The Dream of Scipio

by Iain Pears

  He read, then reread, the section on friendship in the light of the death of Althieux, and there at least found much to comfort him. The bishop had understood about friends, loved his friends, advocated forgiving them if they erred. “For nature gives a man two eyes, two hands, two ears. If one eye weakens, the other becomes stronger in its aid; if an arm is injured, we do not cut it off; rather, the other does its work as well as its own until it is whole once more. So it is if a friend falls from virtue.”

  He was thinking on this passage when Peter arrived. Olivier had to intervene, for the guards on the gate wished to deny him entrance. Then, walking ahead of him, being careful not to talk to him, Olivier led him across the vast hall and up the stairs to Ceccani’s chamber.

  “I did not give you permission to sit,” the cardinal remarked as Peter placed himself on a chair, carrying it over from the wall where it stood.

  “And I did not ask it,” Peter replied, sitting down anyway. “You wished to see me, not I you.”

  Olivier smiled, and waited for Ceccani to erupt. His anger was a terrible sight, and he felt a small tingle of anticipatory glee at the thought of what must come next.

  But it didn’t. Ceccani did not react, merely nodded and thought. “You addressed the crowd this afternoon, I gather. I heard reports of it, but not enough to make sense of it. Would you care to repeat it to me?”

  Even Peter found this mild-mannered response surprising, but was not a man to turn down an opportunity to talk. “I told them that the plague is a punishment from God for the sins of the world. It is only through repentance that His vengeance can be deflected. We are penitents. We urge others to repent as well. So doing may show we are sorry for our sins, and may assuage divine wrath.”

  “You are not a priest, I think.”

  Peter snorted. “I come from Marseille. When the plague arrived there, the priests were the first out of the gates on their donkeys. I spent a week going round houses no one else would enter, giving comfort to the dying. They asked me for blessings, thinking I must be a priest. At first I refused, but then I knew that I had been ordained by God, if not by men. I was sent by Him, to comfort the sick and save the healthy. Who is the greater sinner? A man who gives the sacrament though not ordained, or a man who is ordained yet refuses it through his cowardice?”

  Even Olivier knew the answer to that one. Many a man had been hanged for less. But again, Ceccani smiled, almost as if encouraging him to continue.

  “And while this continues, what do priests do? They sit in their castles, blockaded in their towers, and give themselves over to debauchery and lust. That is why God has struck, because of the evil of the church itself, which dissipates itself in this town.”

  Ceccani nodded cautiously. “You feel that the plague would abate if the pope returned to Rome?”

  “The church must mend its ways and repent, and it must take action,” Peter said, looking at Ceccani with level, steady eyes. “All the world knows how this plague is being spread. Everyone knows that it is the doing of the Jews, and that as long as they exist we are all in danger of our souls. And what does the church do? Nothing. What does the pope do? Builds himself great buildings and seduces women in them. Go back to Rome? Yes. But in a spirit of repentance, vowed to sin no more. And that would be only a start. This is God’s warning, and we must do as we are told.”

  Olivier almost broke in to point out that either the plague was God’s punishment or the Jews’ evil, but could hardly be both, but kept silent. It was all too incoherent to be taken seriously. And the remarks about the pope . . . many men thought such things. Few were foolish or rash enough to speak them out loud.

  The interview went on for some time, Ceccani using all the formidable power of his character, skills normally reserved for princes and cardinals, to win over this filthy beggar. And when it finally came to an end he stood up and embraced him, then offered him his ring to kiss. “You have been touched by God, my friend. There are many who think as you do, but do not have the courage to act. You must be strong, and faithful. You have great work to do. I offer you my protection, and do not think you will not need it in days to come. There are many who fear you, and who hate to hear the truth.”

  Peter bowed, and kissed the ring, tamed at last. “Thank you, my lord.”

  “It would be as well if you were prepared to take advice, on occasion. I will send messages to you, giving you my opinion, making suggestions. Consider it well, when you receive it, for we have the same aims in mind, and together, who knows, perhaps we can bring mankind and his church to his senses before it is too late.”

  He nodded that Olivier was to show him out. As they left the room Peter said, “You are lucky, friend.”

  “How so?”

  “To have such a man as a master.”

  Olivier said nothing. He thought Ceccani had taken leave of his senses.

  And yet this was why old Faustus had chosen him, and why Faustus wrote, quite independently, a covering letter to his fellow bishops instructing them to obey Manlius’s summons. So, over the next month, they assembled, some twenty-four of them in all, finding lodgings of assorted quality in the town—some severe and austere, others aristocratic and opulent. Manlius himself stayed as a guest in the house belonging to a relation, and it was in this still impressive residence that the meeting—or rather the series of meetings—took place.

  For although they were leaders of their flocks, they were desperate to be led themselves through the maze of this dark and troubled world. They were now well used to raising and spending charitable donations, to looking after the poor, to getting hold of corn in times of hardness, to raising work duties to repair roads and water supplies; all the things that the civil government had once done and could do no longer. They maintained, on the whole, good relations with their brother priests and bishops both nearby and far away. But dealing with the secular powers, with generals and armies—with politics and diplomacy at a high level—was something of which few had any experience, and they were worldly enough to know that skill and dexterity in such matters was now vitally required. They were Romans and they were Catholics; the barbarians—Euric to the west, the Burgundians to the north—were neither.

