‘In the name of God and the double nature of Christ,’ he looked at the Syrians, ‘not forgetting His Single Directing Will, be merciful with me. I am but a poor black from the land of Kush. You have discovered me. Let that be my punishment.’
One of the dealers made a gesture of wiping his arse with one of the options he’d lately bought. He sneered a question at the diplomat: would he be able to execute without selling his horse?
More than ever, rumour clashed with rumour in that great trading room. The dealers ran about like disturbed ants, clasping hands when they met one another, and exchanging promises and slips of papyrus. The slaves scrubbed madly at the boards, chalking and rechalking the prices. The presiding official alone sat silent and serene.
In this commotion, the shares rose sharply. They went straight back to par and then rose to one solidus and a tenth. As they headed towards one and a fifth, I sold my own options on to an Armenian. He sold them straight on for more. I could feel the sudden rush of confidence in the room. Every price was rising.
I was tempted to spend some of my own money on what seemed an attractive forward contract on some Spanish slaves bound for a silver mine. But I knew enough about the markets to be aware of how little I yet understood them. I kept my purse resolutely closed.
Looking over at him, I saw that the diplomat had suddenly lost his crestfallen look. He hadn’t made the absolute killing he’d described to me, but was somehow looking very perky. He was producing document after document before the other dealers. These had stopped shouting at him. Their laughter stilled; they were now pulling on their beards and looking nervously over at the Exchange officials. Some of them had gathered together under a clump of icons, and were talking very quickly in a language I didn’t know.
I now realise the diplomat had been involved in an immense double or even treble bluff. My own part in the plan had been to help in a diversion from the main business of ripping off everyone in earnest. At the time, I suspected something of the sort, but lacked the understanding of the markets needed to say exactly what was going on.
But I had no cause for complaint. I had a draft safely in my tunic for over a hundred pounds of gold. I’d seen for myself what fertiliser a few lies could be with just five pounds of the stuff. I’d had the draft made out to me. Once it was cleared at the Papal Bank, the diplomat could have his share. But I’d harvested a straight, easy, forty-five pounds of gold for myself.
No more moonlit frauds for me, I thought. From now on, I’d do them all indoors. And every ounce of gold thereby gained would go on securing me from the common vicissitudes of life, and on preserving every ancient book I could lay hands on.
I can now see where the diplomat had ostensibly gone wrong. His own part of the fraud was too gross to be believed. What he should have done was to say that the pope had been advised to put off the consecration to the autumn. That would have been more credible, and would probably have still sent the shares down before the truth came out. He also should have planned for a sudden rebound.
But all this is irrelevant. I had been involved in a fraud that was meant to be uncovered. The real fraud was something much larger, involving many more securities besides the incense shipment. While the other dealers were laughing at him, the diplomat had made a killing on the markets. At the time, it really was all beyond me. Still, I hadn’t done badly. I’d saved the day where the secondary fraud was concerned. Perhaps I could even still insist on half. Bear in mind, I had all the takings in my own name.
As I was balancing the certainty of keeping more of the gold, if I had a mind to, against the prospect of further riggings of the market with the diplomat, an old man sidled up to me. Short, thin, clean-shaven, he addressed me in a passable English of the Wessex dialect.
‘I know who you are,’ he said with a wheezing laugh. ‘You’re that boy whose friend was killed the other night.’
‘Where did you learn English?’ I asked nervously.
‘In England. Where else?’
A reasonable answer. Where else would anyone want to learn such an unimportant language, and learn it well?
He explained he’d lived there for several years, handling the local business for a company based in Carthage. He’d picked up pretty child slaves for rich profligates out East, and a few of our black pearls. He’d paid with dyed silks and pepper.
‘Good business in England,’ he said. ‘I hear Holy Mother Church is doing well there. Do you think King Ethelbert might want to borrow some money? You get me an introduction, and I’ll pay good commission. Kent has its moments in the summer months, and I’d like to see the place again.’
I said I’d consider his offer, asking him to keep our little secret from Silas, whose face I could see at twenty yards was turning the colour of a roof tile. The diplomat and I had worried I might be recognised, but had decided to risk that – bear in mind, I’d only been out in Rome dressed as a noble, and had never before ventured across the river. Most dealers never left their own district.
I thought to add to the old man that I had some good contacts in Wessex who probably wouldn’t hang him if he turned up with a bale of silk. At that moment, though, I saw through the open door that Martin stood in the square.
At first, I thought I must be mistaken. But as I pressed my way through the tight crowd of dealers towards the door, I knew it was him. He was dressed in nicely pressed white linen. He was holding hands with a very pretty young woman. Dark, braided hair, obviously pregnant, she was gazing up at him with a look of happy trust on her face. Martin looked back at her.
It was because of the expression on his own face that I thought I’d mistaken him. I was used to the reserved, often sullen look of a slave. Now he smiled, his face creased with the happiness of a day out in the sun. He pointed at the Exchange.
