vomit. But the feather was dabbed with an even more potent poison, and that was the end of poor Claudius. Did you even mourn for him, brother?”

Titus was taken aback. That the common people had some vague notion of how Claudius had met his end did not surprise him, but Kaeso knew the actual details, and if Kaeso knew, then everyone in the city must know.

Perhaps, Titus thought, that was not such a bad thing. If people believed that Agrippina was a poisoner, that would make her violent death more acceptable, once they learned of it.

“No one knows for certain if that feather had poison on it or not,” said Titus. “It may be true that Agrippina, as a devoted mother, took extreme measures to promote her son-”

“Her son, who turned his hand to murder with just as much enthusiasm. Or will you claim that young Britannicus met a natural end? He was poisoned as well, wasn’t he, only a few months after Nero’s ascension? The poor boy! And did you, as Claudius’s friend and cousin, lift a finger to protect Claudius’s orphaned son?”

The jab was well aimed. Far from protecting Britannicus, Titus, at Agrippina’s bidding, had done his share to promote the notion that the boy was a changeling, so as to discredit any claim he might have to rule.

“I had nothing to do with either the death of Claudius or the death of Britannicus,” said Titus.

“But you know who murdered them.”

“ I f they were murdered.”

“Titus, my poor, deluded brother! You move among these people as an Egyptian snake handler moves among serpents. They may not have bitten you yet, but their venom has poisoned you nonetheless. Nero’s venom has seeped into you, polluted you-”

“You dare to call Nero a snake? In five years, that remarkable young man has done more for this city than any emperor since Augustus. If you ever left this hovel and took a walk through the decent neighbourhoods of Roma, where decent people live, you’d see how happy those people are. Those are the people who don’t want the world to end, because Nero has made this world a better place.”

“And what do all Nero’s earthly achievements count for, when you consider that he murdered his own mother?”

Titus was stunned. He himself had only just been informed of Agrippina’s death by a messenger who came directly from Baiae.

“How can you know about Agrippina? Living in this hole, a nobody among nobodies?” A dark suspicion struck him. “Is there some network of spies among the Christian slaves? Does that network reach even to the imperial house hold?”

Kaeso laughed. “You think all Christians are Jews, slaves, outcasts, or beggars. If you only knew the truth, Titus! There are people of every rank among us, even fine, upstanding Roman ladies. Not all can aspire to Jesus’s example of poverty, but all can look forward to the day when we shall be redeemed and united in the afterlife-”

“Then there is a network of Christian spies, even in the imperial household?” Titus recalled something Nero had once said, that the Christians might be seditious. Titus had long ago decided that his brother’s obsessions were maddening but harmless, but could it be that the Christian cult was more sinister than he had thought?

“Tell me something, Kaeso. Every so often I come across some bit of information about your cult, whether I want to or not. Someone recently drew my attention to a purported holy text which contained a quotation from Christ himself. When I read it, I found it so alarming I memorized it: ‘If any man comes to me, and hates not his father, and his mother, and his wife, and his children, and his brother and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.’ Did your god actually say such a terrible thing?”

Kaeso nodded. “A follower of Christ must be ready to reject all the attachments of the material world in favour of spiritual rebirth-”

“You don’t have to explain the words to me. I understand them well enough,” said Titus in disgust.

A bit of light happened to reflect off the fascinum, drawing Titus’s attention to it. “You dare to wear the fascinum of our ancestors – you, who do nothing to honour our ancestors, who profess to despise all they accomplished and handed down to us! You, who would profess to hate our father and to hate me, merely to please your god?”

Kaeso smiled and touched the fascinum. “This amulet is not what you think it is, Titus. It is a symbol of Christ’s suffering and a promise of his future resurrection, of the resurrection of all who believe-”

“No, Kaeso, it’s a link to the past, a talisman handed down to us from a time before Roma was founded. You would pervert it into something else entirely, with your hatred of the gods and your hatred of Roma!”

“The gods you worship are not gods, Titus. If anything, they’re demons, though I tend to believe that in fact they do not exist at all, that they never did exist-”

“Fool! Atheist! The gods have always been and always will be. They are of the world and in the world. They made the world. They are the world. If mortals fail to comprehend them, it is because we are so small and they are so vast. What a tiny world you imagine, the plaything of a single god who wants his worshippers to be as poor and stunted and miserable as he is! Can you not see the beauty, the majesty, the mystery of the gods all around you? Yes, they baffle and confound us, and their will is difficult to discern. But I do what I can. I practise the rituals of our ancestors, who were here before us and encountered the gods before we did. I revere their wisdom. You spurn it! You never visit my house. You never come to pay respect to the wax effigies of the Pinarii. You turn your back on our ancestors. You are disrespectful, impious, unworthy to be called a Roman!”

“But I don’t call myself a Roman, Titus. I call myself a Christian, and what you call the wisdom of our ancestors means nothing to me. I have no use for the sins and follies of the past. I look ahead to the bright, perfect future.”

“A future in which you will be utterly forgotten, because you have created no descendants. All memory of you will vanish, Kaeso, because you have broken the link passed down from one generation to the next. The only immortality a man can achieve is to be remembered, to have those who come after him recall his accomplishments and speak his name with honour.”