Conspiracies of Rome a-1

by Richard Blake

  Behind these came a whole army of monks in their dark, hooded robes. They looked threatening in the mass, and I’d heard the stories, even if I didn’t yet know at first hand, of how nasty they could turn given the right excuse. They were chanting one of the more triumphant psalms and they carried case after case of relics and other devotional material. I was too far away to see the individual items, but I imagined the nose of Saint Vexilla was among the mass of holiness. Soon enough, I didn’t doubt, they’d be showing off bits of poor Maximin.

  There was a trail of incense from the silver burners that some of them carried. It was a welcome cover to the smell of their unwashed robes and bodies. It was also cheering to see how much of the stuff was being used for even an impromptu occasion. I might yet buy shares in the importing company, and this time hold onto them.

  The universal bishop himself walked alone in the middle of all this. A small man with a grey beard, he walked within a cleared space of about six feet around him. He walked slowly, resting on his ceremonial crook for support, his face lined, his eyes dull. I could see from his wrists and neck that he was swathed in bandages under his gorgeously coloured papal robe.

  This was the man in whose name England was being won over to Christianity. This was the man the simple mention of whom had saved me all those months ago from Ethelbert in full rage. He dealt on terms of equality – and more than equality – with all the kings and bishops of the Earth. Even when not backed against a wall, the emperors in Constantinople played wary of him.

  He was the universal bishop, the servant of the servants of God, the undisputed successor of Saint Peter. He was the holiest and most powerful man in my world.

  And I was on my feet, within speaking distance of a little man who, under those robes, I had no doubt, was still sweating pus.

  The procession came to a halt. The monks knelt on the hard floor. The pope and other dignitaries mounted the platform cleared for the occasion. He took his position in the highest chair, now vacated by the prefect, who’d taken another seat lower than the pope but higher than anyone else. The prefect stood before this chair with head bowed.

  The monks ended their chant with a final menacing shout. There was a clashing of steel as the guards sheathed their swords. The great hall fell silent.

  The prefect stood forward. When he was sure of the general attention, he lifted his head and began his speech of greeting. ‘In the name of His Most Holy and Imperial Majesty, the benevolent and ever-triumphant Caesar Phocas Augustus, Lord and Emperor of the World, before whose awesome power the universe bows in hushed respect, and in the name of our Lord Smaragdus, Exarch in Ravenna, and in the name of the mighty People of Rome – the Eternal City within which Saint Peter and Saint Paul bore witness to the True Faith of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of the Father – I bid welcome to Boniface, Patriarch, Universal Bishop…’

  And so on and so forth. Lucius was right. These Greeks could put on a good speech, even in Latin, at a moment’s notice. It was largely the stereotyped flattery Greek boys learn to rattle out in school. But it was said in a nicely modulated voice, and there was a kind word for all assembled, all the way down to nothings like me.

  When he’d finished, the pope heaved himself up and gave a brief and pained oration of thanks. He mentioned the return of Saint Vexilla’s nose, and how wondrously his cure had turned after he’d been given the news. He refrained from scratching. But every so often, a hand would go up to rub one of the sorest parts of his diseased body. Throughout, he took little sips of something poured by one of his doctors.

  After this, the dispensator got up. I could almost hear the inward groans of the crowd as he opened his mouth.

  ‘Normal men need to piss twice before he runs out of breath,’ Lucius whispered to me. A Frankish diplomat standing behind us poked him in the back and hissed to show some respect. His long moustache quivered with outrage. We fell silent. I tried to listen to the dispensator. But even his long digression on the miracles said – with the most undeniable proofs – to have been worked by Maximin couldn’t hold my complete attention.

  I looked around the crowded Basilica. Even though the day was blistering outside, it was cool within. The great hall was lit by a golden, diffused glow from overhead. I looked at the design of the building, marvelling how everything was both beautiful and structurally essential. I ran my eyes over the crowd opposite. There was the diplomat, wearing his yellow robe. He saw me looking at him and smiled back, raising one of his icons in further greeting. Behind him, I saw someone I’d met at the Exchange. Here and there, I saw other faces I recognised. I was fitting in well in Rome.