I dodged behind a pillar and continued to observe. They carried on walking until I could no longer see them through the open door. I came out into the square, but they were disappearing into a crowded side street. I would have followed, but the old man had caught up with me.
‘Bad business with your friend,’ he said. ‘Still, he’s soon to be a saint of the Church if I hear right. But a bad business, all the same. You know,’ he continued, ‘you should be careful with the Column of Phocas. They’re a bad lot. They did for your friend. If you get on their wrong side, they’ll do for you.’
‘What is this “Column of Phocas”?’ I asked, spinning back to him, Martin forgotten. ‘What do you know about the Column of Phocas?’
‘All wise men know about the Column of Phocas. The wisest men don’t speak about it.’ He laughed at his epigram.
I pressed him, but he’d closed up. I offered him dinner with Ethelbert. I did think to threaten him with a beating outside. But he’d closed up.
‘Beware the Column of Phocas,’ he said, slipping back into the crowd, ‘if you ever want to pray with me in the church at Canterbury.’
31
‘Have you any notion of who this diplomat is?’ Lucius asked over lunch. ‘Did he tell you anything about himself?’
He’d taken me to a select place in one of the restaurants in the Market of Trajan. Being higher than the Forum, this was still in use. We sat in the open with a canvas overhead to keep the hot sun at bay. There was a fine view over the upper parts of the Forum. In the bright sunshine, it didn’t look too derelict.
‘I really have no idea who the man is,’ I said. ‘I know he spends a lot of time at the Lateran. Otherwise, he sits in his rooms, thinking of ways to defraud the Roman dealers.’
‘We know that he spoke with Maximin on the day of the killing,’ Lucius said. ‘We have only his word for what was said.’
I asked Lucius if he really thought the diplomat might have been involved in the murder.
‘I think nothing,’ said Lucius. ‘The man has been in Rome some while on a mission that no one is able to explain. If he’s from his local king, he should be in Constantinople, addressing himself to the emperor.
Lucius asked me to explain again what I’d been doing with him in the markets. It still didn’t seem to go in. He knew enough about the law of property, and had been forced by circumstances to learn about the intricacies of the testacy laws. But financial speculation was beyond him. And I got the impression he thought it all somewhat demeaning. I let my words trail off.
We turned back to the assault on me the previous evening. While I was going once more over the story in outline, a slave returned from the place of the attack. No bodies, he said, but plenty of blood. He held out the slashed, bloody cloak I’d left there. No one to identify, I groaned to myself. The one I’d injured must have come back with help. Someone at least was showing an unusual interest in keeping the streets uncluttered.
‘From now on, my dear Alaric,’ Lucius said, ‘I want you to promise me you won’t go out again at night by yourself. I should have sent back that escort for you. It was wrong of me to go off and leave you like that. Worse,’ he smiled, ‘it was careless. Nevertheless, I think we can now be sure those letters are still about somewhere.’
I agreed.
‘And I think we can say that those men weren’t sent to kill you. I don’t doubt for a moment you can be good with a knife. But one of you against four experienced street scum – they’d have had you before you could realise if murder had been on their agenda. They wanted you alive. Someone wanted you to take him to those letters. The question now is, who wanted you?’
‘It was the Column of Phocas,’ I answered. ‘Our column isn’t a thing of stone and gilded bronze. It’s a group of men.’
As you ought to know, my Dear Reader, the Latin word ‘ columna ’ means ‘column’. But it also can mean general support. ‘ Columna Phocasi ’ can therefore be translated into Greek as ‘Movement for the Protection of Phocas’.
I was pleased I had uncovered more of the mystery – and had done it without help from Lucius. For the first time, I was taking information to him. I was less pleased that Lucius was so sure I hadn’t been in serious danger from those men.
I suddenly felt less happy with myself. I hadn’t told him about the stranger who helped me. And I’d decided to hold back on my sighting of Martin. The first made my side of the fight less impressive. Revealing the second might only get Martin into a trouble I didn’t feel inclined to inflict on him.
We sat awhile in silence. I looked past Lucius, over the terrace, down past the shabby or ruined or still fine buildings, to the Forum, and to the gleaming statue atop its column. I looked back to a polished wine pitcher on a table just a few yards from us. Though distorted, I could see myself in the reflection. I’d got those crude barbarian things off me as soon as I’d got back to Marcella’s. I was now dressed in my one good remaining suit of clothes. This was of heavy linen – white with no colour for the border. I looked decidedly beautiful. I felt better at once. I had to resist the urge to get up and go looking for a better reflection.
Now I was even richer, I’d have those tailors stitching through the night for an entire new wardrobe. Perhaps I’d go for the heaviest grade of silk.
‘It looks,’ said Lucius, breaking the silence, ‘if what you say is correct, as if we’re dealing with some secret imperial security service. I’m surprised, I must say. I never thought our lord and master in Constantinople was up to running anything like that. I thought straight executions with a bit of torture beforehand was his limit.