  So they turned to Manlius, who had been to Rome, who had even accompanied a member of his family to the court of Euric’s father at Toulouse, and who, as a result, was considered to have an unrivaled insight into the barbarian mind. Such was the poverty of the empire at this final sputtering moment that this judgment was correct.

  To Manlius, looking around the table, it seemed like a sad parody of the great days of the past, when the emperor would summon ministers and councillors to give advice and take orders. Such meetings, glorious and full of pomp, perhaps still took place in Constantinople, although no one was certain anymore; no one he knew had ever been there, not even Sophia. Here, instead of emperors in their purple, senators, generals, and councillors, there was a group of dowdy and anxious men, most of them old, whose main remedy for any political problem was prayer. So let them pray, he thought; it might do some good. It would give him more freedom of action.

  Despite their trust, the look of happy confidence in him, he found it hard to keep the brusqueness out of his voice, to remember that he was supposed to be taking orders, not giving them. “Remember,” Faustus had told him, “you are their servant, selected to do their bidding, to translate their wishes into action. They are good and holy people, for the most part, but have a sense of their dignity, which it is unwise to offend. You will not insult them; it cannot be done. But you can so easily insult their office, and the church itself, and they will not easily forgive you for it.”

  A wise old man, this Faustus; someone who would have made a place for himself in whatever world he was born into. Even half a century before, he might have advised emperors, perhaps even become one himself, for he had a quick and active mind coupled with membership of a powerful family. Such were the times, however, that he had turned his back on the world that so
desperately needed his talents, and crossed the sea to the island of Lérins, there to spend near twenty years as a virtual hermit. He had come back to the world quite against his will, for Riez had appealed to the abbot for a bishop, and he had seen that Faustus had the skills to manage such a disputatious bunch of people. It was the first and only time he had rebelled and disobeyed, refusing for a whole week to accept the order, begging that it be withdrawn, praying to God for a deliverance that the Almighty, in His wisdom, had no intention of permitting. God needed Faustus for more than contemplative prayer, and eventually he had accepted his fate, leaving the island monastery at the age of forty-five for the first time in nineteen years.

  His sanctity—news of which arrived before he did—made him a resounding success; his very shadow, it was said, could make the infirm whole once more should it fall on them. Such holiness was held in awe, and few dared to question the authority of such a man. On top of this, he was wise, not just in matters of theology, but also in the ways of the world; he had no need to think that all men were naturally good to believe in the goodness of his Lord. Thus, he knew the efficacy of prayer but also when God required men to help themselves. It was his decision to push Manlius forward. The church had many good men already, he reasoned; it could afford to have a few effective ones as well.

  In his quiet and efficient manner, it was Faustus who managed the meeting, just as he had managed the diocesan assembly that elevated Manlius to the chair. He said little; just a look now and then, a quiet murmur, a raised eyebrow, and a suggestion or two. Only Manlius saw the skill, and he was grateful for it, as he knew he had no understanding whatsoever of such people and could easily make a mistake. Indeed, Manlius had a better understanding of the minds of barbarian chieftains than of these people. He knew already what was necessary, but had no idea how to persuade them of it.

  “Perhaps,” Faustus said after a while, “we should see in what direction the Spirit has moved this meeting so far; then its wishes might be all the more clear. We are agreed on the need to restore order in the region . . .”

  Here at least was general assent; all of the bishops controlled lands, given by the pious, whose output was declining month by month and year by year as slaves absconded, making their way to lands outside their control. And that was the best that could be hoped for; some stayed and went to the uplands, banding together into marauders and sweeping down to take what they wanted. Bagaudae, they were called in the far north where they first appeared, and the name had become commonplace.

  “. . . and that we should proceed to raise the siege of Clermont. For both these ends, it is desired that the Bishop of Vaison should travel to the emperor to request an army . . .”

  A murmur of assent.

  “This army to be dispatched immediately, and without delay. We accept the full burden of payment, on condition that a general of suitable merit is put in command. Funds to come out of church resources, donations, and taxation. Should this fail, our brother will investigate any other means to salvage the situation.”

  Manlius sighed; he knew the purpose of this was to give him as much freedom of action as possible, but the woolliness of it all made him despair. The bishops seemed to think that all you had to do was tap the emperor on the shoulder, point out that an army was needed, and it would suddenly arrive. At least when you negotiated with the Goths or the Burgundians, you knew who was in control, and that any agreement would be kept. And that thought, which had been with him for some time, niggled at him still.

  “You must bear in mind,” said Manlius with as much restraint as he could manage, “that any army is likely to cause more damage and chaos than it prevents. I do not know much yet about the finances of the church, but I know something of the tax revenues, and I can tell you that this whole region will be strained to pay for one campaign. Any more than that and there would be precious little left worth defending.”