  I stopped my survey of the hall. I focused. I looked hard. I drew a sharp breath. Over on the other side of the hall, half behind a column, but looking straight at me, was One-Eye. He was dressed in black, and what I could see of him was half in shadow. But I could see him clearly. I’d never forget that patch over the left eye, nor the livid scar. He was nearly a hundred yards away, but I’d have picked him out at twice the distance.

  I looked slowly away. ‘Lucius,’ I whispered, trying not to move my lips, ‘if you look straight ahead, by the third rear column from the left, you’ll see One-Eye. Try not to let him know you’ve seen him.’

  Lucius didn’t even move his head. ‘I was wondering if that was the man. I’m going outside to gather my slaves. Don’t move until I come back in and cough twice.’

  With an easy movement, he was pushing his way through the crowd to the great doorway. He caused hardly a ripple of attention as he pushed through.

  One-Eye saw him just as he approached the doorway. He darted back to the wall. I could see the forward motion and hear the whispered rebukes as he forced his own way through. He’d be out first.

  I ignored Lucius and began to make my own way out. The stir I caused made the dispensator pause in mid-sentence. I could see his eyes fasten on me with a look of thorough distaste. He raised his voice and continued as if there were no commotion. ‘For as our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ himself said, “Compel them to come in”…’ I heard his voice booming as I eventually got free of the crowd and forced my way out of the Basilica.

  I met Lucius gathering his slaves. One-Eye had got out just a moment before him, he explained, and had gone off towards the river.

  The slaves went before us, pushing the common people aside so we could pass easily through. Beyond the Basilica, the streets were empty and silent in the hot afternoon sun. But there was the dark figure, moving alone and with rapid strides.

  ‘The only exit from that street is by the Aemilian Bridge,’ said Lucius urgently. ‘You and you,’ he spoke to his slaves, ‘get down the short route past the Shrine of Saint Glabrarius. I want you at the far end of this street before he gets to it. I want him alive,’ he called after them.

  We followed down the long street to the river. There were no side streets. There were no particularly ruined houses to let him off the street. Unless he could force a door open, we’d have him. It would be two against one at worst – four against one if we didn’t catch him before the junction with the embankment.

  We ran over the smooth, reasonably uncluttered paving stones. One-Eye never looked round. He ran ahead, his black cloak billowing around him like the wings of some great bird. For such a large man, he moved very fast. We could scarcely keep pace with him.

  ‘Stop!’ Lucius cried. ‘We need to talk with you.’

  A feeble instruction, you’ll agree. It was still better than the mouthful of obscene threats I’d had ready.

  We rounded a corner. Before us was the end of the street. Beyond was the embankment and the bridge. There were the slaves standing guard.

  But One-Eye was now on horseback. How he’d left his horse unattended with any expectation of coming back to it was a mystery to me. But he had. With a clatter of hooves, he was off. The slaves put up their arms to stop him. He knocked them down as a storm flattens an old tree.

  He was across the
bridge in moments. We stood impotently, watching him canter off to our left along the Via Portuensis. He stopped once and looked back at us. He raised his riding whip in the now familiar gesture. Then he was off.

  ‘Fuck you pair of incompetents!’ Lucius swore at the slaves. ‘Get me a fucking horse. I’m giving chase.’

  But there was none to be had. The streets were empty of traffic. One-Eye was soon out of sight into some trees.

  Back at his house, Lucius punished the slaves with his own hand. While they cowered screaming before him, he flogged them until their blood spattered his face and hands. His eyes blazed with anger. I’d never seen him like this.

  ‘Please, master,’ one of them cried. ‘Don’t hurt us. We did our best. Please don’t use us like the others.’

  But Lucius only beat all the harder, his face like black stone.