‘Now, Alaric, this means we’re up against something big – really big. Something very fishy was going on at that rendezvous outside Populonium. You and Maximin got in its way. He’s dead because of it, and those letters are still missing. You tell me now those letters won’t lead us straight to the killers.’
He stopped and pulled at some bread. ‘On the other hand, it doesn’t do to get involved in imperial politics. Few come out alive. Your friend didn’t. My uncle didn’t – assuming he was ever in them. You and I need to be decidedly careful from now on. I heard this morning that one of the sons of the exarch of Africa has just laid siege to Alexandria. The other son is ready to set sail for Asia.’
This was interesting news. I wondered how it might play on the markets. But I forced my attention back to Lucius.
‘The only forces Phocas has to send against them,’ he continued, ‘need to be taken from already losing wars with Persia and the barbarians. He can’t move openly in Rome against anyone. But he does appear to have a reliable gang of cut-throats at his beck and call.
‘Yes, let’s go quiet on this for the moment. Don’t suppose I’ve been scared off our enquiry for good. But I am now scared. And so should you be. I need to sit down and think how best to proceed. Do, please, come to me for dinner this evening. For the moment, though, let’s carry on as if things have settled down.’
As we parted, Lucius came back to the matter of the diplomat. ‘In view of what you’ve now told me,’ he said very quietly, ‘I’d be very careful of that diplomat. If he is working for Heraclius, he might be just as dangerous to us as the Column of Phocas. Do not, I beg you, suppose you can get close to the truth by playing these people off against each other.’
After lunch, I decided on another visit to the library of Anicius. After banking the draft, I collected Martin from the Lateran, where he told me he’d been all morning at work with the secretaries. I let his deception pass. I had no reason for complaint. Some of the books were already copied. I checked these against the originals, and was happy with them. They were mostly perfect copies. Where they deviated was usually for the better – a silent correction here, a marginal comment there. We were dealing, after all, with the semi-educated. They would welcome the occasional help with difficult words or obscure facts.
As we wandered over to the Quirinal, Martin was less taciturn than I’d previously known him. He’d changed back into the drab clothes of a slave secretary, but something of his earlier happiness lingered about him. He told me about himself.
‘It was in Ireland, sir, that I was born,’ he said. He paused, looking deep into his memories of childhood.
‘You’ve seen the great seas that lie beyond the Mediterranean,’ he continued with a sudden jerk back to the present. ‘But you have to see the clean, cold waves of the Atlantic to know what an ocean truly is. I was born on the west coast, and my grandmother used to have servants place her chair high on the cliffs so we could look together to the edge of the world.
‘No fisherman had ever seen it, but all agreed that the convex dish of the world ended just a hundred miles beyond those waves.’
‘You’ll find,’ I said with a superior look, ‘that the world is round. This being so, it has no edge.’
‘As you please, sir,’ Martin said with a bow that I thought slightly satirical. I was glad he didn’t ask the obvious question about how people at the antipodes didn’t fall off.
He went on to explain that he came on his father’s side from a family that had left London when my people turned up. They’d run off to the Celtic enclave in Cornwall, and then, after constant raiding by us, they’d continued across the water to Ireland, far from the dangers we presented.
‘I suppose, looked at from your point of view,’ I said, ‘my people must have been rather disruptive. But it was you who invited us. You brought us in to do the shitty fighting jobs you’d forgotten how to do for yourselves. It was only natural we should take over once there were enough of us.’
I stopped by an open shop and looked at a very nice cosmetic box. From the stiff look I could see coming over his fac
e, I’d started this conversation badly as well. I envied Lucius and his way with slaves. It didn’t matter if they were older than he was or better looking or brighter. They all deferred to him.
‘You need to be aware,’ I added with an attempt at starting over, ‘that Fortune is on the side of the strong. It was your land. Then it was ours. Perhaps we shall ourselves one day be dispossessed – if we ever forget that a territory belongs to a people not by prescription, but simply by willingness to fight. But I really don’t think anyone need fear or hope that for a while.’
What was I saying? I hadn’t meant to say that. I hadn’t even drunk much that day. I put the box down and thought of opening a negotiation for it. Though Lucius seemed to scorn it, many Church dignitaries from the higher classes wore makeup, and I rather fancied playing with different colours for my face.
‘If you don’t mind my saying, sir,’ Martin whispered softly, ‘that trimming isn’t ivory, but just bleached ox horn.’
I stepped back hurriedly from the box and gave the shopkeeper a dirty look. You have to be careful with some of these people.
We continued on our journey. I made sure to thank Martin for his advice. This let me start over with him yet again. This time, I’d keep a curb on myself. ‘Tell me,’ I asked, offering him one of the dried olives I’d just bought from one of the cleaner hawkers, ‘how you got to Constantinople?’
I ignored Martin’s sullen comment about what a fine city London had been before we broke into it. There was no point in telling him about my own family’s part in the killing and looting, creditable though it may have been. Instead, I began to prod him for his own story.
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