  “Nevertheless, something must be done,” said the Bishop of Orange. “The situation is intolerable. I have lost two hundred slaves in the past six months, and another three hundred serfs have run away as well. Last season two farms were raided just after the harvest and all the corn taken, as well as animals. This cannot go on.”

  Everyone nodded, and Manlius could hardly dissent. He was uncertain himself which was worse, the abstract prospect of Euric’s troops—who certainly would be terrible enough if they ever arrived—or the steady wasting away of civil society that the slow attrition of labor meant. Both, certainly, had to be dealt with.

  “I must point out,” he said, “that gold can only be spent once. It can bribe Euric, pay for troops, or be spent on supplies for Clermont. But not all three.”

  “Which is why you must find the emperor . . .”

  Manlius shook his head slowly.

  “I really do not think that is the right course,” he said. “Not only because the emperor is little more than a puppet. Even if he were truly in command of himself, I doubt I could prevail on Rome—or Ravenna, or wherever he is—to help.”

  “Why is that, brother?”

  Manlius winced. He hated being addressed as brother by anyone, and certainly resented the implication of fraternal equality with the lowborn, ignorant Bishop of Aix.

  “The suggestions are all noble and good,” he continued, “but they omit one detail. Time. There is little of it. We do not know why Euric and his army have decided to move no farther until Clermont falls, but it is a mistake on his part. The town is no threat to his army. He could sweep past it to the sea at any moment he chooses, and there is a risk he will do so. How long will it take to raise an army in Italy, even if it can be done? Many months at least, as I am sure you realize. By which time there is every possibility that Clermont will have fallen and Aix and Arles and Marseille as well.

  “If we are going to get help, we need it now. Within weeks. And, in my opinion, the only people who might assist are the Burgundians. Before anything else, I propose to go to them at Lyon and persuade King Gundobad to block Euric’s advance to the East. He was brought up in Rome; his aunt was married to Ricimer and is a Catholic; he may be persuaded to help.”

  A feint; deceive the enemy that your main advance was merely a skirmish. Lull them into the feeling that the battle was not yet joined, so it might be over before they even realized. This, in essence, was Manlius’s tactic at the meeting, which ended in unanimous agreement that he should first buy time, and then buy an army.

  Thus it was that the end of Roman Gaul was decided by the enthusiastic nods of those who most wanted to keep it in existence.

  “Let me tell you of my trip to Rome,” he told them when they had eaten well and the last dishes were cleared, the musicians finished and dispatched. And when they had settled and he had their attention, he began.

  “I was in the entourage of Lord Majorian, traveling there to cement his grip on the throne, going with a large portion of his army. My father provided a substantial number of troops for his cause from our estate, and I was taken to honor his contribution while he remained behind to keep control of the province. Remember this: I was with an army, and in the company of the only decent emperor to have held the throne for forty years. Did the Romans welcome us? No. Did they honor us? No again. Did the prospect of an emperor able to reassert the glory of Rome fill them with gratitude? No, for a third time. The first delegation which came out to meet us asked for money for games. The second presented a bill for quartering the troops. Even the senate, when he wished to address it, had to be bribed heavily before they would present themselves.

  “That is by the by, perhaps. Rome has long been legendary for its rapacity, and I tell you nothing you do not know already. What I wish to recount is a conversation I had with Lord Ricimer, who had been master of the empire for years, though always in the background, and who eventually struck Majorian down. And, through his agents, my father also.

  “He was barbarian by breeding, and barbarian by nature; utterly unlike those who see the glory of Rome and wish to
emulate it. Not one piece of its civilization did he wish for himself. His manners, bearing, and deportment were almost painful to behold. The first time I caught sight of him—a short, bowed, scarcely shaven man, dressed in a rough tunic, with a truculent scowl—I took him to be a gamekeeper or some other servant. The person I was with laughed out loud when I asked how such a person could wander freely about the powerful senator’s house in which we were at the time, and snapped his fingers at the man.

  “ ‘You, sir,’ he called out. ‘Yes, sir. You. Come here. This fine young man here’—he gestured to me—‘wishes to know how a dirty gamekeeper like yourself comes to be wandering freely in this fine house.’

  “He thought for a second, then replied, with a voice which sounded remarkably cultivated coming from such a source. The thing which struck me then, and continued to strike me thereafter, was its softness; he spoke so quietly you could barely hear him. Others have remarked on this as well. ‘It may be because of one of two reasons,’ he said. ‘The first being that I own both the house and the senator. The second being that not so long ago another great man of this town did deny me entrance. But that is an old story; and he is long since dead.’

  “And then he smiled, a smile of such dazzling beauty that I almost gasped for breath. We are told that we see the soul in such little details and if so, then this man’s reputation must be wrong, for he had the smile of an angel, with beautiful white, even-spaced teeth lighting up eyes which were of a most remarkable blue—a legacy of his Visigothic mother, no doubt.

  “ ‘Your name, sir?’ he asked of me. I told him immediately, with something of a stammer. I was scarcely twenty at this time and, although my training was complete, it had not yet encompassed situations such as this.