  ‘Take them away,’ he gasped at length to his steward, dropping the soaked, now broken cane. ‘I want them in chains for the next month. Permanent latrine duty. Only bread and water. I want them brought to me for another flogging every time the weals scab over. They’ll bless me at the end if I don’t sell them into a lead mine.’

  I looked on, appalled. You don’t treat even churls like that – well, not unless they’ve done something really bad. And these had tried. Could you stop a mounted man twice your size?

  Over an early dinner, Lucius recovered some of his composure. I suggested he might have been rather harsh with his slaves.

  ‘Alaric,’ he smiled, ‘you really don’t understand anything about the management of a household. I will make sure to educate you fully in this before you set up your own house here.

  ‘Slaves may look like human beings,’ he lectured me. ‘But they aren’t. They are in all respects an inferior breed. Everyone agrees on that. I know the priests witter on about the equality of all human souls. But even they don’t actually believe that. If they did, the Church wouldn’t have several hundred thousand slaves, or however many it is, getting with their sweat and blood all the gold that pays for their spreading empire of corruption over the Earth. Slaves are lower creatures. They are kept in line by force and the threat of force. Even today, do you know how many slaves there are in Rome? Can you guess at their ratio to citizens?

  ‘They are there to do as they are told, and when they are told. It doesn’t matter what instructions you give them. It doesn’t matter whether they can or can’t be carried into effect. If a slave disobeys, he must be punished. Flogging is normal for that. If he betrays you, or raises a hand against you or any of your own interests, you proceed to mutilation or burning. You rule by terror, or you don’t rule.

  ‘If you ignore this simple truth, you’ll be lucky if you’re simply laughed at. Do it too often, you’ll wake one night with a knife to your throat.’

  ‘But will you go all the way and sell them into the mines?’ I asked.

  ‘By the Twelve True Gods, of course not!’ he laughed. ‘I’d not get much of a price for city-bred trash like them. And I’d only replace them with worse.

  ‘Since it seems to trouble your tender heart, I’ll knock them around a bit more, then show clemency at a meeting of all the household. How does that suit you? Call it another birthday gift.’

  A slave with an impassive face refilled my cup.

  ‘All this and more, my dear Alaric, I’ll do for you,’ Lucius added, a pleading note now in his voice. ‘Just say whatever you want, and it’s yours.’

  Well, friendship has its obligations as well as advantages. Lucius had done so much for me these past few days. All I’d done was to take. Indeed, I’d now withheld a fair bit of information.

  ‘It isn’t late,’ I said, ‘but it’s been a long day. I can’t take it permanently yet. But I’ll gladly take up your offer of a bed for tonight.’

  Lucius smiled and leaned back complacently into his chair.

  37

  That night, I committed with Lucius what Maximin had always called ‘the abominable sin of the ancients’. The punishment, by the way, is castration, plus the usual confiscation of goods. I have known the law to be enforced in Constantinople – but only against those who’ve already got on the emperor’s bad side and against whom no other charges are likely to stick.

  We woke naked in each other’s arms. A slave was standing over us with clean water to drink and some raisins. I couldn’t get free from his embrace at first, and I thought for a moment Lucius would start the same enquiries about my feelings for him as Gretel had taken to making. But he grabbed at the dish and sent the slave on his way. I slid free and stood stretching in the early sunlight.

  After this small refreshment, Lucius taught me the use of his gymnasium. He’d been right. It was so much better than the barbarian forms of exercise. I don’t except any of these, even sea bathing. I resolved as we shared a cold tub afterwards – still no wood for the big furnace – that this was another civilised usage I’d adopt.

  I was glad Lucius had said no more about the investigation. I was feeling increasingly guilty that I’d advanced more than a little by myself, and was revealing none of it. Then again, he had seemed alarmed by the discovery of a political angle to the murder. It was probably for the best if he didn’t yet know the exarch of Africa was now sniffing about for the letters.

  From Lucius, I hurried back to Marcella’s to collect some papers. I was delayed there awhile by the delivery of yet more clothes. I hadn’t time to try them on properly. But Gretel helped me into some of them, and swore I looked like a god. She danced around me so provocatively that I tore everything off and ravished her on the floor. It was an unexpected pleasure, and it really set me up for the day proper. Afterwards, she got water for me and suggested a touch of face powder to cover the sunburn I’d picked up going with the diplomat down to the financial district.

  Then to the Lateran, where the copying was back in full swing. Martin showed me the first completed books. They still hadn’t dried well enough to risk opening them. Even if they were wholly devotional, they looked very good.

  I’d go over to the Exchange later. I’d sniff the financial air against the day when I went there as a dealer in my own right. I’d also look for that old man with experience of the English market. I could discuss the mechanics of shipping books to Canterbury. And I could press him again about the Column of Phocas. He’d known more than he was saying. I needed to know what that was.

  I worked everyone until some while after the normal time for lunch. I let Martin go with a guilty pang, and took myself across the river to the financial district.

  Before getting to the river, I dodged into an empty side street and put on the hooded robe of a monk. I was almost used now to being followed in Rome. It seemed to involve no danger during the daylight. I was even a little flattered by the constancy of the attention. Nevertheless, I wanted a bit of privacy for what I was to do. The robe covered me entirely. I left through the other end of the side street into a crowd of pilgrims and shoppers. There were at least a dozen other monks of one kind or another. For my first time in Rome, I might now count on being unobserved.

  The Exchange when I got there was in uproar. I took advantage of the milling crowd and stripped off the robe, throwing it into one of the containers set up on every corner so that rubbish didn’t have to be dumped in the street. Unless someone had guessed I was going there, and had sent spies ahead, I was unobserved.

  Fat Silas, I was told, had been murdered in the night. Armed men had waylaid him as he staggered home from a brothel and cut his throat. That explained the uproar. This was the first serious crime the district had known in living memory, and the Jews and Syrians and others were in a blind panic. They’d forgotten all differences of religion and nationality, and agreed on setting up a committee of enquiry in the smaller synagogue – you see, this was close enough by the Exchange to let dealers run back and forth to keep an eye on the prices. There, they were issuing joint offers of rewards for any information that might lead to the killers. There seemed to
be no question of involving the prefect.

  This was a strange crime, I heard from the Armenian who’d bought my options. He was leaning alone against a pillar, making notes into a book of waxed tablets. He seemed quite pleased with himself. He gave me a queer look at first, but soon cheered up when he realised I didn’t yet have the full story. Silas had been murdered, he explained, but his purse and jewellery hadn’t been touched. This raised the matter from a property-related crime to something possibly much more alarming.

  ‘Good thing I dumped those options,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have bought them in the first place. But at least I got out ahead. The poor sod I sold them to will have a hard job collecting from the estate.’

  Well, this was unconnected with any of my business. Even so, it wasn’t nice to wander into what I’d thought the safest part of Rome outside the Lateran, only to find myself in another murder investigation.

  For all he didn’t share in the general panic over Fat Silas, the Armenian was annoyed by the continued movement of prices. Following some vast, hidden intervention the previous day, they were still all over the place. The diplomat, on his earlier visit, had been observed in close conversation with some of the Jews. That had set things off again. The Jews weren’t saying anything. Everyone else was still trying to guess what he was really about. Since I had nothing to say on this, the Armenian soon lost interest in me and went back to his waxed tablets.

  Inside the Exchange, I found the old man. So far as I could tell, he was arguing over the terms of a mortgage he was negotiating to buy. The seller had the golden hair and ruined complexion of an African Vandal. I waited for the transaction to finish, then made my presence known.

  ‘Hello, Aelric,’ said the old man in the buoyant voice of someone who’s just got himself a bargain. ‘Come down from the Caelian to make even more cash?’ He also didn’t seem that worried about the murder.